| Kura |
| Summary: | Bunny and Sweet Pea head into their sleep cycle, but not before paging through The Notebook. |
| Date: | 9 Jan 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | Immediately follows Not A Home. References More Than Just Ashes and the people related to Hatin' From the Oven. |
| Players: |
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| Pilot Berths |
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| The battlestar's pilots call this place home. Bunks line the walls with grey curtains to cover their sleeping areas. Lockers sit between each pair of bunks and a round metal table sits in the center, furnished with simple but comfortable steel chairs. A hatch at the rear of the room leads to a communal head. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #317 |
A long turn in the shower, face angled up into the hot water, has left Evandreus Doe rosy-cheeked and almost visibly steaming as he shuffles back into berthings, wrapped up in his dark red thigh-length terry robe, a towel over top of his head as he rubs up the great mop of hair up there, the material sopping up the better portion of the liquid before he hangs it up on a hook inside the door of his locker, staring into the open space for a long moment, one cheek puffed out as he lets a slow breath out of lips pursed toward the side of his mouth.
A turn, probably, but certainly not as long as Bunny's. No, Leyla's never been one to laze about, or take a minute longer to do anything than she ought to. And at the moment, she's clearly making good on the time difference between Bunny's shower and her own. Berthings racks are small to be getting on with, so trying to get two people to fit into the same space as one barely can is a challenge. Thankfully, Leyla is small and Bunny is lanky, because the woman's currently in the midst of moving a few of Bunny's things over to the opposite side of the berthings. None of his personal effects, mind, he can do that for himself, but his blanket, the extra pillow and such. The digital tablet she's already set out, loaded up with the images of the notebook he requested.
Evandreus has heard of conserving water. But time just tends to get away from him in there. At least in a ship whose source of energy is Very Freaking Hot, hot water is not anything hard to come by, and Evan can scald himself to his heart's content— until people start yelling at him to clear out. Which they sometimes have to do. He snaps back to reality as he notices the blanket's been burgled— a blanket he seldom uses, in any case, either from a disinclination toward being covered up or from how obnoxious it is to get the bed made again once it gets mussed. But when he finds his effects, again, and Lala, herself, over by her bunk, he gives her a warm-cheeked smile. "Hey. Sorry I took so long. Didn't mean to keep you up late." He takes out a set of underclothes from his locker, finally, setting them on the edge of his bunk and then de-robing, hanging up the robe next to his towel.
"Don't worry, you didn't." This is Leyla's off cycle, but it's not usually her sleep cycle, at least, most of it isn't, so there you are. Once Bunny moves to get changed, Leyla climbs into her bunk, having already changed into her relaxing clothes. Bra and a fresh pair of sweatpants. Thankfully, as her topside bunkmate never actually, well, frankly, is on the ship to use his bunk, having a space of his own in the crew housing on the Elpis, she certainly doesn't have to worry about waking him up. Leyla settles the pillows around, and the blankets, trying to make the space as comfortable as possible, "Thought I'd try to make you comfortable."
Evandreus is about to head over when, at a second thought, he goes ahead and puts on a pair of sweatpants. He usually doesn't sleep in them, but it's generally a polite thing to do when first crawling into bed with someone to at least be some semblance of dressed. He finally pushes up onto his toes and grabs the stopwatch hanging from its cord on Priapus' sacred member, bringing it over with him as he goes. "Aw, hun," he tells her, looking over the little space— all done up. "You didn't need to. Thanks for letting me stay over," he adds, lowering his voice, then his person, settling in at the foot and then crawling back toward the back wall, drawing his knees up toward him.
Leyla finally looks back to the taller man, as he comes over to her bunk. It's not as if she's shy in Bunny's presence. Hades, they've probably seen more of each other and of every other member of the wing than should be strictly legal, but it's sort of an unwritten rule that you just don't look. Lack of physical privacy creates the need for simulated privacy. "I wanted you to feel at home. I meant what I said. You can stay as long as you like." Once Bunny's comfortable, Leyla moves to retrieve the tablet, before she finds a small bit of retail space close to the man, "They're in page order."
Evandreus waits 'til Lala's come to settle close, then he leans against her and down, hooking her midsection with a shower-reddened arm and slowly guiding her down to the bedding, cuddling all up on her and nestling his chin over her shoulder to peek at the tablet, his arm moving up her to take the object in his hand and angle it a little bit toward the both of their faces. Making himself at home— Bunny doesn't seem to have a problem with it. He's quite warm, of course, radiating heat in such close quarters. "Is that the bird?" he wonders. He hasn't quite bonded with Klaxon— well, at all, his connection to the creature having been more or less confined to talking about 'the bird.' E.G.
As a general rule, Leyla is not and has never been a woman given to close, personal contact. But, it seems she is one with hugs, as she settles comfortably onto the bed, and into the curve of Bunny's body, small enough that she can tuck in against him without forcing him to back up against the chill of the berthing wall. One arm tucks under her slightly, angled so that she can take his hand in hers, fingers intertwined, the other helping him to support the tablet. The controls she leaves in his hands, to move through the images at his discretion. "Yes, I think it is. I mean, I can't really see that a canary can look that dissimilar from another canary, but it has the same tuft of feathers over his eye that Klax does." The bird in question is, for the time being, quiet, likely sleeping, under the pair of pillow cases that are subbing in as cage covers.
Evandreus takes Sweet Pea's hand, and, as he looks over the picture of the bird, he absently begins to scratch her on the shoulder with his stubbly chin. He's thoroughly accustomed to this sort of cohabitation, himself, and, though Stiffy generally thinks the whole thing is frakking weird, she can occasionally be bribed into his bed with the promise of a backscratch. "Someone spent a lot of time looking at him," he notes, drawing his sweats-clad leg over Lala's and beginning to move through more of the pictures, until he spots a familiar swatch of skyline. Then he stops.
Leyla's hand remains tangled with Bunny's, her eyes studying the tablet as he does, and while she can't see his facial reactions without turning, the length of time he studies each image is generally an indication of his interest level. Her voice is soft, careful. "The majority of the images are of Kythera and Leonis…and the team that was down there during…the operation. Payback…" a pause, "Said it was…" she stops again. But her hand tightens on Bunny's. She doesn't have to finish. Not aloud anyway. 'worse than awful.'
Evandreus seems to forget to keep turning pages somewhere along the way, the looming edifices on the page enough to hypotize him, each flip of the pictures stalled by more and more hesitation. "… it was," he agrees gamely to whatever adjectives couldn't be vocalized there. "We waited for so long. They were just toying with us. Making us sit there and jump when they snapped." A little bitter— almost hostile; it sounds weird, there, edging the usually kindly Bunny's voice with something a little harder than is his wont.
Leyla turns, her head more than her body, looking up at the man settled in behind her, once again finding herself on one side of a gulf and he on the other, "You've never spoken of what happened there Bunny." Not in all the time since she and the man have grown close, "Sometimes…I think part of you is still there. And I don't know how to bring you home."
Evandreus can't keep that edge in his voice; there's nothing hard or cold to speak of in his being, and as icy as his words turn for a moment, they soon melt, and Evan cuddles right up on Lala's back, pushing forward gently with his shoulder as he rolls almost right on top of her, auditioning for the role of Leyla's blanket, keeping a knee subtly crooked on the mattress to keep him from actually resting a significant portion of his weight upon her. "The best part of me," he agrees, sleepy-voiced as the warmness and closeness lulls him, fingers continuing to slowly browse through the images of Leonis. "There's the toptrain building," he murmurs.
The edge might have faded from Bunny's voice, but the sadness it brought to Leyla's expression, however well-masked, remains. Still, it's not an unfamiliar one, and the smaller pilot has learned to, if not reconcile herself to it, at least learn to live with it. So there's no further attempt to press for information, "I've never seen it from that angle." Of course, she's only seen any of Leonis in pictures and from the shows.
"I always hated going there," Evan goes on— though he speaks of hate, however, there's nothing as heavy as that in his voice. "Traffic was always awful. Just past the intersection, northbound Taygete Avenue went down to two lanes, and everyone and his brother seemed to manage to forget that every time they went down that way. And of course you could only drop passengers on the northbound side of the building," a wry note, there.
"Did you usually live somewhere more sedate? There was always traffic in Derry," the industrial town Leyla grew up in, "I remember when we'd travel to see family, and we'd be near the mountains, I was so accustomed to the noise of the city around me, I'd have to turn on a fan, or keep the wireless tuned to white noise so I cold sleep. I couldn't get used to the quiet." The pictures continue, moving into images of the Cerberus team.
"Not exactly sedate," Evan answers. "But not a lot of car traffic, at least. Cabs for the tourists, and trollies for crossing town, but— most people walked. Or biked," Evan reports gently into Leyla's ear, keeping his voice at a low mumble since he's, y'know, right there. "Dear Lady," he whispers, half-breathless, then, eyes fixed on the images. "You must have liked coming aboardship. These walls never quite stop humming, do they?"
"I don't think I ever saw anyone riding a bike once they left puberty. It was a child's thing, for us." There's a playfulness, teasing, perhaps, in her tone, "We used to say, it was something granola-crunchers from Aerilon did." Back to earth, nature lovers. "If you didn't burn carbon fuels, you weren't really Taurian." Leyla makes no comment on the images of the team. Some she knows, others not at all. Shiv, certainly, "No it's comforting, like being home. Like being with you."
"Heh," Evan has a laugh extracted from the bottom of his belly, his torso tightening in the simple, one-time gesture. "I knew I was never really Taurian," he jokes back gently, though as he spots Shiv and Cubits he's driven back toward quiet, and he noses at the side of Lala's neck, nuzzling there, eyes askance.
"Why? Because you like the peace and quiet?" Leyla shifts, just slightly, returning the warm touch. Comforting as well as being comforted. Give and take, "I think you carry the peace and quiet with you, Bunny. A small oasis in a very noisy universe." No longer Shiv now, but Ryker, then a trio: Haeleah, Cilusia, Capella.
"Because I never used coaldust for snuff," Evan answers back, a trill of a teasing tone in his voice underlining the facetiousness of the statement. "Hope I'm not too quiet for you, Lala. I could always humm for you, if it'd make you feel more at home." His eyes still on the images; he ceases, however, to comment on them.
"It's great when you sneeze. Black clouds galore." Leyla certainly doesn't seem to take offense to the teasing." A shake of her head, as much as she's able in the close quarters, "You'd never be too quiet. I can hear your heart beating, hear you breathing, soft and steady as the tides. Eternal." The images seem to be of the team members, but there's one that sticks out. A model Eleven, crying.
"Eternal?" Evan wonders. "I'm sure I'll knock it off, one of these days," he remarks, some humor still in his voice, even if it's a dark sort of humor. "I wonder what she's crying about?" he goes on, fighting the first impulse to just breeze past the picture of the Eleven.
"So will we all, kura. So will we all, but the best part of you will go on, dancing among the stars." Leyla's attention shifts to the image, "I'm certain that I couldn't say. I never had a chance to meet her." Nor is Leyla entirely sure she would have been able to control herself if she had.
Evandreus already knows where his better half is living, and there's no dancing, there. But he doesn't argue against Lala's declaration of belief; he simply pushes past the image of the eleven, as if he could hear the beginnings of that loss of control in her voice, and didn't want to disturb her further. "Neither did I. Not really." There's almost regret, there. Less that he would have done something rash or violent — he is, by nature, neither rash nor violent — but he certainly could have had some questions for her. "Can we look at the rest of these tomorrow?" he goes on to ask, turning his head to bury it completely against Lala's neck, pulling back his hand from the tablet and instead sliding it underneath Leyla's torso, snaking between body and bed, hugging her around.
Given that the images seem only to be bringing back bad memories, with more to come, as Leyla well knows, having seen the images before, she gives no argument to putting the rest off until tomorrow. Or the next day, or whatever day they finally manage it. The tablet is switched off, set back onto the shelf from which it came, before Leyla settles into Bunny's embrace, the two, man and woman, winding around each other like twins…or, perhaps, like children, holding each other against the cold and the dark, "Of course, Bunny, of course. Let's sleep now."
"I'm really tired," Evan whispers, his voice and hot breath trapped in the miniscule gap between his mouth and Leyla's neck. And why shouldn't he be? Even on single shifts, he hasn't slept much. But Lala's presence seems to be working on him like a tonic, bringing some level of peace and normalcy to his day. His eyelashes brush high along her neck, near the base of her skull, when he closes his eyes.
"I know you are, kura, I know you are. But I'm here, and you're safe. So sleep, and dream of sweet things." Not something Leyla might normally say, but a fragment, picked out of a childhood memory of her mother tucking her to bed. "I'm here." And then she's quiet, settling in, to sleep, to Bunny, to peace, for a little while.
OOC Note: Kura, like many words in Maori, is a multi-faceted one, which, in this instance, is used in its connotations as something sacred, something precious or darling.