what's mistaken for closeness is just a case for mitosis [closed]

[lottawork]

Waking is not, historically, what Rush would regard as a favored activity. He is where he always is after being unexpectedly beset upon by sleep's inevitable grasp. The floor is solid and bracing, forming an aching spandrel between that plane and the paralleled arch of shoulders and spine. His skull is no longer the fractured mess it was, in reality left smooth and whole.

The entirety of the Rift's irritating, interfering traversal through the less fondly remembered aspects of his own past is etched into the anterior of his mind, still frames printed behind closed lids. He grinds the heels of both palms into his eye sockets with a fierce, fervent energy, as if it would be possible to scrub away the echo of that experience through execution of pressure alone.

He wonders how much of the dream's content is plausibly dismissible, an idea whose own plausibility he dismisses. Asadi was always too smart for direct obfuscation; it was what he liked about her, what he has continued to appreciate and value about her, but intimacy with one's past as exposed by the Rift is the unfortunate lead-in to a conversation he is certain they will be required to have and would prefer not to have, with her or anyone.

He is also aware, however, that he has been left very little in the way of personal autonomy in relation to that choice. Particularly since his latest endeavor in becoming more deeply acquainted with neuroanatomy has ground to a lamentable standstill, and to best acquire a more extensive knowledge base he will have to be - considerably more hands-on.

Fuck.

The trip to Asadi's apartment passes in its own dull-edged, lateral blur, instructions snapped out briskly to an unlucky taxi driver until he arrives, disheveled and recently woken and completely uninvited. It does not occur to him until after he has rung for her repeatedly that this may be potentially construed as socially unnatural or unacceptable, but he has already set certain events in motion and must see them to their uncertain conclusion.

Comments

[etherthief]

"You're no fun," she half-sulks, sinking forward onto the table as much as she can and watching him work. This won't be as challenging as she'd meant it to be, if he's not going to drink during, but that's probably for the best. It's distantly alarming how little she cares if he works intoxicated, but then, the arm is already so messed up, what's the worst that could happen?

"Well if you win I have to drink all that by myself, I might die," she points out after a moment. "So maybe you better help me out." She smiles sweetly.

[lottawork]

"Sabotage," Rush says, drawing the word out with an energy both intensively focused and thinly applied, "will get you nowhere."

He frees several components with a quiet snap and debates the costs and benefits of acquiescing to the suggestion. In all truth he has not had to employ a costs-benefits analysis in relation to alcohol for some time, and he finds himself disinclined to apply any sort of cogent baseline of reasoning to a substance that largely exists to be contradictory to the very concept.

The settling warmth of his next swallow does not offset his progress in the slightest as he sets the bottle back down with a pronounced swish of liquid and continues along his predesignated work pathway.

"In the supremely unlikely event that I lose," he says, the edges of the words a fraction less pronounced than what he would consider to be strictly the norm, "I am choosing to blame you on the grounds of purposeful obstruction."

[etherthief]

"Bring it," she says pleasantly, reclaiming the bottle for another pull. "Sabotage is my middle name."

She is feeling better, she thinks, than she has in a while, not counting the time spent curled up with Greta - which wasn't so much good as it was complicated. This is fun, and it's far from emotional honesty which is uncomfortable and difficult, and she thinks if she could just drink herself into oblivion and exchange sassy banter with Rush every day for the rest of her miserable one-armed existence she'd be okay.

Oh, no, wait, that got depressing.

Fuck.

She slumps a little, just a little, looking at the table, her free hand drawing abstract, invisible patterns into the surface.

[lottawork]

The steady serial deconstruction of the instruments folded into each digit takes priority, obviously, though the silence that trails in the wake of Asadi's pronouncement is not highly indicative of an ideal outcome. While he may generally consider himself profoundly untalented in the art of detecting subtle social nuances, Asadi's uncharacteristic silence does not lend itself to any hypotheses he wishes to entertain at any length.

"Steelworking," he says with a sense of spontaneity and conversational grace he does not feel, "was my first paid job. At sixteen."

Seizure of that topic, seemingly irrelevant, seemingly at random, does not achieve much by the way of establishing a natural flow of discussion, but he feels this is a sequence of events they have come to jointly accept and anticipate at this collective stage.

[etherthief]

She perks up at once. This is so unusual, so wonderfully unexpected, she can't help but smile at the freely offered information.

"Yeah?" she leans her hand back into her hand, a sort of go on gesture. "Sounds kinda miserable. Or did you like it."

[lottawork]

"I won't deny the usefulness of acquiring an applicable skill," he says, successfully loosening and freeing a mechanism he recognizes as the lighter Asadi demonstrated upon their first day of meeting. He smiles faintly. "I worked two jobs until I could earn a scholarship."

He debates the potential advantages to claiming a premature victory and decides there are no clear advantages and reclaims the bottle with the smooth catch of a wrist and throws back another swallow.

[etherthief]

"How industrious." Holy shit he smiled. He smiled. She manages not to grin stupidly at the sight of it.

It's good to know all this stuff, as well - explains more than a little about him, the various chips on his shoulder, the cutthroat desperation to fix every presented problem. It's just not that he has something to prove, it's that he has proven it, and there will be no slippage. He made it to the top and he has to stay there at all costs.

She's the same way. Charmed life, supportive academic family, but still the same way.

She takes another sip from the bottle. My but it's beginning to hit. Is the cat still here, watching them have this conversation? She forgot to notice, and now she doesn't want to look.

"When I first moved to Manhattan," she says, because it wouldn't be fair to let him do all the sharing, "rent was so expensive, and I had already turned down every fancy fucking job London and Geneva offered me, so..." She shrugs with one shoulder. "I paid for my apartment by fighting dirty in bareknuckle boxing for about six months." This time she grins. "I was pretty fuckin good at it. Part of me misses it, but..." Well, she doesn't need to look pointedly at her dead arm, does she?

[lottawork]

He continues to empty the contents of the progressively-hollowed-out, dead appendage in a finely tuned, flawlessly orchestrated process. He deposits the next of several delicate instruments he cannot put a name to onto the table, consolidating them into their own cairn of efficiency.

"I am unsurprised," he says dryly, both in relation to her history in combative sports and her reasoning for acquiring the talent. "I'm certain the American economy is pure shite in every iteration."

[etherthief]

"Well, it wasn't quite so bad," she says lightly. "And not for the same reasons." She gazes distantly at her arm as he works on it.

"It's nice there," she says, allowing herself to get a little wistful. "Lots of things I'd like to go back to, eventually."

Her eyes flick back up to him. "You know-" she starts, then cuts herself off with another mouthful of whiskey.

[lottawork]

The phrase possesses a thoughtful reminiscence whose significance beyond the more obvious sense is lost to him.

He watches her drink, exercising an impressive amount of controlled intrigue in the fractional lift of his eyebrows. One corner of his mouth twitches.

"What," he says, closing the word with a slow, languid pull.

[etherthief]

She looks at him more steadily. Can't hurt to say it. Even if it is premature. Even if it might not be received well. Well, can't hurt more than they've both already been hurt.

"I mean, I'm just... guessing, here," she says, "that people back home aren't too happy with you." If her own reaction was anything to go by. "And I mean, it's kind of a shit situation to go back to, isn't it? I guess that isn't fair to say, but I dunno, I just..." She's getting lost here. She looks away, clears her throat awkwardly, pushing her free hand through her hair, adjusting her hijab with a distracted tug.

"If you wanted to," she says, "if we find a way to get home, um. You'd be welcome to come home with... with me." She wants to look at him, assess his reaction, but she can't. She stares fixedly at the table, fingers fidgeting with the label on the bottle. "You'd probably do well there. And I'd be - I'd be happy to have you there."

All right then. Time to drink more.

[lottawork]

His look intensifies, eyes narrowing more critically, the sole indication of his surprise. He continues to exert regular effort into detaching a particularly stubborn piece of equipment with automatic precision, his attention divided.

"I doubt there's much to go back to," he says, a dry lacquer over his own persistent sense of loss. "The point in space from which I departed very likely no longer exists."

As Destiny ceased to exist, so likely did his sole remaining avenue to the D-brane from which he personally originated.

"Assuming that offer is still open by that time," he continues, voice softening incrementally, "I would be amenable to that."

[etherthief]

Oh, well, that's even more complicated than interpersonal issues. Her expression twists briefly with surprise and pity, which she banishes as quickly as she can, he's like her and he'll detest pity.

"I don't want to rule out the possibility that we could set our own spatial endpoint," she says, forcing herself to sound reasonable. "I mean, I never got that far in my efforts, but it's not impossible, it was a goal I was working toward."

Of course, to do this, they'll need to make significantly more progress on her arm than she thinks they are capable of.

"Either way," she says. "Uh. Yeah. I can't imagine the offer will close."

Okay enough of that. She swipes the bottle back and drinks a little bit more than would qualify as a single swig, sets it back down heavily and immediately drops her head onto the table.

"Oh-kay," she says, the full effect encroaching in earnest. "Yup. All right. Are you done yet, jeez."

His forty minutes have not elapsed, but surely he has to be getting close.

[lottawork]

Rush finds himself equally eager to shift the conversation from the scope of their current topic, primarily for the sake of navigating to subject matter he feels more adequately informed in discussing. He eases out the latest in the long string of instruments freed from the complicated expanse and surveys the remaining constituents with a displeased scowl.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he says, compacting as much airy hauteur into his tone as possible. "I've been making considerable progress."

[etherthief]

"Make it fasterrrr," she whines, muffled into her arm. She peeks up at him. He actually is almost done. She's going to have to drink so much whiskey.

"We're gonna have to clean the thing out," she mumbles, "before we can put any new mechanisms in there. Mm-hm." She pushes the bottle back to him. "You should drink more or you're gonna kill me. Come on, be more Scottish."

[lottawork]

He completes his objective with several deft twists of the screwdriver, settling the last of the hand's internal instrumentations down with a quiet click.

"As if nationality were measurable by a gradable scale," he scoffs, retrieving the bottle and partaking in a prolonged swallow. The glass impacts the surface of the table with a pronounced snap as his expression twists into a vicious, one-sided smile, victory carved into the bright slash of teeth.

"Go'n tan yersel'," he says, deliberately stretching the vowels, the consonants rolling smoothly off his tongue.

[etherthief]

She giggles (actually giggles) and makes a couple swipes at the bottle, testing it. There's still a good deal left, this'll lay her out for the rest of the day, but there's more in the cabinet for him to enjoy, so he can spend the next hour playing catch-up.

"To the victor the spoils," she says, and knocks it back.

She can't chug like she used to - it takes a few attempts to finish the whole thing - but she does it and slams the bottle back down.

"YEAH," she says, louder than necessary, then slumps down in a happy puddle, pointing vaguely at the kitchen. "All right. Gooooget yerslf s'more. I'm not gon' be this drunk by mySELF."

[lottawork]

He looks at her skeptically. "I'm sure."

Rush stands, scraping the chair back across the floor, and locates a second bottle about three-quarters full of some American-brand whiskey of dubious quality. A desultory scan of the other bottles in abundance reveals very little by the way of any alcohol-based products he recognizes. He returns, bottle in hand, and removes the cap with a deft twist of one hand.

"You're challenging a northerner, I feel you should be made aware," he says with artless indolence, retaking his seat. "An' next time y'can invest in some bloody Scotch."

[etherthief]

"Next time I will," she says decisively, leaning back and propping herself up. Well, she isn't going to just watch him drink, fun as that might be. She has to engage herself so she doesn't fall asleep. After a moment's consideration she digs her phone out somewhat awkwardly and begins dutifully texting.

[lottawork]

The bottle's contents have been dwindling, for a certain definition of the term, in the time elapsed since that pronouncement, though he's currently hard-pressed to discover the specifics, exactly.

"Wha's so interesting, then?" he murmurs, his diction significantly more slurred but his facial muscles no less precise, eyes narrowing slightly in the direction of Asadi and her phone.

[etherthief]

"Greta," says Iman a little too dreamily, then looks up sharply, eyes narrowed. "I still haven't told her. Cause I can't yet. It's terrible. Don't fuckin lecture me. I'm just saying." She looks back at her phone, fiddling with it without typing in more texts, then offers it to him. "You wanna say hi?"

[lottawork]

"Mm," he says, accepting the device and turning it over and over in his hands in a thoughtful, continuous revolution. With exceptional focus and care, he presses out a message and sends it.

"I don't lecture," he says, finding his tone, to his annoyance, to be lacking any sort of earnest scorn whatsoever.

[etherthief]

"Do too," she says, not at all petulantly. "Just the other day you were all-" here she makes the questionable executive decision to do a vague and fairly unflattering impression of his accent and voice, "-THE FOOKING SYMMETRIC PROPERTY, bleepity bleep blorp. Like me an' Greta are just a, a fuckin math problem." She slumps back down, resting her chin thoughtfully on her arm. "I mean I get what you were tryina say and, and yeah, just. Uh-uh." She shakes her head very seriously.

[lottawork]

"I do not beep," he says, relieved to be sounding appropriately indignant if also somewhat confused as to Asadi's particular word choice. "And tha' accent is deplorable. Y'nae idea wha' a fuckin' Scottish accent sounds like?"

He considers the bottle and its contents before deciding against committing his liver to further unrest, making a semi-successful attempt to sharpen his consonants. "When it comes down tae it, everythin' is a math problem."

[etherthief]

"I have plenty of idea," she says, matching his indignation and gesticulating expressively at him. "I just can't do it right. Cause I ain't fuckin Scottish am I. Tha's yer job."

She snorts at his second comment. "Well yeah, I guess you could argue that," she says. "But the variables get absurd when you're dealing with people, you can't make fuckin' proofs for 'em. What're you saying to her?" The question is tacked on seamlessly as she notes that he's actually answering responses and suffers a belated burst of alarm that he might say something stupid.

What is she thinking, it's RUSH. He's definitely saying something stupid. She holds her hand back out. "Gimme."