quick collection of my faves scenes from Controlled Demolition aka eiffel and minkowski slowly turning into each other sdgfkhsdffgh
Transcript:
EIFFEL: God, what have I done to offend you…?
MINKOWSKI: Middle management going well, then?
EIFFEL: Commander? How long have you been listening in?
MINKOWSKI: Hera patched me through about half an hour go. I needed a distraction.
EIFFEL: Navigational data's not the heart-pounding rollercoaster you were hoping for?
MINKOWSKI: No. I'm having to manually go through every single mission entry. And here's the worst part: they could automatically reconstruct all this data with the systems they have on the Urania. [scoffs] The only reason why I'm here is because the Colonel wants to put me through the paces.
[BEAT]
EIFFEL: Gee. I, uh, wonder what that feels like. Sounds… sounds awful.
MINKOWSKI: Shut up.
EIFFEL: [laughs] Best of luck, Commander. Godspeed.
[BUZZER SOUND]
MINKOWSKI: It's completely pointless. It really is.
EIFFEL: Uh-huh.
MINKOWSKI: There is no practical reason to make me go through all this trouble. I could be doing something much more important.
EIFFEL: Right, right.
MINKOWSKI: It's just… pointless bureaucracy! Completely unethical! Practically fascist!
EIFFEL: That's nice.
MINKOWSKI: And another thing -
[BUZZER SOUND]
MAXWELL: Look, don't worry about it. I really don't think that survey thing's really -
EIFFEL: I don't care what you think! That's not the point!
HERA: Umm, Eiffel, maybe you need to -
EIFFEL: Maybe I need to nothing! I've had it up to here with the two of you. Your commanding officer told you to do something, so we are going to do it! And we're going to do it in a timely, orderly fashion if it kills us! Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? It's like you've never
even read Pryce and Carter! Tip 490 very clearly states that --
[BEAT]
HERA: Officer Eiffel?
MAXWELL: You, uh, all right there?
[BEAT]
EIFFEL: What have I become?
thinking about “i know we’ve had our ups and downs but right now i could kiss you” and “i don’t know whether to kiss you or punch you” and “come here, give us a hug” and “you know how tingly i get every time you break out your sarah connor game” and “i know you” “you don’t” “i KNOW you” and
Trying to keep a station running with only two people was a monumental task, but in between the alarms and bits and pieces breaking down around them a Commander and her Officer find a moment of peace to take a break. To sleep a little, holding on to each other as to not drift away.
Minkowski wanted to say that it didn't affect her as much as it did, after all it wasn't like she needed much sleep anyway. Even before space she had always been an early riser, early bird gets the worm and all that, not to mention her routine of jogging at dawn, now long lost with the lack of gravity. Or dawns.
Renée Minkowski didn't Need that much sleep to work like a well oiled machine. She wanted to think.
And Yet.
Sleep had become a commodity neither she or her second in command could get the pleasure to indulge. Not when the alarms wouldn't stop ringing even seconds after they got something else fixed, not when their autopilot and friend had a hole on her head, not when their doctor —and friend— attempted to murder them all, not when it was them against...
—Cutter? Goddard as a whole? Minkowski grimaced at the thought, and Eiffel gave her a sympathetic look that would carry words if they weren't in the middle of fixing the fifth problem of the day—
Sleep was something they could give themselves for a few minutes if the other was up and awake to make sure nothing exploded in their absence. And not even that sometimes, seeing how it didn't pass a minute before something else went awry.
That was why, after a rather big crisis averted, they both let out the breath they were holding and floated for a few seconds in complete silence, not wanting to be rudely interrupted by yet another disaster incoming. The silence, however, stretched between them like a mirage.
"Commander..." Began Eiffel, tentatively. "I... might have hit my head at some point, because I'm not hearing anything saying one of the million ways that we could potentially die."
Minkowski squinted, as if she could see what was wrong in the air.
"No… No, you're hearing correctly, Officer. I think..."
"Oh, thank you, we're finally free of-!"
"Don't!"
He pressed his mouth on a thin line, hands raised in fear of jinxing it, but as the clock kept ticking in silence a relieved yet exhausted smile painted his features again.
"Looks like the planets aligned on a galaxy far far away and lady luck is smiling down to us."
"You know, Eiffel, I think you might be right for once. I'm starting to dread that we actually died, now."
"Oh, shut up, let me have it."
She felt the tug of a smile, but a yawn quickly took its place. He laughed under his breath as if she didn't see the way he fought a yawn of his own.
"Why don't you hit the sack, Minkowski?" Took her by surprise.
"What?"
"Sleep a little, it's been, what, forty hours since you last slept?"
"Thirty-eight, give or take, and it's none of your business."
"Uh, yeah it is. I can't have my Commander running around like a zombie at dawn."
"Me? Have you seen yourself in a mirror recently? You look like a raccoon, and for once I'm not talking about your hair. Or smell." She pointed out, the dark circles under his eyes looking almost skeletal in nature.
“Hey! I already told you, I refuse to take a cold shower.” He said as he rubbed his hands up and down his arms, mimicking the cold, and she raised an eyebrow. It was amusing the lack of remark about his eyes, but she pressed on.
“Besides, if anything does happen in the next half an hour I can’t have my Communications Officer and Second in Command at the brink of exhaustion. Why don't you take a break?"
"And leave you all the fun? Nah." He blinked, and Minkowski frowned when his eyelids took a second too long to open up again.
"Eiffel, I'm serious."
"So am I."
They settled on a wordless stare match as it became clear that neither of them planned on using the other's resting time, but the more they stared at each other the more they both realized they expected an alarm to put an end to their discussion, and just how much time they were wasting on that stupid charade. When Eiffel pulled away, groaning, Minkowski thought she had won without even having to allude to her title —that, really, she should have done that already— when he started digging into his pockets.
"Okay, I know how can we settle this on a simple, peaceful way once and for all." Triumphantly, he pulled out a coin. "Aha! Heads or tails?
"Uh." That was not... "Heads."
"Heads for the lady and tails for the gentleman, come on lady luck."
And the flipped it with such force that it would have taken a few suspenseful seconds to return to his hands to reveal the winner and the loser, if forces of gravity applied in such context.
Which they didn't.
For obvious reasons.
Instead the coin kept turning until it hit the ceiling and then, by inertia, started ricocheting around the room. Eiffel stared at it with his hope crushed while Minkowski simply looked at him with an unrelenting expression. The simple fact that, for a second, she really did hope for it to roll heads notwithstanding.
"Wow."
"That’s not..."
"You always manage to surprise me, Eiffel."
“Excuse me for having a great idea in the wrong place...”
"Why, why do you even have a coin with you? When was the last time you had to buy something? With coins?" He laughed, surprised at the questions, as he finally picked it from the air and twisted it back and forth between his fingers.
"I just like having something to tinker at, you know, since you made all my cigarettes walk the plank, remember?" She rolled her eyes, not being able to stop the tug of a smile, when he gave her a conspiratorial look. “On the bright side… I can’t exactly use cigarettes to do this.”
Lo and behold, he hid the hand that held the coin with his other hand, making it disappear a second afterwards with an exaggerated eyebrow wriggle. Whether it was still visible under Eiffel’s thumb or not didn’t even matter, for the stupidity of the situation finally cracked her demeanor already worn down by sleepless nights. The surprised laugh that bubbled from her lips was honest, her body adamantly relaxing, and her reaction pulled such a tired yet pleased smile from him that she had to wonder for a second if that had been his plan all along.
After the moment passed, Minkowski had to confront two overlapping realities: If they had been standing instead of floating, both of them would’ve be leaning against each other for support, bodies too tired to keep them upright on their own, and also they had been honest to God Goofing for such a long time her muscles kept tensing for an alarm that never really came. Maybe the planets (some planets) were aligned (in Some Galaxy) for things to be going smoothly for once. They really shouldn't pass an opportunity to rest. Neither of them.
Taking a deep breath, she let go of the last traces of her smile to look at him with all the authority she could muster, and he straightened his back.
"Eiffel. We really need to sleep, it has been a hell of a week and we're both exhausted."
"I... agree..." He squinted, as if he didn't know exactly where was this going.
"Good. I have... another idea... but it might -Might- be... a dumb one."
He laughed, shortly.
"Lieutenant Commander Renée Minkowski having a dumb idea? She would never."
She frowned, smile tainting her words.
"I don't appreciate whatever it is on your tone, Communications Officer Douglas Eiffel." Raising his hands in defeat, he let her finish. "What if... we both sleep?"
"...We... tried that already, didn't we?" He pointed at one of the walls. "Didn't part of the second engine almost blow up while we were changing?"
"You were changing, I was already on my work clothes." She pointed out as he made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "But no, I mean... What if we both slept... at the helm."
He squinted.
"Not sure I follow."
"Look, if we're already there when the eventual alarm starts blasting it could save us a lot of time. We could tie something to the console so we don't drift off or... or to each other! So we don’t drift off and hit something. This way we could prob-"
"Oh!" Up until the last point Eiffel kept slowly nodding to her idea, but something about her last statement made his eyes light up. "Like otters!"
"What?"
"Yeah, yeah, like widdle waby otters!"
"...What!?"
"Like..." He laughed a bit, snapping his fingers as he recalled something. "One time my... the tv was on, right? And I saw this shot of two adorable fluffy otters holding hands, and apparently they slept like that so they wouldn't drift away in the water and it was so cute..." He puffed his chest with evident tenderness for the memory as he held his own hand in demonstration, and Minkowski pressed her mouth in a thin line.
"That... is extremely adorable, yes... Not quite what I'm going for-"
"Well yeah, I mean, I assume we're not gonna hold hands but-"
"But that is the basic idea of what I'm saying, yeah." She took a breath, so very tired. "So...? What do you think?"
Eiffel thought about the idea for a few seconds, but eventually smiled at her.
"Aye aye, Commander."
With a relieved sigh of her part they wasted no time on their new contraption, making sure they were bound to the ship within safely parameters while also making sure they wouldn't knock heads in their slumber. Safely bind together in a way they could get to action when something eventually went wrong, too, but until then...
"Well." Minkowski clasped her hands together, as much as she could in the tight space. "Goodnight, Eiffel."
"Goodnight Min-" A yawn broke her name apart, stopping him from butchering it yet again. "Night."
Having said their goodnights they both turned to be back to back, doing their best to ignore the unusual warmth. Minkowski had wished that with that out of the way the path to slumber would be an easy one, but in that deafening silence all her brain could do was to spin progressively faster.
How long has it been since they last heard an alarm? What were the chances of absolutely nothing going wrong in all this time? Maybe, her fatigued and backstabbing brain proposed, maybe it was the alarm that was broken. Maybe things were failing all around them but they couldn't know because the alarms didn't work. Maybe-
A loud snore interrupted her train of thought and startled her a bit.
"Eiffel?" She whispered for some reason, maybe to make sure the noise did in fact come from him, but he was soundly asleep. "Incredible. You can't even shut up in your sleep." She mused, without real bite.
Taking a deep breath Minkowski tried to relax. Tried to focus on the hesitant buzzing of the machines around them, on the creaking of the walls, on the breathing of her Officer... Maybe if she found a pattern on his breathing she wouldn't be startled whenever he snored. Maybe not. She wasn't used to people who snored. Dominik didn't snore...
Opening her eyes, Minkowski sighed.
Eiffel twitched in his sleep.
Did she always had this much trouble sleeping? She had been awake for so long, one would think that rest would come easy now that she finally had a chance to sleep, but the adrenaline running through her veins thought otherwise, never mind the crushing pressure on her temple.
Eiffel tossed, and turned behind her. Mumbled something.
Minkowski considered for a few seconds the pros and cons of checking on Hilbert of all things —after all, she couldn't just lay there doing nothing like a sitting duck— when Eiffel elbowed her back, and she turned with her teeth bared.
"Hey-!" But to her surprise Eiffel was still asleep, concern painting his features. "Eif-"
"No...no..."
"Hey... Doug..." With a slightly gentler voice Minkowski faced him, considering shaking him awake for a second before settling for something less drastic —he Did need the sleep for the coming day— and firmly squeezed his arm. "Doug, it's okay."
"I'm sorry, Anne..." His words dragged in between restless sleep, yet for a few seconds that startled her his voice seemed fully conscious. Questions began pilling up on her mind, before Minkowski shook them out. That was none of her business. If it really were important, she thought, he would tell her at some point, assuming for a second that it was something, and not a fabricated narrative from a hyperactive mind, anyway.
Eiffel's distress, on the contrary, felt very real.
He twisted weakly against the restrains and her grasp in his arm as if he wanted to get rid of what bounded him there, and before he could hurt himself, or before the realization of how utterly ridiculous what she was going to do hit her, Minkowski did a quick thought association and grabbed his hand instead.
"Relax, Doug," the nature of her words juxtaposed with the authoritative tone of how she spoke them, but the wrinkles in her Officer's forehead soothed regardless, "it's okay, we're okay. We're safe."
Eiffel breathed sharply for a few seconds, like a drowning man, before taking a deep breath and letting it out in a big sigh. Minkowski smiled to herself, happy to have at least one thing under control, but when she tried retrieving her hand back she felt his fingers wrap around hers.
"What the..."
Minkowski stared at him, but besides some idle movement behind his eyelids his face was as neutral as it could possibly be, at least until the beginning of a snore threatened to break free, luckily to not avail. Other than that he was completely unconscious, with an iron grip on her hand.
After another attempt of taking her hand back and him lazily telling her off in his sleep, Minkowski considered her options, her goals, and her pride.
"Goddammit, Eiffel, you giant otter of a man..." She eventually cursed at him, quietly enough to not wake him up.
Okay.
Taking a breath, Minkowski tried to make herself comfortable between the makeshift harness and their point of contact, slowly maneuvering herself and the nearly death weight of her Officer in zero G, who in turn decided that to be the perfect moment to get comfortable as well. Eventually she found herself facing the ceiling again, with Eiffel's scratchy cheek using her shoulder as a pillow, and their joined hands resting on her stomach.
"Great. That's just... Wonderful." She said, to no one in particular.
Filing that under the long long list of embarrassing things she had done since the mission started, Minkowski tried to relax again, and, against her better judgment, she actually managed to succeed this time. With his chin locked on the nook of her shoulder Eiffel hadn't been able to snore anymore, the warm breath slowly and periodically coming from his nose setting a tempo to her own breathing. How ironic.
"You know, Eiffel? You're not that bad when you're asleep." She said to the unconscious man, feeling a yawn sneak up on her in response to a particularly deep exhalation from his part.
The warmth of a body against her own helped, too, but she abstained from acknowledging that thought as her eyes finally felt heavy enough to shut closed on their own. The vague pressure in spite of the zero G trying to pull them apart made him feel more like a comfortable duvet than anything else, she told herself, and ironically enough that was the backhanded association that made her feel nostalgic.
She missed home. She missed her bed. She missed…
Well
She missed Dominik. She missed him a lot.
Unconsciously gripping the hand inside her grasp Minkowski tried not to acknowledge the guilt she felt then, when Eiffel hummed contently and wrapped himself tighter around her, and the heat that enveloped her comfortably finally let her uneasy thoughts slip her mind.
-
Funnily enough, it wasn't an alarm blasting what woke him up, but a quiet yet insistent beeping on the console next to his head. Not even something deadly like, Warning, The Air Is Poisonous, or Warning, We're Out Of Water And We'll Need To Drink Our Own Piss To Survive, no, just a simple and small meteorite passing through, far from the station's path.
Eiffel slowly tried to open his eyes a couple times as Hera's... what once was Hera's voice robotically reminded him of this fact, and after promising her yet again that they'll find a way to bring her back he turned the warning off with a voice command. Probably nothing to worry about. Or at least, nothing to worry about in the short run, ruining his long missed morning routine of just laying in bed doing nothing for as long as he possibly could.
Yawning, he tried stretching his arms for that sweet sweet popping of joints, but was quickly restrained by something. For a very confusing second he wondered why the belt of his zero gravity bed felt warmer than it usually felt. Meatier than it usually felt. Much more comfortable, too. But when he finally opened his eyes he was greeted with the sight of The Lieutenant Commander being the one whose arms wrapped around him like a big feathery pillow.
"Shit." He whispered to nobody, suddenly feeling like half of his body were burning, Batman's Two Face style. "Sh- He, hey, Commander..."
His heart skipped a beat when, far from waking up enough to let him go or at least get irked enough to turn away from him, Minkowski's hold on him tightened, her strong arms wrapping around him dragging him even closer as she took a breath and exhaled it against his neck. She also mumbled something, but Eiffel was far too out of it to understand her words.
What the hell happened? How did they ended up like that? For a few seconds a terrible thought crossed his mind, and he quickly licked his mouth for any trace of alcohol. The taste was disgusting —oh, how he missed his toothpaste— but it came out clear, and as he kept wondering it slowly dawned on him the arrangement they did the day before. Night before? The whatever-time-it-was before.
He tried shifting positions, but Minkowski's arms were death set on keeping them that way. So… she was a cuddler, huh? A fond smile escaped his lips, mentally berating himself afterwards while feeling a flush creep through his body. He knew he should probably do or say something, save her from the embarrassment that would be waking up like that with him of all people, but he was also just a man, and he couldn't remember the last time he woke up tangled up with someone in that way.
Or at least, the last time that remembering it wouldn't make him want to kill himself.
This, rather than making him want to kill himself, spread a warmth through his body that only made him uncomfortable for how comfortable he was in that moment. Looking at Minkowski, it was bizarre to see a calm rarely present on her face, too. On her entire body, the rise and fall of her chest against his arm being calm and languid.
Eiffel never really saw her like that, outside of the few times where she was so full of anesthetics after ending on the hospital for whatever reason. It was nice.
Swallowing, he looked at her for a couple seconds more before turning, eyes on the ceiling. Taking a deep breath he didn't smell anything out of the ordinary, and tuning his ears he couldn't hear anything beyond the creaks and whirs of the Hephaestus. Eiffel knew more than anyone else that if something could go wrong, it usually would —Damn you, Murphy's Law— so he knew the chances of something going catastrophically wrong before Minkowski woke up on her own were pretty high.
And, hell, she really deserved a good night sleep.
Yawning again, Eiffel stretched his joints as much as he could without disrupting his Commander's sleep, before closing his eyes and making himself as comfortable as an oversized pillow could be. There would come a moment when something will probably crash and burn and they'll have to scramble out of their contraption with the clock ticking against them, but until that happened, at least they could sleep better than they had since the mission started, and even before.
Eiffel has a theory that he can tell how Minkowski (and the Hephaestus) is doing based on Minkowski's hair style.
In a tight ponytail: default state. Not super fun to be around, but things are going pretty normal (for their crew, which is still semi-disastrous) and she's doing okay-ish.
In a high ponytail or a bun, could be a bit messy: Things are Not Great. Minkowski is frazzled and there may be something wrong with the ship. She may be running on less sleep than usual which is not a fantastic idea.
In a braid: Things are going slightly better than usual. It's a toss up whether Minkowski will be more or less irritable than usual because she has a chance to breathe which might be nice but it also means she has a chance to feel the stress.
Low ponytail: Things have gone to shit and part of Minkowski has definitely died but she's putting on a brave face. Eiffel tries to be a little nicer if he can but not suspiciously so because then she would catch on to him noticing that sort of thing about her.
