Arms crossed behind his head, Apoc way lying on his bunk during his break, staring into the twilight framed by light seeping around the shape of the door. The ship was fainly creaking and humming as usual, more felt than seen, the gentle thrum of the hover pads pulsing through walls and what went for furniture.
It reminded him of rain, falling on the roof of a car, a tent, an old apartment with a bad tin roof over the balcony.
There was an itch in his body to sit behind the wheel of a car again, driving through the rain. No mission was scheduled, though. Sleek rivers of rain on the windshield, mirrored in everything, everyone. The most cheerful melancholy. There was a touch of wild abandon in rainy nights, something too big to be spoken of in the narrow confines of a ship. Not that he was unhappy where he was. It was a good place, in its own way.
How had they ended up here, together, as such a strange crew. The cynics, the ones too young, the ones too lost in the chase to stay put in Zion. Once he had thought he'd might like to settle there, help run the systems of the city, but there was too much energy left playing around the edges of his cultivated serenity. Light around a door, rain around a car, lightning against a silhouette.
He must have dozed off, because the next time he blinked, there was indeed a silhouette in the doorway.
"Daydreaming again?" There was a touch of a smirk in her voice, but no malice. Never towards him. She stayed motionless where she was, light against light.
"There are no days. So it's just dreaming, I guess." His voice was rough and gritty in his throat, reminding him how stale and dry the air was, with almost all water reclaimed by the ventilation system, recycled. Missing the rain, here he was again, full circle in his sleepy contemplation turned rumination.
No answer, none needed. "You're up for watch in ten." No further words, just a shift in the pattern of dirty light and twilight. Switch disappeared, retreating as quietly as humanly possible in the belly of a whale of steel.
Waiting for Trinity to finish writing whatever code she was working on and offer him the chair, Apoc stood among the clouds of cables and monitors, a fallen and oppressing sky, shadow version of the more glamorous ideas of cyberpunk and neon light of his youth. Thunderheads looming, at the edge of his consciousness.
Calm, he reminded himself, calm and collected. For a few seconds, there was the drum of raindrops on his bare forearm where his shirt had ridden up.
Not rain, he registered a moment later. Just Switch suddenly by his side again, her fingers tapping out the calm focus he needed to run smoothly. Just their mutual understanding of the little things needed to stay sane, the little moments of almost slipping.
