trans_9 | [Locked to Paco and Jaime, and Later to Kon]

What he's working on? He immediately drops. Yes, it has to do with the vital task of getting them off the ship. The tools get haphazardly tossed in a pile in a way that will probably piss off both Brainiacs, but it doesn't matter.

Best friend rights.

"Sensoriums?" Jaime says, walking out with Paco.

"Oh hell yeah," Paco said, sticking his hands in his plantsuit pockets as they made their way to the Hub. "I'm thinking the Beetlemobile, a couple of cokes, and that one hill you can see the whole town from."

At least he didn't have any "I've just been dumped" traditions that Jaime could use to figure out what had just happened. Paco really didn't want to talk about it.

Neither of them have many "tells." Oh sure, the "Something sucks and it's bugging me" vibe is crazy obvious and when one's beaming the depression rays, the other, wordlessly, always picks up on it. But the only way one figures out what's causing it is if the other says so.

That doesn't alway happen. It doesn't always need to.

Sometimes they talk, and what they say might not even reach Brenda's ears--a fact that she's well aware of and okay with, because there's things she tells either of them that might not hit the other. For a group of friends that hardly keeps any secrets, it's no secret that sometimes one of them needs just one of the others for a bit and not both.

A lot of times, all they need is the company.

Before long, they're in the Sensoriums, kicking back on the hood of Paco's car, on that little half-hill, half-mesa that overlooks a good part of the city. It's always been a bitch getting the car up there, to the point where ever since Jaime'd gotten the suit, half the time he'd just CARRY the car up when they'd wanted to hang out there, but the Sensoriums are great for shortcuts.

Jaime tosses Paco an imaginary soda, pops the top of his own, and after taking a sip, lays back with one hand tucked under his head, resting the soda on his chest, looking up at those painfully familiar stars coming out as the sun sets with it's characteristic red-orange desert glow.

There's silence first. And silence might be the only thing there is. Depends on what Paco needs. If he decides he wants to talk, he will, if not, Jaime's just there.

Paco caught the soda and took a swig from it, but remained in a cross-legged sitting position with his chin propped up on his hand. He doesn't say anything for awhile, just sitting and absorbing the atmosphere. He wasn't much for meditation or anything, but it was nice to just...let his mind sort of go blank and forget that they were on an alien tentacle ship for a few minutes.

But that only worked for so long before his brain started going again; and so he finally broke the white-noise silence, if only so he didn't have to think about how much Kate dumping him sucked.

"So, I'm starting up my own team to go with your Team GTFO."

"Yeah?"

"Yup. Team Have Some Freakin' Fun Already. I've already recruited Brenda, you won't be able to escape."

Jaime grins.

"I dunno, I'm pretty sneaky when I need to be. Although I'd love to see you guys try to take on, Leon, the Chief, or the Brainies."

A pause.

"Actually, you need to grab Billy, too. Ever since the away mission, he's been kinda overworking himself."

"You fear Brenda's wrath too much to hide from her and you know it," Paco said, taking another pull from his soda bottle. "And Leon actually recruited me to make Chief chillax." He chuckled. "You know, the food sucks and the clothes are creepy and the non-crew living things are made of fail, but the crew is pretty freaking awesome."

He did make a mental note about Billy, though.

"No, see, I fear her wrath, and that's why I'd hide," Jaime points out.

"And I'm kind of surprised. I mean, people from all these different places and times, and you'd expect them to be gouging each other's faces off and finding reasons to fight constantly, but everything people've argued over's typically just everyone having different ideas on what's best for the crew. They drive me nuts with it, and the egos are bad, but the why it happens isn't."

He can respect people that disagree on the right way to do things, because he knows he might be wrong. He doesn't believe he is, but it's always a possibility.

"The hard part is working everybody past it and getting them all at least in the same book, even if we can't manage the same page."

"No, because you know she'd find you, and she'd have had that much more time to plot her revenge."

Paco sighed again and picked at the label on his soda bottle. "I figure it's either Stacy picking and choosing people who can work together, or else everyone figured that it's better to work with everyone else than wind up facing down the roaches and brainslugs on your own."

Especially after what happened to Hudson.

"Let me dream my idealistic hero dreams of voluntary cooperation for the greater good, Paco," Jaime jokes with a laugh. "Let me dream."

Paco laughed too, and toasted with his soda.

"That would be the magical third option that comes with a free pony," he said.

He was already feeling a bit better. He really needed to remember to keep grabbing Jaime and/or Brenda and just veg out for a bit.

"Or a pony-rocket," Jaime says, craning his neck to take another sip of his own coke, without choking.

"Hmm. So, what kinda hanging out do you need this to be?" he asks. "We can do vegging, but I'm making you the one-time offer with a lack of expiration date we always make each other of talking about whatever."

They both only took up the offer about 1/2 the time.

Paco snorted a bit and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "First you've got to promise you're not going to add it to your guilt hoard," he said. "'Cause it's not your fault."

Preemptive anti-guilt. Apply to the best friend before talking about brainslugs, with a blunt object if necessary.

"I can make no such promises." With an amusingly sober expression, he says, "I gotta be me, Paco."

Then corner of his mouth quirks, and he says, "But most likely everything's already in there, so you talking about it won't make it any worse than it always is."

They both know he's a guilt machine, but he can table that for a little bit. Paco needs to know it's okay for him to talk about this without worrying about it bothering Jaime to hear it.

He sits up, gets comfortable sitting Indian style, and goes into full listening mode, tapping at the can, but still looking out at the desert and the stars coming out, because it's easier to talk about manpain when you don't have to look your best bud in the eye while doing it.

"What's bugging you?"

"It doesn't actually turn into delicious candy if you collect enough of it, you know," Paco said, reclining against the hood and staring out over fake!El Paso. He sipped his coke in silence for a moment or two, trying to order his thoughts.

I'm stuck on a tentacle meatship with a bunch of awesome people and the occasional thing that wants to either kill me or take over my brain--

I don't know how badly the Sub-Visser screwed over the time-stream when he told Superboy he was going to die--

The Sub-Visser broke all my rules about not hitting girls, especially not hitting Brenda--

Kate freaking dumped me for someone else, and I don't feel as bad about that as I think should--

"I really never needed to know what it'd like to hold a gun to your head."

Yeah. Just...yeah.

"Paco," Jaime says, now looking over at him, "there's this thing called 'heeding your own advice.' It's an excellent concept. Because you're right, the guilt does not turn to candy."

"Never said I was feeling guilty over it," Paco countered, still staring out at the city. "I'm...really not feeling guilty. It's weird. I feel bad about the stuff the sub-visser did, but I feel bad about it the same way I'd feel bad about it if he'd been in someone else's head. So I guess I should say that I never needed to know what it'd be like to watch someone hold a gun to your head and know the most I could possibly do was twitch my hand."

He took another sip of his soda.

"If it happened, you know how I feel about it."

If he died, and Paco could only watch, he knows right?

"That's the upside of the whole hero thing, Paco, and diving into it head first and believing in it. If something happens, it's okay. And everything that needs to be said has been or you know it. And you'd know what to tell my folks."

Jaime stares back out at the city.

"But yeah, feeling powerless sometimes kinda sucks."

Says the guy with the superpowers.

"Yeah, I know."

He did know. He knew that Jaime wouldn't blame him for it.

"It's just..." Paco made a frustrated noise and gestured helplessly with his hands. "I don't have the vocab for whatever this is, dude. It's pissing me off. I don't have the freaking words and I can't get it out of my head."

"Lemme see if I can find them for you, or find something similar."

He seriously sits there and thinks about this.

"Is it the 'I wish I could've done more' angle?"

"Ehhhh..." Paco tipped his hand back and forth. "I wish I could've, yeah. I'd have liked to avoid all that. But I did what I could, you know? Even if all I could do was harass Subby and screw with his aim."

He grimaced. "I just feel...scuzzy. Like he left a layer of slime on my brain. I just want to scour out the inside of my head."

"Yeah, well, that little handtwitch and you screwing with his aim saved my life," Jaime says. "Everything I do now, every person I help, I'm only going to be able to do it because you fought hard enough. And even if you'd fought that hard and it hadn't been enough, I'd have known how hard you were fighting. I don't think you and Brenda can really understand how much stuff like that means to me."

His mouth quirks thoughtfully.

"And nothing he did belongs to you, Paco. All the dirt and slime is his. It's all on him. But I know how--"

Biting his lip, he says, "Khaji and I, we're good now, but in the beginning--I don't know, you feel...violated, I guess. Like something's moved in and used something that should only be yours. In a way worse way than some random guy using your towel in the gym. For you, I can't even imagine what it must have been like, because even though it was kinda freaky and horrible in the beginning--"

"--Even though it was kinda bad in the beginning with that feeling, scarab is no Yeerk. But you still have that...'this is my body, this is my space, these are my thoughts, this should be where I'm safe, the one thing I should always have as my own' feeling. And I imagine it had to be a million times worse when the one prying in was like that. It is a violation. It makes you feel slimy. Like almost in the 'creepy old guy in the park is watching you play on the jungle gym a little too long' kinda way."

"I already talked about this with Brenda, I know nothing he did is my fault," Paco said, rolling his eyes a little. "Not that I don't appreciate the idea behind what you're saying, but really, I got it. It's his ooze on my brain, I'm all over that.

" 'Violated' is a good word for it, I guess," he admitted, wrapping his arms around his ribcage. Not that he'd ever say that to anyone else, but this was Jaime. "It's gross and scuzzy and I'd really like a shower that doesn't involve tentacles or whatever the hell the suits do to keep us clean." He sighed. "I'm dealing pretty well over all, I just wish it could be dealt with faster. And I'm going to get called up on that stupid stand for the trial, and I really would have liked to avoid that too." Paco made a face. "The whole thing just feels like sticking my hand in a bucket of hot barf right now."

"First of all, that's an amazing, if super gross analogy. Gold star."

He can't help but admire his best friend's way with words sometimes. For someone that's failed a lot of English tests, Paco's pretty witty, if crude.

"Secondly, it... I can't say I know exactly what it's like--nicer symbiote, for one--but you...you start to realize that even if it was in there, digging around, there's still a part of you that's deeper. That it would never be able to worm its way into. It still hasn't touched who you are. Maybe he could read your thoughts, mess with them, maybe he could control your body, but there's a part of you he could never touch, and never change, that's still safe, still...clean. It always will be. It was the person fighting inside and making a hand twitch, and that part is right here talking to me now afterward. That part is safe. Clean. Still yours. That he didn't break or touch, that he would've never been able to break or touch. There's some comfort in that, I think."

It's not something Jaime talks about much, the scarab is nowhere near as bad as the Yeerks, and he and Khaji have long since made their peace, and are even friends with each other, but it is a violation of self. It never stops being one, never stops feeling a little...weird and scuzzy. To deal with it, you have to have a strong sense of self.

[Locked to Paco and Jaime, and Later to Kon]

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