![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
CHARACTERS: Eva Aldana Gutiérrez and Eli McLeod
WHAT: Eli and Eva discuss what “fact” means
WHEN: Monday, after the meeting
WHERE: Hangar F
WARNINGS: One bell pepper
WHAT: Eli and Eva discuss what “fact” means
WHEN: Monday, after the meeting
WHERE: Hangar F
WARNINGS: One bell pepper
"This is ridiculous."
Despite what Cal said or hoped or dreamed, there wasn’t something going on between Eli and Eva.
But there wasn’t exactly nothing, Eli conceded to himself as he caught himself glancing in the dark haired woman’s direction as Jacobs went on about the merits of Mylar versus Kapton. He grunted as Rio asked him a question, his gaze slowly swinging back to the supply officer’s, and told himself Eva wasn’t his business.
His business was keeping young hotshot pilots from launching themselves into the air and wrecking planes.
His business was making sure they had backup planes when the inevitable happened.
His business was trying to remember how the chip had been removed from his head before someone cut into his brain to figure it out.
But most of all, his business was figuring out how to make the Architect’s pay when they arrived.
His head was pounding by the time the conference room cleared, the humming of the projector ringing loudly in his ears as he clasped his hands behind his neck and bowed his head towards the table to try and get a moment’s peace before someone needed him again.
The room had emptied, but Eva still sat in the seat she had chosen towards the back of the room. In her lap was a notebook she was still scrawling in, her notes taken in neat Spanish to better articulate her thoughts on the matters at hand before she returned to her room to translate them later. There’d been a heaviness in Battlest HQ as people listed what they needed and what couldn’t be compromised on, making a true nightmare scenario for Supplies and Ground as they worked to coordinate how to obtain what they could and what to immediately write off.
Suffice to say, there was more than one person with a headache left in HQ.
She stood silently, storing away her notebook and pencil before she took her chair to put it away, putting the room to relative rights so it could be used again.
Eli squeezed his eyes shut at the soft scrape of a chair against the floor, fingers pressing into the back of his neck as he kept himself still.
“I’ll clear out in a few minutes,” he tiredly said to whoever was behind him, not trying to be a bother to the clean up crew but not yet ready to move as he waited for all the information in his head to settle.
Eva hummed absently, content to keep at her self-imposed task. Echoes of suggestions still rang off the metal walls as she worked, engineering requests settled in her stomach like lead as she realized the impossibility of many of them, but shooting things down wouldn’t help.
“No te estoy apurando,” she assured, pitching her voice to carry over to him. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Most of the people in the room had been hoping for the best, but Eli had a feeling the best wasn’t in the room with them.
The gravity of the situation they faced weighed heavily on his shoulders, and her voice cut through the noise. He shifted so he could glance over his shoulder at her, watching as another chair was added to the stack against the wall.
“Did you settle on Mylar or Kapton?” he asked after a moment, dropping his hands into his lap and sitting straight.
“Mylar’s more readily obtainable.” Another stack began to take shape, chairs neatly nestled on top of one another as she made herself useful.
Truthfully she didn’t want to go back to her room quite yet, and when many thoughts were swirling in her mind, she needed to do something. This was productive with less chance of socialization.
Or at least she had thought when she started.
“Kapton’s industrial-grade, though. It will be more Séarlit’s decision with Engineering. Ground will back up Supplies if necessary.” She shrugged. “Strategy has requested additional eyes, so I will be joining them in the cave tomorrow.”
Eli nodded, scrubbing his face as he filed away her comments with the other action items in his mind. He knew he couldn’t get to them all, that the only way to make this happen was to delegate out things, but coordination was essential to make sure all the departments worked together and didn’t get lost hunting a unicorn or going down a rabbit hole and lose sight of reality.
But that was for tomorrow.
“The black hole of Battlest,” he cracked, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets as he pushed the chair back to stand. He grabbed his chair and walked it to the growing stack, seeing no use in not being useful before he went to find something to stop the pounding in his head.
“Only the bravest venture there,” Eva confirmed as she clapped her hands together to rid them of the dust that clung to them. “I won’t tell them you fear them.”
His eyes drifted to the metal side of the ship as if he could see the clouds below them, his shoulders tensing as if he was about to slide into the narrow cockpit and takeoff instead of turn to fully face her.
“I prefer a little sunshine on my face,” Eli countered, shutting his notebook and tucking his pen into the spiral.
“That isn’t a no,” she pointed out, lips quirking upwards as her hands settled on her hips. “The sunshine you get in the planes is not nearly as good as it is on the ground.”
“I listen to them like a good boy,” he said without thinking, running a hand over his hair as he turned in time to see the way her lips tugged in the corner.
“That makes one person you do it for,” she countered, brows arching.
He stared for a moment before dragging his gaze to hers, head tilting to the side. “Are you turning sunshine into a competition?”
“Is it a competition if it’s just a fact?” she wondered aloud, fingers drumming against her hips.
Eli shook his head to hide the huff of amusement on his lips, tapping the notebook against the outside of his thigh. He had spent most of his time on the ground looking to the sky, working hard to earn a spot on Doss’ wing instead of under it, so the answer was easy.
“Maybe a fact to you.”
“That isn’t how facts work,” she said with a crinkle of her brows, and though she knew it was idiotic to argue this, she also knew she was about to. “It’s not a matter of opinion— you can’t feel the sunlight through an inch and a half of glass as well as you can with it directly on your face.”
He knew he wasn’t the one who had made the initial comparison to the plane versus on the ground, so arguing this was a moot point, yet here they were.
And he made no move to leave.
“‘Good’ is subjective,” he pointed out, lips pressing together briefly as if trying to keep them in line.
“Warmth isn’t subjective,” she rebutted, registering the faint twitch of his lips and growing irrationally more irritated because of it. “Detén eso.”
Eli stared at her, an eyebrow arching as he found a way to keep the yes, it is, from passing his lips. “Stop what?” he asked instead.
“That,” she repeated, gesturing at his mouth as she took a step closer. “You look like you’re in pain.”
“Be more specific,” he said, his brows knitting together as he watched her take another step closer to where he was studying her.
She shouldn’t.
It was a blaring alarm, warning her against drawing closer, and she knew better than to go against it.
Her feet, however, seemed to have very different ideas.
“This,” she said plainly, fingertips tracing his mouth as idiota, idiota, idiota rang like a chant through her mind. “If it didn’t look so painful, you could have been smiling.”
In a way, he should have seen this coming. He should have known that asking Eva to be specific was akin to asking for detailed instructions, that she would get her point across by any means possible.
He shouldn’t have asked, but he found he stopped thinking about the should and shouldn’ts the moment her finger brushed against his bottom lip as his mouth relaxed.
“Would you tell me to stop that too?” he asked, tall frame perfectly still except for the brush of his lips against her finger.
She had to tip her head back to see him when she was this close, dark eyes dilating as he studied her. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to,” she murmured, letting his exhale warm her fingertips before dragging them down his chin.
A corner of his mouth pulled back, his exhale soft as he scoffed. “What would you tell me to do, then?” came his next question as her fingers scraped against the dark stubble framing his jaw.
“You know that, too.” She doubted he would listen— despite his claims that he could, he wanted to irk her more. The room felt small when she took a breath, her chest nearly brushing his, the tin and metal doing little to protect this conversation from drifting through the hanger should anyone be working in it. “Turn around and walk away.”
Challenge flickered in his gaze as her fingers curled slightly, unintentionally pulling him an inch closer to her. They were back to playing a game of should and shouldn’ts in the middle of the hangar, the war not raging in the far reaches of the solar system but in the centimeters between them.
“If that’s what you want,” he whispered, fingers brushing against her hip, “then take your hand off of me.”
“You first,” she chirped back, fingers curling into her palm as though he had burned her so her knuckles brushed over the top of his shirt.
His hand hovered over her waist, gently curved in imitation of the flare of her hip. He leaned closer to her like a moth drawn to a flame, lips a hair’s breadth from hers as he offered, “After you.”
“You started it.” She was remarkably composed as his exhale warmed her lips, her swallow not at all harsh as her knuckles ghosted down his sternum in preparation of dropping her hand to her side. “Finish it.”
His features sharpened at the challenge, a muscle jumping in his jaw as he acknowledged that he really, truly should just take the step back she was taunting him with.
And he should have done that.
But his body swayed forward to meet the challenge, finishing the standoff as his lips found hers and his hand settled over the place he had grabbed days ago.
She rose up onto the balls of her feet as he drew her closer, all the kisses they hadn’t bothered to exchange colliding into this one. She vaguely registered the sound of the notebook he held slapping onto the floor as her hand curled into his shirt, whatever sense she had put to the side as she breathed him in.
Eli didn’t bother trying to redirect her as she tugged on his shirt, pulling him down so she could better reach him. He hauled her hips into his, the notebook long forgotten as he cupped the side of her neck and deepened the kiss, and ignored the feeling of his shoulders relaxing as his tongue slid against hers.
He also conveniently forgot that they were still in the hangar, in no rush to end the kiss.
Despite what Cal said or hoped or dreamed, there wasn’t something going on between Eli and Eva.
But there wasn’t exactly nothing, Eli conceded to himself as he caught himself glancing in the dark haired woman’s direction as Jacobs went on about the merits of Mylar versus Kapton. He grunted as Rio asked him a question, his gaze slowly swinging back to the supply officer’s, and told himself Eva wasn’t his business.
His business was keeping young hotshot pilots from launching themselves into the air and wrecking planes.
His business was making sure they had backup planes when the inevitable happened.
His business was trying to remember how the chip had been removed from his head before someone cut into his brain to figure it out.
But most of all, his business was figuring out how to make the Architect’s pay when they arrived.
His head was pounding by the time the conference room cleared, the humming of the projector ringing loudly in his ears as he clasped his hands behind his neck and bowed his head towards the table to try and get a moment’s peace before someone needed him again.
The room had emptied, but Eva still sat in the seat she had chosen towards the back of the room. In her lap was a notebook she was still scrawling in, her notes taken in neat Spanish to better articulate her thoughts on the matters at hand before she returned to her room to translate them later. There’d been a heaviness in Battlest HQ as people listed what they needed and what couldn’t be compromised on, making a true nightmare scenario for Supplies and Ground as they worked to coordinate how to obtain what they could and what to immediately write off.
Suffice to say, there was more than one person with a headache left in HQ.
She stood silently, storing away her notebook and pencil before she took her chair to put it away, putting the room to relative rights so it could be used again.
Eli squeezed his eyes shut at the soft scrape of a chair against the floor, fingers pressing into the back of his neck as he kept himself still.
“I’ll clear out in a few minutes,” he tiredly said to whoever was behind him, not trying to be a bother to the clean up crew but not yet ready to move as he waited for all the information in his head to settle.
Eva hummed absently, content to keep at her self-imposed task. Echoes of suggestions still rang off the metal walls as she worked, engineering requests settled in her stomach like lead as she realized the impossibility of many of them, but shooting things down wouldn’t help.
“No te estoy apurando,” she assured, pitching her voice to carry over to him. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Most of the people in the room had been hoping for the best, but Eli had a feeling the best wasn’t in the room with them.
The gravity of the situation they faced weighed heavily on his shoulders, and her voice cut through the noise. He shifted so he could glance over his shoulder at her, watching as another chair was added to the stack against the wall.
“Did you settle on Mylar or Kapton?” he asked after a moment, dropping his hands into his lap and sitting straight.
“Mylar’s more readily obtainable.” Another stack began to take shape, chairs neatly nestled on top of one another as she made herself useful.
Truthfully she didn’t want to go back to her room quite yet, and when many thoughts were swirling in her mind, she needed to do something. This was productive with less chance of socialization.
Or at least she had thought when she started.
“Kapton’s industrial-grade, though. It will be more Séarlit’s decision with Engineering. Ground will back up Supplies if necessary.” She shrugged. “Strategy has requested additional eyes, so I will be joining them in the cave tomorrow.”
Eli nodded, scrubbing his face as he filed away her comments with the other action items in his mind. He knew he couldn’t get to them all, that the only way to make this happen was to delegate out things, but coordination was essential to make sure all the departments worked together and didn’t get lost hunting a unicorn or going down a rabbit hole and lose sight of reality.
But that was for tomorrow.
“The black hole of Battlest,” he cracked, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets as he pushed the chair back to stand. He grabbed his chair and walked it to the growing stack, seeing no use in not being useful before he went to find something to stop the pounding in his head.
“Only the bravest venture there,” Eva confirmed as she clapped her hands together to rid them of the dust that clung to them. “I won’t tell them you fear them.”
His eyes drifted to the metal side of the ship as if he could see the clouds below them, his shoulders tensing as if he was about to slide into the narrow cockpit and takeoff instead of turn to fully face her.
“I prefer a little sunshine on my face,” Eli countered, shutting his notebook and tucking his pen into the spiral.
“That isn’t a no,” she pointed out, lips quirking upwards as her hands settled on her hips. “The sunshine you get in the planes is not nearly as good as it is on the ground.”
“I listen to them like a good boy,” he said without thinking, running a hand over his hair as he turned in time to see the way her lips tugged in the corner.
“That makes one person you do it for,” she countered, brows arching.
He stared for a moment before dragging his gaze to hers, head tilting to the side. “Are you turning sunshine into a competition?”
“Is it a competition if it’s just a fact?” she wondered aloud, fingers drumming against her hips.
Eli shook his head to hide the huff of amusement on his lips, tapping the notebook against the outside of his thigh. He had spent most of his time on the ground looking to the sky, working hard to earn a spot on Doss’ wing instead of under it, so the answer was easy.
“Maybe a fact to you.”
“That isn’t how facts work,” she said with a crinkle of her brows, and though she knew it was idiotic to argue this, she also knew she was about to. “It’s not a matter of opinion— you can’t feel the sunlight through an inch and a half of glass as well as you can with it directly on your face.”
He knew he wasn’t the one who had made the initial comparison to the plane versus on the ground, so arguing this was a moot point, yet here they were.
And he made no move to leave.
“‘Good’ is subjective,” he pointed out, lips pressing together briefly as if trying to keep them in line.
“Warmth isn’t subjective,” she rebutted, registering the faint twitch of his lips and growing irrationally more irritated because of it. “Detén eso.”
Eli stared at her, an eyebrow arching as he found a way to keep the yes, it is, from passing his lips. “Stop what?” he asked instead.
“That,” she repeated, gesturing at his mouth as she took a step closer. “You look like you’re in pain.”
“Be more specific,” he said, his brows knitting together as he watched her take another step closer to where he was studying her.
She shouldn’t.
It was a blaring alarm, warning her against drawing closer, and she knew better than to go against it.
Her feet, however, seemed to have very different ideas.
“This,” she said plainly, fingertips tracing his mouth as idiota, idiota, idiota rang like a chant through her mind. “If it didn’t look so painful, you could have been smiling.”
In a way, he should have seen this coming. He should have known that asking Eva to be specific was akin to asking for detailed instructions, that she would get her point across by any means possible.
He shouldn’t have asked, but he found he stopped thinking about the should and shouldn’ts the moment her finger brushed against his bottom lip as his mouth relaxed.
“Would you tell me to stop that too?” he asked, tall frame perfectly still except for the brush of his lips against her finger.
She had to tip her head back to see him when she was this close, dark eyes dilating as he studied her. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to,” she murmured, letting his exhale warm her fingertips before dragging them down his chin.
A corner of his mouth pulled back, his exhale soft as he scoffed. “What would you tell me to do, then?” came his next question as her fingers scraped against the dark stubble framing his jaw.
“You know that, too.” She doubted he would listen— despite his claims that he could, he wanted to irk her more. The room felt small when she took a breath, her chest nearly brushing his, the tin and metal doing little to protect this conversation from drifting through the hanger should anyone be working in it. “Turn around and walk away.”
Challenge flickered in his gaze as her fingers curled slightly, unintentionally pulling him an inch closer to her. They were back to playing a game of should and shouldn’ts in the middle of the hangar, the war not raging in the far reaches of the solar system but in the centimeters between them.
“If that’s what you want,” he whispered, fingers brushing against her hip, “then take your hand off of me.”
“You first,” she chirped back, fingers curling into her palm as though he had burned her so her knuckles brushed over the top of his shirt.
His hand hovered over her waist, gently curved in imitation of the flare of her hip. He leaned closer to her like a moth drawn to a flame, lips a hair’s breadth from hers as he offered, “After you.”
“You started it.” She was remarkably composed as his exhale warmed her lips, her swallow not at all harsh as her knuckles ghosted down his sternum in preparation of dropping her hand to her side. “Finish it.”
His features sharpened at the challenge, a muscle jumping in his jaw as he acknowledged that he really, truly should just take the step back she was taunting him with.
And he should have done that.
But his body swayed forward to meet the challenge, finishing the standoff as his lips found hers and his hand settled over the place he had grabbed days ago.
She rose up onto the balls of her feet as he drew her closer, all the kisses they hadn’t bothered to exchange colliding into this one. She vaguely registered the sound of the notebook he held slapping onto the floor as her hand curled into his shirt, whatever sense she had put to the side as she breathed him in.
Eli didn’t bother trying to redirect her as she tugged on his shirt, pulling him down so she could better reach him. He hauled her hips into his, the notebook long forgotten as he cupped the side of her neck and deepened the kiss, and ignored the feeling of his shoulders relaxing as his tongue slid against hers.
He also conveniently forgot that they were still in the hangar, in no rush to end the kiss.
no subject
no subject
no subject
also apollo would NEVER wreck his plane... respect for the plane is the only thing keeping him alive