Cold Hands, Warm Heart

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The hatch opened, and a wave of chill air washed over the boy. He crumpled up his face a touch, grimacing internally as he stepped forward through it - the place was cold. Really cold.
The cargo shuttle ahead took up much of the space before him, its bulbous hull seeming to strain against the walls of the hangar bay. Through some quirk of spacetime, or something roughly like that, there was still enough room for him to scoot around the craft's forward wing and towards the bow. He wouldn't be able to explain how if you asked him, but he managed nonetheless.
His hunt-and-peck stepping around loose tools and spare parts dislodged an errant strand of hair, and he took a second to shift it out of his eyes as he stooped over to look under the shuttle's forward landing leg. A pair of boots attached to a figure atop a maintenance trolley, and a dozen or so cloths tossed to one side covered in oil and grime.
"It's... it's six in the morning shipboard. You know that, right?"
"M-hm."
"...Guessing you're the tech assigned to this shuttle now?"
"M-hm."
"Huh." A pause, as cogs turned inside his head. "Don't recognise your voice much, you new here?"
The trolley rolled out a few feet from underneath the shuttle's hull, revealing the face the voice belonged to - pale, lightly freckled, and topped with a shock of auburn hair. "Who's asking?"
"Me? Maybe? I'm, uh - I'm Mikaere. I'm the guy who flies this tin can, most of the time." He gestured up to the bubble canopy above them, offering the girl a disarming grin.
He got little but a quizzical stare in return. "You're pretty young to pilot something like this."
"Me? Cret, you're pretty young to be tearing its guts out." He laughed; confused, baffled, entertained. 
"I know my way around." The tone of voice was non-committal, and seemingly disregarding of his bewilderment. "I guess you do too."
"Yeah, I've been flying for these guys for a couple of years. I was just seconded to the Moon - you know, our sister ship?" She nodded in reply. "Amani did her leg in, so I volunteered to cover for her, and, well, look after her too. Miss her so damn bad already." His gaze had already slid away from the scene and rested on the bulkhead beyond, but he blinked sharply and looked back over. "So you got signed on while I was gone, I'm guessing."
"Uh-huh."
Not much to work with, huh. "Well, you can't still be working on the port-side gimbal thruster I radioed in about, can you?" He paused; he chuckled. "It's, what, ten yards that way?"
"No, I'm not." She rolled the rest of her herself further out from underneath and sat up. "That was only a couple of hours of work. But then when running some checks for that, it was pretty clear that the intake valve needed clearing - and then so did the other five. Then I checked through the maintenance logs - yours, I presume - about the roll posts behaving a little sticky when you were at low altitudes, so I'm seeing what I can do with th-"
"You've been here all night?"
"M-hm."
"In this - it's freezing in here!"
"Oh, I knocked the enviros down. Save a little bit of power, keep me awake."
"You haven't slept?"
"Look, I gotta get back into the Chief's good books."
"The Chief? Chief Reyes?" His question got a brisk nod in response. "Listen, the hull's in one piece and none of us are dead, so I'm sure whatever it is you've done won't matter to him in the long run - he's a lot softer than his brow would suggest, promise. And, stars, I don't know what titanium mine you grew up in but it's not like you've got to work yourself to the bone to offset whatever you've done. I mean, shit, you step on his toe or something?"
She stared up at him, unnerved. Bellowing roars from drill instructors, tightening of exercise criteria, withdrawal of rest periods, long cold night-marches. Every response to displeasing authority - or at least, without getting away with it cleanly - she had ever known was arduous work and exhaustion. Somewhere along the line, she had gotten ahead of the curve, she had just fallen in with what she expected to happen. 
Ari. Ari, say something.
"Well. I. I don't like to leave jobs half-done."
"You're insane."
His response was quick, glib, matter-of-fact, as if he were discussing a matter of the weather - and following it there was a moment of silence, of deadpan seriousness between the two of them.
And then he burst into laughter. Bright, hearty laughter.
"Come on, that's ridiculous. That's - that's actually ridiculous." Mikaere sat himself upright, offering a hand to the girl. "We're getting you fed and we're getting you rested."
It took a long moment, but she took it; an instant later she found herself hauled to her feet, him reaching out to help steady her, an oversized flight jacket pulled over her, and a bundle of cleaning wipes pressed into her hands. The hand grasping hers, the arm around her, the fabric wrapping around her shoulders - they were all warm. A surprising warmth, and certainly a welcome one.
Huh. Ari, maybe-
"Listen, you got a name?"
"Yeah." 
A couple of seconds pause; a pair of raised eyebrows, an exaggerated gesture of Mikaere opening his hands - and she relented. 
"Arianne. I'm Arianne."
"Arianne. Ari-anne?" He repeated the name a couple of times, trying it out for how it sounded in the mouth. "Ari. Pretty name, hm?" He hauled himself to his feet and beckoned for her to follow. "Come on, come with me. I'm a right devil with a skillet, you'll see."
At last, for the first time, he received a gentle chuckle in return. "We'll see." 
Maybe you should stay.
Category:The Weekly
Category:Seventh Circle