PHD #394: Show and Tell
Show and Tell
Summary: Keenan and Evandreus reveal past connections and present-tense blemishes.
Date: 27 Mar 2042
Related Logs: None
Players:
Keenan Evandreus 
Pilot Berths
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: #394

Another hour has passed in Keenan's life and very, painfully little has happened. Laying in his bunk with the curtain open and one of his legs hanging out, Keenan is quietly reading. The old magazine, one about firearms and how to kill animals with them, is dogeared in many places and currently opened to an article about some new brand of rifles. New being a relative term, the magazine is at least two years and one holocaust old.

Evandreus has been slumbering quietly abed— alone, for all his sins. But that sleep outlasts that quietude, and soon the Bunny is turning this way and that, clad only in a pair of boxer-briefs (though it's more than he usually wears to bed), tangling up his sheets beneath him until they're kicked out of the side of the bunk, as if there were someone in Bunny's bunk trying to escape by a sheet rope. And it might be Bunny himself, for all he's flopping around in there.

Hearing something hit the floor on the other side of the room, Keenan cranes his head around to try to catch sight of it. Thoroughly bored and suffering a never ending case of cabin fever, he decides to investigate. Rolling up the magazine as if he's about to smack a naughty puppy with it, he slips from his bunk and climbs down the recessed ladder at the side of the bunk's housing. Walking to the end of his aisle and turning left, he stops to see the sheets kicked out of Bunny's bunk and hesitates. There are things one must not see. "Uh, Bunny, everything okay?" Keenan asks, scratching his back with the rolled up magazine as he walks over.

The thrashing stills, and all is silent for a moment before a set of fingers grabs at the side of the curtain, tossing it back and open and pushing himself up onto his elbow, bleary-eyed. A yawn half-obscures a greeting that may be along the lines of 'Hey, Pom.' He lifts a thumbnail to scritch at the inside corner of his eyebrow. "Yeh, just… can't get comfortable. Sorry," he murmurs. "What's going on? Any word on Boots?"

"Nothing's going on, I'm bored off my ass." Keenan replies with a shake of his head. "Bingo news on Bootstrap too I'm afraid, but I'm not exactly one of the in-crowd around here, so your guess is as good as mine." Glancing around, Keenan "Pom-Poms" Raios can't help but take notice of how quiet and sparsely populated the barracks are. "Hey, don't let me keep you up but I did want to ask while I've got you. You said you knew a Raios, but you didn't say what his first name was and how you knew him. Who was this Raios?"

Evandreus shifts a little further, moving one hip down against the covers and pulling his other knee forward, foot drawing along hairy calf as he reaches back to scritch at the back of his thigh, listening with a listless expression on his face while the conversation drifts back to him, and then he smiles, a sedate, half-pensive little expression. "C'mon up," he tells the guy, "Bring the blankets, while you're at it." Lazy Bunny is lazy. He does have the decency to draw his legs up a little further so the guy can sit somewhere not immediately up against him, if he's not the cuddly sort. "He was a really great guy. He kind of saved my life, eh? I was in a really bad spot, y'know, and he got me hooked up with ICTC Kythera. I wasn't even old enough for a license, yet, but— he took me in, kinda. Taught me to fly. Put me on my feet again."

There's a look of hesitation on Keenan's face, which disappears when the ICTC on Kythera is mentioned. A poor Triad player apparently, because Keenan's eyes widen slightly, showing immediate interest in the conversation. Leaning down, he snatches up the blankets and steps over to the ladder that climbs up to Bunny's bunk. With a grunt, he tosses the blankets into the man's sleeping chamber and moves to sit on the far edge of the mattress with his feet dangling over the floor. "Are you talking about Paxton Raios? My father worked for the ICTC on Leonis."

"Paxton, yah, that was it… we always just called him Rai— wai— your dad? You're— " Years and experience have come between the Bunny and his ICTC days, and he strives after the name of his ICTC mentor's son in his brain, trying to hear it from the mouth he can see moving in his memory, ignoring the fact that he already knows Keenan's name, but going the long way around. "Gods and Spirits, that's— that's—" Aposiopesis is upon him, and he slides his hand to the back of his thigh again, scratching.

"That's frakkin amazing!" Keenan says, his voice raising slightly. He suddenly catches himself, cringing. Turning to face Bunny, he crosses his legs. Thoroughly elated, he shakes his head a few times as if trying to think of what to ask first. "Yeah, my dad was Paxton Raios. Tall guy, salt and pepper on the temples, goatee that kind of looked like an arrow coming off of his chin?" He grins. "Do you have any good stories about him? He traveled a lot when I was a kid, said he saw all of the colonies."

"Or all the spaceports, at least," Evan comes back with a chuckle. "Oh, sure, yah— hm, there was the— pfff!" he cuts himself off with a half-stifled laugh escaping through pursed lips, the way you do when you remember a funny story, "I once flew a day shift with him to Scorpia's Calisnaia Farris Starport and back. It was my first time on Scorpia, right? And there was this guy out on the mat trying to direct our ducklings, right? Like, trying to get them to stay inside this chalk-drawn walkway, and they're all wandering off straight for the restaurants court, of course, because our meals heater had broken mid-flight so all we had were like these freeze-dried hockey pucks that were supposed to be burgers at some point. But anyhow, I start freaking out because the passengers aren't doing what the guy's telling them to do, and he goes down to try to talk to the guy, but the guy barely even speaks Colonial. But the guy's all, 'come here, come here, this way,' and, well he goes off, I'm prepping the boat for the trip back, and he comes back and it turns out this guy wasn't even a spaceport official. He was trying to recruit converts for some kind of cult, and evidently in the process of trying to convince the guy not to bother our passengers he was 'enlightened' by the Gods of the Five Suns."

A broad smile crosses Keenan's lips as he listens to the story. "Wow so my dad shooed the guy off so that he'd stop bothering the customers?" Keenan's eyes are bright, quite literally the brightest they've been in months. Scratching his back again, he huffs and shakes his head incredulously. "Wait till I tell Solstice about this, that I actually made it this far and met someone who knew my father. That's great! Wow, seriously Bunny you have made my year." He pauses, thinking of another question. "So that's great, I mean you seem a good guy I'd have given you the same chance too you know? Frak! It's a shame he isn't here, I bet he'd be beside himself at the coincidence."

"Yah, y'know… when we set down at Kythera I went back to the old ICTC hub to see if we could find anybody hiding out there, so much of it is underground. But I didn't… I guess he wasn't…" Evan and words aren't friends today, they all seem particularly hurtful. "I mean. Do you know where he was when the bombs fell and stuff?"

Keenan blinks, suddenly looking down and flattening his face. "Oh…shit…he uhm…" Keenan stalls, looking back up to Evandreus. A sympathetic look is shot in his direction, being the bearer of bad news. "He and my mom died in a car crash when I was sixteen. About seven years ago. Sorry I…just assumed that sort of thing would have gone all around the ICTC."

Evandreus's brows lower. Car crash? He didn't remember any— math floats through his head for a moment, "Oh," he finally speaks up, "That, uh. That was after I graduated from VU and went off to flight school on Aquaria. Can't say I much stayed in touch with people from the Cabco. Or. Really anyone from Leonis. Man, I'm sorry to hear, though, eh?"

"Yeah. It's been a while." Keenan says with only a little bit of edge to his voice. "It was rough for a while there." His words trail off and he turns his attention back to the center of the bunkhouse. A few drummed fingertips on the bed frame later, he snaps out of it and looks back to Evandreus. "He was a good guy, though. Really good guy. Hey I know this might be out of line but you wouldn't happen to have any letters or pictures of him would you? I have a few wallets but my bunk's a little empty. I'll trade laundry with you if you have any."

Evandreus's face registers nothing but regret, "Man. If I had any? They would be yours, no questions asked or prices named." But, the implication stands, he doesn't. "I'm really sorry, dude. But I've got a bunch of other stories I'm sure I could tell."

"Anytime you think of one I'm all ears, okay?" Keenan asks, a hopeful look on his face. "But in the time being know that you and I are square and that you can always bring your lunch tray to my table okay?" Chuckling softly, he holds up a finger to cut off any sort of reply ahead of time. "Just no cuddling, deal?"

"Hm! Deal," Evan agrees to the stipulation, "Hey, though, while you're up here, can you look at something for me?" he goes on to ask.

"Uh…sure." Keenan says, suddenly getting a strange look of recognition on his face. "Actually, I couldn't help but notice you were itchy, and I've been itchy as frak as well. I think it's something in the laundry detergent." He pauses, flattening his lips. "Is that…what you want me to take a look at? If so I might need a returned favor."

"Did they switch detergents? I never had a problem before," Evan reasons, then flips over onto his stomach, legs extending into the space behind Keenan. At the very back of his left thigh there's a little bit of red blotchiness— though how much of it is actually red and how much of it is red because he's been scratching at it is at this point unclear. He reaches sort of awkwardly behind and gets his pinky to point at it. "'Round there. It feels like a bug bite or something."

"It looks like some sort of rash. It's not a bug bite, though, at least I don't think I've seen a bug in a long, long time. It's a red splat of rash, though, that's for sure." Keenan replies, turning his back to Bunny. He pulls off his tank tops and motions towards a spot on his right shoulder blade. "Alright, my turn now. It's on my frakkin' shoulder blade and it's been bothering me most of the day. Can you see it? It's just to the right of that horrible spot that no one can reach with their bare hands and have to rub up against a locker or something to take care of."

Evandreus curls up on his side again so that he can reach the back of his thigh without yanking his shoulder out of its socket, and, after a moment of confounded scratching, he sits up, keeping a foot under the rashy part and leaning to to peer at Raios Jr's back. "I see it… here, give me your top," he reaches forward to take the garment from the ensign.

Though Keenan gets a strange look on his face, he takes the two tank tops into one hand, blindly offering it back to the man behind him. "Sure, why? What's up?" He pauses, suddenly becoming paranoid. "It's not bad, is it? Yours was like a red, maybe strawberry red, maybe a little darker. This would be easier if we had phones or cameras or something." He pauses, lips pursing to the side. "Got a shaving mirror?"

Evandreus wraps his hand up in the tanks and uses them to rub and scratch at the blotchy spot, knowing very well how much it itches, but using the fabric to scratch it without causing further injury. "Doesn't look too bad," he murmurs. "It's weird, though, isn't it? Maybe we should head to the s'bay."

For a moment Keenan's eyes roll back as the rash is rubbed. "Oh damn, dude, that's the spot." Frowning, he reaches back for the tank tops. "I don't know, they put out the all call for flu-like symptoms, but this is a rash, right? That's not a flu-like symptom. I just did laundry yesterday. When was the last time you did some?" He pauses, motioning to be bed. "It could be sheets, something with the water, whatever but we're not sick. Hell I feel fine it just itches." Another pause. "What do you think Bootstrap or the CAG would make us do?"

"I did laundry the day before, but it wasn't for me," Evan murmurs. "I mean if it was one person with an itchy spot, it cold be anything. Two people? It seems like it could be something." He stops rubbing the fabric over the spot and unwraps it from his hand to offer it back.

"Frak." Keenan says with an air of disappointment. "Frak it fine, at least maybe we'll get something put on it so it'll stop itching." With that, he swings out to the ladder and climbs down. Dog tags jingling as he comes to a stop at the floor, he waves with the magazine. "Alright then, you've talked me into it. Let's hit sickbay and get this over with. There's no small amount of shit I'd get from the others if I had to drop a shift if I let it get worse anyway."

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