twenty-eighth jump;

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Gravity Couches and beyond.
WARNINGS: Maybe some swearing, or even some violence, and more than likely some implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Another month, another jump, another round of new faces.
NOTES: It could just be the standard sensation of air on wet skin, but if you bother to check, you might notice the steam rising from your body, barely there and gone within a minute. By the time you get to the showers, it will be clear that it's not just taking you time to adjust. The room is cold — colder than usual, but no worse than the last jump. While it's nothing dangerous, it's certainly motivation to hurry through the usual routine and get dressed quickly.



It's getting closer.




YOUR EYES ARE OPEN.

KEEP LOOKING.

You wake up in darkness.

There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're deposited on the floor of a stark, sterile medical bay.

You are not alone.
There are others who have come before you, others who are awakening beside you. Some may be familiar to you, perhaps even friends. Others have much less amiable plans. Some are merely alien and inexplicable, but there are always those who might mean you harm.

After you catch your breath and your vision returns, you notice a number on the inside of your forearm. Maybe it's a familiar number. Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just a number. But the number—completely unique to you—is a tattoo, and it does not come off.

If you enter the room adjacent to the medbay, you will find a small locker with your number on it, surrounded by rows upon rows of identical lockers. Inside, you will find a few of your personal items, a communications device, and a ship's uniform in your exact size. The comms device is fully powered and connects directly to the ship's network; it's your only means of communication beyond physical conversation. Upon turning the device on, a neutral, automated voice will say, "Please take the blue lift to the passenger quarters." Any other attempts at communicating with the rest of the network are met only with static.

This is your welcome party.

Comments

[forgodssake]

[ Even eye contact is only broken soon after, Charles' own focus drooping somewhere around Erik's sternum before burrowing firmly into the ground between his own feet.

Just for a moment. He's people watching after that. ]

Quite a few things ought to have been obvious, I suppose.

[ His fingers drum soundless against the bench on either side of him. ]

I should see you back to the medical bay, once you're decent. Your face.

[sorrycharles]

[ Quite. ]

What about it?

[ The balance of humor between expression and intent lists dangerous from one extreme to the other. No outward indication at first that he isn’t serious, then a watch wind at his teeth well after any fleeting desire to jest has evaporated, bare and raw as exposed wire. ]

I can see myself. [ He leans aside into Charles and then forward onto his feet, towel re-tied with a deft turn from elbow to wrist. For all that his capacity for thought might be clouded, autopilot seems to be in working order. ] After a rinse.

[ Back into the showers. Where fully clothed telepaths with letters and commitment to insane senators cannot follow. ]

[forgodssake]

[ Quite true. Charles doesn't stand, frustration pressing the insides of his ribcage with a pent up breath in, slowly released again. He'd almost smiled at that moment of barely-there-humour, a ghost of it softening the skin around his eyes. ]

Later, then.

[ Talking: later. Forgiveness: later. Bitter arguments: later. Theirs is a relationship where all these important things are continually postponed, as if it had been left behind in the gravity couches when they'd first been dumped out of them.

If Erik looks back, Charles remains where he is, watching some unknown invisible spot in the air aside from him, perhaps listening to thoughts unspoken from one direction or another.

And later: gone, rather than waiting, to shuck himself from his uniform and hibernate. ]

[sorrycharles]

[ Erik doesn’t look back. It doesn’t occur to him that he might, bloody sputum ejected at a stream angled with impressive accuracy for a drain bolted into the floor in passing.

He is proud of himself amidst everything, obscene delight at his own aim bleaching stress clean away.

All without a break in step. ]

[forgodssake]

[ God, you're a dick. ]