[oom] A Pot of Tea

[dejah_thoris]

This is the part of the project she enjoys the most.  The design phase, where ideas start to take form and the project takes on a certain life of its own.  She has compiled all the research she needs.  She's relatively certain she's aware of all the issues that must be addressed in the final design.  Now it's time to synthesize these ideas and put her pens to paper.  As form follows function, and evolution has handled refining the design, all she needs to do is adapt the technology to the original biological schematics.  Layers upon layers, she builds up the image, from structure to power, sensors to servos.  She can't help but put her own aesthetic into the work, and in sketching, she decides that she'll have to fabricate several of the parts by hand.

Woola found his way back and was snoozing in front of the fire.  She'd been up since the wee hours of the morning.  The rats had brought her morning meal without her even having to ask.  Now, she sat at her drawing board, her long hair pinned back from her face, speared through with a quill.  At her elbow, a growing stack of dirty tea cups that would have to be addressed sooner or later.

But not right now.  She wanted to get the last few pieces of the external forearm onto the vellum, just as she'd imagined it.

Comments

[2goodarms]

Curtis opens his eyes. He doesn't draw back, but he shifts enough to give her his full attention, frowning.

Soft: "Who did?"

[dejah_thoris]

"The Thern. You would call them angels, but they were a force of pain and chaos and destruction. They whispered in the ears of powerful men and stoked the engines of our downfall. Ten thousand years of war. The last thousand between Helium and Zodanga. My home and our enemy."

She opens her eyes to tell him the abridged version.

"They tried to assassinate me for my work. I had deciphered their weapons, their technology. And I agreed to give my hand in marriage to the enemy, so they would spare Helium. Only the Thern planned to have me murdered on my wedding night. As a final humiliation to my people."

[2goodarms]

"Jesus," he breathes.

That's what the part of her letter met. His fingers shift from her knee, find her free hand, and curl tight.

[dejah_thoris]

She takes his hand, draws it to her own cheek, whispers against his palm.

"No, he was a man. As far as I know," she says, her voice a quiet, dry laugh. "Though Peter, I have my doubts about. He at least was under their influence."

[2goodarms]

He exhales another soundless laugh, without much humor.

Decades of hearing Wilford revered as a god; he thinks of the schoolteacher with her wide, manic grin, the rows of children singing and pantomiming their worship to the Sacred Engine. But the tail never believed him more than a man. The shock wasn't that he was cruel -- it was how deep that cruelty truly went.

The tail had their own gods instead. Like Gilliam.

And that still doesn't compare to actual angels turning on you.

"You survived," he murmurs. "What happened?"

[dejah_thoris]

She smiles against his palm, shakes her head. "John Carter. John Carter saw through their disguise and shattered it. He saved my life. He saved my people." It is an old sadness. Heavy but comfortable.

"He stood at my back while I figured out how to expose them. How to turn their technology against them."

She holds gently to his wrist at her cheek, her fingers curled around to rest on his pulse. Her other hand shifts from his cheek to his jaw, and so delicately, so carefully, curls around the back of his neck. Her fingertips stroke the short hairs at his nape.

"He died a natural death, over a hundred earth years ago. And I still miss him every day."

Her voice rises, almost becomes girlish at the end. Beneath the iron facade of the warrior queen, there is a flesh and blood woman. It is nothing more than the truth. She does not see ghosts of John in Curtis's face. If anything, she sees the promise of something she thought long since lost to her.

[2goodarms]

Curtis' breath catches. For an instant, his grip tightens involuntarily before he can refocus his thoughts.

It's difficult to reconcile: the sheer humanity of her words, the emotion behind them, and the reminder that she is so ancient compared to anyone -- anything -- Curtis knows. He can't fathom carrying a burden like that for a century. He would've discarded it long ago.

"How can you stand it?" he whispers.

[dejah_thoris]

He tightens his grip and she does as well, caught in the well of gravity between them.

"I put one foot in front of the other. I focus on my work, on my people. I just... keep moving."

By the end, she's clinging to him, unabashedly. He can hear the fatigue in her voice.

[2goodarms]

He doesn't think. He just pulls his hand free of hers, as gently as he can, so he can slip his arm around her shoulders.

(It's easier than he expected.)

"Me too."

[dejah_thoris]

She exhales, her hands snaking around his waist and around his neck. She yields, buries her face in his throat. Her breath stutters, but she does not cry.

"I never expected you. I never thought that..."

[2goodarms]

So many years with no personal space. Suddenly, in Milliways, he could have all the space he wanted; even in their shared quarters, Curtis and Edgar can walk past each other without touching.

Maybe that's why it feels like little knots of tension are releasing all up his spine: he needs this as much as he needed that new room, the familiarity of someone else's body heat, the sense of being tethered to something small within the vastness around him.

(She smells...clean. Like open air. Like the perfumed flowers in the greenhouse car.)

"Hm?"

[dejah_thoris]

She breathes him in, like she could take some small part of him into her and never let it go. Her hand fists in his shirt. She barely shakes her head, leaning into the warmth and solidity of his body.

"I never expected you. You," she laughs under her breath, "I can't explain it."

[2goodarms]

"Yeah, well."

He tries for a smile.

"This place gets fucking weird sometimes."

[dejah_thoris]

She hears the smile in his voice and pulls back just enough so she can see it in his eyes. Again, her hand lights on his cheek, smoothes down his beard. She looks at him with a quiet wonder in her gaze.

After a breath, a moment to look into those blue eyes, she can't help herself. Eyelids heavy, heart racing, she leans in to touch her lips to the very corner of his mouth. It is the softest of all kisses, but she lingers.

[2goodarms]

All he'd have to do is move his head half an inch. Just the smallest motion.

I can't --

Curtis moves.

He meets her lips with his own, just as soft; his hand slides to the back of her neck and curls there to steady them both. Everything seems to go quiet. Not like the suffocating soundlessness of the engine, but like an enormous crowd drawing themselves down into a hush, waiting, wondering what will happen next.

[dejah_thoris]

The space between heartbeats seems to stretch, and she lingers. She savors the lush softness of his mouth, the heat of his fingertips on her bare skin.

A kiss is a living, breathing moment, ultimately ephemeral but alive. She dared to breathe life into this kiss, closing her eyes and tilting her head. Telling him and asking him, in the same breath.

Stay with me just a while longer. Please.

[2goodarms]

He tries. Like the artificial days and nights he's constructed, Curtis has no idea how long the kiss truly lasts. But as his pulse speeds up, and he feels his breath coiling lower, the single thought surges back -- no.

He tears himself away, gasping in air as he bows his head.

[dejah_thoris]

He pulls away and her chest goes tight. She makes no attempt to hold tight to him, but she does not let him go. She rests her forehead against his and lets out a slow breath. Her hand trembles at the back of his neck.

"Too much?"

[2goodarms]

"Yeah," he whispers.

Forehead to forehead, though: that's fine. Keeping his hand against her neck, mirroring Dejah's posture, that also seems fine.

Maybe if she wasn't Front, he'd have fewer reservations. Maybe if he wasn't here. Maybe, maybe, too many fucking maybes, he just knows that he desperately needs to hurl himself back from the edge of this cliff before he falls.

[dejah_thoris]

She nods, rests against him. Her fingers caress the nape of his neck, so lightly over the soft hair.

"Too much."

So why does every inch of her skin ache now? Why is her mouth dry? Why does this feel like falling from the sky?

[2goodarms]

Some moments later, Curtis wills himself to move. It's so much harder than moving that half an inch: he slips his hand over Dejah's shoulder, pauses at her collarbone, then draws his fingers away.

It feels like he should apologize. He can't do that, either.

"So, um," he begins, and has no idea what to say next.

[dejah_thoris]

Her hands are slower to move, coming to rest on his chest. She does pull back a bit, putting some air between them. She finally drags her gaze up to meet his. A hopeful smile touches her eyes.

"I didn't imagine that, did I?"

[2goodarms]

He cracks a tiny smile.

"No," he says. "That...definitely happened."

[dejah_thoris]

"It did. It happened. I didn't dream it."

She flushes at the sight of his subtle grin, and her gaze drops.

"I should -- there's -- there are things you need to know about me, Curtis. If we -- you -- I mean, if you want this to happen again."

Please goddess let him want this to happen again.

[2goodarms]

The smile fades. The tension shifts higher in his chest, no longer as pleasant; he draws in a long breath, lets it out slowly.

"I don't know," he confesses.

It's not about wanting. God yes he'd like to do this again. But it's like looking ahead and seeing the tracks end abruptly in twisted metal: if they can move forward, he doesn't know how.