Grumpy Allergies
Posted on Wed Jul 3rd, 2024 @ 9:54am by Warrant Officer Iryna Voznyuk & Staff Sergeant Nathanial "Nate" Cusack
Mission:
Remnant
Location: Various
Timeline: Day 339
1813 words - 3.6 OF Standard Post Measure
Iryna hated mornings but she hated mornings when she was sure moving would disturb the person next to her but she needed to anyway. She slowly shifted and climbed over and when he did not shift she set about her normal routine of showering and getting her hair into some order. It was going to be that type of day, especially with Commander Gerhard most likely in the same state as Nate so she would going to be looking after Armoury whilst he recovered. She glanced over at her still-sleeping companion as she came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel to find some uniform in the dark.
It had taken Nate a ridiculously long time to fall asleep properly. The frustration of that was he definitely felt exhausted and in need of a solid few hours if he was going to shake off the perpetual irritation threatening to set-back his recent attitude adjustment and yet, as much as an hour after he'd accepted the offer of a proper bed for the night, he had still been stretched out on his back, glaring up at the ceiling. The longer he had laid there, the more he'd been forced to acknowledge that his agitation was attempting to mask other physical symptoms, chief of which being a headache that probably would have benefited from the analgesics he'd stubbornly turned down upon return. If this was what being partially-digested felt like, then it'd be too soon if he never experienced it again.
All this meant that, by the time Iryna was up and moving, Nathanial Cusack was out like a light. Face down, limbs sprawled, faintly snoring and in no current danger of being disturbed. It was rare for him to sleep deeply, and even rarer for him to remain passed out when there was movement around him. He hadn't even flinched when the slow slide of disturbed covers had left his top half exposed to the slightly chilly air.
Iryna grinned and looked over at him in the semi-darkness as she noticed how out for the count he would be for a while and ventured into turning on the small lamp she had close to her wardrobe. It allowed her to find the correct uniform, and dress, and get her long hair into a ponytail. Not for the first time in as many days she considered cutting her hair short to make it easier to deal with. She turned to watch the man sleeping and pulled the covers up over him. She left a quick note saying she would be back around lunchtime and left him to sleep.
When the away team had been told the day before that their next rostered shift wouldn't fall for at least 24-hours, Nate had not had any intention of complying. There had been enough sitting around staring at walls as they'd observed quarantine procedures, he couldn't see the point of more thumb-twiddling when there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. Part of the determination had been a desire to just get on with things in the hope that his irritation fade, that his disillusionment with the universe might at least recede into the background again and give him some reprieve from being annoyed as shit that he'd come closer than anyone should to spending his last day as an hors d'oeuvres. There was plenty of arrogance to his unhappiness but he'd spent so long in a high-danger job that there were expectations for how his final acts would play out. Being some space alien's chew toy because nobody in power wanted to take his reservations seriously was not anywhere close to the top of the list.
What he hadn't banked on, when privately deciding to ignore medical advice, was a delayed sensation of being kicked in the head and the gut simultaneously. If he recalled some of the debrief, there had been a suggestion that there might be residual effects once the stupefying toxins wore off but in usual style, Nate had felt enough like his usual self that he'd dismissed that as not applying to him at all. As a further insistence of robbing him of any control over his own fate, the universe seemed to have decided quite the opposite; several times he had surfaced from sleep enough to realise how awful he felt, several times he had gratefully succumbed to his body's desire to simply sleep it off. He'd suffered some hangover in his time but this not only came without the previous evening's enjoyment, it hit in a way that made it unlikely a good feed of grease would suffice. As lunchtime rolled around, Nate was uncharacteristically still in bed, though a lot more restless, enough that he'd found a way to sleep across the mattress and without a pillow, all of which were on the floor.
Iryna came back and blinked in the darkness as she slipped inside. She had expected him not to be there or doing something to kept the boredom away but not for him to be making full use of the space. She sat on the edge of the bed and leant out touching him shoulder. “Nate? Hey?” She called.
"What time is it?"
The voice from beneath the covers was gruff, deep into baritone country and sounded about as pleased to be awake as a grizzly bear mid-winter.
“Hello to you too. About 13:05.” She explained turning over the glow in the dark clock she kept close by for that reason so she could work out in the middle of the night if she needed too.
The revelation that he'd slept the morning away did very little to improve Nate's mood, though it did prompt him to roll onto his back and immediately grimace as even the faint light cut through his vision with the power of a small sun. He draped an arm over his eyes to compensate and grumbled once more, "What the hell did I drink?" Fuzzy awareness was not permitting a very accurate review of the previous evening but he could recall considering several pints of moonshine as a makeshift sleep-aid at one point.
“Nothing as far as I am aware.” Iryna put the clock back and frowned. “Are you okay? Shall we go to sickbay?” She offered standing up to look at him.
"God, no." Stubborn pride or not, Nate wasn't known for being overly reliant on medical intervention when it came to his self-punishment techniques. He wasn't that sure himself that this counted as a hangover but it felt enough like one that the treatment was probably the same. "Shower, coffee, bucket of ice over the head... Any order'll do."
“If you are sure. Want me to wait around for you or meet you in the mess?” She wondered grabbing a few things off of her desk piling them in her pockets for the rest of her shift.
"You go." Any attempt to reassure felt a little out of reach at the moment but Nate marshalled the last of his energy to at least not take out his pounding head on the undeserving woman doing her best, quite likely, not to kick him in the ass. A hand flopped weakly once towards the door as encouragement. "Give me 20 minutes."
The woman leant out and gave his cheek a caress before she left him to it not at all convinced that she should not stay but she knew he hated her hovering and she hated mother-henning someone. It was not in her nature though she had very specific reasons to hover and check on him.
It was, in the end, closer to 30 minutes and once Nate emerged from the shadows to slink in through the messhall doors, there was something about his slightly-damp, scruffy-haired appearance that suggested he probably should have taken longer. His eyes were still like little pinpricks, screwed up in protest at the intensity of the eatery's natural ambience, and the resulting scowl seemed to suit his mood perfectly as he sank into a chair and just sat there, slouched, for a moment. "What I wouldn't give," he murmured, his eyes practically closed, "for a sudden influx of bacon and eggs."
Iryna had started eating her sandwich as she was absolutely starving after her nerves the last couple of days. "Best they could do is a ham and egg salad thing." She admitted glancing to where the fridges were and what was on offer that day. "Coffee? Water?"
"Both." Though he still sounded rough around the edges, undeniable fatigue had sapped some of the bitterness from Nate's tone. "I'll get it," he added, holding up a hand to interject any attempt to wait on him. "Just give me a minute."
Iryna shook her head as she looked at him and noticed something she hadn’t seen in the darkness of her quarters - his skin was blotchy. “Nope. Up. Sickbay now, Staff Sergeant.” She ordered hauling him to his feet.
Two instincts competed for Nate's initial reaction; the familiarity of annoyance and the self-preservation of grudging compliance, which was certainly the weaker of the two but held some distinction as being a new priority where present company was concerned. He resisted at first, a heavy weight in the chair that wouldn't be budged unless convinced, which very quickly became the case as the grip on his arm threatened to remain for however long it took to create enough of a scene to shift his ass. "What the hell, Iryna..."
“Up now, Nate. You are having an allergic reaction to something. You get up or I call medical here.” Iryna assured still trying to get the much larger man to his feet. He had a choice and she was not past making a scene.
A muttered curse under his breath fell just about out of decipherable range, emerging more as a general grumble and therefore sparing Nate the repercussions of directing expletives towards a senior officer. She wasn't beyond pulling rank on him either and public humiliation wasn't high on his list of pursuits for the day. There was also the matter of Iryna's urgency, and the insistence in her tone when she diagnosed his condition with the authority of someone who knew something he didn't. "All right, I'm moving. See? Feet, walking."
"Keep going." She muttered pointing him towards the door. The silence was not at all awkward to Iryna. She was not at all in the mood to watch him get worse, so if he was moving, she would keep him focused until she got him to someone medically trained. Once they were in sickbay Iryna called out to anyone. "We need help."
Glancing up from his work, Hughes took one look at the pair of marines and raised his eyebrows. Slipping off his stool, he gestured to one of the vacant beds.
"You too, huh?"
