Chapter Text
Thursday 28th January 2021
21:15
Dinner had been made via some sort of autopilot setting Chan wasn’t aware he had. It remained a mystery whether or not this preoccupied version of him could properly season food, only because it also seemed to fall short when it came to registering the taste of whatever it was he’d cooked.
Just two months after the election, it felt like a far too short length of time for such a bombshell to have been dropped by Naird, especially one that surely contravened numerous employment laws. Not that anyone was going to be keeping count; the safety net of the law was something you seemed to lose when it came to being employed by the government.
The email came as he walked from the corner kitchen in his house to the sofa, the vibration of his phone from his pocket stopping him in his tracks. He unlocked the screen, trying to ignore the nervous fidgeting of his fingers against the phone case as the message he’d been expecting all evening loaded. He read it once, twice, then skimmed through it one more time as if its contents was capable of changing in front of his eyes.
He didn’t realise he’d been stood in limbo between the kitchen table and the sofa until the phone in his hand began to vibrate again, a chain of messages from the rest of the science division coming through at once. His frown deepened at the first few.
See you on Monday, then?
Sounds like everyone else has been offered the transfer.
He swiped the keyboard up and down on the screen, never finding the resolve to type out a reply. Reading it in an email was one thing, but to write it out himself was a step too far towards acknowledging it. There was no going back after that.
Enough time passed for the messages to pile up, the tone shifting over time.
You did get the offer, right?
There must have been a mistake if they’re not keeping you.
Don’t worry about it, probably just a bug in the system.
His frustration finally won out, pushing him another few steps towards the sofa. He toyed with the phone briefly, contemplating a frustrated call to Doctor Mallory (surely he’d had some say in the decision), ready to get angry with a man he’d considered a mentor but more prepared to be reduced to pleading with him in no time at all. It wasn’t worth the embarrassment, even if it did seem like the only way he could hope to keep his job.
The phone got tossed to one side, his body following suit as he collapsed across the sofa cushions, propping his head up with his arm as a pillow and staring blankly at the ceiling. His thoughts turned to the job search that would surely need to commence the next day and then to the following apartment search; there were no opportunities in Wild Horse unless you wanted to work at the gas station or the diner.
Having to go back to the base seemed like a final bit of mockery from whoever had dropped his name from the list, taunting him with the promise of an hour to pack up the most exciting job he’d probably ever have. After only a year, it hadn’t exactly lasted long.
He remembered a conversation with Mallory a couple of weeks after Space Force started up. How the older man had complimented his work so far, invited Chan to shadow his role as chief scientist occasionally, suggested without saying as much that Chan would one day need to know how to take on those extra responsibilities. It didn’t make sense; going from that and ending up fired or let go or whatever label they’d put on it to make it seem less like it was his own fault.
But really, if they were keeping everyone else, who else could be responsible?
Friday 29th January 2021
10:05
“You too?”
Chan glanced up from the workbench where he had been prevaricating over what to do with the myriad of exotic plants he’d been studying. He’d been focusing on the same table for a long time, more than content to put his back to the rest of the room and forget about everything else he still needed to sort through.
“How could you tell?” He asked, watching Tony step into the room, letting the door close behind him. It shut with a slight rattle, one that Doctor Mallory would have chastised him for as the glassware on surrounding tables shuddered and clattered together.
“You look like I did when I looked in the mirror this morning,” Tony replied, collapsing in a nearby chair with his usual drama but a far more downbeat overtone. Chan watched him clasp his hands on the table, then move one to drag through his hair before returning it to the other to fidget the two of them together in front of him. For Tony that was the equivalent of pouring his heart out, a genuine admission of nerves or discomfort or whatever it was he was feeling.
“All the others got transferred,” Chan muttered, leaning his weight forwards on his elbows and resting against the surface. “Except me.”
“Other places will be queuing up to hire you,” Tony said, evidently avoiding any sort of comforting talk around Chan being left out amongst his colleagues in favour of offering a practical solution. Chan watched him thoughtfully for a moment as if there was a physical quality to his unwavering persistence that could be observed. Like normal, he saw none of the process behind the solutions (however terrible they sometimes were) that Tony would always generate when a problem arose; it seemed that there was at least some element of enigma to the overbearing man in front of him.
“It’s a shame that all of this will go to waste,” he remarked instead of probing that point any further. He waved his hand generally in the air, not even sure what he meant by 'all of this.' His own research maybe - one year’s worth? Or the base itself, left empty until it was used for some other pointless project? Or maybe the time he’d spent there… or the people?
“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet so maybe it can be put to use as a place for me to hide out in for a while,” Tony joked, his emphasis falling far more heavily on the uncertainty than his weak attempt at humour. “Even if I got a glowing recommendation from the general, everyone knows we’ve been shut down, so they have literally no motivation to hire me.”
“You don’t have contacts?” Chan asked, regretting the question as soon as a wistful expression briefly flickered across Tony's face. He took some satisfaction from the fact that it was swiftly replaced by doubt.
“Hannah, maybe,” Tony said predictably, “She’s always had more connections.” He trailed off again, seeming incapable of sustaining a thought throughout their conversation. Chan eyed him, moving to continue clearing his desk so he didn’t dwell on any conclusions he might have reached. It seemed futile, and out of place considering their half-colleague, half-friend relationship status, to point out how much of a bad idea it would be for Tony to go anywhere near Hannah and expect to get a good job out of it. Then again, he didn’t understand their relationship (and was slightly grateful to be left ignorant), only hearing the occasional comment on Tony’s end.
It was always the same with Hannah and Tony. He’d be all smiles one morning, talking about how she had been in the area and she’d decided to drop in and wasn’t that nice? Then a day later, or two if he got lucky, there would be a sulking shadow following General Naird around for a week or so. Tony wouldn’t mention her until the cycle started all over again. It felt like someone needed to tell him that healthy relationships didn’t function like that. Chan continued to feel like it wasn’t his place to be that person.
“I should probably stop procrastinating and actually deal with my office.” Tony pulled Chan out of his thoughts, his tone maybe implying that the silence had settled between them for a little too long. And there was that awkward clause in their relationship; the unfamiliar familiarity that they had with each other that meant some silence was comfortable but too much tipped the balance.
“Yeah, I guess I should-” Chan waved a hand towards his desk again. Tony's incoherence seemed to be contagious. Tony nodded, retreating to the door but walking backwards because there was enough history in a year to make their last conversation hard to end. Chan fought the urge to shake off the weight that settled over it, trying not to turn away as if he could pretend Tony was alone in perceiving the unspoken difficulty they had in saying goodbye. Anything profound would be overkill, anything less felt like a disservice.
It was a year of Chan playing into Tony's gullibility, only to be on the receiving end of the other man's petulance in retaliation. It was a year of exchanging amused glances over the heads of Naird and Mallory as the older men argued about something inconsequential for far too long. It was a year of the seat opposite Chan in the canteen becoming Tony's chosen space to eat lunch if their breaks happened to coincide.
“I better be the first person to hear about it if you figure out that invisibility cloak shit,” Tony said with a brief grin, knocking the door open behind him with his elbow and standing in the opening hesitantly.
“Sure,” Chan replied sarcastically, “I’ll call you before I even publish the paper.” Tony's mouth had settled again but flickered back into a ghost of a smile, punctuated by another slightly awkward nod. He tapped his hand against the glass door absentmindedly, shuffling out into the hallway far enough for it to shut. Chan smirked when he waved almost sheepishly from the other side of the glass, returning the gesture as the tangle of things he wouldn’t be dealing with settled in his stomach.
He turned back to the plants to shake off the sensation, unhappy to only feel it grow when he tried to ignore it. Instead, he reached for the most recently emptied tray, collecting the remaining soil into one corner and almost picking the container up to tip it into the nearby bin. Almost, because his attention was caught by something lying beneath the brown sediment. He brushed the dirt away curiously, holding the card he retrieved up in one hand, rubbing the other against his lab coat to clean off the soil.
What was slightly disappointing was that it was nothing more than a laminated piece of card. What was less disappointing was the date and string of numbers printed on one side.
The date was for three days’ time and it came with a set of coordinates.
Thursday 28th January 2021
09:00
The office door opening was a reliable sign that it was precisely nine o’clock. Tony's head tilted slightly at the sound but he maintained the focus on his phone, letting Naird complain fruitlessly about the lack of respect for his waiting room or Brad's failings as a glorified guard dog or whatever it was he chose to focus on that day.
The general was a well-oiled machine, even after twelve months of the same routine surely wearing down his resolve. He even managed to keep up their daily meetings despite his consistent state of helpless frustration which Tony chose to be aware of and then do nothing at all to change. The lack of an effort on his part did nothing to interrupt the natural routine Naird seemed to have settled into, the disruption to Mark's clockwork habits that he so clearly caused becoming absorbed into the strictly organised, adaptive network of the general's duties.
“I took your advice on board about steering clear from political satire on the twitter account, sir,” Tony reported first, noting Naird's stoic expression flicker with amusement but then return to an unusual state of distraction. “So I will avoid making any more jokes involving new POTUS.”
“Just POTUS is fine, Tony,” Mark interjected, at least glancing up from the file in his hands. Beyond his usual disinterest in social media talk, he seemed to be altogether more preoccupied than normal. “Considering he’s been in office for a month now, the 'new' has almost definitely worn off.”
“And what is so much more interesting than our meeting?” Tony chose to ignore his reply entirely and pursue his own line of inquiry. Mark looked briefly guilty to have been caught but even this didn’t hold his attention for long, his eyes drifting away from Tony's calculating gaze and back to the file on the desk. Tony shot out of his chair and tried to catch a glance of the document before it was pulled tightly to Mark's chest.
“What’s this?” He complained, only partly mocking as his genuine curiosity won out. “Are you keeping something from the good people of America, sir?” Mark rolled his eyes, closing the file in his hands firmly and placing it in a drawer.
“It’s confidential,” he said elusively, “So yes, I’m definitely keeping it from you and, by extension, the rest of the world, I imagine.”
“I’m flattered that you think I have that much influence,” Tony retorted, pressing one hand to his chest and looking overly flattered before folding his arms and crossing one leg over the other. In his head, he was aiming for something professional or maybe authoritative but Mark continued to look unimpressed. “But between you and me?”
“It took me less than a week of working with you to realise that no conversation is ever just between you and me,” Mark said pointedly, shaking his head. “You'll find out soon enough.”
It was Tony’s turn to look unimpressed, scuffing his shoes together childishly but not pushing the point any further. He kept himself quiet by watching the minute hand on the clock behind Mark tick closer to the end of their meeting and absently wondering how many more seconds it would have to sweep through until ‘soon enough’ came around.
Friday 29th January 2021
10:30
Tony was of the opinion that the quicker he removed all evidence of his work from the Space Force base, the more insignificant an event it would be in his past. Maybe, if he swept all of the strange souvenirs and stationary into the two boxes on his office floor, they would take the entire experience with them: moving out to Colorado, the excitement he’d hidden from his expression the first time he’d pulled up to the inconspicuous rock face in the middle of nowhere and keyed in the passcode, everything.
He also didn’t want to see Mark Naird. His memory of the previous day was soured for a number of reasons, not least because the general hadn’t considered it appropriate for him to know what was going on. Surely, he could have handled the announcement better, given Naird a way to break the news without causing mass confusion. Then again if he wasn’t being kept on by the Air Force, it stood to reason that General Naird would not have considered his input valuable. That would sting a little if Tony were to let it but he buried it under another handful of scrap paper and free pens that they’d never managed to hand out in sufficient quantities at the school outreach events he’d been forced to oversee.
The room was disappointingly bare by the time he was finished with it. He’d crammed himself onto every shelf, forgetting how clear and new it had looked on his first day, forgetting the conviction he’d had to make his new job a permanent one. Of course that determination had remained in a different form, lingering below an opaque layer of modern references and a liking for sarcasm that wound Naird up so much that Tony frequently wondered why the general had ever decided to hire him. That thought had returned now, forcing itself out between the flaps of the two boxes as he left each of them in the doorway and tried to concentrate on completing a final check of the room.
Seeing Chan already felt like it had been a bad idea, the scientist as much a part of Tony’s daily routine on the base as he was an ingrained feature of Chan’s. But even if they had begrudgingly got on after a couple of months of keeping their distance, Tony couldn’t help but feel it should have been Naird who he saw last. Not that he was in a rush to track down the other man, his wounded pride acting as enough of a deterrent.
Whilst Doctor Mallory had always been forthcoming in his praise and, more often, his criticism, General Naird had always been reserved with the former. Tony had got used to the level of detachment that Mark managed to maintain from the people he employed (with the exception of Mallory), his hope of receiving any positive attention dwindling almost daily during the first six months.
There was no escaping the way Mark held them all at arm’s length, particularly not when it reminded Tony uncomfortably of himself and even more so of his parents. That explained the desperate need to please that drove him crazy but probably never even registered with Mark. It almost certainly justified the little rush of achievement he’d brush off as ridiculous whenever Naird struck up a casual conversation with him; as if doing that proved his trust of Tony or even just his increasing tolerance for spending time with him.
Either way, Tony could count those moments on one hand, instantly knowing that several had happened in his office, before it was bare and back to factory settings, ready for a layer of dust to occupy it instead of a person. He wandered over to the window, squeezing himself into the corner between the wall and a bookshelf and craning his neck so he could just see one of the smaller launch pads through the glass. Naird had knocked on his door when he was stood there once, raising an eyebrow in a sure indication of his surprise that Tony would be at all interested by the launch testing that had been taking place that day.
Tony had felt a little sheepish, letting his façade drop nonetheless (because he wasn’t about to come up with a plausible explanation for why he, the uninterested media manager, had deliberately forced himself into an uncomfortable position just so he could watch a rocket’s engines get tested) and waiting for Naird to walk straight out the door and question the arrogance he normally had to put up with every day.
Instead, Naird had dropped whatever it was he’d been delivering and walked with his usual, unfaltering posture to the window. He’d started talking about how he didn’t really understand the science behind the testing, as if Tony’s sudden interest suggested that he did. Tony had been reluctant to admit that it was just that the roaring, bright orange flames gave him that feeling of being a kid again, the age where everyone wants to be an astronaut, so he’d nodded along with Naird’s confusion and offered up little in return.
Upon reflection it might have been his own walls coming down that had lowered Mark’s ever so slightly; their shared moment of being out of character prompting him to make that dry remark about how loud noises and things setting on fire did not make for a particularly calming work environment for someone who had been a soldier their entire life. Tony had laughed a little, not unkindly, and finally tried to get him to admit that he must have wanted to be an astronaut when he was younger.
“Space always seemed very far away when I was a kid,” Naird had replied, rolling his eyes at his own response, “Of course, flying a fighter jet seemed altogether more attainable.”
The next day things had been back to normal. The launch testing was over and Tony left their morning meeting in a sulk because Mark hadn’t approved of the angle he wanted them to take in an interview that day. If he remembered correctly, he managed to rile Mark up so much over the next few days that he’d been threatened with getting ‘fired’ and not for the first time.
Back in the present, he sidled out of the corner, ruining the moment as he had back then by remembering who his brain was determined to blame for all of this in the first place. He couldn’t help but wish that Mark had known how much he’d needed this job to work out and that maybe the older man would have fought for his job to remain intact as they were moved back to the Air Force if that had been the case.
He surveyed the corner of the room he’d just been in, noticing a piece of card left on the end of the bookshelf nearest the window. It looked unfamiliar as he flipped it over in his hand, catching sight of some numbers as he slipped it into one of his boxes. He knew they were mostly filled with rubbish, scraps of meaningless notes that he would have to force his overly sentimental self to part with.
He’d deal with all of that when he got home.