Chapter Text
It’s the lack of oxygen. It’s definitely the adrenaline, the possible head wound, the definite bodily trauma, and the crushing sense of helplessness as yet another thing breaks on this god forsaken ship. There are countless possibilities for pretending to be unconscious so you could stay under his body longer as you two laid there in the debris and rubble of the latest explosion and pressure burst.
You could have moved as soon as you woke up, make sure there wasn’t a round two to your fucked up merry-go-round of impending doom. But you didn’t, you didn’t move at all because it was more worth it to process what had happened and relish in the immediate feeling of warmth that spread through your chest. Eiffel had tried to cover you from the blast, and as much as you tried to blame it on trauma, you didn’t want to move from under him because it just felt so good to have remotely intimate human contact for the first time in… years?
“Holy SHIT!” Eiffel coughed as he rose from his dazed state, groaning and moving to get leverage by planting his hand beside your head and pushing himself to lean up a little. Stretched out across you, some small mass of rubble on top of you two keeping your bodies pressed together. “This is not the outcome I thought would happen from a goddamn yahtzee game! Hey comman- oh fuck, Minkowski! You okay?”
“I would be if you’d quit yelling” you mutter, fluttering your eyes open and getting your vision to go back into a clear state. Seeing doubles wasn’t a good sign. “I think I bashed my head in good. What’s the deck look like?” Eiffel didn’t shift his position as he looked around at your surroundings.
“Lots of sweeping, that’s what it looks like”
“Airlock properly sealed?”
“Yep, green light and everything. There are some loose wires hanging down by the door though, probably should avoid those” now he moves. The absence of his body does well to alert you of the rapidly cooling room. Crawling out a bit, you get yourself on your knees and then a supportive hand from the communications officer brings you to your feet. As soon as the emergency gravity requires you to be balanced, you find yourself slamming straight into a wall.
“Umm, commander, I know it’s pretty disappointing but I didn’t peg you for the dramatic type” he tries to joke because he knows you can hear the nervousness in his voice as quickly starts moving around to try and be beside you. You open your eyes only to find the room spin again and suddenly your legs are buckling and you’re crumpling to the ground.
His arms catch you, of course they do. So instead of using your strength trying to communicate important messages while Eiffel yells for Hera and Hilbert through a stream of curses, you decide to focus on what you could convince yourself could be the reason that you find yourself gratefully leaning into him. Your legs get swept up and you feel yourself begin to get carried. The room isn’t cold anymore.
-
There’s sunlight on your face. The cool lapping of water against your legs is a sweet relief from the brilliant rays and the heat it brings. You open your eyes and for a moment there’s nothing but the soft blues and greens of water and flora. You open your eyes a second time and there’s the stark white wall of a laboratory. Stark white patient bed mat, overhead lights, and dressing gown. Dressing gown? Oh fuck no.
“Ah! Welcome back commander” Dr. Hilbert greeted as he entered the room abruptly, making you jump a little.
“Status report, doctor” you groan, putting a hand up to your head and quickly flinching it away from the sharp sting that came from touching the bandage.
“Well short version is that you have minor head trauma and concussion. You had all sorts of little nicks for blood to leave so I went ahead and did a full body assessment while you were unconscious. Hope you don’t mind” you tried very hard not to shiver with discomfort at the image of your naked body laying on the table for Hilbert to have his creepy scientist way with.
“Great, that will be fun to get work done with” you sit to lean up on the bed, thankful that the gown isn’t open in the back and is instead just a small thing buttoned up from the front. Maybe if you’re lucky you can get to your bunk before Eiffel seeing you and laughing his head off about it for the next whole star sweep.
“Oh no Commander, you will not be working. You would not want to further your concussion damage and then force me to resort to using inadequate equipment to heal very delicate neurological processes. I would strongly suggest you take a very peaceful nap! I will come in to check on you shortly” he nodded, as if agreeing to his own advice before grabbing a clipboard and walking off.
You’d push the limits of his medical advice later, for now the soreness of waking up was just too much to bear in this creepy science dungeon. Getting to your feet, you start out towards the door with cautious steps, adjusting to the lightheadedness and the brightness of the light around you. Just as you reach to push the command pad to slide the door open, you realize it’s already sliding open.
Eiffel looks as caught off guard as you do.
“You’re awake” - “What’s the problem?” The two of you say at the same time, awkwardly taking a moment of silence to restart the conversation.
“You uh, feel okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Yeah I’m good, just a bit of bed rest. How about you?”
“Eh I’m always fine. Think I’ve built up a bit of immunity to explosions by now” he laughed. He hadn’t moved from the doorway, you hadn’t moved from your side either. The space between you was minimal and you kept expecting one of you to get distance but it didn’t happen. Again, it was definitely the concussion. “Okay, um, yeah glad you aren’t hurt. Or hurt worse I guess” he turned and left immediately, making you wonder if it was just you or if something really was off about that little bit of interaction. Regardless, you had more important things to do.
-
Sleep cycles are an easy thing to forget about in space. The star is red, the walls are gray, the void is black. The consistence doesn’t exactly do wonders for the circadian rhythm. So even though you laid in your bunk, lights off, clearly exhausted, sleep refused to come. Not unusal, it was never easy to catch a wink in this god forsaken tin can. After several hours of brain rest and no emergency raising you from your rest, you figured yourself healed enough to try and find something that would keep you occupied. Suiting up, you headed out over to the damaged section, hoping to find some sort of solace in cleaning.
“I can’t just do that Hera!” Eiffel pleaded in his exasperated tone. You slowed your walking down enough so you could catch a bit more of whatever nonsense they were going on about this time. As much as it annoyed you, the relationship between the AI and the officer was something eternally unique and deserved a bit of observation.
“I don’t see why not- oh, you have company. Hello commander” no use in delaying your entrance anymore.
“Hello Hera. Is this where you’ve taken to hiding from me Eiffel?”
“Ha, for your information I was actually doing work commander” he picks up the broom in his hand triumphantly.
“I’m impressed, truly. It’s not even scheduled work hours”
“Yeah well you know, gotta keep this tin can floating somehow” he tapped the wall with the broom and a screw popped out on the lower section. His low muttered curse brought a small laugh to your lips. A twinge ran through your head but it was worth it. When you looked back to him you saw him immediately looking away as if he had kept his eyes on you.
“Well I appreciate your efforts. Need an extra pair of hands?”
“Aren’t you on lock and key head rest?”
“I’ll be… gentle. Besides it’s either this or wandering the station and picking out twenty other things that will need to be fixed or looked at. Better to stay focused on something that can be fixed relatively easily”
“By all means then, my broom is your broom” he handed you the tool and stepped out to go retrieve another presumably. You busy yourself by getting some of the portion Eiffel had cleared of major debris into a tidy little corner that gave you an orderly sense of aesthetic satisfaction. Your officer returned but was clearly distracted, as every other sweep he seemed to hesitate and try to say something but fail. Eventually after so many small intakes of breath only resulting in a slight sigh, you finally gave in.
“Something wrong, Eiffel?”
“Who me? No no, just… wondering how you’re… doing?”
“I’m fine?”
“Oh good. Good, good. A Plus, one hundred percent. Just because, you know, being stuck on a tiny station with two other people and having to be in charge every second of the day must be pretty tiring, I mean hell, I can’t even be in charge of myself. Though I guess you kinda get off on all that protocol shit so you’re probably hunky dory. But even the sith lord had a buddy, even if it was kind of a crazy evil buddy. Not that I’m calling you evil but this station is just about as poorly built as the death star”
“Is there a point to this or do you really not get enough of listening to yourself speak?” he seemed to hesitate and contemplate what he was going to say. The small action actually scared you a little coming from him.
“Do you ever just miss people? Not like, friends and family, that’s obvious. I mean a random guy you see on the subway, or someone who accidentally bumps into you. Little things you take for granted like a handshake, someone who claps you on the back. Being stuck out here, even though there are people it still feels like there’s a ten foot pole between all of us. Hell I think there’s a good portion of days out here where we don’t even see each other, just yell across the intercom” it occurred to you that this was probably the longest he had ever gone in a conversation being completely serious and without making any kind of pop culture reference. It didn’t feel right almost, coming from him. “I talked to Hera about it actually, she called it touch starvation sounds right up Hilbert’s alley if you ask me. She actually suggested that I ask- ah nevermind, I got kind of sidetracked. So you’re never going to believe the amount of stuff I’ve found in those back rooms, I’m thinking of building a shrine to command and seeing if they’ll give us a raise or something” he laughed at his own hurriedly added joke.
“I didn’t know you were being bothered by it that much” you mutter honestly, feeling as though you should repay the gesture of sincere conversation. “I can… understand the feeling. Being stuck out here does a lot of things to your mind, it’s not uncommon for crews to start presenting with symptoms. That’s why command encourages all the bonding exercises they do, trying to strengthen crew unity and prevent the decay of mental health”
“I don’t suppose there’s some scheduled game of Twister on the docket though. As much as I enjoy Hilbert getting all nice and cozy in my personal space, I feel as though he’d take the opportunity to jab me with some weird new chemical to decrease my oxygen demand or something. Or maybe he’d make me glow in the dark, gotta admit that would actually be a little cool”
“No, Hilbert probably self medicates against emotions so he can stay cooped up in his lab longer”
“Why commander was that a joke? It’s been a full good month before one of those came from you” you shake your head, a smile on your lips that doesn’t fade.
“If I didn’t have to yell at you every five seconds I think you’ll find I’m perfectly capable of being humorous”
“Yeahhhh, but there’s not as much fun in that for me”
“You’re an ass”
“And a sweet one too. But that being said, I think I’ve had enough midnight overtime, I’ll see you at O’ eight hundred” he leaned the broom against the wall and rolled out his shoulders before letting out a huge yawn.
“Wait” you found your voice saying before your mind fully agreed to it. “Do you… want a hug?” you would much rather shoot yourself in the foot than hear those words leave your mouth again. It was awkward and uncomfortable as it hung in the air next to Eiffels blank expression. “Neverm-”
“Yeah” he sounded just as awkward as you. Now the two of you were stuck in the uncomfortable stagnate air as he picked his way back to you, standing just in front of you and avoiding eye contact as much as you were. With hesitant and jerky movements, you raised yourself up a bit on the tips of your toes to compensate for how much taller you forgot he was than you. The image of someone trying to very carefully hug a cactus without being stabbed in the eye was a perfect simile for how Eiffel was, gently putting his arms around you while trying to be as professional as possible. It was too awkward, this whole thing was a bad idea.
So then why was it that you called to mind the feeling of him against you after the explosion, and in doing so wrapped your arms around his neck. That seemed to send off some kind of green light to him and he enclosed you in his arms fully, bringing you against him. You definitely didn’t think this was the appropriate action that you could have taken. But there were just so many different factors giving you an excuse to break any kind of protocol you could scrounge up that you really couldn’t care. Even if it was weird to think of it as being friendly with Eiffel of all people, you couldn’t dismiss the fact that he was still a living, breathing, human being who was never meant to go so long without contact like this. Just like you.
“Well, um, I guess I’ll see you in a couple hours” he muttered as he pulled away slowly, taking the process as gently as before.
“Right. Sleep well” you nod, taking your hands off him and trying to do something to keep your hands busy enough to not go back to him. He leaves. You leave. Somehow you feel like started something you had no control over.
You aren’t sure what to make of that.