"That's it, I am never going to be able to look at a garden gnome or a Nokia phone again," he said, laughing. He had seen things stuck in things at odd angles before, a lot of broken equipment seemed to always be tangled around each other, but never an object inside of a person. He couldn't see the appeal to doing that to ones self, there was other things - specially designed things - on the market for people to use.
"Oh I can imagine the phone calls the insurance companies had." He gave a mock shudder at the thought, "Has anyone like that come through your doors whilst you've been here?" He had to ask, there was some wicked odd looking shapes in some of the stuff that got brought back, that he really hoped people hadn't taken to 'play' with. "Actually don't answer that, I'll have to wash my hands if you do."
This was easy banter, this was what he enjoyed doing so much with Claire. The laughing, the joking, he enjoyed it, even when they seemed to be on a tight schedule the conversation always made him smile.
He felt his chest warm when she replied to him about his comments about her, it was a warm ache that seemed to spread out from his chest. Made him feel like his face was flushing, hands sweating, almost as though he was 14 again and planning on going out a date for the first time. That had been mortifying in its own right, not something he would ever be sharing with anyone, ever, ever. But that's what Claire did to him, made him feel like he was on that first date again, with the churning stomach and nervous twitch as to whether you said the right thing or not.
Of course he did have the benefit of having been best friends with the woman first, so saying the right thing not as big of a thing as it normally would have been. Being sincere now that was the challenge for Caleb, he could flirt drop the innuendo and have ladies eating out the palm of his hand, but Claire had never stood for any of that. Well that and she had given it him back just as lewd, just as innuendo laden.
"I'll call you, promise, in fact if I get a break I'll call you," he said, smiling, "You can tell me all about your evening, what you did, what you were wearing." He winked at that.
"Yeah there is these rooms, they got doors, locks, everything," he said, trying to be all serious business talk. "My breaks you know, they gotta be seen to believed. Some people even try to come back for seconds, I have to let them down gently." Which was a complete fib, there had never been any seconds with anyone on base or off base for a very long time.
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