you took for granted all the times i never let you down

[heliakal]

Who: Lois & Clark | Clark & Miles
When: April 17th + 18th
Where: The good ship Moira
What: Clark catches up with the baes and gets Kryptonite in the mail. I'll spear you the details.
Warnings: Maybe talk of mental illness?



April 17th - Lois

Clark keeps pace with Lois as they head down the hallway toward the cargo bay. She's a full head shorter than him and yet he somehow feels like he's the one hurrying to keep up.

They'd started off perfectly fine, going over the latest responses to Lois' crew interviews together and making modifications to the questions, but naturally they'd gotten onto the topic of what was happening on the prison down below. Not that anything was really happening yet, but considering their track record for mid-month on any given planet, the new decontamination protocols weren't anything to casually dismiss.

When the messages came through for them to pick up their mail, the argument had just come with them.

"Look, all I'm saying is there's a trend with this kind of thing, and maybe you should wait and see what's happening before you go down there I mean..." Clark makes a small, vague gesture. "I mean what if this contaminant turns out to be dangerous after all?"

April 18th - Miles

Clark had stopped to look in on Miles a couple of times since the ice bath, and it seemed like he was doing a lot better, to Clark's immense relief. They had a lot of ground to cover now that Miles was getting back into his own head, but it had been a matter of bad timing that kept the visits relatively short and the heavier topics to the sidelines.

Now that Miles was more-or-less fully back on his feet, Clark had sent him a message before stopping by his office with a couple of tupperware containers tucked under his arm - lunch for two. It was probably going to be a long talk, and while he and Miles tended to fight and make up as often as not, a part of him is glad that, whatever happens here, it will absorb all of his attention for a while. He doesn't want to think about the spear. He doesn't need to. There are more important things.

"Miles?"

Comments

4/18

[forwardmomentum]

There had been some objections about him returning to work so soon, but Miles was starting to feel like he might go insane all over again if he spent any more time under house arrest in the kvortira...and there was the matter of J's death. It means he's back to bartending full time until he can find a sub or until J comes back. And she will, he knows. It'll be a relief to see her again.

But he had, at least, decided to work from his other office, the custom room he'd gotten a few months ago, because at least in there he can crawl directly into bed if he needs to. Not that he's going to, not till he gets through some of the files spread out over his desk. He's still looking a little pale and gaunt when he answers the door, but still worlds better than after the ice bath.

"Clark," he says, face lighting up, and he steps back to let Clark in. He notes the containers under Clark's arm, but he resists the urge to check his chrono. He would've noticed it was lunchtime sooner or later. "C'mon in, grab a chair. I was just doing some reading."

[flakjackets]

It was a simple thing, picking up a package. Or it should be, honestly. But this was all still pretty new and finding out there are things to pick up in a place you don't normally go was just one more thing she didn't really want to do alone if she could avoid it.

Or at least, that had been the thought process before she'd brought up wanting to go down to the prison world. It was interesting and she was feeling good about being able to find her way around on the ship, maybe it was time for the little bird to fly. "Clark, if I wait any longer we'll be leaving and I'll lose my chance. Just like if I wait to see what's happening I'll still miss the chance to see it for myself. I can handle dangerous situations. It's an abandoned prison with a weird AI, that's all." And she's just gonna keep walking at a pace to make him play a little catch-up... Even though she's not 100% sure on where they're going.

[heliakal]

"That's definitely not going to be all there is to it,"​ he says. Whenever they reach a split in the hallway, Clark starts along the correct path and then it's back to keeping pace with Lois' rapid strides. "I know it's not a war zone, but it could turn out to be just as dangerous - even more so. Are you sure you want to throw yourself into this right now? You just got here."

[heliakal]

"You look better." Clark smiles, stepping inside to give Miles a kiss on the forehead. "Do I need to put 'lunch breaks' in the official suggestion box?"

He's mostly teasing. Clark is starting to become accustomed to the people he cares about getting wrapped up in their work on a regular basis. It's as much of a coping method as a break would be, in some ways.

He finds a clear space on Miles' desk to set the containers down and pries the lids off; it's simple fare, sandwiches, cookies. He can't do much real cooking unless he knows what Miles might be allergic to. Once that's done, he settles down in one of the chairs. Even after he tugs his glasses off, there's a subtle tension in the set of his shoulders. "Got time to talk?"

[flakjackets]

She only starts going the wrong way once and is quick to catch right back up. "It's been two weeks. I've benched myself for two weeks..." No you haven't, Lois - but keep trying. "One day. I'll go soon just for a day, before anything you think might happen happens."

Because she's apparently also psychic. "I can even give you hourly status updates if it'll make you feel better."

[forwardmomentum]

That idiotic grin crosses Miles's face for a moment when Clark kisses his forehead -- romantic to a fault, and embarrassingly easy to melt. He can see the tension in Clark as he sits, though, blinking his gaze into sharper focus.

"Not saying much, is it?" Miles smiles crookedly. "I feel better. Well, I'm getting there, anyway. Don't worry, I'm not keen on another ice bath any timie soon."

Not quite a sore subject, but Miles hopes it's not too soon. He's always handled things like this. Maybe if he's flippant enough about it, Clark will find a little levity in it too. He reaches for a sandwich, gaze flicking back up to Clark's face. He has an idea or two of what it is Clark wants to talk about, but he's not about to jump the gun on him. "Yo," he concedes, tilting his head. "What's up?"

[heliakal]

Clark isn't the sort of person who gives up on anything easily, but he knows that expression on Lois' face. Even if he got her to agree somehow, she'd still go down there. He cards his fingers through his hair with a sigh as they come up on the cargo bay. "Look just - call me if anything tries to drag you into a ritual sacrifice? Please?"

[heliakal]

Clark finds that expression entirely endearing and he makes a silent note of it any time he can coax it out of Miles. He doesn't quite feel guilty about the ice bath even now, considering the result. "Good. If you scare me like that again, I'll throw you in myself."

He does his best to match Miles' tone. He doesn't blame Miles for losing it the way he did, but he does mean what he says. If that's what it takes to get Miles back to himself, it's just a part of what he signed up for. He leans his arms against the desk and exhales slowly, a little of the tension going out of him.

"I know I said I would respect your privacy, and I wanted to do that but..." He pauses a moment, dropping his gaze while he thinks of how to put this. "We can't keep moving around this - around Naismith - like it's nothing. I want to know the whole truth. I think, after everything, I deserve that."

[forwardmomentum]

"Ah." Miles rubs at his face with one hand, although he doesn't exactly look dismayed. He gives Clark a slightly rueful smile. "No, that's the very least you deserve. I was hoping to talk to you about that, actually. There's not really any point in me keeping it secret any longer anyway.

"Alright. You want the full story about Naismith?" Miles sets down his half eaten sandwich and rubs his hands over his lap, blowing out his breath. "I'm not really a courier. I'm a covert ops agent, and Admiral Naismith is my cover identity. Only he's not just a cover identity, not really. He's a person in his own right." Miles stops there before he starts sounding completely schizoid. "D'you remember that story I told you about how Bel and I met?"

[heliakal]

Somehow, he'd expected more of a fight. He'd be lying if he said it wasn't one of those conversations he'd rehearsed in his head a few times before he showed up.

That Miles is a covert ops agent rather than a courier actually makes a great deal of sense. Even if there hadn't been hints of things that didn't add up, even if he could believe that Miles' talent had gone overlooked, there was no way that Miles himself would have stood for that. Miles is capable of a great deal, but accepting mediocrity just isn't in him.

Still, after the slip with his accent - and then some - it's hard not to be a little concerned about Naismith being 'a person in his own right.' Clark's brow furrows, but he nods, willing to hear Miles out before he makes any judgments on that. "Was any of it true?"

HOPE YOU'RE READY FOR ANOTHER MILES NOVEL

[forwardmomentum]

"Some of it," Miles admits. "The spirit of it, anyway. We felt it best not to change the story too dramatically. It's a bit of a tale to begin with."

Slight understatement, maybe, but Clark did ask. Miles gently props his casted elbow on the desk, his lips half-twisting into a smile. "I was seventeen at the time. I'd just spectacularly failed the Imperial Service Academy entrance exams, and my parents thought it best I go spend some time with my grandmother Naismith on Beta Colony. I had my bodyguard along, and his daughter Elena -- a childhood friend of mine and Ivan's -- anyway, when we got to Beta Colony, I was..."

Miles pauses, gesturing vaguely with his good hand, and sighs a little. "Joining the service was everything to me. The Vor are a military caste, most Vor men go into the Service -- my father and grandfather did, but it was more than just that. My grandfather led one of the key resistance forces against the Cetagandan invasion in his time, and my father..." Miles smiles wryly, though there's a faint bitterness under it. He thinks of all the damn copies of The Komarr Report that keep turning up on the ship. "They've been writing about my father in textbooks for thirty years. All I wanted to do was serve, y'see. Like all nine generations of Vorkosigans before me. And if I couldn't serve Barrayar..."

He shrugs. "I met a couple of guys on Beta who'd been really down on their luck -- a Barrayaran deserter and a jump pilot whose ship had been sold out from under him -- I thought I could help. So I mortgaged a piece of real estate I happened to own against the ship -- I might have exaggerated its land value -- and made the deserter its engineer. We needed some actual cash to pay off the mortgage, so I thought carrying cargo would be the quickest way to get some, so I, ah..." He coughs into his hand. "I posed as a mercenary admiral under the name of Naismith and got us a job smuggling cargo past a wormhole blockade. Into an active war zone."

Because when Miles Vorkosigan goes to visit his grandmother on vacation, he brings back some serious souvenirs.

"It was just just meant to be a silly act to get us the job, because I was sure they weren't going to give it to a Barrayaran teenager, and Baz and Arde couldn't bargain for shit between the two of them. I, uh, might also have been under the influence of some stimulants at the time." In fact, he's got two bottles of those stimulants stashed in the kvortira. "Anyway, we were on track to make the drop and be on our way, only we got boarded by the mercenaries blockading the wormhole. And we were going to just play nice and do what they wanted, and then one of them -- Auson, that idiot -- made some unsavory overtures toward Elena and...well. Some violence ensued. There were only a few of us, y'see, and when we took out the boarding party we sort of had to take the shuttle, which meant we had to take the ship it came from, too. I pulled that Admiral Naismith act right back out of my ass and managed to convince them all I'd annexed the ship into my fleet, and they could all turn their contracts over to me, with the help of my supporting cast. I thought maybe we could pull it off long enough skate clear of the blockade and collect our payment, only it turned out to be some serious non payment, and some things...escalated unexpectedly, which of course meant I had to take the fleet, too..."