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She was almost impressed. Their discretion lasted an astounding four hours: four peace-filled hours where no one pried into her personal life. But apparently dinner was just too much for Eiffel to handle. They talked for a few minutes about what systems still needed repairs and which one of them had to escort Hilbert to the toilet this time (and due to his losing the bet, she was able to order him and actually have him do it without complaint, an opportunity too rare to pass up).
But he was clearly bursting at the seams trying to keep in his questions. And while it had never, ever worked before, she thought she might as well try letting him get it out of his system so he would leave her in peace later.
“Okay, Eiffel, go ahead.”
“Commander?” he asked with just a hint of suspicion. And he was right to be suspicious; she was going to order him to do so many unpleasant things over the remaining 20 hours. But she just sighed and took another bite of her protein bar.
“You’re biting your tongue in half trying not to ask. What more do you want to know about my husband?”
“Oh thank god,” he blurted out, at the same moment that Hera hissed “Yes!” from a speaker near Minkowski’s head.
“I’ll allow you a couple questions, and I would like to assume you know better than to ask anything too invasive. I’d like to, but I know you both too well.”
Eiffel held up his hands in a placating gesture in front of him. “Please, Commander, we do not want to know how tattered your copy of 50 Shades of Grey is, we promise.”
“Eiffel!”
“No, no, I’m just curious about…I don’t know, the little things, to help me picture the whole arrangement better. Let’s see…well, for example, which one of you cooks?”
That was a particularly cruel question to ask over dinner, to bring up the memories of dumplings and roast pork, made with a Koudelka family recipe, while they munched on soy bars and seaweed shakes. “We trade off. We’re both fairly competent in the kitchen, though I like to do holiday meals.”
“Did you have a big wedding?” Hera asked, her voice filled to the brim with curiosity. “A large event with lots of people, or-“
“Or a stoic justice-of-the-peace deal followed by some nice romantic paperwork?” Eiffel oh so helpfully supplied.
“Medium sized, just family and a few friends.” She started packing away the dinner supplies briskly. “Alright, this was clearly a mistake, let’s just finish our dinner in-“
“Wait, just a few more, please!”
“…One more.”
“Each?”
“Total, Eiffel.”
He and Hera both went quiet for a moment, trying to think of the best question to invade her privacy with. Eiffel opened his mouth and started to say something several times, only to stop and furrow his brow again, but it was Hera who beat him to the punch.
“What do you call him?”
Minkowski blinked a few times. It wasn’t the sort of question she had been bracing for and it took her a little off guard. “I call him my husband. That’s what he is.”
“No, but I mean, what do you call him when you’re talking to him?” Hera pressed. “Do you say ‘good morning, my husband, how did you sleep’?”
“Which, let me point out, we are both ready to believe,” Eiffel butted in. “I can completely picture you waking up together, sitting up in bed and sharing a firm hand shake and a steady nod.”
“Ha ha, very funny. I call him David. Some people call him Dave, a few coworkers, but I don’t use that often. And he calls me Renee. Neither of us really got into the whole pet names thing.”
The glint in Eiffel’s eyes was positively evil. “No shnookums? You’re not his little honeybun? Commander Honeybun, if you’re nasty.”
“Okay, you’re spending two nights in the brig.”
“I feel it was worth it,” he said with a sage nod. “But nothing? Not even when you were dating?”
She shrugged. “Not really. I got ‘sweetheart’-ed enough by sleezy old officers at work, I didn’t want it while I was dating.”
“Yeah,” Hera said. “And it’s not like ‘sweetheart’ is a very romantic thing to call someone.”
Minkowski raised her eyebrow at the small button camera set in one of the walls. Even without a face to talk to, it was fairly easy to forget that Hera wasn’t human, and that her information about relationships was almost all analytical. “Well, it is in most contexts. It can be used sarcastically, obviously, but it’s a fairly innocuous pet name for couples. Like, I don’t know, like ‘honey’ or ‘dear’.”
There was a pause, and she noticed Doug fiddling with the wrapper on a food packet.
“Officer Eiffel, when you…when you call me things like ‘sweetheart’,” Hera asked slowly, with a hint of an edge in her voice. “Is it intended sarcastically? Condescendingly?”
“What?” he balked, shaking his head in that strange jerky way he did when he was getting flustered. “It’s just like a, a term of endearment. Between friends.”
“You don’t call anyone else on the station ‘sweetheart’ or ‘babe’.”
“Hey, to be fair, I doubt Hilbert was ever anyone’s baby. I think he popped out of a test tube fully formed, beard and all.”
“And you didn’t start calling me those things until we had been on the Hephaestus for quite some time.” She was gathering up a good head of steam, and Minkowski silently cursed Eiffel for floating between her and the door, blocking off an easy retreat. “I am terribly sorry if some hilarious joke has been going over my head while I was busy keeping us all alive. But if you have anything to say to me, maybe you should say it outright, rather than using veiled insults.”
“Hey, no, Hera, I would never insult you. Unless I had to to lie to Minkowski in some way.”
How did he always manage to forget when she was in the room? But this time, she was content not to bring attention to it.
“And the nicknames,” he continued. “It’s just…I don’t know, I always use pet names for people I care about.”
“But Commander Minkowski said those sorts of terms were romantic in nature. You refer to all of your friends with couple’s terminology?”
“Not…not my friends, exactly.”
The silence was far heavier this time. And far, far more awkward to be floating in the middle of.
“Doug, are you…” Hera said, then trailed off. Eiffel rubbed at the back of his neck, made another one of those jerky head shakes.
“I mean, I…you have to know that I…” he stammered.
Okay, she was officially ready to be out of here. Minkowski grabbed another serving of food from the dispensary containers and awkwardly shuffled her way along the wall, around Eiffel to get to the door. His head whipped around to follow her progress.
“Hey, um, Commander, what’re you up to? Anything you need me to help with? Or anywhere you need me to go? Pressing matters that need to be taken care of right this instant with now delay at all?”
“No, no, I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just going to take Dr. Hilbert his rations. Stay here, finish your dinner.” She caught his eye and couldn’t help letting in a bit of a smirk. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”
She slipped out the door and closed it behind her, before making her way down the empty hallway. She tried to move quickly out of hearing range, only catching snatches of “but why didn’t you say anything before?” and “because the last thing we really need is this to turn into The Real World: Hephaestus”. She slipped around a corner and away from the mess, and hoped that Hera would be wrapped up in that conversation enough to not want to ask her any follow-up questions about interpersonal terminology.
She sighed, shook her head, and continued on her way to the observatory with Hilbert’s food. But she couldn’t help smiling a bit. It was probably going to cause trouble down the line, and she didn’t even want to consider the logistics of a human getting into an intimate relationship with an AI (if Eiffel ever came to the infirmary for electrical burns in unsavory places, she might actually go mad). If they did decide to do this, she would have to talk with each of them separately to make sure it didn’t get out of hand or interfere with their work and the collective attempt to get home.
But it was sweet. As much as neither of them thought she had a heart, she had to admit it was sweet. And if any of them could find a reason to be happy in this death trap, who was she to say no?
She thought about David. She thought about how much she missed him. And she thought about how his face would scrunch up if she started calling him “sweetheart”.
If she ever got back to Earth, she might try it on for size.