Chapter Text
Being in space, virtually alone aside from a handful of strangers who actively dislike you… kind of really mega sucks, according to Doug Eiffel. He goes over the list of the top ten things he misses most. The regular stuff is in its normal spot: pizza, porn, and so, so much booze. He promises he really is trying to stop thinking about that last one so much. It just doesn’t feel right to want any of that stuff anymore.
Deep down, Eiffel knows that every single one of those items is on that list for the same reason: they’re familiar. They bring him comfort. Eiffel hasn’t had any sort of comfort in a while. Quite the opposite, in fact! Because currently, it’s his birthday. And he’s spending it alone, sequestered away in his comms room, sulking in the uncomfortable silence.
Yeah, he’ll admit, the whole mutiny thing had been a new and somewhat exciting development when Eiffel wasn’t worried that his commanding officer was going to suffocate to death. It isn’t very exciting now, though, with Dr. Hilbert locked in a broom closet, the aforementioned commanding officer trying to decompartmentalize from her previous close encounter with her own demise, and the one person Eiffel was actually starting to consider a friend… functionally brain-dead. He’s had worse birthdays, sure, but this downright sucks.
So now he’s in the comms room, staring blankly out at the star. He doesn’t dare try to find any radio frequencies—he’d rather do just about anything else than that right now. After trying to sit in every position possible given the constraints of the chair in the comms room, whistling ‘Happy Birthday’ to himself a few times in a horribly depressing key, and searching the room up and down for his last cigarette, Eiffel finally resorts to just putting his head down on the comms panel and letting out a long, garbling, guttural sigh.
Not so long after that, the dejectedness turns into fatigue and Eiffel finally finds himself very tired. He doesn’t want to fall asleep, not when there’s so much that’s wrong. It feels to him like a privilege that he just doesn’t deserve. And he isn’t usually one to deny himself privileges. So, swallowing his little remaining pride and the crushing drowsiness overcoming him, Eiffel hauls himself in the direction of the corridor.
It’s weird having to go look for Minowski on his own. Usually, he has Hera’s help. Even more usually, it’s Minkowski hunting him down, not the other way around. This time, the silence is pervasive and Eiffel feels like he’s being watched, and not in the comforting, caring way that Hera does it.
He does not expect to collide with Minkowski in the corridor. When she pops around the corner, he lets out a properly undignified shriek. This, in turn, startles Minkowski, who has the absolute graciousness not to slap Eiffel senseless as is her first instinct to do so.
“Jesus, Commander!”
“Jesus, yourself, Eiffel!” Minkowski holds her hands up defensively still, but once she sees Eiffel staring, she drops them. He doesn’t seem to be in the mood for his usual jokes, and honestly, Minkowski can’t blame him at all. “You… okay, Eiffel?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. You didn’t scare me that bad.”
“I wasn’t talking about that. Just, like… generally. Anything you need?”
Eiffel sighs, furling his brow and caressing his chin like he’s deep in thought. The sad part is that Minkowski knows that he legitimately does that when he thinks, and he isn’t making fun of her or anything. She’s going to regret saying this, but she wishes Eiffel would make fun of literally anything right now. Seeing him all serious is rattling her, and that’s exactly the last thing she needs on top of everything else.
“A nap would be pretty excellent right now, but I really don’t wanna sleep. Given all the literal craziness that’s been going on.” Eiffel sighs, and Minkowski picks up on his exhaustion. He even looks wearier than normal.
“Yeah. Me too. It’s too quiet without Hera. I feel… alone.” Minkowski admits the last word in her sentence like it’s something shameful, but Eiffel just nods in agreement.
“Exactly,” he says, letting himself float backwards, and then pushing off the wall to go forwards again.
Minkowski nods, and an awkward silence ensues. Eiffel keeps at the back-and-forth game until he realizes he really doesn’t have the energy for it, and then comes to a halt. “Yeah, okay, I’m bored. And tired. So—” Eiffel cuts himself off with a monstrous yawn— “I’m gonna try to get some sleep, I guess?”
“Right. That sounds good. I think I will too.”
Minkowski turns in the direction of her quarters, and before Eiffel can even really think about what he's doing, he calls out to her.
“Wait, Minkowski!”
“Yes, Eiffel? What’s wrong?”
Eiffel suddenly feels his face redden, and he figures at least he can’t make himself look any stupider than this once it’s all said and done.
“Uh, I just… really… don’t think I can be alone right now. Like, probably won’t be able to sleep. At all. God, Commander, please don’t take this the wrong way, I just…”
“Fine by me. My quarters or yours?”
“What?” Eiffel has to fight the urge to shout, which is luckily quashed by the much more overpowering urge to mumble.
“If the only way you’ll get some rest is if we have a little sleepover, then so be it. We can take shifts.”
“Uh… okay, yeah, sure. And maybe your quarters? Mine are kind of a mess.”
Minkowski sighs. “Of course they are. C’mon, let’s go before you fall asleep right here.”
The use of the word sleepover , Eiffel thinks, is a bit preposterous. He really doesn’t feel any more at ease with Minkowski sitting off to the side, watching him try to fall asleep in her own bed. He’s so tired, goddammit! And yet he absolutely cannot sleep. He’s about to call this whole sleepover thing off and skulk back to his own quarters to suffer in peace. Eiffel is tired, cranky, and on edge, and it’s his birthday! Not that he even really cares about that last detail anymore. The Hephaestus makes a full rotation around Wolf 359 every few months, and they don’t celebrate anything about that. New Year’s Day might be next week, but on this absolute death trap it’ll just be another day in paradise.
“Eiffel?” Minkowski asks hesitantly. “You okay? You’re sort of staring… like a, I dunno, like a sad kitten. It’s a little unnerving.”
“Oh,” Eiffel responds, turning his body away from Minkowski. “Sorry about that. Got lost in thought.”
“Do you… want a hug?”
“What?” Eiffel actually turns all the way back around, the blanket and straps rustling against him.
Minkowski just shrugs. “You seem tense, and you’re clearly not gonna ask yourself since your masculinity is too fragile or whatever, but you look like you’re about to cry. So do you want a hug?”
Eiffel has never been more blindsided by anything to come out of Minkowski’s mouth. To be honest, he’s worrying less about his so-called “fragile masculinity” and more about whether or not emotional vulnerability counts as insubordination. All he can do is nod, unbuckle the shoulder strap keeping him from floating, and let gravity sit him up.
He’s about to undo the rest of the straps when he’s pushed back slightly by the force of Minkowski floating into him. She wraps her arms around his middle, not so loosely that it’s needlessly awkward, but not so tight that she’s suffocating him. She knows what that feels like, and it is not a good sensation. Once Eiffel gets his bearings, he hugs Minkowski back, feeling her chin rest on his shoulder and mimicking that movement. He does squeeze a bit tighter, and Minkowski can literally feel some of the tension leaving not only Eiffel’s body but her own.
Minkowski manages to hook her foot under the lowermost tether strap on the bed, and she gets to a position that almost resembles normal sitting. It is slightly given away by how her hair floats upwards, but otherwise it’s realistic. It feels like home to her, and she hopes it stirs a similar feeling in Eiffel.
“Thanks, Commander. I actually… can’t remember the last time I had a hug? That’s pretty sad.” Eiffel tries to make a joke of it, but Minkowski ruins it by agreeing before the nonexistent punchline sets in. Ah, well. Some jokes land, others go out the airlock and into the star forever and ever.
“Don’t mention it. I’ve missed this whole ‘human contact’ thing too. But, uh, yeah, don’t be afraid to ask if you need anything. I think any two people who go through what we just went through legally have to qualify as friends.”
Friends? Are they friends? Eiffel doesn’t quite know what to make of that, but he smiles regardless. “One point for trauma bonding, am I right?”
That time, the joke does land. And shortly after the conversation dies down, Eiffel finds himself feeling really, truly sleepy, and not just exhausted. He settles back down against the awful, flat, Goddard-issue patented pillows for deep space living, and feels a little more at peace knowing he’s got a friend watching his back.
A friend who’s going to have to wait a good six hours to get that same kind of comfort.
“Hey,” Eiffel whispers.
Minkowski peers at him over her copy of Pryce and Carter . “Yes, Eiffel?”
“Usually, everyone sleeps at the same time during a sleepover. And… I think you could probably squeeze in here.”
He receives an absolutely incredulous look in response, and is beginning to wonder if the whole “friends” deal was really a trap and Minkowski is about to throw him in the bridge next.
“Sorry. Never mind. That’s… that was stupid of me to say. Here, I’ll get up, you can sleep first, it’s your bed anyways, I shouldn’t have—”
“Eiffel. It’s fine. I’m not mad. If it helps you sleep…”
Eiffel is still cringing at himself, but Minkowski turns out to be actually serious. This is a great time for his usual, “Hey, things might as well get more weird” motto.
Minkowski gets up, stowing her book in a cabinet on the opposite wall before carefully climbing into her bed. She faces away from Eiffel, and man, now she’s realizing how warm he is. Does he always run this warm?
“Do you always run this warm?”
“Uh, yeah. Sorry. Basically a human furnace.”
“Noted,” Minkowski says, settling against the pillow she’s finally stopped hating with a vengeance. “Night, Eiffel.”
“Night, Minkowski. Thanks for hosting the best sleepover not-in-the-world.”
“Anytime. Anytime. Consider this your birthday party.”
“Aw, no cake?”
Minkowski sighs. “Shut up and go to sleep, Eiffel.”
“Yessir,” Eiffel says, and even though Minkowski can’t see him, she can hear the restrained laughter in his voice. She sincerely hopes she isn’t going to regret this whole arrangement.