Hot In Here

Posted on Sun Jun 9th, 2024 @ 1:48pm by Lieutenant JG Calanthe 'Cal' Diaz & Commander Benjamin Jamesson
Edited on on Sun Jun 9th, 2024 @ 2:09pm

Mission: Contagion
Location: Communication Hub
Timeline: Day 369
4397 words - 8.8 OF Standard Post Measure

Ben had given Calanthe a couple of days to get used to being back on the ship before he sought her out and he used her shift in the communication as cover for it as well as a report from O’Connery that something was wrong with one of the heaters. He strode in and instantly regretted it as the heat slammed into him. How was she managing to work in such stifling conditions? There she was, though, at the console, as if she hadn’t almost been devoured by the rogue flora just two days prior. Her focus was unwavering, her fingers dancing over the keys with practised ease.

Ben could not help but marvel at her resilience. “How are you not a ball on the floor here, Lieutenant.” He said by way of greeting.

Having been born and mostly raised within a stone's throw of the Mediterranean, Calanthe generally found space travel to be slightly colder than she preferred. It played heavily into her reluctance to get out of bed in the morning, and the recent sojourn on Relia had only served to heighten her longing for a genuine bout of tropical heat. The malfunctioning heater wasn't quite the same, nor was it necessarily a moderate compromise, but once she'd taken her uniform jacket off, the temperature hadn't been really half as bad as everyone was complaining about. That hadn't stopped her features from flushing, nor had it kept her hairline from becoming a mass of damp, wispy curls despite the bulk of her hair being pulled back into a high ponytail away from her neck. It just meant that, whilst the rest of her department had vacated, Cal had pushed through and was mostly managing just fine.

"The deck plating is damp with condensation, I don't need the added moisture." Using the back of her hand to push perspiration away from her brow, Cal added, "You come to partake in my new sauna initiative? Great for crew morale, I haven't heard a whisper of complaint in the last hour." The empty room had nothing to say to contradict her.

"Afraid not. I am here to fix the source of the issue." He chuckled, stepping further into the room despite the heat. “Well, I suppose there are worse ways to sweat out the stress. Just make sure you don’t overdo it. We need you in one piece.” It took him several more moments of just sweating before he realised he needed to get a layer off. He undid his flight suit leaving him with his dark blue vest and wrapped the arms around his waist much like she had. “I’m not sure I could ever get used to this. Is the heater really broken, or are you just trying to turn this place really into a sauna?”

"I haven't touched a thing, I'm just making the best of a situation I can't control."

Even if she hadn't intended it as such, it was such a loaded statement that Calanthe would have struggled to deny it wasn't applicable to more than just her current situation. Interestingly enough, she was slightly more annoyed at the ongoing insistence she be adversely affected by recent events than she was at the events themselves. Having spoken to the others, there was a general agreement that a sense of detachment had made it difficult to feel truly scared whilst trapped on the 'station', which made sense now that they knew they were being slowly conditioned towards becoming a non-resistant meal. Cal knew she should probably feel something about that but admitting to indifference sounded like a sure-fire way to set off alarm bells regarding her mental health. Instead, she settled for the assumption of putting on her brave face.

"But, if you insist on destroying my tropical oasis, I suppose I can't blame you." Turning her seat around, Cal offered the engineer a half-grin. "All part of the new job, right?"

"Got to think of the computers that are struggling here and water and heat are not the best for them." He said grinning at her. "So yes it is all part of the new job." He was starting to find his groove for lack of a better term for it. "But at least it allowed us a catch-up?" He ventured as he turned to look at the heaters.

That seemed to catch the Communications Chief by surprise. There was no doubt that, since the pair of them had agreed to focus first on renewing their friendship, things had become decidedly easier but Calanthe realised with a twinge of guilt for not having thought of it sooner that Ben was always likely to be a little off-kilter if she came under threat, if only because of the memories it provoked. Tucking her hands beneath her knees, she decided to remain seated whilst turning her attention towards a conversation she otherwise would have claimed was entirely unnecessary. "I guess it has been a weird week."

"I bet but here you are working away." He said finding the heater on the floor instead of up high like he had assumed but it made sense with the heat rising. It was certainly a learning curve in his new role but every day should be a learning day for someone like him. Ben thrived on learning and it was the one thing that drove him crazy that they had no access to learning development things but it did make him think on something he needed to speak to someone about at some point - learning in the future.

"Well, this is where the work is," Calanthe reasoned. "And if you look at my actual contribution to this mission, I've probably filled my quota of standing around being useless." Hands still tucked beneath her, the brunette shrugged, almost apologetic for how non-affected she sounded. "There really doesn't seem to be any point taking down-time, it's not as if anything bad actually happened."

Benjamin had just been about to crouch down and start venturing beneath the floor plating when he heard her words. He turned and narrowed his eyes. "You think you contributed nothing to the last couple of weeks hmm?" He said before carrying on with his assessment of her. "You put yourself on such a high pedestal that you will never be able to reach what you expect of yourself. You, Lieutenant Calanthe Diaz, are an amazing linguist, an amazing officer and an amazing woman and you contributed to this whole ship on an hourly basis. Like right this second you working in a sauna because you think you should."

It was not fair, Calanthe considered not for the first time, that he'd had such a head-start in learning how to shut her up. Mouth slightly agape as the words for a witty response failed to present themselves, she found herself grateful for the stuffiness if only because it had already painted her face pink enough for additional embarrassment, pleased though it might be, not to show. "All I meant," she eventually tried to recover with, "was that this particular mission didn't end up requiring all that much of me. Not enough to miss duty shifts."

As much as she hadn't been fishing for compliments, there was something deeply poignant about the way Ben had chosen to chastise her. If the jumbled mess of combined memories could be trusted, it wasn't the first time he'd said them, even if it was the first time he'd said them to her specifically. She found herself wondering if he remembered, or if it had been an accidental slip, and that put her in a very familiar place of not knowing if she should draw attention to it. Certainly, a lot about how they interacted had become easier with everything out in the open, but there were still times when Calanthe wasn't sure if the progress was theirs or if Ben was just slipping into habits he didn't catch in time. As was usually the case when confronted with this kind of indecision, Calanthe reached sideways for an adjacent topic, the best example of which was currently a confession she'd been meaning to keep to herself.

"I just...don't feel much about what happened. I can't explain it, I know I was weirded out while I was over there but that kind of started to wear off towards the end..."

The man stepped a couple of steps closer and looked at her carefully. "Have you considered that it might be after-effects from the creature that was there?" He wondered. He knew his version of Calanthe and he knew this version of her well enough to know there was something not quite right in her viewpoint at the moment.

The knit of her eyebrows suggested that Calanthe hadn't considered the possibility, though if she was honest that was partially because she hadn't really found herself wanting to explain it. Most of her discomfort was centred around other people finding out and thinking her strange. "You think it did something to me to make me not feel bothered?" There was hesitation in her expression as she mulled over the theory. "I guess. Or it could just be that it wasn't really a big deal for me in the end. The Luminari were there longer, they lost people. I just sort of stood around, watched the walls do weird things, and then came home."

Her frown deepened.

"I guess...that does sound like something that would usually stress me out."

The man offered a smile and then a squeeze on her shoulder before stepping back to give her some more space. "It would so let us hope these feelings of not being bothered fade because you are one of the most caring people on this ship." He hated that she felt like that but it was not something that he could help with but he could try and keep her right until the feelings came back.

"I haven't stopped caring to that extent." Had she been entirely apathetic, Calanthe would have found it harder to convince herself that something was wrong, even if the compulsion was trying to steer her towards that conclusion. "For instance, if you're not more careful with that deck plating and burn yourself, I will be concerned enough to kick your ass." The twinkle of mischief in her eyes was proof enough that she hadn't lost all sense of self.

"I am going to be super careful." He assured glancing back at where he had started to work but had stopped his momentum to talk to her. "And I am sure that you can not kick my ass without my permission." But he took the hint that maybe he should return to work as he was sweating all over now.

"How sure?" The retort was shot back at such a speed as to be entirely reassuring that the brunette wasn't suffering too much from a lapse in mental faculty.

Well, that was a good sign, he decided as she retorted back to him. "A good seventy per cent." He countered raising an eyebrow for a moment almost challenging her to try. "But that might be the heat talking."

"And what are my chances," Calanthe grinned, arms folded across her chest as she draped one leg over the other, "of getting you to give me permission?" It was meant as harmless banter, or at least she felt the constant strain of trying to confine it to friendly overtures. It was easier said than done with a head full of all the other times he'd had to take his shirt off because of the heat, not very many of which had anything to do with the temperature controls.

The man gulped as he looked her over. "Not high at the moment." He said his gaze lingering for a moment before he wrenched it away, cursing himself for straying from their safe position of discovering themselves again as each other as this version.

Not so very long ago, the silence that followed would have been an awkward one. There had been a resolution, of sorts, at least inside Calanthe's own mind, that had gradually curbed her tendency to feel guilty every time she enjoyed his admittedly-accidental flirtatious remarks. So far, they had proven that navigating this entire situation was best done with absolute openness and a willingness to be honest with each other and she trusted that Ben would draw the line in the sand wherever it was needed. He, after all, had the most emotional investment to recover.

"Then I guess I'm stuck with my thirty percent. Of course, you could just be careful and spare us the coin flip." Pushing out of her seat, which resulted in the unmistakable sound of damp flesh peeling away from leather, Calanthe untangled her headset and dumped it on the chair before approaching. "Here, give me the kit, I'll pass down to you so you don't have to burn fingers groping for things." It was a role she was becoming increasingly more familiar with where he was concerned, enough that Calanthe realised she could just about name every tool in clear view.

The man dropped the kit on the floor and turned away to start taking the panels off with a frustrated noise. It was for himself and not for her but it was certainly not how he had thought it was going to go him coming down there. "Damn sauna." He muttered under his breath as he slid the plating in front of him across and started to work his way down unto the underfloor.

As was often the case when something jogged a memory that wasn't really hers and yet was now part of a legacy she was left to carry forward, Cal found herself suppressing a smile at the engineer's annoyance. He didn't handle the heat as well as she did, though the more intimate recollections that she tended to keep mostly to herself were proof that he made a fantastic hot water bottle as a result of his own capacity to run warm. This grumpiness was not something he usually expressed, being far too reserved to impose that kind of reaction on those around him. It was reassuring, in a strange way, that he didn't feel the same kind of pressure to hold everything in around her.

"Just think of it as sweating out all the toxins," she pointed out conversationally, sitting cross-legged with the toolkit in her lap to wait for the first request.

"Mmmhmm." He muttered aloud but the inside thoughts were anything short and sweet. He was thinking of thoughts that he should not have and was thankful that lying on his back and looking at nothing other than a heat relay valve was giving him. A cold shower would not go amiss either but that could wait until he had fixed this heater that was dragging everything from quarters across the ship.

"I really need to ask Hera if there are any tropical beaches as accessible as Relia was. There's got to be somewhere we could visit that doesn't freeze a person to the bone."

Already the differences between Cal and the version Ben had known so well had proven to be mostly insignificant details, like the lack of tattoo on her hip and the fact that she had stuck with Communications rather than retraining over to bolster the Armory's numbers. Personality-wise, it was hard to draw a distinction, which was why her current obliviousness to Ben's discomfort was altogether too familiar. Oh, he had plenty of memories of her intentionally getting under his collar but she also had an incredible capacity to get so lost in her own head that she stopped noticing the situation developing around her. Right now, it was clear she was swept up in the idea of finding a deck chair somewhere to inhabit for at least a week.

The man had not really spoken with the alien that had brought onboard but maybe it would be nice to learn something from someone who had never experienced Earth or anything. He filed it away to think on better later but he really did not think he wanted a tropical beach. It would not do anything to cool any of his urges.

”I would rather have an ice bath right now.” He admitted absently as he under did the hatch and finally got to look at the heater. “Can you pass me the red screwdriver.” He asked holding his hand out to her.

With only the minimum amount of scrutiny required to identify the correct tool interrupting her daydream, Cal leaned forward to hand the screwdriver over whilst weighing up the appeal of a cold bath over a dip in warmer waters. "It's not the same if there's no sand to get everywhere," she lamented.

The man grappled around until his hand found the tool and pulled it down to where he was working and fiddling around with the heater. He needed to work quicker as the temperature was worse down there. “Not why I need a cold shower, Calanthe.” He chuckled that they were having two very different conversations.

It was enough to interrupt a very lovely vision of a hammock under the shade of some alien-version of a coconut tree, which Calanthe refused to believe didn't exist. The universe owed her something by now, surely. Once again, a situation emerged that Ben, having had the most experience out of the pair of them when it came to dealing with the other side of Calanthe's flights of fancy, could likely have predicted. Genuine confusion set in, followed by a sincerely oblivious attempt at picking up a thread she'd clearly missed along the way. For a woman so capable of out-sassing him, these moments of genuine innocence were endearing.

"I get it, you're in a hot hole in the ground, but would it kill you to turn on the imagination once in a while," she teased, having assumed he was being literal about his situation.

The man nearly tried to sit up at the teasing but remembered a split second before his head collided with the deck above. He burst out laughing unable to keep it to himself anymore. “My imagination is fully active, Cal. I’m very hot and flustered right now.” He assured in a strained tone as he tried to stop his mind venturing any further into the gutter.

It was an odd sensation, the activation of a memory that wasn't quite hers and yet rested so comfortably amongst all the other fragments that were slowly combining into such a coherent version of herself that even Cal couldn't tell where the merge line was. When Smith had first dumped everything he'd stolen from Ben's version of her into her head, the resulting slurry had been a disorienting mess but time had a way of providing its own resolution and there were moments where Cal forgot that it wasn't actually her experience she was drawing on. Right now, she was definitely being gifted a cheat-sheet from a far more savvy perspective that recognised immediately what the man's tone meant. By rights, it should have been a shock, could potentially have even been intensely awkward, and yet there was so much honesty to it, and the trust that came with investment she felt a little guilty for trying to claim, that her genuine first reaction was to burst out laughing too.

"I am going to throw this entire kit at you, Commander." The empty threat at least warranted a pantomime of lifting the toolbelt in preparation.

"And I would deserve it." He muttered feeling suddenly ashamed that he had strayed from the rules that they had created to learn about each other properly. He stayed quiet for a long moment as he pulled out the parts and started to check them to find the stuck valve. "Sorry... Can you pass me the pliers?" he asked holding up his hand for it.

And so the cycle continued. Weeks ago, it still would have been likely that Cal plunged into the awkwardness right alongside him but whether it was her current state of blissful indifference to stress or just the confidence of time's passage, there just wasn't the same level of guilt as there had once been. More difficult to ignore was the flutter of excitement now that he had admitted to at least residual attraction but easiest to act on was a pragmatic refusal to let him keep crawling back inside his shell.

Reaching out, she tapped him on the head lightly with the tool before placing it in his hand.

"There's actual zero reason to apologise, you know." Confronting issues head-on had proven to be the best way of dealing with them so far, and since it suited Cal's nature to bulldoze through in any case, she barely broke any additional sweat in dipping her head to try to catch his eye. "Part of giving things time is adjusting to when things change. You do have a horse in this race, Ben, it's nice for once to hear you reference anything about your own needs."

“Well yes…but I am also trying to not pressure you.” he said quietly as he fiddled a little more with the valve and moved things around for a moment before putting the valve back. With several more mumbles and grumbles he reconnected everything and turned the heater or air conditioning back on depending on need. The blast of cool hair hitting him was a sweet relief, cooling him instantly thanks to the sweat that was dripping from him. "There we go." He mumbled scooting back out of the hole that he was in.

From her vantage on the floor, he positively loomed. In a rare moment of consideration for the fact, Calanthe was reminded just how vast Benjamin Jamesson was and, subsequently, how much effort his demeanour put in to trying to compensate for it. In both her own recollection and the plethora of examples inside her head, he was easily the gentlest person she knew and it was no surprise at all that he insisted on placing himself as the lowest priority yet again. It was hard to be frustrated with him about it but Cal also knew that letting him get away with it indefinitely was not going to help either of them.

Finding herself not ungrateful for the reversal of temperature despite having genuinely enjoyed at least the initial stages of overheating, the Communications Chief hoisted herself to her feet and used the back of a hand to wipe her temple again as she approached and let his toolkit thud softly against his chest. Eyebrows raised, she didn't let go of it until she'd remarked, "I'm never going to know where your head is at if you don't tell me."

The man scrambled to take the tool kit and placed it aside as he looked at her thoughtfully. He heard her words but he was not sure he could ever put his thoughts into words so decided to reach up from where his hands were at a loss without his tools and hook his fingers under her chin lifting her face to look up at him. He smiled at her as he had forgotten how tiny she was against him. "I'd forgotten how tiny you were. I do not think I can put anything into words but I can show." He whispered as his lips pressed against her.

It was, Calanthe realised through a haze not entirely the fault of the heat, almost exactly the same way he'd caught her off-guard the first time. Of course, it hadn't been her then and her memory, being borrowed, was a little fuzzy around the edges but there was enough to make the comparison and leave her wondering if he'd come to a similar realisation. One thing was certain; flipping through someone else's recollection of Ben Jamesson was considerably different to experiencing it first-hand and Calanthe was immediately stunned by how overwhelmed she felt. As a combined entity, this was old ground for both of them, but as a pair of individuals thrust awkwardly into each other's lives, she'd never been kissed by this man despite being struck by the compulsion more than once. The pure chemistry, mingled with the residual temperature, would have been enough to buckle the knees of a lesser woman but somehow, relying heavily on the input of a far-more-experienced version of herself, Calanthe found the coherency after a moment of reciprocation to slip a hand between them and press her index finger against his lips.

"Does this mean you're trying to renegotiate the terms of our peace treaty, Commander?" She hadn't pulled back enough that the twitch of her smile didn't translate easily without him needing to see it. "Because I think, if that's the case, you owe me dinner."

The man chased her lips for a moment looking down at the finger on his lips and nodded firmly. "Tomorrow night. My quarters." He said without a moment of hesitation that he could make it happen. It would not be fancy at all but it could be private and they could at the very least talk a little more and renegotiate the terms.

In an odd way, amidst the clamour of quite intense sensations, Calanthe felt a swell of pride. If they were going to make anything of what they'd been left with, she needed him to be honest. They could only get so far going in circles out of mutual respect, at least it seemed clearer now that part of him wanted to try again.

"I can be there by 1900," she murmured, savouring the opportunity to lock eyes with him before the sweltering stickiness of their situation, not to mention the rather public nature of their location, gradually coaxed them both to step back. Lifting her chin, a familiar attempt to make herself seem taller than she was, Calanthe regarded the engineer with dancing eyes and intentionally made her next remark a professional one, albeit quite a loaded one. "Thank you for restoring my sanity, Commander. I daresay even I would have reached boiling point eventually."