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He's twirling a dagger between his fingers, soundless. A flint over his knuckles. Rapid and without superfluous movement. Calderon watches, quiet, breathing as if he is asleep. There's no sun in this sector of space; just red dwarfs and the long-banished myth of Icarus and the low hum of titanium engines vibrating through Andromeda’s walls.
Damon's naked under the dimmed LED lighting, chest scarred over and stark. The dagger dives and loops around his fingers, the movement swift enough to form the fleeting impression of a fish, one of those endless and transient things they had seen on a planetary moon. It is almost odd to see him like this--restful, bare and divested of his armor, black drapes and their thousands of little pockets and blades. Where he had sniped the dagger, Calderon can hardly wager a guess. Though. He faintly remembered Damon dragging off his coat somewhere by the cot and his mouth, smirking into Calderon’s neck when he muttered something about how absurdly lighter Damon became without all the platinum and steel.
Calderon watches Damon and thinks that it is good to see him like this: well-rested and still, not out of obligation but some kind of unburdening.
"Staring." Damon doesn't look at him, but Calderon lets his lips twitch up anyway, shifting, knocking their knees together. Illusion made, he raises an arm from under the blankets, holds his hand over the hem of the blanket, fingers just slightly hovering over Damon's hip bone and the gnarled scar there.
"Can I?" Calderon asks, hoarse with sleep. Damon raises a brow, a smile and some teeth, finally narrowing his eyes down at his outstretched hand, then at his face. "Is this what a full eight hours does to you? "Please" and "thank you"? No wonder you like staying up."
Calderon just frowns, ignoring the flush of Damon’s thighs with his sides. He keeps his hand still in the air. “Answer the question.”
Damon looks at him, dagger poised for a mere moment before disappearing off somewhere. “Hm,” and he takes hold of Calderon’s wrist, crushes it to his stomach.
He is warm; skin ridged and uneven beneath Calderon’s callouses. Calderon curls his thumb into Damon’s side, where a scar knots across bone, watching his face. Damon watches him, hand still curled around Calderon’s wrist, contemplative and tentative--if Damon can look tentative. Mostly, he isn’t smiling, a vaguely uninterested look perched upon his face. But he would not let go. An odd concession.
So Calderon traces the center, slow, then the edges: cauterized. He knows what forcibly healed wounds do to the nerves. “Do you feel anything?”
“Enough,” Damon answers, and when Calderon stretches his fingers to flatten his palm over the mangled skin like covering for an opening, Damon’s grip tightens.
“Hm,” Calderon murmurs. Maybe he is smiling. This proximity, this allowed intimacy--it isn’t calculated. It is different, it is simple: complacent, really. What would his mothers say? He starts to withdraw his hand--Damon holds it, head tilting.
“You’re getting ambitious,” he says, like it should be a warning.
“I asked,” Calderon says. “You let me.”
Damon looks at him, considering. Then, “My turn.”
Calderon feels a flush of cool air sting at his back when he heaves himself out from under the covers, blankets sliding off his waist. His hand is still pressed against Damon’s abdomen; carefully, Calderon lifts his palm and turns it over. Damon lets him take his wrist and guide him towards Calderon’s waist, over to the lower expanse of his back. When Damon’s fingers crest the sides of his oldest bullet wound, gentle like a missed blow, Calderon closes his eyes and lets go.
Showing his back is its own confession, he supposes. “Standard for a soldier,” he says. Goldis isn't nearly as civil or sophisticated as the council wants the rest of the quadrant to believe. Hardly any more than Cursa. Commander, conman, bloodhound. It almost doesn’t matter.
“Devastating.” Damon’s hand is ghost-light over Calderon’s skin, and Calderon wonders if he is looking at the beating marks from his time in cells. “I wonder if you would’ve warranted a firing squad or a guillotine. Quite fashionable ways of execution, back in the old days.”
"It would've been a quick death." Political expediency. Ayame would hate to be reminded.
"What a loss that would have been," even as Damon presses his thumb into the small of Calderon's back, into the tense muscle, "Commander."
Well. Keeping secrets is always particular to their work. Their shared strong suits. It makes sense that Damon can pick them from him just as easily, too. “I’m going back,” Calderon says, without pause, into the side of his elbow. “Whether you’re with me, or not.”
Damon’s hand stills; again, that honed attention, concentrated in the pressure at the small of his back. Then, again: “Ambitious.”
Calderon says nothing. He half expects a fight, some kind of verbal flaying, a comment on how dutiful he is, how stupid. It is--ill-advised, irresponsible, futile. Ayame’s curled lip, resigned and unenthusiastic; you haven’t changed. If there is a coup d’etat--and there will be, because it is Zovack and his co-conspirators occupy more seats than not--the fact remains that Calderon is no longer commander, no longer with any state-sanctioned power or agency to mobilize bodies. To protect, to stifle, to avert. To do something.
It is stupid.
Damon’s hand smooths over the chill of his back; Calderon breathes slowly into his arm, trying not to tense, or pull away, or something that gave more away than he already had. He is not afraid; he would not demand any of the Andromeda crew to come with him. Suicide trips aren’t mandatory. He would not lead them to death.
“I don’t know why I follow a man like you,” Damon says from above him. His voice is flat, foreboding, without the contempt that usually accompanies the beginnings of an argument. He sounds--tired. Calderon begins to turn over, but Damon’s hand presses steadily over his back. He stills under the pressure, evening out his breath.
“You’ll survive,” Damon says, and his hand is a pool of heat over Calderon’s scar, exact in its weight, “I’ll make sure of it.”