Lyle did not consider himself to be a man who impressed easily. He would give credit where credit was due, yes - he wasn't a jealous sort. But he had seen many things, and with each new thing he saw, with each new piece of the world and beyond he mapped for himself, the list of things that could be considered actually impressive, truly extraordinary grew shorter and shorter.
But, he had to admit, Lyle was certainly impressed by the display before him.
"You're a little hungry, I take it?"
The man hunched over the four empty rations trays and spork-deep in a fifth shoveling the tasteless reconstituted food-like substances into his mouth as if his life depended on it, jolted not unlike a startled animal and jerked his head around to face Lyle.
"Hey," Lyle chuckled, putting his hands up in a token of nonaggression, "don't let me stop you."
The two were locked in a silent staring contest. Lyle, becoming increasingly aware of how dumb his empty smile probably looked as the sense of awkward silence swelled inside the boundaries of the canteen, slowly tucked his hands in his pockets and found his gaze shifting back and forth between the man's mismatched eyes. He'd never met someone with heterochromia before. Neat.
"Seriously," he assured, still the only one participating in what could barely be considered a conversation. "I've never seen someone eat that quickly. Swear."
The man across the room slowly chewed the bite already in his mouth and swallowed, pushing the tray away from himself and dropping the utensils in their proper compartment. They bounced in the plastic compartment and slowly floated away in the lack of gravity. "Sorry." His voice was hoarse as if he hadn't used it yet that day. He'd dropped his gaze and his hands into his lap.
"Ahh, no need to apologize," Lyle dismissed. "I was acting the maggot there. Mind if we start again?" At this, Lyle extended a hand and offered a handsome smile. "Lockon Stratos."
The other man in the room, the one who looked as if the bruiselike half-moons under his eyes had become a permanent part of his hollow face, who, despite himself and the apparent shame he'd felt just moments ago, was already reaching for a foil-wrapped packet of wheat crackers by the time the handshake was offered to him, looked at Lyle's hand, and then back to his face, then his hand again. After some hesitation, he accepted the invitation and took Lyle's hand with his right, using his left to simultaneously secure the food package. It was clear that the young man was having a crisis of priorities at that moment, politeness and hunger two evenly-matched beasts inside him.
"Allelujah Haptism," he introduced himself. The hesitancy in his speech did not go unnoticed, but Lyle chose another aspect of it - one that could serve as a conversation starter.
"Your accent - that's Reform League, if I'm not mistaken?"
"You're not," the man, Allelujah, confirmed.
"You're Russian, then?"
Allelujah was nibbling off the corners of the now-unwrapped crackers. "I speak it," he again confirmed, this time around a mouthful of dry whole wheat and salt. "Ethnically..." At this, the young man just shrugged. "Maybe?"
This seemed to be a dead end for that train of thought, and so, not missing a beat, Lyle asked, "Mind if I sit with you?"
To this, Allelujah did not verbally reply, but did tilt his head slightly toward the vacant seat adjacent to him.
"Cheers," Lyle replied, too chipper, drawing attention to the awkward tension that collected over the table like a fattening raincloud and further polarizing the steep gradient of emotions spanning the table.
A few crushing moments of relative silence passed between them. Lyle drummed his fingers against the tabletop as he searched for some trivial piece of conversation, while Allelujah seemed intent only on eating every last crumb from the packet, going so far as to shake the last few salt crystals into his mouth when there were apparently no pieces large enough onto which he could grasp.
It couldn't be helped; Lyle had to ask.
"Seriously, though, I'm impressed by how much you can eat no bigger around than you are."
Allelujah met his eyes for the first true time since they'd been in the room together, and Lyle found himself rather entranced. Heterochromia was a sight enough, but to have one eye kind of a dark grey and the other a bright golden yellow? What kind of genetics caused that? It reminded Lyle of thunder and lightning, or heavy machinery. Electric and industrial.
Neat!
"I just got out of prison," Allelujah explained, sounding every bit as tired as he looked. "Four years…. Do you know what prison food's like in the HRL? Not great, and not abundant."
Lyle opened his mouth to again apologize for his arsehole-ish-ness - sheesh, he was really stepping in it tonight - but Allelujah cut him off.
"You eat what's offered to you, and if you don't, you get a tube down your nose that goes into your stomach and they feed you the same food the next day, 'cept now it's half-putrid and it's been through a blender."
Feeling far too sheepish to deal with and extremely ready to change the conversation for fear of more explicit detail, Lyle held up a hand.
Allelujah cut him off again, asking, "Did Miss Sumeragi tell you I'm a genetically enhanced super soldier? Because if not, you should know my resting metabolism is probably twice as high as yours would be if you just got done running a marathon." There was no annoyance in the young man's voice. It was purely a scientific explanation for why he'd felt it necessary to come into the dining quarters well past 0100 hours Greenwich Mean Time - the time the crew of the Ptolemaios adopted for their waking and sleeping regimen - and slam down half a week's worth of rations all before 0130.
"Ah." Lyle mumbled meekly, maybe about to say something else, but was again intercepted - this time, at least, he'd anticipated it.
"So yeah, high metabolism, no food - and barely what you'd call food when it did come - I may be a little hungry." This time, there was the slightest trace of being pissed off in his voice. "Sorry," Allelujah mumbled sarcastically before moving to take another meal, ready-to-eat tray from the stack. He sat it on the table between them (Lyle noted that this one was stamped with a black circle and Arabic script over the word "HALAL" and that none of the other trays were marked similarly so, deducing that this food was likely meant for another member of the crew), popped off the reusable plastic lid, scooped a big glob of what may have been reconstituted potato flake onto his spork, and shoved it into his mouth.
All the while maintaining eye contact.
If Lyle hadn't known any better - and hell, he didn't know this kid at all - he might have summed up this situation as Allelujah marking his territory like some sort of stray cat with a penchant for food jealousy. It was intimidating, but also kind of pitiful.
The quiet, steady hum of recirculated air filled the room, just louder than Allelujah's quiet chewing. The situation maintained itself this way for several seconds before Lyle snorted. The sound came out of his sinuses and startled himself as much as it seemed to scare the other young man in the room.
"Christ," Lyle laughed, leaning back in his chair and letting the weightlessness hold him up on its back legs. "That got pretty tense. Listen, I'm sorry. I don't know what's with me; I think it's that you called me Neil earlier and that threw me off, but…" Here Lyle paused to wave a dismissive hand. "I'm not blaming you for that, don't get me wrong. You were just the hundredth person to do it that day, unfortunately, and you were the lucky winner of my spite."
Allelujah opened his mouth to say something, but seemed to find nothing to say. He clicked his teeth shut and made a small noise of acknowledgment. He seemed to be accepting this semi-apology.
"I feel for you, Mister Haptism," Lyle said. "I've been in jail, myself. I know the cuisine leaves much to be desired, and that was Ireland; I can't imagine how it is with the HRL."
"You can if you've ever cleaned out a trash compactor," Allelujah half-murmured to no one in particular after a brief pause. It hadn't sounded like it was meant to be a joke the way he said it.
Lyle grinned and snagged the foil drink pouch from Allelujah's picked-over tray and announced, "Hear! Hear!" He leaned forward and the chair's front legs floated back down to their usual position. A pink blob of electrolyte drink lumbered out of the straw and hovered between them, its edges flailing wildly but holding together into one fat droplet. "Speaking of…." Lyle leaned forward suddenly, then, making the man across the table flinch at the motion. Carefully, cautiously, but with unfaltering motions, Lyle took the tray lid and capped the half-eaten rations. "This stuff is rubbish. I know this is a pretty low-budget operation you guys are running save for the few hundred tonnes of metal sitting in the hanger across the way, but MREs? Really? A man who gets out of prison deserves something better than one half-step above prison food."
At that declaration, Lyle pushed himself up and motioned for Allelujah to follow. The young man did not look entirely sure he was ready to follow this newcomer, this - as Lyle knew he must have seen him - doppelgänger, but after a moment's hesitation, he did follow. A super soldier, Lyle considered, had nothing to fear from a normal man, and certainly not one who already was at a slight height disadvantage. Allelujah looked like he could take him even in his all but emaciated state. And aside from that, Lyle knew that Allelujah trusted Sumeragi, and Sumeragi trusted Lyle, ergo….
Lyle led Allelujah back to his newly acquired bunk. At the doorway, Allelujah seemed to be hesitating. When the door slid open, Allelujah refused to look inside, instead turning his odd eyes onto a spot on the wall outside the room and staring at it unwaveringly. Lyle had thought this could happen; it was, he understood, his late brother's room, and his late brother had been a comrade and friend. Allelujah's refusal to look was a way for him to honor the memory of his friend; he didn't want to look in to find it different after four years away with his life on pause, to see that the personal mementos of a life extinguished had been boxed up or thrown out. Maybe he was afraid to know how different things were because it would bring up the feelings of surreal dread and anxiety one feels at remembering just how long it was that he was a prisoner.
No problem; Lyle could deal with that.
"Just wait there," Lyle called as if it had been his idea. "It's a tad messy in here. Haven't quite gotten moved in yet."
He saw Allelujah nod and retreat back around the corner of the doorway where he didn't have to keep his gaze averted. Something about his movements looked almost appreciative - the way schoolkids always heaved a sigh of relief after the teacher scanned the room for volunteers for some undesirable task and did not choose them.
There was some rummaging, some digging through bags, some sliding open of drawers, and at last, Lyle called out a triumphant, "A-ha!"
Popping around the corner to meet the other man, he held out a small newsprint-wrapped parcel.
Allelujah eyed it for a moment before gingerly accepting it. This guy's mannerisms sure didn't scream "super-soldier" in Lyle's opinion, but he also supposed that shyness was not mutually exclusive with able-to-snap-your-spine-like-a-twig-ability.
"What-" Allelujah began to speak, but paused to clear his throat.
Lyle wondered how many chances the kid had gotten to speak when he'd been inside. Didn't seem like awfully many.
"What is it?" he finally managed.
"Well, you can open it," Lyle mused.
Allelujah's brow furrowed, but he cautiously did as instructed. A small glass bottle full of amber brown liquid was in his hand. "Whiskey," he summarized the label.
"Good whiskey," Lyle corrected him. He'd paid a pretty penny for that small amount. "That's a fifteen year Kilbeggan single malt."
The creases between Allelujah's brows deepened as he studied the bottle, but he nodded and offered a quiet thanks.
Lyle was, quite frankly, taken aback; any man who knew his drink knew that this—
"Oh, shite," the man murmured, suddenly realizing. "You do drink, don't you?"
"Yes," Allelujah replied. His answer came quickly, not quite defensively, but almost. "I mean, I only recently started. I was only legal for a few weeks before I went inside. This would be the third time."
"Well, I can only apologize for not having been here sooner to make your first time extraordinary," Lyle professed. He felt something like big-brotherliness in this situation, despite the fact that Allelujah, based on his age when he was incarcerated, meant he was a good deal older than Lyle perceived. Only a couple years younger than Lyle, actually. Still, two years younger made Allelujah the little brother. "And I'll do everything I can now to correct that."
Taking the bottle from Allelujah, Lyle unscrewed the top and carefully passed it back to him. The Ptolemaios generated some gravity, but not enough to keep the drink in the bottle if it was handled too roughly. Such a waste was not acceptable for this liquid gold.
"Go on," Lyle urged, his charming smile ever present.
Allelujah took the bottle. "I don't have a glass."
"Do you have some kind of disease? Mouth warts? Mono?"
"No," Allelujah responded, looking almost mildly offended behind the tiredness and the malnourishment.
"Then. Go. On." Lyle wanted to give him a thumbs up, a pat on the shoulder, something - but thought it may be too much.
Allelujah hesitated only a moment more before putting the neck of the bottle to his lips and tossing it back like a shot. Lyle hid a cringe and worried momentarily that he would, in fact, one-shot the entire quantity, but he brought it back and clapped the cap back on before any could escape into the room while appearing to choke it down.
"It's more of a sipping drink," Lyle mentioned too late.
Allelujah seemed to be glaring at him for the delayed warning as he swallowed down everything he'd taken into his mouth. He couldn't be sure, but Lyle thought he might have seen some tears welling along Allelujah's eyelids.
"It's good," the young man replied when his mouth was empty. His voice sounded strained, and the way he tipped his chin down and repeatedly swallowed led Lyle to believe the compliment was a farce intended to preserve manliness.
"Yeah," Lyle agreed, giving no indication that he knew Allelujah's secret - that Allelujah was no drinker. "It is." Taking the bottle back as Allelujah offered it, Lyle paused for a moment and took on a contemplative expression. He held it for a moment, a moment more, and then he brought the bottle up between them. "To freedom," he announced the unplanned toast. His voice sounded bulkier than he'd meant, like there was a better toast inside him refusing to come out. Something about the best day of your past being the worst day of your future. Some Irish proverbs that didn't really apply to this situation. Something in Gaelic that would have just confused the kid more. "To jailbreaks and no more prison food."
Allelujah, having gotten his mouthful down, licked his lips and nodded. "To freedom."