If Vincent kept an eye on all the new employees at Gattaca—well, all the employees that did the actual work, the navigating and the equations and the management, not the janitors and maintenance workers like himself—he did it with only the most selfish of motivations. There was a part of him that catalogued all their small, insignificant traits (mannerisms, clothes, even posture) in order to see what Gattaca looked for in an employee.
Of course, that was a foolish impulse. He knew what they looked for, and it was all about the genetics. They required the perfect genetic code, something a faith child like him could never acquire no matter how much he worked on details like posture, portfolio or his handshake.
Still, he kept an eye on all the new employees. Besides trying to figure out what Gattaca looked for, he liked to fantasize. He liked to pretend he was one of them, one of the old employees welcoming the new worker, or the new guy himself, perhaps surprised to finally be hired by the prestigious company, perhaps arrogant enough to take it all for granted. He liked to memorize their names and their habits, remember each of their accomplishments. All he did was vacuum and scrub the windows and take out the trash, but this way he felt like he was part of all their achievements.
And, lo and behold, one day in April, someone quite interesting showed up.
The first time he showed up in a wheelchair, Vincent thought it might be a fluke. He figured the man must have broken his leg or sprained his ankle, probably in some dangerous athletic pursuit only viable to an extremely fit valid like the type they hired at Gattaca. He wasn't wearing a cast, sure, but perhaps something less bulky under his clothes.
Either way, the man was left at the bottom of the steps into Gattaca staring up for ten solid minutes, and no one stopped to ask him if anything was wrong or help him. So Vincent, good little janitor that he was, hurried outside to lend a hand.
The man didn't notice him approaching, even though the rush of people on their way up to work had already passed him, and now there were only a couple stragglers still climbing the steps, carefully not making eye contact with either the man or Vincent, staring at their own feet. The man didn't seem to notice anything. He stared up the stairs, his eyes unfocused and his mouth slightly open, the sort of hazy expression one rarely found in such a focused, intense environment as Gattaca, even on the maintenance workers.
"Excuse me," Vincent said.
He was right beside the man, having climbed down all the steps, but the man still neither noticed him nor responded. He shut his mouth with a snap, clenching his jaw tight, and his brow furrowed. But he still didn't answer.
"Excuse me," Vincent said, and gently touched the man's shoulder—barely touched it, in case he turned out to be squeamish about physical contact with a janitor. "Can I be of assistance?"
The man glanced up now, his eyes finally focusing on Vincent, raking over every inch of his frame before settling on the stairs again. Vincent half expected him to go back into his daze again, but instead he said, "I don't suppose there's a ramp."
British accent. Huh.
"I think there is, actually," Vincent said. "It's a little bit out of the way." He pointed the general direction, adding, "I can lead the way there, if you want."
The man smiled stiffly. "Thank you, I would appreciate that."
He followed, slowly wheeling behind as Vincent walked towards the side entrance where the ramp was. It was taking a while, and Vincent cursed mentally as he thought about the time he was losing cleaning the bathrooms. Caesar, his boss, would have his head.
"Do you want my help?" he asked the man.
"Thank you, you are already helping." British accent mixed with confusion.
"No, I meant with…" Vincent gestured awkwardly at the wheelchair. "If you want me to push you, I can. It must be tiring." Although valids did have strong hearts and bodies, so the exertion probably meant little to the man.
Predictably, the man tensed and said, "I think I can handle it." Brief. Snappy.
Fine.
When they got to the ramp, the man insisted on going up that on his own as well, and opening the door for himself. Vincent still followed him in and realized, when they had gotten inside, that the man was still lost. He didn't say anything, but he had begun wheeling himself in the wrong direction entirely, the direction which led to the shuttle launch area. There were no launches for hours, and there was no way a man in a wheelchair would be going on any of them. Vincent ran to catch up (the man could go quite fast when in a temper, apparently) and stood in front of the wheelchair.
The man glared at him.
Vincent said, "I'm sorry, sir, but you're going the wrong direction."
"How would you know where I'm going?"
"That's the launch area."
"Maybe that's where I…"
A hearty voice cut through the argument. "Morrow!"
Vincent and the man both turned to the side to see none other than Director Josef striding over, his mouth stretched into a welcoming smile. So the man was in Josef's division. The division Vincent wanted to be in, the one he applied to every few months even though every time his application was yet again rejected.
Director Josef said, "Where have you been? You're fifteen minutes late. I thought maybe you were going to back out." He winked—actually winked—at the man in the wheelchair, completely ignoring Vincent. As usual. But Director Josef acting this genial, even towards a treasured employee, was not so normal.
Who was this…Morrow?
Morrow, whatever else he was, at least did not appear to feel as hostile towards Director Josef as he did towards Vincent. He gave the man a fake smile and said, "I got lost."
Which only accounted for the past minute or so, but Vincent supposed he could spin his tardiness as he chose. When he got back to Caesar, he himself would have to come up with a good excuse for not just giving Morrow directions to the ramp and getting back to his own job. Saying he thought it would be more polite was not going to cut it, and he suspected Caesar might guess the truth—that he liked being around actual employees, the kind that wore suits and spent the day doing calculations instead of cleaning toilets, even if he was still only a lowly janitor himself.
"Well, come with me, now," Director Josef said. "I can give you the grand tour."
"The wheelchair accessible tour," Morrow said. "I expect that will be rather shorter."
He was still smiling the fake smile, and Director Josef didn't seem to have noticed anything off, but his hands were clenched in his lap. What was his problem? Heck, if Vincent had been offered a tour of Gattaca by Director Josef himself, he wouldn't have been equivocating about an injury.
But Director Josef didn't object to Morrow's tone, only agreeing with the qualification and leading the man off towards the elevator. Almost everyone at Gattaca used the stairs as a point of pride, and the first DNA checkpoint was located right by them, but Vincent supposed for Morrow that wasn't an option as long as he needed to use the wheelchair.
As for Vincent, he stood around for another minute imagining that he was going with them, that he was the one Director Josef found worthy of "the grand tour". In the end, though, it was too much of a stretch even for an imagination of his flexibility, and he sprinted back to rejoin the rest of the janitors and apologize to Caesar for wandering off.
Caesar just shook his head and sighed. "Sometimes I wonder why I bother with you, kid. It's too early for a launch. What was it this time?"
"A new employee," Vincent said. "He was stuck at the stairs outside. Couldn't go up them because he was in a wheelchair."
"New employee and he's already got an injury," Caesar said. "Hope he doesn't bring us any bad luck. Did you catch his name?"
For all he acted stern and disapproving of Vincent's dreams and shenanigans, there was nothing Caesar liked better than a choice piece of gossip. Vincent grinned. He was more often in the position to hand off gossip than any of the other janitors, and Caesar knew it. Might as well make the boss work for it.
"Yeah, I think the Director may have said it," he said. "Only the last name, though. Not the first. Or the middle," he added, just to draw out Caesar's curiosity a little bit longer. For all he knew Morrow didn't have a middle name. For all he knew, the man didn't even have a first name.
"Well, what was it?" Caesar asked.
"Morrow," Vincent said, drawing the word out and wiggling his eyebrows. "Know anything about him?"
"If I did, I wouldn't tell you," Caesar said, crossing his arms. "You're much too interested in what's going on with the navigators. I keep telling you, it's our job to clean the shuttles, not ride them."
"So you don't know anything."
"No. Let me know if you find out anything else," Caesar said. Catching Vincent rolling his eyes he said, "Hey. I can be curious. I don't get any funny notions just hearing about the navigators, do I? It might end up being important to my job. Sometimes I have to talk to these guys."
"I'll let you know," Vincent said, with a growing sense of exhilaration.
Morrow. An employee like any other: valid, intelligent, handsome, entitled and obnoxious. But he had made it in and had Director Josef's approval and friendship, and Vincent couldn't help but feel a certain sense of solidarity with him. He pumped his fist out of Caesar's line of vision. Someday, that was going to be him.
/…/…/
When Eugene got home from his first day at Gattaca, he couldn't help but sigh in relief. He maneuvered his way out of the wheelchair and into one of his more comfortable lounge chairs and took out a cigarette. They said they were bad for your health these days, but Eugene didn't have a genetic tendency towards addiction so he could stop smoking at any time, and his heart could take it. And if a car hadn't managed to kill him, he doubted a stick of burning tobacco would. Wistfully, he half wished it would, that the cigarette would turn out to be poisoned, perhaps by some jealous contender for the job he had just gotten, perhaps from the janitor who had shown him into the building wanting to kill him for his tone. He inhaled deeply and exhaled. No, still alive.
Pity.
He had promised his parents to stop vegetating after the accident, even though he knew he could afford to live off their money a little while longer. He had promised to get a job, clean up his worse habits (the reason he was just smoking instead of sipping some tequila) and act like the well bred man he was. Bred. Ha. The well engineered man he was, more like. Didn't it shame them, seeing the son they had pinned all their ambitions on go to pieces? Wasn't he just such a disappointment? Couldn't even win a gold medal, and now he spent half his time thinking about death. How terribly morbid.
But that wasn't fair to his parents. They didn't know everything. He'd told them he'd been drunk when the car hit him, the crowning disaster in his chain of alcohol abuse and the crowning factor in their disapproval. No one had ever found his suicide note, and when he'd gotten out of the hospital he'd torn it up. They didn't have to see his weakness. No one did.
No, his parents weren't disapproving (they claimed). Just…concerned. And so he'd promised them to get work, respectable work. He would never do anything as glorious as the Olympics, never again, so now he would do something…reputable. Which was how he had ended up deciding on Gattaca.
Inhale. Exhale, spiraling smoke into the air. Fire and breath, both symbols of life. Symbols of failure, in that aspect. Eugene extinguished the cigarette on an ash tray next to his chair and simply leaned back.
Gattaca had been supposed to be a noble job. It elegantly combined scientific office work—and despite the fact that Eugene had spent all his life as an athlete, he wasn't actually all that terrible at physics and science—with the idea of a field that had a dream, exploring the far reaches of space and taking terrible risks. People still saw it as a company that made dreams come true, and perhaps Eugene, in joining their staff, had been a little taken in by the hype.
One day of work later, he had to face the facts: it was one of the snobbiest establishments he had ever encountered. DNA tests were apparently mandatory just to enter the building, drug tests instituted nearly every day. Ridiculous. Of course, they assured him he wouldn't be subject to as many drug tests due to his disability—dealing with the catheter would be more trouble than it was worth. Eugene had smiled politely and said he appreciated it, privately wondering whether that meant he could show up at work drunk on a regular basis. It would probably help him deal with their idiocy even if it would drive his parents insane and do little to advance his career.
He lit another cigarette. Those weren't allowed on Gattaca grounds, so he'd have to get his smokes in the morning and during lunch break, and plenty with his vodka at night. This Gattaca job was going to be just a bundle of stress with nothing glorious about it. He could already tell.
/.../.../
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AN: So my Gattaca feels are still fairly strong, although I haven't seen it in a month. This is going to be a multi-chapter fic, but probably not all that long. The basic premise I'm working on is: What would happen in a world where the Jerome Morrow working at Gattaca was, actually, Jerome Eugene Morrow? And what would happen in a world where Eugene and Vincent met each other without the whole borrowed ladder arrangement? Would there be bromance? Would there be feels?
Anyways, reviews are always much appreciated. I'm trying to finish up Coeruleus, figure out where this is going, and hopefully participate in Small Fandom Fest over at Livejournal. So fanfiction-wise I'm busy and could use the motivation. See you in the next chapter.