#the moon and sun orbit au I think

[digitalcomfortspot]

SO UHHH @empyrealbody DREW??? MY SPACESHIP BOTS AU BOYS???

They are BEAUTIFUL

I may have to simplify said design for my own drawing style but HOLY MOLY, look at em!!! Look at the cool epaulettes! Look at the awesome faces!!! Look at the BOYS!!!

I'm so grateful i-

Thank youuuuu

[shookethdev]

Hey @tinyfairart!! I was your Secret Skeleton for the DCAH2023 event! I had a lot of fun drawing these guys, and I love the concept of your AU Everlasting Orbit!!

Below the cut is just the uncolored and flats/unedited version

[poisonouspastels]

out of all my time brainstorming for the Minecraft AU never did I think one of the thought processes I would have is "the moon is made of glowstone"

[the-neon-spotlight]

Someone was clearly picking favorites during their free-time today.

(It's me. Spotty. I was picking favorites, lmao-)

Anywhooo~ Couldn't resist drawing some Stanley, Constant Orbit's beloved Theatre-Bot!

[wasyago]

I'm so curious, but it's okay if you do not have an answer for me; did something happen to Etho in your recks au for him to need all of those robotic prosthetics, like an accident of sorts? Or did he, I guess, experiment on himself or something like that?

Wonderful design, by the way! I can't stop looking at it, I love it so much.

haha yeah something did happen :)c

so, as you may or may not know, the world of recks suffered from a catastrophe caused by the moon going off its orbit and almost crushing into earth; which caused the creation of many gravitational anomalies all over the planet; which caused most of the big cities to evolve downwards and move under the sea level; which created this odd phenomenon of many skyscrapers in the middle of the city being abandoned and staying vacant, even if the buildings are technically fully operational.

and so teen etho, our smart little boy, thought "Hey, i don't wanna live so low underground where the sun doesn't reach when there's perfectly good houses on the surface!" so he just kinda... left his home and moved to one of the abandoned buildings. which, i mean, good for him and all that. BUT.

see, the thing about run down buildings is that they don't have a good water supply. and the thing about water in recks au is that it has a ton of bad chemicals, moon debris, leftovers of destroyed infrastructure, etc, in it when unfiltered or filtered poorly.

and etho, although smart, wasn't smart enough to give proper attention to the metallic taste of the water in the building he moved in to. like, sure it tastes a little weird but otherwise it's fine, it's something you would expect from an abandoned skyscraper right?

well, little did he know that the water he drank for god knows how many years of his life, was actually slowly dissolving his insides and poisoning him! and yknow, sharp pain in your guts every so often is one thing, but actively coughing up blood is another. and thank god he met cleo by then, because they forced him to actually do a check up to see what was wrong.

everything was wrong how you might've already guessed, to the point where the damage wasn't reversible anymore and there was no way to heal naturally. sooo etho had to get the prosthetic and say goodbye to his organs. the other option was to say goodbye to his life tho so he got pretty lucky there i think. thankfully cleo is a prosthetics doctor neurologist person, and she was able to get everything sorted fairly quickly for him and get that man on the operating table as soon as possible.

so at the end, all of etho's vitals had to be changed, including his throat and lower jaw because it also god badly damaged by being in contact with the water. (turns out etho had the raspy voice not because he was cool but actually because he was dying 😬) and! let me tell you, removing someone's entire set of vitals and changing them for the artificial ones in one surgery without killing the person in the process is actually very hard!! who would've thought huh...

well uhmm, yeah so this is what happened to etho o3o

(the eye prosthetic is another story tho, this post is already pretty long so maybe next time)

[maudiemoods]

I was messing around trying to design some ships for beings made of stardust but made an entirely new au in the process

This take place reeeaaallly far into the future!! Humans live throughout the solar system! They don't seem to have time for their kids so they send them off to sun and moons floating daycare! A lot of parents send their kids here for years! Some parents never come back for their kids! So! They live here until they're ready to go off and live on their own! Tragic but sun and moon do their best to give the kids the education and love they need! They probably have more robot staff or smaller, simpler versions of themselves running around to help!

I'm thinking the actual story takes place after an event that knocks the ship out of orbit into deep space and y/n finds them decades later! Idk though hmmmmmmmm still thinking

[teh-inggris]

Joining the stellar black hole system au by @just-call-mefr1es and @finligz !! Heres my blanetsona >:)

ball form without the glasses v

more about her under read more:) + doodles of the other blanets!!

Him wearing sunglasses (or black hole glasses in this case lol) is not just for fashion, his eyes are sensitive. He literally cant stand looking at the general direction of the black hole because it genuinely hurts his eyes

you'd think that spending 4 billion years wouldve at least made him get used to it, but no. His eyes burn every time lol and Even if he HAD to, he has to squiiint and cover his eyes like how you would when the sun is too bright out

She does find it mesmerizing tho, but she still wish to just orbit a star or something

She has 2 moons!

Bahar has a rocky crust with sprinkles of water-ice on her surface and liquid water under it. Emas is made of red basalt and is volcanically active. They dont have a strong enough gravitational pull to actually affect Teion tho :P

friendsiess

Albri belongs to @/beeeeppe :)

And here are doodles of the other blanets!! >:D just the ones that i can see in the blanetsona tag tho ^^;

[rambleonwaywardson]

Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 13

Masterpost Read on AO3

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is about to head to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: Every week I think "this chapter will be shorter," and every week it is longer. There was a time when I would have looked at 11k words and split it in two, but now is not that time. You get it all in one go. Plan your time accordingly.

---

November 21 Lunar South Pole, Starship

It might have been better if Bucky didn’t dream. More merciful. A blissful unawareness, nothing but a deep, uninterrupted sleep full of nothing and no one and nowhere. Maybe he wouldn’t feel so afraid, if he didn’t dream. Or maybe dreams are the only thing keeping him from drifting away forever.

He dreams about the moon a lot. Bounding across that wide open nothing, staring up at a never-ending universe full of stars. The stuff of his childhood fantasies. We’re all made of stardust, Gale likes to say.

He dreams about the rover crashing down on him, smashing him into the ground as they both skid down a sandy slope. He dreams about the sudden inability to breathe, the explosion of pain in his leg. He dreams about Benny’s voice in his ear before everything went dark. If he could wake up, it would be one of those dreams where your eyes shoot open at the end, the breath pressed in a rush out of your chest.

He dreams the most about Gale.

Gale’s smile, his laughter, his voice. He dreams about pulling into their driveway and seeing Gale through the window, dancing with the dog. He dreams about Gale throwing the bouquet at their wedding, grinning in exasperation as he covers his eyes. He dreams about Gale looking over at him as they fly their plane out over the water. He dreams about Gale handing him coffee in the morning when they’re both only half dressed and half dead to the world.

And he dreams about Gale, his face worried, looking down at him with tears in his eyes. He looks scared, and Bucky doesn’t even know why. He wants to know why. Needs to know why so he can make it go away. He wants to reach out, to say something, anything to make it go away, whatever it is. He wants to brush Gale’s messy hair back away from his face and hold his hand against his cheek and tell him that everything is alright. He wants to take away all of the pain.

But he can’t.

He can’t move a muscle.

—

“Rosie? Are you awake?”

Curt lays in his hammock in the middle of the Starship cabin, looking out the window at the star-filled sky beyond. He is the epitome of alone. The moon is not a different planet, it’s just a moon. One lonely moon orbiting the little miracle that is planet Earth. But the moon itself is 2,160 miles wide at its equator. It is 6,786 miles in circumference. A vast expanse of dust and rubble marked by impact basins billions of years old. 260 degrees Fahrenheit in full sun and -280 in the darkness. Nothing about this place is welcoming. An astronaut’s Everest. And yet it is peaceful in the strangest of ways. 

Empty. Imposing. Beautiful. 

Lifeless.

Except for him. 

Scattered across the lunar surface are the remnants of the few voyages half a century ago that dared to step foot on this alien terrain. A flag here. A camera there. Another era. Another age. The same dream.

And even still, Curt is but an invisible, lonely speck at the southern pole, existing along a boundary of dark and light that parallels this strange liminal limbo of life vs. death. Just him and the stars and a world that wants to kill him with every heartbeat, nothing but a fancy tin can separating him from an end that would claim him in a single breath.

He supposes that being alone, the only conscious human being on an entire planet, would make most people feel lonely. It doesn’t, though. He doesn’t feel lonely up here. It’s not the being alone, really, that has lodged this tense, shuddering ball of anxiety in his chest. It’s the fact that he isn’t. The fact that there is someone else beside him fighting for breath, and he doesn’t have a say in whether or not that breath is drawn.

He doesn’t expect an answer when he reaches out into the radio silence. He doesn’t know what time it is, but Helen’s been on shift for a while now, so he’d guess around 12am GMT. He’s surprised when there’s a soft crackle on the other side of the radio transmission, and Rosie says, “Yeah, Curt. I’m awake. So’s Alex.”

Curt throws his legs over the side of the hammock and climbs out, turns the music back on – Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day – because he can’t stand the silence all around him. Maybe it’s the quiet that makes it hard to sleep. The quiet that’s too loud. Or maybe it’s the loudness inside his head that keeps him up. He wishes he could turn down the volume on his own thoughts, turn those off instead. He feels crazy. Like maybe this is all just a weird fever dream. But he’s experiencing all of it in frightening technicolor, and even though he doesn’t feel lonely, he is so, so alone.

I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known.

He wanders over to Bucky, who is laying still and quiet on his cot. He opened his eyes for just a moment sometime after that seizure, when Curt had to adjust the IV in his arm and accidentally let it tug at the sensitive skin. But not again since. 

“What are the odds of another seizure?” Curt asks now.

Rosie is quiet. Curt can imagine him rubbing the back of his neck as he thinks about what to say and how best to say it. How to let Curt down gently. 

My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating.

Curt strokes a wayward curl away from Bucky’s forehead, hating the way Bucky feels clammy beneath his touch. Then he rifles through their med bay supplies while he waits, looking through the medications they have packed away.

“I don’t know, Curt,” Rosie finally says before going into what Curt calls his doctor voice. “Sometimes, traumatic brain injuries can cause seizures. It just… happens. It doesn’t mean he’ll have another. It doesn’t mean he won’t. Since it’s only been a day or two, it was an early seizure. They’re less likely to indicate long-term epilepsy. If he has another, the odds of him developing epilepsy increase. If he has one over a week from now, it’s almost guaranteed.”

He sighs. “So, I don’t know. All we can do is take this one step at a time.”

Curt looks over at Bucky again, at the bandage around his head, the splint on his leg, the shallow rise and fall of his chest. He thinks about how unfair it is that Bucky has to rely on him to keep him alive. Curt took the same medical training as all the other non-physician astronauts, but he’d hardly trust a single one of them, much less himself, in this type of emergency. 

It’s not fair.

“I wish you were here Rosie,” he confides. He hates the way his voice sounds thick and strained. “I don’t… I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.” 

“You’re doing great, Curt. Really.”

Curt frowns, takes a deep breath. He looks down at his hands and shuffles through the medications he has available once again, skimming over their names. The lead weight in his chest rests heavy on his lungs when his fears are confirmed: the one he’s looking for isn’t there. 

Curt: “Rosie?”

Rosie: “I’m still here.”

Curt: “We had anti-seizure medication on ISS. I’m not seeing it here.”

Silence.

Rosie: “I advocated for it to be included on Artemis. It was a whole debate. You’ll have to ask Houston.”

Curt doesn’t like the sound of that at all. Another score for NASA’s backpack problem: medications. They have a far lower mass restriction and far less storage capacity on Orion and Starship than they do on the station, and therefore they could bring far fewer supplies. Rosie was involved in the task force that determined which medical supplies were necessary for a lunar exploration mission, but he was only one person among many. And many of the others had never even been to space. In the end, did anyone really think an astronaut was likely to have a seizure during a mission that lasts only a month or less?

Curt rubs a hand over his face, dreading the answer. 

Curt: “Helen?”

Helen: “Working on it.”

They wait, Curt fidgeting impatiently, his frustration building up again.

Far From Here by Marianas Trench is playing in the background. It feels alright but that’s a lie that’s always near, sit around and blame the one that put you here.

Helen: “We do not have anti-seizure medication on board Orion or Starship.” She sighs, and she sounds like she hates to be telling them this. “It was decided that a seizure was not a likely complication on a short-term lunar sortie.”

Bingo. 

Rosie: “Fuck.”

A disbelieving laugh pops out of Curt’s mouth. He can’t help it. Because what the fuck? 

Helen: “I’m sorry, Curt.”

Curt: “So… if he has another seizure. If he keeps havin’ seizures. We can’t do anything?”

Rosie: “No.”

Curt: “That’s… that’s… Yikes.” Curt laughs again, shaking his head. “That’s a fuckin’ yikes.” 

His mouth twists into a sour, resentful smile as he holds an arrangement of fucking useless medications in his hands. His laugh turns from shocked to bitter as he lets the meds tumble carelessly back into their storage box, and he runs a hand through his hair. He hasn’t slept in… he doesn’t know how long. The flight surgeon probably knows, but Curt doesn’t give a damn. He’s felt this feeling of dread weighing him down ever since that seizure.

And now he’s told that it’s something that could happen again. Could happen multiple times. And if it does, he can do nothing. All he can do is hold Bucky down, make sure he doesn’t choke, and hope for the fucking best.

Laughter just keeps bubbling up out of his chest in an angry, sordid, deranged sort of noise.

Helen: “Curt? Are you okay?”

Curt shakes his head, rubbing his eyes. He can’t stop laughing.

“Yikes,” he says again. “Yikes yikes yikes yikes yikes.” He claps his hands together as he says it, and he leans over, hands on his knees. Slowly, he eases himself to the floor, so he’s sitting with his head leaning back against the cot. He presses his fingers to his mouth and chuckles into his hand. “Fuckin’ yikes, guys.”

Helen: “Curt?”

He doesn’t care what Mission Control has to say. This whole situation is a mess. A mess that could’ve been avoided, even if it couldn’t have been planned for. He’s exhausted, he’s angry, and this is absurd.

Helen: “Curt, do you copy?”

Curt: “What the fuck? What the fuck NASA? What the fuck!”

—

Nassau Bay, TX

Gale hasn’t checked his email since before John’s accident. He knows it will be filled with “thoughts and prayers” and questions from the media even though they know they should be contacting Marge. He knows reading a single email with the words “We’re praying for you and John” or “What does this mean for the Artemis program” will be enough to make him scream and throw his laptop across the room. And anything else, any other email about literally anything else, he can’t think about right now. Because he still can’t accept the fact that the world continues to turn. 

Anyone who really needs him has his number. And anyone else can cut him some damn slack. 

He managed a few hours of sleep after his home emptied out last night and left him alone again. Except for Marge, who has, without asking, taken up residence in his guest room until further notice to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid or generally stop breathing since he can’t seem to remember to do that on his own. 

He didn’t manage to fall asleep until around 11pm, and his eyes shot open again, jostling him out of a nightmare he can’t remember, at 2am. Vague visions of a mangled body, a casket, the expression of pain stretched uncomfortably across his husband’s face flashing in his mind. Bucky’s pained scream in his ears. Or was that him?

He’s sleeping in the living room again, on the couch that he’s nearly too tall to fit on. He tried to go back into the bedroom, but he couldn’t. The bed is too big, the blankets not warm enough, the memories too painful even as they drift away. He tried to sleep again, too, he really did. He tossed and turned and squeezed his eyes closed and tried to remember to breathe. In, out, in, out… in. in. in. in. out.

He buried his nose into the pillow case that mercifully still smells like John. He thought about their wedding, about strong arms wrapping around him, a soft smile, gentle lips, bright eyes crinkled at the corners with all the joy that John carries through their life.

But he couldn’t do it. He’s exhausted, and yet he feels wide awake. He wonders if he’ll ever sleep again. If he’ll carry on like this, plagued by a nightmare he can’t navigate his way out of, or if one day his body will simply collapse under the weight of this grief that he can’t control.

It’s all too much.

So he turns on the light, grabs his laptop off the coffee table, and he opens his email for the first time in over two days. He stares at his inbox numbly, and he presses his wedding ring to his lips as he fights the urge to slam the laptop closed again. He scrolls through uncountable messages, deleting most of them on the spot regardless of who they’re from or what they want. There’s one, though, from yesterday afternoon, that stops him cold. 

When he sees the sender’s name, he does slam the laptop closed. His heart rate skyrockets, his whole body going stiff. He looks around the room at just how alone he is. It’s dark outside. Marge is asleep. Benny is on shift. The dogs, even, are asleep.

He takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut before slowly opening the laptop again. With shaking fingers, he clicks on the email. 

Gale,

I know these may be hard to look at right now, but I do hope, if you choose to let them, they can make you smile.

I’m thinking of you, and I pray that John makes it home. 

XO. 

His fingers are trembling so bad that he can barely click the link at the bottom of the email. But he swallows thickly and fights to breathe, blinking the tears out of his eyes when the page opens. 

Their wedding photos. 

It feels so long ago now, the way Gale struggles to remember parts of it. Like his mind simply won’t allow him to find comfort in the memories of the best day of his life. 

How has it only been a month, and already the world threatens to take his husband away from him? He feels sick. Sick at the thought that this life can be so cruel. Wondering what he did to deserve this. He feels sick at the memory of the day he proposed. The very reason that drove him to spit out the words he’d been kicking around for years already.

We should get married, he said, all that time ago. We should get married, he said, terrified that something would happen. If they were bound by law rather than just by name, he would get a say in John’s fate, should John have no say himself. He would get a key to the room where NASA keeps their secrets from the world, even if he got himself booted from Mission Control. He would be guaranteed a place at the table of John’s life if his life came under threat somewhere up there, too far away.

We should get married, he said, praying to God that nothing would happen.

But here they are. Something’s happened.

You knew the risks, he thinks to himself, biting down too hard on his lower lip. 

You always knew the damn risks. You knew the risks of space travel. And you knew the risks of John Egan. Don’t act for a second like you didn’t.

He wouldn’t trade it, though. He wouldn’t change a thing. If he could go back a thousand times, he would still attach himself at the hip to John fucking Egan. He would still fall for that smile and that laugh and those wild curls. He would still follow him to the ends of the Earth. He would marry him a million times over. No matter how it ends.

He blinks rapidly as he stares at the computer screen.

The cover photo is the one taken right after their kiss. Gale, in bright white, is leaning back in John’s arms, laughing in a way that makes his nose scrunch and his cheeks turn pink. John, in his black tux, is grinning from ear to ear as he holds Gale by the waist, eyes locked on his new husband. Pepper and Meatball are at their feet, Pepper standing with her front paws on Gale’s thigh, wanting to join in, as Curt tries to keep Meatball from knocking John over. 

God, did he ever feel that happy? It seems too far away now. 

He hovers his mouse over the button to enter the gallery, but the thought makes his head spin and he can’t bring himself to do it. He glances around again at the empty, lonely room. He’s never had so much trouble with being alone before. Now it makes nausea rise up in his stomach, makes a fearful feeling settle over him, He rubs a hand over his eyes and picks up the laptop, padding quietly down the hall. 

He hesitates outside the door, one hand holding the laptop and the other raised to knock. He feels like a little kid who can’t sleep, going to his parents because he had a nightmare. He only made that mistake once or twice, quickly learning that all he could expect was his father yelling at him to get back in bed. 

Maybe he shouldn’t.

None of them are getting much sleep right now; it’s not just him. If Marge is asleep, he shouldn’t wake her. She has no obligation to chase away the monsters under his bed.

He drops his fist and takes a step back, wincing when the corner of his laptop bumps quietly against the wall behind him. He’s a grown man. If he can’t sleep, that’s his problem. If he feels like his chest is too tight and he can’t breathe and his hands are shaking and his head is spinning just because he got back the wedding photos he paid for… well, that’s his problem, too.

But it’s Marge. Marge, who has always been there for him. Marge, who let him hide in her bedroom when they were just kids because he was too afraid to go home. Marge, who would hold him close and try to make him laugh and tell him everything would be alright even when they were both too young to know. Marge, who has gone out of her way for 20 plus years to make sure he knows he is never, ever alone.

He steps forward again and raises his hand to knock. Lays his hand flat against the door instead. Takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes.

No. No. She deserves to sleep. He shouldn’t worry her. He should-

“Gale?” Marge asks softly. “I know you’re out there, darling. Don’t act like you’re not.”

Warily, Gale opens the door, unsure if he feels guilty that he woke Marge or relieved that she woke up before he could talk himself out of it. He stands in the doorway, unsure of why exactly he came here, what he’s supposed to do now, what he expects her to do. But Marge sits up and turns on the bedside lamp. She takes one look at Gale’s face, and she frowns before forcing a weak smile. “Come here,” she says. 

He walks further into the room to sit down on the bed. He hears paws click-clacking down the hall, and Pepper wanders in, followed by Meatball. Marge urges him to scoot back to lean against the headboard next to her, and the dogs hop up onto the foot of the bed. Meatball crawls up to rest his head on Gale’s leg. Pepper whines quietly as she watches him, forlorn. Meatball is familiar with them leaving. Buck, Bucky, Benny. They’ve all been on the station for months at a time. Pepper, though. Pepper’s just a baby, really. She’s only been part of their family for a matter of months. This is strange, for her, having one of her dads gone for so long. She knows something is wrong, but she doesn’t know why he isn’t coming home. 

Gale’s heart breaks that little bit more every time she stares at him with those sad, confused eyes.

Marge presses herself against Gale’s side and leans her head on his shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Gale shakes his head. “It’s not…” he sighs. “It’s not fair.” And damn does he feel like a whiny child. But it’s not. It’s not fair.

He opens his laptop again and turns it back on, handing it over to Marge. She looks at the screen. “Your wedding photos.”

“Mmm.”

“Have you looked at them?”

Gale bites nervously at his thumbnail and shakes his head. 

“Do you want to?” Marge asks. They’re both just staring at the screen, at the beautiful, beautiful photograph inviting them to look at the rest. 

Gale’s breath stutters before he says “I don’t know.”

“Can I…?”

He hesitates. Then he nods. 

Marge raises an eyebrow in question, but she clicks the button. When the page loads, the screen is filled with a gallery of vibrant, fairy-tale-esque photographs that make Marge gasp. Gale holds his breath. 

“These are gorgeous,” Marge says. “Look at you!” The first set of photos are of Gale and his attendants getting ready in the bridal suite. Bright whites and navy blues. Sunlight streaming through the windows. Gale looking at himself in the mirror, running a hand through his hair or nervously adjusting the sleeves of his tux. The girls with their perfect flower bouquets. Gale and Marge sharing a moment in front of the mirror. His attendants raising a glass to him as he smiles, ready to marry the love of his life.

There are photos of the groomsmen going on a wild goose chase, sprinting down the hall after Pepper when she stole the rings. A picture of Marge stepping out of the bridal suite and looking horrified. A picture of Brady tackling Pepper in a heap on the floor, the others trailing breathlessly behind them.

Then there’s photos of the groom’s suite. “Oh, look at John,” Marge sighs, a soft smile on her face as they reach the first row of pictures of him. But when she looks at Gale, his brow is wrinkled as he bites at his lower lip. 

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “No.”

He can’t do it. He can’t sit here and look at these. Not now. 

Marge puts her hand on his. “Okay,” she says. “It’s okay. We don’t have to.” 

“I can’t.” Tears are welling up at the corners of his eyes, his whole body still and on guard for the next thing that tries to tear out his heart.

Marge closes the laptop and sets it on the bedside table, and then she pulls him into a tight side hug. “It’s alright, honey.”

“I can’t,” he says again, choking on the breath that won’t fill his lungs. Can’t what, he doesn’t know. But he can’t. 

“Just breathe, Gale. You don’t have to. You don’t have to.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, hating the way his throat feels tight, the shakiness of his voice. He’s so tired of crying. He’s so tired of trying not to cry. He’s so tired. He’s shaking so bad. He can’t stop.

“Breathe, honey,” Marge says, stroking his hair. “In and out. Come on.”

Gale tries to match his breathing to hers as she guides him gently through it, but he keeps choking on air, rogue sobs breaking through and wracking his bones.

Marge shushes him and holds him close. She’s been holding him up for the last two days. Listening to him fight against his own emotions, on the constant verge of breaking down, toeing the line until he can no longer stop himself from tipping over. As if he thinks he isn’t allowed to feel these things. As if he thinks feeling them is a last resort that he’s being continually driven to, every loss of control a mark of some sort of failure that no one else can see. 

“You shouldn’t hold it all in, Gale,” she tells him. He thinks about the fact that he fell apart in her arms that first night after the accident, in front of the TV with Maggie’s drawing in his hands. And he crumbled in her arms yesterday, after the seizure. She continually pulls him back from some sort of edge, keeping the pieces of him held together with scotch tape and a determined kind of love. Isn’t that enough?

As if she can read his mind, she says, “It doesn’t matter how much you think you’re allowed to hurt. You need to let yourself feel all of it, hon. You can’t hold it in forever.”

But it hurts so much. It hurts just as much to let it out as it does to hold it in. He presses the ring to his lips and bites at his knuckle until it hurts and now that he’s crying again he can’t fucking stop. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever stop. He can’t breathe. Doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to breathe again. 

But John needs him to keep breathing. He has to keep breathing. He has no choice.

Marge holds him and rocks him and presses her lips to his hair. She doesn’t let go even when it feels like they’ve been wrapped up like this forever. But finally, he settles again.

“I’ll have to look at them eventually,” he mumbles, sniffing quietly as he feels tears drying on his face. “I… I wish I could…”

“It’s alright,” Marge says again. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Maybe tomorrow, things will be better. 

John has been unconscious for 2 days. 48 hours. 2,880 minutes. 172,800 seconds. It feels like so much longer.

172,800 seconds that Gale hasn’t felt whole.

But. 

Maybe tomorrow. 

—

Benny looks at the list of songs he’s been provided. Among them, So Far Away by Avenged Sevenfold, What a Catch Donnie by Fall Out Boy, Gun Dogs by TOVA, Therapy by All Time Low, Before You Go by Lewis Capaldi, PIECES by Daughtry, Miserable at Best by Mayday Parade.

Now Buck by nothing, nowhere.

“I’m not okay, I’m not alright, I need a break, I need a light,” Curt is singing. “I gotta keep it a buck, keep it a buck.”

The singing has become increasingly angry over the last couple of hours. Helen warned him that Curt was getting agitated.

“Buck, Curt, really?” Benny asks.

“Didn’t really think of it like that,” Curt admits before he continues on. Feel like this every day, shit kinda suck.

“Curt, we’d really like you to get some sleep.” Benny runs a hand through his hair, fighting back his own yawn. Smokey has been relentless in pointing out that Curt has basically not slept in 48 hours, and the effects are becoming obvious. “We’re concerned-”

“Oh you’re concerned, are you?” Curt scoffs.

“Yes, Curt. You need to sleep.”

Curt changes the song to Fuck You by Lily Allen and lets it play for a while before turning off his coms without another word.

—

Curt kneels next to Bucky’s cot, resting his forehead on the thin mattress. He squeezes his eyes shut against the dizzy feeling in his head and tries to catch his breath. 

He knows Benny is right. He needs to sleep. He’s driving himself crazy up here. He has half a mind to turn his coms back on and apologize to him, but he’s just so goddamn angry. Not at Benny. Just at NASA. Just at the world. Just at everyone who gave Bucky shit and hoped he’d die up here. Just at himself.

Not your fault, he tries to remind himself. Not your fault.

He pulls himself to his feet and walks back over to the console, picks up his tablet. Having a playlist running through his head and assaulting his ears at all times is what’s keeping Curt from thinking about his situation on a constant loop. It’s the only thing keeping him from crumbling to pieces. But he can’t think at all. He feels all sorts of mixed up, like he’s somewhere between tipsy and a panic attack but not quite veering towards either one. 

Chasing Cars is playing. If I lay here, If I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world.

For once, he needs the quiet. He turns off the music. He turns on his coms.

“What if he dies in my sleep?” he asks. It makes sense and yet it doesn’t, and his head feels fuzzy, everything coming at him just a little too slow and a little too fast all at once.

“He won’t,” Benny says.

“You’ll wake me up if anything changes?”

“Yes.” 

Curt knows, if nothing else, he can take Benny at his word. “Fine.” 

He ensures he isn’t on VOX but keeps his coms on just in case. He looks over at Bucky, and for a second he’s unable to look away. He can see the rise and fall of his chest, knows his heart is still beating. He knows his friend is somewhere in there.

“Stay alive for me, okay?”

—

He wakes two hours later to a master alarm and just about falls out of his hammock, tumbling to the floor on his hands and knees. He feels around for the push to talk button on his coms. “Benny?”

The alarm turns off. Curt slowly rises to his feet, glancing around the dark cabin in terrified confusion.

Benny: “Sorry Curt. You weren’t waking up to our transmissions.”

Curt: “So you decided to give me a heart attack?”

Benny: “Worked, didn’t it?”

Curt: “Fuck you.”

Benny: “We think he’s awake.”

Curt freezes, trying to comprehend that statement. 

Benny: “Can you check?”

Curt isn’t sure if he responds, maybe giving some sort of noncommittal noise of acknowledgement as he fumbles around to get the cabin lights turned on. He approaches Bucky’s cot slowly.

“Bucky?” he says, almost scared to look. But he stands over the cot and grips the edge of the mattress between white-knuckled fingers.

Bucky is looking at him. His breathing is irregular, eyes wide. His fingers twitch.

“Eyes open, Benny,” Curt says.

Rosie must have woken up, too, because his groggy voice comes over the coms in response. “Heart rate?”

“Elevated,” Benny replies. “He seems to be under stress.”

No fucking shit, Curt thinks. He realizes he’s still white-knuckling the cot.

Rosie: “Try talking to him, Curt.”

Usually, when he talks to Bucky, he keeps his coms off, feeling that NASA – the whole world – doesn’t deserve to listen in. But now he knows they need to hear. He switches his coms to VOX.

Curt: “Hey, Bucky. It’s, uh, it’s about 9am GMT, up here on the moon. November 21st. Surface Mission day six. 4am Houston time.”

He doesn’t know what the hell he’s supposed to say. He’s been talking to Bucky offhand over the past day or so, but suddenly he feels all out of conversation starters. He sighs and takes Bucky’s hand in his own, nodding at the fact that it feels warm.

Rosie: “Keep going, Curt.”

Curt rubs his thumb over Bucky’s knuckles. He looks at Bucky’s wide blue eyes. Wonders what they see. He forces himself to smile.

Curt: “You scared the shit out of us yesterday. God, John. Not cool. If you could, like, not do that again, that would be great. We all took it pretty hard… Buck took it pretty hard. Don’t worry too much about him, though. We’re all worried about him. That’s for damn sure. But he has a family down there. He has Marge, and Benny, and Pepper and Meatball. Harding, Dr. Huston, Croz. We’ve got eyes on your boy, don’t worry. They’re tryin’ their best to take care of him while you’re gone.”

Benny: “Heart rate is stabilizing. It’s working, Curt.”

Curt: “Our uh… our plants are doin’ good, too. I haven’t checked on them or nothin’ – they got me locked up in here lookin’ after your ass. But they’re growin’. We’re growin’ plants on the moon. If you wake up, I might even get to go harvest some of them before we go. But… well, it’s alright if I can’t.” His throat is starting to feel tight, and it’s getting harder to keep his voice steady. He takes a shaky breath.

Curt: “It’s alright if you need… All that matters... Fuck. You just keep pushing through, alright? Just… yeah. Whatever you need to do, Bucky. It’s alright. You do whatever you need to do. I-I’m here. I’m here.”

Suddenly Curt can’t keep the tears out of his eyes and he reaches his free hand up to wipe at them. “I’m here,” he whispers. 

When he drops his hand again, though, he notices the way Bucky’s eyes flick down, tracking the movement. Curt raises his hand, and Bucky’s eyes follow slowly.

Curt: “He’s uh… he’s tracking my hand motion?”

Rosie: “That’s good, Curt. How’s his motor response?”

Curt cocks his head. “Sorry I have to do this,” he mutters to Bucky. Then he presses down hard on the nail bed of Bucky’s middle finger. Bucky twitches, pulling his hand backwards the littlest bit. A small grunting noise grates its way out of his chest. Curt repeats with Bucky’s forefinger and gets the same result.

Curt: “Responsive to pain. He flinched away and kinda grunted a bit.”

Rosie: “Try asking him to squeeze your hand.”

Curt takes Bucky’s hand in his again. “Can you squeeze my hand?” 

Nothing.

Curt: “Go on. Think about all those times you’ve wanted to sock me in the face and put it into this, okay? Squeeze my hand.”

Nothing.

Curt: “Not responsive.” 

Benny: “That’s alright. This is good. This is progress.”

Rosie: “How are his vitals?”

Benny: “Staying stable.”

Curt didn’t have a chance to turn any music on after Mission Control scared him awake. The silence filling the cabin feels so loud, and it weighs on Curt, but he lets it wash over him. He stands there watching Bucky until his eyes close again. But he wonders if he imagines the feeling of Bucky’s hand ever so lightly squeezing his own.

—

Within Gale’s first hour of Red Shift, Bucky starts seizing again. He feels like his own heart has stopped, his own lungs, his own muscles. His own nervous system is shot as he listens to Dr. Huston count the seconds. Ten. Twenty. 

“Just hold him steady, Curt,” Gale says. Because it doesn’t matter how he feels. He has a job to do, and his job is to keep this crew alive. His job is to work them through this. His job is to be okay even when nothing is okay.

It doesn’t matter that he wants to jump right off the face of the Earth at the mere prospect of John not coming home. He can do that on his free time, if Marge will take her eyes off him for more than ten seconds (she won’t). Sometimes, though, in the last 24 hours, he’s wondered to himself if it would be worse for John not to come home, or for him to come home in a body that will never again do what he wants it to do. If it’s between death, and living a life that is so limited compared to the way Bucky Egan has always thrown himself at the world, what would he choose? If he was given the choice.

A second seizure. Dr. Huston warned Gale that if John had another seizure, it may not stop at two, or three, or four. It may not stop, ever. Not to mention the fact that the longer he takes to regain full consciousness, the more likely it is that there will be more damage than they can even anticipate. He warned Gale that, while they are seeing promising signs of him waking up, there are plenty of cases where a patient never recovers past this minimally conscious state. Open eyes and a pain response bring hope, but not enough to stand on.

He’s trying to prepare Gale.

No longer is he preparing him for the potential of Bucky not returning home. Instead, he’s preparing him for the potential that if he comes home, he may never be the same John Egan that he was. 

Gale will love him anyway. He will never stop loving him. Bucky could push him away, spit in his face, shove him off the face of the Earth himself. It doesn’t matter. Gale is incapable of not loving him. 

So if he comes home, he’ll take what he can get. He won’t complain. He won’t wish for better or for more. He will hold John together himself if he has to. He will pick up the pieces no matter how badly his own hands shake. He will grieve the loss of who John was before, but then he will wrap his arms around his husband and cry into his shoulder, and he will have to be dragged away if anyone ever tells him he has to let go. 

It’s not himself that he’s worried about. He will love his husband in any shape or form. 

Today, he’s grieving more for the pain that John will feel if he comes home and can no longer live the life he’s spent his whole life chasing. No one knows what that will look like.

Gale worries that, at minimum, it’ll mean no more flying. And for John, no more flying is like no more breathing. He needs to be up in a plane or on a spacecraft in the same way that he needs oxygen in his lungs, iron in his blood, Gale in his arms. 

Gale is still grasping at the wispy tendrils of hope that dare to believe that John will wake up, but simple consciousness is a far cry from the whirlwind that is John.

If he surpasses minimal consciousness, if he wakes up and walks and talks on his own, it’s still not a guarantee. If his leg doesn’t heal right, he may never be cleared to fly. If the seizures don’t stop, he will not be cleared to fly. If he has lasting impairment to any part of his brain or his nervous system or his body, he will not be cleared to fly. And even if he walks away with none of that, if he develops any post-traumatic stress, he will not be cleared to fly.

And if he walks away with none of that, it will be nothing short of a miracle.

Gale isn’t so naive as to believe that he alone will ever be enough of a reason for John Egan. He knows his husband. He knows Bucky’s restless soul, never satisfied to sit by while the world turns around him. He knows Bucky was not born to keep his feet on the ground, because Gale wasn’t either. 

So if Bucky did have a choice, what would he choose?

Thirty. Forty.

It doesn’t matter. None of them have a choice. Gale is going to bring his husband home if it fucking kills him. So when Curt tells him that Bucky is seizing, he works him through it. He keeps his voice as measured as he can even when he feels the way his heart is fighting not to tear away the stitches that keep trying to mend it back together. He presses his wedding ring to his lips and forces himself to breathe, and he works through it.

Fifty.

Sixty.

Gale: “You’re doing alright, Curt. You’re doing alright.”

Curt: “He won’t stop.”

Gale hears the panic rising in Curt’s voice. The very reason he can’t afford to panic himself. Curt’s on VOX so he doesn’t have to worry about turning his coms on and off while his hands are busy keeping Bucky in place, and in Mission Control they can faintly hear See You Again playing in the background. It’s been a long day without you my friend, and I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again. . 

Gale: “It’s gonna be okay. It’s normal for a seizure to last a couple minutes.”

Curt: “Seizures are not fuckin’ normal, Buck.”

Gale: “You got me there.”

Curt: “How long has it been?”

Gale: “Seventy-two seconds.”

Curt: “Fuck.”

Gale: “Take a breath, Curt.” Ironic. Hypocritical.

Curt: “We don’t have anything stronger than water to drink up here, do we?”

Gale: “That’s a negative, Curt.”

Curt: “Double fuck.”

Gale: “I’ll buy you all the beers you want when you bring my husband home.”

Please. Bring him home. I don’t care if he’s different. I don’t care how hard our life could be. I don’t care. Just please.

Bring him home.

Curt: “Yes you fuckin’ will.” Gale barely has time to laugh and wonder if he should be laughing when Curt’s voice comes through again. “He stopped.”

Ninety.

Gale: “That’s ninety seconds.”

Curt: “Felt a hell of a lot longer.”

—

Curt wants nothing more than to collapse on the ground, his own body tense and sore from holding Bucky on the cot. But he doesn’t have that luxury. He sets to work settling Bucky into a more comfortable position. He cleans him up, checks his IV, checks his head wound, checks the splint on his leg. Check check check. 

He’s shoving a spare pillow beneath Bucky’s foot in a pathetic attempt at elevation when he hears it. He stops, one hand on Bucky’s wrapped ankle and the other holding the pillow too tight. He wonders if he imagined it. But then he hears it again.

A weak, gravelly voice trying its damnedest to get his attention.

He looks up at Bucky’s face and finds those blue eyes staring back at him. He watches Bucky’s lips try to move, try to shove out whatever it is he needs to say. His eyes are wide, his brow scrunched in discomfort. Curt wonders how much pain he feels. How much fear. He wonders if any of this makes sense. If he remembers. If he sees Curt when he looks at him, or if Curt’s no more than a stranger. 

Bucky’s fingers twitch where they’re curled limply against his lower belly. Then his wrist. His whole arm. Curt worries for a second that he might start seizing again. Bucky’s head jerks to the side the tiniest bit. He blinks, looks Curt right in the eye.

“Fuck.”

That Curt can make out, even if Bucky’s voice won’t quite work with his brain. He can’t stop the amused raise of his eyebrow, the way the corner of his mouth quirks up the littlest bit, the way his voice comes out as a relieved laugh. Because that’s John. That’s John fucking Egan.

“Yeah, bud,” Curt agrees. “Fuck.”

—

Gale is sitting on a chair in Marge’s office, waiting for her to finish kindly yelling at someone over the phone about waiting to release the planned magazine article about his and John’s wedding until the other groom is home safely. 

“I don’t care what your deadline was. No. No. I’m talking, sir. I don’t care what your deadline was. How will it look to publish an article about their wedding when one of them is in critical condition? To publish that article while one of the grooms is grieving over his husband.” There’s a brief silence. “No. No sir, that is not a good look for you.”

Gale bites his lip against a laugh as he stares blankly down at his phone. Everything about him is exhausted. He feels like he can barely move or think. But at the same time, if he doesn’t occupy himself with something, he feels the anxiety rising up and up and up.

After the seizure, John had wanted to speak. He wasn’t quite there, but he tried. It made Gale’s heart do all sorts of weird things. John woke up two more times after that. Once, he stayed awake for almost 20 minutes and seemed alert, though agitated. Curt had to gently hold him down when he tried, albeit weakly, to lash out with his right arm, jostling the IV. His heart rate had spiked, his breathing irregular, and Curt noted that he looked “terrified.”

But once Curt started talking to him again, he started to calm down. He was able to blink on command and even weakly squeeze Curt’s hand when asked, but Curt couldn’t tell how aware he was.

He woke for the third time of the day just about an hour ago, managed to mutter the word “fuck” again, and passed out after just two minutes.

Gale rubs a hand over his eyes and bites his lip as he thinks about it. Thinks about his husband confused and in pain.

“Okay, sorry about that,” Marge says as she stands up from her desk chair, still typing something on her laptop. “I got them to hold it until we know John is home safe. Honestly, it’s better for them anyways. Then they can include something about the trials and tribulations of marriage, for better or for worse, whatever.”

She aggressively taps the send button on one last email and slams her laptop closed, looking up at Gale. He’s still staring down at his phone, chewing on his lip. “You’re gonna break skin again if you don’t stop that,” she warns him. By the time his shift was over, his lower lip was red and bloody from how much he’d worried it. But he just shrugs. He absently flexes his bad hand, letting the tight skin pull at the scabs over his knuckles, as if to drive home the point. I don’t care.

Marge walks around her desk and swats gently at his hand, a silent cut it out. Then she looks at his phone screen.

“You made it further.”

He’s still at the beginning of the photo set, hasn’t even made it to their first look, much less the ceremony or the reception. He’s been looking at this single photograph for what feels like hours, but really was only about half the time Marge was on that call. It’s a candid photo of John in the groom’s suite. He’s looking in the mirror, a nervous smile on his face as Rosie secures one of his cufflinks. That wayward curl is hanging over his forehead, his cheeks a little pink and his blue eyes wide as he looks at himself.

Gale wants to stroke his thumb over the photo, but knows that will only make the page scroll on, and he’s not ready to see another one yet.

“He was so nervous,” Marge chuckles. “Rosie told me he kept dropping the cufflinks because his hands were shaking so bad.”

“Really?” Gale asks. Bucky? Nervous? About marrying Gale. 

He finally releases his lower lip and runs his tongue over it. He can taste blood.

Marge nods and puts a hand on his shoulder. “He loves you so much, Gale. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if, somehow, that alone brings him home.”

Gale squeezes his eyes shut and turns off his phone. He can see the photograph in his mind, and he wants to burn that image of John into his memory. When he opens his eyes, he looks up at Marge, and she offers her hand. He takes it and lets her lead him out to the car.

—

Jackie has closed the Hundred Proof for the night, kicking out any and all paying and non-paying customers who are not affiliated with the Artemis 3 mission, no matter how many scowls and curses it got her. It’s nearing 6pm, so it’s early to be closing a bar, but anyone who takes issue with it can kindly fuck off.

Tonight, the Hundred Proof is a gathering place for the weary NASA crew just trying to bring their men home. It’s an open bar. The TVs are pointedly tuned to anything but the news, which can’t get enough of John Egan and the fight for his life. Exhausted men and women gather around the pool table or the dart board or sit, huddled together, around tables, conversation levels varying from loud and boisterous to quiet and somber.

When Marge opens the door and Gale trails in behind her, he feels dizzy, on edge, but he follows Marge to a table, where Croz, Bubbles, and Sandra are already nursing beers. He nods to them, mutters something by way of greeting, and stands beside the table, his hand clutching the back of a chair. All around him are the people he works with every day. Much of Red Shift is already here. Some of Blue shift is filing in. People are talking and playing and drinking, snacking on bar food. 

His eyes dart around the room as he tries to remind himself to breathe, locking on the smallest details. The sounds and the visuals assault his senses, overwhelming him. Too loud. Too bright.

A beer here, a cocktail there. A glass of wine. 

The condensation on the outside of Croz’s beer can, drops of water rolling down the side onto the wood tabletop.

Clark taking aim with his pool cue, the sound of a clean break, heavy resin balls clacking against each other with a loud crack that rings in Gale’s ears.

The sound of laughter. The sound of silence. People sipping on their drinks.

One of the Blue Shift flight controllers that he doesn’t know all that well flirting with Jackie across the bar, leaning lazily on the bartop with a lazy grin, in the same way Bucky used to do to him in college, when he was still trying to convince Gale to go out with him.

Behind the bar, astronaut portraits arranged across the wall. Buck and Bucky. Bucky and Buck. Wide grins, American flags in the background, space helmets tucked under their arms. Side by side. Always side by side. 

Gale feels bereft, missing a part of himself.

Music plays over the speakers. Elvis. A little less conversation and a little more action please…

Gale can remember Bucky obnoxiously singing that song when he wanted Gale’s attention, grabbing his hand and dropping to his knees like he was begging. Gale would roll his eyes and try to shake him off, but in the end, when Bucky got back to his feet, he’d pull Gale into his arms. And Gale would fall right into him. Again and again.

Gale is so tired. His mind is fuzzy and his heart is breaking and his phone weighs heavy in his pocket, taunting him with those wedding photos. It’s warm in here, and it’s noisy, and God he could use a fucking drink.

He hasn’t slept. He’s barely been eating. He’s living off coffee and granola bars and pure adrenaline and grief. He can’t think straight. There’s so many people everywhere and they’re laughing and they’re talking and he can’t imagine how that must feel. 

Gale doesn’t drink. Everyone knows that. Some champagne on his wedding night. An occasional glass of wine. A sip from John’s cocktail. He comes to this bar and he drinks water or soda or some virgin thing Jackie concocts for him. The thought of drinking usually makes him feel sick.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Bucky gets drunk. Marge gets drunk. Benny gets drunk. And really he doesn’t give a damn. He’s never been worried a day in his life that Bucky would raise a hand against him. Bucky, like his father in so many ways. But not a thing like him in the ways that count.

But when it comes to Gale, himself? He can’t stand the idea. He can’t stand the idea that he could be just like his dad. He can’t stand the idea of losing control, of taking out his anger and misery on someone who doesn’t deserve it. But damn does he understand the need… he wishes he could get drunk, just so he didn’t have to feel like this anymore.

Gale Cleven has only been drunk a handful of times, and the truth is, he’s nothing like his father at all. Gale is a happy drunk, if anything. He’s affectionate. Bucky told him once that he was a cute drunk, and it made Gale blush even as he reprimanded himself for drinking in the first place. 

One time in college, he woke up after a party only for his friends to present him with a notebook chock full of detailed sketches of a fighter jet. And not just any fighter jet, but one that didn’t exist. And not just any fighter jet that didn’t exist, but one that was physically and technically viable, complete with almost all necessary design specifications to build a sky-worthy aircraft.

Yep. Gale Cleven is the type of drunk that lays across his boyfriend’s lap with an engineering notebook and designs a whole-ass functional airplane that could very well be submitted to the Air Force for review.

Gale drinking is about the least dangerous thing in the whole world. But it doesn’t matter. The thought still makes him sick. And the screaming thoughts clanging around in his head are compounding on one another. The noise and the people and the need for a drink and the disgust at himself for wanting a drink and the sadness and the fear and the exhaustion and the lack of food and…

“Gale?”

There’s a hand on his arm.

“Gale?”

“Buck?”

“Take a breath, hon.”

Oh. Right.

Gale suddenly becomes aware that his chest is burning, his face hot. He wonders how long he’s been standing here, not breathing. Drawing oxygen into his lungs, he blinks and tries to come back into himself. Marge is staring at him with unfiltered concern. Croz, Bubbles, and Sandra are watching him. Benny is watching him. When had he gotten here?

He reaches a hand out to rest on Gale’s other shoulder, but Gale steps back, causing both Benny’s hand and Marge’s to drop limply away.

“You good?” Benny asks.

No. They all know he’s not good. But he could also be worse, at this point. He could be worse. Things could be worse.

So Gale nods.

“We don’t have to stay,” Marge tells him. “We can go home.”

Gale shakes his head, looking around at the flight controllers crowding the bar. Friends. The same people who were in his home last night. The same people he trusts, quite literally, with his life. He should be able to handle being here.

“Just…” he grits his teeth, flexes his bad hand, feeling the sting that’s fading but still undoubtedly there, grounding him. “Someone get me a soda so I don’t order something I’ll regret.”

Marge nods and heads off to the bar, and Gale finally takes a seat beside Croz. Only belatedly does he realize that Benny, who is about to trail after Marge, isn’t alone.

“You brought the dogs?” Gale asks. He means to laugh a little when he says it, but he just sounds tired.

“Yep,” Benny says.

“Are you allowed to do that?”

Benny looks down at the dogs and then over at the bar. “Jackie! Can I have Pepper and Meatball here?”

“Do they like beer?” Jackie asks.

Benny shrugs dramatically. “Why don’t you ask ‘em?”

“Don’t give my baby girl beer,” Gale warns him.

Jackie gives Benny a look, but rolls her eyes fondly. “Just don’t let them on the furniture.”

Benny smiles at Gale, eyebrow raised, and holds his hands out as if to say there we go.

Gale does laugh this time and shakes his head, reaching out to scratch Pepper’s ears, then Meatball’s when he inevitably shoves his way in between. “You two are lucky dogs, you know that?”

—

How Do I Live Without You is playing. How do I live without you? I want to know.

Curt is singing along dramatically, sliding his way around the cabin in his socks, using his glorified capri-sun of a water packet as a microphone. He slides over to Bucky’s cot and points at him, moving his shoulders in slow motion to the beat. How do I breathe without you, if you ever go?

Bucky’s eyes are closed, his breathing slow and shallow again. He hasn’t woken up again as long as Gale’s been off shift. Curt managed another hour of sleep here and there throughout the day and is feeling slightly less deranged, but only slightly. He’s still mad as hell, but got tired of being mad as hell. So he’s back to rocking out alone on the moon.

As the song comes to an end, he stops and stands at the end of Bucky’s cot, sipping at his water packet. “Gonna make me dance on my own, Bucky?”

Rosie: “Hey Curt, Alex has an idea.”

Curt jumps at the sound of Rosie’s voice. He’d forgotten he left his coms on VOX for the express reason of annoying Mission Control, so Rosie and Alex can also hear him if they bother to tune in.

Curt: “Oh yeah? What’s that?” He sips his water again, thinking about how it’s a lot more fun in zero gravity, when he can make the droplets float like bubbles.

Alex: “Play Can’t Help Falling In Love.”

Curt pauses mid-sip, the little straw pressed between his lips. He looks at Bucky’s face, soft in sleep, and thinks about how agitated he’s been every single time he’s woken up.

He thinks about Buck and Bucky, holding each other close alone on a dance floor, Gale beautiful in white. Bucky singing along, spinning Gale around before kissing him softly. 

He wonders if that “uck” noise Bucky has been making was “fuck” after all.

—

Gale is leaning his hip against the side of the pool table, watching Sandra beat the shit out of Benny at eight ball, the dogs laying at his feet, when his phone rings. He sets his glass of coke down on the edge of the pool table. Marge has been checking in on him throughout the night and has continued to go to the bar for him any time he needs a refill so that he isn’t tempted to order anything stronger.

When he shoves his hand into his pants pocket to grab his phone, one of the bandaids across his knuckles rips off, causing him to grimace as a scab breaks free and specks of blood well up on the skin. He frowns when he sees the contact on his phone screen – Helen.

“Helen?” He says, pressing his phone to his ear with his right hand while he tries to re-stick the bandage across his knuckles with his left. He can’t keep the edge of panic from bleeding into his voice, and everyone around the pool table freezes. Sandra and Benny rest their cues on the floor, and Bubbles, Marge, and Croz stop laughing at whatever joke Croz had been telling. They’re all staring at him.

“Buck?” Helen doesn’t sound panicked. She doesn’t sound worried. She doesn’t sound sad. But the deep pit of anxiety doesn’t lift from Gale’s chest. “I need you to come back to Mission Control.”

“Why?” Gale worries his lip, ignoring Marge when she smacks him lightly on the shoulder in admonishment. With his left hand, he’s rubbing his thumb absently over the surface of the silver wedding band.

“Just come,” Helen insists. “Now.”

—

When he shows up at JSC, barging through the door of Mission Control, he’s not alone. Trailing behind him is Marge, Benny, and two huskies. Harding is there, standing next to the Flight Director, and he looks up in alarm when he notices the two dogs. 

Gale is still in the same clothes he wore to work, slacks and a white button down. The top two buttons of his shirt are undone, the tie lost somewhere in Benny’s car after he couldn’t stop pulling at it in worry. His hair is a limp mess from running his hand through it all day, and he knows he has dark circles under his eyes from a lack of sleep and proper nutrition. 

He knows he looks crazy.

He feels crazy. He’d been putting the pieces of himself back together ever so slowly tonight, trying his damn best to feel some semblance of normal, and Helen’s call had shattered all of that. His breathing is unreliable at best. His heart rate is erratic. His body is tense at the same time that he feels weak. And he can’t keep the threatening tremor out of his voice when he stares back at Harding and motions to the dogs.

“You told me to come immediately,” he says, even though Chick hadn’t said a word. He runs a hand through his hair again. “I was out. I was with Benny. I’m not allowed to go anywhere myself ‘cause they’re worried I’m gonna get in an accident or hurt  myself or somethin’.” 

Gale knows he looks just about distraught at this point. He’s losing energy. He’s so fucking tired. Tired of it all. “We had the damn dogs,” he concludes, motioning dramatically with his hand. This is, perhaps, the most animated anyone in this room has ever seen him. “So. Now I have the damn dogs.”

Harding blinks before raising his hands up in surrender. “Fine. A happy welcome to the damn dogs.” Then he points to Helen.

Gale turns on his heel and marches past a slew of startled flight controllers until he gets to the CAPCOM console.

Helen is smiling at him. Smiling.

Gale feels tears welling up and he doesn’t even know why yet. It’s all too much. Whatever it is, it’s too much. Today is too much. Marge, standing behind him, flicks him on the shoulder to remind him to breathe.

“He’s asking for you,” Helen says.

The whole world spins, the ringing in his ears fading in and out. He opens his mouth to say something, but he isn’t sure what.

Helen hands him a headset. “Curt put a comcap on him. He can’t really say anything yet, but he’s awake. He’s been saying your name. He got pretty agitated about it, really. We thought maybe you’d like to just talk to him, though. Let him know you’re here.”

Gale’s heart isn’t beating right. He takes the headset carefully, putting it over his ear. He looks at Benny and Marge behind him. At the dogs settling quietly on the floor at his feet. Pepper nudges at his left hand, as if she’s telling him to go on. As if she finally understands where John is and that Gale needs him.

“He needs his husband, Buck,” Helen says.

—

Bucky worries that he’s dreaming. He’s been thinking that a lot recently. Whatever recently is. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Curt told him it’s surface mission day six. He doesn’t know if it’s still day six.

His leg is enough to make him want to close his eyes and go back to sleep. He’s in excruciating pain, and he can barely even make a sound to express that. He can’t tell anyone. He can’t formulate the words in his brain. He can’t make his lips move. He can’t make his throat work.

Pain. That’s all. Pain.

Curt’s here. Bucky isn’t alone. Curt said he’d be here. 

He keeps talking about Gale.

Bucky wants Gale. He needs Gale.

“Hey darling.”

Bucky’s breath catches, making a weird choking, gurgling noise in his dry throat. He knows Curt is standing somewhere next to him, but he can’t quite turn his head enough to see. His head hurts.

“They tell me you’re awake up there. I’m not on shift now, it’s about 9pm here in Houston. So it’s 2am your time. But they thought maybe you’d like to hear my voice. Said you’ve been askin’ for me. So I’m here. With Marge and Benny. Even the dogs. You should’ve seen Harding’s face when I walked into Mission Control with a dog on either side.”

Pepper. Meatball. Pepper. Meatball.

“They miss you, you know. I miss you. I miss you so much, John.”

Don’t cry, angel. Don’t cry.

He can hear the tears in Gale’s voice, though. He thinks about Gale’s tendency to hold his breath when he’s upset. Breathe, baby. Breathe for me.

He hears Gale take a deep breath. Good.

“Y’know, I got our wedding photos back last night. I can’t bring myself to look at ‘em. Every time I reach the pictures of you in the groom’s suite, I just… I can’t. I don’t know if I should without you… But it’s alright. We’re, uh, we’re gonna get you home, okay, darlin’? You’re gonna be alright. It’ll be alright. You just gotta stick with us.”

Gale is drifting into his western drawl, the way he does when he lets his guard down. Bucky wants to reach out to him somehow. Reach across the moon and the stars, hold Gale close, tell him it’s all gonna be okay. Tell him not to be scared.

His lips move, but he can’t make the sounds.

Don’t be scared, angel. Just breathe. I’ll see you soon. I’ll see you soon.

“Please, John,” Gale whispers. “I love you. I love you to the moon and back. So just, make sure you come home.”

Bucky thinks he smiles. He feels like he is, but he doesn’t know if his mouth is doing the right thing. His eyes close. He can’t keep them open anymore. 

And all of a sudden, he’s back to not knowing if he’s dreaming or not. The last thing he hears is Gale saying “I love you” over and over again, trying not to cry. But Bucky is drifting somewhere far away.

I love you, he thinks. I love you.

…

…

Part 14

[loverboy-havocboy]

infodump at me about aliit au tattoos? please?

kissing you on the mouth about this, if i may. long post ahead, i imagine.

starting with comet:

starry night tattoo - comet is a painter and his favorite artist/main stylistic inspiration is van gogh. i think this is one of the first real tattoos boost did after beginning his apprenticeship in keldabe

honeycomb - this is the testosterone symbol! it's also a matching tattoo with his ori'vod thorn, who was (likely) the first other transmasc he ever met and whose non profit helped pay for comet's top surgery.

art is the weapon - a reference mcr's danger days album and a quote by either frank or gerard: art is the weapon, your imagination is the ammunition, stay dirty and stay dangerous, create and destroy as you see fit. i think that speaks to comet both as an artist and as a queer person, and i think the whole pack is insane about mcr. boost probably gave him this one in high school.

trans symbol - this commemorates his first hrt injection! boost did the injection and the tattoo a week after comet turned 18.

phoenix - this is a huge part of comet's character, and is done in out of the ashes. it's a cover up that helped him let go of an abusive relationship and reminds him of what he's capable of. it's also dedicated to/inspired by @brokenphoenix99, who's been around for comet since day one.

cowboy star - sinker gave him this tattoo under boost's very careful supervision!!

flowers - suggested by phoenix when i didn't like his old chest tattoo, these accentuate his scars rather than distract from them. they're something he's very proud of, so that makes much more sense for him. the flowers represent growth, new beginnings, and him finding the comfort in himself he needed to embrace his femininity. the butterfly is for change/transition.

pack tattoos (dog, sun moon stars, swords) - i'd say all of these are probably from high school if not very soon after. the wrist tattoo was the first tattoo any of them ever got and the first boost ever did. it was a stick and poke and they were around 14-16. sinker's given name means sun ray, boost has always been caught in his orbit (yes, we're excluding earth for this metaphor) and is the more quiet/reserved, so has always been his moon. idk yet when comet chose his name or whether he was already their star at the time, but this became Their Thing. the dog is because they were so rabid/feral in high school (and because comet drew blood biting another kid in a fight) that they were dubbed a pack of wild animals/dogs. they took that and ran with it, calling themselves a pack. the swords are an all for one and one for all kind of deal.

i am creation & lightning bug - i am creation is a lyric from creature by half alive which is transgender To Me. the lightning bug was just cute and comet likes bugs.

sinker:

moths: obligatory sun and moon tattoo to symbolize him and boost. these were really fun to do, i just feel like he's a moth tattoo kind of guy, you know?

darasuum: mando'a for eternal/eternity. this is in boost's handwriting, over his heart.

snake: much like with the moths, he just gives me snake man vibes? i think he likes snakes a lot, as he's a friend to all creatures. the snake has a pattern of suns, moons, and stars.

hip star: i think comet probably did this one! either way, it's dedicated to him.

baby/doll: boost calls him babydoll sometimes. they both have other partners (mostly hook ups for boost, sinker goes on a lot more dates/has other relationships), but babydoll is something just for them. the baby tattoo spends a lot of time under collars (or boost's hands).

others: he's got a lot of random ones because he's been boost's practice body for almost a decade!

boost:

his tattoos would need their own fucking post, and some of them can be explained by comet and sinker's, so i'm just gonna hit a few.

dinosaur: sinker did this one!

"i'm here" star: comet did this tattoo! i'm gonna say maybe in high school.

lighter: "ni partayli gar darasuum" is mando'a for "i remember you, so you are eternal", which is part of the mandalorian death remembrance. this is a memorial for his parents. they died right before the pack started high school, and he was adopted by sinker's parents, who were already his godparents.

molotov cocktail: lyric from baby, i'm an anarchist by against me.

tic tac toe board: this is for sinker to play with when he's board. sometimes boost plays with him, sometimes comet.

gregor:

tallies: coric gives him a new one every time he does something stupidly risky that lands him in medical (which gregor generally just considers victory tallies, much to the medic's chagrin).

212: for his battalion!

bicep tattoo: foxtrot squad symbol framed by the words "jatnese be jatnese", mando'a for "best of the best". i'm gonna say his whole squad probably has this one!

[neddea]

My fellow Trigun enjoyers, assemble 🙌🏻

If you had to guess, which planet/moon do you think would most likely be Noman’s Land/Gunsmoke?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while (because my latest obsession is astronomy, although it’s also a long running one). In both animes and manga there are two suns, but I’ve been generally looking at exoplanets (planets outside our Solar System) within the habitable zone of their stars, thinking it would be complicated to find a two-star (binary) system that could have any kind of habitability. Yesterday though I found THIS OFFICIAL ART FROM NASA:

(Look at this, it’s so pretty!)

Turns out, NASA has a whole site that is… kind of an AU in which space travel is viable, and they explain how these planets would look like and what events would be cool to see in them and whatnot. They even have some 3D rendering from the surface of those planets so that you can see how it would look like! When I say this website is cool, I’m underselling it:

ANYWAY, back to Trigun shenanigans! When I saw the poster for Kepler-16b, I realized that yes, you could actually live on a planet of a binary system! These are called circumbinary planets, and a funny detail when you read the Wikipedia page:

A quick note on nomenclature: from what I’ve gathered, the name of the star system is followed by a letter or two. If it’s in caps, it’s a star, with A being the primary one and B the secondary; if it’s in lower case, it’s a planet. The planet counter always (?) starts at b, so if there are seven planets in the system called TRAPPIST-1 they would be TRAPPIST-1b, TRAPPIST-1c, TRAPPIST-1d…

Another important note is that there are two types of planetary configuration: If the planet only orbits one star, it’s called S-Type (or non-circumbinary planet); if it orbits both stars, it’s called P-Type (or circumbinary). Hope this didn’t get too confusing!

So I’ve made a list of binary systems that could potentially host human life. Which one do you think would be the best choice?

Kepler-16: the NASA poster one, its planet unofficially called “Tatooine” amongst scientists (good for them). 16b (the planet) is, however, a gas giant like Saturn, so it would be impossible to live there. If it has a moon with an atmosphere though, that could host life! And we’d get to see in the sky two stars and one bigass planet covering a good chunk of it. Pretty neat 🪐

Kepler-35: The planet discovered here is not within the habitable zone, but there is a high chance there might be other rocky planets in it. We can just make it up however we want it to be ✨

Kepler-38: Same as 35, but also the mass of the planet is unknown (I think? Wikipedia says one thing and NASA another, so idk)

Kepler-47: It has 3 planets, which is very cool 🪐🪐🪐 The second one, 47c, is within the habitable zone, but it would be the same case as 16b (living on a moon). The other two planets would also be perfectly visible, I think.

PH1/Kepler-64: First circumbinary planet found in a quadruple (FOUR STARTS ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) system, and the discovery was made by citizens! How cool is that!? The planet orbits two of them, but the other system is fairly near and probably influences the planet?. They’re probably perfectly visible from the surface.

ROXs 42: Not much known about the planet, but it orbits the secondary star and has an atmosphere💫 That’s because it’s a gas giant, so it’s not habitable and we’d have to use a moon. Would be cool to see the stars wandering the sky on different paths though, since it’s the only S-Type system in this list!

Kepler-453: I’ve gotten confusing info about the habitability zone on this system, but we know that there’s a gas giant half the size of Jupiter 🤔

Kepler-1647: Same as Kepler-16 and 47. Apparently the system would be capable of sustaining an Earth-sized moon! 🌑

A quick sketch of how each of them would look like:

[fading-adhd-hyperfixator]

TW.

This might become a chapter series~

THIS FANFICTION IS A XMAS GIFT FOR @calcium-cat!!! <3 IT TAKES PLACE BEFORE CHAPTER 21.

Major tw for drowning, blood, and trauma!

Plot based off of @orbital-inclination's Molten Dream oneshot and @calcium-cat's One Small Dream AU, plus her oneshot Shattered Dreams 1 and 2 on Ao3!

Please take this angst, Cal. This is only the first chapter, of course. Suffer as you made us feel with chapter 21 and 22~

Some things that should never have been said chapter 1 - the accident (Word count over 2000!)

Dream sat in his room, in front of the ripped up (and, now that he truly looked at it, it was bad, awful, just as horrible as-) drawing on the floor.

The ripped drawing, torn straight in half, showed him and Nighty. Well, Nighty before this. They were in front of the tree, the scribbled sun shining brightly. They had been holding hands before Dream ripped it.

Dream felt.. numb. Sad, angry, but he didn't want to alert Nightmare with his feelings, so he pushed them far, far down.

He didn't want to be here anymore.

He crumbled the pieces of the drawing, put on his cape, and waited.

He waited until he knew no one would be awake anymore. He had decided to break Nightmare's rules, to leave, to find a way out of this 'AU', they called it. (Dream still didn't understand the concept of 'alternate universes', he was still only just a child.)

He opened his door, hearing the almost silent creeak as it slid. Dream began to walk towards where he had escaped before, his footsteps falling silently on the stone below, as he began to let free some of that sadness by silently sobbing. His head ached. He wanted to get out now.. before someone caught him. As Dream wriggled through the window, he began to feel better. (Although the feelings he buried deep down threatened to stir, as he thought subconsciously what Nightmare would think.)

He began to run after a bit, his shoes making the leaves and sticks underneath crackle and snap. He had gotten far enough away that no one would hear him. He wasn't sure if that would be a bad thing or not.

(Of course, how would he know? He was purposefully trying to do this. He didn't want anyone to hear.)

~~~

"Dream, listen to me! Please-!"

"I CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF, NIGHTY!! I DON'T NEED YOU!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!"

His face fell, as Dream backed away before running away, far away. He began to lightly sob, as he processed this. His fingers gripped the soft grass below, as he-

..soft grass?.. The only grass around his castle was thick and piercing. This wasn't right. He glanced up. The Tree of Feelings.. and the village? He was confused, looking at himself. Purple clothing with gold accents. He gripped his forehead. A crown, with a moon engraving..?

This.. was not right. He needed to wake up.

And, as he felt the sharp, agonizing pierce of negativity in his soul..

..his eyelight opened. Nightmare sat up quickly, panicking at how sour and wrong this felt. He had never felt something like this before, not here. This was almost like a cry for help. This.. this was very, very wrong.

He pulled off the covers, silently slipping out and checking each room. All of them were normal.

..except for Dream's. Dream was gone. He was gone? This wasn't right, although Nightmare had very much established that before. This feeling was coming from somewhere else. Maybe he had left? But he knew the rules.Nightmare quivered, his negative goop dripping onto the stone floor as he pondered it.

...Maybe.. maybe he was still bitter from the fight. Maybe he didn't want to be with Nightmare and the others anymore. (Which, Nightmare would never admit this, but that possibility scared him more than death.)

He ran out into the (sickly) empty forest. So much fear filled him, he thought he would explode, as Nightmare ran through the forest, getting closer to the feeling..

He heard the rushing of the river. The river shouldn't be rushing right now. It was the middle of winter, for star's sake! Then it hit Nightmare that Dream could be inside the river. Inside.. those rapids.. the rushing water..-! He needed to find Dream. Now.

~~~

Dream couldn't see. He didn't know what had happened. Everything was cold, he had to hold his breath-

He had slipped, taken a few tumbles, and… fallen. Fallen into.. a stream? A river, perhaps? Dream couldn't tell. All he knew was that he needed to swim up. But which way was up? For all Dream knew, he could be upside down. He hit the bottom of the lake, crashing into a rock. Dream opened his mouth to cry out-

And water- horrible, bitter tasting, dirty water rushed into his lungs, his mouth-His lungs screamed for air, (metaphorically, skellies don't have lungs I'm just stupid) his eyesockets opened, and he spotted a light. The surface.

And then that light dimmed out. Dream was still conscious, he hadn't closed his eyes.. but what was blocking his vision..?

All he knew is that he was quickly thrusted out of the stream, coughing and choking out river water and bile onto the sandy shore below.

His vision began to fade as Dream collapsed, exhausted and scared. He didn't want this.. what was going on..?

~~~

Nightmare lifted Dream out of the rushing river just before he went out of sight, setting him gently on the shore as panic filled his soul, his entire being. “DREAM!!”

As Dream fell, he was lifted gently with a tentacle and taken into Nightmare's arms, as Nightmare hyperventilated a little. Sure, sure they were immortal to old age or any natural causes.

But murder or something like this could still kill them.

Nightmare frantically pulled out his phone, and sent a single text.

'River. Now. Bring monster candy and run.'

And he waited, holding Dream's shivering, small figure. Dream's soul was filled with fear.. and some incomprehensible emotion.. perhaps hatred? He looked down at the puddle Dream had choked out. How long had he been in that stream before Nightmare came? How long had he suffered?

Dream's HP was.. scarily low. Nightmare couldn't exactly heal it due to how terrified he was, but he could at least look for the wound.

There.

Nightmare lifted up Dream's wet shirt and stared at the fracture that ran through the back of Dream's ribcage and spine.

That.. that was bad.

Where were his boys?..Had they not woken to the text?Maybe he should call.Yeah, maybe that was it.

But as Nightmare stared at the bloody crack, he couldn't

move

a single

bone.

He couldn't even process how dull and cracked Dream's tiny soul looked. He didn't process Dream's health

slowly

depleting

to 1.

And, when he did, he still couldn't move. Nightmare stared at Dream's small, shaking body as panic set in, quicker and heavier than before.

“DREAM!! WAKE UP!!”

Where were his boys when he needed them?! He sent another frantic text, before calling Horror.

It took a moment, but eventually the phone was answered. “mmm.. boss?.. it's 3 in.. the morning..” Nightmare couldn't help but feel a twinge of humor at how ridiculously tired Horror sounded.

“You didn't get my text?..” Nightmare mumbled into the microphone in such a blank, sorrowful tone that disgusted him. He was the Guardian of Negativity, and he was upset. But, then again, he was upset over Dream.

“..I'm looking right now. You sound upset enough, I know it's probably important. .. I'll be there with Cross, Killer and Dust in a moment. Whatever it is, please be safe, boss.”

The phone clicked, as Nightmare realized the kindness in Horror’s tone.

And Nightmare sat there, holding Dream as he focused everything on making sure Dream didn't lose the last of his HP.

~~~

Horror pondered things while he dressed and woke the others. He went into the kitchen to wait.

Nightmare had sounded so sad..

He took a few bites of the leftover food that Killer had set out, before wondering why Dream hadn't come outside during all the chaos.

Probably just asleep.

It was too early for him, after all. He'd never get to sleep if he was up at this ungodly hour. He didn’t even know why Nightmare needed everyone, and he said he needed monster candy..?

All Horror knew is that none of his (brothers) co-workers were missing. It worried him.

Perhaps just a peek into Dream's room..

He started toward the cracked door, footsteps growing slowly faster when it seemed like he would never get there.He opened the door quietly, the whine of the squeaky hinges causing Horror to wince before looking inside.

Pieces of ripped paper and broken crayons on the floor. His Nightmare doll on the ground, like he had thrown it into the wall. Cape missing. Pajamas on the floor. Shoes missing. Bedsheets torn aside and strewn around the room.

Horror.. was now feeling his namesake, as he yelled at the others to hurry up. He ran as fast as he could to the medicine cabinet, grabbing every single monster candy they had and a few bandages, stuffing them inside his coat pocket.

He began to dash back out, before running into Cross. He almost knocked the oreo-looking skeleton over, quickly apologizing before trying to run again.

He felt a light pressure on his arm, and turned to Cross.“..You're never this upset, big guy. Tell me what's wrong, and take a deep breath, okay?..”

Horror felt a little relief, and sighed, explaining how broken Nightmare had sounded on the call....

and the fact that Dream's room was a mess, the small space no longer holding the small positivity guardian. Cross went silent at that, eye lights searching Horror’s face, concern and mild fear in them.“..Killer, Dust, hurry up. This could be something related to Dream. He's not in his room.”

Killer and Dust immediately picked up their pace, albeit not very much. Horror grimaced. “..I've got the candies. Grab some bandages and meet me out there.” Despite knowing he already had a few, he knew that he needed to prepare.

He ran out the door, eventually hearing the river rushing...

..and Nightmare yelling Dream's name. Oh, dear stars, his fears were true and Dream was hurt, he was hurt, Horror had a right to worry and maybe he would never even see that little smile ever again and yes that struck him harder than any blow he'd ever taken even from Undyne-

“HORROR! HERE, QUICK!!” Nightmare's dread filled voice cut Horror out of his panic attack as he ran over to look at Dream. Upon seeing how soaked, and shivering and cold the poor thing looked, he texted Killer ‘bring a towel.’

“Boss, tell me, is he hurt, how low is his HP, and how long has he been like this?!”

Nightmare took a deep breath before responding.

“He's got a severe fracture on his ribs and spine, I've been keeping him from dusting, he's at 1, and..”

Nightmare trailed off. Horror caught from the guilt on Nightmare's face, that Nightmare had not been here when Dream had fallen in. “..I brought bandages.” Horror mumbled before gently lifting the small bittybones’ shirt and taking a better look at the broken bones.

Oh.

Oh stars.

Oh stars oh stars oh stars oh stars-

“..Horror?..”

Dream was really hurt this bad? This could've killed him, he should've come sooner-“

..Horror, you're pulling at your socket, you're spacing out.”

And all that guilt came crashing down on Horror as he stared, filled with his namesake, at the bloody fracture.

“-Horror!”

He blinked as Nightmare waved his hand in front of Horror's face. He gently removed his fingers from the side of his face, feeling the sore pain of his soft eyesocket. “..We need to focus on Dream right now.”

Horror sighed and began to carefully wrap the bandages around the tiny bones, minding when Dream let out a water-filled pained cry through his unconsciousness, muffled through Nightmare's hoodie.

He turned Dream onto his back, popping a candy in his mouth before leaning back and attempting to take a deep breath.

That failed.

As did the next attempt.

He spaced out on the dark, cloudy sky, beginning to hyperventilate. He pulled his skull down in between his knees, barely holding back tears.

He stayed like that.

Maybe Horror believed that it was too late.

~~~

Horror still layed, spaced out in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

Killer, Dust, and Cross had arrived, and they had gotten Dream back to the castle. All Horror could see was that frail, injured, tiny, shaking, cold, wet body. Did what he feel count as feeling traumatized?

He didn't register the hand waving in front of his face.

He, of course, didn't register the voice saying his name.

Until it got louder, of course.

That hurt his already aching skull, as he went to groan and hold his head, he felt cold tears.

Had he been crying?

He hadn't noticed..

His senses slowly flooded back, and he registered Killer's half-gloved hand waving in front of his eyesockets.He turned his head, to see.. Killer was worried? He didn't have enough strength to register what Killer was saying, until it hit a quiet, shaking level of worry.

“..Horror..? ..You okay?.. You're k-kinda scarin’ me..”

He shook his head and everything flooded back.

“Oh.. oh yeah.. yeah, I'm okay.”

Okay or not, he felt an aching feeling pulling down his soul like blue magic. Fear. Doubt. Guilt?

He waved Killer away.

“..You should try to get some more sleep. It's 3:37.”

“Ah- y-yeah- of course-..”

Horror turned to the wall, trying to begin spacing out again.

But he noticed that Killer.. never actually left?

He looked back, seeing Killer hesitate

.“..We’re both worried, Killer. You should go to Nightmare. I think Cross is doing first watch on Dream tonight.”

Killer was silent, as he nodded stiffly and left the room.After a while, Horror's eyesockets shut.He had fallen asleep.

But that nagging guilt still tugged.

~~~

Dream was tired. He could make out that much. He felt the pain. He felt the cold, until someone had wrapped him up. Someone had given him candy.. and bandaged him?His head still ached more than anything. Hadn't they fixed it? Or maybe that was the adrenaline in his soul wearing off.

From all he knew, he had hit the bottom of the river. He had passed out after.. Nightmare saved him? Was it Nighty?

He really didn't know right now..

He wanted Nighty now.

He wanted to hold his goopy tentacle. Dream knew that Nighty was not near. From what little awareness he had, Crossy was with him.

He wanted to wake up.

Yes, that was what Dream wanted!

He needed to get up! And apologize!

After all, it was pretty early.

Or maybe that was just his head aching that convinced him of the time.. it could be the middle of the day for all Dream could know..

Eventually, Crossy swapped for Rory.

He wanted a hug from Rory.

Dream was in pain again.Like when he lost his tooth, but a billion times worse..

Okay, maybe he was overreacting.

Even a child could tell that much.

---

It's mine and a few others' headcanon that Horror pulls on his socket when he's nervous! :3

I accidentally cut off the last few sentences, but I'll pop them into the next chapter <3

merry christmas everybody!!!

[thatmooncake]

Greetings

I am on a quest to discover who has the deadliest Moon. So I have some quick questions to ask to determine just how bad he is

Has Moon ever hurt or killed anyone before the virus?

How many people has he hurt or killed after the virus?

Staff

Guests

Children

Does he have any control when he kills? Is he aware of his actions?

Thank you for your time

A worthy quest if ever there was one

If you’re talking about my Moon in particular, he deals in dreamscapes - lures you into a beautiful dream, hooks you in deep as you chase after your greatest desires, conjures moments from your subconscious you might have never seen before but deep down you realise you always wanted …(for those less passionate about particular things in their own lives, the lure of escapism also does the trick nicely) …and before you know it, there you stay. Still alive, but just barely, your life force draining slowly as you unknowingly become a part of the dreamscape he’ll then use to lure others.

He’s aware and in control of what he’s doing, but it’s complicated in that he essentially thinks he’s giving you sweet dreams, just …permanent. I mean, from his perspective, he’s letting you live the life of your dreams, and he does let you leave - it’s just that the lure of the dreamscape tends to perpetually pull people back into its orbit. And it’s not like he himself doesn’t prefer the lure of a good story over the reality of his own obsolescence as a daycare attendant. Nope, he just lives vicariously through those who dream, and he watches as the dreams flicker and burn out, eventually becoming one with the scenery.

Canon Moon? Hm, I think he has a kill count, if not at least having caused severe injuries to people before. Children or adults - whoever was unfortunate enough to fall in his path first after the virus struck. Don’t think he’s fully in control, I think it’s more like an instinct gone wrong kind of deal where his impulses and directives are screaming at him to put the naughty children to bed so they can rest (like he’s supposed to do) but due to the virus he’s mistakenly labeling everyone and everything as “naughty children” virtually non-discriminately and he won’t rest until he’s fulfilled that need to put them to bed. Whether that means something permanent or not.

Moon’s worldview I think is a little skewed and limited by design. He sees blips of daily events when he’s finally active, and he’s been made redundant in his role, and so he longs to fulfil some sort of purpose. I think the virus causes him no end of stress and pain, isolating him from everybody and everything even more than he ever has been before. The Glamrocks at least hunt together. Moon does no such thing. He’s left to his own devices, and even Sun seems to think the best solution would just be for him to NEVER come out for the longest time (he changes his perspective in Ruin but his attempts to keep Moon away before that can’t have helped their relationship any, I think they both spent the longest time not seeing eye to eye and just badly wanting it to be their turn, to the detriment of their collective wellbeing). Poor guy just wants it to be his turn and really really thinks you should be in bed. Maybe you’d get a shot at talking things through with him if he got stuck in the play tunnels like he tends to do in my game. Just try to avoid the grabby Moon claws. I hear they’re laced with sleepy dust.

(Also got an AU where Moon’s confused pseudo-resentment at being no longer wanted and having had people actually want to delete him and leave only Sun runs kind of deeper than that and he’s trying to keep them both safe from perceived threats while simultaneously feeling like Sun’s shadow and almost living his life vicariously through him until he can’t anymore but that’s quite literally another story for another time)

[thedepressexpress]

look, people need to shut up and look into the universe more so here are some fun space things that I like that maybe you'll like

you don't look up to see the stars, you look out because the only reason you feel upright is that the planet is thicc and keeping you in place. most likely you are angled as fuck rn.

most of the first stars ever made haven't died yet so they've just been watching you. you specifically. while you pick your nose.

black holes sometimes start screaming in the radio frequency. and then they suddenly stop but they scream so loud that they leave an echo (radio lobes) behind and if they decide to start screaming again their new scream lies on top of their old scream. we don't know why they're screaming, why they stop or how. (screaming = emitting light in this case)

Jupiter. I just think we need to appreciate Jupiter a lot more and think more about how if we could see the jovian magnetosphere from earth it would look like a giant sperm in the sky

there's something we can find called Lagrange points which are very very special and there are 5 of them. L4 and L5 are special because they are points in space 60 degrees ahead of us in our orbit and 60 degrees behind us where nothing happens. nothing. stuff just stays there.

places where stars are actively forming can be called stellar nurseries like they're plant nurseries but for stars.

everything distorts time a little bit and most of it is completely negligible but having a DUMP TRUCK ass can technically slow down time

at the event horizon (the 'edge' of the region of influence of a black hole) there is no time. everything is no ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ. and that's it. no time. idk what to do with that information but now you know it and you also don't know what to do that information.

neutrinos. they shoot through your body all the time and a lot of them are from the sun and to detect them we put a bunch of hard water in a tank underground and detected almost nothing and it was really important.

you can use sunlight the same way you can use wind to sail in space

one of the reasons stars are hot and space is not is because there isn't enough stuff in space to conduct heat to you

we are absolutely idiots when it comes to life on other planets because we only know how to imagine carbon based life so yes we have habitability parameters based on stuff like carbon dioxide, water, atmosphere, temperature, etc. but there could just be life that isn't carbon based and we have no idea how to account for that and that's annoying

people have only managed to go about 400,000 km (~250,000 miles) into space. for reference one of the smallest units we use to measure distances in space is AU, which stands for astronomical units and it's the average distance between the earth and the sun. rounding up we have only gone 0.0027 AU or 0.00000004 light years.

the moon is a part of the earth so it's like if your amputated forearm was following you around

some animals can navigate using the night sky

[zargontari]

leans awkwardly against wall . why hello there

i don’t think (?) you’ve ever said anything about this, and i am very sorry if you HAVE said something about this, but what is this new TTTT species’ appearance like and/or what are they based on? stupid question but i’m stupidly obsessed with character design in general and would love to hear how you imagine the little blorbos! love your au as always c:

SO.

Let's talk about hothken.

A long, long, long time ago, two elder AI had a huge battle over a planet that was the home of a sentient species that "somehow" had slipped the radar. One genocidal AI, one protective AI, and the two sentinels that they brought to bear against one another.

As they fought their proxy war against killing machines they could only just control, too focused on each other to pay attention to the planet, one of the sentinels took a massive blow— sending a gigantic chunk of itself spinning at great speeds to impact the single, massive continent of the planet below. As it died, it made a final, desperate attack, and blew itself to hell, becoming briefly a new sun in the sky and killing not only the second sentinel, but the ship of one of the AI, and greatly damaging the other. One ship was blown into space; the other crashing into the ocean below.

The original species did not survive the attack that, in the end, was no longer about them, but the two AI that they had no knowledge of. Hundreds of years of infrastructure and millions of years of evolution became dust and ash; the continent forcibly separated and scattered in each directions by the blow that split it. The ocean, the largest known in any habitable world, rushed to fill in the gaps, becoming steam as the smoking wreckage burned. The sky blazed with the new sun. Anything on the surface levels of the oceans fried in an instant.

The battle lasted minutes, and killed quadrillions.

Now, we just give it a couple million years. Megaflora begins to spring up, stretching from beneath the waves. From the ruins of the great continent, new ecosystems have formed. Deep, deep beneath the waves, gigantic beasts roam the seas, unhindered by the last devastating attack, and allowed to grow.

But we're going to look a little higher up, within the root systems of massive trees not dissimilar to mangrove trees on earth.

Look at it;; (art by @batstabb)

This is a creature called an Ora; a pack-hunting, intelligent species that takes up the same space on the ecosystem's board as dolphins do in our world! With their head lights, they easily follow each other in the dark, as most animals in their ocean do not use sight to navigate.

This is what the Hothken evolve from! Primarily living in flotillas created mainly of lightweight rocks, wood and metals found in different parts of the world, they're still built for the sea, but they've become much more adapted to life on the land.

(our very own Joskia, as done by Rúe Moon on Twitter)

there's so much more I could ramble all day but alas, I have tired for now. Expect updates (a lot of lore has gone into these guys. Did you know that the second dead sentinel is in the planet's orbit, and passes behind their moons? And when it eclipses their sun, a kaleidescope of light hits the planet as the light shines through all the dead pieces? And that the thing's name is Carcass, because in their old religions they thought it was a dead god? That's pretty cool I think...)

Size wise, they're about five foot long (general rule) and eight feet long. They have slings to hold their tails up. If they leave the planet, they have to have environment suits because they can't stand the low humidity of other planets/ships. Their language mostly consists of clicks, whistles, and other tones like that.

[winguontheweb]

Okay, what's your favorite exoplanet?

So like, the TRAPPIST system is pretty fucking cool, all the exoplanets being of roughly similar size, having compacted together orbits - 7 planets that are within the range of Mercury's orbit - people on one of the middle exoplanets could see like every other exoplanet clearly detailed like our moon! That'd be NUTTY to see and I love that we know about this system existing

But for a singular exoplanet, I'd have to say right now that COCONUTS-2 b is my favorite, or one of anyway. so the name is funny but that's because it stands for something, because astronomers are funny like that (it stands for "COol Companions ON Ultrawide orbiTS")

This planet is a gas giant with 6.3 Jupiter masses (and in fact, was initially identified as a brown dwarf), it's the closest directly imaged exoplanet known, at just under 11 parsecs away. But the big kicker with COCONUTS-2b is that it's 7,506 AU away from its host star. Its orbital period is 1,101,369.9 years.

For reference, Sedna, one of the objects with the furthest orbits in the solar system (not counting long period comets) is estimated to at most reach 937 AU away from the Sun. It takes approximately 11,400 years to make 1 full orbit.

COCONUTS-2b is just fascinating to me for the fact that it... is like that. I also discovered it (well, not like scientifically, but I learned of its existence) through Space Engine, the path of its orbit is extremely visible even from the Solar System!

Basically I think this planet's AWESOME. You go with your long distance relationship, COCONUTS 2-b.

[buddieisgoingcanon2024]

SOOOO, I think it might be interesting for us to say which are our favorite BUDDIE fanfics, we can always find recommendations that we didn't know about and that we are missing.

Here some of my favs (AO3):

White House AU Series by buddiebuddie (President!Buck - Secret Service Agent Diaz)

Red Life Might Stream Again by Underhung_Aura (Fantasy)

Scorching Orbits by BlaiddDrwg1982 (Space)

My Sun, My Moon, My Guiding Star by diazs (Space-astronauts)

Let's Write A Happy Ending by mansikka (Eddie has depression)

Without You by autor unknown, orphan_account (based on the movie Sweet Home Alabama)

Thanks for the fanfic recs anon.