"You want me to hold your hair back?" he quipped.

Title: Quite Some Night (or, Why Gabe Went From Hair Model to Crew Cut)
Author(s): Gabe Yazimoto and Duncan Cooperstone
Character(s): Gabe, Duncan
Timeline: Current, appr. 2 months ago
Canon: Yes
Warnings: Not a whole lot



Loud.

Gabe knew from the moment she pointedly didn't open her eyes that it was going to be bad.

Loud, loud.

She attempted to stir, without much success. Groaning? Nope. Whimpering seemed to work and she did that, her throat feeling raw and thick and dry like sandpaper.

Loud, loud, loud--

Gabe squinted her eyes open, instantly regretting it. The sunlight seemed to pierce her eyeballs and impale her brain, and she quickly closed her eyes again. Not that her headache could get any worse. Someone was using a jack hammer or something, close to where she was laying -- was she laying? yes, she was pretty sure she was -- and the sound seemed to vibrate inside her head. They could might as well have put a power drill to her temple, she thought. She instantly wished that someone would do just that, because her stomach lurched sickly, and she curled up in a fetal position, her knees against her chest, her arms raised as if to protect her pounding head from the auditory onslaught.

Gabe had a hangover. She had the mother of all hangovers.

It took a while before she tried the opening-her-eyes thing again, and this time it went a lot better. The sunlight still hurt like a sumbitch but it was bearable, and she slowly lowered her arms and raised her head to look around her.

She wasn't in Raivenn. That much was clear. She could deduce this from the fact that she was laying on a couple of flattened cardboard boxes. There were no flattened cardboard boxes in Raivenn. 'Least not any that were next to some kind of building with corrugated metal siding for walls.

Dread washed over her, ice cold and sobering, and her hands flew to the fly of her trousers. Still done, still zipped, and she relaxed a little. So far, so good. But where the hell--?

With an effort, Gabe sat up. This time the groaning thing worked, and she groaned like she was sure she'd never groaned before as renewed spikes were driven into her head.

Okay, so. She was outside. Thankfully her cardboard boxes were shaded by the surrounding buildings, otherwise she'd probably be dead from exposure. The sun was beating down hotly, relentlessly.

Was she on Persephone? The bustle drifting in from the other side of the structures told her she probably was. Forcing her brain to at least work at minimum capacity, she tried to remember.

She'd been drinking. Yes, Einstein, that much was painfully clear. Had she been in the Barrel? Yes. Yes, she had. And she'd been... yes, she'd been with Duncan, 'cause they were still at the Docks, hadn't been able to close that deal, they'd been here for days, ever since that cage fight earlier that week.

So. Okay. They'd been in the Barrel. There'd been whiskey. Lots of it. And someone had challenged her, implied that she was a weakling or somesuch, and... Yes. Whiskey.

Duncan had left. He had... yeah, he had to meet up with the gorram trader first thing the next day, didn't he, and he'd left, and she'd just grinned and waved and told him she'd be in later.

Later was such a subjective term, wasn't it?

After that, there was nothing. She tried and tried, until her eyes teared up from the effort, but to no avail. The rest of the night was just a big, black void. Not even fragments, not even a little bit, and she cursed herself, first in her head, then muttered out loud.

"...qu zih ji xue you sha bi..."

Gabe got to her feet. Unsteadily, but to her feet nonetheless. She could see people now, rushing back and forth as usual, the commonplace order of business in the Docks. The smells from the cooking stands nearby drifted into her nose, and her stomach lurched again. Doubling over, she vomited, depositing whatever the hell she'd been eating last night onto her makeshift bed, the poor cardboard boxes. She didn't want to know and didn't look, just straightened her back again, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and spat.

Gorrammit. She spat again, then ran her tongue over her teeth. It felt like they were wearing little woolly sweaters, and she sighed. Some toothpaste and a shower and then she'd sleep this off. She suspected she was still drunk.

It took her a while to find the ship, hunched over, her hands raised to protect her eyes from the stupid sun, bumping into people left and right, but finally Gabe, missing the coin purse she'd had last night, her knife, the contents of her stomach and most of the hair on her head, hobbled up the loading ramp of Raivenn.

"... honey, I'm home," she rasped, trying to make her voice carry to the upper levels of the ship. The fact that Duncan may have worried about her didn't even enter her mind.

----

The man reeled backward, eye already sore and puffy, arms failing as he twisted round and slammed into the slats of the backstreet fence. As he slumped to the ground his heels began scrabbling trying to find some purchase on the ground beneath to put some distance between him and figure approaching in the darkened alley. The paving stones were clad in mixture of algae growth and a build up of grime and the man threw his hands up shaking his head.

"I'm gonna ask but one more time," Duncan crouched over him as he muttered his protestations. "Where'd you steal this?" To add focus to the question he held the flat bladed knife up to the man's line of sight. Not that he needed reminding, it was the very fact that he'd come into possession of the knife that had led the unfortunate hwuan dan to find himself in a conversation with Duncan in the backstreet alley. So far he hadn't been too helpful, claiming he'd found it, not too far from the bar where Duncan had left Gabe the night before.

As the man just shook his head and uttered the same response Duncan reached out, pinning his hand back against the broad planks of the wooden fence and setting the blade against joint of his little finger. "First, I'll take a finger..." He stared hard at the man. "Then the thumb... so you best be telling me all you know." He waited just long enough as the man began whimpering "I told you... I found it... I found it!"

More than likely he was telling the truth, the man wouldn't risk losing the use of a hand to protect a street seller or pickpocket. Duncan rose slowly and turned leaving the man in the alley, a handful of coins clattering on the ground in his wake. As he emerged back onto the mainstreet his mood was no better for not found sight nor sense of her. "Gorramnit Gabe, why'd you need be so stubborn?" he muttered quietly. He'd been out long before first light, the moment his eyes opened and he found himself alone he'd set off to look for her. He'd already retraced their steps, the street vendor where they'd eaten the night before and the bar where she'd gotten dragged into a drinking contest. He looked down the dockside towards the UAP flag fluttering in the morning breeze. He should try there next, if she got herself in some altercation or another there was a good chance she'd be picked up by the local law and thrown in the drunk tank for the night. Before that however, he'd try the boat one more time, chances were she'd made her way back there in the hours he'd been padding the streets.

The walk from the south docks to where Raivenn was berthed was a good 30 minutes, but as he stepped up on the loading ramp the time had done little to improve his mood.

----

Duncan hadn't been in the cargo bay. Nor was he in the steps to the upper level, or in the hallway leading to the master bedroom, or in the room itself. He might've been somewhere else on the boat but Gabe didn't know because she hadn't checked. Somehow she's managed to cross the bay floor, climb the stairs and walk down the hallway, until she could collapse on their bed. The ship was mercifully quiet, but she still pulled a pillow over her head and curled up, trying to fall asleep again.

She'd almost managed to doze off when, 45 minutes later, her guts did their lovely churning again. She tried to push it back down but it didn't wanna stay down, and she only barely made it into the head, crawling on her hands and knees, before her stomach again turned itself inside out. Just bile this time, and it stung the back of her throat and the inside of her nose. She was parched, so very thirsty, but her legs didn't carry her and she remained sitting, with her back against the wall of the head, within comfortable leaning-forward distance of the stainless steel toilet bowl.

Gabe felt very, very sorry for herself.

The ladderwell was already dropped into the cabin they shared, she'd made it home. To say he was relieved was an understatement and when his feet found the deck beneath it was only a short turn until he saw her, finally, in the first place he began looking. And how she looked. "Rough night?" Any trace of irritation was gone from his voice, replaced instead with a note of surprise.

She looked up at the sound of his voice, and even though she kinda felt like jumping into the engine right now, she grinned up at him, unable to help herself. Her lip had healed up enough to not split open again when she did that, and she took full advantage of it.

"No more'n usual," she said, her voice rough and hoarse. She opened her mouth to say something else, but at that moment bile rose in her throat again and she pressed a hand over her mouth as she leaned over the rim of the toilet bowl. She dry-heaved for a few moments, then the nausea passed again and she panted, slumping back against the wall. "... gorrammit," she muttered weakly.

As she slumped back down from the bowl there was clearance enough for him to pull the basin out of the fascia and draw a cup of water for her. "You want me to hold your hair back?" he quipped, more an attempt to make her feel a little better and comment on her radical change in look than a real offer. He hunkered down opposite and offered her the cup.

Gabe flashed him a self-depreciating grin, took the offered cup and drank the water down greedily.

"... no... I'm fine," she said. Obviously the understatement of the year. "I just need... lay down a li'l. Maybe. And no light. Yeah. Absence of light. Might be good." She grew a couple shades paler as another wave of nausea washed over her, then faded again. She closed her eyes and groaned.

"... never gonna drink again," she whimpered.

Self inflicted or not she was in sorry state, his eyes darted back to her much shorter hair, ruffled and tossed, her eyes, a little bloodshot and red ringed in contrast to her pale palour. It would be worth talking about, how he left to go looking for her in the middle of the night, how he thought the worst for a few black hours maybe even how some unfortunate duh liou mahng very nearly met his end at Duncan's hand as a result and most importantly how gorramn stupid she'd been and how he'd fretted. Worth talking about, certainly, but it'd keep. "Reckon we both said that a time or two 'fore now" he murmured quietly as he reached out and traced his thumb down the outside of her face "You'd best get some rack."

She smiled weakly up at him and nodded. "Yeah. Think I better." She shifted and reached up to let him help her to her unsteady feet. She leaned against the wall and carefully rolled her head from left to right. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, looked away, then did a double-take, snapping her head to the right so hard it sent renewed spikes of pain through her head. Not that she'd notice.

"... oh... my God..." she breathed weakly, wide-eyed. Her hand rose slowly, fingertips touching the uneven, choppy... thing on her head. "...w-what...?"

He frowned a little and then his head quirked a little to the side as understanding began to piece together. "There now I thought you'd found yourself a barber shop and fancied the change..." He read the surprise in her eyes and reached out to push the sink basin back into its recess before she bumped her head on it as she made to stand up, no doubt looking for his round shaving mirror.

Gabe loved her hair. She was not a vain woman by any means, but she'd always had a head full of thick, soft hair, and she was proud of it. Sure, more often than not it was just tied back with a rubber band to keep it out of the way when she worked, and there was usually a knot or ten in it, or she hadn't had a chance to wash it for a week or two, but whenever she had the chance, and some time to herself, she liked to sit down and brush it, untangle all the knots, and braid it or put it up all fancy-like and look at herself in the mirror and smile at how unlike herself she looked before shaking it down again. Yes, she loved her hair.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror. She lifted her other hand and closed the fingers of both hands around fistfuls of what remained of her hair.

"... no," she whispered, as if that would undo it. She was already shaken by her physical condition, and her lower lip trembled and tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to spill out.

"... no, no, no..."

"Hey, xū cǐ kè.." he whispered quietly, arms slipping around her waist, chin resting on her shoulder as his eyes met her's in the mirror. He knew how much she liked her hair, of course, and truth be told he did too. "I like it."

She lowered her head and pressed her chin against her chest, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. The tears that had risen in them spilled out, wetting her cheeks, then falling silently to the floor. She sniffled thickly and rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands to rid them of the hateful tears. She took a deep, shuddering breath, steadying herself, raised her head again and stole one more quick glance in the mirror before turning away.

"Doesn't matter," she said, a little too firmly.

He just nodded quietly, turning himself for the ladderwell. He figured on how she'd be feeling right then, and knowing her as he did the reaction wasn't unexpected. As he set a foot the rungs and carried himself up hand over hand he thought about when they found each other, and found the way to each other's arms for the first time. '...fight with your own shadow 'fore noon, just case it kept gettin' in your way.' It was easier for her to show her emotion with him now, to accept, as he understood she saw it, some types of 'weakness'; but not this. So when he reached the corridor above he made his way to the bridge to make his routine checks on cortex bulletins and give her the space to herself.

When he eventually returned, he found her curled up on their bed with her knees under her chin and her back turned towards the ladderwell. She had kicked her boots off but was otherwise still dressed in the clothes she'd put on the previous morning. Her cheeks were dry but her eyes were red and puffy, and the sheet under her shoulder was wet. She was not asleep, and she heard him enter.

"... hey," she murmured in a slightly thick voice. She didn't turn her head.

"Hey, your ownself." His timbre filled the space between them as he sat on the corner of the bed, elbows resting on knees.

There were brown tufts of hair on the floor beneath the mirror, where she'd attempted to better the situation. She looked like someone had taken a sheep-shearer to her head and she'd found a pair of scissors to, even though it killed her to cut more off, try to even it out a little bit. She curled up tighter, hugging her legs.

"... never, ever, ever, ever, ever again," she muttered.

"Aint no-one lyin' dead, you found you're way home.." he shifted a little on the mattress to reach out a lay his hand on her hip. "an' we still got our sky. Been worse nights, to my way of mind."

She un-curled a little and tilted her head back so she could look at him. And it wasn't even that she cared what he thought (but deep down, she knew she had at least started to care), and she probably would have felt differently if it'd been her own choice, her own decision, but it wasn't, and... She sighed deeply. "I guess so," she murmured. Her hand rose, almost on its own accord, and touched the uneven bangs self-consciously. "Gone," she said, her face drooping into a nearly comical expression of confused sadness.

He nodded. "What's worse? It bein' gone or you not knowin' the hows and whys as to it?"

She shrugged, her brow furrowing and her lips pursing stubbornly, and she turned away from him and pulled her knees up again. "Dunno," she muttered.

"Well I know what'd have been worse... happen you do too. But we all get a pass on being stupid now an' again"

"Mmm." She didn't say anything else for the longest time, just laid and tried to remember something, anything, from the previous night, while attempting to ignore the headache that was still running rampant. Unsuccessful in her endeavour, eventually she looked up at him again and shifted over on her back.

"I know it ain't evenin' or nothin', and we got a million'n one things'ta do, but come lay down for a minute, willya?" She held out her arms.

His shoulder pressed hard to the mattress as he slipped an arm under her and without drawing comment or attention to it cradled her and just listened in the quiet, to the rhythm of her breathing.

"... stupid," she murmured, both conceding to the fact and echoing his earlier statement. "Feel sick," she went on. Yeah, today was all about the wallowing in self-pity. "Head hurts." She tilted her head back and pressed her lips to the angle of his jaw, then ducked her head and nestled it down in the hollow of his throat.

"Well..drinkin' holes in your gut'll do that to you.." He murmured quietly, stonewalling her a little. He nuzzled his jaw against her head a little as if it would somehow sooth it. "Didn't lose everything though.." with that his left leg lifted up and bent at the knee letting him dig his forefinger and thumb in behind the top of his boot and, having closed on the pommel of the knife he recovered from the south side of the downport he drew it out fully and held it up for her to see.

She peeked from the corner of her eye, unwilling to raise her head from it's comfortable resting place, and seeing the knife her face split in a wide grin.

"There you are," she said in a voice that was softer than was probably healthy, when directed at an inanimate object. She lifted her hand and took the knife from him, then pressed it to her chest like a child would clutch at a doll. "Thank you," she said quietly.