03rd Landing . video

[landfall]

Really? I still don't have an inmate? Come on.

[ Hey Barge, have Racetrack in a sweatshirt with her hair messily pulled back. Lookin' good messy. Like she spent half an hour in the mirror getting it to look messy-perfect, because she did, and don't judge her, she hasn't had half an hour to spend on her hair in years. ]

Anyway. Attention, people with - well, medium-bad judgment. Especially Mal. Triad - it's a card game, like poker - my place, the stakes are clothes because I don't have any money. First four or five takers are invited. And, because of the stakes, no one underage.

Oh, and Felix Gaeta is not invited.

Comments

[Not here... or is he?]

[itstopped]

[She's right; they're not speaking. Dean told him she'd made it out alive and more or less unharmed, and with that addressed, he hasn't tried to contact her, and he expects she doesn't particularly want him to. It's not especially nice to have that confirmed, especially not publicly, but he's not inclined to fight her on it. It's not like he has a solid defense. He's barely standing on solid ground.

In fact, he hasn't even seemed to be in the same areas as her. It's hard to avoid someone on a ship with fewer than 100 people on it, but so far, he's managed.

He's also better at the language of passive-aggression and conflict avoidance than she is. Now, he opens a channel, just long enough for her to see that it's there... and then switches it off without saying anything. A silent you've made your point.]

text | private

[landfall]

[ This makes her mad. There's about fifteen seconds of pure anger, in which she very determinedly stays still and does not respond to anything because she knows it's dumb and it will pass.

About at the fifteen-second mark she realizes that her anger isn't about him acknowledging what she said and is more about how she can't decide if she should feel stupid for trusting him in the first place. So she takes a breath, and she lets it go, and she decides that she doesn't want to just leave him thinking that they're never going to talk again.

So she drops in a text message. ]

Just give me a while.

text | private

[itstopped]

[He doesn't respond for a while, but in that time he starts to get frustrated. He doesn't blame her for being upset with him, wouldn't even blame her if she refused to forgive him, and staying out of her way is as much a way to avoid provoking her as much as it is to avoid the confrontation. But he's not going to lie anymore; he's not going to hide what he did.

That doesn't mean he's okay with the way she keeps talking about him for everyone else to hear. He's still a private man, at heart. So after her conversation with Dean, he can't help but shoot back:]

Until you've gotten it out of your system?

text | private

[landfall]

Yes.

[ In retrospect, she's not really sure why Dean didn't private that conversation.

...maybe she should have, too. ]

text | private

[itstopped]

And you have to do that over the network.

text | private

[landfall]

Dean did too!

[ A pause. ]

Sorry

text | private

[itstopped]

[He wasn't expecting her to apologize. Actually, he was expecting her to yell at him. The change trips him up a little, and he has to mentally adjust before replying.]

I'll keep out of your way.

text | private

[landfall]

Good.

[ And now she's mad at herself for apologizing, and has to stop the stupid urge to go and take it back.

Better to just leave it there. ]