Chapter Text
To Jay-Den,
I think you're an amazing person. You make me see things I'm not sure I've ever noticed before, feel things I haven't felt properly in a long time. I value our companionship and I wish to spend more time exploring it with you.
“What the hell is this, Caleb?”
Darem held up his padd and waved it in Caleb's face. Caleb blinked awake from his almost-sleep and cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Hey, you told me to edit it for you.”
“This is so short! How is he gonna know I'm serious from such a short little… synopsis?”
Caleb stared for a moment at Darem in a bit of annoyance. He was tired. He could tell Darem was too from the redness by his eyes and the unnecessary fervor with which he spoke.
Caleb didn't want to think about Tarima. All Darem wanted to think about was Jay-Den. Neither of them dared wonder how Sam was doing on her way to Kasq. Both of them wanted to punch the metal walls.
“Dude. Jay-Den is a practical guy. He doesn't need your gross love poetry to understand what you're trying to say. Plus, if he likes you too, he'll be excited about it no matter how much fluff you drop in.”
Darem knew this. He knew, somewhere, that the amount to which he'd rambled on in his original drafts– one of which was nearly 1500 words– was his attempt at pleading with the guy without even standing in front of him. He wasn't nearly awake enough to back down, though.
“You don't know what Jay-Den needs.”
“I'm his friend, I think I have a bit of an idea.”
“Yeah, well, so am I.”
A third voice spoke up from a bunk above.
“Can you guys just, like, journal or something about this instead?” Ocam audibly turned away from them on his bed. “I need sleep.”
Darem glared at Caleb for a moment before pulling out his padd. He took the draft message that Caleb had sent him, and edited it. He made sure to include lots of the little details Caleb had cut: how calmed he felt around Jay-Den, how close he felt they were, could be… Admittedly, he got a bit carried away.
It was unsurprising, then, when Caleb got a ping about receiving the new copy, he picked up his own padd, scoffed, and sent him back another pared back paragraph.
Darem shot back, re-adding some of his words, and a few extra exaggerated ones. Caleb returned a copy, this time the tone of it colder than space.
They volleyed it back and forth another couple times, each iteration taking it further to their preferred extreme. When Darem was just about finishing the twelfth overall draft, Ocam suddenly shouted out in his sleep, something about a queen of some random planet. Darem, startled, fumbled the padd and dropped it in his lap.
He picked it up nonchalantly, scanning it over for accidental typos, then tapped the tab to send it to Caleb. Though, when he did, it already had a large “Sent” message at the top. And not to Caleb.
Darem wasn't sure if the squeal he heard thereafter was from his mouth or the DOT scraping cleaner off the window outside. Either way, it caused Caleb to look up with his eyebrows uneven. Darem dropped his padd again.
Caleb broke Ocam's requested silence. “Dude, why do you look like you've just done a cannonball into a pool of live gagh?”
He didn't inhale before responding. “I just sent it to Jay-Den.”