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Jimmy wasn't listening. He's moving at a march with his head bowed, brown hair bobbing around his face with each strike of his heel on the corrugated steel floor. what was that shit anya had said? in four, out four? yeah, he'll try that. Or, he would, but a hand on his arm yanks him back mid-stride.
"Jim! Stop walking away from me while I'm trying to talk to you!" Curly hisses. Jim flinches away from him but stops. When Curly was angry— or laughing or embarrassed —his face became flush. Jimmy could see beads of sweat rolling down his temple. Curly was a big man, his body warm like his demeanor.
"What the fuck do you want me to say? I didn't mean to make the kid cry." Jim met Curly with his eyes, but kept his head down. His features were cowled by the wild shadows cast by the ship's uncovered internals. That tendon on the side of Curly's neck strained. dear god, was it that important to him?
"To say sorry, you jackass!" Curly crowded him into the wall. The sloped ceiling here forced Jim to sink into his shoulders. Curly knew better than to mistake it for submission — if anything, Jim was more akin to a coiled snake like this.
"Sorry for what? Telling him he sucks at simple instruction?" Jim could feel his own breath coming out in staccato gasps.
"That you don't get along with other people, Jim!"
"You know this already! I know this already!" His growl turned into a snarl, pearly teeth flashing. "I barely fucking talk to anybody because I know it! I just do my job. What more can you ask for?"
Curly stared at him for a moment, eyes wide enough to see the white circling his blue iris. Curly was reeling his temper back in. That clenched fist at his side spoke of his urge to strike out, but it went slack. he was a good captain like that, able to control himself. Jim hated it.
Curly wet his lips, then continued. Carefully. "You need to make an effort to work harmoniously with your crew. Just have some... have some patience."
"Okay. Got it." Three words, pop pop pop. Jimmy turned to leave again.
Three steps. "Jimmy! Stop."
He doesn't know why, but he does. He feels like a turgid boiler ready to pop, like a shaken can of Swansea's shitty diet soda. The pipes around them were rattling under pressure, but he can barely even fucking hear the drone of the ship's machinations over his own pulse.
Curly grabs him again, but it's gentle and at the bicep. No flinch comes. Earlier, he'd scruffed Jim. Now, Curly's hold on his leash was loose. He bid his co-pilot to turn, and he did.
Those blue eyes searched him, wavering between his grimace and his gaze. jim wanted to sock him in the head for it.
"It's not the intern, is it?"
Silence. Jim's hair swayed as he shook his head. Anger was an easy emotion. It was a saline injection, sharp on the tongue and invigorating in the blood. It compelled respect from the weak and the undeserving. no, Jim never had to struggle with his anger. Not like Curly. Curly didn't like confrontation, didn't like his own anger. Jim would never understand how he earned his rank being such a push-over.
why is he looking at him like that.
A slow exhalation from the other man briefly warmed the air between them. This part of the Tulpar wasn't intended for humans to linger in. It would be colder still if the machines could operate at any lower of a temperature. It was cold and blue, blue, blue eyes.
stop looking at me like that.
And then Curly feels a drop in his stomach and his boots are off the floor. It's that same feeling he gets when he departs the hanger, directing three hundred thousand tonnes of metal out of the atmosphere for another haul. Just as he thinks his body has adjusted to planetary gravity, he's cradled again by mock gravity. Those twenty-eight days of shore leave, spent side by side with his best friend, just like he spent the rest of the year. Jimmy's presence was more constant than gravity. Jimmy shoves him into the steel-paneled wall, cramming him between the pipes that crawl out of the floor and into the ceiling. Curly feels the air evacuate his lungs.
Jimmy holds him by the lapels. Boots on the ground again, but he's shaking like there's turbulence. "Can't you fucking leave it alone?! You know why I came down here, so why'd you fuckin' follow? Huh? Just to be difficult?"
The crows' feet at the corners of Curly's eyes crinkled, just like they do when he shoots him a private smile from across the lounge. His brows furrow deeply, just like they do when he's trying to read a trajectory print-out from across the cockpit's center console. A choked noise escapes him like some sort of kicked dog.
Jimmy slams him into the pipes again. Vitriol like this was pure and effortless. It wasn't even Curly. well, it was Curly. But it wasn't. not really.
"Stop looking at me like you pity me!"
"Jim - " his name was truncated with a wheeze. "The pipes- move-!"
They had been rattling just a second ago, hadn't they? Jimmy couldn't tell anymore with the thrum of blood in his ears. It was heat on metal on polyester on skin. He felt his breath hitch, his pupils dilate. Curly was squirming under his hands. It was Jimmy on Curly on this stupid ship like a sharp instrument.
He held him for half a second longer, etching the details of Curly's breathless cry into his memory. His mind was somewhere else, imagining the shape that the pipes would brand into his skin. How they'd look like the bowed planks of a coffin across his shoulders; an array of inflamed, pink lines on a body pale from receiving only medicinal doses of artificial sunlight.
Curly stumbles and unsticks from the blistering metal as the death grip on his uniform is released. The air is bitingly cold, but not enough for the burns that frame his arms.
Jimmy felt better. Breath escaped his lungs like a thin steam.
Curly was inches from the floor. A voice next to his ear, "Oh shit, Curly, I didn't mean to actually hurt you." Curly sucked in a breath as he grappled with the pain splintering across his back. He's had worse, and there will be worse. it's not that bad, it's not that bad. He blinked hard and felt droplets roll down his face. He was just glad that Jim caught him before he went face-down into the steel grate.
Jimmy let his anger extinguish, and everything around him slotted back into place. The feeling went as quickly as it came, and now he was worried. The surprise he'd mimicked was genuine now. That was fucked up of him. He's a fucked up human being.
"... Jimmy, that hurt," Curly manages. A whisper of a laugh in his voice.
i hope so.