fandomtownies | Fixer-Uppers [all day]

Fixer-Uppers [all day]

Ben wasn't very upset that he had to work through the welcome picnic: no one was coming to see him and he wasn't anxious to intrude upon family meetings.

Besides, in the quiet he had a chance to catch up on some more of the audio Dink had sent him. Because he felt guilty about listening at all, it was taking him some time to get through them. He turned the audio down low on his laptop and began to listen:

The first man was talking again. Ben wished he knew his name but wasn't about to ask Ender. "The sister is our weak link. He really loves her," he said.

" I know," Graff replied. "She can undo it all, from the start. He won't want to leave her."

"So, what are you going to do?" he asked.

" Persuade him that he wants to come with us more than he wants to stay with her," Graff replied.

"How will you do that?"

" I'll lie to him," Graff said.

"And if that doesn't work?" the man demanded.

" Then I'll tell the truth. We're allowed to do that in emergencies. We can't plan for everything, you know," Graff ended and Ben snorted and turned the audio off. "Kriffing gundark."

Fixer-Uppers was open and feeling quite sneaky.

[OOC: And I'm about to get into the car for a road trip to Ohio, so yay for Slowplay!]

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With Valentine still in transit here, Ender had more time off today than he'd planned for. Fortunately, he also had another guest with him - quite possibly the only guest from his universe Ben would ever be happy to see.

He pushed open the door to Fixer-Uppers, followed by a certain someone else.

"Ho, Skywalker," Dink said, hands in his pockets. He let the door shut behind him. "Nice place."

"Ho, Dink!" Ben said with a wide grin. "And you too, Ender, I suppose," he adding teasingly.

"Ah, I see what this is going to be like," Ender said, "Say goodbye to your coffee, Ben. I'm injured to the quick."

Dink watched that tiny bit of interplay with a little thoughtful frown on his brow, but he didn't comment on it. "Smartasses," he commented about them both, though it felt a little strange saying that about Ender now. "I let Graff talk me into coming here, to check it out."

"And what's your impression so far?" Ben asked. "All the junk in our room is mine."

For a very limited definition of junk as well as all. As a pair, Ender and Ben failed at teenage boys when it came to decorating a dorm.

"That your room is way too clean for a normal teenager, at least if I have to believe the vids," Dink said, walking up to the desk while Ender put the coffees down on it. "Which I'm not sure I do."

Ben grabbed at his with poorly contained glee. "I'll be sure to savor this, the last coffee you'll ever deliver," he told Ender with a little grin. "Well if you want to see a scary room where no one has discovered a laundry machine, I'm sure it can be arranged," Ben added.

"I could be cruel and sabotage all of the coffee machines, too," Ender observed, "But I don't want to start a riot."

"No, thanks," Dink said, leaning against the desk. "I dislike clutter, too." Most kids from Battle School did, for obvious reasons. "Still, what are you building in there?"

"Astromech droid," Ben replied. "It helps to fly our starships at home, should I ever get to have one." He smiled a little ruefully. "Pretty much everyone else in my family has one."

"Ben's family is practically a franchise," Ender commented, sitting down and taking a sip of his own coffee. "For better or for worse."

Dink's eyebrows went up. "Starships, huh," he said, thoughtfully. "Hopefully by 'helping' you mean 'make less boring'. I feel like I've already lost half my life to shuttles."

"That's because you do it wrong," Ben said, "or as Ender likes to insist, we ignore basic laws of physics."

"At least as they work in this universe," Ender contributed, easily. "They have no trouble at all tripling the speed of light - or way more than that."

Those eyebrows couldn't climb any higher, but they were trying to. "Wow," Dink said, "That'd make my trip a hell of a lot less unpleasant."

"We can get from one place in the galaxy to another in a couple of weeks, or at the most, months, and our entire family hasn't passed of old age," Ben said with a small smile.

Which Ender echoed for just a second. But only that. "Dink's going to the colonies," he said, to keep them from dancing around the point any longer.

"Guilty as charged," Dink admitted. "I've just spent the better part of the past few weeks in transit, too. It's enough to drive a man crazy."

"No one will play poker with you?" Ben guessed.

"Anyone who claims I cheat is a liar," Dink announced.

"That's because you're rotten at cheating," Ender pointed out.

"I'm shocked to hear that," Ben teased.

"You should be," Ender said, taking a sip of his coffee and glancing up at Ben. "Dink used to be one of the best soldiers in Battle School."

"Until you came in and made me look bad," Dink said, good-naturedly. "I do hope you never forget I'm the one who scouted you."

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