Morning

Posted on Tue Aug 8th, 2023 @ 4:48pm by Warrant Officer Iryna Voznyuk & Staff Sergeant Nathanial "Nate" Cusack

Mission: Sojurn
Location: Relea
Timeline: Day 338
2312 words - 4.6 OF Standard Post Measure

As the first rays of sunlight crept into the room, Iryna slowly opened her eyes. She stretched her arms and legs, feeling the warmth of the morning sun on her skin. Thoughts danced lazily in her mind, weaving dreams, and reality into a tapestry of possibilities. The faint scent of unfamiliar cologne lingered in the air. Suddenly, flashes of the previous night rushed back to her: laughter, drinks, and a passionate connection with Nate clicked in her head. It was at that moment she realised that she was alone in bed. She slowly sat up on her bed, taking a deep breath and admiring the beautiful view of the city from the window as she pulled the duvet closer to herself and listened for any sound of Nate.

Somewhere, on the other side of the closed bedroom door, someone was humming.

That same someone had masked an inability to linger in bed for too long behind a charade of pre-emptive breakfast preparations. The truth was, Nate, like so many others, never found protracted sleep to be very comfortable. As a man who routinely allowed his demons to sabotage his self-control, he had very little recourse against them once rendered vulnerable by sleep and some reoccurring dreams were based on memories he would have gladly offered to Smith had the creature just asked for a menu selection. He didn't often get trapped by his night terrors anymore, and had arguably better luck with more moderate restlessness the scant few times he'd shared his bed with Iryna lately, but that didn't encourage him to risk it. He didn't want to disturb her. He definitely didn't want to wake screaming and thrashing about when she was there to witness it. Quite aside from preferring to bury his problems, Nate wasn't all that sure he'd welcome another's presence in that state and worried that he'd lash out at her.

So, he was making bacon instead.

And he was actually reasonably sure that it was bacon, or something close enough that it would pass, just like the coffee he had on brewing was his version of good-enough, and the eggs he was going to cook once the smell of bacon had lured out his intended prey also seemed the right shape and colour spectrum to be edible. Mastering the food replicators had been quite the puzzle at first but he'd noticed that some of the commands had been upgraded for Earth Standard and could only assume that was the work of Calanthe and her team in getting the translator's lexicon up to scratch. Certainly the display on all the buttons were now words that he mostly understood, even if the combination of them was occasionally a little awkward.

The woman could hear him just beyond the door. The marine had been worried for a moment that he had left but it seemed that he had gotten up to do who knows what. She got up slowly doing what she needed to in the bathroom before grabbing up his shirt from the floor and headed out to see him. “You got up very early.” She commented smiling as she took in what he was up to.

Glancing up, Nate offered only the familiarity of a crooked grin as he continued the delicate process of turning the bacon at just the right moment. "No rest for the wicked, right?" The added bravado of a brief wink invited several definitions of the term wicked and how they might apply to him, with recently acquired evidence being highest on the list. By rights, he should have been exhausted, there really hadn't been many hours of actual sleep after all, but Nate moved with an energy that at least made it seem like he wasn't suffering for their exertions. "You can always head back to bed if it's too early, I was going to bring this in anyway once it's done."

"Well you are pretty wicked." She commented with her own wink back at him as she slurred her words just a little as she tried to wake up more. She moved towards where she could see the coffee brewing and poured a mug taking a sip without adding any milk or sugar for the moment. "I am awake now. I will maybe have a nap before night watch tonight." She admitted she could run on a lot less sleep so she was happy with being awake early. It was a great chance to watch a sunrise.

"Breakfast is nearly done at least," Nate replied, shaking the last of the bacon onto the plate where he'd been amassing enough to feed four people. "I was going to attempt to scramble the egg-looking-things, unless you have a different request?" He'd miss all this, Nate decided, the little gadgets and gizmos that made cooking more of an adventure than he recalled it ever being before. With so many corners cut, handled by technology rather than manual labour, so much of the drudgery seemed to evaporate and he was left only with the impish delight of wondering what happened when he put certain food items into hot water.

“No requests, just happy someone else is cooking. I am not very good at it.” Somehow they had fallen into him cooking and her not. She would need to find something else to make him happy when his cooking had made her happy.

"This feels less like cooking and more like..." Nate pondered a moment, egg poised over the bowl. "Food assembly. I am reasonably sure these devices would just materialise fully-prepared meals, I just happen to be fussy about my bacon." Which, whilst perhaps technically true, wasn't really the reason he wanted to do at least part of the task himself. Under this guise, it made it seem like he'd got up early to surprise her. It was an infinitely better excuse than not trusting himself to sleep longer than a few hours.

“Well, I get to cook the next meal or assemble a meal.” She said quietly coming around the counter to touch his arm. “You okay?” She finally wondered picking up the bowl to inspect the eggs.

"Yep." It was too instant, too automatic, too straight-from-the-mouth-without-bypassing-the-brain, but that only made it more uncompromising. Coupled with the fact that Nate was being very serious about whisking eggs and adding what was probably some kind of black pepper variant, and there wasn't a lot of room to voice any doubt. The flick of his gaze upwards to meet hers cemented the deal with, "Some might argue better than okay." And his eyes seemed to twinkle with a mischief that was sincere, or at the very least reassured that whatever was festering beneath the surface, it had nothing to do with the night before.

Iryna backed up a step and nodded. "Okay." She said softly leaving it there. Something was not right but it was not something for her to worry about that she had done wrong. It was not them connected and she did not want to poke anymore what was underneath the surface of him for fear it would send him running and screaming from her. "Glad to hear." She said less awkward.

"What about you?" Nate turned back on her, holding the whisk up to allow the mixture to drizzle slowly back into the bowl, ostensibly to test consistency, but mostly so that he could sniff at it. He wasn't about to taste-test raw egg but he wanted to make sure it actually was egg before he threw it into a pan. His glance flicked towards Iryna for a brief moment. "Think you're going to be okay to walk today?"

His grin was far more smug than it had a right to be. Probably.

Iryna shook her head at the smugness and shook her head. She ached but she was not about to admit anything else. "I am sure I will." She said not at all about helping his ego get any bigger, it was not needed. "You did not break me." She stuck out her tongue at him.

Lifting up his free hand in partial defense, Nate used the other to carry the bowl over to the hotplates, slopping his thumb into the cold mixture in protest. "I wasn't trying to break anything." There was a pause just enough for the mischief brewing to form its own momentum and then he glibly added, "The sound barrier, perhaps, though I think you beat me to it."

The woman blushed under the mischief that he was creating. "I guess I did... was good." Was all she could stammer through before awkwardly laughing.

Nate just grinned, though his eyebrows raised just a little as he drained the egg mixture into the preheated pan. "Well, thank you for the performance review, sir. Always nice to end one without a reprimand."

The woman just blushed deeper if it was possible as she thought about what her neighbours must have thought if they could hear. "You are impossible, Nate." She decided shaking her head trying to ignore his grin so that she could think of anything other than last night.

The thing with scrambled eggs was, they were impatient. They didn't give you a lot of time in between runny egg and burnt egg, so Iryna was spared a comeback because of a need to focus intently for the next minute or so. Managing to finish the task with only the faintest film of charred residue stuck to the bottom of the pan, certainly not enough to interfere with the flavour of the finished meal, Nate plated it up alongside a serving of the bacon and moved to present the plate as an offering held just under her nose. The proximity gave him ample opportunity to snake an arm around her waist. "No sausage, I'm afraid." His lips twitched and the damnation came from what he didn't say next.

There was a method to this madness though, other than the fact that she was ridiculously attractive when she wrestled with her own amusement and embarrassment. This was, Nate guessed, the time in proceedings where she normally got short-shifted, where the bastard who'd come before him had come before her and then rolled out of bed without remorse. He wasn't the greatest at flowery speeches but he could cement his presence as an annoyingly permanent reassurance. It was his way of proving he wasn't going anywhere.

The woman smiled and put the plate down and moved her hands to take his head in her hands and kissed his cheek. "Thank you." She whispered simply before letting him go. There was no need for words when he had gone to the effort of this and had not disappeared on her. "Better eat up, Nate... get that energy back." She teased wiggling onto the chair.

He honestly hadn't been hungry when he'd started, had seen it mostly as an excuse to justify being awake, but now that the entire apartment smelled of bacon, Nate didn't need to be told twice. Taking his own helping over to the dining table, he eased himself into a chair with an exaggerated groan and picked up a piece of the salted meat to chew on. "Hey, I'm not the one who fell asleep first."

"I was on night shift and only had a couple of hours of sleep before our adventure. What can I say, you tired me out." She reminded him before using her knife and form to start eating. It had an odd taste but it was not a bad thing at all in her opinion, slightly sweeter than she was used to.

"I'll probably nap all afternoon," Nate lied in the guise of a grudging admission. A lopsided grin gave no reason to doubt the claim, however, and he rose briefly to grab her half-empty mug and returned with a coffee refill for them both. "What are your hours today?"

"Night shift." She said shrugging. Someone responsible had to be on the ship at all times and with limited armoury cover she was taking the worst shifts to allow others the same opportunities. "What happens when you become all responsible and get a promotion." She took the mug with a nod of thanks and took a sip of the liquid. He had added just the right amount of creamer and sugar.

Attacking his mound of eggs, Nate screwed up his face, though his distaste was more for her choice of professional obligation than his culinary attempts. "I knew there was a reason I wasn't chasing the extra pips." His blue eyes met hers as he chewed, a casual observance of the fact that they both knew his service record was a twisted mess of cause and effect. "Maybe a change in career direction will address that. I can set my sights on becoming Chief Hotshot Nurse. Senior Chief, even. First Grade."

"Yeah, I am sure Daglish would let you." Iryna teased just a little. Daglish would be good for him to learn from. She was patient and everyone respected her. "But we do have a few hours together if you want to do something before I have to have some sleep."

"Are we talking wrestling you for my shirt so that I can look respectable in public kind of doing-something, or completely ditching shirts altogether and seeing if you can wake up the neighbours again kind of doing-something." Nate winked at her. "I am content to call it lady's choice."

The woman glanced up from her food and grinned. Both sounded like good ideas but she was sure that one had a lot more merit over the other. "We shall see what happens when you try and get the shirt from me." She challenged him with a poke to his chest.