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Tucker will catch Carolina and Locus “making out” in the sparring room and then proceed to holler at everyone about the “hottest muscle couple,” like it’s a new development that’s hot off the presses. Both of them will let him do it because they’ve got better things to be doing. Carolina’s still one point ahead of him on the scoreboard, and Locus will intend to make up the difference. The kissing is just a… related coincidence. A phenomenon.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the--the whatever it is that will happen with him and Carolina--begins much, much earlier than Tucker will ever be privy to. The third time Locus provides last-minute back-up in a mission for the Reds and Blues, A’rynasea’s hatch door pops open and Carolina, without a single care that this is not why he gave her the code, comes marching in with a visible, audible frustration.
Locus knows where the conversation is going when she’s in this mood: she’s got her shovel talk in one hand and her grudge in the other, ready to warn him away from her simtroopers, again and again and again. Locus knows it is highly unlikely that Grif--or Caboose, or Sarge, or Donut, or Lopez--knows that she’s here, because they would never back her up. Locus should sit back in his pilot’s seat, her anger should be harmless, and Locus should be, at most, amused by Carolina’s nonsensical delay in his preparations for take-off.
Locus is not amused.
“Is it common for you to enter people’s ships without invitation, Agent Carolina?” he asks archly.
“Look who’s talking,” Carolina’s steely voice says from behind him. “I’ve said it before, Locus. Nobody asked you to stick your oar in our business.”
Locus keeps himself very firmly in A’rynasea’s pilot seat, staring out through the windshield, looking away from her advancing up through the back of the ship. He swallows down more words than he’s willing to give her: That was the point; nobody asked; it was my decision; everyone else is pleased with my decisions but you.
“We don’t need your help,” Carolina goes on, “and we don’t need it from you. We should have reported you to Kimball ages ago.”
She won’t, and he knows it, and Locus refuses to play the taunting game. He lived with that with Felix for ten years, and he should, by all accounts, be above rising to bait. “It appeared that you did need help. Especially considering how you had allowed yourself and the simtroopers to be thoroughly outnumbered.”
Carolina’s footsteps stop.
“That I allowed?” Carolina demands. She puts a hand on the back of Locus’s headrest. She spins the pilot chair around to face her, so that her face is right in front of him, glaring down at him. “I allowed us to be outnumbered?”
He hadn’t meant it that way, except he might have because he didn’t regret it, and if Carolina wanted to come and pick a fight about his diffusing every tense situation her simtroopers cook up, then she should expect to hear his position defended. “If you’re so intent on taking responsibility for the simtroopers, then you being responsible for their mess would be the natural conclusion, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t take responsibility for them. They’re their own people.”
“Their own people, except for deciding who they can or can’t associate with,” Locus says dryly.
“Because they’re stupid,” she snaps. Locus’s eyes narrow. “Yes, they are, don’t act high and mighty over defending them. They’re stupid. They believe the best in people, that everyone is doing the right thing for the right reasons.”
Locus’s mouth struggles between a wince and a snarl. He is rapidly reaching the end of his patience for this conversation they’ve had so many times before. “Reasons for doing the right thing have nothing to do with anything.”
“They do if you insist on inviting yourself to a base full of defenseless, trusting idiots who think you’re doing good from the goodness of your heart.”
His hands are tight on the armrests of the seat. “And you, I presume, have my reasons figured out?”
“I’ve got a theory,” Carolina replies. “And every time you show up to save us, you prove me right. You’re no different from Chorus at all.”
The leather of the chair creaks under her grip.
“I think you’re still looking for a cause to tell you what to do.”
Locus stands up so fast he nearly hits her in the head, and now they’re standing far closer than Locus would ever allow if it weren’t a matter of pride. She looks delighted. Backing down now would be a sign of weakness, and he knows that if he gives this woman, who stands half a foot shorter than him and sixty pounds less, a single inch of victory, she’ll tear him in half.
She bares her teeth when she laughs. It's not a mocking laugh, just dry and humorless. “That’s what I thought,” Carolina says. “You might have Grif sold on turning over a new leaf, you might have Tucker thinking you’re a big man for refusing to kill, but I know...”
“Get out,” Locus says.
“So you can shove your head in denial again?” Carolina asks. “You think the Reds and Blues need that? A robot looking to make them into a cause and a purpose? Or did it slip your mind, because you forgot how to think for yourself?”
“I will leave this conversation, Agent Carolina,” Locus says. His own voice sounds hoarse with fury.
“Like you always do?” says Carolina. “I come here every time you show up, trying to get straight answers out of you. Every time, you just run away again. Every time, you come running back to the simtroopers like a dog. You’re just preying on the simtroopers’ moments of weakness so you can feel like you’ve got a new set of orders to live under.”
Locus leans forward. Carolina’s face is inches away. “I’m not running,” Locus says, voice shaking through clenched teeth. “I just won’t have this conversation with someone who won’t face her own fears of failing her team, and then takes it out on other people.”
In the moment he sees that hit home on Carolina’s face, Locus tells himself: that’s enough, that was deserved and fair but farther than he should have gone. He turns to exit his own ship and cool his head when Carolina grabs his arm hard and spins him back around—he smacks her away on instinct.
That was the wrong move. Carolina grabs, twists, yanks the offending arm up behind his back. Locus makes some undignified noise at that and knocks her feet out from under her; she tangles a leg around his own and pulls him crashing to the floor. Fuck, she’s fast, she’s clearly trained more thoroughly in martial arts than standard CQC, and Locus never was very good when sparring against Siris. Locus tries to push up and finds she’s still got his hand pinned, and she wrenches hard to pull him around onto his back, trapping one arm under his own weight as she shoves a knee, the weight of her body, and all the additional weight of her heavy armor onto his sternum.
“Say that again,” Carolina hisses. “I dare you.”
“Get off me,” he snaps. Her knee presses harder. He squirms under her, looking away and across the floor for something to grab, and she grabs him by the root of his hair and makes him look at her.
Locus inhales sharply. The grip in his hair only tightens.
“Bringing that up like you have any right--like you know anything about me-- now you choose to say something truthful?”
Locus’s voice comes out breathier than he’d like. “I’ve always spoken the truth. You just don’t believe me unless I say the worst about you.”
“That’s a tall claim from a man who can’t even say two sentences in a row.”
“You’re a skilled, intelligent woman who will suffer failure on missions because it’s an occupational hazard,” Locus snaps. “Choosing to believe that there is nothing you cannot protect gains you only a fear of defeat. What happens to the Reds and Blues will not kill you, because you’re better than that, but you refuse to act like it.”
Silence is the worst sort of response to the longest string of words he’s said in a while, but that’s what he gets: Carolina unmoving above him, the gears moving just behind the window of her eyes. Locus’s own eyes dart down to her mouth. He knows that she sees it. He probably shouldn’t have done that.
“That’s more like it,” she says, at last. Her face is so close he can feel her breath when she speaks. She looks relieved and exhausted and satisfied all at once.
“I’ve always spoken the truth,” he says again, accusatory.
“Act like it, then.”
When Carolina leans away, Locus can hear his own heartbeat loud in his ears.
“My point stands. Don’t come back until you’ve got your shit figured out,” she says. “The Reds and Blues depend on it.”
His eyes narrow. “Speak for yourself,” he replies.
“A deal, then,” Carolina says. “Next time you come around, we’ll both be better off.”
She takes her knee off him, but her fingers pull hard in his hair just before she lets go. He jolts and glares. The smile Carolina gives him as she stands should have shark teeth, as confident and determined as herself.
Locus doesn’t really know what he’s gotten into it, but he’s at least a little bit in love with that smile.