He found Eve curled up on one of the common room's black couches. She had on a baggy t-shirt he assumed she'd liberated from the base's lost and found or an abandoned locker.
She looked cozy, and one of her bare feet hung from the couch and was twirling a little pattern against the grey carpet. The nearest wallscreen was, funnily enough, displaying the same fireplace background he'd been using in his own bunk.
The unyielding cold of Antarctica apparently had a way of making people suddenly appreciate humanity's first invention.
"Yo," he said, finding a spot next to her. "Playing Vertimon?"
"Yup." She didn't look up from her phone's screen, which she held at an odd angle to use while plugged in to a charger stretched to its limit.
"Thanks for the gift."
"It was a super potion," muttered Eve. "They're basically everywhere."
"Sure they are," he said, pulling out his phone. "Want to battle?"
She gave him the side eye. "You'll lose."
"We'll see about that."
His starter Vertimon was at level eight, and Eve had a full team leveled to the mid-teens. She beat him in two moves. Jove suppressed the prickle of competitive annoyance he always felt at losing to Eve as he noticed the genuine smile on her face.
"Here," she said, walking around him in-game. "This way."
She led him to the Verticenter, where Vertimon could be easily healed up, and rummaged through her player storage chest.
"This is an item that heals you automatically in battle," she said, bringing up the trade window. "This raises your defense by one point. And this egg will hatch into a Vertimon that's good, but not one I need."
"Thanks," he said. "You're aware I lost the battle, right?"
"That's why I'm giving you all of this. It'll be boring if you don't put up more of a fight next time."
He chuckled and nodded slowly. "Oh, don't worry. I will."
The game was mostly single player, outside of battles, but he stayed on the couch and played alongside her for a while. They both walked around in the grass of an area early enough for Jove to be able to reach it, Eve leveling a neglected Vertimon while Jove trained his starter.
"Alright, I'm getting hungry," said Jove, after about an hour. "I'm going to check in on dinner. Don't out-level me too much while I'm gone."
"It's on you to keep up if you want to stand a chance against me, little brother," said Eve. She turned her phone's screen off, regardless.
Jove found his mother in her office, looking busy and stressed out. Her door was open partway, but he still knocked before leaning.
"Jovian." Kira let out a sigh and pulled her gaze away from the screen she'd been staring at. "What is it?"
"Just checking in." He felt some of the recent tension between them lingering in the air and decided to take a page out of Eve's playbook. "Want some help with dinner?"
"Ah." Kira ran a hand through her dark red hair. "I completely forgot about dinner. I'm going in circles with this program while trying to get a sense of our fuel situation."
"Let me take care of it," he said. "I have some ideas."
"That would be wonderful," she said, smiling. "We're limited to potatoes and carrots and kale tonight, along with anything that seems to be abundant in the cupboard."
"I'm on it." He smiled back at her as he pushed away from the door frame.
The creative challenge of cooking a full meal with what amounted to three staple vegetables was one that he found surprisingly enjoyable. Jove worked backwards from what he could find as garnishes.
There was plenty of salad dressing in various forms, so he knew he'd be shredding carrots to mix with kale for a side dish. The potatoes were harder to contend with, as he considered that they'd already had them roasted and stewed a fair bit over the past few days.
He opted for french fries and spent far longer than he'd been anticipating simply chopping potatoes. After boiling them, brushing each one with oil and salt, and baking, they turned out surprisingly well. There was still something bare and incomplete about them, however.
He found some powdered gravy to mix up. There were no cheese curds, but plenty of parmesan, which seemed like a decent substitute.
"Kale salad and poutine," he said, presenting the plated dishes to his family half an hour later.
He settled into his own chair around the table and eyed their reactions, feeling strangely nervous despite how much fun he'd had with the cooking. Aster was smiling charitably. Eve looked openly disappointed. Kira's mind was clearly elsewhere.
"I haven't had poutine in years," said Aster, taking a bite. "Oh wow. It's actually really tasty. Good work, nephew."
"What do you mean it's actually really tasty?" he said, in good humor. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"I think what your aunt means is that given the limited ingredient pool we have, something like poutine seems like a challenging dish to make," said Kira.
"I meant what I said," said Aster, still smiling. "I dated a twenty-five year old a few years ago and was rapidly reminded of how long capable cooking skills usually take to develop."
"You dated a twenty-five year old, Aunt Aster?" asked Eve.
"Oh, hush." Aster waved a hand as she tried the kale salad. "Why do people only react to age gaps in romance when the woman is a bit older?"
She stopped to wipe a bit of white salad dressing from her upper lip with a dainty motion.
"I wasn't judging you," said Eve. "But to answer your question, it's the same as all relationship gossip. People are curious about what the sex is like."
A brief, but loaded silence followed. Jove tried and failed to keep from glancing at Aster. Her eyes met his for an instant and he caught her reaction, a quick blink, a faint flush of the cheeks.
"How about we keep sex off the list of approved topics for family dinner?" suggested his mother.
"That seems fair enough," said Aster. "It's not like any of us are getting any at the moment, regardless."
Again, Jove swore he could pick up on something in her tone, a hidden excited and guilty edge. He felt himself getting a little turned on and took a sip of water, trying to shift gears.
"Did you figure out the fuel situation, Mom?" he asked.
"Not quite yet," she said, shaking her head. "It's complicated. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if we weren't so low on propane."
"Should we start thinking about trying to get a refill?" he asked. "You mentioned trekking back to Port Sirius and looking for more."
"That's why I had you tow the snowmobile in," said Kira. "But we can talk about that tomorrow."