river_meimei | (no subject)

Entry tags:

duo,
field trips

(no subject)

Moon Base Station is, apart from certain restricted-access sectors, built for tourism. Some tourists, like Duo, are just killing time during a layover; others come here, to the cheap hotels or the expensive ones with a real-time video view of Earth, to spend their whole vacation within the base's walls.

There's a casino area somewhere not too far away, but River and Duo have opted for one of the more family-friendly bits instead. It's a shopping area, full of glittering storefronts and small food-court nooks, with an intricately tiled floor and fountains every few dozen meters. Tiny potted trees show off the station's opulence -- this is space, after all, where trees are hard to come by.

River's already found herself cotton candy somewhere.

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Duo is already pulling on his tie a little, but leaves it alone before he can do any real damage. Even if he took it off in this less dressy area of the complex ('MARE TRANQUILLITATIS' as the sparkly sign reads) he'd have trouble tying it again later.

And somehow he doubts River is an expert on bow ties.

"What d'you think?"

You never know!

...But yeah, you can probably guess. (For her part, River likes this dress way better now that she gets to pair it with her usual stompy boots.)

"It's not an ocean."

Beat.

"Mĕilì," she adds, with a quick smile at him. "We'll forgive the nomenclature."

Or, you know, at least not blame Duo for its inaccuracies.

"Oh, do not even talk to me about the nomenclature. The tourists think it's quaint, okay? And since we are tourists, we should act like it." Duo gathers up River's arm, adopting a chivalrous manner.

"What would you like to see? Oh hey, they've got a sweet viewing room that you can look at the Earth from."

River's sense of manners is idiosyncratic, but this she can do. She slips her hand cheerfully into the crook of Duo's arm, with absent-minded grace and a mischievous expression.

Which pretty much immediately brightens into hope. "I haven't seen the atmo."

"Then by all means! Let's meander in that direction. And are you sharing, or am I going to be watching you rebound off the wall once you're finished?"

It's not too crowded here at the moment- it is the middle of the week. They start to stroll toward where Duo remembers the viewing areas are located.

River gives him a blank look.

"I'll be polite," she tries.

Well, then! Duo steals a piece of her cotton candy.

River has no idea what this has to do with walls.

But she's not objecting! She has another bite of it herself. Yay fluffy sugar.

Sugary fluffy sugar. Duo enjoys sweets, but not usually this much in one go. Yikes.

This viewing area is sectioned off from the mall- mostly so it can be quieter. Some people want to stare at the Earth in peace.

Some people want to yell about it and pose pictures in front of it. It takes all kinds.

Duo looks up, silent for a moment. "Every time I look at it, I see something new."

River sees -- well. It's River, so it's hard to say what exactly she's seeing.

But when and if she sees what's really there, it's Earth-That-Was, whole and healthy and steady in her orbit. The first time River's seen it in something that wasn't a textbook.

Earth from the ground is one thing. But there's something a little different in the view from the black.

She tips her face up towards the window, her fingertips resting lightly on Duo's sleeve, and says nothing.

She doesn't need to say anything. "Yeah, that's what I usually think too."

They stand there in silence for a few minutes until a group of young twenty-somethings wander in, clearly buzzed if not actually drunk.

"Floating in the gravitational well." River's voice is hushed. "They don't know it but they are. Inside."

...Hushed is not a tone that works all that well under buzzed twenty-something bickering. For the record.

Duo shoots them a glare. "C'mon," he says. "We can come back later if we want." Pretty scenery is not improved by rowdy drunks.

And even if you find watching drunk people amusing, it's not best done in front of pretty scenery anyway!

"It'll be waiting," River assures him, even though that's pretty much what he just said. "In the synchronous rotation."

"Lucky for us, then, huh?"

He glances around as they walk out again.

"Ever been in a casino?" Do they have casinos out where River's crew wanders around? They must.

It's a completely fair question. River, therefore, has no cause for the friendly well, DUH face she's giving him.

(River tends to forget that all her friends do not automatically know what she knows.)

"I count cards," she informs him, regretfully.

...Maybe mock-regretfully.

Duo's eyebrows vanish behind his bangs. "Do you really? Of course you do. I just cheat."

He beams.

"We should play sometime!"

This is the correct reaction, Duo!

River beams back, right on the verge of laughter. "It's a deal," she informs him; she's trying for solemnity, but failing pretty miserably on that score.

"Actually-" Duo says, with the air of someone who has just remembered something awesome "-some of the casinos here offer use tables to people who want to practice before placing bets against the house. They'd probably get mad at us if we sat there all night and didn't lose any money to them, but we'll probably get bored of cheating each other first. Wanna go?"

And hey, now River has a legal ID and everything!

Well, a totally illegal ID. But it's an excellent fake.

"It's efficient," she approves, with conspiratorial cheer.

"Let's roll." They head towards a nice upscale casino in another part of the complex. 'MARE NUBIUM', this sign reads, and the metal walls and ceiling start to be covered by gauzy curtains, softening the angles of everything around them.

The casually dressed are rarer in this section, and tend to be getting discreetly disapproving eyes. River's boots apparently pass muster, though, or at least can be overlooked because of the gown above them; nobody looks at them twice as Duo maneuvers towards an empty table.

It's probably to the good that he's steering, and that River still has her hand on his arm, because she's giving most of her attention to the ceiling. (Possibly looking for clouds.)

Seems she's in the right place! Metaphorically, at least.

"You know, there's actually some new kind of depressive hallucinogenic they're calling 'Clouds'. I hope no one tries to go for dramatic irony and uses it tonight where I can see them. I just got off duty."

River is not the type to scold Duo for jinxing them.

Instead, she's peering at him with the dubiousness River reserves for the concept of volunteering for depressive hallucinations.

"It's not an appropriate scene dressing."

"Hey, don't look at me. I don't volunteer for-" Uh. Well, there was that one time with the thing and the guy and the place.

And way back in training when-

Okay, FINE. He sighs.

"Nah, I agree. Not really all that much fun in the end, is it?"