| Good Smoker, Bad Smoker. |
| Summary: | Smoking's good for you. Honest! |
| Date: | 2041.04.06 |
| Related Logs: | None. |
| Players: |
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| Laundry Room — Deck 3 — Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Post Holocaust Day: #39 |
| Industrial washers and dryers line each side of this elongated room, which typically has personnel moving in and out all day and night. These front-loading systems are designed to withstand the rigors of a military beating and still function as expected. A sturdy set of counters run the length of the room for crewmembers to fold their own laundry and dress and pins or patches before and after the process. |
| Condition Level: 3 — All Clear |
The laundry — not where excitement happens. Never one to break a streak of extreme banality, the room's relatively quiet but for a couple washers chugging and dryers rumbling, and hushed voices of some conversations going on here and there.
Stavrian's got some clothes loaded in a machine and is settled on a chair in a set of irreverently rumpled off-duties, left ankle pulled up over right knee. A large notebook is open on his leg and he doodles idly on it with a black ink pen, while smoke curls from the cigarette in his mouth. Born Again Smoker Step #2: Secure your own smokes.
That's the best part about the laundry-room, though, isn't it? Eternal and unchanging — the same noises, the same smells. If everything else is scrambled, at least you know what to expect as you come through that hatch. It's with that sort of bland relief that Tisiphone enters, laundry over one shoulder, book under the opposite arm, little black earbuds connected by black wires to something in her front pocket.
Soap does smell kind of good. Unless you were the type that had your mouth washed out with it a little too frequently. Stavrian's pen scratches over the blank page, leaving thick hatchmarks over a circle shape. With the washer droning on mindlessly nearby, drowning out most of the sound coming from his little spot, he's indulging in one of those small idiosyncracies that many people reserve for their cockpit or the shower. Singing under his breath absently, perhaps not even noticing he's doing so.
Tisiphone has her laundry-bag tossed up onto a folding table at the edge of a bank of washing machines, the book slid down next to it, before she gives the room a proper once-over. There and back again, coming to a pause upon Stavrian's seated form. A few seconds tick by as she watches in stillness, bland expression warming. She ducks and rolls her head, pulling one earbud free, then the other, before turning to her laundrybag. A wadded pair of her red-and-gold socks are drawn out, contemplatively tossed a few times in one hand, before she lobs them over. Aiming for his legs, though she's throwing with her off hand.
Thup. Stavrian gets bonked right in the kneecap, making his leg flinch to the side. His notebook almost drops off his knee, caught just in time by the corner, and he looks up at his assailant. The whole thing took only a second, a momentary pause in the roll of the song going through his head, which he now continues — loudly and regretfully off-key. "Baby, why you got to…./hurt meeeee/…" (Breathy falsetto, also terrible) "…so bad?"
And Tisiphone laughs, more a low chuckle than her gleeful cackle, just lightly shaking her head at him. Or the tune he's carrying — if by carrying you mean dragging by one ear, thrashing for all it's worth. Pushing up from her lean against the washing machine, she crosses toward him, eyes flicking about to locate her wayward sock-bomb as she goes. "Count your blessings. Could've been all my socks," she says, looking back up to him as she nears.
Stavrian clears his throat harshly, voice dropping like a stone back to his baritone range. "There are a lot of memoirs I'd read from people up here. 'Tisiphone's Passionate Affair With Tinea Pedis', not really so much." His foot knocks about the balled up socks on the floor, giving them a croquet-soft tap back towards her.
The medic receives a snort and a quick, toothy smirk in return for his words, eyes narrowed in mock-offense. "I'll keep that in mind." Tisiphone crouches to pick up her socks, lingering there a moment to stretch out her legs, arms stretched out across her knees. "Someone else feeding you smokes now, eh?" A point of her chin at Stavrian's cigarette. "Or you thrown in the towel and hit the quartermaster?"
"What, you jealous?" Stavrian smirks back at her, pulling his foot back up on his knee. The sketchpad jostles, though not enough to show her what he's been doing on it. "Or you just want one?"
She's flicked a glance or two toward Stavrian's sketchpad — and does so again when it's jostled — but hasn't quite decided to snoop. Yet. Instead, Tisiphone's eyebrows shoot up her forehead a fraction in a sort of, 'oh, so THAT's how it's going to be?' pique. She grins, the expression skewing as she prods a tooth with her tongue, trying to goad an answer out of it. "Little of Column A, little of Column B," she replies, lightly, grin widening again as she stands. Magic Tooth says, 'Hedge Your Bets', apparently.
One of Stavrian's eyebrows hitches up to meet that look, making an arch above a blue eye that could, in another lifetime, have been called 'aristocratic'. Definitely not right now. "Well," he offers, with a sniff. "I'll solve that easy. Column A wins, you give me cigs. Column B wins, I give you cigs." He holds out both hands palms up, weighing them up and down. The pen's still tucked into the fold of his left thumb. "Make your choice, grasshopper."
Screw you, Magic Tooth. You didn't help at ALL. Sleet-blue eyes narrow as Tisiphone folds — well, half-folds, half-props — her arms across her chest. Bolstering her defenses against the Dread Arched Eyebrow. "That's hardly a fair choice," she points out, mouth twitching with a poorly-contained grin. She manages to hold the look for four, maybe five seconds, flickery-intent, before dropping her arms out of their fold, lobbing her sock-bomb back toward her laundry-bag — and finally, with an eye-roll, digging into her pocket for her pack of smokes.
Stavrian might not have expected that. Honest surprise catches up to him, in the off-guard second or two it takes him to find something to say. "Hey…" Just that, 'hey'. He hadn't planned any further. "Here." He sits up, pulling his own pack out of the wrinkled pocket on the side of his green offduty trousers. "Let me be a gentleman once and then I promise - you're my sugar mama till I die. How about it?" His thumb flips the pack cover back, holding it out towards her.
Tisiphone glances up from her pocket, pale brows lifted, grin gone crooked. "Deal," she says, slipping her pack back away. A step closer, to extricate a smokytreat with short, ragged nails. As she's tugging it free from its brethren she says, "Shouldn't be too tough for the next three weeks, at least. Got a memo from Sickbay last night. They want to- check- if the cast can come off on Sunday." 'Check' is said with light unease. "Nothing to do but pace the halls for at least two weeks after that."
Haeleah arrives from the Deck 3.
Haeleah has arrived.
Stavrian's hand turns to give her easier access to the pack. As she mentions her cast, his wedding ring glints under the track lighting as his hand draws the pack back and shuts it. "Yeah?" His eyes were down on his hand rather than her face till right then, blue lifting again. "That's a good step. Even if it's just checking, at least the ball's rolling. I'd bet you're ready for it to come off." Seated by a chugging washer, working on a cigarette. "What are you going to do with it?" His chin lifts, indicating her arm. "The cast."
Smokytreat acquired, Tisiphone transfers it over to her casted fingers and slouches her good hand back down into her pocket for her lighter. As she rummages it out she says to Stavrian, "Hadn't- You know, didn't really think about it at all, beyond wanting it gone. I guess I figured they'd- I mean- they saw it off, don't they? I didn't think it'd be…keep-able." Her laundry-bag is over yonder on a folding table by a bank of washing machines, a black book tucked halfways under it.
"Some people hang onto them," Stavrian says quietly, letting his arm drap across his waist. He shrugs, picking an errant piece of tobacco off his lip. "You know? Sometimes even when you might've…wanted something over with for the longest time, once it's gone you can't quite let go. For a while."
Into the Laundry comes Haeleah. Clomping a bit in her military-issue boots, so her entrances comes with a certain amount of warning. She's bearing a large duffel of laundry. Which is to be expected when one comes into this place, of course. Stavrian and Tisiphone are noted but she leaves them to themselves at first. Scouting out a free machine, on top of which her duffel is dropped.
Tisiphone drags out her scuffed steel zippo and lights up on the scent of lighter fluid and a thick puff of smoke. Sweet, sweet smokytreat. Always better when they're someone else's. She watches Stavrian through the ribbons of smoke for a few seconds, as if considering a comment, then glances up toward the ceiling as she exhales, instead. "Yeah," she decides. "Some things are like that." She touches her teeth to the ever-worried spot on her lip before continuing, more lightly. "Guess I'll find out on Sunday. I didn't know you drew." She nods her chin at the medic's sketchpad, starting to lean forward to peer at it, then rocks back on her heels to turn and mark Haeleah's arrival, instead.
Stavrian looks down at the pad, shrugging one shoulder. "Yeah, it's just…" As Tisiphone's shadow pulls back he looks up. At her face, then the face she's got in her sights. There's one he hasn't seen in a while. "Hey." Beat. "Hay."
Haeleah turns. Little smirk playing on her lips as she regards Stavrian. "Hey." Pause. "Stay." Two can play at that. Tisiphone earns a friendly nod of her curly head as well, though her head tilts when she catches the pulling back. "How's the weather in here? Or…whatever. Insert lame rejoinder as you will."
"Rain with a chance of sunbreaks," Tisiphone immediately replies, as if the laundry-room's weather should be perfectly obvious. There's a crooked grin as she says it. "I- sorry, I'm blanking on your name. I remember you from the Library, though. Just after I got out of Sickbay. A whole crowd around some of the couches. I was a little zooed on tea." The slightest of sidelong glances, there, though it doesn't quite reach Stavrian.
"Her name's Hayhay," Stavrian announces drolly — with the accent on the second syllable of the horrendous nickname. He smirks and knocks his thumb against the back of the cigarette. Feathers of ash tumble past his leg to the floor. "Can't forget that, Tisiphone. I know I won't."
"Huh. Forecast called for snow on this deck. I'll have to bang on the environmental controls for letting me down," the engineer says with a grin at Tisiphone's reply. As for the name she supplies, "Haeleah. It's a palindrome. Well, in full I'm called Lieutenant J-G Haeleah Parres. Which is more lacking for symmetry. Pilot, yeah?" Between the bald head and casts, that much about Tisiphone has stuck in her head. A pause and she adds, after accessing more details, "Friends with L-T Marcion, right?" Stavrian earns a snort. "That's *not* palindrome. But I can live with it."
"Yeah. Black Knights," Tisiphone answers Haeleah, the words a little muffled around the cigarette bouncing at the corner of her mouth. "Good to know you, Hayhay." Grin. She pushes forward, crossing back over toward her own laundry, still patiently waiting to be fed to a washing machine. At mention of Marcion: "Alex? Gods." There's a sort of fond exasperation to the chuckle that follows. "Theoretically, yeah."
Stavrian smirks around his cigarette. Point's still his, in his mind. His own washing machine beeps loudly, signaling the clothing's readiness to be fed into the gaping maw of a dryer. Closing his sketchbook, he leaves it on his chair and inches past the two women to make the transfers.
"Theoretically?" Haeleah snorts. "That sounds like Marcion. He getting to you? Don't take it personal. He gets a little…" A pause, in search of a diplomatic way to put something. "…up in his own head sometimes." That's what she lands on. Her nose does some wrinkling at the cigarette but she just seems resigned to it. "Sometimes I feel like the last person with fully-endowed lungs on this ship." As she notes that she begins sorting her laundry. Not that it requires much. Khaki and green is washed with like-colored khaki and green.
"Never talk math with an engineer. It always goes wrong." That's Tisiphone's take on the situation, wry amusement still lingering on her face. Her own laundry-sorting is much the same as Haeleah's — an uninspired array of khakis, browns and greys that's interrupted with the occasional crimson- and gold-striped sock. "If it makes you feel any better," she says, glancing up from her task, "Jesse's lungs are only /lightly/-mangled."
"Ninety-nine point six percent alveolar function, thank you." Stavrian's back is to the women, and a puff of said smoke rises in a small approximation of a mushroom cloud over his head, quickly dispersed. "Tisiphone did me a favor reminding me of how much I used to like this. Now I can't smell a thing in berthings, and that is a boon from the gods."
"I suppose you're aware of how bad those things are for you?" Haeleah rattles to Stavrian, though she still sounds resigned. "Equivalent of a coffee cup of tar in a pack? Not to mention the other four *thousand* chemicals in one of those things. You know what they use formaldehyde for? Pickling dead bodies. Also, those things." A gesture at Stavrian's cig. And a snort as she loads her laundry into the machine. "Frak it. Don't blame your bad habits on the rest of us. I smell just fine. Most of the time. Engineering's messy work, but I shower."
Not just a favour, but a cancer-causing favour. Tisiphone's all grins for a moment, aiming the wolfish expression at Stavrian's turned back. She stuffs the last of her clothing into her washing machine and starts it up, then collects her book off the folding table and crosses over to where the medic's sketchpad sits. It's eyed as she drags on her cigarette, head canted just so, but left untouched — instead she seats herself atop the nearest washing machine, bootheels lightly drumming against its front as she looks back down at the sketchpad.
"Formaldehyde." Stavrian snorts softly. "Going to be dead one day, might as well get used to it." He dumps the last of his T-shirts into the machine and leans his hip against the white metal corner. "Monoamine oxidase inhibitors harman, norharman, anabasine, anatabine, and nornicotine. All of which up-regulate alpha4beta2 nAChR in the cerebellar and brainstem regions. Nicotine's also an anti-inflammatory agent, improves ADHD symptoms, lowers the risk of ulcerative colitis, and delays the onset of Parkinson's disease." He folds his arms comfortably. "And if you're ever in a pinch, you can kill a man by soaking approximately two packs' worth of cigarettes in water and throwing the concentration on his skin. This is versatile shit, let me tell you."
"Sad justification…" Haeleah says, shaking her head at Stavrian. "Very sad. Fine. I'll say I told you so when you get the first spot on your lung." She lets her machine go once her clothes are washing, heading to sit at the folding table. The pad is noted, and glanced at, but she doesn't peer at it long enough to properly spy on it.
"Here's to living long enough to get one, eh?" Tisiphone quips, plucking the cigarette from her mouth to lift it in a brief, smoky salute before refilling her lungs. "You know," she decides on the slow exhale, "someone else's cigarettes /are/ always better. Which one of those fancy words of yours explains /that/?" Cue cheeky grin, bootheels playing a little rimshot against the washing machine. Ba-da-dump.
"No you won't. Like you give a rat's ass about my lungs," Stavrian cracks a smirked grin at Haeleah. "Now, say you don't like the smoke and I'll gladly never have one out around you again. Till then?" Cigarette goes back into mouth at that, and drag taken with deliberate slowness. Ohhh. Yeah. To Tisiphone, once he's exhaled, "Recently discovered gene: Mooch."
"Well, I don't want to be rude," Haeleah says to Stavrian. Rather cheekily. "But, in case it wasn't obvious before, I don't care for it." A snort at the mooch talk. "Works with food, too, if you don't demand the nicotine."
"Cheeky, cheeky," tsks Tisiphone to Stavrian, not sounding very serious at all with the chiding. She draws her legs up cross-legged, the fingers of her good hand absently flipping her loose-knotted bootlaces around. Flip. Flip. She's looking back at the closed sketchpad again. "Genes are /so delicious/. Who knew?"
Stavrian clears the last of the smoke from his lungs in that exhale and promptly drops the thing, crushing it under his heel. "See?" He tells Haeleah, with an overdramatic lilt. "Wasn't that easy?" He reaches behind him and pushes the button to start his dryer a thud-thudding behind him. His sketchpad, of course, gives nothing away as to what his mind was up to before he had company in this drab place. The pen's settled on top of it, precariously ready to go rolling off at the lightest nudge. "They are, Tisiphone, but if you start eating all the mooches there'll be no-one left."
Haeleah looks a little surprised Stavrian's cigarette was so easily squelched. She cracks a slight grin at him and says, sincerely, "Thanks." That done, she's out of stuff to complain about. For now. She folds her hands comfortably on the table, gaze following Tisiphone's sketchpad. Curious, but she still keeps her hands off of it. She does, compulsively, lean over to nudge his pen into a less precarious position, however.
Good Smoker, Bad Smoker. Tisiphone isn't putting her pilfered ciggie out /that/ easily, though she'll start making a small point of exhaling in the general direction of Away From Haeleah. "I'll stick to their smokes, then. Maybe nibble a little around the edges. Rationing, you know?" She rocks back, knees lifting up from the washing machine lid, and balances there. "How's it going down in Engineering, anyway?" she wonders. "You guys busy with all the salvage that's coming across, or are the deckies still pawing through it all?"
"Yup," Stavrian answers Haeleah. Ain't no thang. He raises an eyebrow at the mention of Salvage Stuff in Engineering, tipping Tisiphone one of his bare little smiles before looking back at Haeleah.
Haeleah doesn't press, but she does scoot further away from Tisiphone and her smoking. Though she doesn't seem too put out. She's probably used to it on this boat. "It's a combination of snipe and deckie pawing. From a technical point of view, we're very lucky we came across this place. Gave us a nice haul of materials, at least as far as bulk metal and even some technical parts are concerned. I've heard the Deck's scrounging some aircraft parts as well, but that's kind of outside my wheelhouse. I don't mess with ships smaller than a carrier. Call me prejudiced that way."
Tisiphone watches Stavrian over her cigarette for a moment, her counter-grin more in her eyes than on her mouth, before glancing up and away to exhale. "Heard anything further about the hydroponics equipment? Any of it salvageable?" The look she turns to Haeleah is less warm, and much more intent.
Stavrian waits to hear the answer to that one, bracing his hands behind him on the dryer.
"I haven't poked around too much in the hydroponics bay, honestly," Haeleah replies. "I know there was more radiation in that part of the ship than in other areas. None of the levels are *particularly* high, but they go up on the research decks. I suppose it'd depend on what we wanted to salvage." A look to Stavrian. "Medical'd know better than I what utility the stuff left there would have. We should get a band together. Go play around a little. If the bosses say it's O-K, that is."
"Ah," Tisiphone says, simply, looking mildly disappointed at the answer. She takes her final drag off her cigarette, then unfolds her legs and hops down from the washing machine to crush the smoke out underfoot. She shoots another half-playful, half-furtive glance between Stavrian and his sketchbook and re-e-eaches out with one foot to try and hook the nearest leg of the chair it rests on.
Stavrian re-e-eaches out at exactly the same time to snatch the book up off the chair, the pen almost flying off it. That too ends up against his chest though, smoothly. He gives Tisiphone a cheeky smirk and then Haeleah a nod, some of the humor melting at the news. Not that it wasn't news he'd predicted but still — hearing it from someone else makes it more real. "Unfortunately, radiation's cumulative," he points out. "So even low levels can build up. I agree, we need to poke around more. I haven't heard anything from Captain Diego lately. But I'm in." He wiggles the pen at the engineer. "Anyway, I need to check on something in Sickbay, I almost forgot. Uh…Tisiphone, could you watch my dryer? Just a couple minutes." Beat. "And if I find itching powder in there later, so help me gods."
"I should check on a few things as well, while I've still got time between loads," Haeleah says, standing. "Excellent, Stay." She has nick-named him, and she's sticking to it. "We'll gab about it later. Good to see you again." That latter directed at Tisiphone as she heads out. That intent look before was noticed, probably, but she managed not to twitch too much under it. Outwardly.
SUCH a pout. No sketchbook for Tisiphone. She folds her arms across her chest and leans back against the washing machine. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll watch your stuff, Jesse." She deliberately itches at the corner of her mouth as she says it. To Haeleah, as she makes her departure: "Hey, yeah. You bet. Good to see you around again." A quick flash of grin.
<Fade for PRECIOUS SLEEPS.>