Title: The Effort of Connection (and the Ease of You)
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Timeline: 2.04 Age Before Beauty
Pairing/Characters: Artie/Claudia (friendship, the contours are left to the reader)
Disclaimer: Someone else's sandbox. I just play here because other people have all the best toys
Author's Notes: This is written to follow in the same fic universe as I'll Keep You in My Pocket, but each vignette is designed to be a self-contained exploration of Artie and Claudia's relationship within season 2 and can stand alone.
Summary: Does it get easier? Connecting with people who aren't us?
Artie can't quite hide the look of apprehension when she comes back to the Warehouse after "Date with Todd – The Sequel", like he's half expecting her to blow up again, and is trying to discretely look for a strategic way out because this is so obviously not his area of expertise.
She doesn't do much to help. Really she still kind of wants to punish him for the whole lame Todd set-up thing, no matter how sweet or well-intentioned or absolutely wonderful the gesture was. So instead she just flops down in the other desk chair and twists this way and that, waiting him out. Leaving him to stumble through on his own.
And stumble through he does, "So um, things with Todd . . . better?"
Oh, is that ever a loaded question. She knows what he wants to hear, what he's hoping for. That's everything's perfect, that she's on top of world, that she's happy and in love. That she's normal.
Only she's not, and it's not. Because Todd might be a great and fantastically understanding guy, might make her pulse race, might even be a pretty amazing kisser (and she's had enough experience with the sex if not the dating to rate this), but when it comes down to it none of that really fixes anything. All the things that made her screw up the first time, they're still there, just hidden a little better, lurking behind a corner waiting to pounce.
But Artie made himself ask the question (with his eyes firmly fixed on the computer, and his hands rifling through papers), and he is so very very bad at this that she can't help but love him for expending the effort. So she relents a little.
"He wants to see me again."
"Good." Then he actually looks at her, and she doesn't know what he sees there but it's enough to make him ask, "That- that is good, right?"'
"Well he still thinks I work for the IRS, and I have no idea how I would ever explain Joshua to him, and it turns out I don't actually know what my favorite movie is because I've missed like everything that came out since I was fifteen . . ." she trails off, suddenly embarrassed at the unintended outpouring of information, finishes lamely. "Yeah, it's good."
And it is. Maybe. Kind of.
Not really.
Artie takes his glasses off, and pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head back and forth. "Oh kiddo," he sighs.
The regret in his voice cuts deep, sharp and painful because she knows where his thoughts have gone. Knows that despite her protests otherwise Artie thinks he broke her, thinks he's responsible for the train wreck that is her life.
And the thing of it is? He's not wrong, not entirely.
Because losing Joshua might have been the all-encompassing grief of her life, but the day after? The day she woke up to find herself a ward of the system and the Professor gone? That's the day she thinks of when she thinks of losing everything. And sometimes when she's really honest with herself, she can't tell whether everything she did wasn't half about just having an excuse to find Artie again.
But the part he doesn't get, the part she doesn't know how to make him see . . . is she wouldn't change it. Not now, not if it meant trading this. She loves this place and everything it entails. She feels whole here, feels complete and right in a way that's unfamiliar and shocking and unimaginably perfect.
And maybe there is something truly, truly fucked up about willingly, desperately putting your crazy-glued heart back in the hands of the man who broke you and trusting he won't do it again, but she's never exactly been one for making quality life choices.
So because she doesn't know what to say to fix this wound she's inadvertently reopened, and she can't stand to watch Artie kill himself over this, she tries to back track. Getting up from her chair she mutters, "You know what? Forget I said anything. Me and Todd we are great. I mean, I didn't scare him off by being a spastic freak, so that's got to mean something right? True love is just around the corner."
It doesn't work any better than she thought it would. Artie just reaches out and grabs her wrist, tugging her gently but firmly back around, "Claudia-"
But that seems to be as far as he can get. He's lost, out of his depth and floundering for words to make it better. She's not sure they exist, but she's willing to help him try.
"Does it get easier? Connecting with people who aren't us?"
"Ohh," Artie groans as if defeated by the question, "I'm not the right person to answer that." Releasing his grasp on her wrist, he drops his hand to her own giving it a quick squeeze of apology for his inadequacy before withdrawing completely. "People and I don't mix."
She can't help but feel he's dodging the question because he doesn't like the answer he'd have to give her. Because she thinks that maybe she needs to hear it all the same, she presses. "We mix just fine."
"Yes, well, let's call you the exception that proves the rule."
The words come with a wry laugh and an indulgent smile she can't help but return, unable to suppress the ridiculous swell of happiness that comes every time he singles her out, makes her special, and for a moment everything else just fades, unimportant background noise.
But only for a moment.
"So? Does it?"
Scowling at her refusal to let this go, he mutters, "Isn't there someone else you can talk to about this? Myka maybe. That's what you girls do, isn't it?"
"Yeah right in between painting our toenails and talking about hot Zac Efron is just, you know, the greatest." She drops her false teeny-bopper voice and shoots him a scathing look. "Dude, what am I? Twelve?"
"Okay, okay." He holds up his hands in surrender. "Still there are better people-"
"Umm, no. There's not. Myka and Pete have been her, what? Five months more than me, not exactly expert material in this area. And if Leena's name comes out of your mouth, I will reprogram your Farnsworth with a ringtone. Face it Obi-Wan, you're on deck."
Feeling compelled to reinforce her proclamation, her determination to see this through, she makes her way over to the couch and sits down, careful not to adopt her usual slouch. There's nothing casual about this, and she wants him to see it in her body language. So she sits forward, elbows on knees hands clasped, eyes level.
"Look I'm not asking you to fix anything or make me feel better or any of that mixing with people crap you're not good at. I just-" she stumbles a little on the words, tries to rebalance, but her voice still shakes when finally they come, "I feel like I'm playing at something I'm not. And I need to know up front if I'm being really stupid about this."
"Hey! There is nothing stupid about what you're doing. How? How can you think-"
"Cause this is my first date, okay!"
It comes like an explosion, and leaves a ringing silence in its wake, deafening and uncomfortable. Artie's expression makes a lurch a towards the embarrassed discomfort of a few days ago, and she knows he thinks they've just come full circle to the 'woman' conversation, which she will absolutely never ever repeat, except maybe with a gun to her head and even then it would be a close call (death would at least afford dignity).
Throwing up a hand to ward off the impending doom before it descends, she warns, "Woah, stop, reverse course captain."
Artie's "Oh thank god," is enough to avert disaster and suddenly they're both laughing, quiet hysterical hiccups of relief.
"Geez you are bad at this," she manages in between gasps.
"I did warn you," he shoots back, but there's no recrimination there. The mood has eased, unspooled from the earlier tight coil into something more comfortable—genuine and warm and safe. And she doesn't want to leave it, kind of just wants to stay here forever.
To her surprise it's Artie who doesn't let them.
"There is nothing stupid about wanting a normal life."
"Wha-?" The question dies on her lips as she looks up to meet his eyes. It's there again, that guilt and regret, and okay this officially has to stop now. "Wait. No. And hell no. I don't do normal. And if that's what your whole Todd reprise experiment was about, I'm calling him right now and canceling next time."
She pulls out her phone to underline her threat, but Artie reaches out and stops her. "Don't do that."
Reaching around the barrier of the phone to press the tips of her fingers against the edge of his palm in a makeshift clasp, she fixes him with her gaze, pleading with him to get this. "I like my life. For the first time in twelve years I am genuinely, completely happy. I don't want to screw this up."
And this would all probably be a lot more convincing if she couldn't feel the start of tears in her eyes. God, she's a fucking emo-rollercoaster of crazy right now.
But Artie seems to speak crazy (or at least her peculiar variant thereof), because he comes around to sit next to her on the couch and with a startling lack of self-consciousness reaches out to pull her close. This isn't them. Not usually. They're tactile in a way that she thinks is unique for both of them, but it's always brief, fleeting. Prolonged physical contact is for other people, people with fewer sharp corners and rough edges, but they both seem to be a little duller, a little more worn down tonight, and she curls against him instinctively, indulging the vulnerability.
"Oh kid," he sighs into her hair.
"I swear to God, if you apologize to me right now I'm going to hit you."
"Can we lay off the threats for a little while, hmm?"
"You gonna lay off the guilt?"
The answer to that is an obvious no, so he feints left instead. "I know I'm missing something. But what exactly does the fact that it's your first date have to do with this?"
"Well, I don't know how they did it back in the stone age, but in case you haven't noticed I'm not fourteen."
"Is there some particular reason you're feeling compelled to remind me of your age, tonight?"
It's not so much reminding him as herself. She feels everything but her age right about now, too old and too young all at once. But she's not gonna tell him that, so she just ignores the question and rolls her eyes, "The point is, I'm kind of behind the curve here. And I've really been okay with that. I mean there were way more important things going on. I don't know, maybe after awhile, I started to think the universe was trying to tell me something. After all, this job doesn't exactly scream conducive to healthy relationships."
"No. No I guess it doesn't," he mutters, then after a long pause he continues, "I don't know . . . if it gets any easier, I mean."
It takes her a moment to realize they've come full circle, that he's finally answering the question that started this mess. Then she does and fills in the unspoken blank, "But it didn't for you?"
"By the time I came to the Warehouse . . ." he trails off, and she feels him shake his head slowly, sadly, "Well let's just say I didn't fit the standard recruitment pattern."
Somehow she knows that 'not fitting the standard recruitment pattern' is probably tied up with the whole, 'convicted for espionage' story he's never told any of them. And were she Myka or Leena she might take the obvious opening, but she's never felt a pressing need to pry into Artie's past any more than he's tried to get her to talk about her foster family or her time in the psych ward. So instead she just says, "Yeah, 'cause I'm sure kidnapping the boss is right at the top of most resumes."
"Still. It was very easy for me to just let this place takeover everything, to not even try. I don't want that for you. This alone. It's not any kind of life. You deserve more."
Maybe she does, but she's not entirely sure she wants it. Because Artie's wrong about one thing, maybe the Warehouse isn't enough, but the people—Myka and Pete and even Leena and Artie most of all—they're more than enough, and if she ever did something so stupid as to fall in love, to let some 'inoffensive' guy sweep her off her feet and take her away from all this, from him . . . she'd never forgive Artie for not stopping her.
But that's not what Artie needs to hear, and he managed to give her the truth, she figures she owes him the lie. So she rolls a little to lean her head back on his shoulder and mutters, "So what you're saying is, no matter how bad at this I am, I've gotta keep the date."
"I'm saying don't make my mistakes. Make the effort to connect, to have something beyond this place. This Todd seems like a good start."
The way he still refers to Todd like an inanimate object makes her huff a laugh, and she rolls her eyes in mock exasperation. "Fine. But just so you know, obsessive teenage years of searching for you mean I am bad at this, I'm gonna screw it up. And when I do, you're gonna have to do the mixing with people thing again."
He squeezes her shoulder. "We mix just fine."
Yeah they do.