This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
It is a few hours into a projected 168 of them. Haru is trying to get back to sleep while his mother holds him, because 168 hours is going to feel a lot longer if he can't figure out how to sleep while lonelier than ought to be humanly possible.
Suddenly not having his mother holding him is certainly a way to ruin the attempt.
The arrival of a person in the room is more interesting than the Odyssey but he manages not to break stride.
That's good, because Ari has questions! And only some of them are logistical ones about how to comfortably keep up cuddles.
"Ariel," Xavier interjects during one of their shuffles. "I've whipped up something which you're under no obligation to take, but might wish to."
"Something used by agents on stakeouts, or in other scenarios where it's advantageous to be comfortable remaining still for long periods. Very well refined, very safe, no mental effects, but it'll sell well enough if you don't want any."
"I'm not going to answer that. Decide that you want it or don't on its own merits; I didn't make it for the money. But of course feel free to take the out if you need to."
"I'm accustomed to oral medications for adults being pills," comments Haru even though the situation obviously did not need this comment in any way.
"Well, hm, yeah? Uncle Xave, do they usually call this sorta thing medication? Like, officially."
"Hmmm. I think to me a medication is something that makes you less bad instead of more good, and that - maybe doesn't change just because I in particular, the one taking it, am worse than most people at the thing it makes you better at? Like, I drink coffee to focus, and I'm normally pretty bad at that, but that doesn't make caffeine a medication, let alone one that I would take as a pill."
"Many augmentative drugs are in fact mass-produced in pill form. It's somewhat less common for ones an agent might need to take while in a high-action scenario, and I found a liquid form factor more convenient and quick to produce with the materials I have in my lab at this time."
"Caffeine pills are a thing. At home, anyway. And stimulants for people with ADD are medications and not completely distinct from coffee."
"I don't know much about it, I don't have ADD. They're both called stimulants, you hear about people who have it self-medicating with caffeine."
Apparently it doesn't kick in quite immediately, but after another two shifts the requests start spacing out substantially, until they're longer than it takes for Haru to start becoming uncomfortable.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
