things have gotten closer to the sun [closed]

[lottawork]

He has it.

It had come together unprompted, without the click and slide of a solution slotting easily into place. There is never a click, a common misconception even in the highest echelons of academia - there is never a well-timed stroke of brilliance turned over by some new fragment of insight, simply the give of a problem folding beneath the fierce, continuous, brute force pressure of the uncontained mind. For weeks he has considered it, has become an expert in fields utterly beyond the scope of his specialties or his prolonged interest, and even with the minor distraction of Jackson's spontaneous return to the flesh, he has done little else but attack the set of circumstances without compromise.

The dog is asleep when he exits the building, and he locks his door upon departure, his movements streamlined by the fervent intent of intellectual energy, the strap of his bag taut over his chest as he commits himself to the grueling inadequacies of public transportation.

He knocks immediately upon building entry. He expects Asadi will be waiting for him.

Comments

[etherthief]

"There is no secondary objective," Iman is already saying as she opens the door. She's wide awake, full of adrenaline, no caffeination necessary - they'd been getting close, she knew that, all their sessions of tinkering starting to become less frustratingly unfocused and more pointed and quiet, Lucifer's offered components (unfortunately) a helpful push forward - and it was really just this, just waiting for one of them to bring it all together. She lets him in, wandering back over to her worktable, gesticulating wildly with her organic arm. "It was always just going to be a limb again. We can't make it what it was, as we have discussed."

In part she's saying this because she knows it will piss him off. It's something they haven't fought about in at least a week. Right now she's awake, and he has it. She's got the wherewithal to pick a fight and she's gonna goddamn do it.

[lottawork]

"That," says Rush, low and dry as he brushes past, "I very much doubt."

He unclips the satchel from his shoulder and opens it, sorting through the resultant scatter of clinking metallic pieces with his typical frenetic energy.

"We've progressed," he says shortly without lifting his gaze from his work. "Significantly. I'm not a mechanical engineer and I'm not a neuroscientist. I am, however," he continues, looking at her coolly, "very fucking determined. Sit."

[etherthief]

"Don't tell me what to do," she says as she obliges him, perching in her chair and laying her arm on the table, opening all the necessary hatches. They've been able to replace most of the hardware, things are looking good if a little stitched together. The main issue has been getting it to just work. In theory everything is in place; in practice, there could be any number of fucking intricate issues to blame for its continuing functionlessness.

"Making an arm is one thing," she says. "Making what I had is another. This progress is distinct from progress on the other thing. Don't get your hopes up. Better yet, don't get mine up."

[lottawork]

"I don't deal in hope," he says with a prim twist to his voice. He slides into the seat opposite and begins, nearly vibrating with rising, clear resolve, his motions economical and merciless. "You presented me with a problem, and I intend to devise a solution. A complete solution."

He will not accept failure. This he has as a policy. He will set his mind opposite to the thing that galls him until it has destroyed itself or he has. This is of the sprawling, radiant incomprehensibility the Rift boasts; it is science, hard and bright fact, the simple colocalization of mechanical parts and necessary aptitude.

With nothing else to occupy his time, he has achieved both in short order.

[etherthief]

She says nothing to that, not willing to push it further just now. She watches him work, her attention mostly fixed on the trajectory of his fingers over her arm's mechanisms, piecing together his solution as he presents it with action rather than explanation. Occasionally she glances up at him, not entirely aware of the faint smile playing about her lips.

"Oh fuck you," she says excitedly when she ascertains the nature of his solution, her eyes widening. It's so fucking obvious. Ana would never let her hear the end of it. "Cocksucker. I can't believe you figured it out. Not an engineer. Psh."

She can't stop grinning.

He did it. It's going to take some time to finish the process but she can see where he's going and she knows, she knows he did it. The fucker actually figured it out.

The arm part, that is. That's the endgame for tonight and that's good enough.

"Fucker," she says for good measure.

[lottawork]

"Steelworking is hardly the most delicate art," he says in a tone nothing short of utterly reasonable. The corner of his mouth twitches once. Twice. "I'm self-taught."

His eyes rake the spun-glass fragility of those mechanical intricacies, inserting and adjusting the required constituents with neat, tight tweaks of wrist and fingers.

"Not to mention," he continues airily, punctuating each word with the satisfying click of a mechanism snapping into place, "pure. Dead. Brilliant."

He looks at her and arches a brow. "Try it now."

[etherthief]

"Mr. Fancy," she says, smirking at him.

She feels that, she realizes with a startled shock. Feels the snap of the mechanism. Oh god. She feels it. She feels it.

She draws a breath and tells herself to open her fingers, lay them out as if she's going to have her palm read.

The joints are stiff, arthritic without any pain, but the fingers stretch out in perfectly executed unison.

Simple as that.

She lets out a breath that is also a laugh and a gasp and very nearly a sob. She knew he had it, she could see him doing it, but she still didn't quite believe that he'd - that it would actually-

"You did it," she says, obvious as it is. She lifts her arm slowly, bending the elbow, extending again. It's like a limb waking up from a long sleep. Moves a little different, feels a whole lot different, but it works. "Fuck."

She feels the distant stinging threat of tears - she was not prepared for this, especially not mid-REM cycle, and it takes her a moment to compose herself. She looks at him, smiling so hard it hurts, and for a moment she really just wants to reach out to him, but she holds herself back for his sake.

"Thank you," she says, quiet and genuine.

[lottawork]

Rush scowls at the prosthetic as she begins to flex it experimentally, as the improvised, reconfigured system responds to the neural synapses, as it begins to flood with new stimuli, as the body accepts the reconditioned limb as its own.

He is not frequently left with nothing to say, but his brain seems to be suffering imminent trouble with supplying him with anything situationally appropriate.

He smiles, a small, satisfied quirk of the lips, and leans back.

"I did say I would."

[etherthief]

"You did." She settles back as well, drawing her recovered arm along with her, treating it gingerly, like a fragile thing. She holds it in her lap for a moment, gazing down at it, then looks back at him.

"We're going out," she says. She feels giddy, ridiculous. She wants to do something stupid. She wants to have fun. "We're getting a couple bottles of something and whatever else piques our interest. Get up." She slides off her chair, moving toward the door, a little bit unsteady, re-acclimating to the feeling of having balanced sensation, no longer off-kilter.

[lottawork]

"I'm certain I'm doing no such thing," he says, striving for affronted but succeeding only in sounding puzzled. "I find it supremely unlikely that you should be, considering you seem to be having trouble walking in a straight line."

He scrapes his chair back as he rises and catches one of her wrists.

Possibly the one he just repaired.

He endeavors not to think about it.

He eyes her warily. "I wouldn't recommend it."

[etherthief]

"Of course you wouldn't," she says smoothly, flipping her palm to catch his wrist instead and pull him toward her, as if, absurdly, they are going to dance. "Don't be an asshole. It has been almost a month to the day. It's 2am and I can't show Greta yet and I am not going back to sleep. So you're going to celebrate your accomplishment with me. No. Arguments."

She smiles and releases him, extricating herself and moving back to the door, holding it open. "Come on," she says, patting her thigh like she's calling a dog.

[lottawork]

"And what, pray tell, is your idea of celebration," he says coolly, narrowing his eyes at her urges to acquiesce and doing nothing of the sort. He certainly did not exit his building with the intent to do ill-advised damage to his liver, nor does he anticipate this being a particularly wise decision on Asadi's part.

Rush looks at her, arms folding over his chest as he tries and fails to not waver in indecision.

He sighs.

"I suppose I would do well to ensure that the repairs hold," he says grudgingly, like he's actually considering it.

[etherthief]

"Mmmmhm," she says brightly, taking this to be victory enough, stepping out completely because she knows he'll follow.

As she heads down the stairs she says over her shoulder, completely unconcerned about any sleeping neighbors in the building, "I don't think I want to stay out somewhere. But there's nothing properly celebratory in my apartment. We need to do a supply run. What, did you really think you were just gonna come over and do this and exchange a professional handshake and that'd be that? You know me better than that, Doctor."

[lottawork]

He follows her, lingering a half-step behind. He is not terribly predisposed to partake in celebratory aftermaths, familiar as he is with the practice in theory. Prolonged contact with that amount of nonproductive function could never successfully obtain his interest.

"Completely unwillingly, I assure you," he says dryly. "And by 'supplies' I assume you mean a method by which we can get completely fucking smashed."

[etherthief]

"Maybe only somewhat fucking smashed," she says compromisingly, leading him happily out the building and down the street. "I'm flexible. I can't believe you're gonna whine about this. After all that fun we had last time?"

Yeah, last time, with the cat making open threats and all? Wow that was so great.

She presses on doggedly. "We could get a movie. Do you like movies? I introduced Greta to movies not too long ago." She can't even imagine Rush watching a movie, which means obviously she needs to make it happen. For science.

[lottawork]

Yes, well. He has not conceded the secondary objective, even if Asadi is determined to insult their joint skillsets by continuously deriding the very idea.

"I don't spend much time contemplating fiction," Rush says stiffly. Eli had been exceptionally fond of employing manifold references to items of pop culture he should have known full well would land entirely beyond the scope of anyone's interest, particularly Rush's own.

The night air is cool and clean, breeze catching loosely at his hair, and in conjunction with the sweeping, glittering crest of building tops, it is not unreasonable for him to be reminded powerfully, briefly, of San Francisco.

He turns his mind from the distraction.

[etherthief]

"Of course you don't," she says with a wry smirk in his direction. She leaves him be until they've reached the little store; stepping in, she nods hello to the man at the register and proceeds directly to the wall of cheap liquor at the back.

"Pick your poison, I'll pick a flick," she says easily. There's a conveniently located rack of even cheaper DVDs. She flips through them, eyeing the bland-looking romantic comedies with disdain, until she finds precisely what she's looking for.

She grabs a jar of olives and proceeds to the counter.

[lottawork]

Rush says nothing but simply arches a brow, his features composed and disdainful.

Poison would be an uncomfortably apt description, he notes scornfully, surveying the selection of alcohol with frosty indifference. A brisk scan of the rows of dark- and clear-colored glass uncovers nothing so palatable as Scotch, and he scowls. He seizes some typical, revolting, American whiskey by the neck of its bottle and rejoins Asadi at the front.

"And what the fuck," says Rush, dubiously eyeing the plastic, colorful rectangle laid atop the counter between bottle and olives, "is that. Exactly."

[etherthief]

Iman hands the stoic cashier money, takes the bottle and waggles it at her companion. "You haven't even had any of this yet. It's almost 3 in the morning, your peak hour of awareness. You can't be having such intense short-term memory problems."

She accepts her change and bag of goodies with a polite thank you and turns to lead Rush back out into the night. "It's called a movie, Rush. You know, that thing I just suggested. We're going to watch a movie. It's going to be fun. I've seen you fun. I know it exists. And I," she turns back, showing him, showing him gleefully the result of his work as she holds both bag and bottle in two different hands, "have earned a glimpse."

More to the point, he's earned it himself. But she knows that won't get much traction with him.

[lottawork]

He looks at her with an expression he hopes communicates nothing but utter disdain, feeling that at this point any eye-rolling would simply prove superfluous.

"Remind me never to comply with any scheme of yours ever again," says Rush, "as your idea of fun appears to significantly deviate from my own."

He is fully capable of departing from her gratingly cheerful company and returning to his own apartment, blissfully devoid of movies or social obligations of any kind save for the indifferent dog, and his strand of reasoning dissolves into weary acquiescence for no reason he can immediately enumerate to himself.

[etherthief]

"Oh my god, what is your idea of fun?" she says, forcing herself to slow a bit so she can walk in step with him. "Seriously, please enlighten me. Is it working? Working doesn't count. Work is... fulfilling. Sometimes fun, the adjective. But it's not fun the noun."

She feels very strongly about this, apparently.

[lottawork]

"Obviously we've a difference of opinion," he says dryly. "Your understanding of the concept does not remotely align with mine."

Approaching the familiar looming silhouette of her building cultivates a mounting feeling of trepidation, which he dismisses on principle. Whatever Asadi's notions of sufficient pastimes may include, at least he may anticipate the presence of ethanol to counter it.

[etherthief]

"Obviously," she says. Well, fair enough. She supposes he's entitled to his weird Scottish opinions.

She quiets for the rest of the way home and leads him back upstairs; once there she sets things out and slides the movie disc into her computer.

"I've never seen this," she says. "Doesn't exist in my universe. But I figure anything called Die Hard has to be worthwhile, right?" She smiles at him and grabs the jar of olives. "Hey, look what I can do."

She opens the jar. The arm is still a little stiff and awkward but it's running about as smoothly as can be expected, and really, working with what they had, it's more than she could have hoped. She smiles, digs out an olive and pops it in her mouth.

"I'll make you a deal," she says after a moment. "Tonight you subscribe to my idea of fun. After that, I'll subscribe to your idea of work. And we'll... we'll figure out the secondary objective."

She glances up at him, meets his eyes. "Okay?"

[lottawork]

He is certain that any film boasting that sort of title is overwhelmingly likely to not be suited to his time or to his tastes, selective and profound as those may be, and he eyes the case skeptically.

He heaves a weary, possibly exaggerated sigh and retrieves the bottle of likely revolting whiskey. Considering the length of time he has been awake, it is not unreasonable to presume he would lack the requisite finger strength to open said bottle. The corner of his mouth twitches. Alleged failure of an objective is remarkably simple to manufacture.

"I suppose," he says crisply, extending the bottle to her. "Do me the honor?"

[etherthief]

Iman raises an eyebrow at him, smirking as she takes the bottle and opens it easily.

"For such a sneaky shit that was pretty fuckin' obvious," she says, grabbing them a couple glasses and pouring a little in each. She hands his off to him. "But I'll let it slide. You know I love opening things. Bottles. Locked doors. Cans of worms."

She slides onto her couch and gives the space beside her a little pat. "Come on, let's see what 'Die Hard' has to offer us."