Title: Year 2509 V
Prompt: (06:00/6AM) "Tenacity and perseverance, especially with something you have been putting off."
(December 2509)
"What would you say if I asked you out?"
Unlike most things in their lives now, it wasn't a premeditated decision. There was no plan for a contingency looming over the hill. Lexine, slowly working her way back into the swing of surveying full time, never actually considered it a viable option. Not because he was undesirable, far from it (when he wanted to be, Gabe was a rather fetching man), but because she didn't think he saw her that way. She suspected her excuse was that the road that got them to the point of friendship was rocky. Why rock the boat a fourth time with romantic pursuit?
"I would probably ask, 'well, what brought this on, Gabe'? You never seemed interested before."
Besides, if she was quantifying, Gabe never seemed the type that went beyond harmless flirtation and casual dating. A sturdy romantic relationship, on the other hand, that seemed reserved for the ghost of a woman he never spoke nor thought of. What's more, Gabe never appeared to regard her as anything except a friend, or worse, a little girl (or maybe she was internalizing their age difference). Still, death had a way of making you look at things differently. Where she would've broken ties with him under normal circumstances, Lexine remained relatively close to him. She appreciated the gradual familiarity they learned as time went on. Their bodies weren't so much in sync as they just knew when and how the other would move, how to avoid each other. The learned distance and standoffish behavior from their respective societies evaporated the more they simply talked to each other.
"Well, I'm interested now, so how about it?"
Lexine had a way of working around the exterior of his "armor" and by all rights it was never an intentional move (according to her). He swore to the memory of Nathan that he would protect her no matter the cost was to hisself, he never thought he had the option of rejecting the responsibility. She was special to Nate, Gabe figured he was in love with her and it wasn't hard to see why that was, really.
"I dunno, what's in for me?"
Where Eckhardt and the Marker heads saw her as some type of object to poke and prod because of that one "unique attribute", those she truly affected saw her for the special person she was. Lexine was a sun and everyone who had the fortune of meeting her would always be pulled into her obit and unconsciously revolve around her even when they were no longer near her. And maybe that was putting her on some God-like pedestal, but it was truth. Try as he might to fight that same effect, Gabe eventually followed suit. And for that reason, he felt rather undeserving of her and intrusive on the line his friend never really crossed.
"A lovely night on Inverted City, I figure. No levelers, no security. Just food and nothing but containment glass between us the yawning blackness of space."
She was just a happy person, not in the sense that left her oblivious to hardship (that was rather impossible at this point) or clueless, but her positivism made it difficult to maintain pessimistic outlook he had on future prospects. The morning Gibson caught him asleep on the couch with her arms wrapped him, Gabe tried to deny a very real reality unfolding before his eyes. Every day since that morning, it was hard to explain away the jump in his pulse. Jitters, in a profession he was arguably comfortable with by necessity when she visited him or touched him, shouldn't have him tripping over his own feet and making bad jokes. He wasn't a school boy, and while he wasn't incapable of puppy love at his age, this wasn't what he was feeling for Lexine. Leastwise, he hoped not.
"Oh, you lost me at yawning blackness of space. You've got to do a lot better than that to woo a girl."
Rationalizing it as some symptom of survivor's bond misunderstood as romantic affection was an easy mistake they thought. What made them better suited each other that no other potential companion seemed to lack? Was it because of what they experienced? It wasn't as if they needed to speak to anyone else of their past, they had each other for that. Yet, the connection was there, a constant confluence of emotions that slowly started to untangle itself from the fears and anxieties of moving forward in their relationship.
"Alright, what if I told you I could take you to the beach without ever leaving the station, what would you say then?"
Gabe, whether he'd acknowledged it or not, wanted something beyond his duty; he went through the motions of his job, no less dedicated than he was before. Yet, he always found he was always hoping to find something at the end of the metaphorical tunnel he constantly denied himself. His heart was telling him it was Lexine, and he hesitated, whether out of foolish respect to his dead friend or his own fear to commit. Lexine wanted more or less of the same, but her thoughts often lay with the unattainable man of her dreams, the person who'd yet to arrive in her life and served as a template example of who she wanted.
He read once that dreams of sexual nature were the libido's way of giving the subconscious a very clear message: firstly, that it'd been too long since he had sex, and secondly, he wished for physical and emotional love. It scared him the first time, as he never consciously allowed his mind to wander in that direction with Lexine. He couldn't look her in the face the morning after, his mind inadvertently going back to the imaginary night of passion that left him breathless upon waking. But the more frequent they became, the more he started to wonder. Whether or not he could achieve the kind of happiness he often saw others preach about with Lexine was a million to one chance, but he didn't lose anything by trying.
"I'd say you better show me this beach, Mr. Weller; you've certainly got my attention."
Gabe bit the proverbial bullet when he allowed his hand to close around hers and led her out of her office. It was a little secret he discovered not long after his and Nathan's first arrival on the Sprawl, a little spot for the workers from Earth, between the CEC and extraction facilities. It showed the both of them the state of the world before either of them even born, a veritable paradise compared the wasteland it was. Lexine, eyes closed, was led into the relaxation room and positioned in front of the apparent blank wall.
He chose the desired location and casually took his place beside her. The small room was illuminated with light, the interior slowly overtaken by the wide blue sky, the lull of the sea washing against the shores and branches whistling in the lull of the wind. The illusion created by the hologram was enough to fool him that they'd been transported elsewhere, one of the reasons he loved visiting this particular room after so many years. "Alright, you can open your eyes," He told her.
The best thing about sharing it with Lexine was her expression; a reflection of awe that reached her round brown eyes, she must have laughed for a good while as she watched the physics of the hologram react to her movement when she kneeled down to touch the sand that wasn't there. "Gabe, this is amazing," She proclaimed. "I had no idea this was here!"
"Most people don't, but I thought it'd be a nice surprise," He told her. "It was," Lexine beamed at him. "Are there other places like this?"
"I'm not sure, I kinda just stumbled across it a few years back and to be honest, I'm surprised it's still here," He answered. "The tech is old."
"Old is good sometimes," Lexine remarked drawing lines in the sand. "They don't allow you do this kind of thing with the holograms now. I can't imagine why though."
"Efficiency, maybe," Gabe said. "Why animate an entire environment when you can do half the work?"
They spent the better part of the evening fooling around with the simulated environments, Lexine's curiosity dying to know what other places could be projected around them. He never got to woo her with a fancy dinner or a night on the town, but as far as he was concerned, as an unofficial "first date", it was a good start to an otherwise tentative relationship.
