Sulking Or Something More?

Posted on Wed Nov 1st, 2023 @ 7:21am by Warrant Officer Iryna Voznyuk & Staff Sergeant Nathanial "Nate" Cusack

Mission: Contagion
Location: MACO Barracks
Timeline: Day 366 Early
2183 words - 4.4 OF Standard Post Measure

Iryna was fuming that she was being side-lined for the mission and was not being allowed to go across to the space base. She wanted to go, she needed to go across as was her role on the ship but her shoulder dislocation was not healing as quickly as it should and even she knew that she would be a liability in the situation but it did not mean she liked it. No one liked to be told that, especially a woman who felt like she had already let enough people down.

She stormed into what formally had been the Marine Barracks to get away from Gerhard’s sympathy and went to her old room to finish packing up the last few items to move to her bigger quarters out of the barracks as was every other marine. She would rather the man yelled at her than be all nice and worried about her, she hated that. She muttered things under her breath and yelped as she turned and someone was standing in the open doorway.

It wasn't always easy to tell if Nate was a perceptive man. By all accounts, he had the intelligence to aim for it but a certain disposition towards giving a damn was at least deserving of some scepticism. He had, to date, never really tried to feign interest in things that didn't concern him, and since the list of potential candidates for that honour seemed to include anything that didn't directly affect him...

He'd been a jerk for a while. Banishment to the other side of the cosmos hadn't brought out the best in him.

Or, at least, so the early days had gone. The gradual loss of comrades hadn't helped his attitude but, at the same time being forced to confront the inevitability of prolonged displacement had obviously had some impact. The gradual shift in priority might have been responsible for his position now, leaning against the doorframe as was his wont when he was trying not to intrude whilst also hinting at being difficult to dislodge. It could also just have been that his timing was appalling, which up until the past couple of months probably would have been the more likely.

His eyes tracked the other marine's movements across the space.

"Whatever that pillow did," he eventually remarked, "I think it's probably ready to apologise." At least she was man-handling something soft, it was a start.

Iryna looked down at the pillow in her hand and shrugged before wincing at how the familiar gesture was now painful. “Deserved it.” She said putting it back on her old bed as she moved the other bits and bobs into the final box. It was not like she had lots of items but she did have enough that it required her to think better than she had the first time. “Did you need anything?” She asked.

If her brusqueness daunted him, Nate didn't let it show. All thing considered, he'd always born the brunt of it during the course of their mutual deployment one way or another; taking offense now seemed to carry an unreasonable amount of expectation in regards to a relationship changing a person's baseline. Voznyuk got curt when she was pissed off. Cusack, on the other hand, had a tendency to speak bluntly even if the timing wasn't the best.

"I'm being sent to Plague City."

It was not, as it happened, an attempt to one-up her or to rub salt into a very obvious wound. Part of Iryna's displeasure in being grounded surely stemmed, Nate theorised, from the understanding that this was a high-stakes mission, one that would involve some degree of segregation from the rest of the crew. Quarantine protocols would ensure the away team had to spend time in isolation before returning to the general pool lest they inadvertently bring back communicable nasties, and that would mean an elongated absence from any social gatherings. There wasn't really a need to spell that out, but it did suggest a motivation for his otherwise unwise choice to bring it up now. He was running out of time for later.

The Marine rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t say that about there. It’s more ghost town.” The woman comment with a sigh as she sat down. She would miss him as they had settled into domestic synch pretty easy since Relea. It was nice but this would be the first time in weeks where they would not be together at beginning or end of the day.

"All the hallmarks of a zombie invasion, if you ask me." His tone was flippant, hardly a surprise, and just as predictably, Nate opted to stay where he was for the time being. She was, after all, a woman who cherished her space. "Probably nothing to see though." In a way, it was his attempt to provide reassurance, or at least try to soften the blow. "That's the trouble with automated systems, they never know when to shut up."

“That is not going to help my mood knowing you are going into a zombie invasion without me.” She whispered finally. It was odd that the automated systems were so going but they really had no idea what they were going into which did not help at all.

Looking far too at home, Nate folded his arms across his chest and turned so that his back pressed against the doorframe. "What if I promise to have absolutely zero fun?"

This was the side of her he was less familiar with, however, for all there was probably a herd of shrinks somewhere who'd claim it should have been obvious from a mile off. And the trouble was, Nate didn't think he was very good at cheering people up, and was probably even less successful at saying the right words of encouragement with just the right hint of tenderness to appease the romance elves. He sighed, quietly because he wasn't that much of a masochist, and pushed off to go and ease himself down to sit next to her.

"I'll bring you back a souvenir. One small zombie, tiny one. Baby." He measured it out with the span of his index finger and thumb.

The woman made a face and wished not for the millionth time she was not laid up with an injured shoulder. "And what would I do with a baby zombie?" She wondered turning to look at him as he sat down next to her and the door frame he had been leaning against closed, leaving them alone.

Nate thought about it for a bit, as if such a ridiculous offer warranted any consideration at all. "I dunno. Teach it to write 'Gerhard can shove it' and have it sign all your official paperwork perhaps?" The twitch of his lips was the only crack to his composure, which was otherwise doing its best to sell the whole idea is completely plausible.

Iryna felt every bit of anger that she had been directing at him fade away and lent over and pulled him into a soft kiss. She had been annoyed at the wrong man though it felt like that him going was wrong without her to cover his ass. “Thank you.” She whispered.

Mindful of the tenderness that was keeping her grounded in the first place, Nate settled for hooking an index finger under her chin to return the kiss and then pushed his forehead against hers. "If it helps, I will probably do a lot fewer stupid things with you out of reach of a rampaging hoard." It wasn't the most romantic way to express the sentiment but it was, Nate realised, entirely honest. Voznyuk could hold her own and he'd never do her the discourtesy of suggesting otherwise, but the slow dwindling of their numbers over the past year was some cause for paranoia. It was hard to deny at least some relief that she wasn't barrelling into fate's cross-hairs for once.

The man staring at her like that was her undoing and she felt every annoyance leave her properly. She hated that he could undo her like that with just a look. It left her vulnerable and wishing she could say something more to express how his sentiments had struck her. Iryna whispered something in Russian before she kissed him again.

"Used to be a time when you only pulled that out to verbally castrate me," Nate murmured, having retreated only far enough to speak. A second stolen kiss became a retreat to the spot just below her ear, which wasn't much of an improvement in his efforts to keep things uncomplicated. Giving her time to heal had required a certain amount of restraint, so much that it had been a mutual agreement to spend sleep rotation in separate beds. In the wake of potentially several more nights apart, the timing seemed every bit as poor in regards to their private lives as it was to Iryna's professional preferences but showing too much frustration was only going to make her feel worse. Forcing himself to pull away, Nate settled instead with his cheek resting against her temple. "It's just some empty buildings and a computer that doesn't know when to quit. We'll be back for dinner."

"Well, things and times change. You did not seem to respond to the way I used to speak." She whispered allowing him to retreat from her gaze. She spoke standard better than any other language but it was easy to know that she was emotional when she switched to Russian as it was natural. She liked to think it was just an automated ship and there was nothing scary there but it was hard to not think on the future ship and what had happened there when they had thought it was abandoned. "That is what we thought last time."

This time, as he exhaled, Nate didn't seek to conceal it. Slipping from the seat to kneel on the floor in front of her, he folded his arms across her lap and fixed her with a direct stare. "To harness the gist of what my superior officer has been beating me over the head with for the past few months, we need to leave that behind. Easier said than done but if we're going to bury our head in the snow every time something risky comes up, we might as well have stayed back with the bugs."

"You would have gotten bored in a week." The woman commented moving her gaze away from him to look at the bare room around her. It had been her sanctuary for so long in the Barracks but now that the barracks were being remolded into something much better for the crew as a whole.

A non-committal grunt neither agreed nor refuted the accusation. In many ways, all available solutions had the capacity to drive him stir crazy as far as Nate was concerned. It all boiled down to picking what seemed like the best of a bad bunch. "If the hypothermia didn't get me first."

Iryna sighed hearing the grunt and glanced at him taking his face in both her hands. “I would not have let you get cold like that.” She promised quietly.

Her current condition might have left him with no recourse for following through but that didn't stop the rakish waggle of Nate's eyebrows, followed by the intentional mischief of, "Promises, promises."

“Did I do that at any point when we were there?” She asked seeing the mischief in his eyes. It was just a relief to feel herself becoming normal again and less filled with rage from fear of missing out.

A look of slightly exaggerated thoughtfulness saw Nate pause. "No," he eventually agreed. "No, I would definitely say that any time I couldn't feel my extremities, it was absolutely no reflection on you." His lips twitched. "If anything, I feel like your ability to thaw out caught me pleasantly by surprise."

"Good." The woman decided and glanced at the box beside her. "How long do you have left?" She asked gently running her hands through his hair trying to tame it a little but she had to admit him growing it out was a nice change.

Squinting as he calculated what he could get away with, Nate postulated, "Forty minutes? Maybe an hour."

Iryna slowly pulled her hands back and placed them on her thighs as he gave the number time frame over to her. It was not long at all but it would be a few days until she saw him and had the urge to hang onto the moment as he tracked her down. "Got any plans for that time?" She wondered quietly.

A faint smile, the rarest of its kind because it hinted at sentiment that Nate wasn't particularly good at articulating, stirred a glimmer of mischief whilst also softening the expression in his eyes as he gave each knee a gentle squeeze. "Already right where I intend to be for all of it."