eye knew him well

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[alaspooryork]

my worst distraction

Characters: Agent North Dakota, Agent South Dakota.

Summary: South wasn't the first of the twins to be knocked down a peg.

Word Count: 200.

available on AO3.

[alaspooryork]

(insp.)

[alaspooryork]

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Title: The Quiet Characters: Carolina & Wash. Word Count: Just over 700. Notes: Once upon a time in late April, @annefiction wrote a thing, and I fell in love instantly. It was speculative for season 15 at the time, and though it was quickly confirmed to not be canon, it’s one of my favorite fanworks to come out of 15 so far--so much so that I didn’t make it 10 days before I began writing this. A million kudos to @anneapocalypse for taking this little surprise in stride, encouraging me to polish it up and get it posted, and generally being awesome.

I implore you to read “Don’t fucking do that” first. Credit goes to Anne for one of her timeline theories in the [spoiler] mention. Finally, for anyone curious, here’s the original song Wash is playing. And yes, there is ambient noise in this recording. You aren’t crazy.

He’s playing again. 

Carolina knows Wash can play the guitar. She’s watched his fingers, calloused and sure, skip over the strings, watched the shy hint of a blush tinge his cheeks as he let his bangs hide his eyes from the gaze of his audience. He used to play before, on the Mother of Invention. Back when he had friends to play for. Before the Project tore them apart.

When Caboose presents Wash the weathered and creaking acoustic instrument in the New Republic base on Chorus, Carolina pretends she doesn’t know what the sudden thickness of Wash’s voice means. She hears notes carry out of the room he shares with Caboose and Tucker on occasion during her patrols—always quiet, always late at night.

But in the silence left in the wake of the disappearance of the Reds and Blues, the quiet strumming is unspeakably loud.

Carolina doesn’t always enjoy silence. It presents an undesired opportunity for what's between her ears to crawl out from the back of her mind. Silence reminds her of an empty home with two ghosts inside, waiting for a third that will never return; of the bottom of a frozen valley; of the fist that seized her throat a second time the day she asked Wash what happened to Maine, and the answer was, "he’s gone." 

Of the endless space between those words and the rest as she pried when out of Wash: "A few days ago."

Carolina could’ve stopped it. Maybe not all of it--just one version of Tex could have been too much, she’s halfway willing to understand that now--but she could have stopped Maine from sinking to the bottom of icy waters.

Always too late.

There’s still no sign of Hargrove’s ship, and the people of Chorus no longer brace themselves for the worst. They’re moving on. The Reds and Blues will soon be hailed as heroes of the fallen kind. Lost in the furthest reaches of space, unlikely to return. Chorus has a world to rebuild, a civilization to shape from crumbling ashes. Sim troopers or not, this world must spin on.

But there are two among them who cannot let go.

Carolina is losing all memory of when attempting to sleep at night didn’t feel like lying down with a weight on her chest. Three weeks ago, they were at war. The only thing to fight against now is the prevailing sense of empty despair that follows her down the halls. Anger sank its hooks into her skin long ago, but it's always burned bright, fierce.

They have Epsilon.

That flame has died down.

She’s smoldering.

It’s yet another shared coffee break, another day she and Wash will talk about anything but the fact that it’s four in the morning and their friends are still missing. She’s never said anything about the lonely notes that float into her room, but she carries them with her, all the way to the tiny break room that serves as a caffeine dispensary when there’s no access to the mess hall. The notes seep out of her without her notice, and it isn’t until Wash’s steps halt behind her that she realizes she’s been exhaling them under her breath.

“Shit.” She looks over her shoulder. Wash is flushed to the tips of his ears. “I didn’t realize—I didn’t mean to keep you up.”

“I was awake.” She shrugs. “Besides, it’s nice. Better than the quiet.” Which is perhaps more of an admission than she would generally allow, but there it is, hanging in the air. Still and true. She leans against a counter and watches the words sink into him.

He fidgets. “You, uh. Don’t have to listen through the wall. If you don’t want to.” He looks like his skin is crawling. It probably is. Carolina can’t help the huff of laughter that escapes her at his obvious discomfort. He’s always been shy about this—but he’s still offering.

“Maybe I won’t.”

It’s days before she hears the low plucking of guitar strings next door again. But when she does, instead of lying there in the dark, Carolina gets up, pulls on a sweatshirt, pads to his door, and knocks twice.

“It’s unlocked,” comes the quiet response.

She lets herself in.

[illumynare]

Red vs Blue Fic: Softly, Gently

Summary: Carolina knows what it means, when Wash looks like this.

Parings: Wash/Carolina.

Warnings: none

Notes: Also available on AO3!

I sent @tuckerfuckingdidit a Fluff Week prompt and then immediately wrote it myself like a punk. SORRY.

Carolina knows what it means, when Wash looks like this. The pinch between his eyebrows. The tension in his shoulders. She knew it well in Project Freelancer—how could she not? It was her job to know what each of her squad looked like under stress, near to breaking.

Keep reading

[anneapocalypse]

For a While

Oh, it was good for a while, your smile, your restless hands, and a flicker of flame. Flick. Flick. Flick. Stop doing that.

Even the scars you’d try to smile away. Caught you touching them in the mirror when you thought I didn’t see.

You always put on such a face for me, always acted like you didn’t care. You always had a smirk, a wink, a swing in your step, a flip in your hair.

The more I tensed and growled, the more you’d shrug and shake your head. Let’s not fight, you said, so I tried not to love you.

Love breaks things, don’t you see? You were cute and a good fuck  and I wore you like a good luck charm when we’d strut into a nightclub, arm in arm.

I wanted to love you sometimes, in the scent of our sweat and your hair. Moments I could close my eyes and, just for a minute, not care

but it couldn’t stay. I could’ve loved you at the end of the day, out of armor, out of the fire. (Flicker. Stop doing that.) Maybe. Who’s to say,

but you’re at the end of a rifle, but you’re at the end of my fist, but you’re at the end of a tunnel

(Love breaks things, now do you see?)

and I’m watching you drift.

[alaspooryork]

carwash + hands

[alaspooryork]

cue all the love to leave my heart it’s time for me to fall apart

[tuckerfuckingdidit]

Headcanon that Carolina can fall asleep in the most ridiculous places. Like sometimes she'll fall asleep standing up and no one is brave enough to go and confirm

The group’s conversation dies off gradually, until anyone who entered the room would see half the New Republic Lieutenants and a Freelancer, inexplicably staring in awed silence at an armored woman leaning casually against a wall.

Except it’s not just any woman. It’s Carolina.

And she’s asleep.

“…You do it,” Tucker whispers. 

Wash shakes his head. Neither of them look away from her. “I did it last time.” It had only taken her name and the lightest of taps before their positions were reversed, and he was pinned against the wall.

Wash isn’t exactly looking to repeat that incident.

Epsilon materializes next to her shoulder, and makes a show of rolling his entire head, in lieu of a pair of visible eyes. “Wake the fuck up and go to bed, Lina.”

Her eyes snap open instantly. She straightens, and the hush that’s fallen upon the room dissolves. Grif is the first to snicker, but he quickly falls silent again as Carolina narrows her eyes at him. 

She stretches, picks up her helmet, and as she steps away from the wall, her eyes fall directly on Wash. “Come on.” And with that, she exits.

“Uh.” Wash exchanges a look with Tucker. “Okay.”

He catches up to her out in the hall, still confused. “Are you… going to try sleeping?” He asks, pushing for casual, and probably failing. 

“I am,” she says. “We don’t have anywhere to be for two hours.”

Wash nods. Then why is he here?

Realization hits, and he flushes. We.

Oh. “I’m not…”

She looks at him, finally, and he can see the tired lines in her face even clearer up close. It makes him not want to protest. “Wash, you always need a nap.” 

That, and the fact that he really sleeps better when he’s not alone.

[tuckerfuckingdidit]

Okay at some point Carolina and wash go back to the wreckage of the moi and go to their lockers and rooms. Carolina hears a sudden scream and rushes to check on wash. He's found his heelies and skateboard. Carolina groans and laughs

When Dylan tells them about the wreckage on Sidewinder—says that it’s still there, abandoned, waiting—Carolina and Wash exchange a look.

The island has been peaceful. Quiet, but not in a way that’s reminiscent of empty halls, corridors for ghosts to pass through. The wind whispers at night through the trees, but the cadence is soft. Soothing. The shadows are not thick with despair here. Rain falls, not in a deluge, but light showers, leaving the air fresh afterwards. Clean. 

They like it here. They’ve adjusted to lush green, to damp earth and blue skies. Neither are prepared for the unforgiving, frozen hell they each left behind.

They both still know they have to go.

and then we’re skipping the fucking angst we’re not gonna talk about it

well actually there is this:

The trek up to the crash site is quiet. 

Every time Carolina expects Epsilon to end the silence, she has to remind herself he’s gone.

soRRY!! moving on:

“No fucking way,” Wash says, voice cracking.

Carolina ignores the fear that grabs her throat in a vise. There’s no one here. There’s no one here. Still, her feet drag her closer, as though behind that locked door—bashed in by who knows what, barely hanging on to its hinges now that Wash has forced it open—is some kind of threat. “What?”

Wash laughs, and it sticks in his throat, like the lump that’s been sitting in hers has managed to occupy two spaces at once. “I don’t believe it.”

She steps around the door, and groans. 

It’s his skateboard—and the ridiculous shoes he was so fond of. 

She rolls her eyes. “Seriously?” You scared me, asshole. It wasn’t rational. But a lot of things about this place weren’t.

Wash laughs again; though she doesn’t, Carolina has to admit, his amusement is contagious. It’s good to see him laugh, though she knows it must have hurt, suddenly facing yet another relic of simpler times. 

“I kind of want to bury them,” he says. 

Now she’s laughing. “That is so fucking dramatic.” She wishes Epsilon were here to have heard that. “Besides, you hate snow.”

Their helmets are on—it’s fucking cold—but she can almost see the smile touching his lips, just barely there, cradled in the corner of his mouth. “I really do.”

“Just take them,” she says, tugging gently at his elbow. She wants to leave, while there’s still a good note to end this on. “You can teach Caboose to skate.”

Laughter stutters out of him once again. “That’ll be a fucking mess.”

“It will,” she says. “He’ll love it.”

Caboose accidentally snaps the board in half, but Wash can’t say he really minds.

[tuckerfuckingdidit]

Title: What’s In A Name?

Summary: For Blue Team’s “crack played straight” for the @rvbficwars bingo wars! Theta’s interest in South reveals the Dakota twins’ ridiculous first names.

Word Count: 1248

Notes: For @lostlegendaerie and @malcolm-hargrove, featuring quotes pulled directly from big sister south and the freelancer formal, because they contain the single most South Dakota™ lines i have ever seen in my life. Obligatory tag for @capricornfraud, my beloved beta, who is out of town. Consider this me ditching my training wheels!!

Keep reading

[tuckerfuckingdidit]

carolina and vanessa finally get together, and the boys have been waiting for so fucking long, donut throws them an honest to god party. it’s small—or it’s supposed to be, but that doesn’t stop what feels like half the base coming through, and between that and grif, they run out of food way too quickly. 

tucker and sarge conspired to get their hands on a copious amount of moonshine wash is pretty sure was made in a fucking car engine, but he keeps his mouth shut, because for the first time in years, carolina gets tipsy. she’s flushed and happy, can’t seem to go more than ten minutes at a time without touching vanessa, and he. loves it.

they all do.

they love it even more when wash gets in a particularly searing zinger, and instead of firing back at him, carolina walks across the room, gives wash a hug, then stands back, ruffles his hair, and goes back to vanessa’s side like she didn’t just break his brain.

tucker says that if wash can get that red, there’s a sudden, long list of things he wants to try out, but wash barely even hears him over how hard he’s tracking carolina’s smile.