Spaaaace, just outside of Mars' orbit | Monday Afternoon

[flourish_or_perish]

Mars was the closest planet in the solar system, regardless of whether you went to the robot-inhabited version of 2021 or caught a portal to take you to the densely-populated version of Faye's time, and so that was where she had decided to take Stark for that promised, non-hole-related ride in her ship. They could have gone further, but Faye didn't especially feel like passing through a gate and paying the associated toll -- or, honestly, letting her ship be seen at an official checkpoint, if she could help it.

Plus, Mars had cities, which meant nightlife. And this was, after all, a date. Faye could even admit it.

"All right," Faye noted quietly -- given that it was still a very snug fit in the Red Tail's cockpit, she really could keep her voice fairly low -- as she gestured out the windshield to a green spot on the red planet. "So that's Tharsis, where we're headed. Still doing good?"

He seemed like he was doing fine, but Faye had found that checking in with Stark was just a thing she'd started doing since the whole hole thing, regardless.

[for the space date and NFB for distance, self.]

Comments

[stykera]

Faye knowing about pickpocket behaviors? Just because she came home with Stark's pockets full of phones and cash after Summer's birthday doesn't mean anything!

"I am not," Stark reminded her, "someone who dances often." Or maybe ever. Especially in public. "I suppose I could try." Going to the bar first might help.

"Or we could stay here." Because yes, that did sound fun. "...but it seems a shame to come all this way and see the planet at all." There was plenty of time later.

[flourish_or_perish]

Going to the bar first would absolutely help. Such was the nature of dancing in public.

"I'll help you," Faye assured him, which mostly likely meant that she'd hang all over him and possibly sway a little in a leading sort of way. "With the dancing. The nice thing about dancing is that no one really looks at anyone else. We all just think we're being watched."

She leaned back to kiss him over her shoulder, lingering a little bit. "And we can come back out here later." 'Here' being space. 'Here' actually meaning more remote space, really, because Faye wasn't quite that much of an exhibitionist. (Or at least, she was conscious of the fact that Stark certainly wasn't.)

[stykera]

Stark could absolutely sway a bit to some music like some sort of large prop. He might even enjoy it! Right now he was just going to enjoy the kiss. Perhaps even steal another.

"You'll be watched," he said, eventually. By Stark, absolutely, and quite possibly by other people. Faye was eye-catching! "While you dance. Definitely watched if we come back out here. But just by me, then. I hope. Or we could go somewhere else."

He really was not an exhibitionist. At all. But they had been in such close quarters this entire flight and doing something about that was sounding more and more appealing.

[flourish_or_perish]

"I don't mind being watched," Faye assured him with another kiss before, somewhat reluctantly, turning back to the controls to actually begin their descent. "In either context."

Faye sort of prided herself on being a giant distraction, which was why it was both kind of wonderful and also terrifying in those moments when Stark actually seemed to see past that.

Ignoring the brain alarms again.

"And you won't stick out, if you're worried," she added. "No one'll think anything of the mask." They'd probably come across at least a few other people with a face plate or a mechanical limb, honestly, in a city this big.

[stykera]

"I had noticed that," Stark admitted. He could be shy enough for the both of them, and Faye could soak up all the attention. It evened out. "I do like watching you," he added quietly. In case he hadn't made that very clear over the past few months.

"And I didn't think you'd take me somewhere the mask would be a problem." Because he trusted her, no matter how many times she might protest that he shouldn't. He would still be a little nervous about it. He was always a little nervous about something. Was that degree of nervousness why he was wrapping his arms a little tighter around Faye when they started the descent? Maybe. Or maybe that was just an excuse.

[flourish_or_perish]

He really shouldn't trust her. Faye would keep saying so. She wouldn't trust her.

But it still felt nice that he did.

She laid a reassuring hand on his arm for a moment before sliding it back into its grip. The city they were swiftly approaching was contained under its own atmosphere, with tiny vines of highway leading out to the other colonized portions of Mars, like Alba City and Space Land. "If you like Mars, we can go further next time," she offered, mostly just trying to make some conversation as a distraction from how they were hurtling faster towards the planet. "We'll just have to take a gate. I don't think they have them in Fandom's normal time." They certainly had any Earth-destroying accidents with them, anyway.

[stykera]

But Faye hadn't done anything to Stark that would make him not trust her! She hadn't even run off with any of his belongings. At least not that he'd noticed.

"I don't think there's much space travel at all, in the usual Fandom time. Or a lot of Earths, really. I only ever met the one human before Fandom." And now there were so many humans to keep track of! "I don't know about gates. We don't have those where I was before, either. Just ships. But I think I'll like Mars." It looked interesting, at least, from here. And he had a lovely tour guide. That helped.

[flourish_or_perish]

"There's only humans here," Faye shared as they broke through the atmosphere and she throttled her speed a bit as she flew them towards the city. There was a shipyard near the artificial lake, she was pretty sure. "Gates allow for hyperspace travel here. It'd take years to get to the other side of the galaxy before they were developed, I guess? At least, that's what they tell me." It was the sort of thing Faye would have learned school, if she could remember having gone.

"Do your ships have hyperspace capabilities?" She assumed so, but then, she was learning that there were apparently a lot of differences in spacecraft across different universes. (The Razor Crest had several features she was considering adding to the Red Tail, though space was obviously at a premium.)

[stykera]

"Leviathans, like Moya, can Starburst," Stark said, turning a bit so he could get a better look around as they approached. "Other ships have Hetch drives, for faster than light travel. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to get far. Things were very spread out. Are very spread out." So spread out they called a good portion of inhabited space Uncharted!

"It's still strange, sometimes, knowing there aren't others around who aren't human, most places." It was a little lonely, really.

[flourish_or_perish]

"There's others in Fandom, aren't there?" Faye asked, not entirely sure. She dipped the ship low to fly amongst skyscrapers, and now that they were much closer to the surface, it was easier to see how green the city was, under its bubble. There were more parks than you'd find in the average Earth city, since Tharsis needed to generate its own oxygen. "We just haven't quite...made contact with anyone else outside of this galaxy. Least not in my time."

[stykera]

"I'm not the only one who isn't human," Stark said, after thinking about it for a moment. "But there aren't many of us." And only one other alien that he could think of, who also happened to be glowy!

"There have been others, other times. Even ones I knew from before. This looks," he said, gesturing outside, "more like Earth than I would have thought." Just a vaguely futuristic Earth. "None of your planets had people before you got there?"

The multiverse was odd like that. Some places you had countless intelligent species. Some places you only ever found the one.

[flourish_or_perish]

"None of them," Faye said, shaking her head as she swung them a little lower, navigating around other zipcraft as she spotted the shipyard she was going for. "Or the moons. A lot of the planets in this galaxy, like Jupiter, are gaseous. But the moons are populated. And they all kind of look like Earth, I think. Or what Earth used to be like." You had to be careful about where you went, as far as the Earth of this time was concerned. There were a few okay areas, but it had largely been evacuated.

"Lots of people live on their ships, for the most part. Bigger ships. Somewhere between something like the Razor Crest and your Leviathans." Those sounded huge, and the Bebop wasn't exactly small.

[stykera]

"Have you been to many of the others? There's too many planets, where I'm from, but I've seen a number of them. And plenty of ships." Not always voluntarily, but still. "It seems more manageable here, seeing all of them." The solar system wasn't all that big, after all.

"Moya was plenty big enough for all of us to live on. More than big enough. And we had smaller ships for when we needed them." Like when someone needed to drag themselves out into space on their own for a time-out, for example. "For landing on planets, sometimes. None of them looked this one."

[flourish_or_perish]

"Were they bigger than this one?" Faye guessed. "The Red Tail's small even for a MONO craft. We had a couple other smaller ships on the Bebop, for maneuvering and chasing. The Bebop's a trawler, so not exactly zippy for going down to the surface -- which, I've been to most of the moons of Jupiter and Earth a couple times. Maybe more than that. There's not that many, you're right."

She was honestly not super sure whether she might not have been other places, but that was a little harder to get into.

[stykera]

"Some were smaller, I think. One was at least. I was never in those." For some reason Crichton and Aeryn never took him for rides in their tiny ships where someone basically had to be in someone else's lap. "The others were bigger. Room for passengers and supplies and not just a pilot."

"I like this one," he added.

[flourish_or_perish]

"Usually I strap passengers to the outside as long as we aren't breaching the atmosphere," Faye told him, gliding low and shifting so she could give his arm an affectionate squeeze. "But it's nice having something so compact. Makes it easy to store."

Case in point how she was going to be able to pull in for a smooth, vertical landing once she picked out her spot and had pressed a button to lower the ship's little feet.

[stykera]

"I'm glad I'm sitting here and not strapped to anything." Being strapped to the ship sounded terrible, for one thing, and this way Stark had spent the entire flight with Faye in his lap which was a very pleasant way to spend time.

"Easy to land? Or are you showing off?" She could show off her piloting and her ship all she liked, as far as he was concerned. "That was a very nice landing." One that deserved an appreciative kiss, he thought.

[flourish_or_perish]

"Both," Faye assured him, smiling into the kiss as the ship settled and cooled. "I'm a good pilot, but she's also not exactly tricky to fly." Faye would probably have a much harder time trying to fly -- and land -- a bigger ship, considering how much she relied on the zippiness of her little ship.

She moved to open the ship's door, reluctantly starting to untangle herself from Stark in the process. "You'll want to stick close. Just to be safe."

Cool, not an ominous thing to say at all, Faye.

[stykera]

"I was planning on staying close. Not going to wander off. Not on a strange planet." Especially with no way home if things went badly.

"But I could stay closer. Somehow. If I need to." That was a sacrifice Stark was willing to make, Faye. "Do I need to?" Because that was a little ominous, yes.

[flourish_or_perish]

"It's just a city," she said reassuringly, hopping out of the ship and immediately reaching for his hand to prove what she meant about sticking close. "I'd say the same thing wherever we went. Like when we went to all those cities for Summer's party. Tharsis isn't as dangerous as, like...Callisto or something. Just a normal city."

Faye, for the record, loved Callisto. For every single wrong reason.

[stykera]

"I can handle a city," Stark said, climbing down and taking the offered hand. "I think. I just don't visit them often, aside from the party. Or when we went to Japan. But the party was fine." He paused, then grinned. "More than fine."

The party had been great, really. Especially California.

"So, no visits to Callisto. I don't even know where that is. I think we can avoid it."

[flourish_or_perish]

"One of Jupiter's moons," Faye supplied, locking her ship much in the way someone would use a key fob to lock a car. (It even gave a corresponding beep-beep! of acknowledgment.) "The party was kind of great 'cause we could just portal out of there after a few minutes." Which was also why Faye had felt like it was prime theft time.

"Though I'm a little surprised she restricted us to just Earth cities," she added, quietly making sure she was on his right side before leading the way over to a booth where she swiped a card to pay for the parking. "It was fun seeing so much of the planet, but there's so much else out there."

[stykera]

Stark absolutely noticed, and very much appreciated, Faye positioning herself on his right side. Because she didn't have to, and she'd done it without needing to be asked, and that felt good.

"It was good to see new places." Even if he didn't really remember all of them. "There's still so much of it I haven't seen." Maybe he'd have to teach again in the fall for another vacation opportunity. With his own bed, this time.

"But you're right. There's more than the one planet. Summer's said she might take me in her ship, sometime. But I'm looking forward to seeing your Mars, for now. With you."

Or at least seeing a bar and a club. With her.

[flourish_or_perish]

"It's not really my Mars," Faye replied, giving his hand a squeeze as she led them along to a sidewalk. Tharsis looked very much like an urban Earth city, though the architecture was modern to the point of seeming somewhat futuristic. Notably, there was a large, man-made park near the center of the city, raised up like a lush cone of green (and in actuality, it was a cemetery rather than a park, but from here it just looked like a bunch of green.) "I don't really have any of my own places. But I'll show you some spots I like here, anyway."

Because that was the thing -- Faye didn't really have many touchpoints of familiarity in her life, as it was, but some reluctant part of her still wanted to share those few familiar things with Stark, anyway.

Weirdly.

[stykera]

Stark would be perfectly fine visiting a cemetery park. They were peaceful places!

"I don't have many places of my own, either," Stark said, squeezing her hand in return. Moya, and the island. That was it. Nearly everywhere else he'd been for any length of time wasn't somewhere he'd want to return. "But this is more yours than mine. That counts. Where to first?"