WIP "Wednesday": Custos Custodium

WIP "Wednesday": Custos Custodium

Oops. Anyway.

They say to write what you know, so I decided Malik's roommate has a cat. Also in this episode: Jensen learns how to skydive, and everyone is shitty to Augs. Find the fic at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

He met Malik at her apartment—a matchbox indeed, with a galley kitchen occupying most of the shared space and two closet-sized bedrooms holding a lofted twin apiece. One of her absent roommates had filled the living room with potted plants whose vines crawled across the windows and turned the sparse rays of sun that crept between adjacent buildings a brilliant emerald. A tortoiseshell cat followed her out of the back and inspected him. He ran a careful finger down its back, from one ear to the base of the tail, and it purred and shoved its head into his shin.

“Good to see you! You want to pass out on my couch for a minute?” she asked. “Fair’s fair.”

“Slept on the train. Can I drop my bag, though? Hotel doesn’t do check-in until four.”

“Sure.” She made a face. “You know you could’ve crashed here, right? London’s expensive as hell.”

He surveyed the minuscule accommodations deliberately. “You said it was cramped. You share it with three people I don’t know. And this fellow.” The cat twined happily around his ankles, rumbling like an old muscle car.

“They’re friendly! And two of them are gone at any given time. The Duke of Hork doesn’t take up much space, and he only ever throws up on Sarah’s bag.”

He raised an eyebrow at the title. The cat did have an aristocratic portliness to him. “Didn’t want to impose. It’s fine. The Task Force keeps me housed and armed. Prague’s not pricey like London.”

“All right, well, if you’re sure. Hungry?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Tear yourself away from His Grace, and let’s hit a chippy.”

An entire cod and an acre’s worth of insuperable fries later, he sat back on the bench they shared and basked contented in the sun. His black clothing soaked up the sparse rays, and though the weather was chilly still, it lacked bite. “What’s the plan?” he asked. “Not that I wouldn’t happily just bum around and clean out the North Sea of seafood.”

Malik surveyed the smaller chunk of fried fish half-eaten in the paper tray before her and admitted defeat, consigning it to a nearby bin. “Want to jump off the top of the London Eye?”

He snorted, but she continued: “I actually think I can line up another pilot friend of mine for tomorrow if you want to learn how to skydive. You owe it to yourself, with the Icarus.”

“Seriously? Yeah, for sure. Sounds like a blast.”

She nudged his shoulder. “You’re gonna be a natural. You probably won’t even need supplemental oxygen for the altitude.”

“Uh… how high were you planning on going?”

“You ever heard of HALO?”

He pondered. “Like the angels, or like the video game?”

“That’s what I thought. High-altitude, low-open. Ask your coworkers—I bet one of them was a paratrooper or something, the way you guys operate.”

“Mmm, yeah. At least one of the grunts. And I think the E-SEALs train with chutes, so Jarreau back in Chicago’s probably done it. How high is high? And more importantly, how low is low?”

She fought a smile with limited success. “How’s thirty thousand feet sound?”

“High. Cold. I see why you’d need oxygen.”

“And you can pop under two kay, but it’s not advised for beginners. I’ve gone down to two-fifty over water. I know someone who was showing off and pulled at two hundred… but he broke both ankles.”

Jensen looked at her. “Twenty-eight thousand feet of free fall? As in five miles?”

The smile won out. “Hell of a thrill. What do you say?”

“If I break my ankles, you get to pay for the replacement parts. And explain it to Sarif.”

“I’m telling Nils you’re a ‘yes,’ then. Speaking of ankles, when did you get yours repaired? It was in rough shape when I saw you in Singapore, but it seems fine now.”

“Huh. I’d… forgotten about that. Must’ve gotten fixed up while they were reviving me.” He flexed the ankle thoughtfully, then pulled it up over his right knee. It looked fine. “Guess they had Sarif spares.”

“Well, as long as it can take a landing. Not like I’m gonna get you on a dance floor… am I? I assumed pubs over clubs, for tonight.”

He remembered the Hive and winced. “Yep.”

“Too bad. I wanted to see what would happen. Figured you’d panic in under a minute.”

“Remind me why I spent fourteen hours on a train to hang out with you?”

She laughed. “I thought it was so you could drink me under the table in front of all my friends. I didn’t tell anyone you had a Sentinel—didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“That’s terrible.” Jensen chuckled. “Can’t wait. How many friends are we talking?”

“Just three. My roommate Maggie—she’s more or less on my schedule. She’s a flight attendant, and we’ve gone bouldering a couple times. Nils, who’d be flying us up to the stratosphere tomorrow on his way to Johannesburg. And Laura, another pilot friend. She does helo tours around the British Isles, mostly. That okay with you?”

“Shocked you have three whole friends besides me. I figure I can just about carry four people home after a couple of pubs. Especially if anyone else is a shrimp like you.” “Bold words to your future skydiving instructor, Jensen,” she said, and socked him in the arm. He pretended not to notice her nursing her knuckles as she stood.

This is right up there with the 50-lb wheel of red Leicester cheese from Ask MetaFilter.

so once me and my wife were watching a documentary where a snake ate like a million eggs. that snake just went to fucking town on eggs. and the snake made the eggs look so good that i kept thinking about it, and thinking about it, and thinking about it, and eventually it was 11pm and i ran out of willpower and decided to eat one (1) singular raw egg just to prove to myself that the snake was surely a liar.

the snake was not a liar. texture is like, super important to me and raw eggs are very Texture so i had another one, and then another one, and then another one, and eventually i ran out of eggs.

i had like, fifteen raw eggs.

i didnt really know how to explain this momentary madness to my wife, so my Plan was to put all the eggshells into a grocey bag, and then throw that grocery bag in the dumpster, and if she never noticed that would be Excellent and if she noticed immediately i could lie and say that the eggs went bad.

except i cant lie very good, and of course with murphys law being such, i got salmonella.

so i threw up a lot and my wife asked me what poisoned me so and i tried very hard to dodge the question but i was oozing shame like oil from a room temperature cheese and eventaully i gave in and told her everything and to her enormous credit she was more flabbergasted than actually upset. she did make me promise to not eat any more raw eggs, which i have stuck to, and she gives me weird looks during nature documentaries now as if desire was the only thing keeping me from eating thousands of pounds of krill anyway i made a joke earlier about being able to eat my age in eggs and my sister in law in law made a drawing to comemorate the moment and also because it was my birthday. she's excellent. thank you 10000000% @cintailed. you should all visit her page and admire her work.

It's tragic that this advice is so needed.

hi uh i keep seeing this being debated on tiktok and as your resident adult with a history of infertility who knows just.. way too much about pregnancy and hcg tests: if you are capable of getting pregnant, you really REALLY need to understand how drugstore pregnancy tests work. if there is a line, no matter how faint, that test is POSITIVE. I’ve seen people test positive and get a negative or start their period a few days later and be like “it must have been a false positive”. actual false positives are extremely rare. what most likely happened is something called a ‘chemical pregnancy’ which is when an egg is fertilized but does not implant in the uterus so the pregnancy does not continue. that positive test was not faulty or false, it was just an early test.

if you think you might be pregnant, get your hands on a test. you don’t need the fancy digital ones. the ones you can buy at places like the dollar tree work just as well. buy a few and take one every day until your period comes on if you need to. if there is a FAINT line you aren’t sure about (sometimes tests have something called an indent that makes a shadow that can be mistaken as a very very faint line), test again the next day. as a general rule, morning is the best time to test for most people.

in a post-roe america, is it vitally necessary that you know and understand that because if you intend to terminate, your window is incredibly small in most states and by the time you’ve missed a period or begun to suspect you might be pregnant, there’s a decent chance you are past the cutoff. please please please educate yourselves on this because it could mean the difference between you having access to the healthcare that you need.

ohio removed 160000 inactive voter registrations

Search for yourself here: https://registrationreadiness.ohiosos.gov Voter registration:

"The Committee said on Tuesday that its newly-published report is the first output from a series of meetings exploring what a united Ireland would mean and examines the current economic relationship between the jurisdictions on the island and the potential of the all-island economy.

The report, the Committee said, goes on to examine the cost of a united Ireland and makes the case for planning and preparation for a united Ireland to begin."

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I present the exception that proves the rule: Mr. Rogers.

Please remember that almost everyone around you is traumatized. I didn’t understand this when I was younger. I wondered why people acted so strangely and irrationally. Maybe all children wonder this. The author Robert Anton Wilson said (paraphrasing), “We have never seen a completely sane adult human.” No one makes it out of this life alive. It’s not their fault. Mercy, kindness, forgiving — these are what makes one human. They are other names for love. People break in the strangest of ways.