@korakos

Three years later it becomes clear: squid-boys never stood much of a chance breathing on land.

''Is he awake? The tranquilizer is loosening. Oh, he moved. Did you see? Left fingers.''

Your shoulder – right, you hit a rock. A set-up of metal walls glistens in the corner of your vision. You can't move. Some wetness in your throat makes you despair, makes you cough, involuntary and chokey and wet. Your muscles just don't move the way you want them to.

''Hey. Are you awake? Back away, I think he's scared.''

''Binary gender is a construct,'' a voice says, light, somewhat serious, somewhat self-aware.

''Oh, I'm sorry. Are they awake.''

Fuck you, you think. This happened just fifteen minutes after waking up. If this were to happen later, maybe you would be less out of it and more situation-wise, more windbreaking skin. More teethful. Wetness should be at your side and not pool where it shouldn't. Wetness should drown things when you willed it to.

They carry your limp body into the metal box, as you knew that you would, carried to the truck door and packed away neatly. Your body feels particularly insensitive, even when gloved hands touch it, maybe in the enlightenment of death, or something death-like.

In the box, the only way to look is upwards at the glass cover plate. It doesn't move when you push against it, and none of the other walls do. When the light in the space of the truck is cut off, you stop pushing at the upper plate, because it makes you feel flattened, or something that can be flattened with force, in the way of soft-tissues invertebrates. It makes the air in your chest twist into impossible illusion shapes, looped into themselves.

And then the truck screeches to a stop. When it does, abrupt in the way of accidents, you think of the gods you've been learning to despise in the practise of eighteen years. You would think your spite is more polished by now, better refined, with how raw and disgusting it has felt. But now your ears are ringing with divine working in one's life shall become apparent as an ineffable experience; divine working—

Your ears are ringing with Andrew and eyes burning with the image of the hell-made saviour of him. You hear shouting. The truck sways with the force of something, and you go with it, like unrooted watergrass. If this is Andrew, he must be sating the hunger of his hyper-grin. A new image blazes into you: out of water, in the air of land, bloodied hands remain bloodied. You are used to water washing blood from your skin, the skin remaining stainless, shedding impurity and grime and violence right off. If this is Andrew, he must look like a terror.

But there is a godly part in this. If this is Andrew, he has brought what you have always wanted: difference without novelty and novelty's stomach-digesting discomfort. The truck sways again and you are still holding your breath.

*

It has been over a week since Andrew removed his arm from around your shoulders, and you both fell in the water of a flooded basement, comrade-like, collapsed and breathing fast in the aftermath of things. He dragged himself to the staircase and spread over the length of a step, legs up on the railing, the weight of his cement-bag body sagging. The thump of his head falling back against the wall made you want to urge forward. But you didn't. His clothes were soaked past his waist, black jeans abyss-black. His head lolled to look at you and you felt all too transparent, like he could see right through your skin and muscle, liver and intestines and all your soft organs. You were still spiked-up, body still ready to rush. Too tender when he was looking like this.

It has been over a week of you dragging your body through the ecosystem of the basement. The water is shallow enough to make the basement a crawl-space. You crawl around the pillars, wondering if you can do it in an utterly random pattern. Don't think too hard. You think you're going crazy. From aloneness. All the other beings in the flooded basement are small and timid. Don't think too hard.

Andrew comes every day, every second day, every few days. Irregularly. He brings stacks of food.

''It's not this dark outside,'' you tell him the next time his boots settle with your eye level, ''The windows are tinted. It's darker in here.''

He brings you a flashlight. You don't use it. To what, target yourself? A predator with nothing to prey on. A predator with nowhere to go.

He sticks his feet in the water and reads with your flashlight. He brings you games of multiplication and these little metal wire shapes to disentangle. You get better than him at chess quickly. It surprises him. It doesn't surprise you.  You have been thinking about mathematical perfection and formal proofs your whole life. You have spent your whole life over-chewing your people's stories; it makes you a good social learner; a learner from mistakes, yours, others'.

''I am going to promote my pawn,'' you observe. He brings his hands up, all fingers meeting in a point aligned with the centre of his chest and then he pulls his hands apart and spreads his fingers into something open and empty-handed.

''I don't care,'' he says, then huffs and laughs meanly until he swallows it down, and then bolts upstairs. You can hear him rage there, the thumping of what you imagine is hands hitting the frame of a doorway as he enters a room, pushing empty drawers shut, throwing himself on a bed. You don't understand his theatrics, or his rage.

Most of the time he is gone, though. It would be okay, that nothing ever happens, if nothing happened inside of you, too. You just feel disused, as a person. Your skin is pale without bruises and your head is empty. Andrew has brought you a waterproof phone, a metal little thing. He's been gone for days, and you've been existing amongst clutter, a being in the ecosystem, an object in stasis. This water tastes different. It leaves a dirty taste in your mouth that you try to get rid of by licking your lips. It doesn't work, but you keep catching yourself doing it anyway.

You call him.

''I feel sick,'' you say.

He brings you aspirins, more food, a radio.

He hasn't been saying much. This isn't what satisfaction looks like, you think as he expressionlessly tears a second packet of salt into his food box. His quiet leaves you feeling alone in un-novel ways, even though most of your aloneness is new. To be fair, you have only found dissatisfaction to be unkind; not intrinsically, not out of necessity, but out of something more spiteful – maybe stubbornness. Anyway. Anyway, maybe you shouldn't think of quiet as unkind. What else can you expect. Being low-maintenance feels kind of right.

*

Somebody is in the house.

When the steps come, they come slow, and with foreign wilfulness. You still. You watch your breath skate over the surface. You know that you wear suspicion the way Andrew wears the relaxed slope of his shoulders, but you're right, you're right.

You are right. After minutes of soft thudding, a corrosion-of-a-boy appears at the top of the basement staircase and deflates in front of your eyes. He peeks downwards quickly, then half-turns, his eyes again jumping around in the way of sweeping: thorough and clearing. The semi-dry sepia shrubs outside the window, the unopening front door of abandon, the end of the hallway you only saw once. He stops. He deflates. He exhales, exposing the wear of him, then covers his eyes with his wrist. He stops like that.

You are watchful. You make yourself unseeable and now that he doesn't see you by how he continues walking downwards. You watch as he crouches his anaemic-looking body on the last step above the water, looking around in a glazed way, with clumsy attention. His eyes are shadowed by the downwards tilt of his head, so you set your gaze to the tight pull of his shoelaces and the triple knots of them. Slow enough to be soundless, you lift some more of your body out of the water.

''Psh,'' you say, and the boy stills. Stops breathing, until he leans his head forward, a little, squinting, and you think about a fish hook.

''Merman?'' he asks, stupid.

He looks a thought away from bolting, a distraction away. Haunted? you wonder. Fast as someone would be if they had something sharp snipping right by their neck. For a moment, you worry that Andrew has installed cameras, but he wouldn't.

''Are you with Andrew?'' you ask, and have him scrambling up – and it rolls a terrible terrible sense over you. A sense of Andrew's hyper-grin. A sense of his red-dripping hands. An unpunctuated question of things Andrew could do.

You don't want him to go. ''Wait, wait. Do you have an aspirin?''

He stops in something surprise-like. Continues looking undecided. He looks like a person who only trusts himself. Who wonders whether he himself is trustworthy.

''Black hair,'' you address him. It seems to stagger him further.

''I don't,'' he says, then clears his throat. ''I have needles. Some alcohol?''

''Alcohol is a very ineffective drug.'' Drugs know you, you know drugs. You say this to skirt the edge of things, because some basicity is growing inside of you. Psychotropics have always meant skirting things, for you. People have always only responded to the wrong ugly aspects of you using them, and they have responded in an ugly way, when they did.

''Is he the one keeping you here?'' the boy asks lowly, with horror. Andrew wouldn't. The boy probably doesn't know Andrew specifically. He is probably just wary. Trustless. He absently wipes a hand under his nose and looks at his hand as it comes away clean.

''No, no. He helps,'' you say, throat wound up in a familiar way.

The boy's gaze doesn't linger on the un-land-suited parts of you. What must you look like? Hiding in a vacated house, now un-vacated, now a whole new ecosystem. You dragging your body around it purposelessly in the manner of dethroned kings. In religious stories, evil is described along the image of decadent, scorching beauty, or ugliness, never ordinary. What are you? Stale, now; touch this – this; ah, pfh, in the hold of gloved hands. Are you ordinary. Can you be unordinary in a good way. Please. Suddenly, you feel the crash of some alien plea, fully, mouthfully in a way extraneous things can't be.

The boy stands up, scanning the basement around you, the misplaced wooden boards and pillars and the handles of some exercise equipment above the water level. The place you scavenge. The place where electronic devices make your eyes hurt. The boy shakes his head.

''Does Andrew—'' he starts, then reconsiders, ''did Andrew—'' stares at you wordlessly, before he glances over his shoulder and grips the strap of his bag with both hands.

''Are you in a hurry?'' you ask.

His eyes are a little wild when he turns back to you, and his nodding is shaky. ''He will be back, right. Andrew.''

The air isn't right. You twist your arms under the hunch of your shoulders. ''Are you really?'' you ask after a moment.

''I don't know how to tell the truth differently,'' he evades the question; you notice things like that. You stare. You stare. He sharpens under your gaze. His grip on the strap tightens. His eyes narrow when yours do, and his face is tightening up with something wild and exposed and almost breathless.

''Look, I'm just asking, okay?'' you roll the words out carefully. ''You don't have to, I won't— It's just me here, okay? But are you— are you—do you know Wes—''

''No. No. I'm. I'm Neil and I don't know anyone here,'' he says, then runs back up the stairs, and you think: fuck.

*

''What have you done,'' you accuse Andrew right as the door at the top of the staircase gapes wider, more late-afternoon orange light seeping in. You don’t know if you should tell him about Neil. Andrew halts and untenses with a controlled exhale before he even fully tenses. He turns his head before he turns his body, the slit-eyed mechanism of it.

You watch him pull down his large brown-knitted sweater from where it has creased at his waist. This is the softest you have seen him. In his mechanical way. He walks down.

''What do you mean,'' he asks blankly. You lift your eyebrows. You don't want to prompt his answer. You want to squeeze out his hiding space until he is forced to expose himself. Something tells you he has not been sufficiently challenged, lately, that he has been glaring his way through people's curiosity until they took their questions back.

''I will stay here now. I needed the foster address to get a job. I don't need it anymore.''

''You work?'' you ask, dumbfounded.

''Warehouse stock control. I'm getting machinery training. Forklift truck. Vroom vroom'' his tone mocks himself. He doesn't answer your question. He lifts his mug above his open mouth and nothing pours out, which he must have known before he lifted it and did it anyway.

''So what did you do,'' you ask. You imagine he squints his eyes, but he doesn't do anything, really, you just see the questioning of it.

''I left and now I'm moving here. What do you think I did? Oh thee who inquires with an accusatory tone.'' He sits down, then stands up enough to pull a pen from the pocket of his black jeans. ''What will you charge me with, officer?''

''Okay,'' you say carefully, raising your hands. ''Were they bad? Wherever you were staying.''

''Sure.'' He gives a not impressed look at your raised hands, then pulls a sudoku from this jacket pocket, and you think: how can this be the thing that bores you the least. He has this unasking about him: he doesn't wonder about your life, or about its past, or about its pastness. How you sometimes wanted to be one of the little beings that scuttle inelegantly, instead of a self, and how you now drag your body around in patterns. You still don't know to where he disappeared for two years, and he doesn't ask about the gelatinous ways in which life unfolded in that time. He doesn't bite into pasts. It's very uninviting.

''So why were they bad?'' you ask, then watch him build things inside of himself. Stories, lies, napkin-houses that fold the dirty sides inwards.

''They don't read social cues,'' he says, finally. You wonder how carefully crafted this answer is. But who are you to judge? You haven't told him about Neil.

''And I read things fine, for you?'' you ask.

Andrew's eyes trace the line of your shoulders. You turn a little, into something more invisible, and Andrew nods a little.

''You wear your body like it's soft,'' he says.

You feel a strike of something pulpy. You look down at your body, water surface wavering around it. The stricken feeling is illusionary; it reminds you: Andrew's curiosity is just selective. Just one of the on-off things he switches, like his energy and benevolence. It's selective in the way of not knowing things that are easy to know, like knowing to list your body organs, and on the other hand saying, you wear your body like it's soft.

''This doesn't work,'' you say. Twitching your head sideways to indicate the space of the basement.

''I know,'' he says after a moment, taut. I'm sorry, he doesn't say.

''I can't even move.''

''I know,'' he says. I'm sorry, he doesn't say.

*

Andrew should be sleeping upstairs when you hear a crash, some crashing, and then quiet. An accident, you imagine immediately, your mind attuned to likely narratives, bad things, extrasensory things.

''Andrew?'' you ask tentatively. It's something bad. It's always something bad. But then the quiet is broken with more crashing, scrambling, the noise of something desperate. The sound has moved down the hallway, where you can hear more clearly. Andrew is saying something through his teeth, softly, melodically, always teethfully. You hear a gasp.

''Neil?'' you say.

''Neil?'' Andrew pronounces carefully. He pushes the weight of something unwilling to the basement door. A hand in Neil's hair is pushing his hand backwards, harshly, and a knife glistens by his throat artery. Andrew isn’t grinning, but you can’t unsee him grinning.

''Why did you come back,'' you say to Neil, who is forced to look at the ceiling, one hand around each of Andrew's arms.

''Come back,'' Andrew repeats blankly, looking between you and Neil.

Neil uses both hands to push at the arm with the knife and suddenly knife is held by them both, away from their bodies and struggling for a swing, both breathing hard with faces sharp. You imagine red-dripping hands. You don't want the knife to swing. You don't want it fiercely.

You open your vocal cords in the right way and a shrill blooms from the resonating spaces in your cheekbones, outwards, hitting Andrew and Neil with the force of soundwalls breaking. It's piercing to your ears, too, and you know it doesn't even compare. You're the predator, then, and they are prey-like. Neil falls down the stairs. Andrew falls to his knees and elbows, hands closed around his ears.

Neil is staggering, touching his ears, spitting water away from his lips, wild. You offer a hand and he stares at it, then moves further back. He bumps into a pillar and startles, before walking around it to take another step back.

Andrew cracks his neck sideways, both sides, glaring at you, then slowly takes two steps down to pick up the knife.

''Neil came back, Aaron? Is there something you aren't telling me? Try not to lie.''

''What,'' Neil asks, then covers and uncovers his ears again, panicked, looking between Andrew and you. His hearing. It probably hurts. It's probably disorientating.

Andrew snaps his fingers three times. Neil doesn't respond. Andrew keeps snapping rhythmically; the more times he does it, the higher up the clog of eeriness in your throat climbs. Neil pushes his hair out of his face, breathing hard at his reflection. He's cupping his ears, shaking his head, shaking the ringing out, until he looks up at Andrew, and Andrew stops snapping and drops his arm.

''What?'' Neil asks again, quick, twitchy. Andrew tilts his head. Neil takes another step back. ''Who are you on the market? Are you resistance? Is this how you know?'' he looks at you.

''The market. Food?'' Andrew says, just as you ask, ''Criminal?'' Neil is talking about the criminal market. He is talking about prized items like you. You know from stories; you just hear big names, as a lesson for avoidance. There is nothing familiar about the way Neil looks. But his hauntedness; it might look like something familiar.

''Liars, liars,'' he Andrew smiles, syllable by syllable. ''You're staying, then,'' he says to Neil. ''You have overshot your runaway runway, huh? We have something to talk about. I see we'll be dining finely tonight. The plentiful company of the three of us.''

Andrew carries himself like a punchline, when he talks. It's annoying.

''He's patronising to everyone. Don't think you're special,'' you tell Neil.

Neil smoothes his hair back and wipes the water off his face. ''Who are you?'' he asks tautly. ''Resistance? Nobodies don't hide Others in abandoned houses.''

''Your turn to share, squid boy,'' Andrew says, both reappearing and coming down. Neil is in Andrew's clothes, dark and monochromatic. Andrew ceremoniously offers a metal fork to Neil, and then hands out a plastic one to you. You pull it out of his hand.

''We are not. You both. You both say these statements. As if you knew. Nobodies don't do this. Nobody knows anything for sure, okay? Tentativity can be enjoyable sometimes.''

''Pescatarian, anyone?'' Andrew asks, pleasantly. ''Come, Neil. You can't stay in wet clothes. We'll talk.''

They disappear upstairs. In the way of denouements, you feel a resolution unfolding. Or hoping for one, anyway. You press the feels of your palms over your eyes. They will probably talk about you, too. And then Neil will appear in Andrew's clothes, dark and monochromatic, and it will make you think of the cosiness of monochromatism, of how homewise it is. It will make you think of when your cousin was glancing at you with a frown and your aunt told her, leave him, he's just brooding, and the cousin still went to him, calling out Aaron Aaron Aaron.

They keep sneaking glances at each other. Neil's dark hair and Andrew's face so much like your own make you think back in time, back to the few days before the metal box and dismal circumstance. I like your hair, you signed to the girl the name of whom you had been trying not to think, drawn to things that are too dark to shine. She was lingering by the mosaic in front of the growth of your rock opening that you had deliberately let become overgrown, something one pushes through with spicy feeling. Thank you, she signed, I like your face. That sounded like a really bad comeback. I do like it, it's very symmetrical.

Neil and Andrew's eyes meet, and you think: you two assholes are too self-absorbed to not do this staring contest.

*

Andrew's phone rings. He turns to bore into Neil's eyes. He moves the phone away from his ear, and says: ''Nathaniel?''

And Neil panics.

In the way of narrative complications, the three of you end up in Andrew's warehouse car.

You are in the backseat, covered with two blankets, feeling yourself frown as you readjust your grip on the four two-litre water bottles you are hugging to your chest.

''This is clearly idiotic,'' you inform them, again, because apparently neither of them senses the threat of a looming climax. The so many things that will go wrong, because nobody has any sustainable plans.

Andrew is loosely gripping the wheel with faux laziness and Neil glances around full-bodily, alert, before returning to zooming in on google maps on a new phone he just had in his bag. He destroyed Andrew’s.

''This doesn't work,'' Andrew repeats your words so wholly blankly that it is no-doubt mockery.

''Not nearly the stupidest thing I've done,'' Neil mutters. Andrew flicks his eyes at Neil. You squint as you flick your eyes between them. Andrew is tapping his fingers on the wheel. Neil is hunching low in his seat, scowling at the screen. Andrew reaches over to Neil's side to pull sunglasses from the glove compartment, and Neil leans away to make space without looking from the screen.

''So you two are friends now?'' you ask, something strange and foreign tinting your tone. ''Or have you guys started—''

''He's a benefit,'' Andrew interrupts. The sunglasses render his thoughts further invisible. He is a thing of well-fitting black placed within American-spaced property and nothingness. He evades the friend part with his answer. Like so often, he is making himself into invisibility and insinuation.

''You smell like excitement,'' you tell him and watch as his face jumps a little.

''You can smell feelings now?'' He snatches the phone from Neil's hands, maximally zooming into the location that Neil has been inspecting for minutes. Neil keeps looking in the empty space of the phone, hands hanging around phone-shaped air, before he drops them and buckles his seat belt. And you think: theatrics on the road.

You shrug. You can still sense Neil's panic.

''You smell like wet,'' Andrew retorts, looking who knows where. Having learnt from exposure, you know Andrew looks down on things he feels, and you soak in them. Leave him, he's just—

''Just start the engine,'' Neil says.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15099911/chapters/35012867

Chuck appreciation art it is ! Release date of tmr in slovenia is 23. October HELP

Pidge is fourteen. She and Keith are pressed against the Garrison wall, both a little breathless despite not having moved for half an hour. The memoir is taking place on the other side of the wall, outside, beautiful day. They can hear everything. This is the first time she's alone with Keith. It's funny how a sentiment brings you closer instantly; a tragedy to call this all-consuming loss a sentiment.

''I could sneak you in, at the end,'' Keith offers, seventeen and blood simmering.

''No. I don't want to see his face,'' she says and immediately feels horrible.

She draws a forever sign in the dry soil and it intensifies her pure agony like she thought it would. She stretches her long socks further past her ankles, hair still long and tied into low buns. She doesn't feel like herself. Her brother was a half of her self-definition.

''It is now appropriate to pause for a moment to reflect on the huge impact the crew will continue to have on humanity’s aspirations. We extend our deepest sympathy to everyone inspired by their spirit.''

Dust is rising from where Keith is thumping his fists on the ground with a devastating frequency. His eyes are clenched.

''Hey,'' she says, lowly. Collecting ignition to continue, firestarter petroleum oozy. But Keith says, ''Yeah.''

He splays his hands on the ground. Looks up, continues looking up. It's too bright for that to be comfortable. She fixates on the bruises on his knuckles and the blood around his fingernail.

''You have blood on your fingernail,'' she says. Keith brings his hands up, stoic and turmoiling at the same time. ''Right thumb,'' she says.

They have come up with a post-mortem communication code, okay? Matt said if one of them died and became a ghost, they would knock three glasses over. It's so so horrible. Keith lays a hand atop of her head.

''Perhaps this is the nature of heroism. Striving to achieve something that is beyond our ability. Even being the best doesn’t protect you from errors. Perhaps that in itself honours space and space exploration.''

Keith clenches his fists again. He had said Shiro would never. He’s too good for errors.

''I guess,'' she swallows, ''I guess we are the only ones who—'' The only ones with this erroneous feeling. This fucking mistaken grief. ''Who believe in them more than that,'' she finishes.

''Well, that's awkward,'' Keith jokes. They smile at each other, vaporous.

''We will now play a special song – the last song recommendation Matthew Holt sent to our station on Earth. Panic Vertigo by The Wrecks.''

Oh no, she thinks. Her mind spills into a stream of no no no, when Keith growls: ''Let's get the fuck away.''

He's already dusting off. He doesn't offer a hand and Pidge is grateful.

At fourteen, the Garrison is holding a memoir for the lost crew and Pidge’s hands feel unstable when she drinks from glasses. On the way to the ceremony, she and Keith climbed off his motorbike at a gas station made for boys like Keith, rogue, creases of their jeans sharp, boots strangely clean. Keith bought them canned coke and she was grateful.

 *

 She's pulling a yellow pepper apart, thinking, quite uselessly: maybe the illusion of strength stems from weakness. She squished it until it cracked and now the seeds are falling on the counter.

She's a half of a person. But, in contrast to the missing half, an idea is forming within her. In contrast to the missing half, Enceladus is still her favourite moon. It helps her think: Keith, from whom she hasn't heard for weeks, is a cyrovolcano. And she won't remain a flyby. She'll be a rover.

She calls the Garrison three times to reach him and carries her phone as a weight in her pocket for three days before he returns the call, bleeding apprehension.

''Hello?''

''Keith,'' she says, solemn. ''Keith. Can you steal something for me?''

 *

 Pidge is fifteen and a boy called Lance makes her doubt her insight all over.

She stops in a corridor when she sees him now, well past sleep-time. Lance hovers two fingers above the skin of a girl's hand.  His eyes flicker to hers, watchful, intent.

''How does that feel?'' he mutters with a ghosting smile.

''You're not touching me,'' the girl says through the teeth of her grin. Lance smiles elastically in a way that makes Pidge feel like she can snap.

The girl clears her throat, mouth a contour of a smile, and then Lance, too, turns. The girl pulls her hair in a tail, then releases, and Pidge watches it swing behind her back.

''Hi,'' Pidge says, ''Lance.''

''Hi, Pidge.'' He grins, pulls the girl's hand behind his back and holds it there with both hands. ''Look at that. Won't tell if you won't.''

Pidge runs her fingers through the hair at her nape. She thought familiarisation would come more slowly. Not letting go of the girl's hand, Lance pulls a key ring from his pocket, spins it around his finger. It's something kitsch, lowbrow and vibrant and nostalgic. She isn't like that. He's vibrant and she compares herself to extraterrestrial objects.

''Won't tell if you won't,'' she repeats.

 *

 She can't fall asleep, just keeps thinking, defined, almost geometrical thoughts. It's often like this. She just lies frustrated.

She thought it would be easy, that she would uncover the assembly of concepts of her and re-cover them with a new sheet. Instead, she is stuck. What drives science forward is the universality of laws. Eyes open, duvet light on her chest, she is stuck. Can't go forward. She can't develop herself, no universal laws apply.

A week ago she broke a plastic fork without meaning to and didn’t know what that meant.

 *

 Lance walks into the dark dining hall where Pidge sits slouched and they both start.

''Oh, uh, hey. Pidge. Wow, right? I didn't know the dining hall was unlocked at night, but looks like you've known. What are you reading?''

She glances down at her tablet. She's coordinating outputs of Garrison detectors. The device on the backside of the tablet is reading the academy’s data analyses. Lance comes close enough for its light illuminate him and she tilts the tablet away from him, towards her stomach.

''Wikipedia,'' she lies. He grins.

''Is this referring to your, what it that, a tablet?'' he points at the special offer sticker in the corner of her tablet that she scraped from a sandwich wrapping.

''No,'' she says, ''It’s referring to me.''

''Yeah? How so?''

How funny that a person so whole is asking her this. ''You want me to tell you why I think I'm special?''

''Sure,'' Lance crosses his arms.

Her neck cracks when she tips her head up. Maybe this: she has, in a way, cracked all the joints in her body, cracked her everything, new shape recuperating under the always-loose clothes. Who is she? Primordial soup of a person. Chemically potent. An isomer inverted. And can’t stop thinking about that. The transition, the hoax, has made her the embodiment of metacognition.

''I cognise about my cognition,'' she says. Lance’s eyebrows shoot up and it makes her want to cross out her answer. ''I’ll find aliens,'' she covers up. Something less irritating, less out of reach, and no less sincere. Lance beams, whole body moving illogically with enthusiasm.

''Me too! Man,'' he says, closer now, and Pidge concludes magnetism attracts him to things, never repels. ''Please tell me you have a plan. Humanity has lived so long without aliens, it’s time.'' He straightens up with intent. ''Are you going to cognise something for the Garrison? Or, I mean, if we can reach Kerberos. I mean. Maybe we’ll have the tech to go further just when I’m allowed to fly higher than fifty thousand feet.''

''Yeah, well. Icarus only flew too close to the sun because his wings were shit.'' Lance grins, but then tilts his head.

''You look upset,'' Lance says – because he seems to live on the outside of himself. She shakes her head. Typing tempestuously from her home floorboards, she thought: the Garrison would be a she-unknown zone. She’d be a hoax, and people wouldn’t know her. But actually, no. She can give what she can give.

''Some officers don't take girls seriously,'' she says.

''Oh,'' Lance sounds surprised. ''Is there someone you like?''

''No. That girl, what's her name? Do you take her seriously?''

''The one from the hallway?'' Lance asks and it makes her feel infinitely worse. ''Whoa, dude. Yes, I take Alleine seriously. I'm not just, I don't know, playing. I have respect.''

She sweeps her electronic chips into a pile on the tabletop. She’s not trying to be inflammatory. She just feels her bedrock being attacked.

''They have internal worlds too, you know.''

''Dude. I know.'' He folds his arms and she doesn’t know what to say. He half-laughs, looking to the side, arms unfolding. Okay, adventure over for tonight. See you around. Nice talking to you, Pidge.''

''Lance,'' she calls. He turns, tilts his head a little. ''I like your confidence. Keep it up.''

''I like yours,'' Lance smiles, just by the door, when the door swings open, an officer stepping in.

''Ah,'' Lance breathes. Straightens up. ''Sir.''

''Good evening, cadets,'' an officer Pidge doesn’t know barely glances at her before settling on Lance. Crypsis, she thinks. ''McClain. Are you testing the admissions?''

Lance takes in the scattered electronics, glances at Pidge. ‘’I — Pidge was teaching me, sir. About – structural aircraft repair procedures. After today's simulation I thought I could benefit from it, and I feel – devoted—'' he stumbles over devoted three times, and she feels her body jerk. Lance looks horrified.

''Bring your devotion to class tomorrow. And don’t test academy rules. Two minutes to clear up.'' Lance keeps his eyes on him as he leaves, breathing in slowly. Shiro was a Garrison commander and she has met him twice. She’s sure Shiro would use euphemisms.

''Jesus fucking Christ,'' Lance says.

''Whatever you want to believe in,'' she replies. Lance huffs.

 *

 In her head, she once calls her inner voice her articulatory control system. Then thinks: that’s enough. Her insight told her that this person-creation would lead her further than any human has ever been. And her insight is good: she’s picking up data she doesn’t know what to do with. That’s good. Her insight was a carefully crafted thing and she absolutely loves that Matt and Keith are the two people who'd never tell her you're overthinking this. It’s for them. She doesn’t own three glasses, because she believes: in Matt, in herself.

 *

 It’s her foresight that can’t be trusted much. She talks to Lance and doesn’t feel very real. Maybe she should start listening to music.

 *

 ''Hunk,'' Lance says, back straight and voice loud, ''do you know Pidge? He's a romantic.''

''I'm not a romantic,'' she snaps, climbing carefully over the bench with her tray. Hunk is sitting opposite of Lance and now scoots along the bench and ends up in front of her. His relaxed arms, elbows on the table and hands clasped, look warm.

''Sounds like a compliment, but. Lance, you dick, what did you do?''

Lance grins while chewing. Like Michael Jackson. ''I meant it positively. But I still trade these bad boys—'' he lifts a bottle of juice, ''to compensate. Want, Pidge?''

''No. Yes,'' she snatches it Lance’s hands. She likes the knowing between him and Hunk. It’s different from her, and from Keith. They are both somehow not old enough for it, maybe; don’t have enough real niceties.

''These were out when I was a child, can’t believe I’m getting them in my dream school, too,'' Hunk says. ''Like, the smell. Smells like childhood.''

Treat and threat are such similar words, she thought while drinking coke on a curb with Keith, smelling her way into childhood. And now she thinks it again.

''Good god,'' she jerks, her fork screeching against the plate.

''Whoa. You doing okay?''

''Yeah,'' she clears her throat, a cover-up, a swallow-down. Before her insides disseminate. ''I just lost track of – time,'' she finishes lamely.

''Oh,'' Hunk says. ''Track of time is a good thing to lose. If I were to lose something,'' he smiles.

 *

 Lance chews like a Hollywood star and isn’t afraid of heights and she is volatile. But maybe she’s past the impact-heavy stage of moon formation. Pidge is fifteen, her hair is short, and she’s the first microorganisms bursting to life. She’s the detection of some geothermal activity. Still uncertain, but onto something.

 *

They are perched and tense above the extraterrestrial sample curation building. It's the most perfect of surprises. It's Shiro.

She breathes in. She sends the location to Keith, the rushed word: Shiro. Coordination and causation are her blood type, after all. It's nothing new, to be an in-group spy. An infiltrator. They all start at the explosions.

''No way,'' Lance says, strained, hype-high. ''That guy is always trying to one-up me!''

The desert-night wind cools the sweat at her hairline to a suggestion of a headache. It's all happening very fast. When she speaks, it's taut and dusty.

''Who?''

(on ao3)

Oh yes a great day for bad sketches of deany dean

throw back to the game between usc and psu

sister and i; a moment without a need for sharability; that post that says you ever drink coffee so strong it instills transcendemce in you for the entirety of four minutes

Flower crown ! :)