Caspian was in severe need of a drink, and a smoke. Several drinks. Several smokes.
After the incident with Tiger, Caspian had been escorted to listen to a lecture on the importance of command chain. He had recited through all the ranks and helpfully pointed out that Nicky, an operator, was a pilot officer - ranking directly above him as a flying officer and an analyst.
“Under the umbrella rank of flying officer, analysts provide information for squadron leaders. Squadron leaders, not flying officers, manage pilots. Have you anything to say for your defense?”
“I was right, and he was wrong,” he had replied. It had not been the right thing to say, but at least he was not being decommissioned. Even if it was only due to them being short on mechanics and this having been an isolated incident.
Caspian wanted to think it was because he had been right.
It wasn’t like he didn’t know his place. Operators guided the pilots, not him, and interfering with a mission was a quick way to get the pilots in a dangerous situation. Certainly there were a lot of intricacies to being an operator Caspian couldn’t understand from his position.
But he had never been good at ignoring facts. This made him an excellent analyst.
Just, this time it had cost him the few lukewarm friendships he had managed to make at the base. Operators treated him as ‘holier-than-thou’, other analysts as ‘ruined our reputation’. Even mechanics seemed to be suddenly busy when he went to the canteen to buy cigarettes. Three packs - one for smoking and two to be exchanged for cheap rum readily available from soldiers who ran errands outside the base.
With his newly acquired bottle and the remaining pack of cigarettes, he walked to the elevator and headed to the bottom floor, where the boiler room was.
Excluding the cleaner who came by once per day in the morning and the mechanic who came by during the night shift to make sure everything was all right, the boiler room was always empty. Once Caspian had realised this, it had become his little shelter from the world.
He climbed the stairs with his treasures and settled comfortably on the large mechanic platform, just ready to screw open the cork when the door opened. Caspian instinctively lowered himself to the darkest corner of the platform and peered at the door. Below him, he saw the least likely person to wander in here.
Everyone at the base knew Nova Creed. Born to a famed soldier and an excellent scientist specialising in the anomaly threat, the Creed brothers were the poster boys of the Eurasia base. Their achievements were undeniable, which also made them prime candidates for civilian propaganda. The war is almost won - fear not, the pilots will protect you!
From what Caspian had heard, Nova was actually a cocky, arrogant prick. It was a truth universally acknowledged throughout the base that no-one other than Liam Creed could match Nova in skill, nor ever be good enough to pilot with him.
Nova was not wearing his usual smug grin today. It was replaced with a sombre expression that was well-matched by his slumped shoulders and worn demeanour. None of it prevented Caspian from admiring the dark, tousled hair and toned arms revealed by the dark t-shirt.
Not that an analyst could ever really hope to sleep with a star pilot, but looking was free.
Caspian wondered what the star pilot was doing here.
Nova walked under the maintenance platform and disappeared from Caspian’s field of vision. Then Caspian heard a hand grasping onto the same ladder he had climbed up just a moment earlier. He listened to the heavy, metallic, rhythmic sound echoing in the room until Nova climbed onto the platform and back into his vision.
Nova straightened himself and looked up, twitching as he finally noticed he wasn’t alone. Caspian flashed a brief grin and raised his bottle in a greeting.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” His voice was purposefully theatrical with the intent to disarm any potential hostility. The gesture matched it, a peace offering in the form of a terrible drink.
Nova stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded, before his lips curved into the expression more familiar to Caspian: a confident, curious smile. Caspian was well aware of how it looked, because he was one of the people who had been paying very close attention to it. The appreciative kind.
“Didn’t expect this spot to be taken,” Nova greeted and slid a hand to his thigh pocket, pulling out a thin bottle of whiskey. He waved it towards Caspian in a mirrored gesture.
“Do you mind sharing, or should I find another spot to drink at?” Caspian made a grandiose gesture to his right. As Nova sat down, he opened the bottle of rum and handed it over.
“You’re an analyst, right? What’s your name?” Nova asked and eyed through Caspian’s uniform, stopping briefly at the rank marks before tasting the rum. It was the worst drink available here, and his grimace was a testament to that.
“Bauman if you go by last name basis, Caspian if not,” Caspian introduced himself, accepted the bottle back and did his best not to grimace as strongly when taking a sip.
“As for you, you don’t really need introductions, lieutenant,” he continued. Nova’s smile turned terse.
“Nova. I’m currently off-duty.” Caspian arched a surprised brow - Nova was not known for informality - but nodded and raised a bottle to him.
“Nova, then,” he agreed and took another sip. He watched as Nova opened the whiskey with a sigh, then offered it to him. Whiskey was expensive, and Caspian’s rum was a matter of budget as well as an acquired taste. The whiskey burned on his tongue as he took a sip.
“Strong,” he coughed and handed the bottle back. “So what brings you to the boiler room? Would imagine that someone of your stature would be drinking in better company.”
Nova’s eyes shifted. Caspian made a note on how the thin smile hanging on the pilot’s lips didn’t betray as much emotion as the deep, thoughtful brown of his eyes.
“Well, as I said, I wasn’t really expecting company tonight.” Something was aching beneath the tone, some still-stinging wound Nova concealed behind a tilt of his head, the curly hair barely reaching the shoulders as he redirected the conversation: “What about you? Come here often?”
“Only when it’s been a heavy day,” Caspian replied and allowed the new topic to brush the previous one aside. Up close Nova seemed like the kind of person who was used to dictating the pace and flow of conversations. “Today was one of those.”
“I’m assuming those are for heavy days, too,” Nova commented and nodded towards the cigarette pack.
“Smoke?” Caspian offered the pack towards Nova, whose eyes lingered on the package for a brief moment before locking decisively on the bottle.
“Tempting, but will have to pass,” he sighed and took another sip of whiskey. “Piloting is rough work, can’t really wreck up my lungs.”
“One smoke probably doesn’t hurt,” Caspian chuckled, but accepted the answer. He fished one cigarette from the carton, pulled up a lighter and filled his lungs with smoke. Watching the thin, wispy trails spiralling towards the air vent never failed to put his mind at ease. It was less about the chemicals and more about the force of habit.
“My brother is at the medical ward right now.” Nova had made steady progress through half of the small whiskey bottle. Caspian arched his brow, but didn’t push. Nova either would talk about it if he wanted to, and if not, he probably couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. He took a sip from the rum, then offered it back towards Nova. The pilot took it, not even looking towards Caspian as he brought the bottle to his lips and drank so eagerly a thin trail of alcohol dripped from the corner of his mouth.
“Our operator fucked up during a mission. It happens. Just that this time it happened in a way that was almost fatal,” Nova stated briefly and wiped away the stain from his chin with the back of his hand.
Caspian remembered the data feed from earlier, the abnormality pattern that he had recognized in the blink of an eye. The fear that had gripped his heart when the operator clearly did not realise the pattern was just an overture.
Something like that could be almost fatal.
“That’s ugly,” Caspian commented.
“It is,” Nova concurred. His tone was calm and emotionless; either he did not understand the gravity of the situation, or it had not sunk in yet, or it had and he was trying not to think about it. “We don’t know if he will ever walk again.”
“Who’s your operator?” Caspian tried his best to keep the tone casual.
“Nicky. You know him?” Caspian felt Nova’s eyes on him at the question and took the rum bottle back.
“Not personally,” he said and took a deep sip, deeming it a safe answer.
“Because the weird part is, there was this analyst,” Nova muttered, frowning heavily at his bottle as he turned away from Caspian. “They don’t take part in operations, obviously, but this one interfered. Said we should not engage.”
“Yeah, that was me,” Caspian muttered and took a swig.
He wasn’t good at ignoring facts.
There was a silence the size and shape of a black hole appeared where Nova had been. Caspian didn’t dare to look up from the opposing wall, because he had sat through one lecture today already and wasn’t in the mood for another.
“Thank you for trying.”
Nova’s voice was silent, but not hostile. Caspian saw regret and frustration gleaming in the darkened eyes as Nova brought a bottle to his lips as well, drinking eagerly and sighing before continuing.
“I’ve been replaying that scene in my head ever since we got back. What we could have done, what we should have done. If there was any way to prevent… that… from happening.” He paused to run his fingers through his hair, then looked solemnly towards Caspian.
“The only thing I can come up with is what you suggested, without even seeing the situation, just by looking at the raw data.”
If you want to live, do not engage with it so close to the rift.
Caspian brought his rum bottle to collide with Nova’s, softly.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your brother, he offered.” Nova sneered slightly at the words, before finishing the whiskey with a deep swig and wiping his mouth with his hand again. Steel flashed in his hardened eyes as resolve when he turned to Caspian with a light smile.
“If I get another partner, I’ll make it so that you will be my operator.”
Caspian almost choked on his drink from laughter.
“Excuse me?” Nova wasn’t laughing.
“I’m serious,” Nova said, not laughing. “You didn’t see the main monitor, you didn’t hear the voice comms. You just looked at the data and knew what would happen if we engaged,” Nova said calmly, not taking his eyes off Caspian. “That is the kind of person I want as my operator.”
Of course Caspian had heard the rumours of Nova being headstrong. A part of him had brushed them off as embellishment or jealousy, but perhaps there was more truth to it than previously anticipated. Nova was talking about it as if it had already been decided, as if he just needed to click his fingers and his will would be done.
“Sure. If you can somehow convince the commanding officer to make an analyst into an operator,” he finally sneered.
“He’ll do it if I ask.” Nova’s voice was confident and punctuated with an idle shrug. He placed the empty whiskey bottle to the side, then fished out a new, full one from his other pocket. Caspian accepted the first sip from the new bottle, idly wondering how it would be like to live in Nova’s world, so certain that people around him would be willing to accommodate his requests.
Nova’s world, where he was putting his life on line to keep others safe, every day.
And not just his own life. His brother’s life, too.
From there, the conversation drifted to a lot more mundane and a lot less personal, and by the time they were done, Caspian felt like the Nova he had been observing and admiring from a distance had paled in comparison to the warm, radiant person he had shared drinks with.
A man can dream.
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