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pinkgothic:
He was waiting for her after work the next day, his body language a muted mixture of anxiety and apology. One of Leila's colleagues passed him, taking note of the posture, glancing over his shoulder to Leila, and with mild amusement scrunching his brows toward her as though to ask 'seriously, this guy?'. The subtext wasn't fully apparent - was the implication that he thought they'd gone on a failed date? Or was it just a silent acknowledgement that Mateo had clearly screwed something up?
Either way, Mateo didn't notice, and her colleague had filed out quickly.
“Hey,” Mateo said, softly, as soon as it became unambiguous that he meant her. “I'm sorry about the other day.” 'The other day', as though it hadn't just been yesterday. There were no tell-tale marks on him, but the fingers of his left arm still looked a little unnaturally slack; maybe lingering effects of the nerve blockers?
Nymphetamine:
Leila had plenty of time to think about what she could've done differently that wouldn't have made the day before go so horrendously wrong. Having been plenty assertive, and perhaps overly so, she had gone on to offend her host, and made him uncomfortable. So the following day, distracted as she might have been, she did her work with only half interest. The rest was focused on still trying to mull out what she could to amend the situation. Though they were relatively new friends, (if they were still friends at all), she shouldn't have pushed him the way that she had. When she found him waiting for her, and her colleague's wrongful assumptions, she brushed the latter aside and instead focused on the former. A weak smile touched her lips as she looked at Mateo, her hands coming to fidget near her waist. His apology brightened that smile just a tad. “Me too,” she said quietly, eyes falling away from his face as if ashamed that she had made him uneasy. “I was being inappropriate, and I'm sorry for that.”
pinkgothic:
He sucked in his lips until they disappeared past his teeth, leaving only a thin crevice for his mouth. For an awkward moment, he said nothing, then glanced past her, watching the last of her colleagues file out. “You're curious,” he said, in a tone of understanding. “There's nothing wrong with that.” His hands were by now folded against each other, but not quite central before him, fingers of his left hand mostly enveloped by his right, squeezing the joints lightly.
Nymphetamine:
With eyes that were looking down, she caught sight of his own hands, the way that one cradled the other. She watched for a few seconds with obvious intensity and interest before her gaze lifted to his own. Still smiling quietly, she asked, “Are you alright?” A vague gesture to his hands was made with one of her own, a look of concern washing over her face.
pinkgothic:
The question seemed to do him more pain than anything that might have previously plagued him. Why would you even ask that? almost fell out of his mouth, but instead he closed his eyes for a moment, taking a breath. “You know where I'm from, right?” he asked, as though that answered anything at all.
Nymphetamine:
Immediately regretting this with the change in his expression, she just waited for him to reply. What she wasn't expecting was the question asking after his hometown. Wracking her brain for an answer to that question, she finally settled on, “No?” It sounded like a question, though it was mostly just uncertainty. If she had heard where he was from, she had forgotten it. “Sorry. Where are you from?” And why did it matter to this conversation just now? But she didn't say that part aloud.
pinkgothic:
“Do you know anything at all about Neiphil, Euryalia?” he asked, answering the question by asking another. His right hand had let go of his left, which was now back to hanging casually by his side.
The last of Leila's colleagues that were filing out had left. There would be some on other shifts still in the green house compartments, but it was the quietest it would get until she'd return to her own. Still, there was a mild discomfort in Mateo's posture. Maybe it was right to suggest going somewhere more private? What they'd last spoken about was, after all, not really fit for public consumption.
Nymphetamine:
Looking away from him as her co-workers filed out the door aside them, she waited for them to go before she turned back to him. An expression of concern creased her face as she considered what was best. “Here, lemme host you at my place. You know, it's only fair that I return the favour from yesterday,” she said quietly, lifting a hesitant hand to his shoulder but then thinking better of it before it could land there. She wasn't really sure how he felt about tactile contact and it seemed rather impolite to just presume. Awkwardly withdrawing it, she extened the other to the door to let him precede her out.
pinkgothic:
He seemed at once guilty and flustered, a strange combination, but made no verbal complaint and started following after her gesture and lead, trailing after her as soon as they were both through the gate between green house and base.
Base aesthetics were and always had been 'submarine', although formally a little more spaceous. Two and a half people could just about fit in a corridor shoulder to shoulder. With the occasional wall-mount such as a first-aid kit, fire-extinguisher, breaker box, emergency vacsuits or sturdy vent-cover, people walked in file, not in clusters.
Mateo and Leila were the same, with Mateo behind her like a confused puppy.
Nymphetamine:
She led the way away from the greenhouse down the winding tube-like passages towards the basic crew's quarters, passing through that way in relatively short order. Her room was located about halfway down the crew's quarters, and after passing the biometric lock, they could file inside. It was much like his own room, save much smaller and without the delightful company of his cat any longer. Neat and tidy, with everything in its place, and lovely printed out landscapes hanging on the walls without frames, it was about as homey as the crew quarters would ever look. She gestured for him to take a seat wherever he might, not exactly being a large enough room for the nice little table set he had in his own room.
pinkgothic:
With privacy restored, he simply leant against a blank spot of wall rather than sit down, and repeated his question softly, only slightly altering it: “What do you know about Neiphil, Euryalia?”
Nymphetamine:
Giving it genuine though, she wracked her brain for any information she had on the location he named, but she finally shook her head. “Not a whole lot, I'm afraid…” She didn't even know that's where Mateo was from, though she was probably about to find out.
pinkgothic:
“Neiphil is a Hansa - a kind of free economic zone, charter city, or city-state, depending on how you view it. It has a significant amount of legal autonomy, but is still taxed on the level of Euryalia. There's been a secessionist movement for a while,” he said, imparting the information in an impartial tone, like a scholar.
Then: “I grew up there. There's a significant values dissonance between Neiphil and Euryalia. I agree with the secessionists that it should be a separate nation. Micronation. That said, Neiphil is more Euryalian than Mars is Terran. We have extremely different needs up here than back home.
“Which is a long-winded way to say: I don't love the rules. They're our political reality, but I don't love them.”