Who's Watching? (Tal)

[Anonymous]

Pause.  Pause.  Faintly:

"... unauthorized interference... TRIM channel 058 locked.  Stand by.  Stand by.  Subject 029574865 secure.  Over and out.  Subject 995618023 secure.  There's been a..."

Pause.  

"...repeat, do not..."

Liv jerked upright at his terminal and tore out his earpiece, heart pounding.  What?  Where was that--

Domain parameters:

p=6277101735386680763835789423207666416089087039032461279
r=627710173538668076383578942317605913767194773182842284081
s=3045ae6f c84f64 ed579528 d38120ea e12196d5
c=3099d2bb
bfcb2538 54dcd5f b078b6ef 5f3d6fe2 c745de65
b=64210519
e59c80e7 0fa7e9ab 72243049 feb8deec c14b9b1
Gx=...

saving...
<error>
<error>[blink:210u1twg]l[/blink:210u1twg][/color]

His screen blinked to blue.

"Okay," he said aloud, looking around, running his hands slowly over his own biceps.  He shook his head.  "Okay.  What the FUCK!"  He stood up; his shoulders trembled.  "The fuck!"  He knew elliptic curve cryptography when he saw it. That was an Edani governmental system.  That wasn't--  "Fuck me."  Liv shoved his chair in, hard, and slammed one palm into the wall.  Again.  He remained there, leaning on his hand, head hanging.

"What the fuck was that?"  

"Was what?"

"Don't play dumb, Falstaff, you are the motherfucking system, and I know that shit doesn't just decide to reroute to my terminal.  What did you let through?"

"Who's watching the watcher?"  The tone was noncommittal.  Falstaff's mental voice was uncanny, smoky.  It faded in and out.  It both gave him space and left him with the creeping feeling that what space he did have had been filled with a soporific, confusing gas; then it evaporated.

Nothing.  Silence.  Liv picked up a nearby boot and threw it across the room; it landed with a dull thump in one corner, and sent a lick of flame and a wisp of smoke curling into the air.  He high-stepped over and stamped it out.  "--why I fucking hate dragons."  It was probably his control issues.  Then again, why was everything centered on the self?  Eh?  Fucking hedonism.  

"And I lost my blog post, too," he announced, inanely, to no one, running his fingers through his hair.  "Fu-u-uck.  Me."

He moved to the sink, where he splashed water on his face, as cold as he could stand, then stood up to rearrange his hair.  TRIM, eh?  Of all things.  Watchers, that was the problem, had really always been the problem.  With everything.  The problem with dragons.  Addiction my ass.  

His terminal screen blinked on again, but he ignored it.  He readjusted his vest and belt, patted his pockets, and finished fluffing his hair properly.  The screen was still blinking.  Determinedly, Liv avoided looking at it, thinking about it...

At least Falstaff stayed out of his head--most of the time.  Maybe.  

A rap at his door.

"What?  Who is it?"  Hastily, Liv leaned down over the terminal and tried to shut it off; nothing doing.  The code kept unspooling.  Now it was downloading.  Fuck me, fuck me.  "Just a--"

He hadn't locked his door; as it swung open, he tossed a jacket over the terminal and turned around, shoving his hands into his pants pockets.  Shoulders and eyebrows tilted up in a display of nonchalance.  "Hey--"

[Tally]

"...so I really wanna run these by Gabriel first and probably Alaric and Remi, too, and now that I think about it I may just get everyone's opinion 'cause I mean this is a big decision and I have to live with these colors, know what I mean?  These aren't the only fan decks I've got, but these are the ones I'm looking at for the living room.  Now the Canary is really bright and I like that but then I'm thinking maybe it's too bright.  I like the Sundance Yellow too, but I worry that with the Cloud Nine in the kitchen everything'll just look too pale and washed out.  Oh zing!  Maybe I nix the white in the kitchen and go with the Lemon Meringue in the living room?  Or do you think that just screams 'this guy is afraid of real color'?  Roman?  Helloooo?  Are you listening?"

Roman blinked down at Blaine Clé.  Having tuned out most of their one-sided conversation, there was only one answer to give the kid.  "No," he said.  "I'm not."  Then he grabbed his triple shot of espresso and fled the café.

Blaine followed him into the skyway of course, paint cards in hand.  Ahead of them loomed the Citadel, behind sprawled one of the many convenient shopping centers that made life in the center of Haviah livable for those at the top.  The skyway's walls were all glass.  Beyond, the city writhed.  It was never still.  

Neither of the Pilots were in uniform, Roman being in his typical jeans and t-shirt and Blaine looking like he'd stepped out of a pop star magazine.  A bucket hat nearly hid his eyes completely, so that he had to tilt his head upward to talk to anyone.  "Romaaaan," he said, catching up to the older Pilot.  "Where are you going?"

"I just needed some coffee to wake me up, Blaine.  I didn't come looking for a conference on your interior decorating efforts."

"Ah, but you are wise and my dilemma is most exacerbating.  It's a pickle I tell ya.   And I happen to know from Gabriel that you did all the decorating in your own place.  So if I could just get your vote between...the...the ..."

It took another couple of steps before Roman realized Blaine had come to a halt.  He stood stone still and his face and body had gone slack, eyes wide and darting back and forth as though he were watching an invisible fly zip through the air.  He was elsewhere, elsewhen, watching an event that had not happened yet.  Roman reached out to clasp his arm, just in case.  Prolonged or intense visions could send him into a seizure or leave him in a catatonic state.  Beyond standing there to catch the kid if he toppled, Roman could only wait.  All of Blaine's senses were tuned into a separate reality.  Short of mortal danger, nothing would jolt him out of the vision trance.

Whatever he was seeing, it didn't last long.  A mere thirty seconds after stopping, Blaine squeezed his eyes shut then blinked them rapidly, looking around and reminding himself just where he was.  "Roman?"

"What did you see, Blaine?"  There was a tension in Roman.  He was poised to call upon Scher if needed.  Precogs had no control over what they saw.  Could be anything from mundane to dire.

"I saw..." Blaine looked up, brow furrowing as he sought to recapture what he had seen.  Sometimes there were sights, sounds, even smell or taste, but this one had been all visual.  Trying to recall these visions was like remembering a dream, with the super-spiffy-fun added bonus of lots of pressure on him to give his superiors usable details.

They still resented him for not seeing Elijah's disappearance or Providence's death.

He rather resented himself for those things.

"Liv," Blaine said at last.  Yes.  Pilot Livos Sulo, whom Blaine had known as a candidate.  His face resolved itself quite clearly in the darkness before Blaine's inner eye.  "And he's..."  There he stopped, a knot tying itself up in his stomach.  The images uncurling in his brain didn't look good.  For any of them, but for Liv in particular.  A terminal screen glowed in Liv's room, the Pilot before it.  The numbers scrolling upon the monitor did not belong there.

"What?"  Roman's hand tightened on Blaine's arm and he put some command in his voice.  "Let's hear it."

"Something will be showing up on Liv's terminal that shouldn't be there.  Probably just some bug—"

"When?"

"Soon.  Within minutes."  Blaine shook his head.  That terminal screen in his vision just wouldn't resolve itself more clearly.    "That's all I've got, sorry—now where are you going?"

"Gonna drop by Liv's place," Roman called over his shoulder.  Anticipating Blaine's next move, he added, "And you stay away.  Go paint your living room."

During the journey through the Citadel and the elevator ride up 126 floors to Liv's room, Roman and Scheherazade volleyed thoughts back and forth.  All things considered, the dragons didn't seem as agitated by it as he would have thought.  Every Pilot and dragon was accounted for and doing what they were supposed to be doing.  The Network was quiet.  No flags, no suspicious activity in the logs, nothing to suggest the beginnings of an attempted security breach.  It was looking like Blaine had given them another false alarm.

But as Roman stepped out of the elevator and onto the right floor, Scher piped up in his head.  "Ah.  There it goes.  It's happened."

"What is it?  Anything we need to shit bricks over?"  Obviously not, or they'd be in lockdown.

A long moment passed as Roman continued down the hall, then Scher was back.  "False alarm.  Possibly a wire got crossed with Thanatos HQ somewhere.  We'll send Voodoo to get it straightened out."

"Probably Noel's people dicking around with the connections again."  Always had to be something with that man.

Roman was practically at Liv's door anyway, so he continued on.  Might as well pay the kid a visit, see how he was holding up...and maybe just give him a little scare.  He rapped on the door, got a snappish reply back from inside the room.  When Liv wasn't quick enough for him in opening up, Roman let himself in.

Leaning on the door frame, he drifted a casual look around the room and landed his eyes on Liv, who looked pointedly casual.  "Hey kid," he said, smiling and taking a step inside.  Not that Liv had invited him in, but why wait on something likely never to happen?  "What's up?"

[Anonymous]

Oh, shit.  It was Roman.  

Liv tended to avoid him whenever possible; if he hadn't, there was always the risk he'd snap back at him, or fall prey to the resentment he felt toward all authority.  Liv knew his anger could fuck him over more completely than any outside influence, so he tended to stay clear of authority, or quiet in its presence.  Roman was a respectable man, as far as that went.  He had admired him early on, as a puppy-eager Candidate.  And then, slowly, poisonous anger had crept in, as it always did.  

There was no point in lying to him, either.  Liv's instincts had whittled themselves down to only one: self-preservation.  Resignedly, he pulled his jacket off the monitor.

"Some sort of glitch," he muttered; but the screen had gone blank, only the blink of the cursor edgily visible.  "Freaked me the f--I had no idea what to do."  

Honesty's the best policy, isn't it, Liv?  Isn't it?  Honesty was the only policy.  Honesty or something like it, because it was amazing the lies you could tell while you were being honest.  Honest was a state of mind.  Liv was remarkably talented at Honest.  

He stepped back, shoulders collapsing inward and arms crossed over his chest; a wary stance, watchful, ready for rebuke.  Even after so long he had to steel himself for it.  Liv didn't take orders well, didn't take orders or chastisement.  He had to do that turn again, the same one responsible for his honesty; that turn that flattened out all of his thoughts and turned the world metallic-hued, vibrant, and confusing.  Confusion was Liv's best friend, the most trustworthy part of himself; possibly the only trustworthy part, what was that they said about innocence and stupidity... over the years, aphorisms had been diluted and recombined so many times one had access, now, to a nearly infinite range.  Of all truth-values.  Etc. etc.  

"You're not gonna spank me, are you, Rosales?  Ha, ha."  Nervous, jittery half-laughter.  Downplay the punishment and maybe the more frightening possibilities wouldn't even come up.  It was all about decentering.  Confusion.  Honesty.  Yeah...

[Tally]

If Roman had been the type to lay bets on the success of candidates, he would have laid a significant sum of credits on Livos Sulo never making Pilot.  A candidate for that long, with that much difficulty controlling his pyrokinesis, fell near the realm of Not Worth The Trouble.  Livos the Candidate had taken Roman to the edge of his patience.  If he'd been just a hair less professional he would have trimmed the kid just to get rid of him.  Livos the Pilot he had yet to fully acquaint himself with.  The dynamics could change drastically or not at all.  Watching Liv pull that jacket of the terminal, Roman suspected the latter.

Way to not look suspicious, kid.

"A jacket over the terminal screen.  Real subtle, Sulo.  The gods help you if you ever pull a genuine violation."  Roman went for the terminal, didn't bother to ask Liv's permission or even excuse himself as he shouldered his way past.  Whatever had been on the screen was gone.  The monitor was blank.  Damn.  A little faster and he could have caught it himself.

Not that it mattered in the grander scheme—Scher would have the log, and Roman was ever so slightly more dense with technology than he would have liked.  Still, he would have felt better having seen it for himself.

He didn't touch the terminal, just verified the state of it, and he took Liv's words at face value.  Or gave the impression that he did.  He made no conclusion one way or the other.  Impulsive judgments, whether condemnatory or redemptive, just weren't Roman's style.  He was no Seeker, eyes always on the bottom line.  Liv had made Pilot.  It earned him at the very least the benefit of the doubt.

Which wasn't to say that news of this glitch hadn't already been flagged on the Seeker's grid.  But that was out of Roman's sphere of influence.

"A spanking," he said, turning around to lean back on Liv's desk and fix him with a level stare.  New Pilots often tried to dare him in some way, or provoke him.  The kids got full of themselves with that Pilot uniform on and a dragon at their backs, and he understood the bitterness, really he did.  He put them through seven kinds of hell and there were no few young Pilots still holding grudges.  You had to take it with good humor and just hope they got over themselves.  "Not from me, no.  Sorry to say you're no longer my responsibility.  I know, I'm heartbroken over it too."

The triple espresso was still in his hand, forgotten after Blaine's vision.  Roman recalled it then and downed it.  It had gone lukewarm and he grimaced at the taste then tossed the paper cup into Liv's wastebasket.

"Now Marshal on the other hand, I expect he'll want to have some words with you."  Words.  What a vanilla way of putting it.  Liv would find little to joke about if Marshal took an interest in his loyalties.  He'd likely never gotten to see a Seeker on a mission.  Roman played the hardass authoritarian on a daily basis, but Marshal?  The man was like a force of nature when he was on a scent.

"Then there's the possibility of an Axis Point interrogation, the pleasures of which I believe you have yet to enjoy.  Looks like you might get that cherry popped sooner than you thought."

Not exactly a threat, but not exactly an inevitability either.  The dragons would make that call, and Roman was just being needlessly antagonistic now.  Something about Liv had always brought that out in him.

[Anonymous]

Liv caught Roman's impatient, skeptical look toward the jacket, and held up his hands, elbows against his sides.

"Heyyy, what can ya do," he said, in a labored parody of nonchalance, putting on a lower-caste accent.  His hands bobbed, sketching compromise in the air.  "I'm not so good at the covering up, I'm such an innocent, yaknowwhaddamean?"  Liv tossed his hands in the air and took a step back, shaking his head slowly.

Roman checked the terminal but, predictably enough, found nothing.  In fact Liv's instinct to cover the thing with his jacket--well.  It was admittedly moronic on its surface, he didn't want to give himself too much credit--after all, no one else did.  Which was what it was, both a positive and a negative.  But.  It had the redoubtable benefit of double life as an alibi.  It meant: I'm scared of this too, I'm what-the-fucked out of my mind, and I'm going to put a lid (or, in this case, a jacket) on it, sit on it, and wait for the proper authorities.  And that was how Liv got by, for better or for worse.  Quite often for worse.

Roman really hadn't liked him when he was a Candidate.  He'd hoped he could sink into the camaraderie of Pilotship, which seemed somewhat easier with the others, but it would be difficult.  For one, it took inordinate charm to lubricate (and how he would appreciate that phrasing) social intercourse (why not, while he was at it; Rosales couldn't hurt him for silent innuendo) with the man.  Even Gabe-grade sparkle didn't do it, often enough, and the sexual tension between the two could have fueled a zipship.  

It was odd, though--he thought, as Roman responded laconically to his spanking gibe--that it disappointed him, the sudden realization that Rosales wasn't his nec plus ultra any longer.  There's a whole perilous sea out past Pilot Point, Livvy, and you're just breasting the first few waves.  

Oh, shit. Case in point.  Marshal.  Marshal almost scared him.  There was something off about him, something insane, in precisely the sense of the word as it was--unhealthy.  Felicitous neither to himself nor others.  And the Axis Point?  What, for this?  Fuck no.  Fuck, fuck, fuck.  Fuck me.  Fuck you.  Fuck everyone.  The Axis Point horrified Liv the way very few things did.  It was that intrusion, that total fucking mind-rape, that turning-over of all his carefully tended funereal plots.  Dead and fuckin' buried, Axio.  He didn't want to know what would happen if something big and impersonal came stamping through.

Lesser of the evils.

"You won't, will you?  I just brought a little work home."

Falstaff rumbled, his mental tone just a touch weary, condescending.  "It seems there's no record of an infraction."

"What--really?"  Falstaff didn't lie, it wasn't what dragons did.  But it was difficult to believe, and too convenient; no, it was precisely inconvenient.  It made him look like some sort of mastermind.  "You know I didn't--it's another glitch, all fucking glitches--"

Only a silent shrug projected back, and Liv shook his head again, loosening the cotton cobwebs of unease.  Although his hands had gone cold, he tossed Roman a smile.

"Hey, everything's an adventure, eh, Rosales?  What doesn't kill you makes you--makes you--a Pilot, anyway."  He tossed off an ironical salute.  "Thy will be done and all, oh wait--hey--how'd you know so quickly?  I had barely regained sphincter control when you came by."  His face was serious now, eyes running up and down Roman's body, searching for some hint of... what now, Livvikins, conspiracy theories?  What hasn't killed you has made you fucking warped.

[Tally]

Roman clenched his jaw.  He wasn't feeling this cutesy shit and wasn't about to be baited with it.  From someone else it might have been tolerable, even endearing.  From Liv it was just grating.  He'd put up with it for years and even now every attempt at flippancy from the kid brought Roman a little closer to slugging him.

"An adventure.  That's one way to look at it.  Just remember this adventure can end in a court-martial and execution, or a KIA, or in the hands of some Edani Mordecai.  That's not counting all the various, smaller pitfalls a careless Pilot might fall into.  A sloppy salute is fine here, with me—it's not my job to stop you from making a twit of yourself anymore—but it won't fly with everyone.  Not the majority of the Nobles and Royals, never with the Imperial and...agh, you know what?  Never mind.  Forget it."

Roman shook his head.  He was doing it again. Lecturing.  Always trying to be the candidate director.  "You're a Pilot now, right?  You know all this."  

He'd better.  If Roman had done his job worth a damn, Liv should have been able to walk right into a conference full of Royals and the Imperial and know exactly what was expected of him and exactly how to conduct himself.

"As for how I knew..."  Roman abandoned his post by Liv's desk and laid an arm across the kid's shoulders.  "You should know there's more than just security cameras and Network logs watching us.  But maybe you should talk to Pilot Clé about that.  Extensively."  Long enough for Roman to put himself on the other side of the Citadel, too far away for Blaine to bother hunting him down and asking his opinion on the two dozen slightly different shades of green towels he was considering for his bathroom.  Roman steered Liv toward the door and jabbed the button to open it.  "In fact, if I know Blaine he's flat out ignoring what I told him to do and is on his way here now."

He propelled Liv toward the open door with a hand on his back.  "Why don't you two catch up.  It'll give you a chance to step away from the terminal screen for awhile.  All terminal screens."  Which Liv would do well to take as more than just a helpful suggestion.  Wouldn't look good for him to hole himself up in his room just then.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Liv rocked back on his heels and shoved hands into pockets, riding out the Roman rant.  How many times had he heard this talk?  And always, but always, in the same tones of weary impatience.  It would've been funny if it hadn't been so sad.

Roman put an arm around him.  Liv resisted the desire to wrap his around his waist in turn, friendly-like.  They weren't friends, however Gabe insisted on the soft, gooey center beneath Roman's horny shell of an exterior.  Not horny enough, Gabby.  The other man was really the best of what Liv had to use against Rosales, so he'd saved it for last.

Steered out into the hall, he tugged free of Roman's proprietary arm at last and snapped a crisply perfect salute.  Perhaps the heel-click was a bit much.  "Righto, Pilot Royal Rosales."  And if Liv was still biting back the rage boiling in his throat, it could wait.  It could always wait.  Better not to vent it on Roman.  He'd learned that the hard way.  

Still, the parting shot was necessary.

"Kisses to Gabby!"

Wink.  He did an about-face, spinning on the ball of his foot, arm moving fluidly from salute to flamboyant farewell.  Then he turned and hurried down the hall, fingers twitching.  Blaine Clé, Blaine.  Oh, Blankie.  You just had to pick this one to cash in on for cold hard credit, just had to, you bastard.  

A flash of familiar blond, and Liv found his rapid steps had nearly carried him past the other pilot.  He pulled back and plastered on a wide, gritted smile.

"Oh.  Hi."

He followed it up with a smashing cross to the jaw, all his weight behind it.  

"Fuck you, Clé.  Fuck ya.  I mean it."  He shook out his hand, and his head, chastisingly, before he bent to give the other guy a hand up.  "Fucking sellout."

[Tally]

Even a technically perfect salute from Liv came off oozing sarcasm.  How did one project sarcasm from a gesture?  Roman would have liked to know that.  It was a feat Liv seemed to pull of as an afterthought.

"Wouldn't kill you to to at least pretend to take something seriously for once, Sulo."  He was already speaking to the kid's retreating back.  It hit him then just what it was about Liv that tried his patience so, and was because he found the kid difficult to read.  Years of instructing him, and he'd never realized that.  He'd always assumed it was the constant attitude.  He didn't like not being able to understand someone—wasn't used to it.  Wasn't used to having to work for it.  Huh.

Liv's parting words reached him, and he shot a frown over his shoulder.

Kisses?

What was that supposed to mean?

Pah.  More stupid, juvenile crap that he shouldn't have to put up with.  Probably.  Maybe.  With Liv is was hard to distinguish between nonsense and calculated nonsense.

At that moment, Blaine was approaching Liv's place using an around about way in an effort to avoid Roman.  Having to do so made him a little bitter.  Any other Pilot could have asked their dragon for the location of anyone they wanted to avoid, but Voodoo was more of an overseer than a partner.  Blaine's relationship with his dragon was...tense.  Voodoo only spoke to him to relay orders.

Peeking his head around a corner, he caught sight of Liv coming the other way and jogged to meet him.  Liv seemed off in his own little world, even when Blaine stopped and waved at him, and the other Pilot nearly passed him right by before greeting him.

Oh hey, he didn't sound upset or anyth—

Liv's fist connected with Blaine's face and he only just managed to keep his feet, staggering back and clutching his hands to his face.  Whimpering, he stumbled blindly over to the wall, reaching one hand out to feel for it then putting his back to it and sliding down until his rear hit the ground.  He pulled his knees up to his chest and tugged his hat down to hold it over his smarting face, letting out a long groan.

"Owwww, ow ow ow."  Once he'd overcome the WTFery of what just happened, he lowered his hat just enough to uncover his eyes, which he prayed were conveying hatred enough to melt Liv's face.

"What the hell, Liv?!  You punched me in the face!  You punched me in the face!  Shit!"  He screwed up his face behind the hat for a moment longer before swiping the hat away and revealing a busted lip and a red patch on his jaw that was going to make one heck of a terrific bruise.

"What's your problem?!"  Furious, he slid suddenly down onto his side, braced against the wall, and swept a kick at Liv's legs, grabbing his hand and jerking him forward at the same time to upset his center of balance.

[Anonymous]

Liv leaned down, one hand extended, hoping he'd get to help Blaine up and just forget all about the howdeedoo and who ratted on whom, hit whom, and whatever else of shit had happened.  But no.  Damn you, Blainey, always forget you've got a feisty side too...  He was glaring at him, those big blue eyes narrowed to death-laser lines.  

He also stated the obvious.  You hit me, indeed.  How schoolgirlish.  

"So I did," Liv said, attempting mild amusement, as the blond Pilot wrenched off his hat and uncovered Liv's rather masterful, if he did say so (and he always did), handiwork.  Item, one ripe reddened welt on the cheek, item, one split leaking lip, item, one head of hat-disheveled hair.  Someday Liv would share the secret of World's Only Acceptable Hair Gel with him, the kid deserved it, he certainly was a cherubic looker.  

"What's my prob--ow!"

Blaine moved quickly, too quickly for Liv, bent over and discomported, to evade.  He wriggled down against the wall and swept his legs sharply across, hitting Liv at mid-ankle and calf.  He had only just managed to windmill upright when he was toppled, to land flat on his back, all the wind knocked out of him.  It took a dizzy instant but the rancor that built in his chest and throat could have fueled hours of lonely stewing.  Liv hated to be caught unawares.

The anger peaked--and then it ebbed, ebbed as the tide of his breath built and swelled.  Gone.  He lay on his back, coughing, breathing hard, listening to his lungs and heart.  His legs still lay athwart Blaine's, and he made no move, vicious or otherwise, to remove them.

"Criminey, Clé, I never pegged you for a narc."  He had to pause to get his breath back.  Breath.  Breath.  Breathe.  He tilted his head up and winked before letting it drop, once more, to the floor.  "'Course I never pegged you at all."  Wink, nudge.  He struggled up onto one elbow.  "We even, eh?"  Prodding a tender spot at the back of his head, "Well, fuck.  Eh?"

[Tally]

Did kicking Liv's feet out from under him count as striking a superior officer?  That would have been a new one for Blaine.  Another violation to add to his collection.  Terrific.

Blaine didn't drop his glare or his guard, not even when Liv hit the ground with that satisfying thud.  Call him an impaired psychic, call him what you will, but he'd never taken shit like this and he could shed the cheery front and get real in an eye blink.  Let Liv charge him for insubordination.  He'd do the time and come back smiles.

Scooting back up into a sitting position, Blaine explored his aching face with feather-light touches of his fingertips, waiting for Liv to come back to him, waiting for some indication that this was over or else that there would be further trouble between them.  Meeting a fresh Pilot always made him feel awkward, even without the extra spice of mutual assault.

Then Liv made a funny and just like that, they were back to normal, or as close to it as they ever had been.  As Blaine was not permitted access to candidates, it had been a good while since he'd seen Liv more than just from a distance and in passing.  It had always been easy with Liv.  Easier.  For him, at least.  Maybe Liv had thought him a trial.  Blaine had had tunnel vision for the majority of his candidacy, seeing only the finish line at the end of each day and taking everything at face value because he just didn't possess the analytical mind necessary to decode every word and tone and gesture and sneeze.

"Narc!  That's dumb.  Your face is dumb."  He stuck his tongue out at Liv and snatched his hat back up.  "He was standing right there.  What was I supposed to do?  Can't lie about those things."

He'd tried that—once.  Then never again.  Hadn't even lied; he'd simply refused outright to disclose his vision.  And they'd come down him as on an Edani spy.  He'd caved only a few hours in, but they kept on.  To educate him.  He didn't see daylight again for a week.

It was a memory he didn't dare approach.  No need to remember details.  Just to be reminded of it kept him on the right side of that line they'd drawn in the sand.

Blaine went about rearranging his hair, combing his fingers through it and taming stray strands.  "Tsk.  Liiiiv.  Look what you did.  I had it perfect."  He spent a good hour in front of the mirror every morning making it so, even taking a curling iron to it on occasion.  "We're square.  I guess.  What were you doing anyway?  One would assuuume nothing disgraceful, since y'know, your head is still attached to your body.  And yet, one must observe, you did punch me in the face over it."

His jaw was really starting to throb now, and yet he couldn't stop prodding at it.

[Anonymous]

Liv raised one urbane eyebrow and pointedly touched the side of his face to mirror Blaine's Liv-inflicted injury.  "My face is dumb, Clé?"  

Groaning, with great flurry and ostentation, he pushed himself up into a sitting position and scooted back against the wall.  Once there he arched his back up into a bridge, knees on floor and shoulders against the wall, then, wincing, lowered himself to a tailor-style seat next to Blaine.  "Ow, my ass."  He shook a finger at the Pilot.  "What'll I tell Shylock, he'll get all jealous.  Ha."  Shiloh Lockwood was the most amusingly homophobic Pilot Liv had ever had good fortune to meet, Strip Checkers aside.  Checkers, hey, that'd make a great new nickname.

Poor Blaine, fiddling with his hair.  He really did have that young-and-angelic look, all big blue eyes and gold curls.  Liv's were proportionately less cherubic but definitely more masculine, as curls went; and they'd stayed in place, if a little flat in back.  He combed them out companionably next to Blaine, then sighed and reached into his pocket for a tube of Wag's Hair Tonic (whimsically acronymized, on the label, to WHAT).  "Here, chum."  Had to love the retro brand name.  "World's only acceptable hair gel, trade secret, don't say a word, eh?  Trust me on this."  

"Look," he added at length, prodding him in the shoulder, then, struck by sudden empathy, turning to watch him sideways, "I get it, I really do."  Because it wasn't easy to be a Them.  It was easier to be an Us, for everyone, and Blaine didn't have that and Liv didn't have that, either.  Sometimes he forgot he wasn't in it alone.  The way they'd treated Blaine as a candidate... granted, he'd spent some of the time bitter over the other's ability, his Get Out of Jail Free card, as 'twere.  But they were really of a boat, he and Clé.

"It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.  Golly, let me take a look at..."  One hand came up and, firmly, removed Blaine's (he would only inflame it), then took him by the jaw and turned his face so Liv could examine the damage.  He ran a thumb over the growing bruise and winced in sympathetic tandem with Clé.  "Well, they'll patch you up OK if you ask.  You'll be fine.  Besides, massive facial disfigurement's popular with the--"  Somehow the question had never come up, perhaps because Blaine looked about twelve.  "--Sigrenes."  Liv let his hand drop, with a last, proprietary squeeze, and turned his head back to stare at the opposite wall.  "You'll be fine," he said again.  

"You know how it is, though, Clé.  That anger.  Sometimes..."  He paused, took a breath.  "Anyway, Rosales ain't got nuthin' on me yet, but he'll find something, mark.  Seriously--I didn't do shit, just some bug in the system sent code over to my terminal.  See?  None of the fun and all of the pain.  Prob'ly a setup.  Prob'ly everyone's trying to make me look paranoid."  A swift, sly smile caught on the edge of his mouth and went away again.  "So, uh, how are your curtains?"

[Tally]

"Shy...lock?  Who're we talking about?"  Yeah, he wasn't sure who that was.  Well, another Pilot obviously.  Not one he was passing familiar with, but his life had always reminded him of one of those pictures they showed you in math class, of two circles overlapping each other by a small fraction.  The other Pilots made up one circle, he the other, and the two met each other only a teensy bit, at certain times and under certain circumstances.  Sometimes he heard through Citadel gossip of gatherings like the most recent one at Gabe's place, all the Pilots hanging out and being like...colleagues.  Those times it was hard not to feel the sting of isolation.

Blaine gave his head a final shake and his hair settled into place.  "Chum?" he muttered, thinking what an odd word that was.  "You think you can just offer me hair gel and that'll just make everything okay."  Said as he was squeezing out a dollop of the stuff onto his palm.  Spread it through his hair with a light touch.  There.

The hat went back on his head.  What he really needed now was a mirror.  Durn.  The one time he leaves without putting one in his back pocket.

He leaned his head back against the wall so Liv could look him in the eyes instead of at the brim of his hat.  Told himself to stop poking at the bruising on his jaw.  Managed to keep his hand away from it for all of five seconds before it rose again to feel at the sore spot, but this time Liv put a stop to it.

"I don't wanna get it looked aaaat," he said, squirming a little.  It was kind of a pride thing.  What kind of Pilot went through the whole candidate program only to run off crying over a minor thing like a fist/face affair?  No kind of Pilot, that's what.  Certainly not Blaine Clé.

Well.  Unless it was going to bruise.

Released at last, Blaine waved a hand at Liv.  "Oh, Roman.  He's not so bad.  Seems to keep to himself mostly at least."  And one of the more tolerable Royals, if you could stay on the right side of his moods.  In general, Blaine held with the theory that the higher in rank a Pilot rose, the more asshole-ish they became.  Hadn't met a Royal yet to make him question the theory.

"My curtains?  In a crumpled heap. I hate them.  I'm replacing everything."  A groan and a wince and he was back on his feet and his hand was back to running questing fingers over his jaw.  Ow.  "I think I need a mirror. I gotta see what you did to me."

[Anonymous]

"Yeah... seems."  

But he wasn't thinking about Roman Rosales, though the recent memory of how close he'd come made fear rise in the back of his throat.  Liv looked down at his hands, rubbing one hand over a puffy knuckle.  He supposed he ought to feel bad about hitting Blaine, but feeling bad tended to be something Liv didn't like to touch.  Guilt was a damned sinkhole, and useless, too.  Briefly, he examined his reasoning: Blaine's precognition, involuntary, had almost fucked him over.  Had Liv been in his place, he would have done the same thing.  He'd hit him because... well, in Blaine's place he'd have wanted someone to hit him.  

That, and military training sometimes made such things unavoidable.  That was on purpose, he knew: good soldiers did not ponder.

It was in his best interests to be a good soldier.

But--hell.  He did feel bad, tipping his head back to watch the blond Pilot gather himself.  Blaine wasn't a bad kid, not at all.  A little naïve, certainly a better person than he was.  Of a boat.  Not really, Livvy, but you'd have liked it, wouldn't you?  Anyway, he'd snap back, these things happened.  Liv realized he'd taken refuge in bluntspeak.  Behind it, he found himself, still, half-vibrating with nerves.  Never mind, never mind.  The static prickles behind his chest started to recede.  He'd be okay.  If they took him to the Axis for this, he'd... be okay.

"It doesn't look that bad," he said, levering himself to his feet after Blaine.  His tailbone twinged.  "Here, hang on."  Of course he had a mirror, and his weary smile mocked the obviousness of it.  Liv Sulo without a mirror?  Perish the thought.  He held up a forestalling hand while he dug through his pants pocket, and came out with a shell-clasp compact.  Flicking the catch with a thumbnail, he eyed the bouncing sliver of his own reflection for a second before he handed it off to Blaine.  He kept careful bodily distance and hoped the tension, that pesky you just punched me tension, would ebb.  

Maybe he ought to leave him alone, but.   Liv felt the overwhelming urge to stay in someone's presence, so he wouldn't start letting his mind go off in the direction of just what might happen if--bad directions.  Not that he'd burden Blaine with whinge or anything, massive faux pas, that, after socking the fellow in the face.  

"Honestly, you look dashing."  He glanced down, pinching the bridge of his nose.  "Oh--shit.  I'm sorry.  Paint your ceiling for you, to make up?"

[Tally]

Blaine looked first down the hallway in one direction then in the other.  "Uhh...with all this I've forgotten what I was supposed to be doing."  Something specific.  Oh well.  Someone would let him know.  He'd gotten off track as soon as he'd run into Roman in the cafe.

He pursed his lips and stared at the proffered mirror.  "Well it's a start."  He plucked it from Liv's fingers and examined himself, holding it at arm's length and swiveling his head and the mirror this way and that to get a more comprehensive picture of the state of his curls, his face, the deliberately upturned collar of his shirt.

"I always look dashing," he muttered.  Modesty was so yesterday.  And this blossom of red and purple spreading over his jaw was so noticeable, but not necessarily bad.  Might give him a tousled, rough look.  Maybe.  If he could pull off rough.  "But I'm going to lie to people," he said to his reflection.  "Make up some interesting story that makes me look cool."  He snapped the mirror shut and handed it back to Liv.

"Ohh ceiling.  That reminds me!"  Blaine patted at his shirt pockets, at his pants, at the pockets of his coat.  Those paint samples were on him somewhere.  "Aha!  You haven't seen these yet."  He fanned out the samples and held them out in front of Liv's face.

"I'm painting my living room.  Well, ummm, the whole apartment but the living room first.  And don't say that I should just pick the colors and let one of the decorating crews see to it 'cause that's what everyone's said.  I want to do it myself.  Okay so these are my color options for the living room.  Seeee?  It's gonna be one of these.  Yellow.  Yellow like the sun, or like flowers.  Yellow like happiness.  I want people to walk in and go 'ye gods this is a happy room.'  But I haven't thought about the ceiling.  I think a yellow ceiling might be too much yellow.  I want happiness but not like lunatic happiness.  So maybe another color for the ceiling."

He tilted his head to the side to look at Liv from around the paint sample fan. "What do you think?"

[Anonymous]

Liv tucked the mirror into his pocket and patted it carefully into place, then settled back, watching as Blaine shifted from momentary contemplation into shiny cheery mode.  It shouldn't be this relaxing to listen to him natter on about paint samples, but so help him, it really was.  He tilted one eyebrow up and peered at the colors, considering the matter seriously.  It was important to consider these things seriously.  Otherwise he might have to consider the serious things seriously, and then where would he be?  Hm.  On the left, too fluorescent.  Second from the right, too beige.

He lifted a hand and plucked out a sort of lemon-cream color, holding it at arms length and turning to examine it against the grayish Citadel corridor walls.  Glancing at Blaine, who'd peered out from behind the paint chips, he had to smile a little, though it felt numb on his lips.  Had to.  It wasn't even an option.

"I think you've just buried the needle on the cute-o-meter, Blainey, that's what I... hm."  He paused to reached for a pale blue sample and held it up beside the other, shifting to consider them in various alignments.  "That might make a good ceiling.  I've always been a fan of the blue-and-yellow palette."  He nodded at Blaine, who managed a fair personal embodiment of the palette himself, but didn't wink, as he might've ordinarily.  He couldn't stop turning things over and over in his head, trying to fit them together, and despite the little distractions, could not stay quite in the moment.  The colors soothed him, but more and more, he'd begun to fear he'd really, really messed up this time.

No use thinking about it.  He unblanked his eyes and glanced from the paint chips down to his watch, turning his wrist so the display didn't reflect light.  The workday had wound down an hour ago, but he wouldn't want dinner for awhile.  His stomach kept turning tight somersaults--that was always where it hit him, right in the gut.  And he was abiding by Roman's 'stay away from terminals' edict.

"Sorry.  Hey.  That thing you had to do, it wasn't perchance painting... hope I didn't rattle something in there."  Liv's eyebrows came together for a beat.

[Tally]

Behind Liv's back, while the other Pilot was busy considering the paint sample—or pretending to, who knew?—Blaine dropped the excessively sunny smile for one of genuine appreciation.  So few Pilots were willing to humor him.  He just liked for things to be pleasant, and frankly he thought it would do a few of his coworkers a world of good to stop being so dour all the time and have a giggle every now and then.

"Blue and yellow," he mused, plucking the paint chips from Liv's hands and giving them his own scrutiny.  "Like the sky and a field of sunflowers!"

The rest of the paint chips went back into their pocket, and the two Liv had picked out into another so he could ask further opinion on those two later, maybe when he ran into Alaric.  "Errr, no it wasn't painting.  I don't think so.  No, I'm pretty sure it wasn't.  I mean, I do need to paint and I could be doing that, buuuut I'm thinking there was something specific I needed to do and that wasn't it.  I could ask Voodoo..."  The black dragon was up there somewhere.  A quick questing with Blaine's very limited abilities found the monolithic impression of the dragon's mind somewhere on the other side of the city.  He confirmed the dragon's location but didn't disturb him.  "...but not knowing what it is saves me from having to do it, y'know?  At least until later.  Anyway."

Blaine worked his jaw and waved away Liv's concern.  He was fine, or would be.  Pilots weren't supposed to go around slugging each other, but come on.  People like them, in a place like this, under pressure as they were?  Disciplined or not, soldiers or not, you had to expect the occasional difference of opinion manifesting in some guy's fist hitting another's face.  Sometimes Blaine wondered if it would have been better or worse in wartime.  Some of the older Pilots, they talked about the war like they missed it.  He could understand it.  He craved it, as they did, the driving vibrancy of conflict, combat, struggle.  That sense of purpose when striving to see a mission complete.

They'd gone and made a soldier of him after all.  That still surprised him sometimes.

"No no, really, I'm okay.  It'll be sore for awhile but—"  He shrugged.  "Gotta be somewhere?" he added, noticing Liv check his watch.

[Anonymous]

Blaine was babbling, as he did, setting loose the little bouncing balls of ebullience.  Forced, Liv guessed.  He could feel bile rising in the back of his throat and he twisted the band of his watch this way and that, thinking of his codes.  Computational.  If he kept the access computational, you'd need infinite guesses to crack it.  He kept the numbers themselves in the only truly hidden place he had, distributed in packets, places that were subconscious, that even he didn't access without the trigger.  His watch ticked, and he picked out a series at random, and coded it in, and started to weave the memories into incoherence.  Numbers scrambled his thinking for the span of several long heartbeats, and he knew in a few minutes he would have the mother of all headaches, as always, and and and and

after the suspended secondhand kicked into motion again, he blinked at Blaine and mustered a disjointed smile.  His teeth felt slick with spit.  

"Uh.  Sorry," he said, ruffling the hair at the back of his head, that cowlick that wouldn't go away.  (19082221340982 333 divide and).  He wasn't done yet, but if he worked in stages, he'd get it all.  Get enough.  Get the intention and the specific sensory references and burn them off.  He'd get it eventually.  "Yeah, hey," he said, hand still tangled in his hair, "you want to go shopping?  Or, uhhh, hang out at your place--something with clothes--I should, you know, buy you something."  He put his forearm on Blaine's shoulder and let it slip off, comradelywise.  Blaine looked puzzled and bruised.  Fuck.  Awkward, but awkward in such an explicable way.  "Something blue, maybe, or yellow, go with the hair.  And I'm, I'm just--shouldn't be around terminals--lonely."

[Tally]

"Are you okay?  Are you listening?"  Probably not.  Blaine knew that look.  That glazed over look people usually got around him when they wanted to politely listen but weren't following what he said at all.  He could hardly complain about it.  It couldn't be easy for the lower ranking soldiers especially to endure his rambling.

But he liked to talk, and he outranked them, so they were SOL if they didn't like it.

Maybe something was wrong with Liv after all, though.  He was talking funny, all jumbled like.  "Uh, shopping yeah...let's do that!"  He should actually work but shopping would be more fun and he already had a reputation as a good-natured slacker so it wasn't like he'd be disappointing anybody.

"Are you sure you're okay though?"

[Anonymous]

"Oh.  Yeah.  Fine."  

Liv tipped his head to one side and worked a finger in his ear, as though he'd caught water in there and was twisting it out.  He scrunched up his face.  There still lingered the aftertaste (it was smell that connected to memory, and this time he smelled something like tin shavings in the back of his tongue) of what he'd done to his brain, but it would fade, if he made it, and he would.

Once he'd finished with that, he stuck out his tongue, retracted it, and flung out his arms exuberantly.

"Let us shop!  Blainey.  I will listen to everything you say.  C'mon.  C'mere."  He hooked one elbow into Blaine's and started to tug him along, but quickly halted, wary of more physically violent gestures.  That was No Good.  That would only create ill feeling and power imbalances and all of that gooey stuff that made things difficult.  And he'd only just solved the whole punching thing, and not yet to his satisfaction.

"Sorry.  I don't mean to manhandle... if you know what I mean..."  He waggled his eyebrows, though he hadn't really perfected the innuendo.  "Manhandle, get it, it's like, uh, anyway, you should get a new hat.  Because I want to get a hat like your old hat, and if I distract you, you won't notice."  Shades of truth.  Little pieces of it did tend to seep out, and his head was still ringing, his whole body vibrating like a struck bell; his nervous system a little numbed.  You're a fucking creep.  Shut up.  Move on.

[Tally]

Blaine was still confused—more than a little.  But they were going shopping so who cared?  Liv's sudden enthusiasm struck a chord in him like a chime and he swung into a jaunty stride, almost skipping until Liv hesitated again.  But no. No, no.  Blaine was on a mission now, and he yanked on Liv's collar to get him moving again.

He was probably still upset about the whole vision thing, but he just needed some time and some fun and he'd get over it and realize how trivial it really was.  Blaine kept telling himself that.  It was trivial and okay.  It would be okay.

"Sir!  I will acquire a new hat, sir!"  Had to obey orders, right?  He only had a closet full of hats already, and he kept adding to the addiction.  "Come on, come on.  Where we goin'?  Someplace new.  I don't want to be bothered."  As in, he didn't want the photographers and Pilot fanatics to be crawling all over them while they were trying to shop.