[The City Adel] (Pevi/Ivahn) "Post-Mission Protocol" Theme #14: military Title: Post-Mission Protocol Author:ivoryandhorn Fandom: Original -- The City Adel Pairing: Pevi/Ivahn Rating: PG-13 Warnings: m/m, light swearing Words: ~4000 Theme: #14 - military Summary: It's been a long day, and it gets even longer when he flies back in. Notes: (1) This has some terminology in common with another Roads Diverged piece I did (the very first, in fact, which is oddly fitting). However, the universes are entirely separate and not compatible or very similar. (2) I think the guys came out older in this piece than I usually write them. I get the sense they're in their late twenties, rather than the early twenties/late teens that I usually envision them.
High above the Earth’s atmosphere, a metal behemoth kept watchful eye out for the little domed cities that dotted the planet below. The space station Vanguard wheeled serenely through space, keeping the same orbit it’d kept for the past twenty-odd years.
Not a few hours ago, various lights within the Vanguard had begun blinking insistently and sirens had begun to wail and the speakers had crackled to automated life, and it hadn’t been long before the great airlocks that ringed the space station’s base had ponderously slid open, disgorging twenty men and women and their respective mecha to go do battle in the name of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
---
The observation bay clung to the ceiling of the Vanguard’s lowermost deck like some kind of smooth, rounded limpet. Below, radiating out in all directions, were the space base’s five hangars.
Dr. Ivahn Chandlersohn slowly circled the bay, moving quietly from each clump of monitors to the next, watching the mecha make their way into the airlocks and then their landing pads, one by one. Once upon a time, back when the project had just begun making its first attempts to run on its own two feet, all twenty of the mecha had been identical. Each machine coated in the same green-and-gunmetal Myrmidon paint job with the same standard Myrmidon Class weaponry. Not so, now.
Number 744 was painted black and silver, and it lands smoothly in Hangar A. That’d be Jozas’ mecha; he’s soon followed by Daichi in 745, and he predictably doesn’t land as cleanly as his captain—still, he’s clean enough. Ivahn scribbled a note about realigning shoulders for Jozas’ Reaper Man, and moved on.
Over in Hangar B, 750 comes in. That’s Yelina and her Soultaker, her mecha’s colors largely untouched except for the addition of stripes here and there in an oddly disquieting shade of red. Soultaker’s basically pristine, as usual, but Ivahn made a note to pay special attention to all of its additional guns anyway; they’re still smoking a little when they shouldn’t be, particularly the shoulder ones.
Next in is 741, Ralin, his mecha painted bright blue and white with sporty touches of cheerful orange. The mecha—Ping Pong—has an arm locked in a bent position, which makes his landing a trifle shaky until Ralin wises up and balances Ping Pong out by bending the right arm, and its entire left side is covered in deep gouges and sagging spots where the surfaces of the mecha’s outermost plating’s been burned and melted—most of those sections are going to need either serious work or outright replacement. Ivahn scribbled a note with a resigned sigh—there goes this month’s budget—and moved on.
108-748 lands perfectly in Hangar C. It’s easily the bulkiest looking and least elegant of all the ones in so far. It’s also probably the worst looking so far, the red and blue paint job covered in dozens and dozens of scrapes and scratches. But the little figure that eventually emerges from the little cockpit is completely unscathed and he waved up at Ivahn, via the closest cameras, while Ivahn tried not to smile too much at that because he has a job to do, damn it. Even so, there’s a warm flutter in his chest anyway while he watched that dove-grey head saunter off to join the rest of the pilots and he thinks to himself—well, Ping Pong’s damage doesn’t look too bad, maybe I’ll be able to take some time off time so we can—
And then one of his underlings who’s monitoring Hangar B tell him that 747, Atticus’ TEKE, had just flown in looking like absolute shit and he rushes over to the monitor, where the poor thing looks like it’s about to fall apart right there in the air—in fact, parts of it do fall off as Atticus struggles to land, sections of armor and chunks of internal processors and bits of its repulsor guns falling away like an obscene parody of rain, each landing with a thud that seem to reverberate up from the hangar floors, through the walls, up through the observation bay’s floor. Atticus just barely manages to make it down, and all of Ivahn’s thoughts of grey-haired heads and free time are swept away, as he rushes down to the hangar floor to assess the damages. And to get Atticus out safely, of course. But mostly to see what can be done to save his poor mecha.
---
Ping Pong was by no means the worst off of the mechas that’d come in, but it’s damage was unusual—and since they were all in the middle of a war and all, a little bit of unusual damage was a hell of a lot more worrying than a ton of regular damage.
So now he’s leaning over the railing of one of the platforms, over what had once been Ping Pong’s left elbow. It is now a huge chunk of slag, rendering the arm totally useless, locked bent forward. All the parts of the section, inside as well as out, had been melted together and Ivahn was having a hard time figuring just how much of the arm and its innards was salvageable. There shouldn’t have been any way for a Squid to do this, especially to a Myrmidon Class mecha. Except for the part where it was.
“I’d think you’d be all over TEKE instead of this guy.” Ivahn started, automatically scanning the hangar floor for the speaker, until he realized that it hadn’t been a shout and the voice had come from beside him, not below.
He blinked, squinting into the hangar’s bright lights; he hadn’t heard anyone moving another platform over, or even the faint buzz-hum of anti-gravity at work as someone rode it up. “Pevi?”
“Yep.” The pilot grinned and tossed off a little two-finger salute.
“Shouldn’t you be in the med bay? Or the lab, so Cyber can poke the implants?” he asked hazily. “Post-mission protocol…”
Pevi gave him a funny look. “Man, that was hours ago.”
“What?” He almost rubbed at his eyes before he remembered he still had his gloves on. “What time is it?”
“Closing in on midnight,” Pevi replied. “In case you’re wondering—we came in about 1800 hours.” After a moment, he added, “Just in time for dinner, in fact.”
“Oh God. It’s been that long?” Ivahn let his elbows rest on Ping Pong’s cool forearm, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “The mess must be closed by now.”
“Don’t worry, I asked the cooks for an extra tray and Dr. Jayausler to stick it in the staff lounge fridge.” Pevi reached across their platforms’ railings and slid his hand onto the back of Ivahn’s neck, kneading the muscle under his callused fingers. “It was fish and chips today, you know. With chocolate pudding for dessert.”
Ivahn glanced over his shoulder to check how the grunts he’d assigned were doing on TEKE’s manual diagnostic (he hadn’t trusted enough of the internal systems to be intact for an automatic.). Sim and Freddie were currently in a shouting match over something or the other, but he wasn’t too worried. With those two, arguing tended to equal a) foreplay or b) hard work. He was pretty sure it was the latter, considering the fact that Freddie actually sounded like he might be winning. “Thanks for saving the food, but I really have to work on this.”
“Have you taken one break since you ran down to help pull Atticus out?” Pevi asked shrewdly. “No, thought not.”
“But this is important,” Ivahn protested. “If the Squids have upped their game, then I need to try and figure out how and relay it to—“
“And you can’t do any of that until Ralin’s report comes in,” Pevi reminded him. “And he’s still in the med bay, doped to high heaven.”
“Well, damn. I didn’t think he’d been hurt that bad.”
“The shot injured his dominant arm pretty bad. He couldn’t even move it when he came in. Come on,” Pevi said persuasively. Somehow his hand had shifted, landed on Ivahn’s cheek, thumb stroking the corner of his mouth. “Take a break, eat food, drink that disgusting swill that will not be named in my presence—no, don’t say it, I know you’re about to. Just, don’t.”
“I guess I could take a short break,” Ivahn admitted reluctantly. “But just a short one.” “Great!” Pevi beamed at him, leaning over to kiss his shoulder because he couldn’t reach Ivahn’s mouth without falling and breaking every bone in his body. “See you down there.”
Ivahn stepped back from Ping Pong’s elbow and stripped off his gloves before keying the command into the platform’s controls. He was loathe to leave this puzzle unsolved, but Pevi was right, he did need to take a break, if only to eat so Sarha couldn’t make a fuss about him skipping meals again.
The disc’s descent was smooth and unhurried, its end signaled by the hiss of escaping air as the platform slotted neatly back into is base.
Pevi stopped him from pulling his shirt back on. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with this much skin before. Well, this much skin in public. And in reasonably good lighting.”
“Yes, well,” Ivahn said, feeling the back of his neck heat up. He’d shed his jacket for maneuverability, his shirt to keep it clean, and was now walking around in a black tank top, which suddenly didn’t feel like anywhere near enough.
“You’ve got more muscle than I’d’ve thought,” Pevi continued, shamelessly feeling up Ivahn’s bare arm, heedless of his flush.
“Not that much,” Ivahn mumbled, eyeing the end of Pevi’s sleeve, where the cloth swelled around his bicep.
“Still,” Pevi said mildly. “Not too shabby, considering you don’t even know how to fire a blaster.”
“Oh I do too know how to fire a blaster,” Ivahn protested.
“Do not.”
“Do too.”
“Prove it.”
“I don’t have time to take a trip down to the shooting range just for you.”
“But it would be so hot.” Pevi grinned, blue-green eyes taunting. “Especially when it turns out you’re lying and I get to grope you while I teach you how.”
“Ha fucking ha,” Ivahn said sourly, trying not to think about Pevi pressed against his back, hands covering his as his instructions ghosted over Ivahn’s skin, riding the warm puff of his breath. It might even be worth the teasing to fake how bad he was, though it’d been so long since he’d even held a blaster that faking shitty aim might not even be necessary, which was kind of depressing, all things considered.
Just before they left the hangar, Ivahn looked back—just as he’d predicted, Freddie was pinning Sim against TEKE’s scored and pitted chest plate in an attempt to crawl into her clothes, never mind they were floating some twenty feet above the ground on a metal disc that was started to tilt a little with the force of their weight. Still, as he watched Sim shoved him away and he had faith in Sim’s ability to further cockblock Freddie until the important stuff was done, so he didn’t feel too anxious leaving them unsupervised as Pevi steered him towards the elevator, hands pressed flat on his shoulder blades.
---
“I asked for double helpings,” Pevi informed him, watching him inhale the food, which had probably all been spun in a lab and yet managed to taste exactly like actual meat and legume. “For a weedy little guy you sure do eat a lot.”
“Shuddup,” Ivahn mumbled around a mouthful of not-really fish and potato. “Lemme eat in peace.”
Pevi sighed. “I’m not going to be able to convince to you go sleep, am I?”
Ivahn shrugged and waved at the thermos of CofFix he’d made in the deserted senior support staff lounge.
“Instant coffee doesn’t count as sleep,” Pevi said primly. “That stuff’ll give you an ulcer, just you wait and see.”
He swallowed and retorted, “Because watching you wreck my hard work day in and day out is going to do wonders for my peace of mind, right?”
“I always knew you cared more about them than us,” Pevi said sagely, nodding in the direction of the hangars below their feet. “Remind me to get the Sorrowsmith extra banged up next time I fly out.”
“Asshole.”
“Workaholic.”
“How is that an insult? Me being a workaholic is what keeps you alive, after all.”
“That’s what I like about you.”
This, Ivahn had not expected. “What?”
“You’re a certified genius with like fifty degrees,” Pevi began, ticking points off on his fingers, “you’re division head, and you probably have about a million grunts who could do this crap for you. But you do it yourself. You love the mechas, and you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty in the name of that love.”
“I think you knocked your head or something when you landed,” Ivahn muttered. “And anyway, as Head of Mechanics it is my job to figure out why the tech we have on hand isn’t working as it should.”
“You could delegate.”
“I did, for TEKE’s diagnostic. But if I did that for Ping Pong then I couldn’t be sure it was done right.”
“See? There you go again.” The look on Pevi’s face was insufferably smug but also quietly fond. “Shut up,” Ivahn said again to hide his embarrassment, before attacking his pudding cup. Then he spat his first bite out into a napkin. “I thought you said these were chocolate!”
“Well, mine was,” Pevi protested, perplexed. He levered himself up, so he could peer into Ivahn’s cup. “Why, isn’t yours?”
“No.” He shoved it over. “God, I think its banana or something. I’ll never get the taste out now.”
Pevi heaved himself the rest of the way onto the table. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said meaningfully into Ivahn’s mouth. “Tastes fine to me.”
And Ivahn let him keep going; in fact, he twisted his fingers into Pevi’s t-shirt to hold him there and closer because god, there just hadn’t been enough time for this, to just relax and take it slow and enjoy the luxury having each other because who knows for sure how long they will? But after a while—and it’s not easy, but—he pulled away, because more important things than his neglected libido were at stake here and sex was just going to have sit down, shut up, and take a back seat.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” he said sternly, “and it’s not going to work.”
“What if I took my shirt off?” Pevi offered, pushing the empty tray aside so as to sit on the tabletop, one foot planted on either side of Ivahn’s hips. “Used my numerous charms to seduce you away from your work and into your bed where, hopefully, a fuck or three will knock you out.”
“You know, normally people use drugs for that kind of thing. Or a stun gun, stun guns work too.” “What can I say, I prefer it when the other person enjoys the sex as well.”
Ivahn immediately dropped his hands from where they’d been resting on Pevi’s thighs. “Remind me to never touch you again. Ever.”
“Fuck you.” Pevi leaned back on his hands. “Or not, I guess. Can I at least have your pudding?” “God, I thought you were just saying that to get in my pants.”
“Yelina’s was banana. She didn’t like it either.”
“You’re such a freak,” Ivahn informed him, handing him the dessert. “After this I’m getting back to work for sure, so don’t try to stop me again.”
“You’ll work yourself into an early grave,” Pevi said, with an accusatory point of his spoon.
Ivahn almost said something about how Pevi would probably meet him there, what with the death-defying space battles and all, but that was far too morbid and anyway, if he was working so hard on improving the mechas that he died of it, then Pevi’s life expectancy in a mecha should shoot up significantly in exchange. “I have faith you’ll seduce me out of it if I get that bad.”
Pevi swallowed the last of his disgusting pudding and dropped the cup and spoon onto Ivahn’s empty tray. “I’m not exactly having the highest success rate with that, am I?”
“Practice makes perfect.” Ivahn picked up the tray and shoved onto a counter for the cleaners to find in the morning. Later in the morning.
“Is that so?” He heard Pevi turn and step off the table’s other side, felt his arms slide around him from behind, felt him nuzzling the back of his neck, licking up to his ear. “Then I guess I should get started, huh?”
“But not right now.” He set about fixing another thermos to take with him back to the hangar, but Pevi didn’t seem to want to give up, so eventually Ivahn gave up on re-caffeinating (again) and turned around, sliding his hands up Pevi’s arms, feeling the muscle there under his palms. Pevi switched gears to his throat and face without pause.
“It’s not that I—ah—don’t want this,” he tried to say, and okay, maybe Ivahn wasn’t doing so well with the dissuasion, what with folding his arm around Pevi’s neck and shoulders, tugging him and his extremely distracting mouth closer. “This is…It’s just, right now, if the Squids do have better guns then I—mmph—need to know figure out how much better and let the people working on, ah, new polymers for the mecha know so they have a target strength to aim for and I need to make sure the news gets to all the other space bases and—”
Pevi stepped back and for all his talk about needing to work for the good of the Mecha Corps entire, Ivahn found his mouth chasing Pevi’s as he pulled away. “I know. I know what you’re doing is important, I know that the Squids have better guns is bad news for the entire Corps, I know you have a job to do as head mechanic. But it’s been so long since we’ve had time to just do be together. I miss you.”
Ivahn swallowed and looked down. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“But…you said it yourself, I don’t have to do all of this myself, I could get other people to do it for me or at least help me out, but I choose to do it all myself, and that takes time away from other things, important things like—“
“But then you wouldn’t know for sure if it was done right,” Pevi interrupted. He kissed him again, softer this time. “Come on, I’ll stay up with you. I have to write my report anyway.” “You shouldn’t. You need the sleep more than I do; you were out practically all day today.”
“What, and leave you alone in there with Mr. and Mrs. Makeout? At least if things get a little too hot and heavy, you can, you know, distract them. Er, instruct them. As to the appropriate way to behave with one’s paramour while on the job. That kinda thing.”
“Somehow I don’t think fucking me against a severely damaged mecha is the best way to set a good example for how to behave when on the job.”
“Never know ‘til you try.”
After that they exited the lounge in silence, lights blinking off behind them. As they rode the elevators up to the residential level, so Pevi could grab his laptop, Ivahn finally spoke.
“Hey, Pevi?”
“Yeah?”
“Even with all I said about needing to work and all that…I still miss you too.”
“I know.”
“Oh.”
“So do your pants.”
“Shut up.”
“You know, it’s not too late for you just say that I succeeded in seducing you away from your work. I won’t tell anyone. We could just go to your room instead of mine and—“
“Shut. Up.”
---
When they got back to the hangar, Sim and Freddie had already finished—the disks that presumably their assessment of TEKE’s damage were lying on the platform he’d left in front of Ping Pong, beneath a note reading ALL DONE, GOOD NIGHT in Freddie’s nigh-unreadable scrawl.
“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Makeout appear to have finished,” Ivahn said, slipping the disks into his jacket pocket. He draped and his shirt, which he’d never managed to put back on, over the railing of the elevator platform.
“Eh, I’ll stay with you anyway.” Pevi climbed in with him, settling on the floor with his laptop over his knee. Ivahn keyed in 2 as the number of passengers, and listened to the thrum of the anti-gravity getting to work, propelling the metal disc up until he was level with the melted arm once more.
He heard Pevi turn his machine on, the holoscreen flickering to life from the projector set along one edge. The not-quite-steady rhythm of Pevi tapping out his report was a welcome intrusion on the immense hangar’s usual ringing silence. Ivahn turned his attention back to Ping Pong’s arm and pulled out a marker, tip squeaking against the melted plastic as he gingerly began sketching out a plan of attack for getting at the fused parts hidden within layers of plating and armor. He might have to basically dismantle the whole fucking arm to do it, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure until he got the outermost layers of the forearm off, which…would be hell to do, considering one end of the plates had melted into the elbow and upper arm plates, essentially turning what had been three pieces of high-density, high-durability, high-everything plastic into one.
Time passed as he puzzled his way into the mecha’s arm, and suddenly Ivahn felt a strange weight on his thigh. When he looked down, he saw Pevi’s head slumped against his leg, hands limp on his laptop as RRRRRRRRRRRRRR scrolled serenely across the holoscreen.
“Told you,” he muttered, running a hand through Pevi’s hair. Like all the other subjects of the Myrmidon Project, the cybernetic implants had screwed with his pigmentation, robbed his hair and eyes of color. Privately, Ivahn thought the dove grey suited the man better than the ashen blond he’d seen in Pevi’s old photos.
He spent a thoughtful moment leaning on Ping Pong, sliding his fingers through Pevi’s fine hair. Then Ivahn keyed into the platform the command to take them back down.
“Wha…you’re done?” Pevi looked up at him blearily as the anti-gravity whined at its work.
“No. But I don’t think you want me wielding high-powered laser cutters when caffeine’s the only thing keeping my eyes open.”
Pevi’s mouth stretched in a jaw-cracking yawn. “So, what? Bed?”
He absently stroked the side of Pevi’s face with his fingertips. “Want to bunk with me?”
“You have to ask?”
---
Even as head of one of the project’s three divisions, Ivahn’s room was still pretty small, and his bed was tiny. It was always a squeeze, fitting two bodies on a bed obviously made for one, but he'd always considered the cramped space to be worth the trouble.
Behind him he could feel Pevi breathing—chest slowly expanding and relaxing against his back, breath skimming over the skin of his bare shoulder. Ivahn had been lying there for a while now, focusing on the feel of the arm slung carelessly over his body, listening to each soft exhalation of air, to the faint snores of Pevi getting the sleep he’d needed four hours ago; all of this, over the muffled sounds of the Vanguard’s internal systems at work, keeping them safe, keeping them all alive.
But Ivahn wouldn’t be just lying there for much longer, he could feel it already—the drag on his limbs as the caffeine was already beaten into submission by his body, the urge to sleep emerging triumphant over the demon CofFix as he relaxed limb by limb, his eyes no longer fighting to stay open.
---
The Vanguard wheeled through space, locked in geosynchronous orbit with the planet it had been built to protect. Its automated sensors and the graveyard shift keeping an eye out for Squids on the move. Deep in its belly the mecha stood silent in the darkness of the hangars, each Sentinel patiently awaiting the day (perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the day after) their pilots would return to fly them out into space, back into battle.
But until that moment—the Vanguard’s inhabitants slumbered on, at peace.