seananmcguire:optimysticals:seananmcguire:sisforsammi:Drift Compatible A lot of people–a gratifying

seananmcguire:optimysticals:seananmcguire:sisforsammi:Drift Compatible A lot of people–a gratifying number of people, really; it was like reaching the actual apocalypse cleared a lot of puritan bullshit out of everybody’s heads, so that their response to “we’re married” became “congrats,” and not a frantic game of “which one is your husband, which one is just a friend,” or worse, “oh, you’re gay, how nice, is she going to be your surrogate”–a lot of people assumed, when they walked into a hanger, that they were like those Chinese triplets.  Three pilots.  Triple the strain but triple the connectivity, the control.(”How amazing,” those people murmured, in their own dialects, in their own ways.  “They’re not related, you know.  They can run a drift that close on love.”)Except that they couldn’t.When No Encores woke, she woke with Eliot on her left and Parker on her right, and Hardison back in the control room, monitoring their vitals, dying a little bit inside from the fear, coming back to life from the pride.  He never stepped into the cockpit, never saw what they saw, never had to hold up the weight of the world as they knew it.  That was for the best.  He kept them safe in so damn many ways, in all the ways that counted, and their Jaeger danced like a thief and hit like a trained professional, and they came home.  They came home every time.Sometimes those same people, the ones who had assumed, would see Hardison on base when No Encores was running the waters.  They would treat him so gingerly then, assuming he was hurt, neglected, left behind.  And he would only smile, and maybe touch the inside of his left arm (”one show only” tattooed there, black on brown, small and meant for him and his and no one else), and say, “Nah.  You think I want to punch a kaiju?  Those things are full of germs.”The drift wasn’t love.  It was similarity in the broken places. Hardison didn’t envy them that.Someone has to be the harbor.Someone has to lead them home.Thanks @seananmcguire, I wasn’t using my feelings today.I am a surgical strike of pain.  I AM THE GODDESS OF LOVE. -- source link

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