Layton & Melanie, Rated T
There were days-bad days-in which Andre Layton was not entirely sure that the revolution had been worth it, because leading could be unimaginably difficult and even painful. It was on one of these days that Melanie had found him in the nightcar drinking, an unfocused stare directed at the curtains behind the bar.
“Hi,” she started cautiously, stopping behind him. She’d been on her way uptrain after fixing something-in desperate need of a shower-but had seen him and wondered what had gone wrong enough to make him drink in the middle of the afternoon.
“Where’d you come from?” he asked without turning.
She snorted a little, “Engineering emergency in the subtrain under the chains. Unfortunately the subtrain is down at that end, so here we are.”
He turned then, blinking at the grime she was covered in and the wet patches on her engineering suit, “The hell?”
Melanie sighed, “Trust me, it looks worse than it actually is. Just a badly busted pipe. Ben’s still working on it with a few of the other engineers, but they’re almost done.”
Layton nodded, absorbing the information. Despite all the bad blood between them, he had no reason not to trust Melanie’s statement. She would never lie about any serious damage to the train.
“You can join, if you promise not to drug me again,” he offered, taking another slow sip of his drink. He was not nearly drunk enough yet, he concluded.
“Cross my heart,” she replied, resting her elbows on the bar next to him. He watched her eyes flutter closed in exhaustion, wondering absently when the last time she’d slept was.
“When was the last time you slept?” he blurted out unbidden, and watched as her eyes opened again, staring hazily at him-an answer to the question in its own right.
“If we’re talking about more than three hours, then three nights ago I got six,” she murmured.
“And how many since then?” he raised his eyebrows. It wouldn’t do them any good if their head engineer collapsed on them.
“Maybe… four?” she grimaced.
“Total?”
The guilty look on her face told him enough before she even tried to justify herself, “Look, I was at the helm last night, so I only got an hour and a half, thanks to Ben insisting I take a break. The night before I was… otherwise occupied. Enough about me. What’s making you drink this early?”
Layton groaned, staring down at the drink in question, “Fight broke out in Ag-Sec. Attempted robbery.”
“Again?” Melanie exclaimed in disbelief, scrubbing her hands over her face, “Jesus. I thought that was done two revolutions ago when we took the train back.”
“Apparently not,” he sighed in frustration, “God. I knew leading wouldn’t be easy but I thought we could get past the harsh punishment part.”
She smiled tiredly, “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”
“Yeah,” he chuckled bitterly, nodding in agreement, “Yeah, it is.”
“Look,” she started, “Dealing with petty complaints and arguments? That’s the easy part. Dealing with actual crimes? It’s never easy, so don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“Is that how you live with yourself?” his question had no real bite to it.
“Yes,” her reply was equally as resigned.
There was a long silence after that, wherein Melanie ordered a drink, sipping it slower than he had. At some point she broke the silence to declare that she really had to shower, and that he knew where to find her if he needed anything else. She patted him awkwardly on the back on her way out. Layton watched her go, hating that this was where they both understood each other.
But then again, maybe it was better to not be alone in being haunted by the choices that they’d both had to make.