They met at lunch at the Red Elephant Inn, which was located conveniently between the castle and Cid's hangar, and drank beer, and pored over Cid's blueprints. It wasn't so much that Cid needed the help, Braig knew—he was perfectly capable of running the simulations himself and sorting the bugs out through careful calculation and experimentation—but he liked having someone to talk to about it. And, hell, so did Braig.
"The stabilizing wings look good," he began, scanning the careful diagrams of Cid's ship, neatly annotated in his square engineer's hand with comments and calculations.
"Don't be fucking nice to me," Cid said. He took a long pull from his beer. "I ain't one of your students. Just tell me where it isn't gonna work."
"Yeah, okay," Braig said, "if that's what you want." He slashed a red circle across the blueprint with his pen. "Here. You're not accounting for torque, see? Five minutes in the air, it'd tear right off, yeah?"
"Hn," Cid said. He leaned forward, setting his beer down a careful distance away from the blueprint. "I thought I accounted for that with the placement of the struts . . . "
"Almost. Not quite." Braig drew two more arrows, curving in from the struts, and hashed out the calculation in the space where the lines met. "One more here could do it. Or you could reinforce the hull, here . . . ."
Fifteen more minutes of scrawling, two hamburgers, and a fresh beer each, and Cid said, "Okay. I gotta run the calculations through the computer and come up with another plan, clearly."
"S'not actually that bad," Braig said. "You'll have a working model in a month, two tops."
Cid snorted, but looked pleased. "I fucking hope so. I want to get going on the construction. Get 'er in the air."
Braig sat back, until the front legs of his chair came up off the floor, and took a swig of his beer. "So besides the fact that you want to kick my ass for pointing out why you can't get started building your ship yet," he said, "how're you?"
"Can't complain," Cid said. Braig raised his eyebrows. " . . . Okay, could complain, but won't bother," Cid amended. Braig lifted his mug in salute to that sentiment. "You? How's Dilan?"
Braig shrugged. "Okay. We hardly ever fucking see each other, though."
"No shit?"
"Pfff." Braig put down his mug with a thump. "I've been tied up with the analyses I was runnin', and now Ienzo's a full apprentice, Dilan's working on some chaos models with him, and we've both got teaching, and Ienzo's been talking about some other big project that'll involve all of us, and . . . ."
"You need a vacation."
"Ahaha," Braig said flatly, then cocked an eyebrow. "Pot, paging kettle?"
"Yeah, okay," Cid said. "But seriously. Just 'cause I don't listen to my own advice doesn't mean it isn't good."
"Yeah," Braig said. "Maybe."
Braig's only warning was Cid's eyes flickering up to look at something behind him, and then one heavy hand came down on his shoulders and another caught his ponytail to pull his head back and he was being kissed, upside-down but rather nicely anyway. He nearly lost his balance and tipped his chair over; as it was, he had to bring it down hard on all four legs. He could hear Dilan laughing at him, and Cid looked vastly amused, the traitor.
Dilan dragged another chair over and sank into it. Braig said, "Didn't expect to see you till late. Like, late-late."
Dilan shrugged. "Ienzo wanted to talk to Ansem about his project, and I had no objections to wrapping up early."
Braig leered. "I just bet you didn't."
"Oh, get a room," Cid said, but he was smirking.
"Yeah, fuck you," Braig replied amicably.
"If you gentlemen are quite done," Dilan said, his voice arid, "I would like to go home, take a much-needed shower, eat something, and then, yes, Braig, that."
"My lucky day," Braig said. He dropped a handful of munny on the table, stuck the red pen in his shirt pocket, and got up. "Lemme know when you want me to look at the next set of blueprints, yeah?"
"Yeah," Cid said. "Have fun."
Braig snickered. "With an afternoon off? Believe it. Thank god for eager Ienzo and his projects."