Crossed Wires

"Keep dreaming, Xan. But hey, I've never seen the Major completely trashed. You put enough booze in him and who knows how he'll swing."

Some part of her refused to acknowledge the fact her brother had said anything even remotely kind to her about her appearance, and the part that did register it was too busy being completely confused on how to respond...

"Unless he wake up feeling like you do right now, he may not even care!"

The whole thing about the Major inviting her on a date was still something she would love to have avoided talking about the rest of the day. The thought that Xander must have been mistaken continued to repeat itself enough that it seemed to lose meaning.

"Speaking of which..." her voice trailed just long enough to steer her mind in the direction the conversation would hopefully follow. "You didn't answer my question earlier. The hell were you up to last night anyway?"

Glayde had allowed Xander to sneak out of answering earlier and odds were her brother would just redirect things back to that whole weirdness about dinner, which he was totally wrong about, but it was worth a shot.

The question was a repeat, but since Charles had asked the first time, the back corners of Xander's mind had been rummaging around for a suitable excuse, response, and rebuttal, and he was ready for it this time, taking his pick of the few options that his brain presented.

"Last night," he said with a slight edge of mischief, wrapping an arm around Lottie's shoulder, "I met guy in a bar." He let the admission hang for just a moment; long enough for it to sink in, but his response was too quick to let his sister interrupt. "Don't worry, I'm more than happy to go into detail. Glorious, technicolour detail, with vividly painted mental imagescapes, and possibly even suggestive hand gestures and everything."

He grinned, his eyes twinkling as if to say that yes, he was teasing; but he'd most definately follow through if she forced his hand. "So how about we find you something less trampy to wear, and then I'll braid your hair and tell you all about it?"

With an eyebrow quirked, about the best Charles could do was mouth the word 'trampy' in a questioning manner as she tried to process, filter, and ignore most of what her brother had unleashed.

It was strange when you had to go and remind yourself that you had a sibling at all, that you were supposed to be a soldier, that you were at war... all the while fighting the urge to ask when her big brother became a big sister and when her CO become some sort of suitor with a dinner date. It was maddening and unwholesome and Charles couldn't help but wonder if she really did feel more at home when she was in a spot of solitude with just her blaster rifle and a spotter for company than well... all this.

Xander acting like a brother and the Major apparently wanting to get to know her better... what the frink was the galaxy coming to?

The befuddled look on her face faded into a sarcastic sneer. "Yeah... sure..." If the tone of her voice wasn't enough to throw the entire scenario out the window, surely her eye roll would accomplish the feat.

Charles let out a loud breath as she eyed her brother. "Or you know... we can skip you touching me and getting all explicit and you can tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do about tonight."

She let it hang there, silencing all the gripes about how she was still certain Xander had to be wrong about the whole ordeal and if he was right then how Glayde was obliterating protocol and all that... Not that she was ever really one to follow it... but still!

Several Hours Later, Glayde's Quarters

One of the worst things about being a member of the military was the food. It wasn't that the food was bad per se; and in truth, Glayde was one of those strange individuals who actually didn't have an aversion to the field rations that the Imperial military pumped into it's troops - the same rations that the Rebellion routinely stole.

The problem was more to do with selection, and preparation. Even if you found yourself on a large enough starship with a decently-stocked galley, or on some garrison base with access to local food reserves, everything you ate was mass produced and done to a strict menu; and a strict budget.

That was the beauty of Bothawui: one of the few upsides to the team's current base of operations. While some military personnel had been placed in barracks, or in dorm halls that had been loaned to the Alliance by the Military Academy, others found themselves in bespoke officer housing at some of the larger bases, and even in private homes, if any were available and their military wages could cover it.

Glayde wasn't quite important enough for a house of his own, but he had been granted a modest apartment, which came with one very important feature: a kitchen.

Foolishly, his mind had decided that this one meal absolutely had to make up for a decade of rations and mess meals. One home-cooked meal, from family recipes, with the closest approximation of Corellian ingredients that he could find. And who better to share it with than a fellow Corellian?

In his over-ambition however, he had completely lost any concept of time. And so, despite having had hours to prepare, he was still shirtless and mid-sauté by the time Lieutenant Tur'enne arrived at it's door.

"Come in!" he shouted, hoping his voice would carry far enough.

If the meeting in the marketplace had been awkward, the next few hours she had spent at her brother's hands had been a new form of hell all together. His constant insisting that there was more to the meeting than something formal had burrowed all sorts of seeds of doubt under her skin. The only way she could get him to half shut up and make it stop was to let him help her decide what to wear and it wasn't without several fights that they had both agreed on a pair of well fitting pants and a black sweater.

Of course...

If that had been a new form of hell...

Then what would anyone consider walking in on your commanding officer standing around half-naked, covered in a light sweat thanks to a hot kitchen...

Charlotte was determined to prove her brother wrong. Determined. And so she stood at the doorway, taking on at at-ease stance, her hands clasped firmly behind her back.

"You uhh.. need any help there, Major?"

John turned, a cook-pan and a whisk still held in his hand. It took a few seconds for it to register in his brain that he was staring. Aside from their mission together on Corellia, he couldn't remember a time when he'd seen her wearing anything that hadn't been requisitioned beforehand.

His face threatened to flush as he remembered one of the things that had happened over the course of that trip. He looked away, embarrassed, staring down at the half-thickened roux he was in the process of creating. More seconds passed as his brain stumbled for something to say.

"It's taking longer than I expected," he offered lamely, by way of an explanation.

His mind should have been formulating an answer to her question, but it was already a good twenty steps away, rifling through his wardrobe in search of something that wasn't one of the scruffy-looking black t-shirts that he always wore.

The mental cavalry finally rode to the rescue, and he abandoned the roux on the stove, waving his hands towards it. "Keep whisking that," he instructed, "And yell in panic if it starts to burn."

"Since when have you ever known me to yell in a panic?" The cocky air in which she answered was an obvious overkill response to the fact she felt entirely foreign with any sort of cooking utensil in her hand.

Her mother had tried to teach her, but Charlotte never did want to find out much past how do I not burn toast. And when she was old enough to actually find that the skill would come in handy...well... full time solider meant no-time chef.

It wasn't exactly a pleasant thought, but it helped take away from the oddness of the actual situation. Charlotte couldn't actually remember the last time she was supposed to be casual, not just fake it in some elaborate ploy. Not that it had stopped her from appraising the entire room when she entered. A mental layout of all possible exits was now burrowed deep in her brain. She couldn't help it, it was just second nature... Just like the whisking was just following another order from The Major.

If Xander could somehow find out, he would give her hell. Can't you just...turn off? Just for a little bit? Charlotte put renewed focus into the task given to her, anything to just keep herself from answering with the resounding 'No.'

Until now, Glayde had never had much of an appreciation for how bland his fashion choices were. Hangers creaked uncomfortably across the clothes rail as he rummaged through his wardrobe, searching for something - anything - that wasn't either military issue or some black item of civvies pretending to be. He finally stumbled on a shirt that he managed to convince himself was a very dark blue instead of black, and dragged it on over his shoulders, fumbling with the buttons a little more than he should have.

Finally convinced he was at least moderately presentable - to a quick glance of his neglected facial hair confirmed that the emphasis was on the moderately there - he strode back out into the main room, still fumbling with the buttons on his cuffs.

He almost laughed at the sight before him. He would have done, if it hadn't been such a tragic sight, and if doing so wouldn't have been as detremental to his health; Charlotte was standing in a kitchenette full of knives, after all.

Autopilot kicked in, memories flooding back of all the times he'd stumbled across his sister and her best friend Sel, converting the family kitchen into a culinary battle ground. Before he knew what he was doing, he found himself gently adjusting the way that Charlotte gripped the utensil, tweaking the angle of her hand. "You're trying to whisk it, not interrogate it for information," he teased, with a hint of a rare smile. "Whisk with your wrist, not with your shoulder."

"What if I want to interrogate it? I'd like to know what my food was up to before it ended up becoming a part of me."

For a tiny moment, it looked like she was being completely serious, and in truth, some part of her was dead serious... not the words, but certainly the tone she was maintaining. And then a smile cracked it all, breaking down whatever barriers she was attempting to keep up. Well, maybe not entirely, but it certainly put enough of a dent in them to see clearly over.

So what if Xander was right? So what if this was meant to be a date? They all could die on the very next mission they went on... why not enjoy a decent dinner for once and not try and be the ice queen? Even if her brain wouldn't shut off from her training, at least she could try and not act like this was some sort of survival scenario.

But that didn't mean she was just going to give in to whatever alternate plans the Major had. If he had any. He was, after all, still the Major.

Which meant he was all the more deserving of whatever innocent meanness she could dish out on him.

"You can let go now. I'm not going to somehow flail about and stab you with this thing."

John's hand snapped away a little more quickly than he'd intended it to; mainly a result of the surprise realisation that he'd just been holding Charlotte's hand. His mind fumbled, searching for something to say to distract from things becoming too awkward.

"Death by whisk isn't exactly the way I imagined going out," he tried. "But if anyone could kill someone with one of those things, I'm sure it'd be you."

Fantastic plan, his mind hissed. Had it posessed a head and body of it's own, there would have been a great deal of head-shaking and disapproving arm-folding taking place. Distract her from the inappropriate touching with an inappropriate compliment. Way to go, Major.

This wasn't what he'd intended at all. This was supposed to be perfectly benign; perfectly innocent. He already knew Tallen far too well, and he'd even managed to learn enough about the likes of Onashi and O'Hurn from the kind of casual conversation that filled in the blanks between missions, or in the men's locker room. But Charlotte Tur'enne was something of a mystery. Factually, he knew far more about her than most because of what he'd read in her files: but personally, she was a closed, bound, and welded shut book.

It was all her bastard brother's fault. That passing comment in the hall a few hours ago - I hope you haven't got any inappropriate intentions with my sister, Major - had derailed his mind completely. He'd convinced himself that his motivations were purely innocent, and purely objective. He'd convinced himself that Charlotte would understand exactly what this was, and that it would be the appropriate, civil, absolutely fine meal between two fellow officers that he had always intended it to be.

So why did he feel so on edge?

And why, Gods damn it, did Charlotte have to go and let him find out what it looked like when she smiled?

"Ha." She glanced away, just for a moment from the task at hand, her grin full of triumph. "I challenge you to find me something I couldn't kill someone with."

Charlotte wasn't entirely oblivious to the unease that Glayde was feeling. She couldn'tbe, no matter how hard she was attempting to ignore it. But the conversation was at least going a direction she could handle, even if it wasn't the most polite conversation. But to hells with that. Why should she try and be something she wasn't?

"You know me," Glayde tossed back casually. "Always a sucker for impossible missions."

He fought the urge to smile. Or rather; he fought to turn his smile into something a little less enthusiastic than it wanted to be. Ordinarily, his face displayed emotions with a hint of subtlety - mild annoyance, slight frustration, and an assortment of other downplayed expressions: a necessary life-saving precaution that he'd learned in the Imperial military, when serving under such frustratingly incompetant men.

By now it had become second nature; but sometimes some stupid urge came away and threatened to ruin it all. The amount of damage one overzealous smile could do to his reputation with the team didn't bear thinking about.

"So -"

He changed the subject, searching for something trivial and conversational, but not too generic; asking about the weather or something similarly bland was a sure-fire way of making it look like you had absolutely nothing interesting to talk about.

"How are you finding Bothawui? You settling in okay, or are you starting to miss that old asteroid cave of ours?"

"It's nice to have actual ground under my feet again but can't say this would be my choice for a place to have a vacation home."

A small frown threatened to encroach upon the general good-feeling she'd settled in with and she looked around, once again stricken by the absolute strangeness of their situation.

"I guess I was just hoping for more action. It seems like we barely had time to sleep when we were on the station, but now... It's like command just up and forgot about us, Sir."

It left her before she could stop it and she gave Glayde an apologetic glance.

"Wait, am I supposed to ask for permission to speak freely before I start mouthing off about that sort of thing? Not that it would stop me, but you know, I'd like to know if I should at least be expected to follow regulation here."

"Even when you're meant to ask permission, you don't anyway," John quipped back.

It wasn't entirely true. In fact, it was very much untrue, and decidedly unfair. While Tur'enne had her rough edges, her hot temper, and a laundry list of personality traits that made her an 'interesting' soldier to command, she was at least the kind of soldier who could be commanded. If something was ordered of her, Tur'enne made it happen. She didn't always do it in the tidiest or most polite way, but she was one of the most reliable soldiers that Glayde had served with in a long time.

Not that he'd ever tell her that, of course.

He frowned for a moment, coming to a decision. "No uniforms," he pointed out, "So how about we drop the Sir, and just go with 'John'?"

She'd called him that a few times, mostly when trying to make a point or when it just didn't seem appropriate. There was just something strange about using a person's first name, though. Maybe Charles had just been involved in the war for too much of her life...

"Yeah, I guess I can do that."

Charles still felt a knot of tension between her shoulder blades, the whole sitaution was still just wrong. Only one real fix...

"You don't have anything to drink, do you?"