Slime Mold Was Grown On An Agar Gel Plate Shaped Like America And Food Sources Were Placed Where Americas

Slime mold was grown on an agar gel plate shaped like America and food sources were placed where America’s large cities are. 

The result? A possible look at how to best build public transportation. 

I just really like the idea of slime mold on a map of the US. It’s beautiful.

(I adore fics where Johnny’s family loves Ghost from day one, but, you know…angst)

Soap and Ghost had been together for almost two years. They never name the relationship, really, but it's serious and they both know it.

Thing is, Johnny's seen Ghost's face a total of four times, counting Las Almas.

Well, he sees parts of it regularly, more than others. Ghost will either roll the balaclava up when they're reading together in bed or when they're eating. Sometimes, when Soap wants to go out and Ghost indulges him, he goes in public in just either a face mask or a gaiter and Soap can see his short wavy blonde hair sticking all over the place and 

The four times he had seen Simon’s face in it’s whole — obviously, Las Almas; one time when he was unconscious and bleeding from a head wound and Johnny had to check; one time when they took a shower together, Simon stayed with his back toward him through most of it, but when they finished, he let Johnny dry off his hair; one time, when Johnny asked him to see him for his birthday presents, a few minutes after midnight.

Johnny wasn’t sure why exactly Simon didn’t want to show him his face. It wasn’t a trust thing — he trusted Johnny with more than his own life — and it wasn’t like he was ugly — he was downright sinful. He never drilled the topic because he didn’t care, if SImon wasn’t ready, then he wasn’t ready, but if he had to guess, it was all to do with identity and being seen. No one knew his face — people could know his name, Simon “Ghost” Riley, but they wouldn’t know the man behind the mask. Wouldn’t know the people behind Simon “Ghost” Riley.

(Johnny wasn’t completely off on the assumption — Simon didn’t want anyone to know his face because faceless people weren’t missed. Faceless graves — like his own — didn’t have people to leave behind, and faceless soldiers didn’t have loved ones to find and he was both. No one could get hurt if he remained faceless. Or at least that’s what he’d been telling himself.)

And Johnny is okay with that — if Simon never showe him his face again, he’d still love him all the same. Johnny’s family? Not so much.

They’re supposed to be in Glasgow for five days total, leaving after Boxing Day. Johnny gives them all a warning, that Ghost is a bit shy and doesn’t like showing his face, he’ll most likely stay covered the whole time, he might be wearing a balaclava, or a mask, he probably won't eat at the table.

When they arrive at his parents house, it almost seems like everyone forgot. Like everyone thought it'd be more mild or that Johnny was exaggerating.

There are looks. There is silence. People can't stop staring.

His mam takes one look at Simon’s balaclava once they enter the living room and looks funny at them. “Ah thooght Ah tauld ye boays tae strip doon.”

“Mam, lea him alane,” he tries but he can tell that Simon is getting tense and his mam is getting tense.

His mam, who is usually the sweetest person ever, is uncharacteristically quiet and curt whenever Simon is around. Simon doesn't really know how to make it better — Johnny's never seen him so silent outside of stealth missions, he just stands there like a sore thumb, not making anything less awkward. He didn't expect him to — Simon's social skills are lacking and he loves him that way — but he expected his own family to not make such a big deal out of that mask.

His da is stern and silent, which is as disapproving as he gets. His sisters are a bit weirded out, but mostly focused on teasing Johnny, even making fun of the mask. With a stupid grin, his older sister asks, “Does he keep it oan in bed?”

Johnny doesn't say anything to that, even though his face feels red. His sisters stop laughing.

“He does?” When Johnny tries to step out of the room and avoid the conversation, his sister’s tone changes. “Hae ye e’en seen his face?”

“O’ coorse Ah hae,” he spits out. He doesn’t specify it was only four times — he doesn’t think it’d help. “And ‘s a bonnie ane, alricht.”

It doesn’t save the situation and his sisters are also weirded out and wary from then on.

 The kids do not care — they ask maybe two questions, tilts their head as Simon explains and that’s it — and Johnny breathes a little easier as soon as his nieces push Simon outside to help them build a snowman.

The judgment doesn’t stop. Johnny’s blood boils any time it shows and even though Simon says it’s all fine, he can’t stop feeling angry about this. They just can’t get past the mask.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are difficult to Simon and Johnny knows it. He’s given him the option to omit the family dinner on both those days if he’s not feeling alright enough to spend those days in crowdy house filled with a flock of loud and cheery people of all ages.

Simon knows this. He also knows that if he says he wants to stay at Johnny’s flat for the time being, Johnny is going to insist he doesn’t have to go either, that he’d prefer to stay in with him and not go for the Christmas dinner. Which he also knows is bullshit — Johnny loves Christmas, loves spenidng time with his family, that was basically why he kept on insisting Simon couldn’t stay alone at the base for Christmas another year in a row. It was the main reason why he agreed to go with Johnny in the first place, he was pretty sure if he didn’t go with him, Johnny would insist he stays, too. 

So Simon stays in for Christmas Eve — or rather goes to a pub while Soap spends the day with his parents — but insists they go to Christmas dinner. 

His family is disappointed to see him there, to the point the usual manuevering around politeness and disapproving go onto a backburner.

“John said yer nae a fan o’ Christmas,” Johnny’s mum says to him pointedly.

“That’s right.”

“And yet ye’r ’ere,” she notes.

Johnny is far away from the earshot and he doesn’t want to lie to her so he admits, “If I didn’t come, Johnny would insist on keepin’ me company.”

“How come ye dinnae try to hae a bit mair cheer fur th' holidays then? Put a bit mair effort in for ma baby.” 

Johnny notices and soon enough, he’s next to him, their arms brushing, Johnny’s hand on the small of his back. “Lea him alane, mam.”

“It’s fine,” he says even though it’s not fine. They deserve an explanation, even just to know what they son is getting himself into. “My family was murdered on Christmas Eve. I’m—I’m trying.”

The silence falls over the room — Johnny’s mum, dad, his sister, all present, not looking at them. Simon closes his eyes, tries to breathe.

Johnny rubs his back. “Let’s gae home.”

“I’m not ruining Christmas for you, Johnny,” he says. Before Johnny can deny it — and he knows he’d try — he tries to placate, “Let’s just have ourselves a minute to calm down.”

Maybe it’s the way his voice is perfectly levelled or the way his hand trembles as he squeezes Johnny’s, but he lets him leave the room.

He steps outside — to the backyard. Sits down on the step to the garden and lets the snow soak through his jeans and the top o his balaclava.

The kids come outside, tripping over Simon’s legs. They were all oblivious to the trails and errors of Simon’s integration into the family, so they approach him as always

“Whit's wrang?”

There’s just something so innocent in having a six-year-old girl covered from head to toe in pink and glitter worry about you. Simon would never admit it in front of Johnny, but he finds the accent cute.

Simon takes off the mask.

The kids all look at him and look at him, a bit unsure maybe a bit fearful — it can be a scary sight, he admits, the elongated, jagged smile that sticks to him no matter the mood, makes him more crazy than he already is — but only one of Johnny’s niece keeps her eyes on Simon’s face. 

Shily, she asks, “Does it hurt?”

“No,” he replies. When she smiles, he smiles back.

Not anymore.

This is Johnny’s family. Simon can deny it all he wants, but Johnny’s seen him as family, as someone he’d leave behind, and it hadn’t been unrequited. He can’t hide behind a mask forever and maybe this was the kick he needed.

He steps back inside when his hands turn numb. He doesn’t put the mask back on.

Johnny’s eyes widen. “Simon?”

Simon just—smiles. He can feel the scars pulling on the corners of his mouth, the stiffer skin, but he’s not faceless. He’s not been faceless for a while.

“I try to capture all the little fun moments that happen when living with cats. All my little cat comics are done on 4 by 4 post-it notes! My fluffy friends are always a great source of inspiration and entertainment. And best of all they are always there when you need a hug or a good cry.”

Comics/text by​ Rikke Asbjoern - More info: Instagram

Whump Drabble/fic where Soap suffers realistic trauma from MWIII (though we’ll put a bandaid over his ultimate fate lol).

TW: explicit medical injuries and treatments, angst with a bittersweet ending, will likely be inaccurate in some way seeing as I’m not a medical professional nor a trauma doctor/nurse (I’m just a girl fr), Ghoap✨

Ghost had been wrangling with this worm of guilt that chewed at his heart, something that he thought he had grown accustom to over his life but was now back with a vengeance. When he wasn’t clawing his skin from his bone to try and find the fucker, he was with Johnny.

He had thought the hardest part of this would be overcoming that guilt, but he quickly realised the coma was much worse.

He’d followed soldiers after they’d suffered significant GSW trauma before, of course he had. He’d caused many himself, knew how to engineer one that would guarantee a kill, knew how impossible it seemed yet possible it was to survive a shot to the temple, nearly point blank. He knew what recovery entailed.

Yet, he didn’t know what recovery entailed when it made the soft birdsong in his life silent and still.

He was a sniper and a stealth operative, he was used to sitting in one place during recon, unmoving and hyperaware for hours on end, days or weeks or even months at a time.

Yet, he wasn’t used to searching for a heartbeat and willing it to keep going rather than aiming to stop it.

He’d never felt so restless in his life, cataloguing every detail of the man on the bed in front of him every day. He watched as bandages turned red, watched as the side of his head swelled and bruised and went so black it was like staring into space. He read the words ‘Pressure relief DO NOT TOUCH’ scribbled on the vacuum-sealed, open wound on the back of a window in his skull over and over and over until swelling bowed the dressing and the words didn’t make sense.

He watched air be pumped through tubes down his throat when his brain couldn’t do it for him, and saw urine pool in a bag next to the bed. He watched nurses exercise his body, watched the shut door as they cleaned him up with sponge baths. He’d watched the codes be called and watched from outside the room as ribs were broken in the frail, pale body that was a fifth of the size it used to be and void of the usual tan.

He watched it all. He watched everything.

Just watched.

He knew people in comas could often hear what’s going on around them, he’d learnt that when he rushed Tommy to the hospital after a particularly bad overdose. But it was like his lips were fused together, vocal cords totally lax and frozen. He couldn’t speak, wouldn’t speak, scared of what would tumble from his tongue and leave in the open when Johnny couldn’t even respond.

Spontaneity was a common tactic on the field, as much as they tried to negate it. It wasn’t very often a plan went totally right. Damage control and problem solving were heavily exercised skills that Ghost possessed.

But he couldn’t solve this. He could wish death on Makarov as much as he did before, he could research the best trauma surgeons and doctors and nurses and therapists in the UK, he could monitor Johnny’s condition obsessively all he wants, but he can’t fix it. He can’t heal the snapped neurons, he can’t dig into Johnny’s veins and fish out the blood clots that continued to threaten his life or limbs. He couldn’t crawl into John’s skin and nest there in his warmth, protect him and feel protected. He couldn’t.

Helplessness wasn’t something he’d felt in a long time, but he’d much rather be clawing out of his own grave as ravens cawed again than have to put John in one, still and unable to dig to join Simon.

So when Soap eventually does wake, it felt like an endless tunnel came to an abrupt end with blinding lights and trees, waiting for birds to call their greeting.

He made his own greeting, his imposing yet solid presence next to the bed as tubes were removed and the body was propped up and assurances were given. He was eager, after 4 months of pure silence about to be filled with music again.

But it was off key.

“Where am I?”

“Hospital, Johnny.”

A furrowed brow.

“Who th’ fuck ah you?”

Simon thought that the worst part of all this was the coma, the silence, but he was wrong. It was the recovery.

Simon had learnt that the temple was the perfect place to locate the parts of the brain responsible to speech, decision making and rationalisation, and memory. He’d learnt how irritating it could be re-explaining the same thing over and over every few minutes could be, he learnt of the shame that followed the irritation knowing that Soap couldn’t help it. He learnt how much it hurt to be escorted out of the room for routine check-ups because the once unrelenting trust between him and Johnny had relented to the shadow of unknown.

He had learnt that nothing is permanent.

His visits became less and less. Unsurprisingly, John (not Johnny; only his family calls him that) didn’t want a mountain of a man, full of angst and anger and sadness, haunting the corners of his hospital room. He only wanted his ma and pa, and as much as it hurt Ghost, he respected his wishes.

For months, Ghost isolated himself, got lost in his work. For months, John worked at recovery, regaining his smart mouth and witty remarks, slowly relearning his impulse control that wasn’t really as much control as it was pure will power to restrain himself.

For months, Ghost sought birdcall in the gurgles of his enemies’ throats, revelling in the garbled melodies that never matched the one he remembered, but breaking off just the same.

Beware the mockingbird, Johnny would say.

Yet here he was, searching for a blue jay’s song among the mouths of the unknown and wicked.

He got so used to the warped record that he often found himself forgetting what the original chords sounded like when they reverberated through his chest, right to his heart. Was it sweet, like the pull of a blade through supple skin? Was it explosive, like the crack of body armour in the hap between Kevlar plates? Was it deafening, like the rounds discharged that aimed for his heart?

Was it quiet, like an unmonitored heartbeat over nighttime?

Was it gentle, like the lingering touches left on his waist that still burned his skin months later?

Was it still there?

“Simon.”

Ghost blinked, looking up to Price. He hadn’t realised that he’d let his gaze wander, his mind even further.

“You need to go see him.”

There’s a cry of a broken-winged dove in his ears, overshadowed by the croon of a raven. Stability and chaos, broken and mended in one.

It hurt his head.

“He asked me to leave,” Ghost reasoned.

“When he first woke up, yes,” Price conceded. “Back when you honoured your callsign very proficiently, mind you.”

A scoff erupted from Ghost’s chest, under his crossed arms.

“Look, Simon,” Price sighed, leaning back against his desk, blue eyes of cobalt melting the sulphurous gleam of Ghost’s brown ones. “He remembers, now. Remembered Gaz in a matter of moments, recognised me soon after.”

There was a pause, pregnant and heavy as Ghost kept his mouth shut, luring Price to continue. Daring him to try and push past the raven’s sharp talons to help the dove.

A hand reaches towards the nest.

“It might be time for you to try again.”

The raven hesitates.

“The hospital staff spoke to us about how helping Soap’s brain reconnect the broken neural pathways from the trauma could help him recover faster.”

The dove coos.

“Please, Simon.”

Outstretched fingers.

“Fuck, I can’t watch two of my men crumble at the same time.”

A flurry of feathers, the screeching of breath through gravel, rubber on road, nails on chalkboard. It’s overwhelming, sending his heart into overdrive and rationality to the wind.

“Fuck you, Price.”

Yeah, the recovery hurt the most.

Looking in the mirror during recovery, specifically, hurt like a bitch. Scars that pulled over once unmarred skin, hollow cheeks where laughter and smiles once grew, gnarled soul and memories where purity reigned. It was all thrown back at you, as insistent as a murder of crows at your doorstep.

He could see the way John, not Johnny, sifted through his memory like a locked filing cabinet while trying to place Ghost, desperately searching through the unlocked drawers over and over for the file he needed, all while the closed drawers taunted him with kept knowledge. It was all right there, yet he couldn’t access it.

“Ghost, aye?”

It’s met with a grunt. Silence stretches out, black feathers shielding the delicate white ones.

“And ye were my… lieutenant?”

He was going off of information fed to him, his brow furrowed in concentration, still trying to place Ghost. He couldn’t tell where the darkness around him ended and Ghost started, obscured by inky blackness.

He doesn’t sound right. It’s not the same teasing, playful lilt that danced in the air. It’s not pronounced the same, not said the same, it’s not the same.

It’s some… imposter. Something that looks the same and smells the same and tastes the fucking same, but it’s different.

A cuckoo’s egg in a nest.

“Price ‘nd Kyle were telling me some stories about ye,” John noted with a small smile. “You’re quite the stunner out field, ‘pparently.”

It’s an olive branch, a bridge built half way. An offering to meet in the middle, to talk and revere and remember.

But Ghost didn’t remember, and neither did John.

Recovery never ends, you know. It goes on and on and on, haunting your nerves and your wits for the rest of your life. You’ll always have some sort of ache or pain, a reminder of what happened to you.

John never ended up recovering fully. He was medically discharged, left to nurse a broken cage and a silent heart. He did well, considering; it wasn’t hard when you didn’t remember the song that beat with the rhythm of your heart.

He still joined the team on outings sometimes, staying in a local hotel when everyone was back at base. They’d have a meal, or go to a pub, catch up. Re-establish connections once lost.

Ghost rarely joined them, to save his own torment.

But of course, he had to honour the dove occasionally. Just as he was now, sitting across the table from the lively Scot and with his two other teammates, Gaz and Price. Beers had been served, a single glass of warm whiskey for cold hands. The table was lively, fun, rambunctious in all the best ways.

The cuckoo had hatched in earnest, Ghost found.

It was easy to see the progress John had made, loud and bright and cheeky like he used to be. Demanding of attention, hungry for every scrap of past he could swallow to try and heal old wounds. Listening to stories about himself and his old crew when they were all together, as if it was another version of him. The right version of him.

And by god, were the scraps from Simon the most nourishing of all.

John’s mouth felt desert dry, cactus dust caking his tongue as he bit desperately into every glimpse of Ghost’s bare face, lips wrapped around glass and breath smelling of potent, liquid gold with every word. It hurt, it tasted awful, and it was impossible to rid himself from. It hurt so good, feeling his heart pull and swell in ways he didn’t understand anymore.

He felt like glass, he felt like the air, he felt like expensive liquor, he felt like it was meant to be him in their places, held and touched and breathed and consumed. It was overwhelming, leaving him starstruck and staring, a flutter in his chest reawakened.

Ghost’s own nest was erupting with displaced wind, white wings desperate to spread and carry it away, escape the raven’s hold. Right now, meeting Johnny’s eyes, he realised that the time spent captive in the nest had only lent to the dove’s healing. It was stronger now, bigger and fiercer and so, so hopeful.

The cuckoo cackled, loud and leering. Mockingbirds whistled and cawed, off key and haunting. The raven keened, shaken and damning.

The white dove flew.

The blue jay sang above the bramble.

And the two nested together, among the dappled branches of a birchwood tree, cool and calm and surrounded by colour year round. Above the bramble of the past.

Ghost had learnt one thing over everything else; a lesson that was recurrent in his life, stubborn and overwhelming. It swallowed him in waves, crashing him into the sand bank below.

Nothing is ever, ever permanent.

Admittedly, his retirement had gone well. The down payment was easy, the renovations smooth, moving in a sigh of relief. They’d have their harder days, where getting out of bed and walking without aid was difficult for Johnny, but they’d have their good days, too. They’d have their days where they’d go for walks across the countryside, watch as their service dog bounced around through tall grass, tongue lolling from her mouth.

They’d have quiet days, relaxing days. They’d have loud days, rough days.

But they were all days where the sun would rise and then set.

They were all days when the blue jay sang.

Simon had forgotten silence. His life was filled with sound, and love, and content.

Maybe… maybe the worst part of it all was loss.

Maybe the worst part of it all was the unmoving body, still warm.

Maybe the worst part of it all was the frantic screams that drowned out the silence.

Maybe the worst part of it all was the silence.

Silence.

A/N: bandaids don’t last forever

Idk if this is coherent or cohesive or any other co-words meaning readable and enjoyable. Maybe I’ll rewrite it, who knows. Probably not, I can’t post consistently as it is lmao

I just realized Anne Hathaway and Sandra Bullock were my gay awakenings and then I realized it wasn't just a phase, I still feel that way-

I don't know how to feel about that

So I think I might be bi? But if I am it changes almost nothing about my life because I am happily and monogamously married. But if it doesn't really matter, why do I have so many feelings about it???? Anyways, I am asking you because it seems like there is a 50/50 chance of a delightful and pithy answer or a picture of a bird as an answer.