(no subject)
TITLE: Indefinite Variables, pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, part 4, pt 5, pt 6, pt 7 (COMPLETE).
RATING: PG-13 for language.
AUTHOR: johnwilmot
CHARACTERS: Eugene Morrow/Robert Capa (GATTACA/Sunshine crossover!)
WORD COUNT: ~8000 and not finished!
DISCLAIMER: Characters/movies not mine, no profit being made, etc.
WARNINGS: Spoilers if you haven't seen GATTACA - which, if you haven't, GO NOW. Change in the ending of it. Takes place before the launch of Icarus II. Also, I haven't posted a fic of any sort in years upon years, but this idea just struck me, so if you read, please comment!
SUMMARY: In the not-so-distant future, man has all but perfected his own genetic code, essentially ruling out the possibility of error. Or so they thought. A mission has failed. Eugene Morrow takes in the young trainee Robert Capa as he prepares for any further mistakes.
Understandably, things had become more tense. Eugene could feel it in the ions of the air, even when Capa was nowhere to be found, which was a majority of the time, now that his priority with GATTACA had shot up considerably. Eugene could feel his absence almost more than he could feel his presence; when he was home, he was most likely upstairs, only the faintest sound of his pencil scratchings or keyboard clickings giving any indication that he hadn't simply and literally worked himself to death. It gradually started to become maddening in the way that a dripping faucet did for an insomniac, echoing louder and louder in Eugene's head as he read something - anything - or else slipped on headphones and tried to block out the exterior world with a method other than drinking himself into a blackened stupor.
"I was told that reassembling the crew and another ship, another payload, would take six or seven years, at full capacity," Capa had protested when Irene had explained the very real prospect that, with continued silence from Icarus I, he would indeed be making the journey they had been preparing him for. No longer the understudy - Robert Capa was now GATTACA's golden boy.
"That was before you came to GATTACA," Irene had said in her near-monotonous way, obviously trying to mask her hysterics with a sort of disassociative calm. "We're used to things moving much quicker here."
Capa had not seemed to welcome this news, but only Eugene's eyes on his body language discerned this fact. Therein lay the difference, the grave difference - Vincent had been working for himself, for realising a noble dream of reaching for a clouded ball that may very well have held the secrets to extraterrestrial life and man's gradual expanse over the stars. Capa's mission was a more resigned one, the more utilitarian and altruistic kind, bred into soldiers since birth: a journey straight into the brightest star in the sky that humanity had known and marveled at since its first days of consciousness, a sacrifice to save mankind.
Only Capa wasn't a soldier.
He was asleep on the terrace when Eugene found him one night, a thin blanket covering his too-thin shoulders, notebook riddled with his physics jargon on his lap. Eugene lit his cigarette, wrapping his robe tighter around himself and looking upward as he always did, wondering how many of Capa's indefinite variables he had calculated, how many more stress lines it would add to his face.
Unexpectedly the slim body stirred after a few moments, not from any movement of Eugene's - he had clanked around in the kitchen at night and not woken the sleeping physicist, not to his knowledge - but from some sort of unseen terror in the backs of his eyelids, his body shooting up and his hand grasping for the arm of the chair, sweat lining his face. His breathing was erratic, his eyes bulged, and it seemed to take a moment for him to even recognise that Eugene was there.
"Didn't rule out anxiety and depression in their genetic workings, then, did they?" Eugene said casually, trying to act as if it didn't bother him as he blew smoke toward the atmosphere almost hyper-deliberately, one more sort of fuck-you to the galaxy for the strange cards it continued to deal him when he'd spent the better part of his life being more than glad to have nothing to do with it other than live on one of its revolving rocks.
Capa said nothing for a moment, wiping his eyes and then long, damp hair away from his face, sitting up and taking in the world around him, letting the one his imagination had conjured up for him fade away into the ether. "Just a dream," he said, finally.
"I'd imagine so," Eugene said, some of that sarcasm creeping in again, the same blackened look over his features that Capa had witnessed the day they had met. It had reappeared when Irene had spoken of Icarus I's communication loss and hadn't seemed to fully dissipate since.
"Why, do you think, they called it 'Icarus I', if they weren't expecting things to fail in the first place?" Eugene said, turning to look at Capa again, his thoughts exposed.
Capa's brow furrowed as he adjusted in his seat. He was always slow to respond, always seemed to overthink his answers, unlike Eugene's quick tongue. "It's always been that way. More missions are always expected. It's just... tradition. Hope."
"Hope," Eugene repeated, scoffing, slipping the cigarette between his lips and holding it there, mumbling his next response. "Hope for a second mission to the sun?"
Capa shrugged, noncommittal as always, never as eager for a verbal confrontation, wanting to just let the conversation pass over. He hadn't liked the looming, wordless feeling that hung over everything since the news of Icarus I's supposed failure had arrived. The sun shone no brighter, the days grew no warmer, and life somehow went on, as if it had no knowledge or care that it had been given a death sentence.
"You don't get it, do you?" Eugene's voice lashed out again, unexpected. He wheeled himself closer to Capa, obviously not satisfied with the other man's deliberate closing-off. "You don't fucking understand how GATTACA works, do you? You haven't since you got here." And he took a bewildered and slightly resistant Capa by the arms. "They send them up. They watch them fall. They'll do it again, and again, and again. They'll continue thinking they're perfect until they destroy themselves and everyone with it. And they'll keep telling you you're a hero, they'll promise you a fucking medal, but they don't care if you come back. This is war, Robert, and you're being sent to the bloody front lines with a target on your chest."
There was a long pause, the intensity in his eyes making Capa frigid, unable to move for a few elongated seconds. But he didn't fear the man, even for his verbal floggings and strange and unpredictable temperament. "You've got a medal, don't you?" He said, akin to a small child confronted with something and diverting attention away, and yet at the same time his eyes wise with some kind of knowing, some dawning of understanding. Eugene paused.
"You saw it, then." He said, releasing the man's arms and going back to his cigarette, looking out again at the darkened sky.
"Olympic silver for swimming. Very impressive."
Eugene laughed. "Not to most."
Capa's features softened, just a little, even if Eugene wasn't looking at them to see them. "It's not about the medal," he said quietly. There was another long stretch of silence.
"You think you're doing mankind some kind of service? You think you're some kind of hero, being willing to die for this great big lump of idiots?" Eugene spat venom at Venus as he stared up.
"No," Capa said, standing. His hand was on his hip again, and Eugene tried not to glance. "I'm still just a physicist."
"A physicist with a death wish," Eugene muttered.
"Doesn't make us so different, then, does it?" Capa retorted, hand now firmly flattened on the back of his pelvic bone as he looked down at the crippled man. Whatever it was - the tension in the air, the smell of alcohol on Eugene's breath, the thoughts that had been rolling around in his head for weeks since the news, the unfamiliar and disconcerting use of his first name - Capa was again, uncharacteristically, prodding into new and shaky territory. Again, Eugene was thrown, unexpecting, and the quick glance up proved that, followed by just as quick of a glance away.
"The way you drink yourself to death. The way nothing is ever good enough. The way you don't seem to believe in anything and yet still help me, help Irene. Still watch the stars." Capa fixed his expression on the other man's, showing that he, too, could judge character, could take account of minute details. He wasn't Searle, but he wasn't blind, either.
"And the thing you said, about the sun, about it feeling futile." Eyes glanced to Eugene's crippled legs, but not so that Eugene could see, certainly not to show any sort of pity, which wasn't an emotion that Capa ever let cross into the contorts of his countenance anyway.
Eugene turned, eyes lifted now not to the stars but GATTACA's star physicist, at his hair falling about him, eyes bright as ever even in the dark, as if they held starlight in them eternally. Starry-eyed as Vincent, even if he tried to hide it. He stubbed his neglected cigarette out and beckoned him closer, using being a cripple - a drunk one, at that - to his advantage as Capa leaned down to hear whatever he said.
"Everything's futile," he breathed, their eyes impossibly close, his fingers lacing into Capa's blue t-shirt to keep him there, but more gentle than they had been before. Capa waited, didn't waiver, didn't flinch, and he continued. "Unless there's risk of failure."
And his grip pulled the man in, their mouths connected with crushing force, the combination of a mounting tension from before colliding with the tension and inevitability of what was to come, the unspoken but unavoidable order of things that made every action matter. And hadn't that made life worth living, with Vincent? Riding in his wheelchair on the coat-tails of his impending glory, having the satisfaction of knowing he had contributed to the impossible, even if he had failed at what mankind had expected of him? Eugene craved the impossible now like an addict.
And, impossibly, Capa's lips gradually relented to his, his thin arms coming to grip the arms of the wheelchair as Eugene's mouth parted them. Capa, the man who had never given Irene more than a passive, submissive glance, who had not once spoken of anyone on the programme with more than a calculated and trained stagnation, the man who had excused himself quickly the one day he had come home early and heard Eugene with a 'paid guest', the man who didn't so much as masturbate as far as Eugene knew (although how could he?) - Capa, Robert Capa, was pouring some of that extraordinarily pent-up but very much alive passion into him with that kiss, and it felt just as much a relief as it did a pleasant buzz behind the eyes that no alcohol and no star-gazing could parallel. Finally, he had ignited something from the emotionally closed off man that had been assigned by humanity to handle the bomb that would explode the sun.
Just when Eugene thought something in his chest might explode and bring further heat to the relented kiss, the hovering blue frame pulled away. Capa straightened, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, and Eugene's gaze roved over him, noting his swollen lips, his impossibly blue eyes that nature had crafted all her own as they avoided him. There was no regret to be seen, not that he could discern, but a certain briskness that gave Eugene no time to object. "I need to sleep. You should too." And he grabbed his notebook and pushed open the glass door and into the house.
RATING: PG-13 for language.
AUTHOR: johnwilmot
CHARACTERS: Eugene Morrow/Robert Capa (GATTACA/Sunshine crossover!)
WORD COUNT: ~8000 and not finished!
DISCLAIMER: Characters/movies not mine, no profit being made, etc.
WARNINGS: Spoilers if you haven't seen GATTACA - which, if you haven't, GO NOW. Change in the ending of it. Takes place before the launch of Icarus II. Also, I haven't posted a fic of any sort in years upon years, but this idea just struck me, so if you read, please comment!
SUMMARY: In the not-so-distant future, man has all but perfected his own genetic code, essentially ruling out the possibility of error. Or so they thought. A mission has failed. Eugene Morrow takes in the young trainee Robert Capa as he prepares for any further mistakes.
Understandably, things had become more tense. Eugene could feel it in the ions of the air, even when Capa was nowhere to be found, which was a majority of the time, now that his priority with GATTACA had shot up considerably. Eugene could feel his absence almost more than he could feel his presence; when he was home, he was most likely upstairs, only the faintest sound of his pencil scratchings or keyboard clickings giving any indication that he hadn't simply and literally worked himself to death. It gradually started to become maddening in the way that a dripping faucet did for an insomniac, echoing louder and louder in Eugene's head as he read something - anything - or else slipped on headphones and tried to block out the exterior world with a method other than drinking himself into a blackened stupor.
"I was told that reassembling the crew and another ship, another payload, would take six or seven years, at full capacity," Capa had protested when Irene had explained the very real prospect that, with continued silence from Icarus I, he would indeed be making the journey they had been preparing him for. No longer the understudy - Robert Capa was now GATTACA's golden boy.
"That was before you came to GATTACA," Irene had said in her near-monotonous way, obviously trying to mask her hysterics with a sort of disassociative calm. "We're used to things moving much quicker here."
Capa had not seemed to welcome this news, but only Eugene's eyes on his body language discerned this fact. Therein lay the difference, the grave difference - Vincent had been working for himself, for realising a noble dream of reaching for a clouded ball that may very well have held the secrets to extraterrestrial life and man's gradual expanse over the stars. Capa's mission was a more resigned one, the more utilitarian and altruistic kind, bred into soldiers since birth: a journey straight into the brightest star in the sky that humanity had known and marveled at since its first days of consciousness, a sacrifice to save mankind.
Only Capa wasn't a soldier.
He was asleep on the terrace when Eugene found him one night, a thin blanket covering his too-thin shoulders, notebook riddled with his physics jargon on his lap. Eugene lit his cigarette, wrapping his robe tighter around himself and looking upward as he always did, wondering how many of Capa's indefinite variables he had calculated, how many more stress lines it would add to his face.
Unexpectedly the slim body stirred after a few moments, not from any movement of Eugene's - he had clanked around in the kitchen at night and not woken the sleeping physicist, not to his knowledge - but from some sort of unseen terror in the backs of his eyelids, his body shooting up and his hand grasping for the arm of the chair, sweat lining his face. His breathing was erratic, his eyes bulged, and it seemed to take a moment for him to even recognise that Eugene was there.
"Didn't rule out anxiety and depression in their genetic workings, then, did they?" Eugene said casually, trying to act as if it didn't bother him as he blew smoke toward the atmosphere almost hyper-deliberately, one more sort of fuck-you to the galaxy for the strange cards it continued to deal him when he'd spent the better part of his life being more than glad to have nothing to do with it other than live on one of its revolving rocks.
Capa said nothing for a moment, wiping his eyes and then long, damp hair away from his face, sitting up and taking in the world around him, letting the one his imagination had conjured up for him fade away into the ether. "Just a dream," he said, finally.
"I'd imagine so," Eugene said, some of that sarcasm creeping in again, the same blackened look over his features that Capa had witnessed the day they had met. It had reappeared when Irene had spoken of Icarus I's communication loss and hadn't seemed to fully dissipate since.
"Why, do you think, they called it 'Icarus I', if they weren't expecting things to fail in the first place?" Eugene said, turning to look at Capa again, his thoughts exposed.
Capa's brow furrowed as he adjusted in his seat. He was always slow to respond, always seemed to overthink his answers, unlike Eugene's quick tongue. "It's always been that way. More missions are always expected. It's just... tradition. Hope."
"Hope," Eugene repeated, scoffing, slipping the cigarette between his lips and holding it there, mumbling his next response. "Hope for a second mission to the sun?"
Capa shrugged, noncommittal as always, never as eager for a verbal confrontation, wanting to just let the conversation pass over. He hadn't liked the looming, wordless feeling that hung over everything since the news of Icarus I's supposed failure had arrived. The sun shone no brighter, the days grew no warmer, and life somehow went on, as if it had no knowledge or care that it had been given a death sentence.
"You don't get it, do you?" Eugene's voice lashed out again, unexpected. He wheeled himself closer to Capa, obviously not satisfied with the other man's deliberate closing-off. "You don't fucking understand how GATTACA works, do you? You haven't since you got here." And he took a bewildered and slightly resistant Capa by the arms. "They send them up. They watch them fall. They'll do it again, and again, and again. They'll continue thinking they're perfect until they destroy themselves and everyone with it. And they'll keep telling you you're a hero, they'll promise you a fucking medal, but they don't care if you come back. This is war, Robert, and you're being sent to the bloody front lines with a target on your chest."
There was a long pause, the intensity in his eyes making Capa frigid, unable to move for a few elongated seconds. But he didn't fear the man, even for his verbal floggings and strange and unpredictable temperament. "You've got a medal, don't you?" He said, akin to a small child confronted with something and diverting attention away, and yet at the same time his eyes wise with some kind of knowing, some dawning of understanding. Eugene paused.
"You saw it, then." He said, releasing the man's arms and going back to his cigarette, looking out again at the darkened sky.
"Olympic silver for swimming. Very impressive."
Eugene laughed. "Not to most."
Capa's features softened, just a little, even if Eugene wasn't looking at them to see them. "It's not about the medal," he said quietly. There was another long stretch of silence.
"You think you're doing mankind some kind of service? You think you're some kind of hero, being willing to die for this great big lump of idiots?" Eugene spat venom at Venus as he stared up.
"No," Capa said, standing. His hand was on his hip again, and Eugene tried not to glance. "I'm still just a physicist."
"A physicist with a death wish," Eugene muttered.
"Doesn't make us so different, then, does it?" Capa retorted, hand now firmly flattened on the back of his pelvic bone as he looked down at the crippled man. Whatever it was - the tension in the air, the smell of alcohol on Eugene's breath, the thoughts that had been rolling around in his head for weeks since the news, the unfamiliar and disconcerting use of his first name - Capa was again, uncharacteristically, prodding into new and shaky territory. Again, Eugene was thrown, unexpecting, and the quick glance up proved that, followed by just as quick of a glance away.
"The way you drink yourself to death. The way nothing is ever good enough. The way you don't seem to believe in anything and yet still help me, help Irene. Still watch the stars." Capa fixed his expression on the other man's, showing that he, too, could judge character, could take account of minute details. He wasn't Searle, but he wasn't blind, either.
"And the thing you said, about the sun, about it feeling futile." Eyes glanced to Eugene's crippled legs, but not so that Eugene could see, certainly not to show any sort of pity, which wasn't an emotion that Capa ever let cross into the contorts of his countenance anyway.
Eugene turned, eyes lifted now not to the stars but GATTACA's star physicist, at his hair falling about him, eyes bright as ever even in the dark, as if they held starlight in them eternally. Starry-eyed as Vincent, even if he tried to hide it. He stubbed his neglected cigarette out and beckoned him closer, using being a cripple - a drunk one, at that - to his advantage as Capa leaned down to hear whatever he said.
"Everything's futile," he breathed, their eyes impossibly close, his fingers lacing into Capa's blue t-shirt to keep him there, but more gentle than they had been before. Capa waited, didn't waiver, didn't flinch, and he continued. "Unless there's risk of failure."
And his grip pulled the man in, their mouths connected with crushing force, the combination of a mounting tension from before colliding with the tension and inevitability of what was to come, the unspoken but unavoidable order of things that made every action matter. And hadn't that made life worth living, with Vincent? Riding in his wheelchair on the coat-tails of his impending glory, having the satisfaction of knowing he had contributed to the impossible, even if he had failed at what mankind had expected of him? Eugene craved the impossible now like an addict.
And, impossibly, Capa's lips gradually relented to his, his thin arms coming to grip the arms of the wheelchair as Eugene's mouth parted them. Capa, the man who had never given Irene more than a passive, submissive glance, who had not once spoken of anyone on the programme with more than a calculated and trained stagnation, the man who had excused himself quickly the one day he had come home early and heard Eugene with a 'paid guest', the man who didn't so much as masturbate as far as Eugene knew (although how could he?) - Capa, Robert Capa, was pouring some of that extraordinarily pent-up but very much alive passion into him with that kiss, and it felt just as much a relief as it did a pleasant buzz behind the eyes that no alcohol and no star-gazing could parallel. Finally, he had ignited something from the emotionally closed off man that had been assigned by humanity to handle the bomb that would explode the sun.
Just when Eugene thought something in his chest might explode and bring further heat to the relented kiss, the hovering blue frame pulled away. Capa straightened, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, and Eugene's gaze roved over him, noting his swollen lips, his impossibly blue eyes that nature had crafted all her own as they avoided him. There was no regret to be seen, not that he could discern, but a certain briskness that gave Eugene no time to object. "I need to sleep. You should too." And he grabbed his notebook and pushed open the glass door and into the house.