Making Things Worse

Posted on Sun Jul 21st, 2024 @ 10:20pm by Ensign Madelyn 'Madi' Moore & Ensign Duncan McManus

Mission: Remnant
Location: Personal Quarters
Timeline: 407 - Midnight
3679 words - 7.4 OF Standard Post Measure

"Hi, I was just..."

Nope, nope. Just nope.

"Hey there. I thought I'd..."

Ugh, stop talking about yourself! You're there to apologise.

"Hi Duncan. If you have a moment, I'd really like to..."

What, Madi? You'd really like to what exactly?

Had there been carpet in the corridor between the turbolift and crew quarters, it would have been worn down to its last thread by the amount of times Madelyn had lost and regained her nerve over the past five minutes. As much as she felt compelled to make amends for her behaviour the last time they'd actually spoken, so much time had passed since Duncan had escorted her home that she'd moved passed feeling guilty for turning messy on him and was now well into fretting that he might not even have given it a second thought. She'd come close to ringing his door chime three times now, many more attempts and she was at risk of being logged by the computer for suspicious activity.

The last few weeks had been strange, with the icing on the cake being her conversation with Mercy that morning. Ordinarily, she would have had at least several people to discuss the situation with, which would have gifted her much-needed perspective, and Duncan's input had always been the sprinkle of pragmatism she needed before getting completely carried away by her own imaginings. When the Away Team's mission had gone awry, Madi managed to get out of her own head long enough to sincerely worry about her friend and had nearly gone to see him in Sickbay before realising they'd been released to quarters and it probably wasn't appropriate in any case to turn Sickbay into a social venue. So much of the way her mind worked lately involved second-guessing herself and her current predicament was no different. Pacing up and down wasn't proving anything but she'd waited until late shift to improve the odds that nobody would notice her and now she was struck by the fresh concern that he might already be asleep. It was a cycle of perpetual defeat that she couldn't seem to shake and it didn't just apply to her desire to apologise to Duncan. Everything left her paralyzed with indecision and it seemed like only a matter of time before leadership called into question her capacity to work. That was part of the reason she was so keen to clear the air, a desperate hope perhaps that if things were okay with Duncan then perhaps she could finally shake the insecurity that had fastened its grip on her that night and refused to let go.

Her next pass took her several steps beyond Duncan's door before voices from the other end of the corridor prompted her to panic. If she turned and fled to the turbolift now, there was probably no chance of it not waiting for others in range to arrive, at which point she'd be stuck awkwardly in a confined space with crewmates who might wonder what the hell she was doing there. Anxiety saw her turn abruptly, palm smashing not once, not twice but three times against the door chime as if seeking refuge from an approaching threat. Even as she waited, her gaze was trained on the end of the corridor, and the seemingly inevitable conundrum of trying to explain a late-night visitation in terms that didn't sound....

...wrong.

Duncan grumbled from his bunk, his voice low and muffled by sleep. He pushed himself up, feeling the resistance of tangled sheets and boxer shorts twisted around his legs. With a frustrated sigh, he managed to disentangle himself and stumble towards the door. As he pressed it open, a sharp beam of light flooded in, making him wince and squint. A figure moved swiftly into the room as he blinked against the brightness, Duncan looked down to see a woman standing there. It took him a moment to recognize her through his groggy haze. "Um... hello," he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep. He struggled to process why Madi, looking visibly stressed, was standing in his quarters at this hour.

As reality sank in, he became acutely aware of his dishevelled state, standing there in nothing but his boxer shorts. He shifted awkwardly, trying to cover himself with a corner of the sheet still draped over his shoulder. "Is everything okay?" he asked, his mind racing to catch up with the situation. She had not really spoken to him recently but there she was standing there when it was after midnight.

Everything was supposed the be okay, that was the point. She was supposed to reassure him that she wasn't a basket-case just because she couldn't handle her booze, even though Madi hadn't really felt drunk enough to invent an inferiority complex. The cloud over her head hadn't really dissipated with the eventual headache either, but she was okay, she'd be okay, everything would be fine. There wasn't a whole lot of choice.

Opening her mouth to say the words, however, required the split second it took for Madi to realise what was going on. The short-lived relief of having made it into his quarters undetected evaporated instantly as, wide-eyed, she stared at his half-dressed, half-asleep appearance and felt the rock sink all the way to the pit of her stomach again. "I..."

With a sudden swelling of dread, she remembered the chronometer in her quarters had stopped working last week. With all the temperature issues, she hadn't lodged the issue right away and had been just compensating. Clearly, it had given up the ghost entirely.

Whirling to face the door, a little late in finding her manners, Madi hid her flushed cheeks by standing with her back to the engineer and held herself with such rigid tension that it was almost hard to breathe.

"I am so sorry. I thought it was earlier. I didn't mean to wake you up, it can wait."

The engineer used her turning away to grab a flight suit and pulled it on quickly chucking the sheet back on his bed. He stared at her back and nearly leant out to touch her but stopped himself before shoving his hand into his pocket. "I am awake and less undressed so it is safe now." He murmured still confused as to why she was there but he was at least less vulnerable. "Looking next time will cost you though." He teased trying to break the tension.

Oh god.

Very aware that she was still red-faced with embarrassment, Madi turned around slowly and fixed the now-grinning Duncan with a sheepish look of pure apology. From that point of view, it was suddenly very easy to say the words she'd come here to convey. "I'm so sorry," she repeated. "The clock in my quarters hasn't been working, I guess it stopped completely." It didn't bode well for her awareness of time passing that Madi hadn't noticed it was closer to midnight than early evening but she crossed her arms over her stomach as a kind of mortification shield and continued. "It really wasn't important enough to wake you up for. I just...wanted to see how you were doing after last mission, and to...." Her gaze flitted downwards briefly. "Apologise."

Duncan raised a confused eyebrow at her need to apologise. He had noticed her avoiding him but he knew that friendships changed and adjusted so he had not been worried but now he wondered if he had missed something. “Apologies?” He asked gently. He needed to know what he had missed.

He was making fun of her, he had to be. Duncan's level of self-confidence tended to slip into the capacity for endless teasing, which normally Madelyn quite liked because it meant he was never difficult to talk to. Now, she couldn't imagine another person on the ship she'd struggle this much to make eye contact with. "You know," she tossed her head, flirting with the idea of looking at him but not quite managing it. "The whole cliché drunk-girl-gets-messy thing."

Duncan looked at her confused far longer than needed before he realised what she was on about and frowned. “And?” He said simply his voice lower than hers. Had that been why she had been avoiding him? Well now that made sense, he realised shaking his head.

"I just..." Why was his making this more difficult? Being drunk at all in a situation where you were pretty much permanently on some form of duty had been a stupid idea, without taking into consideration how little alcohol it had actually taken. "It was a pretty stupid idea," Madi blurted out, making brief eye contact again. "Getting drunk, that is, and since you're the supplier, behaving the way I did ran the risk of getting you into trouble." That was where her fretting had arrived at in any case. Madelyn was nothing if not an expert at inventing calamity.

"It happens. I'm not the only supplier," he said with a shrug, attempting to downplay the issue as he sat back on his bed. His eyes followed Madi, noting the tension in her posture and the frantic energy in her movements. "Why don't you calm down, Madi, and take some deep breaths," he suggested gently after a moment, his voice steady and reassuring. He could see how wound up she was, her stress radiating off her in waves. Her face was flushed, and she seemed on the brink of a breakdown. Duncan patted the spot next to him on the bed, inviting her to sit down. "Come on, take a seat," he urged softly. "Let's just talk through this. We'll figure it out together."

The conversation was quickly spiralling into Round Two of the very thing Madelyn was attempting to distance herself from. Using existing stress to fuel additional worries was not a new concept, Madi had been getting plenty of practise at that for most of her life, but there was something about this particular situation, right down to being invited to sit on someone else's bed, that made her desperately want to avoid looking that pathetic. Attempting to reset her projected panic, the young scientist blinked owlishly for a moment before crossing to sit at what she calculated to be an appropriate distance, though trying to find the Goldilocks-measure of not-too-close yet not-too-far came with very little experience. Once seated, Madi strove to maintain an expression of calm concern, though in this case it was consideration for a friend's plight.

"I didn't come here just to apologise," she attempted to reassure. "It was more that I put it off for so long and then your mission went the way it did, and it seemed suddenly stupid to be so anxious that I wasn't even talking to you anymore. Are you okay?," Madi ventured tentatively. "I heard it wasn't that fun over there."

The man stayed very still sure that if he moved she might just run out of the room. He had never thought of her as skittish but there she was looking like a deer in headlamps. “That was ages ago.” He said with a shrug as he thought about it. He did not say it to make her feel worse but to state that it was a long time ago and he had tried to move forward. “It was not.” He admitted. “It made me feel very dirty and paranoid.”

That was ages ago. The words pierced in a way that was immediately deflating, or it would have been had Madi any enthusiasm left to lose. There was no denying that the procrastination cycle she'd got herself stuck in had left any inquiry about her friend's well-being far too late to have been helpful if Duncan had suffered any ill-effects. There was not much she could do now to fix that but the guilt still lingered, now even more potent knowing that Duncan had also acknowledged how long it had taken her to ask. "You weren't hurt though, right?," she asked anxiously, already poised to not forgive herself if she'd actually missed a near-emergency.

"Just a headache. And that disappeared after a few nights of decent sleep and water." It was not something unusual for him after something stressful like being nearly eaten alive by flora. "Maybe a night in sickbay but nothing awful." He shrugged a little. He was not worried about it but he could feel her anxiety. He slowly wrapped an arm around her shoulder and squeezed her to his side. "I am fine."

Well, that put to bed any chance of her actually looking at him. Already trapped in a spiral of diminishing success, Madelyn could feel the ripple of tension as a palpable yet unintentional impulse at the sudden physical contact and was catapulted back to her original concern regarding other people's interpretation of her visit. She was under no false illusion that she disliked the physical comfort, there might even have been some argument to be made for her being starved for it, but other people's opinions always seemed to matter far more than they should have. Reaching up, Madi nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and cast a furtive smile sideways. "Being eaten by a giant cabbage is at least an interesting story," she tried the humorous approach.

"I am excited to tell the grandchildren one day of the time their dear Grampy nearly got eaten by flora. Certainly one of those types of stories that my kids will hate me sharing as I changed it every time to be bigger and better." He said with a grin and nudged her shoulder. "So if I can laugh about it you can relax this anxiety that you are feeling."

Madelyn had always found Duncan to be comforting to be around, right from the early days of kind of stumbling into the Moonshine Appreciation Club. He had an infectious enthusiasm and a pretty pragmatic nature that left no room for pretence and plenty of opportunities for not taking himself too seriously. It wasn't until that moment, however, that she realised a key part of what made him so easy to talk to was his unwavering optimism. Judging by their last conversation, it wasn't so much that he had any idealistic notion of their chances of returning to Earth, more that he refused to let that dictate how his life was going to progress. Speaking of grandchildren, of children, at all under the circumstances seemed pretty complicated and yet Duncan, in usual form, spoke of it almost as a foregone conclusion. It was reassuring and made it easier to chuckle at her own ridiculousness, even if it didn't do much to change the colour of her pink cheeks.

"I'm pretty sure, at this rate," she confessed, "we'll be able to power the ship on my blood pressure. I'll try," Madi added, in regards to his suggestion. "At least to stop barging into your quarters at midnight." She winced at the recollection and uncrossed her legs at the ankle. "Speaking of which, I should probably let you get back to sleep."

"Well, I ain't working on the engines to power it by that." He murmured pressing a soft kiss to her temple before laying his head against his again. If he had any telepathic abilities he would have been embarrassed that she thought him idealistic or pragmatic. He had never thought of himself like that he was just him - a lad from Scotland who had gotten lucky with ending up in the right place at the right time. "So try and lower it before it controls you. Everything is as well as it could be out here," He assured. "Are you going to be able to sleep?" He asked.

Sleep. What a foreign concept. It was already difficult to untangle her thoughts long enough to drop off, it'd wind up practically impossible if he kept piling on more things to dwell on. He kissed me. The shock wasn't dulled much by the fact it had been a pretty chaste form of affection, not really worthy of over-thinking and yet already generating plenty of fodder in that department. More perplexing was the realisation that Duncan hadn't retreated much, still content to keep her close and not exactly jumping at the chance to get rid of her, which Madi had honestly expected. Her mouth suddenly dry, she swallowed and found herself responding with far more candour than she actually would have preferred. "About as much as always." Her soft tone didn't do much to hide the fact that this meant little sleep at all.

"So none then." He murmured shaking his head. He could sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, he had always been able to do that despite everything but he knew that not everyone could. He was worried about the candour that she was offering and wanted to help her if he could. "Do you want to stay and we can talk until you fall asleep?" He offered removing his arm to allow her space to think about it all.

Anxiety rose like a wall of suffocation, entirely irrational and yet fuelled by the uncomfortable intensity of how much she wanted to say yes. Madelyn didn't know how to process that, however, finding herself unable to picture a reality in which she spent the night in Duncan's room and that wasn't somehow inappropriate. Again, had she been capable of analysing the root of the issue, she might have realised the problem was her own eagerness, the tiny spark of rebellion that wanted to step over the line, but instead she was left floundering under the expectation that she had to decline. It was far too easy to convince herself that he was only asking out of a sense of obligation.

"I'll be okay," she reassured him, rising reluctantly to break their connection entirely. "Maybe another time though." The treacherous words slipped out before she could modify them, meant to be a way to avoid offending him. "Or not at all, it's really fine. You should sleep though, one of us should at least." The rambled rush wasn't helping.

Duncan raised an eyebrow at the words that tumbled out of her mouth. “Madi? What’s going on?” He wondered softly. “I am happy you came to visit, I was wondering why you were avoiding me and now you are practically running out of here when I am offering to listen and help you get some sleep.” His voice, whilst firm with what he needed to tell her, was not sharp or anything.

"Nothing's going on!"

If anyone had told her that she'd wind up losing her cool entirely, there would have been no way Madi would have ever set foot inside Duncan's quarters. Now, reaching her capacity to contain the chaos of competing tensions bubbling away inside her, she instantly regretted the outburst but found herself incapable of stemming the flow entirely.

"I'm just trying to do the right thing," her tone pleaded as, much to her horror, she felt her eyes prickle with tears. "But it doesn't seem to matter what I do, I can't figure out what that is. I already messed up the time and woke you up, now you're saying I should stay here..." As an additional layer of torment, Madi felt her cheeks burn red at being forced to verbalise what was making her squirm about that part of the conversation. How could he not understand? The living quarters weren't big, where exactly was she meant to sleep if not his bed? The floor? "Where would I even sleep?"

“What do you mean the right thing? There is no right or wrong thing here.” He said gently trying to calm her down from her outburst. “The bed? We are both adults but it is okay. I am just trying to help, no ulterior motives… I am not that type of man but I get it. I am not forcing you to stay” He stood up holding his hands up as he stepped as far away as the space would allow her. How had the situation got so out of hand?

There it was again, that now-reinforced sense that this was more about obligation and trying to be nice to her than actually wanting her company. Madelyn stood quietly in the slowly mounting realisation that she felt like even more of a burden than she had prior to arriving and, suddenly, misery couldn't think of anything worse than having company. She didn't want people feeling sorry for her, or taking pity on her, or patting her head over and over like she was five-years-old just to reassure her that the bogeyman wasn't coming back to get her. She didn't want to be some emotional charity case, and she certainly didn't want the reason someone invited her to stay the night to be because they thought she was too fragile to look after herself. It stung, somehow, to have not one single mention made of what Duncan was getting out of a night talking until they fell asleep. Because he's not getting anything out of it. He was happily asleep already before you barged in.

"I came to apologise, and I've done that." Her voice, flat and defeated, couldn't find the volume to remain panicked. "I'm really glad you're okay. You don't need to worry about me, though, my problems don't have to be something you try to fix."

She turned then, moving to tap open the door and blinked at the contrast in lighting, even though the corridor beyond was fairly dim. Without actually making eye contact, Madelyn looked back long enough to quietly say, "Good night, Duncan. I'll see you later," before the doors closed behind her and she left his quarters at a much more subdued pace than how she'd entered.