He wasn’t going to win that one. So Dax pressed on. The next twenty minutes or so flew by, with attempt after attempt of varying seriousness. He tried on a wholesome shy puppy approach, a straightfoward business-like one. Even whipped out the occasional raunchy angle to remind himself that he didn’t have to take this seriously because the entire point was that this wasn’t playing for keeps.
In all honesty, it was helping. Even if he didn’t have much of an idea of the approach he wanted, it took the edge off the nervousness of looking forward to trying. But this would only get him so far.
“Look, I appreciate this, and I think it probably has done some good but there’s only so much trying to seduce your cat I can handle before I need some time to reflect on my life choices.”
He stood to start getting ready to leave, but felt he should do a little more to repay the balance for her help, unexpected as it was. “You know, since you were so interested in finding out how my hands work, I recently got my workbench back from where the Hunters stashed it after I got nicked. I’m going to have to re-calibrate and set everything back up if you wanted to snoop and nose around while helping.”
Her datapad was full of a lot of notes, including a couple phrases she would have to look up later, although from how they sounded when spoken they were probably quite filthy. But he was right, and to be honest she probably should be getting back to her duties anyway.
His offer struck a nerve, and oh it was tempting. “Lieutenant Dax Webster, if I didn’t know better I would think you’d just changed your target and are trying to flirt with me instead.”
“Was not my intention.” He started the line reflexively, but as he spoke he reflected on the implications. Avianna and Aspis got along very well, and part of that was shared interests and motivations, including an emphasis on scientific inquiry. While Dax was still working on getting his read on Aspis dialed in, she did seem to have a genuine interest….and was making a valid point.
“That would be the perfect opener though, wouldn’t it? Get her alone on an engineering task to tinker with, technically the conversation would already be about me to begin with as the bench is an extension of how I work my abilities. Be natural to transition from there to talk about other interests from there.”
“That is, if you don’t mind giving up your chance. I already made the offer, so you do have dibs.”
“As much as I’d like to hold you to that offer, I’ll survive.” Besides, it was a worthy sacrifice to see the more important experiment go farther. “You go find out how to bring up the topic. I can probably make some movements to help ease the workload for her short-term and make sure that she’ll have the time free to give you an opening.”
“But! I expect to hear about how it goes after.” The “or else” hung in the air without needing to be said.