#harpyfic

[the-girl-who-flies]

Salim deals with the unexpected consequences of his drunken behavior. Jason makes pancakes. Misunderstandings happen as both of them try to survive a children's birthday party.

AKA

In an unexpected turn of events,

Here's another chapter from the physical therapy/kink exploration/ family dramedy jalim au @thewolfmanny and I have been working for nearly a year now

Hope you enjoy

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[the-girl-who-flies]

Hello lovelies! @thewolfmanny and I are back with another chapter of Let's Get Physical – our kinky emotional rollercoaster of a Jalim AU.

One failed hook-up and lots of misunderstandings later, it's time for Jason to make some confessions – and hope Salim is ready to hear them.

Read the latest chapter (6) here.

Read from the beginning here.

\(° " °)/

[the-girl-who-flies]

NEW CHAPTERRR for Let’s Get Physical

We know it's been a while, but here it is - chapter 3 of our little slice of romcom-suburban-drama-au for the hoa-jalim fandom, titled Constant Craving.

Despite his best intentions to resist temptation and keep things professional, Salim is running into his mysterious patient in the most unexpected places.

In case you’re wondering what I’m on about, Let’s Get Physical is a jalim fic @thewolfmanny and I have been writing with the premise of Jason coming back from Iraq with an injury and having to go to a physical therapist - a very handsome, and recently divorced Dr. Othman. Things get complicated from there.

[the-girl-who-flies]

It Was a Bad Idea, pt. 2

Part I

Dying sucks, but somehow, coming back to life sucks even more. Jason's mind doesn't feel like his own in the drug-filled haze he awakens in, too sluggish and disjointed to focus on anything. It reaches out to his body but comes up empty, and then he thinks he might actually be dead - that this is what death is like – being trapped inside your own skull, helpless and lost, laid out like a dissected bug under the blinding clinical lights. 

He would honestly rather have the vampires. 

Brightly coloured hazmat suits hover at the edge of his vision. He tries to call out, to scream, but there’s something shoved down his throat that turns any sound he tries to produce into a pitiful wheeze. Maybe it’s a good thing that he blacks out again.

It goes on like this for a while, his consciousness coming and going, with nothing but blackness in between. Eventually, the sedatives start wearing off and he becomes aware of a thousand little discomforts - the straps around his wrists, the itch in places he can’t reach, the fucking tube shoved down his throat.  They do take it out once they seem convinced he can breathe on his own, and he finds out just how deep that thing went, because every inch fucking hurts.

“You’re very lucky, Lieutenant.” Says a hazmat suit with a clipboard. “We almost didn’t manage to bring you back.”  

For someone who claims to be his doctor, she sounds a little too disappointed.

She ends up giving him a pretty vague explanation of what happened - some kind of delayed anaphylaxis followed by respiratory arrest, followed by him basically being dead for six minutes. The substance he inhaled may or may not have caused it. They don’t know. Jason’s vocal cords feel like they’ve been treated with sandpaper, but he manages to get some basic answers out of her.

It turns out he’s not at Camp Slayer anymore, although he could’ve guessed as much, since the room he’s in is way too bare and modern to be part of Saddam’s palace. They’ve flown him to some kind of medical facility just about two weeks ago, only where this medical facility is is apparently something no one wants to disclose. He gives up on that one and asks about the other survivors.

“You were the only patient they brought us, Lieutenant.” Is all the doctor tells him.

Pretty much all his other questions are ignored, and he’s too tired, and way, way too weak to insist. He’s still unconscious more often than not, but now when he sleeps, he dreams, and his dreams are not peaceful. They are awful, feverish, nonsensical things. Sometimes they chase him out of the cavernous depths of his subconscious and he wakes up in the middle of the night gasping for breath and straining against his bonds, possessed by a distressingly familiar sense of urgency he can't remember the cause of. He imagines it must be the drugs, taking his fresh experiences from the House of Ashes and vomiting them back at him. At least before, he had a choice. Now he doesn't even have that anymore.

Of course, they can't remove the bonds yet. They have to make sure he’s not a danger to himself, he’s told. Who knows what other symptoms could have a delayed onset?

 Jason keeps quiet about the nightmares and withdraws into the little corner of himself he still has left. He’s never been very good at being alone, but now it seems that he has no other real company. 

His mind turns into a highlight reel of his finest moments.

The blistering heat of the road, the dead silence that follows a single gunshot. Oranges rolling out of a bag.

Nicky, calling out to him in the middle of the night from the top bunk, pleading to have someone to talk to, while Jason pretends to be asleep.

And down in that alien horrorfest of a place, facing a fate worse than death, him finally admitting that he’s full of shit. That he’s as lost as he was two years ago, as lost as he has been all his life, really. Except now there’s blood on his hands and it won’t wash off. He told Nick they’d die in that place if that was what they deserved, but he really only meant himself.

There’s one speck of warmth in his little parade of self-contempt, and that’s the memory of who he bared his soul to. Jason doesn’t know what became of his other comrades, but he tries to convince himself that Salim made it back home to his son. He hangs on to the thought as if it were a lifeline.

One day he wakes up and finally finds himself free to move around, or at least so he thinks until he actually tries. Making his way to the bathroom is a slow and painful process that leaves him sweaty and trembling, and when he finally sees himself in the mirror, he wants to cry. The man staring back at him is nothing but skin and bone.

Incidentally, or maybe not, this is also the day he finally sees a familiar face. 

“Shit, Kolchek.” Eric looks genuinely taken aback by the sight of him. "Should you be up and about?"

Jason makes a sound that is either a cackle or a cough, he's not sure which one, and hangs on for dear life to the edge of the bed because the last thing he wants is to need Eric King's help getting back into it.

"Disappointed that I'm not a corpse, Colonel? Yeah, I know. Me too."

"That's not what I meant." Eric frowns. "Listen, I've got some good news for you."

“Did they let you all go, then?” Jason interrupts. “Nick, Rachel… they okay?”

Eric actually looks over his shoulder, towards the door. When he speaks again, his voice has dropped a few decibels.

“This isn’t the best place to have this conversation. But yes. I… promised them I’d make sure you were taken care of.”

“Taken care of?” Something very unpleasant twists in Jason’s gut at those words. As if to add to the pathetic image he must be presenting, his legs feel like they’re about to give out under him, so he has no choice but to plop himself on the bed awkwardly.

“I know this isn’t the usual process, but given the circumstances, expediting this was the best option for you.” 

Eric hands him a sealed letter which Jason’s shaking, clammy hands take a frustratingly long time to get open. He skims over paragraphs of official nonsense until his eyes finally catch the words that sound like the last nail in his coffin. 

Unfit for duty.

He must spend a long time staring at them, because Eric breaks the silence with a small cough, having probably grown tired of hovering politely.

“Like I said, it’s good news. You’re going home, Lieutenant.”

[the-girl-who-flies]

It Was a Bad Idea, pt. 4

Pt I /Pt II /Pt III

***

The forceful knock on Jason's door startles him, yanks him out of the soft haze of a sedative-induced nap. He unglues himself from the couch with a groan, fully expecting to find his landlady holding another piece of unwanted mail he’d purposefully neglected to pick up. What he does not expect to see when he opens the door is Rachel wearing a fluffy pink sweater and looking deeply unimpressed. She doesn’t have her hair up in her signature bun - instead, it falls down her shoulders in what looks like beach waves. It’s unnervingly feminine.

“So you’re not dead.” She greets him, shattering the illusion that maybe he’s just met the Queen Bitch’s softer twin. 

Jason steps aside with a sigh, because he knows it’s pointless to resist. He watches detachedly as she struts into his apartment with purpose and pauses to take it all in: the blackout curtains drawn over the windows, the pile of takeout boxes on the floor, his clothes strewn about the secondhand furniture, the empty pill bottles. Jason can read the disapproval off the back of her head, he just doesn’t care enough to feel any particular way about it.

“Not yet,” he answers. “Nice to see you too, Rach.”

She turns to look at him. “I wish I could say the same, but you look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s not something to be proud of. Nick is really worried about you.” She says in her characteristically demanding tone, and then adds, almost as if despite herself: “And so am I.”

“Is this ‘cause I turned down his brunch invitation? Tell him not to take it personally, I was avoiding everyone that day.”

“Jason…” Rachel’s thin brows knit in concern. “Nick called you about that in August. We’re in February.”

Jason finds he’s awake enough to be mildly shocked by this. Has it really been that long? Hard to tell, when all your days are essentially the same.

“Regardless, that's not why I'm here.” Rachel carries on. “The reason Nick called you that time was because he wanted to tell you in person. But since you blew him off, and you’re clearly not opening your mail,” -She eyes the trash can overflowing with papers- “I’m here to deliver this straight into your hands.”

And with that, she shoves a cream envelope at his chest. It smells faintly of perfume and appears to be sealed with actual wax.

Jason stares at it uncomprehendingly, simply because he’s lacking the will to comprehend.

“It’s a wedding invitation, Kolchek.” Rachel helpfully clarifies. “As in, you’re being invited to our wedding.”

Jason looks up at her. Something stirs in his sedated brain, and for a second, he remembers that he’s a person who also gives a shit about some people.

“Congratulations.” he says, meaning it.

“Thank you.” The corners of Rachel’s mouth turn up a fraction. 

 “When is it?”

“In April.”

“You two in a rush, huh?”

His question is met with a familiar deathly stare.

“Maybe,” She admits, nevertheless. “Or maybe you’ve missed a lot and have no right to judge mine or Nick’s decisions.” 

“Sorry.” He ducks his head, rubbing the back of it.

“So, will you be there?”

 “I don’t know.”

“Well, you better figure it out quickly. Or you’ll end up sitting next to my conspiracy theorist cousin.” she warns, probably not joking, then adds in a softer voice: “Nick really wants you there. I… I hope you can make it, too”.

That's about the warmest confession he's heard from her.

“Thanks.” Jason says, forgetting for a second about the empty pit of hopelessness that his life is supposed to be. 

Rachel returns his faint smile; her expression then turns oddly hesitant.

"Listen. Maybe this is none of my business, but… I think there's someone you should talk to."

"I already have a shrink, Rach."

"That's not what I meant." 

She takes another piece of paper out of her pocket. This time, she places it gently into his hand. Jason frowns at her in suspicion, then unfolds it. There's a phone number and a UK address written on it in Rachel's sharp handwriting, but it's the name above them that makes Jason's heart do a backflip and get stuck somewhere in his throat.

Salim Othman.

"I've checked. It's him." He hears her say, but he's got tunnel vision right now and it all sounds kind of distant. He must've spent a while stuck like this, because eventually Rachel calls his name again and pokes his arm in what, for her, must count as affectionate concern.

Jason looks up. He's feeling some kind of emotion right now, but it's been so long since he's felt any that he's not sure which.

"What do you expect me to do with this?" He asks.

"Call him."

"Why?"

Rachel gives him a loaded look, as if whatever he might be trying to hide from himself is plainly visible to her. But Jason's not ready for any meaningful realizations this early in the late afternoon, and so he just stares back stubbornly. 

The former Mrs. King gives up first, probably realizing how childish all of this is getting.

"Fine. Do whatever you want. I'm not your mom." She says, rolling her eyes, and turns on her fancy winter heels, seeming to decide that this little reunion has reached its conclusion. "But you better answer that RSVP. And call Nick!"

Jason gazes at the door for a long time after she leaves. He doesn't look at the paper in his hand – doesn't really need to, because it feels like the letters are cutting themselves into his skin. Finally, he moves.

He sets both the invitation and Salim's contact info next to his phone. Then, for the first time in months, he goes out for a walk.

[the-girl-who-flies]

It Was a Bad Idea, pt. 3

Pt I  Pt II

***

To say that civilian life is an adjustment is a bit of an understatement. Besides going to all his medical appointments, picking up groceries and resupplying the bathroom cabinet with about a dozen different prescription meds, Jason has no idea what to do with himself. He ends up buying a Playstation 2 with his second benefits check and a copy of Grand Theft Auto III. The game helps him fill up the hours of the day for a couple of weeks, then he buys another. And another. Before he knows it there’s a whole stack of them on the living room shelf of his one-bedroom rental apartment. Most are something like sports or action, or fighting ones where the characters are all funny-looking and throw around crazy moves and energy attacks that look like fireworks. He steers clear of horror and shooters; they’re the wrong kind of stimuli, his shrink says, may bring up recent trauma. Jason doesn’t exactly need to be told that. He’s just looking for something to disappear into for most of the day. And sometimes a good part of the night.

The nightmares are fucking relentless, and they don’t even make sense most of the time: inhuman screeches echoing down stone corridors, familiar in their blood-curdling symphony, mix with something that sounds a lot like the music from that space console - a haunting alien chorus that makes his very bones vibrate, growing in intensity until it pushes out every conscious thought. He stands trapped in it, like a statue, while the flying creatures swarm him, only to be engulfed in a bright blue light that burns away everything, including him. He wakes up with phantom pain all over his body.  Where does it come from, he doesn’t know. Another mystery for his neurologist.

Sometimes his nightmares are less surreal and simply present him with all the ways he could’ve failed down there. Barely making it to rescue Nicky turns into finding his lifeless corpse at the feet of the undead warrior, who proceeds to snap Eric’s neck like a twig while Jason watches helplessly. Rachel gets left behind, trapped in a cocoon. Merwin dies a dozen different deaths, screaming in terror and agony. Joey claws and snaps his teeth at his throat and curses Jason for abandoning him, and Clarice just stares, her dark eyes standing out prominently against her unnaturally pale face, and silently begging him to save her. Jason shoots her dead. That last one isn’t even made up, that’s just something his brain likes to remind him of.

Sometimes, he dreams he doesn’t come back for Salim, and the man dies telling him he should’ve never trusted Jason. He wakes up feeling like his soul’s been snapped in half. The cocktail of drugs he takes is supposed to knock him out for a solid eight hours of steady, dreamless sleep, but it’s doing a shit fucking job. Jason’s pretty tempted to take a half a dozen extra of those little pills and wash them down with some cheap scotch, but he’s stopped by the prospect of potentially drowning in his own vomit. If anything, because he doesn’t want to scar his landlady; she’s actually nice to him.

“Jason?”

“Mmh?”

“I said ‘What are you up to’?”

It takes him a moment to come back to the present and realize what exactly it is he’s doing with the phone in his hand; Nick’s on the other line waiting for an answer because that’s how conversations work, of course.

“Not much.”

“Cool. So listen, me and Rach are gonna be in town next week. I was thinking we could… get together for coffee?”

Jason puts the phone on speaker, turns the volume on the TV way down and unpauses the game. Might as well, if Nick is feeling chatty.

“Coffee?” he says, not bothering to mask his mocking tone. “Is that what we do now?”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one, ‘cause I can’t drink coffee anymore without getting a fucking seizure.” It’s not exactly true, but he wants the conversation to be over quickly.

“Oh. Okay. Well, how about tea?”

“Is there any particular reason you’re pitching brunch ideas?”

“Because you’re my friend and I haven’t seen you in a while?”

There ain’t much to see, says that ever so helpful little voice in his head. 

“Look, I appreciate the concern, but you guys don’t need to go out of your way to check up on me. Just trust me when I say that I’m fine. And say hi to Rachel for me.”

“Jason--”

A part of him feels bad about hanging up on Nicky; the rest of him is too numb to care. 

He turns the volume on the game back up.

[the-girl-who-flies]

It Was a Bad Idea

"Salim, wait!" Jason is tired to the bone, but he scrambles to his feet and hurries after the man who's about to disappear from his life forever. It seems like something important should be said, something that would encompass the bittersweet ache in his chest that blossoms at the sight of Salim's kind brown eyes as he turns to look at him. For a moment, he thinks he sees expectation. Hope, even. And that is sure as hell the only thing that got them through that nightmare that followed them all the way to the surface. But they're out now, and Jason is not feeling as brave as he was twenty minutes ago. "Good luck, brother. You wish Zain a happy birthday from me," Is what he says in the end, offering his hand stiffly. As far as farewells go, it feels wildly inadequate for all they've gone through together, but Salim smiles and takes it solemnly, and calls him his friend. Pussy, Jason's brain helpfully supplies. He watches the older man limp off into the sunset for a lot longer than he should. The helos finally come and take them home. Home being quarantine and endless interrogations, and it's not that Jason doesn't expect this kind of welcoming committee, but the hazmat-clad robots that seem intent on having circular conversations leave him with a worse taste in his mouth than that cloud of dead vampire did. He's relieved when they finally let him shower, but he's even more relieved that Salim isn't there with them. As much as he would like to have the man by his side, this just might be the worst place for him to be. Jason's drying off his hair in the small changing room, finally free of the layers of thousand year old dirt and dressed in clean clothes, when another coughing fit hits him and it's like his lungs are on fire, and he's inhaled enough bad shit in his life to know what poison feels like. In retrospect, poking a fossilized alien corpse was not one of his best ideas. He remembers collapsing, his muscles seizing, his airways too constricted to draw a single breath. Then it's all flashes. Hazmat suits swarming him. Bright lights. Tubes, needles. Familiar voices screaming in the distance. Some oddly colored pattern imprinted on his retinae as his vision fills with black spots. His brain clings to its last reserves of oxygen and he knows he should be angry about going this way, but he can't help feeling that he deserves it. And then he feels nothing. He is nothing.