khajidont | MoM IC Contact: TAKE TWO

hey
you okay?

[ this month is so fucky!!! ]

Yeah.

It's just

It's been a weird month, huh? All at once. I've never seen anything like it before.

Yeah, I don't know if I have, either. Not all at once.

At this point, I think I'm only surprised we don't have any old enemies showing up, too.

Ugh. Don't jinx us. I've got my hands full with all of these people from versions of my world who have no clue who I am.

Of course this is the month where my therapist got ported out

Which sounds more worrying than it is. I'm fine. It's just like

Ironic

You mean Dr Chilton, right?

[ Because, what other imPort therapists are there? Crane?? Then again, if that guy exPorted too, she wouldn't be too broken up about it... ]

Who all do you recognize?

Yeah. That's him. He even left me his car.

[ He knows, Ruka. He knows. ]

Dick. Tim. Bart. Peter was here a while back but you probably remember the last version of him that came through and now he's just like

a toddler

Yeah, he left me a bunch of money, too. I didn't think I'd left that much of an impression, but... better than letting the bank have it, I suppose.

[ That is a lot of names... she feels like she's seen most of them before, either here or there, but they weren't any of the types of people she got to know very well. Except for— ]

Yeah, I've known a couple of Parkers, but neither of them were THIS young! He's really not in a good spot, either. Have you talked to him?

Us relics have to stick together I guess. Plus I talked about you so maybe you were more on his mind that way? Who knows. We can't ask him now.

I talked to him a little bit. Offered to buy him some food and provide a listening ear. I thought maybe hanging up something at the Memorial would help give him a little closure too.

He almost broke down crying when we talked, so I took him out for Thai. [ railroading and emotional sledgehammering: #just ruka things ] He'd just been unmasked, and it sounds like it went really badly.

[ wait. ]

you talked about me???

Edited 2019-08-19 01:36 (UTC)

God. Poor kid. People really need to stop dragging teenagers into their messes. That's how this happens.

Of course I did! You're a part of my life.

[ She can't even reply to that part, she just has to bury her face in a pillow for embarrassment. Flattered?? Flustered?? Either way, it's definitely too much!!

It probably shouldn't be, considering they've been dating for five months, but even little statements like that feel monumental. God, she's a sap. ]

Yeah. Everything else I heard was awful, too, but I'm sure he's going to throw himself into the next four or five big messes without any idea what he's doing. [ Impulsive shonen types. They always do this. ] It's going to go very badly, for him.

Yeah. That sounds about right.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll add him to the list of Youths To Watch Out For.

[ It's a growing list. ]

[ there's a delay, with the typing dots and everything. ]

Are any of the youths NOT on that list?

Absolutely not.

You're screwed here either way, aren't you?

[ Normal kids? Forced into a terrifying world without their parents or anyone to guide them and left in flux for the rest of their sorry existence here, or at least until they, like Jaime and Ruka before them, grow up enough to simply be jaded about it. Kids who were already pretty screwed up by the time they showed up? Well, they speak for themselves. ]

Yeah.

Nobody ever focuses on the right things.

[ It's not that nobody cares about the kids who come through — in some cases, it's the opposite. So many people care, but it spreads responsibility too thin, weaving a net so wide that it catches nothing. They might get put in a house with adults now, but what happens when those guardians disappear? Who talks them through those loses and regains? They might get enrolled in school, but who helps them catch up when they lose weeks or months of classes to port-outs, or kidnappings, or some other disaster? How do they adjust if their friends skip forward years and decades on them, and they're left behind? ]

We should trade notes later.

Yeah. We can do that. I'm pretty sure that we have a

Unique perspective on things

And the closest thing to a sure thing, for whatever that's worth

It's worth something.

[ There's some dots for typing, there and gone for a moment, but... maybe he doesn't know he's dancing around the subject, but there's a reason she reached out, and it wasn't for the baby spider. ]

There was a guy on the network looking for you.
That's your old roommate, right?
From last year.

Yusuke.

Yeah that's him.

He remembers

[ There's a lot he could say - a lot that's on his mind. It doesn't come out. Not right now, anyway, not when Jaime's not sure how to put any of it into words. ]

[ That's one question answered, but it leaves too many in its wake. He remembers Jaime, but is he the same as Jaime remembers? Yusuke says he just lost the time, but that doesn't mean it's the truth; he could have gained months, years in his own world, and so become different. Jaime, certainly, has changed. Even just losing Yusuke for a few weeks had changed him. So many other things have, too, and he must know it. How wide has the gap gotten? Does the relief of seeing someone cherished again make up for the pain suffered, for the anxiety of a future loss that can't be quieted?

How on Earth is she supposed to ask any of that over a text? She can read him pretty well, but that's not good enough. Beyond that, would he even want to say? It had been excruciating trying to get him to say anything back then. Would he even want to bother now?

Even when it's a happy occasion, there's too much room to be hurt. ]

I'll be here when you get home

if you want

Edited 2019-09-01 07:55 (UTC)

Ok

Sounds good

[ He doesn't say much more than that - doesn't know what more to say. He's still figuring it out himself. He could argue that Ruka has more experience with this than he does, but that's not wholly accurate; he's got as much experience as she does, and it's still odd, complicated even if he's overjoyed to simply be able to see his friend again.

Ruka can always feel him return home, but she can hear him too. He's not subtle in the click of the door, the stomp of his boots, his low voice welcoming the dogs back home. As for what he's feeling?

It's complicated. He's happy. But there's a bittersweetness there too, and a certain timbre of fear that he always carries with him, only magnified, nerves rubbed red and raw. He doesn't waste much time in finding Ruka, wherever she's waiting for him, draping himself over her back, arms resting over her shoulders, cheek bumping against hers. ]

Hey.

[ He's obviously been crying from the redness of his eyes, a residual thickness of his voice as an indication that he'd at least stopped crying a while ago. He doesn't try to hide it anymore. Besides, they're happy tears. Right? ]

Hey.

[ He finds her in the kitchen, which is a little unusual for her for daylight hours — but she accepts the weight at her back and the warmth at her cheek with a little hum of acknowledgement. Her faces presses back a little against his; her hands slip to take his, bending his arms to wrap them against her ribs.

His heart beat is like the throbbing of an old bruise, freshly struck; it doesn't feel all bad, but it doesn't feel all good, either. It's a shade of familiar, but Jaime doesn't feel his hurts the way Ruka experiences hers; the fact that there's any spot of brightness is more than she can usually say for herself, when this happens. ]

Did you eat yet? [ She doubts it. He usually cooks, and he usually doesn't when he's upset. ] I was thinking we could do something simple tonight, if you haven't.

[ With a day like this, and the fact he's been crying already — even if he thinks he's ready to talk, she's pretty sure he'll need a little softer lead than all that. To feel a little more grounded. ]

Mm. I haven't. Just some coffee.

[ Coffee's generally got enough calories to get him through the day, on bad days - but that's only because of what he puts through it. It sure doesn't help with the jitteriness or the fact that Khaji likes to chide him about not getting enough nutrition in the day. That's the least of his problems, he always tells Khaji (to which he gets a grumbled rejoinder of it is statistically a very large problem), though he hasn't had a day where he's only eaten cereal out of the box since Ruka moved in. It's always easier to keep up good habits when you're around someone else, especially someone who you know has to eat too. He wraps his arms around her easily, slotting in there as though this is something they've been doing for years instead of a scant few months. She makes it easy to. ]

Simple sounds good. Maybe even some take-out.

[ look sometimes a bitch likes to be held. and sometimes, 'sometimes' actually means 'at all times.' ]

Maybe both? Or a snack, at least. You know delivery times are bad right now. [ Truly the biggest downside to Jaime's Moderately Normal-Person Hours: everyone else is using those hours for the same things, too. ] I know there's ice cream. Haven't checked what else.

Mmm, yeah. If we're really in a pinch, I can always pick something up later. Let Khaji drive.

[ Khaji will enjoy that. Jaime likes flying so much that he usually keeps it as a group effort, but sometimes it's easier to just turn off and let Khaji handle everything up until the point it's time to land and actually pick the dang thing up. Khaji's a big fan of frippery up until that point - there is no use in going as quickly or showboating as much as Khaji prefers aside from the sheer joy of it - but Jaime will never deny him that.

He only extracts one arm from her to fish around in his pocket to take out his phone before draping back over her, holding his phone in front of them with a handy dandy delivery app open. ]

What d'you want?

[ Apparently it's too much to ask for him to not drape himself on her even when choosing what to eat. But as long as Ruka never pushes him away from those empty places, he'll continue insinuating himself into her space. ]

Hmm...

[ It's not a thing she's used to, this kind of casually affectionate contact. Her powers have mostly forbidden it — between the danger of touch when that was the sole way her empathy worked in the years before now, and an earlier childhood where her only friends were invisible, intangible beings, when could she have ever acclimated to it? Even now, while it's something she can anticipate from Jaime, in theory, the reality of it still takes her by surprise. Unexpected, but comforting, all the same.

And if he's the one instigating, and able to find something soothing about it when he's been run so rough by everything else... it hardly counts as her being selfish, does it?

Oh, right. Dinner. She doesn't take the phone, but she does start scrolling through the options, finally settling on a nearby Indian place, and loading up a few different plates. It's hard to tell how much of an appetite Jaime's going to have, but the excess will keep, and better to get more than less. It's a quiet few minutes as she goes through — in good circumstances, she'd make verbal confirmations as she'd go, but Ruka has the bad habit of simply deciding when things are a little more serious. (Well, Jaime could always pull the phone away from her if he hates it, so it's not like she's totally inconsiderate. It's fine.) ]

Yeah, we'll figure it out later, I'm sure. [ She'll make something up, if she has to, it's fine. In the meantime, though, she nudges the phone back his way. ] That work?

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