Idle Hands (Vitale)

[Abigail Gunn]

Rachel had been a ripper, then an Enforcer. What it meant for her was long hours of not sleeping, and that called for Onas's magic dust. He made sure his shifts were short enough that the lack of R.E.M. sleep didn't hinder performance. There was a certain period a body could go without entering that deeper level of dreaming sleep in which they didn't hallucinating dancing asparagus, and they'd been safely in that level. And, until Rachel eased herself off of the stuff, she still had a waking period of about twenty hours, except all twenty hours were down time. Gun hands were really only useful when shit needed guarded or people needed to be shot. For the moment, it was just down time that she'd have to fill.

She was up late or early, depending on who you asked, and when one said awake, it wasn't in the sense that she was just barely clinging to consciousness. She'd have normally been people watching in a bar somewhere, maybe talking someone into going home with her. She had half a mind to go in the engine room and find some nice, lightly vibrating component that didn't get too hot, but she wasn't really in the mood. That left her with few options, and she'd already exhausted the shower option. She had put eyedrops in her eyes, the only symptom of her false iris color, and sported wavy tendrils of damn auburn hair, a form-fitting black tank, and short, stretchy gray shorts. She was dressed to go to sleep, with zero intentions of trying until she was actually capable of rest.

In short, it was play time, and she had nothing to occupy herself with. That wasn't a great combination.

She hadn't let herself pace the corridors... much. She had, to a point, then she'd made herself to the elevator and waited impatiently for the machine to drag its sluggish mechanical ass up the shaft. She was going to screw around in the cargo bay, exactly where the words screw around had no place, but to hell with it. She was tired of the living area, she'd already made at least 10 full sweeps of it short of going into anyone else's cabin. She was acquainted with the gorram living space.

She'd lucked out in her first round rummaging through shit in the storage area. She'd found something lovely: a nail gun. This and the top of the FN 5.7 crate, and she had herself a game. She was sitting on the back of the hover mule, which was resting on the mechanical equivalent of its haunches, firing nails at the crate cover. She'd made a smilie face with slightly askew eyes, and was working on what had been the most giggle-worthy aspect of Michelangelo's David.

And no. No, she wouldn't be explaining to anyone why that particular shape was in the crate lid in nails. If they wanted to know that, they should have really kept a better eye on her.

[Deleted]

Vitale had been in the bridge reading for about three hours when Nate swapped up with Ollie. The course was pretty much on autopilot, so they ended up playing two rounds of texas hold 'em at a hundred pla a piece, which Vitale was pretty sure Ollie was cheating horribly. And one round of liars dice. Which again, he must have been cheating or something. But eventually, the computer busted up the game, and Ollie went back to work, fixing this or that, Vi wasn't much of a pilot. He ended up wandering the ship for a bit, and was surprised to find more people awake. The guys in engineering were awake, and working on some such that went way beyond his understanding of put gas in it, and while he expected to hear about it being bs that they were up so late and all, no one was complaining. Vi chalked it up to excitement about the mission, and moved on. But pretty soon, he found Nate bsing with Mitch by the shuttles, and they too looked wide awake. Did Davis build these people? Was it some space syndrome he wasn't aware of? The coffee wasn't that strong. Plus, he was the only one drinking it.

So after the guys started working on piddling stuff, Vitale decided to go find something to do. In the back of his mind, he thought about losing his Walther back on Beaumonde, and decided to go down to the bay to retrieve a new pistol from the stockpile. They hadn't stowed them all yet, and he didn't want to remove any of the ones that Davis had stored around the ship on purpose. When the doors to the elevator rolled aside, Tali caught the noise of an air tool whiring. Vi walked around a stack of crates to find Keller doodling in some newagey fashion. He walked up beside her, and gave her a 'sup' nod, then walked on to her crate lid while she reloaded. It was a smiley face, and... his denotation of the fact that this was a 'his'.

"He doesn't look very excited," He observed, pointing to the obvious, "Maybe its the sixteen penny nails your outlining him with. Very gratuitous though."

Vitale smiled at his own comment, as he walked back towards her position, and took the nail gun from her. As she talked, he shot a nail of his own, the first just hitting and bouncing off. He exchanged a look with Keller, then re-aimed, and took a step closer. This one stuck, and he put a rather pointy nose right in the center of the eyes and mouth. Then he attempted in putting a moustache with it, but it came out looking more like freckles. Which kinda made the whole thing look less like a face, and more like a bunch of nails in a circle, with a large banana underneath.

"So tell me something," Vitale said, gathering a fresh rack of nails, "Don't you people ever sleep? Ollie, you, the three amigos in the engine rooms, the others, you guys just stay up all night or what?"

[Abigail Gunn]

When she saw Vitale at first, she thought maybe he was suffering from the Syndicate Sleep Syndrome---as she and the other former Rippers had called it in passing as a light jest. When she saw Vi initially, she thought he could relate. He seemed active enough, and he was Syndicate stock. She'd relinquished her nail gun without a fight, simply amending: ”I beg your pardon, he looks pretty damn excited from where I'm standing. Tilt your head a little to the right.”

She started swinging her legs off the edge of the hover mule, leaning back and planting her palms on the bed of it. If she didn't have something to occupy her hands, she was going to swing her legs. She really couldn't help it. Of course, in the next moment Vitale asked something that made her stop moving her legs and sit up straight. The shock on her face was very real, her jaw dropping in the space a few blinks while she registered him.

She felt like she was about to deflower Vi. It was kind of cute, actually.

”And here I thought you were cool.” Then, she laughed at him somewhat, lifting her left hand to stifle her amusement against the back of it. ”Dude, we all started as Rippers. We're coming down off of Knox's magic dust.”

Normally, she wouldn't have been so forthcoming with the information. Not everyone understood, and some people were really prudish about chemical dependency, or even chemical independence which you could stop anytime you wanted to but wouldn't because you didn't want to. Vitale, though, didn't exactly strike her as prudish... or foreign to the operation, even though she didn't know him well.

”We'd work maybe seventeen hours, and still have another three to pull someone at the bar and make them reach nirvana before we kicked them out of the hotel and made 'emwalk home.” It was a roundabout and inappropriate way of educating him on the drug's effects and, basically, what the Rippers used it for. They needed all of the production it allowed, and still liked to be able to feel that they were actually part of society.

[Deleted]

"Magic dust?" Vitale narrowed his eyes as he gave her back her nailgun for round two. He did remember hearing that all the Syndy boys(that's what Colt's people called 'em) were like insomniacs. But he'd always just thought it was the typical street talk. Gangs could be like sewing circles with the amount of bs that came across the wire. He'd never paid it any mind.

Hearing her talk about it, like it was so casual, was fairly strange. He felt justified about this, as while most gangs had addicts, they didn't get high on the same supply. And he had never known Minerva to just hand out anything for free. What was this Onas guy like? He just handed out mind control drugs or what?

After she explained it a bit more, Vitale got the idea. So it wasn't brainwashing, it was literally about labor efficiency. What an asshole. Who did that to their own people? He thought about the guy, he'd met him just before coming out here, not two days ago. You'd never have known it was him. And what was a ripper? Was that what the enforcers called themselves? He decided to voice it all, better to know, and not to be acting like he was already in the know. "I met Onas a few days ago. He didn't seem like much. And the stories you hear about him, and the way he is, guy sounded like the grim reaper. But the guy I met looked like a grease monkey. I mean, Colt had us running around looking for death incarnate, then I happen across him, and all he talked about was a spaceship that looked like it was ready to fall apart. You should have seen the engine room when Desmond got done with it, kind of makes you wonder just how the Syndy made any money. I thought they were good at the starship game. He sounds like a real asshole."

"Incidentally, what is a ripper?"

[Abigail Gunn]

”Gorram, I didn't think I'd be poppin' your Knox cherry.” She commented, firing an uninspired nail toward the crate lid. When he talked about Colt, it did give her the cold feeling that the name Minerva inspired in any of the Syndicate. For her, as an Enforcer, it was the name most likely to be associated with her untimely death, and a name that necessitated the ungodly amount of firearms above Onas's office.

”Rippers, which is where we all started... we worked stripping the star ships. They use suction grapples to hang off the side and welders to strip off the metal. We gut the internal components, scrap them or part them out. Some of the better welders end up changing the serial number plating. Shit like that. And Onas's magic dust is Shotadren Alserin. He pays good, but you'll be putting Shotadren Alserin in your cereal.”

It was kind of interesting to hear Vitale's view on Onas through the filter of Minerva Colt. It was also interesting to think, of the shoot-outs between the two factions, Vitale could have well ended up pitted against her, with the two firing on each other and shooting to kill. They'd have never had this conversation, and he'd have been a faceless Colt boy to her when he hit the dirt, and likewise she would have been some nameless Knox bitch if he'd taken her down. Perhaps it shouldn't have been, but it was... a kind of shock to really think about the Colt lackeys as people. That was a necessary adaptation, though. People were harder to shoot. Colt boys and nameless, faceless, pastless, futureless aggressors? They were easy to pick off.

”Knox is an engineer. I'm not going to say he's -not- an asshole, but if he is, it ain't for that. Like I said, he pays good. And he doesn't ask anything of his Rippers that he doesn't do himself. He lives in the warehouse, seriously, and usually in a manual, a machine, or Siobhan, and those aren't all necessarily mutually exclusive. I was promoted from a Ripper to a crew lead, specialized in dismantling hydraulics. That's where I brought Lewis from. He's useless to anybody that doesn't know how to make him useful... and I joined the Enforcers. That's the pew-pew side of the Syndicate. But you know that.”

She shot another nail into the lid, disfiguring the banana-esque shape. Perhaps 'he' wasn't as excited anymore. Oh, well.

”So, Onas likes to disembowel and throat-stomp traitors. That's kind of his thing. What happy punishment awaits you with the Colt side of the family?” She said it matter-of-factly, looking back at Vitale and passing him the nail gun as she awaited his response.

[Deleted]

"Yeah, ain't made up my mind on him yet, Lewis seems a bit slow. But, I can see why he's got friends. Guys kinda like a large ass child." He was too, in the very short time he'd known him, Lewis had made a hundred comments about this chick that ranged from sexual chewtoy, to deitization. But under it all, you could always hear this respect for her, like a line you could tell he just wouldn't cross. With her anyway.

Keller brought up a nasty little question, the kind that brought bile to your tongue. Throat stomped and gutted huh? That he could definitely attest to. Gerald Nowak had been a defector, and buddy, they'd hunted his ass down. It was a sobering question for him. "Public hanging. you must have seen a few. I don't know if it's solely for traitors like the knife and boot thing, I think she just hangs everyone who opposes her," He paused thinking. "I never did it myself. What's wrong with a bullet, they're just as dead."

He had actually, but that was an ugly memory of being blitzed and hating himself more than the guy he'd done in. Well, it wasn't a guy, it had been a seventeen year old kid with an uzi. Vi changed the subject. "So he does do work then... not just order children around in slave camps all day?"

An engineer who lived at work, huh? Certainly not how he'd heard it. Vitale listened on as she spoke, and was nearly shocked. Nope, he was shocked. What this woman described sounded like a business, not the rep on the streets. She was not a teenager, and yet she'd been a grease monkey too? That was a surprise, without a doubt. And Shota, that's what they were all on? No wonder they never slept. Sure, Vitale'd tried it once with Red Peach, nearly gone blind and insane, and he didn't sleep for a week. That vision thing was mostly the Peach, it affected your eyes, and Shota was like a magnifying glass. Mostly, he just remembered the dry throat. It had been terrible. And these people lived on it? No wonder Ollie and Mitch drank so much.

"That's got to be different, never sleeping. Isn't sleep like, important for your brain and not just your body though," He asked.

But she made other points that he couldn't pass on either. She had been an enforcer, he knew that about her, who didn't. But he thought about the fact that they'd killed tons of kids in the process of the Syndy getting it right. She was obviously the new blend of killers. "So Siobhan, thats the black hand right? No one really talked about her much. I think I saw her back on Seph, but the gal I saw never spoke to me. Just watched and wrote stuff down, and drank a lot of water. All I knew were the threats, what was she like?"

[Abigail Gunn]

”There was a saying I heard once... if you convince a fish it's supposed to fly, it'll spend its whole life feeling stupid.” She smiled a little, genuinely. She gave Lewis a lot of hell, and that did mean a -lot- of hell, mostly well-deserved and second-nature from her time as his crew lead. Everyone knew Lewis didn't belong in that job. She wouldn't say he didn't belong anywhere, but wherever it was, it wasn't with the Rippers... but that was the only place he had to go, so she'd made the most of him, and played to his strengths. Not everyone was willing to bother with that, though. Whoever had put Lewis on the equipment lifting heavy shit was just asking for gorram trouble.

She could detect the change in demeanor when she asked her question. There was a reason she talked about it, though. She was beyond flinching because of it. It had been her way of desensitizing herself to the topic, and it was an extremely personal topic to her. No one was going to know it, though, just like none of them would know her name. When he went into his answer, she mercifully spared him the fact that they'd referred to the hangings as Colt pinatas. Colt was rumored to hang any malcontents, the ice queen of bitches sitting on a throne of skulls. That was in the metaphorical sense, of course. Skulls wouldn't have been comfortable for a king--- queen? pin like herself.

”Knox arranged the shifts so we could break. If you go cold turkey off the stuff, you'll sleep for a few days straight. You won't dream until then, and REM sleep – dreaming sleep – kinda needed for sanity. So, we worked almost to the point of seeing fairies, slept a few days, and that was 'off time'.” That was a little known side affect that one wouldn't find in the text books, frankly, because they were never written by users. So long without REM sleep lead to psychosis, which was a documented fact. They endured it to a point, but not to a point that Knox and company considered dangerous. The few days off they were given at the end of that point was supposed to make up for the sleep, and damn if it wasn't good. After that many hours, sleeping for a few days was better than sex. And if you were lucky enough to have lucid dreams, it was the same difference. ”Working for Knox is a good way to save a shit ton of credits though. I could probably buy the gorram Peerless at this point.” That, too, wasn't much of an exaggeration. She had the majority of her annual wages. She didn't have time to spend it, usually, and when she did, she just didn't have anything she really cared to get. She was a waste of affluence, as was anyone else who worked for Knox.

”Siobhan, knife-happy, dresses like a stripper, light blond hair.” She paused for a moment thinking of Siobhan's hair. She missed her own blond hair. She liked it better than the auburn. The red was MacPhelan's favorite, and it had gotten her into his bed a few times. She was maintaining it meticulously just to keep her natural hair color from showing. ”She was a big proponent of killing in bed, or with the promise of a bed. I took a different style. I only wore a corset once-” she paused a moment. There was no need to express that much. ”That had nothing to do with murder, though. But, yeah, Siobhan is dangerous. And Onas's sex toy. I mean soul mate. I mean sex toy.” She grinned slightly.

"What do you think about Davis and the whole thing? Were you made to come or was it a want-to decision for you?"

[Deleted]

Vitale smiled at her comment about Lewis, as he took the nailgun back, and racked a new set of nails. She went on about the life of Syndy boss for a minute while he popped the board a few more times. Then she finished on what sounded like a high note about great pay, and time off and la shi. "Sounds like quite a guy," He said sarcastically, walking across the room to set random crap up on the boxes to shoot off. It was eerie really. Hearing her describe him, even admitting his faults, you'd almost believe the hype. Vitale had been through a lot of la shi in his life, enough to know one inevitable truth. No one lived up to the hype. Not people of power anyway. Maybe God, but that was as far as he was willing to suspend his faith. And he was pretty far from a shepherd.

Why would a God want him on some fuzzy road to redemption?

But Knox, that one wasn't real, and everyone knew it. Croney's back on Seph could blow it up all they wanted. Hottie McStuffinshirt here could talk that la shi all night, but he wasn't buying it. The guy used kids to fight men, set his people on drugs for gain, and sent his bitch to fight his battles. Plus, Vitale had personally witnessed the Syndy boys running slaves on the market. Not that Minerva was much better, but at least she wasn't vieing for the jobs. People asked her for favors, not her offering. Jesus.

Did he just defend Minerva?

Keller moved on which was fine with him, that was a dark mental moment there for a second, he was glad to wave at it as he passed it by. "So it is true then, she runs the guns in the outfit? I heard she 'as like a demon or something. Sounded a lot like Minerva herself by the stories. Heard she was real twisted about killin people in screwed up ways and all kinds of stuff." Vitale said as he put random expensive looking things from Desmond's boxes on the crate. What was this thing? Who cares, gonna shoot it off'ah here...

The description of clothing was something to think about, it was definitely the gal who'd watched him, how many gals could there be like that in the universe? Or well, in the Syndy anyway. "Black widow style huh? Nice...." He said as she continued. "So their together? For real? I know its not a secret, but soul mates?" She finished her statement, "Ahhh..." He exchanged the grin with her. "If he can pull tail like that, then there's gotta be a bombshell in my future somewhere. Must be nice to be filthy, friggin rich."

Then she changed the subject. Well, that was a question wasn't it. It was his turn to grin. He walked back over to the Hover Mule, and picked up the gun, then looked her in the eye a second. Then as he spoke, he intermittently shot a nail off, desecrating some kind of stuff he didn't recognize, but sure it couldn't easily be fixed. He'd blame Lewis or something. "I owed it to a guy I know..." Bam, "Name's Haun, works this little dig down on the south side..." Bam, "A chinese shop... Brilee recruited me..." Bam, "Haun and him are pretty tight..." Bam, "And they got to goin on about this robbery I foiled," Bam, "like I was some kinda damn superhero. That man loves the Syndy."

He paused a second, "I still don't exactly see it," That was true enough, Onas was no saint... He shook his head and shot again, "But I know a scumbag when I see one. And this Lee fella. He is on this whole other level of needs-to-die that none of us can touch." Vitale set the nailgun down, but he didn't look at Keller. "You know for me. It was about doing something that Haun would be proud to talk about for once. The man saved my life. There's a lot of truth in that. Don't really talk about it much. I try not to think about it much. The Syndicate has a bad rep for a good reason, but I think my life has been worse. At least you all had a reason. Some of the crap I've done..."

He looked at her a minute, Vi didn't know this gal, not so very long ago, she was the enemy. He didn't hate her or anything, but he wasn't going into that part just yet, his black soul was his own business. Vitale cleared his throat, "But I've spent a good bit of time tonight, reading about this guy we're after. I'll be honest with you. I don't like Knox. But the more I read about Lee, the more I respect what we're being sent to end. It's like, we're doin something worth doing, you know?"

He looked down at his shaking hand, and put it in his pocket, turning his body away from her, so she wouldn't see it. "It'd be nice to think we were going to do one thing right, and maybe earn a little redemption in the process. You know the life, you know what I mean."

Vitale popped his back and thought, Man that got dark quick. I came down here for a pistol gorramit, enough with the dark dreary past bullshit! He looked away and then cleared his throat again, then smiled and asked, "Wait. wait, back up. You wear corsets? Out in public, cause that's a cause I could get behind, really." It was half hearted, but anything to get past that conversation. He needed to sleep, or drink or something. A couple of months on his own with no one to talk to, and he was talking about this la shi? Welcome home sanity, glad to see you check back in.


_{(((OOC: For the record, he did not say "Filthy friggin rich", but you know, censorship and all...)))}

[Abigail Gunn]

It wasn't often that she heard complaints about Onas Knox... or, at all. She'd spent so long stifling her own thoughts that it was almost alien to hear someone sarcastically say, Sounds like quite a guy. It made her pulse quicken a little, as if it was a test of some kind. She didn't believe it was honestly, though, but emotions were a lot harder to reign in. She'd tried so hard to blend in, to eliminate any suspicions that she may not be a company woman, and her, in a second, he was offering her something else... something that wasn't a lie. There was an authenticity to Vitale that, frankly, made her jealous of him. There was a time when she'd been as blunt as her manner of speaking. She hadn't had anything to hide. Now... she was mostly hiding. She was a secret.

”Yeah, well, she's not much different than the hype. She'll kill people she doesn't give a damn about, spare people she does. C'est la vie.” She couldn't really judge Siobhan. Onas and Siobhan were both very selfish people. They were the sort of people who'd shoot your mate on the way to their wedding. They weren't honorable, they didn't care about anyone else but themselves... but that didn't make them a special brand of evil, minus the fact that the shooting bit might very well be literal.

She was a bad person herself, but... at the very least, she did have some sort of code, and it wasn't a business code.

”Yeah, being rich... powerful... but they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That was the first dissent she'd ever voiced, in years. It felt horribly uncomfortable, and... liberating. Tale wouldn't know why, and he didn't have to know why. It was just a cathartic emotion that breathed the slightest bit of life back into her. Funny, she had to wait until they were in the black to get some fresh air. ”And yeah, I'm sure you'll be laid like brick before you know it.” She grinned a little more.

She watched Vitale gathering stuff that looked kind of important, realizing in seconds that he was about to make it a lot less useful with the nail gun, and that he'd just made her an accomplice. Among the pearls of wisdom she knew was the old rhyme snitching bitches lie in ditches. She wasn't about to tell on him. Besides, they'd probably blame Lewis. Maybe. Except for the fact that Lewis didn't have any nail-sized holes in himself. She could fix that.

She knew Haun---well, knew of him moreso. Brilee had brought food to them from there. Rice always seemed bland to her, but that guy could make rice that made you dig past all the glazed cat meat just to get to it. She had a lot of respect for Brilee; it was that man, in fact, who'd made her a crew lead.

”Man... we've all done things we'll answer for. My dad, for one, would be pretty gorram ashamed of what I'm doing with myself now.” She commented. It was innocuous enough, not out of line with her falsified identity, but that wasn't the father she was referring to. It was her second breach into her life with Vitale. She'd shared experiences that couldn't be traced to her or disproved by her fake file, but it was the first time she'd skimmed so close to something else entirely.

”Knox is the top of the totem pole. He's not there to like. But, you're right... this is the most worthwhile thing I've ever done working for Knox. And I like Davis even more because he would've turned Knox down if he'd had to take orders from him.”

”I did wear a corset. I got more,” She could tell he was trying to change the topic and distract himself. She nudged him with her bare foot, winking toward him. ”I could definitely show you. Can't promise to erase Siobhan in your head. But I can promise you won't think a gorram thing about anything else while I'm there.” She said it, rather brazenly, then laughed. If he didn't want to think about it, by all means, she'd help him with it.

[Deleted]

Vitale smiled at her comment about Davis agreeingly, "Yeah, I got that impression as well. He's like a regular guy or something. Or whatever, likeable I guess." Vitale wasn't sure how to describe Davis yet. He had that way about him that you could look up to, like, well, likeable. He looked away again while he thought about it.

Until Keller spoke to him, then her bare foot touched his stomach, with not but his shirt separating them. He turned towards her now fully aware of her abrupt stare, and the feel of a woman's touch. It wasn't so much a tap of her toes, but a solid connecting stroke, the flat of her foot sliding down his ribs in a way he found enticing. She continued. Vitale hadn't known Keller but for two days, and what he knew of her didn't lend to bashful courtesy. But he hadn't seen her as the openly promiscuous type beyond just words. Now that he had a moment to really look at her, Tali saw a young woman, with an innocent smile, and unmistakably sad eyes. Not presently troubled, but she had lived a hard life. Vi took Rachel by her foot and turned her body, her left leg following his direction, and he took that ankle as well, then pulled her across the tailgate to him.

He kept his head level to her's, but let his eyes roam free. She had on only a black tank top and short gray shorts, which he soaked into scrutiny on a base level. His eyes flickered over her body then back up to her lips, where he leveled out, and admired. When he spoke again, there was a disconnect of attentiveness in his meaning. He just wasn't really concentrating. "Why did you wear the corset?" It had been a very long time since a woman took the time to offer him more than a look. He ran his fingertips up her bicep, and let them rest on the bottom edge of her shoulder. She leaned forward, and he leaned further.

Vi tilted his head slightly, and kept his eyes open to continue watching her as he touched Keller's lips lightly for a moment. A kiss was one of the few sensations in this life that held more meaning than just sensory perception. Everyone must go through it, twenty thoughts can fly through your mind ranging from where is this fixing to go, will she accept this, man I used to be much better at this, even things like 'I need to shave,' and 'My breath reeks of coffee.' Tali thought all these things and more until her breathing slowed, and then he didn't think of anything at all. His eyes flicked down from her's to her cheeks down till he nearly closed them. Vi took in a shallow breath, and he pressed against the skin of her mouth further and let it linger, opening his mouth enough to capture all of hers, and pull her lips to him. His right hand instinctively lifted to her face, but he caught the movement around her thigh, and let his hand fall, then slid it to her shorts leg, and gripped the cotton lightly.

It was a very long moment.

[Abigail Gunn]

Sexual freedom was truly the woman's pulse at times. The truth was that she just liked to feel something with a person at times, like a defibrillator electrocuting life into her for a few heartbeats until the muscle fell back into the stagnation of normalcy. Most of what she said was simple jokes, but with more of an element of truth than people would have believed. She didn't believe in making love and some sweet emotional connection. She had zero illusions about what it was, and what she used it for: it was for the endorphins, a very unhealthy way to connect to another human being without really connecting with another human being. Basically, she would have had no qualms with fraternizing Vitale until he was as motion sick as Lewis on the hover mule and walking away from him---if he wasn't a familiar face.

It was true that she'd been flirtatious, that a touch between people was an invitation to reciprocate, and that's exactly what she'd done. At the heart of it, that's really why she'd done it as well, a very simple gesture of testing the waters with the man. It was harmless, except that he caught her foot and rounded on her with unmistakable intent. She could have said he'd have been her first such experience, and that would have been true this week at least, but she knew exactly what was in his eyes when he dragged her body closer and drew near.

He'd listened to her a little too intently, or maybe Lewis, and he thought he'd cash in his chips, so to speak.

His eyes flicked up and down, his irises nodding in that respect as an affirmation of his intent. She was comfortable in the situation, which should likely have been unnerving, but it wasn't. It was a part of life. It was dancing with a stranger, over-sharing your thoughts in conversation with someone of no consequence who would be gone the next day... Vitale's stubble-dusted chin, intelligent eyes, not to mention very nice physique, left nothing to be wanted. His problem, and his only problem, was that he wasn't going to be going away. He had the right personality, an acceptable appearance, just the sort who'd have made great meaningless fun if she could have spent the next week trying to figure out what his name was and hoping it wasn't something that sounded elderly like Herman.

She didn't do co-workers. It wasn't really a rule... she really didn't have a lot of rules. She had caution of her own, her own standards---someone physically appealing, someone fun, and someone who didn't give her the slightest discomfort. Someone she felt she could overpower on some level, who felt non-threatening. He met those shallow expectations, but the promise of friendship was a massive deterrent. He should have come to view her as some asexual piece of furniture in the way she viewed Lewis and Gabriel, Brilee, the lot of them. Maybe her reputation preceded her, maybe Lewis had filled Vitale's head with bullshit, or maybe he'd just taken her a little too seriously.

She didn't do emotions and questionable. She had too much shit to hide, and she wasn't about to let anybody weaken her walls. They were necessary. They were survival. They were... life.

In the seconds that Vitale kissed her, she didn't pull back. She didn't slap him or act indignant for show. She did raise his bet a little, raking her nails down the back of his shirt just to make his spine bristle and his heart pound a little, but she pulled back from him. He was pressed against her, wedged between her legs, but she leaned back and brought her right leg between them and off to his side, shoving off the tailgate of the hover mule that, if he fraternized on it tonight.... it wasn't gonna be with her.

”Oh, you know. Wanted to get laid.”

Came her flippant reply. She reached up to pat the man's shoulder once as she peeled away from him, laughing quietly and shaking her head.

”Good night, hot shot. Have fun inspecting your weapon.”

And that---that was how Gunn left Vitale, nothing but a swaying walk and a brief glance over her shoulder, waggling her fingers in a slight wave, and a cold, lonesome hover mule.

It would have been a bit more poetic if she hadn't bitten his tongue a little.

[Deleted]

Vitale stepped back when Keller hopped up, listening too her with a slight pang of regret. But in all fairness, it was a very slight pang. Keller was a damn fine lookin gal. She walked away with what one might call typical bravado from a strong woman. He let her go without comment, and waited until she was long gone to make adjustments and turn to lean back against the mule. He smiled and dug a cigarette out of his pocket. What a night.

"What a night..."

End of thread