2010-03-31 - Gaycation II: Son of Gaycation - Guy Talk

There are a few old-fashioned, O'Neill cylinder-style colonies located in Jovian orbit. They are few and far between, as most colonies are located on Gallileo's moons, but the Jupiter Energy Fleet uses them as both spaceports for ships entering and leaving the Jovian Sphere and as homes for the families of men and women living in those spaceports.

One of these, Zeus Thirteen, is the foremost such colony; it looks like a normal one, with a large spaceport "rod" built out of it, that attaches to ships coming and going. At the bottom of the colony, the spaceport facility itself looks out on a view of Jupiter and Ganymede alike. There is a large bar here, and a huge window rims the side of it; the artificial gravity, made by centripetal force, is low enough here that people float to and fro. Chairs are bolted to the ground, with small cloth straps that one can slip a shoe through to not go flying off.

Arado leans back in a chair, arm slung through a metal railing, and looks out at Jupiter. He has a beer bottle in one hand.

"If you ask me, it's prettier than Earth."

Leo Stenbuck, fresh out of a meeting with the governing body of Zeus Thirteen, drifts up from behind Arado. Even after over a year and a half, he still seems more comfortable in this low gravity than he does on Earth; it shows in how he carries himself, and even just in his stance.

Leo, thanks to the MIA status of one of his wingmen, has been awfully quiet so far on the Super Jupiter Vacation; slowly, however, he is starting to open up, and stop seeming so... well, depressed. If Arado hasn't heard about what happened from Latooni, of course, he certainly hasn't told him yet, which may make his foul mood downright mysterious.

Thankfully, being mysterious doesn't bother Leo Stenbuck one bit. "Mind if I join you?" the young man asks, gliding to a halt next to Arado by grabbing hold of the back of a chair.

Arado looks back at Leo, and flashes a grin at him. He nods his head; whatever has Leo in such a bad mood, he doesn't know, and Arado has been dealing with his own problems most of the time. Seolla -- his girlfriend, partner, and probably the one person who has gone through almost everything that he has -- is doing something that he cannot, at present do. It makes him feel uncertain, worried, and he kept to himself a little more than usual.

The young man nods his head. "Yeah," he says. "The colors are nicer. Nothing like it in the Earth Sphere."

He shakes his head. "Go ahead!" he says. "I was getting a drink while Seolla's off looking some info about her folks."

Leo grunts a wordless thanks, and maneuvers himself into the chair, slipping his foot through the little loop on the floor beneath it. It takes a little doing, because he is not exactly wearing sneakers. In fact, everything about his attire screams 'military', probably because it is simply his A-LAWS uniform - combat boots and all - minus the duster-laden top, and with the addition of a plain teal tanktop.

"How's that going, anyways?" Leo asks; he may be talking to Arado, but his gaze stays fixed firmly on the huge window, and Jupiter beyond it. "The search, I mean. If there's anything I can do to help..."

"We got in contact with one of her uncles," Arado says. Maybe her only uncle, he realizes. "He gave us an address and stuff--she's just, you know, getting the arrangements to get there. They're on Ganymede, so we'll head down there to one of the baitation domes."

He shakes his head. "I think we got it from there. You helped already, a lot. I mean, we thought getting out here would take an act of God or something." The purple-haired kid leans back against his chair; his arm tightens around the rail, to keep from floating up, and he drinks some more of his beer. "I know I said it before, but... thanks."

"Don't worry about it," Leo assures Arado with a dismissive wave of his hand. "All it took was pulling a few strings." He pauses for a moment, and then adds, with a shrug, "Besides, it isn't like I don't get anything out of it."

"Either way, let me know if anything comes up I can help with. There aren't that many strings to pull out here," he points out, with a weak grin, "But I'm sure I can find one or two." Especially if it lets him fuel his unstoppable workaholism!

Of course, he's managing plenty of that on his own.

"Of course!" Arado grins, broadly, and nods his head. He takes another drink of his beer and looks, thoughtfully, at Jupiter. It must be weird, to grow up here, he thinks -- it would have to be in the sky of every moon, something that would dominate the sky. Even here, it occupies the majority of the view from the colony, in a way Earth never could.

"What'd you get out of coming here?" he asks. He looks back at Leo. "I mean, y'know, a vacation and all... I guess you have family out here?"

There is also Latooni, he thinks, but that might be more of a small, purple-haired elephant in the room.

Latooni Subota is in fact here, as in 'at the colony'.

She also just got off a ridiculous set of hours because she was doing 'secret work' for Shine and as such is taking a nap. This is either a good thing (she's not actually in the way for this conversation) or a bad (she's not there to make sure it stays neutral.

Family...

SOME TIME AGO

Leo Stenbuck is ten years old, and is having dinner with his mother and father. This largely translates as sitting quietly, staring at his lap, pushing food around his plate. This is because his parents are in the middle of a divorce, and are arguing loudly over who has to keep Leo when they separate.

His mother eventually wins the argument, on virtue of her intent to move back to Mars to be closer to her parents.

SOME TIME AGO

Leo Stenbuck is fourteen years old, and is on the EFS Atlantis, en route back to the Earth Sphere and currently halfway between Jupiter and the asteroid belt. He is sitting in the mess hall, talking nervously with Celvice Klein, when Rock Thunderheart - whose name perfectly describes him - approaches his table.

"Hey, kiddo," he says, voice uncharacteristically gentle. "They just bursted the casualty list back to Mars. We caught it as it was passing."

"Is... was my dad...?" Leo asks, a mixture of hope and fear in his voice.

It's answer enough when Thunderheart looks away and reaches up to rub at the back of his head.

NOW

"No," Leo says, a little more sharply than he intended. "No family. Not anymore." He hesitates, briefly considers explaining what he does, in fact, get out of it, and then thinks better of it. Small, purple-haired elephant indeed.

"It's just nice to be home," Leo says, his tone softening again. At no point does he ever look away from where Jupiter looms in the window.

"Sorry," Arado says, immediately. It isn't the first time that he asked a question like that and realized, afterward, that the person's family was lost. In recent years, that sort of story has been all too common. The people without deaths in their families are more common than those without.

Or people like him, who never had one.

"It must be nice," he says. He sounds almost sad, but -- strangely -- not terribly jealous. "Going back home. I've never--well, I don't... really /have/ a home."

Leo shrugs again. "It's just 'home' in a... sort of general sense," he admits. "My actual /house/ burned down. But... it's, you know, the people, that are important. Home is where the heart is, and shit."

And it isn't like there's any people here /he's/ invested in. ... well, except for Celvice. He probably should have gone to see her. But...

"Sorry," Leo sighs, shaking his head. "I don't know what I'm trying to say. Just... don't worry too much about it."

"Don't sweat it," Arado says. He shakes his head. "I think I get it. It's kind of like... seeing the place you're from is kinda comforting?"

He doesn't know, himself, of course -- but even the Earth Cradle offered a kind of comfort. The kid scratches at the back of his head and looks at Jupiter, thoughtfully. He puts his feet up; they rest on the edge of the spaceport bar's window, and he drinks down the last of his beer bottle.

Little purple-haired elephant. He sighs.

"Did you wanna show Lat where you're from?" he asks, finally.

More than content to sit in silence and watch Jupiter, Leo only offers a shrug and a grunt when Arado asks his first question. The second one, though - that's about Latooni, and thus not something he can just shrug off.

Leo thinks for a moment, and then makes a noncommittal noise, and waggles his hand in a 'so-so' gesture. "Maybe a little," he admits. "Mostly it's just a good chance to spend time with her. We don't exactly get to a lot, especially now, with the whole A-LAWS thing."

Arado feels a little bit of that irrational anger bubble upward, but he thinks of Latooni again. She wouldn't want him yelling at her boyfriend -- and really, he thinks, he will have to ultimately learn to live with this sort of thing.

He nods, and tosses his beer at a trashcan. It arches up, and falls slower than it would in Earth gravity, towards the trash can.

"Yeah, that's gotta be a little tough," he admits. "Are you guys... y'know? Dating and stuff? I wasn't sure and, uh..."

He flipped out about it before. He doesn't say this, but Leo probably remembers Neo-Twitter. And the threats.

/That/ question takes Leo a little longer to answer. It's obviously struck a nerve, judging from the way his shoulders tense up, and the way he nervously licks his lips.

Perhaps Arado's earlier flipping out is the reason why, when he does finally answer, he speaks slowly, obviously very carefully picking his words. "We... have gone /on/ dates... before," he explains. "But are not... currently... 'dating.' Per se."

Arado pauses at that. Latooni hadn't told him, exactly, what was happening -- but he could tell that the interest was not entirely friendly. He frowns and looks downward, as he thinks about it, and the fact that Leo is tense makes him tense up in turn.

"Make sure you know where you stand," he says. "It's not..."

He frowns more. He can't start yelling.

"People from the School aren't always good with this kinda stuff," he finally says. "We're supposed to win wars, not go on dates. They didn't give us a lot to go by, and sometimes, we don't really know how to approach these kinds of things. Not a lot of social experience." He frowns and looks back at Leo. "And they didn't want us to work with these kinda feelings, either, or really ever be normal people."

He sighs. "So even though we wanna be, we might... you know... make mistakes. Like, uh, saying we'd make your skull into an ashtray."

Apparently Arado's confession about - long story short - how fucked up he is does a lot to put Leo at ease; he visibly relaxes as the explanation goes on, and at the comment about turning his skull into an ashtray, he actually laughs.

"You wanna know a secret?" he asks, finally turning his eyes away from Jupiter to shoot Arado a glance. "Most of us are just as bad as you are. We just don't have an excuse."

And then he turns back to Jupiter, and when he speaks again, the good humor has drained out of his voice. "I like her," he says, bluntly. "A lot. I have for awhile. But after-" The word catches in his throat, and he forces himself to take a long, shaky breath through his nose.

"I just need... some time."

After Rei, Arado thinks. He heard about what happened -- mercifully, he never saw it. He swallows, looks downward, and nods his head.

"I guess we're a little lucky, huh?" he asks. He looks back up and grins; it's lopsided and not quite as wide as it used to be. He loosens his arm on the railing, and floats upward, slightly, in his chair.

"That's good. I mean--I dunno for sure if she does, but I think so," he says. "Just be honest with her and all--and, uh, patient. I think she'll understand."

"Yeah," Leo mutters. He doesn't sound like he thinks he's very lucky.

The young man pauses, and reaches up to fiddle briefly with the long ends of the strip of cloth tied around his head, pulling the dangling ends over his shoulder to trail down his front.

When he speaks again, he sounds almost offended by Arado's implication. "I'd never lie to Latooni," he assures Arado. "I'd never do /anything/ to hurt her." A small voice in the back of his mind adds, 'Unless I fuck up again.'

He does his best to ignore it.

He fails.

Arado grins at that. He doesn't see the doubt in Leo's expression or hear it in his voice; he hears what he thinks is certainty. The purple-haired kid nods his head.

"Good! I'm, uh, I'm glad. I mean--I want her to be happy, and I think she'd be, so..." He trails off, awkwardly -- he doesn't know what else to say about that. Strictly speaking, it might annoy Latooni to hear him talking like that, but he certainly cannot help looking after her. She is his little sister, after all.

Instead of continuing, he lets his arm off the railing, and floats up until he stands. Then he grabs the rail with his hand.

"Want a beer?" he asks. "On me!"

Leo is plenty happy to move past that terribly awkward topic of conversation, but Arado's question presents him with a whole new dilemma; does he, in fact, want a beer?

On the one hand, he technically has more work he needs to do today, and he should probably be in his right mind for that.

On the other hand, he is sixteen, and makes bad decisions on a regular basis.

"Yeah, sure," Leo decides after a few seconds of deliberation. "But just the one." It'll totally be fine if he has just one, right?

"You got it!" Arado says. He floats over and puts a couple of bills down on the bar; thanks to a static-charged strip, they stick, and the bartender hands over two beer bottles. He pushes off the ground, floating back towards Leo. He does a slow, underhanded toss, and sends a beer bottle slowly rotating towards him.

"How is it, over with the in-LAWs?" Arado asks. He heard the nickname once on Langley, when he was visiting, and it stuck. "I was kinda curious."

Leo easily catches the thrown bottle, reaching out to grab it by the neck, and as he opens it he marks this incident down as yet another reason why - to put it eloquently - space rules and Earth drools.

"In-LAWs, huh?" Leo asks, with a short laugh. The questionable nickname doesn't offend him; he's heard a lot worse. A-HOLES, A-LOLS, fascist faggots, all sorts of things. "It's..." He pauses, to pick his words, and uses the opportunity to take a swig of beer.

"Nice," he settles on, eventually. "For the most part, the Federation army couldn't find its own ass with both hands and a GPS - no offense - but with the autonomy, it's way easier to actually get shit done."

"Like, it'd have taken months to get the Anaheim crap sorted out back in the regulars," he offers as an example. "And with ZAFT and the BMC and all that, morale's pretty high. Everybody's excited."

He takes another drink of beer, and finishes with, "Plus, the uniforms are zetta sweet."

Arado laughs, and nods his head. "Nah, I know what you mean. I thought of putting in for a transfer--they'd scouted me and Seolla for the ATX Team, but... you know, maybe we can help out some. I'm glad you guys are there, though."

He sits up straighter, and takes a swig of his second beer. He nods his head to that.

"A lot of those ex-DC guys were my friends," he says. "So it's good they're on /our/ side now--it's better for morale, for everyone, I think. Plus, they're good people, and maybe they'll be happier. The Crusaders got kinda crazy."

'Kinda.'

'Got.'

"You should do it," Leo suggests. "The transfer, I mean. We'd be happy to have you, and-" He stops abruptly mid-sentence, a grimace flashing across his face.

Apparently, there are a lot of raw nerves for Leo Stenbuck recently.

When he begins speaking again, after a few seconds, he doesn't seem as enthused about the idea. "Technically," he explains, slowly, "The ATX Team is under strength. We're not at MS capacity, on the Shirogane, and... again, /technically/... they need to... replace Lamia."

He takes a long drink of beer, and then continues, "The suits are really on my ass to get us there. To capacity, I mean. Keeping a Jump-capable ship anything but overstuffed's shooting ourselves in the ass, as far as force projection goes. But... I'm not going to force them to fill out. Not until they're ready."

He was just about ready to do it, too... until Sunday. He can't tell them to do it now. He certainly has no intention of replacing Ralla any time soon.

"You think so?" Arado asks. He weighs it in his mind -- there were people he really liked in the Earth Federation, but there were people he really liked in the Earth Federation Army regulars, too. He considers, and nods his head.

Replacing Lamia would be the single, hardest part. He frowns and looks downward, as he weighs that in his mind. He and Seolla could make it easier.

"I'll talk to Seolla," he says. "I mean -- we'd wanna go over it. I don't think we'd like being in separate branches, and all, but...you know. I needa see what she says."

"Yeah," Leo agrees, with a small nod. "They could probably take both of you, actually... they've only got the three, right now." He pauses, and then adds, "But maybe they won't want to. Or maybe Seolla won't want to, or want you to, and either way, I'm sure, like, Latooni would miss you."

"Think about it, though," he urges, after another short sip of beer. "But... if I were you, and Seolla didn't want to, I'd stay right where I was. It's important to have priorities."

"Yeah. I'd talk to Latooni too. Besides, uh... we gotta make sure the EFA doesn't lose its way," Arado says. He shakes his head, and looks down at that beer -- and wonders about that for a second. "Princess Shine's trying hard and there's still a lot of good people. We can't let it become what Doctor Zoldark was worried about -- something that'd stand by, why the world goes to hell in a handbasket."

He looks back at Leo and nods. "I'll think about it, though." He grins over the top of the beer. "Even if not, y'know, maybe we should do a team-building... thing. A soccer game or something!"

For that, Leo thinks bitterly, I'd have to have a team, now wouldn't I?

"Yeah," he agrees with Arado, flashing the most sincere smile he can manage. He nails sincerity, but not happiness; it just looks depressed again. Rather than dwell on it, Leo tips his head back and drains the remainder of his bottle in one go. It takes a few seconds, thanks to the low gravity.

Once it's empty, he lowers it into his lap and wipes his mouth on one of his bare arms. "I gotta get going," he explains, slipping his foot out of the loop and rising carefully out of his chair. "There's some stuff I gotta do. Thanks for the drink. I'll see you around, yeah?"

"Yeah!" Arado says, with a nod of his head. Maybe the soccer game wasn't a hit, but he could probably think of something. He grins, slightly, and then leans back in his chair, and wonders for a moment. "I'll be around. I should meet up with Seolla, soon, anyhow. Give me a hollar if anything comes up."

"Yeah. Say hi to her for me," Leo requests. He raises his hand in a slight wave and half grunts a final, "Later."

And then he pushes off the ground, which, combined with a tug on his chair, sends him soaring across the room; he catches the corner of the doorway, swings around it like the Prince of God damn Persia, and then pushes off it to go soaring down the hallway outside.

Low gravity owns.