| The Last Cookies in the Universe |
| Summary: | Two Capricans and a Sagittaran walk into a storage closet… |
| Date: | 2041.08.10 |
| Related Logs: | none. |
| Players: |
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Topic Markers:
"...is that a HICKEY?" | Strip Triad avec Wilkerson | "OhmyfrakkinggodsCOOKIES." | "THOUGHT ORGIES!"
'Change of plans - 8-34B - 22:00' reads the note left for Cora. Messy, flourishy letters, tidy numbers — not that she has a lot of experience with Tisiphone's handwriting, but there it is nonetheless.
The storage deck is dimly lit at this hour, smudgy little lights set into the base of the walls showing off a maze of corridor after branching corridor, all alike. 8-34B isn't /too/ far off the beaten track, and its door has been left the slightest bit ajar, wedged on a wad of paper. Inside are pallets and crates, helpfully marked with labels like TOILET PAPER and CLEANING FLUID — and an Ensign Apostolos, perched on a crate against the back wall, smoking a cigarette with her satchel nearby.
Cora must have received the note, because she arrives a few minutes after 22:00, Bubbles in tow. The pilot was collected in the berths after a quick mention earlier that there would be a cookie and more in it if she cleared her evening and came along. The lieutenant hasn't got a satchel, but she's carrying her green off-duty uniform shirt, folded with inconspicuous care around the hand that carries it. "Here we go," she comments to Psyche, picking up the wad of paper as she opens the door and heads in, lifting her chin to Tisiphone in greeting, "Hey."
And Psyche has got nothing but her sweet self, hands in her pockets as she pokes her head through the hatch, clearly intrigued by the promise of cookies and more. "This is all secrety. I feel like I'm pledging all over again," she stage whispers, creeping elaborately over the threshold. Sneaky Bubbles is sneaky. Ooooo.
"They stop running the forklifts before supper. I've never seen a person down here after nineteen-hundred," says Tisiphone, by way of greeting. She sits forward from her slouch and tucks one leg under herself, pulling her satchel into her lap. "Never knew you smoked, Bubbles," she adds, grinning down at the unbleached canvas as she rummages within.
"Thank gods the academy didn't have sororities," Cora remarks dryly, shutting the hatch and heading in. "Good," she replies to Tisiphone with a nod before her brows rise, "Really?" she asks, tone amused, skeptical, "It's really -her- that you're surprised is interested?" Rather than Cora herself?, is the question. She unfolds her overshirt, reaching into one of the large pockets to draw out a carefully napkin-wrapped parcel. "In exchange for one of the last homemade chocolate-chocolate chip cookies in the universe," she informs Psyche, "Tisiphone is going to share what she claims is really good Sagittaran diplomat hash with us."
"But… I don't smoke," Psyche shoots Tisiphone a puzzled glance, watching her fellow pilot rummage. "I — " But then Cora makes it all clear. "Oh!" The little blonde's eyes go wide and she beams, clasping her hands together and turning her dazzling grin on Cora. "Why Nikki, are you trying to buy back my friendship? Because it's totally working." She bounces around in a circle. "Ohwowohwow! Oh, Tis, if I'd known, I would have brought my shortbread cookies. I'll make sure you get some later, I promise, you lovely — is that a HICKEY??"
Rummage. Rummageclank. Tonk. Tisiphone's in the middle of drawing something out of the satchel and stops short, the expression on her face translatable no other way than, oh, FRAK. Some good the band-aid does sitting on your bunk-shelf, you stupid girl. There's the tiny sound of her clearing her throat before she finishes her motion, pulling out a small, intricately-carved wooden box. "Yeah," she says, looking up with a wry and rueful grin. Nothing for it; might as well be honest, right? "Seems that way, don't it?" She rubs once, self-consciously, at the angry mark on her throat.
Cora grins at Psyche, admitting, "Something like that, maybe." She finds a seat on a crate where she can lean back against some others, watching Tisiphone dig around for that box she pulls out, and then winces, and shoots Bubbles a look. One that says 'GAH! Have you no tact??' The weed-sharing pilot's grudging honesty draws a flicker of a smile, though, and she just nods, "Kinda does. What, Psyche, haven't you got any?" she turns the teasing back on the other pilot, "What with your supposedly gorgeous boyfriend and all?"
Psyche makes a little squee sound and dashes over to make sure the hatch is well-closed before dashing back over to sit near Tisiphone, all big eyes. "Please tell me you're going to kiss and tell," she gushes in a swoon of sincere delight. "Are you and the hickey-donor docking?" Vocab words! She haz them. "Or is it still undefined? Or was it a completely ill-considered eruption of too-long suppressed passions, never to be repeated — until it is?" She gasps. "Oh, gods, please tell me it was Wilkerson." She looks apologetically at Cora, adding hurriedly, "I'm sorry, Nikki, but I need to live some things vicariously about that boy like you have no idea. Also," she smirks a little and looks coy, "I might have." Hickeys, that is. But they're not immediately visible.
Inside the fancy wooden box is a scrap of cloth and a cunning little collapsible pipe. Tisiphone starts assembling the thing, not looking up from her task. Rather pointedly. Her pale skin doesn't hide an embarrassed flush well (read: at ALL) but maybe the dim lighting will save her. It's what she's desperately praying for, at least. "No 'supposed' about it. He's easy on the eyes, all ri-WHUH?" The mention of Wilkerson brings her head up on a snort of laughter. "Sorry, man. Not a frakking chance. He probably cries when he comes. Wants to talk about his feelings."
Cora just sort of gapes at Psyche and her barrage of question, shaking her head after a long moment and remarking, "Wow, I totally forgot how you get around gossip." Not that she seems to really -mind- the blonde peppering Tisiphone with questions, or having to hear the answers, or at least a few of them. The talk of Wilkerson draws a frown. "Is that true, Psych?" She asks, "You did not mention him probably being that sort. They're no fun." She makes a bit of a face and then adds to Tis, "But her boy is actually attractive, I take it? I guess that's not surprising. You always had good taste," she tells Psyche, adding, "In terms of looks, at least."
Psyche snrrks mirthfully, rolling her eyes and grinning at Tis's dire predictions about Grunt in the sack. "Ohmigods, that's so mean," she laughs. Waving her hands, she assures Cora, "No, Nikki, he's not. Tis is casting assumptions because he's pretty — and frakdamn he's so pretty — but I can personally vouch that pretty doesn't always mean girly. Gods know mine doesn't want to talk about his feelings. Ever." She twirls a finger in the air. "Par for the testosterone course. But whatever. Alright!" She claps her hands together. "So we can reasonably assume, then, that the guy who's been chewing on Tis is manly in a hairy-chested way." She temples her fingers against her chin, eyes bright and entertained. "That narrows it down some."
Back to the pipe-assembly. Tisiphone's taking her sweet time with it. Maybe it has to be put together just /so/. Maybe she's stalling until her face doesn't feel hot enough to fry an egg on. Magic 8 Ball says 'latter'. "Somewhere beyond pretty," she chimes in with Psyche's attestations. "That damn easy on the eyes, no way they're even half that in the sack. Just the way it goes." The pipe gets balanced carefully in her lap; next comes the pocketknife, with which she starts whittling off little curls of resin from the dark greenbrown block of it in the box, the smell of it rich and intensely green. "Bubbles, I-" She looks up at her fellow pilot, then across to Cora, before her eyes drop back to her job. Chuckling, she finishes: "Man, I- I'm not saying. I'm serious. It's not- I'm not."
"Psyche, maybe we should wait until we've actually gotten a crack at the smoke before you start interrogating her," Cora suggests, "If she runs off, I'm blaming you. And wait, is it a guy?" she asks, brows drawing together somewhat and bent upwards as she looks to Tisiphone, "I mean…it doesn't necessarily have to be, after all." She watches the pipe being prepared, the pilot's denials, and circles the topic back around, "So, wait. The verdict on Wilkerson is 'beyond pretty'? Alright, I at least need to see this guy," she says, "Just to see if he lives up to the hype, now." No other reason. None at all.
Psyche slides a sly, patient look toward Tis as the Saggie protests and dissembles. "Oh, we have ways of making you talk," she assures with a sagacious nod. She grins sheepishly at Cora. "Alright, alright. Throttling back now." For a little bit, at least. "And yes, Wilkerson is beyond beyond. Really. To be a woman — or gentleman of certain persuasions — in his presence is to suffer a partial lobotomy."
Carve, carve, ca- Tisiphone's pocketknife hesitates for a second at one of Cora's questions. "Yeah. It's a guy." Her brows twitch as if the admission displeases her, somehow, then smooth out again. "Hey, maybe Wilkerson plays Triad." She continues along this line of conversation with palpable relief. And a lewd glimmer in her eye. "Strip Triad night. C'mon. We gotta do it." She grins again, down at her pipe, as she packs it.
"Ah, alright," Cora nods at Tisiphone, "Seemed like it needed to be asked, I mean…." She trails off and shrugs a little before snorting softly. "So, basically, Psyche, you want me to have a lobotomy? Is that what I'm hearing?" The next suggestion draws a laugh, and she considers for just a split second before shrugging, "Why not?"
"Strip triad… now that's inspired," Psyche muses, grinning. "I'm in — but only if Wilkerson's in? And only if he's bad at triad. Otherwise, it's not worth having to look at Boots and Spiral and the other inevitable eyesores." She wrinkles her nose. "Glimpses in the head are bad enough." She smirks at Cora. "Thinking a little less might not be bad for you, Nikkipoo. That's the whole point of tonight's exercise, right?"
"Well, shit, yeah. Whole point's to get Wilkerson there and losing bad. I'll even throw in- oh, gods. Spiral will want to- he wouldn't want to play, would he?" Fun Meter… dwindling… Tisiphone looks downright bleak for a second, before tucking the pipe to her mouth and digging into her pocket for her lighter. "He would, wouldn't he? Frak. Win some, lose some?" There has to be a silver lining in there somewhere. She flicks the fancy Zippo (thanks, Kythera!) to life and takes a series of shallow puffs off the pipe to light it, then holds it out in front of her. Airlessly: "'ere." You don't expect her to /exhale/ yet, do you?
Cora just looks back and forth between the two of them as they gradually talk themselves out of strip poker and then asks, "First, was Spiral the bunkmate you were trying to foist on me, Psyche?" Her friend gets a look, "And second… why not just make it an invite only game? Hold it here, only tell people we actually want to play with. This seems pretty obvious." She takes the pipe when it's held out, similarly puffing before passing it on to Psyche, wordlessly holding her breath for a while before eventually having to exhale at which point she adds, "And 'Nikkipoo' is not an acceptable nickname, for the record."
"He would," Psyche says to Tisiphone, looking apologetic for dropping the reality check. "He would, just to be a troll." Cora's question makes her shoulders hunch with guilt. "I had to try. Just once. Just once with every female living, I will try. There has to be SOMEONE who will appreciate him." The other Caprican's suggestion that the game be invite only gets a wide-eyed and admiring look. "You have such a big brain," she beams, taking the pipe. Toke, toke, pass. Her assent to the nickname ban is nodded, mutely, as she holds her smoke.
If one's never smoked hash before, its taste is best described as Chamalla +5 (+7 vs. Saggies). For those that have, it is, as Tisiphone promised, excellent indeed. "It's like I told Daphne once," she says, leaning forward to nab the pipe. "There's rough-housing funtimes and there's women-beaters, and there's no way that man's not in the second category." Her eyes narrow for just a second, before she shrugs it away. Smoke's a-wasting. Another lung-achingly deep drag, before it's handed on.
"Such a big brain," Cora agrees with a snort of amusement before her nose wrinkles at Tisiphone's description of Pallas, "Wow, this guy just gets better and better. You -really- owe me for even suggesting that, now, Psyche. What if I'd been braindead and said yes?" She takes the pipe back when it's passed, inhaling deeply again before passing it to Psyche. She holds this lungfull until she begins to go a bit red, and then lets it snake out her nose, head shaking a little as she says, "You were not kidding about this being good."
Psyche exhales in a rush, coughing toward the end. She wheezes and shakes her head; it's a moment before she can speak. "Tis, that's a terrible thing to say! I mean… he's mean and… mean and drunk and smelly and not at all good looking, but he's not… like that." Because all the wife beaters and child molesters and truly wretched human beings got vaporized when the bombs fell. Unicorns and rainbows. Also, fuzzy puppies. She speaking of those, she casts a rather puppyish look at Cora, all hangdog in her apology. "I don't think… he never really struck me as being like that, Nikki. Just really, really unhappy. And I think everyone can be redeemed by love." Yeah, she really just frakkin' said that. Toke, toke, pass.
"Jesse an' Ibrahim an' I tore through a bunch of the locked offices in the Sagittaran Embassy. Well-" Tisiphone says as she exhales, grinning somewhat lazily. "-I pointed at doors, they did the heavy work." Gods bless her homeworld and their antiquated ideas about Men's Work and Women's Work. "This was my share." She fondly pats the carved wooden box, then reaches again for the pipe. "Well, he's completely frakkin' unhappy. I'll give you that." Her mouth purses a moment before she reluctantly admits, "He /did/ come see me in the brig. An' said I deserved a drink for trying. Maybe he's okay." Or he will be, after this next breath of smoke. Puff, puff, pass.
Cora listens to the story of where the hash came from, nodding, "Good work. None of my scavenging was this rewarding." Then a look is turned on Bubbles. "Did you really just say that?" she asks, just staring for a moment before she laughs and repeats, "'Everyone can be redeemed by love.' Wow." She snickers a little more and then shakes her head a bit as she takes the pipe back, puffing, passing, coughing slightly and leaning back, commenting a bit hoarsely, "Victor hit me, once." A look rolled towards Psyche, "You remember Victor, right? Roussos?"
Psyche manages, somehow, to puff up and sulk simultaneously as she's laughed at. "They totally can," she maintains, indignantly. "Love is… a many splendored thing. All you need is love!" So there. Feeling she's made a very deep and irrefutable point, she takes her hits, holding her breath as she passes the pipe to Tis. "Wait, what?" she croaks a cloud of smoke, squinting at Cora. "Really? Oh my gods, Nikki…" she shakes her head. "I guess… I guess I can see that? Considering the re-frakking-tarded amount of coke he did." She shakes her head. "That's so sad. His sister was such a sweetie, too. Annie? Anya. Always thought Anya was a great name. Did you geld him?"
"He was an ass," says Tisiphone, taking the pipe and digging into the ash and embers with her pocketknife. Redistribution of (weed-)wealth, yo. She doesn't say anything else until after she's finished fussing, and then it's only a muzzy, "s'enough left for another round. Careful. Smoke's hot." The pipe's stem has warmed up, too, but not uncomfortably so. Such is the price of portability. She passes a flame back over the bowl, taking a succession of shallow little puffs, before passing it along.
Cora grins at Psyche and shakes her head, "I blacked his eye. He never did it again. Well, not seriously, anyway. We had plenty of stupid fights." After a moment she adds in a nod, "He did do a lot of coke. And he was an ass, yeah," she adds further, "Fun, though, when he wanted to be." She shrugs a little, and takes the hot pipe carefully, taking her hits and then passing it to Psyche and settling back comfortably against the crates. "How long were you with Anya?" she asks Tisiphone curiously.
Blink. Blinkblinkblink. "Okay, how stoned am I?" Psyche giggles, shaking her head. "'Cause… huh? With Anya?" She squints at Tis, leaning in to really peer, like she can't see much past the tip of her nose. "Howthefrak… do you know Vic and Annie? Or… eh?" She swings around to look at Cora for clarification, then startles a little at the pipe in her hands. "Shit. Am I bogarting?" And did she hit it already? Oh, well. She tokes for the first time again — or something — with shifty eyes. And passes.
"Nearly a year? We had our big fight just before commencement." Tisiphone's sun-bleached brows twitch again, though the displeased look doesn't really sink far into her fuzzy, detached gaze. "No. Little more'n a year." She handles the tiny pipe cautiously, and tries to pull another puff from it. A sharp grimace results. Scorched ash. Dee-licious. She sets it off to the side to cool, then looks back to Psyche with a lopsided smirk. "You ever… remember seeing her with some…" A vague gesture shapes the air. "…some girl at her heel? Spiked hair. Different colour every weekend. Didn't talk too much 'cause-" Her voice changes; her Sagittaran accent is always there, but suddenly it's almost comically thick. "-when she did, her words, they were so backwards and cute?" It drops away with a snort, her smirk widening as she looks down at her lap, scrubs her head.
Cora snickers at Psyche's confusion and starts to shake her head, then nods instead, "Both. You are high, AND she totally knew them." She gestures towards Tisiphone when Psyche looks at her, letting the Saggie pilot explain herself. She chimes in at the end, "You remember, Psych. She'd dye her hair to match Anya's outfit? It was after we graduated, though," she admits, "You might not've been around anymore, maybe. I went back sometimes. Sort of lost track of you after the whole Theseus Reed thing. Now HE was an ass," she adds with a snort of laughter."
Psyche shakes her head slowly. "No, I probably wasn't… I mean, once I went away to UC3, I was kind of…" she makes a vague gesture. Out there. Somewhere. "Wow. So you and Annie?" She peers again at Tis, then puts her hands over her face, rubbing vigorously. "Too weird! The… the convergence and… CONfluence and crap. It's just soooo spec fic. What the frak??" Delighted and slightly weirded out giggles follow. She peeks between her fingers at Cora. "Yeah, Thee was a dick." She pauses. "And a pussy." Her lips press together as she tries not to give in to the urge to cackle. "So… like… no wonder he was so into himself…" Commence cackling. "Oh, gods, I kill me…"
Tisiphone rests her head back against the wall, then flinches abruptly. She folds one arm behind her head, and rests back against that, instead. MUCH better. "Th'frak you giggling about?" she wonders, giving a few peals of snorting laughter, herself. It's not her fault. Damn stuff is /contagious/, yo. "Capricans. So frakking perverse." Which just gets her snickering /more/. It takes a while before she can add, "Wait. Wait, wait." And then for good measure: "Wait. Cookies."
Cora catches the giggles as well as Psyche marvels over confluences and "Spec fic?" she echoes, shaking her head as she snickers and then sighs, "Seriously, that guy was such a douche. Anybody could've told you you were making a huuuuuge mistake getting engaged to him. My brother married his aunt, you know, and she's awful. And he was awful as a kid." She giggles abruptly, "You should've seen the stuff they made him wear." Tisiphone's crack about Capricans earns her a half-hearted shove and a "You'd know!" in reply before she nods, "Cookies," and turns to look around for the napkin full of them. It is located, one passed to Psyche, one to herself, and one to Tis, "Even though you called us perverse."
"OhmyfrakkinggodsCOOKIES," Psyche profanes in a rush, practically toppling herself off her crate as she vultures over Cora, staring until cookies appear. She examines her cookie with a rapt and reverent attention to detail. "I am SO high," she declares. Naw. Really? "And I know I'm going to enjoy this cookie SO much more because I'm high. But… the experience won't imprint the same as it would if I… wasn't. High. Y'know? So, then… if I won't even be able to properly recall how orgasmically perfect this cookie was…" She tilts her head way to the side, squinting as she chases a thought down the rabbit hole. "Wow. I have no idea what my point was." A beat. "Alex thinks Thee was gay." That probably wasn't it.
Tisiphone accepts the cookie in cupped hands as if it was some ritual sacrament — the other kind, the kind that isn't smoked — and then slouches back against the wall, wriggling her shoulders just /so/. This time, she doesn't flinch as she settles back. The cookie is brought up to her nose, so close it almost touches, and she just bre-e-eathes for a few moments. "It smells so good," she all but moans. Looking at the cookie, this perfect cookie, one of the very last of its kind in the entire cosmos, from so close, her eyes are crossed. "And you're right. All we'll remember is, like…" Pause for another breath of cookie-fumes. "…that it was /so/ /good/. But not how good it actually was." Hey. It was profound in /her/ mind.
Cora looks up at Psyche's tumbling and looming and snorts, positioning herself protectively over the double-chocolate cookies as she unwraps them and - carefully, carefully - hands them out. Her own is held on the flat of her palm as she curls back against her crate, resting her hand-tray on her bent knee and crouching low, til her eye-level is the same as cookie-level. "It smells amazing," she agrees before nodding some more, "We should, like… write down how good it is, or something. So we can read it later and remember." She shifts the cookie slightly on its palm-pedestal, and then licks a finger, using it to pick up a crumb that's liberated itself and eat it. "Mmmm."
With exquisite care, Psyche breaks her cookie in two, wrapping half in a paper towel liberated from a nearby pallet. "I'm gonna save half for Alex," she whispers, reverent in this holy moment of pre-cookie bliss. She carefully licks and nibbles the crumbs created by the halving, still not daring to take a bite from the cookie proper. "This almost feels like something someone should do before dying. I mean, right before dying. Or something we should do in order to die." Cheerful!
"No, wait." Tisiphone's sudden hesitation comes some unknown time after Psyche's last words, her brows slowly knitting together with utter seriousness. "Don't do that. S'not right. You should eat the whole cookie because…" Because /why/, Ensign? "Because-" And here she straightens a little — victory over the smoke-addled brainmeats! — to point at Cora. "-because I get a cookie and a half. That was the deal. So /you/-" To Psyche. "-eat your whole cookie. An' the extra half can be for yer boy, an' that way we /all/ get a whole cookie." This is /cosmically/ just, is it not? She nods primly, thinking it so.
Cora peeks up over her cookie at Psyche's halving and blinks, then straightens up just a little further, emerging over knee and cookie to comment, "Wow. You must really like this boy." She eyes the cookie piece being tucked away, and then looks at her own, perhaps pondering whether she would do the same, or maybe just imagining the joy of scarfing it down, and then blinks as Tisiphone calls a stop to… some undetermined portion of the proceedings. She sits up, brows wrinkling in confusion, and then they lift in understanding followed by surprise. "Wow," she echoes, the Sagittaran the subject of her wonder, now, "You would give up your extra half for her boy? I should meet him. And okay. We will get another half for him later. I didn't bring it 'cause I thought it'd be better if you didn't eat them all at once," she explains with a nod of her own.
Psyche listens to Tisiphone and listens hard, hanging on the edges of incomplete thoughts, scrambling to pick up the thread as it spools out. And as Tis's thought — Tis's absolutely beautiful and cosmically just thought — comes to fruition, the smaller pilot's mouth hangs open a bit in awe. Her big blue eyes brim, her chest rising as her heart swells to cartoonish proportions, and she smiles brilliantly, all aglow. "Oh, Tis…" she breathes, swooning a little. "You're such a beautiful person!"
Tisiphone doesn't quite squirm under Psyche's incandescent praise, but she /does/ frown, very seriously, once more. "No," she insists. "It's just. It's the right thing to do." Right Thing To Do(tm), even, with the capital letters all but visible in the smoke-choked air. "And it'll, heh." The deep frown cuts off as if it was never there, to scratchy chuckles. "Make up for cheating in the sims. Cause, heh. It was shitty." You'd think if chamalla was this good at righting karmic wrongs, Sagittaron would've had its shit sorted out before the Cylons came along. She manages to stave off a giggle-fit — narrowly — by breaking off a morsel of cookie and chewing. The slowest. Chewing. Of. Her. Life.
"I think… if you're willing to give up your cookie-half?" Cora says, also quite serious, "That means you should definitely have your cookie-half. So… so… you can each have a half. You and the boy. I have enough." She nods gravely, and then frowns a little and asks, "What was shitty?" Her head tilts with the question, but the tilting just brings her own cookie back into her line of sight and she is quickly distracted by it, looking back up only as Tisiphone begins to chew. She eyes the pilot's cookie, and then oh-so-carefully does her best to break off a piece of similar size to pop into her mouth, where it isn't chewed at all.
"Yeah, but…" Psyche goes right on glowing, closing her eyes and broadcasting that beatific beam. "But… knowing the right thing. Recognizing it. Doing it. That's… so beautiful. It's… like dancing. It's living, human art." She takes a tiny bite of her cookie, bowing her head and radiating joy as it melts on her tongue. "Oh, I'd so forgotten about the moments when the… when life and everything are redeemed because people are just… beautiful. It just… makes everything so worth it. For… just a few minutes. When people are good to one another and noble and right. The gods have done such amazing work."
Truly, these are the finest cookies that have ever existed. Tisiphone's expression, as she chews, swallows, and carefully retrieves a smudge of chocolate from the corner of her mouth, is nothing but /blissed out/. She eats a second morsel of cookie before she remembers to wander back into the conversation drifting about her. "He's just a nugget, an' I just wanted to frak with him. Scare him. It was like- shitty." So he gets one of the last cookies in the cosmos. So say she all. She's saved from further brooding by Psyche's words; her bloodshot eyes suddenly light up and she says, "It's like. You ever, like. Get that way? When you're flying? Out there sometimes? It's just like…" She leans back, eyes closed, with a pure and simple smile on her face. "Like it's frakking perfect. Like. Yer doing what yer supposed to do. It's so good."
Cora giggles at Psyche, watching her fellow blonde as she babbles. "Totally," she agrees with a snickering nod, "These cookies are beautiful. Captain Bia giving them to us was pretty beautiful, too. She could've kept them but she gave me ten and the major ten and it was awesome." She takes another tiny bite of cookie and lets it melt in her mouth, just sort of nodding along for a while, head bobbing up and down continuously until she lets it loll back against the crates. The subject of flying makes her sigh, just a little bit, and she comments quietly, "I liked flying when I did it."
"When you forget you're even in a plane?" Psyche rhapsodizes. "When there's just… this… this beautiful, winged extension of your body moving through space, and your… your brain commands it, all seamless, and you're just… like… suspended in this… perfect, sublime element more essential than air?" She breathes a big, rapturous sigh. "Wow, these are good cookies. Captain Bia's Beautiful Cookies. Gods, I hope I look that good at her age."
Of all the people to figure would have one of those disturbing intense mind-meld moments while stoned off their gourds, pairing Tisiphone with Psyche would probably be quite far down the list. But the former's pale eyes open and fix on the latter as if she was speaking some truth seven times more profound than she realized, and the widest, happiest, /stupidest/ grin threatens to split her face. "Oh yeah," she breathes. Then again, for emphasis. "Yeah. Yeah, totally yeah. /Exactly/ like that, like…" The grin gentles abruptly, and she looks down at her cookie, breaking off another tidbit, stabbing up some of the crumbs on her fingertip. "Yeah, I. Totally understand. This cookie is frakking amazing. You sure you didn't bring more?" You never know. They might be able to will them up out of the ether.
"I know," Cora agrees with Psyche regarding the now-beloved baker's take on 40-something, nodding vigorously. It threatens, after a moment, to dislodge the cookie and so the movement is stopped immediately and for a brief period the lieutenant doesn't move at all, barely breathing, in an attempt to compensate for that (not really very) near disaster. "I wish I'd become a pilot," she says, "You guys make it sound like the best. And no," she says, expression crumbling apologetically, "I only brought three. I've got more in my bunk?" she says, "We could go get them."
"Oh, it is…" Psyche basks in the perfection of being a pilot for a moment longer — before realizing with a little start that her friend's non-pilotness might have her feeling a big dejected. "Oh, but Nikki…!" She shakes her head, a glassy-eyed deluge of sincerity. "What you are is perfect. You have SUCH a big BRAIN… and CIC needs big brains. Requires. And… and your brain it's just… just HUGE!" She holds her hands out around her head, demonstrating the monstrous cranial capacity that Cora apparently possesses. "Frakking ginormous. And you're all disciplined and stuff. It's totally amazing."
Her pure and perfect hatred of the Marines was ruined when she discovered good people within their ranks. How is she supposed to hate the medicators, in the wake of these cookies? DILEMMA. "It /is/ the best," Tisiphone tells her cookie, on matters of pilotry, smiling down lovingly at it. Such a well-behaved cookie. So delicious. "You know whof-" she starts to say, while breaking off another piece. Pause. No aspirating the cookie, girl. Chew. Chew. Chew. Whatever she was going to say drifts off on the smoke, her attention thoroughly distracted by Psyche's demonstration of Cora's stupendously, monstrously huge brain capacity. "Yeah. Yeah, totally," she agrees, nodding several times more than is necessary. "You made it out of Caprica City. And then. You were in Kythera for, like… ever. And you survived. How frakking amazing is /that/?"
Cora blinks at Psyche, and blinks some more, wide-eyed, though incapable of being quite as wide-eyed as her friend. She starts to giggle again and covers her mouth, shaking her head, which somehow causes her head to keep shaking as she insists, "It's not," the word drawn out, more like nooooot, really, "It's not big enough at allll. There's all this… stuff, and I can't figure it out. If my brain were that big I'd totally have it figured out. Unless it's too big, so the bits and pieces that need to go together can't get together because they're too far apart from each other." Inside her brain. She ponders this for a minute, brows drawing together, and then turns her blinking on Tisiphone, nodding, "I was in Kythera for ever. Oh my gods, forever. There were no cookies." She looks longingly at her cookie, breaking off another tiny nibble of a piece and licking the crumbs off her fingertips.
Psyche catches the giggles from Cora, putting a hand over her mouth, unable to even dampen much less smother the glee. She nods along as the other Caprican tries to work out why things aren't coming together in her headspace, taking another tiny cookie nibble in the meantime. "Maybe a little too big," she nods, but hastens to add, supportively, "But you'll grow into it! You have… like… genius land mass, right? So now it's just a matter of… of developing all that real estate with… with genius buildings." She pauses to contemplate this new profundity. "Genius condos." Totally.
"No cookies." Which is indeed worth a moment of solemn silence from Tisiphone. "But. You had that. Place." You know, the /place/! "The stripclub. Aquarian Pete's. And the bar. There was this. Ambrosia. Ibrahim and I got /so/ /drunk/. Ma-a-an, we should have taken all those bottles with us. The frak were we thinking?" Little details like 'Gotta go, a hundred Centurions closing in to brutally slaughter us if we're not gone by dawn,' seem to be escaping her. She falls back into mourning the abandoned ambrosia between nibbles of cookie until a sudden giggle-fit seizes her. "Man, no. No. Even better. Genius walkways. Like. Fancy frakking ones. Made of glass, right? So like, when you're /thinking/, you can see the thoughts going through them." Sheer. Brilliance.
"I didn't have a stripclub," Cora says, looking confusedly at Tisiphone, "And my bar ran out of Ambrosia. And then everything else. Except the kegs of beer, which were huge but they got pretty gross. Warm beer is the worst." She makes a face, scraping her tongue against her teeth, but this serves only to remind her that her mouth currently tastes not like stale beer but like COOKIES and she takes another little crumb of hers. It takes another minute or two for her to catch up to talk of her brain, and then she just peers at Psyche for a minute. "Condos?" she seems confused, but then the other pilot starts talking about glass walkways and she jumps in, shaking her head, "No, no, no — they need those moving walkways. The conveyer belt flat escalator things! So then my thoughts will get across my brain faster! That'd be perfect. But they can be glass, too. Glass conveyer belt things. That'd be beautiful. And I could watch all the ideas ride by and it'd all be so neat. Instead of all…" her nose wrinkles and she gestures with one hand, a tangly, squirming-finger gesture that evokes a bag full of angry worms as much as anything else.
"But, but…!" Psyche protests, baffled as her beautiful, high-end, cerebellum-front condos become glass conveyor belts zipping around the brain-berhood. "Where will they sleep? And… and have dinner parties and bubble baths?" She sucks a bit of chocolate off her thumb, eyes darting back and forth between Cora and Tis as wild fancies arc like electricity. "This isn't a… a thought factory, it's… a habitat for inspiration and epiphany! Your ideas need room service." She takes a breath… pauses. "Which… I'm not sure what that means, except that room service improves everything."
This is what happens when you let a pilot and an Intelligence officer loose upon tender, delicate flights of fancy. They turn into people-movers. "Epiphanies!" Tisiphone echoes, as if she knows all-ll-ll about those and approves of their more widespread use. "Yeah. Totally, /yeah/ wait. You frakking have bubble baths at your dinner parties?" Her face screws up in deep puzzlement for a second, eyes moving from Psyche to Cora, before she dissolves into snorting, giggling laughter. Somewhere amongst it is: "Frakking- perverse- Capricans- ohgod- mgonnadropthecookie-"
"Where will they…" Cora trails off, baffled by Psyche's protests for a moment, eyes wide. "It would be better if they had parties," she agrees finally, nodding and nodding some more, "I need them to, like… meet up and get to know each other and mix all around and, like, dance, or something. Or have an orgy! A thought-orgy, and then they turn into more thoughts. New better ones. That's what I need." She babbles all this through and below Tisiphone's giggle-fit about bubble baths at dinner parties, and turns in time to catch the tail-end of the giggles herself, culminating in "Ohmygods not the cookie!"
"THOUGHT ORGIES!" Psyche squeaks in elation, holding her cookie in both hands — one cupped over the other — like a butterfly that might escape. SHE will not be dropping her cookie. She bounces and squirms a seated happy dance, giggling. "Yes! Abso-frakking-lutely yes — because that's — you know? SO what epiphanies are! They're… like… thoughtgasm!"
"Frakking /orgies/? In yer /head/? Love of the frakking gods, yer- it'd be- aw FRAK no." Tisiphone crumples back against the wall, her cookie trapped against her chest in a cage of fingers as she laughs harder and harder. She tries pulling her knees to her chest, as if she might be able to /squeeze/ the laughter to a stop. It, of course, doesn't work. She's nearly sobbing by the end of the fit, wiping at her eyes with her free hand, and moans, piteously and pleadingly, "It'd be /sticky/." Like it's the worst thing /ever/. Her shoulders keep shaking, but the giggles are airless and soundless by now.
Cora still has her cookie balance in an open palm, but she has to give that up as the giggles take her, clasping her other hand over it as she laughs, "Yes!" to Psyche, "Exactly, they're just like that! And I can feel one like right over there and I want it but I just. Can't. Get to it and it's driving me CRAZY. There needs to be a big frakking brain thought orgy and then boom! Epiphanygasms or whatever." She just looks at Tisiphone for a beat, and then bursts out laughing as well, finally managing to retort, "Thoughts can't be sticky!"
Psyche topples over onto her side and goes fetal, howling with laughter. She keeps trying to drag in enough breath to speak, occasionally uttering a completely non-frakking-sensical syllable, sparking laughter afresh. Still cradling her cookie, whimpering and panting, she manages to wheeze, "… sticky…!" and rolls right off her crate. Pilot meets floor, blinks… and screeches with mirth, shaking and squeezing tears from her eyes. "Ow!"
The thing to do, when someone literally laughs their ass off a crate is to check and make sure they're okay, right? WRONG. The thing to do is /laugh harder/ — which Tisiphone tries to do, she swears she does, but she's out of air, and her diaphragm hurts, and so it doesn't take long before she's huddled, nearly fetal, whimper-giggling, "Ow," every time she takes a wheezing breath. "Shit. Oh, shit. Shit." She stands up, her cookie still held in a death-grip against her shirt, and sways unsteadily. "You…" She nearly crumbles back into giggles, but manages to hyperventilate herself out of it. "You okay?" She's concerned, somewhere beneath the foggy, stupid grin. Honest, she is.
Cora definitely laughs harder, her own cookie now clutched to her chest with both hands, curling towards her knees around it as she quakes with helpless laughter, losing her breath entirely more than once and falling silent only to immediately being giggling again as soon as it is back. She can't even stop as Tisiphone stands up, though her eyes widen in surprise at that bold measure. She wipes below them with the back of her hands, still shuddering with occasional little bursts of pained, exhausted laughter, head finally bowed against her knees, face hidden as she tries to breath.
Psyche holds her cookie aloft, like some arcane and immensely powerful medallion. However bent (like whoa) or broken she might be… the cookie remains. It remains. "I'm good!" she squeaks, snuffling a few more pathetic whimper-giggles. "I'm… so good. It's just a flesh wound. You should see the other guy. The check is in the mail. I've never even been to Gemenon! I've just got one of those faces. I swear he told me he was eighteen." Laughter tries to happen again, but she can only groan… and sort of gurgle faintly. "What was the question?"
"I don' wanna remember. I'll just laugh again," whimpers Tisiphone, carefully extricating her cookie from her now-smudged shirt. Waste of good chocolate, girl. For SHAME. "I should go," she adds, mumbled more to the remainder of her cookie than anything. "And…" She trails off while she brushes the crumbs off her shirt. "Sleep. Lay down. Finish my cookie." Hopefully not in that order.
A few more burbles of laughter sneak out from the ball Cora has made of herself at all of Psyche's answers, what sound like bits and pieces of words repeated to herself with giggles filling in for half the syllables. She finally flops back, twisting around to slide off the crate entirely and flop onto her back, chest heaving with still-labored breath for a moment before she sighs and objects, "You can't goooo. We have to finish the cookies first. And!" She pauses after that enthusiastic bridge, and frowns, but points at Tisiphone, "There was something you were supposed to tell us that now I forgot."
"Oh, Tis…!" Psyche declares, as though beginning an ode. She stretches her arms out to the pilot, towering up there. So far from the floor. "Beautiful, noble, glorious, radiant Tis!" She beams up at the Saggie, at a loss for how further to express her adoration — then kisses the cookie to her in tribute. "Thank you." Two words, said with such warmth and simplicity that they need little else.
How can one resist a smile such as that? Not to mention the cookie-worship. Tisiphone is rarely anywhere /near/ effusive, but it's a beaming, sleepy smile she gives back to Psyche. Utterly devoid of her usual spikiness and bristle. "But I wanna. Take the cookie back with me with me. And." She looks shiftily from one of them to the other. It may well be laughable how obvious her this is me, trying to lie face is. "I wanna save it for later," she finally compromises, which is truthful enough she can actually say it without snickering at herself. "And I, I. Heh. Um." She upturns the long-cold pipe, tapping the ash out onto the floor before tucking it away in the carved box, and the carved box into her satchel. "I dunno what I was supposed to tell you. I dunno." Her shoulders twitch with a poorly-restrained giggle.
Cora covers her mouth with her hand to keep from giggling again as Psyche begins what sounds like it will become a poem. When it fails to go that direction, she relaxes again, and then grins as the pilots beam at each other. And then she laughs again, part triumph, part glee, part fending off a return to the uncontrollable before, "You are so lying! What are you gonna DO with it??" She pauses, grins, biting her lip and adds quickly, "Not— not like THAT. But what're you gonna do with it?" Always probing for intel, this one, mining for more facts to ride on their glass conveyer belt walkways to the orgy-condos in her mind. She can't seem to resist the question.
Psyche sits up abruptly, like a corpse from a coffin, clutching her cookie to her heart. "OH! Oh!" She staggers to her feet. "Are you going to… like… share your cookie, too?" she asks Tisiphone, looking ready to swoon again. Or maybe that's all the blood redistributing as she becomes vertical WAY too fast. She staggers a little, grabbing a shelf to keep upright. Headrush!
"Nuh-uh." Tisiphone shakes her head, very energetically. Not telling. Not. Telling. She juggles the satchel around, unwilling to set the cookie down even for a moment in order to make the satchel-closing any easier. "I just." She shrugs the pouch of unbleached canvas up onto her shoulder, its contents jangling softly. "I. Maybe. Yeah." A deeply bashful grin is given to the poor, crumbling, half-melted cookie-fragment which — let's face it — is looking more and more like a bedraggled thing brought in by one's pet than some masterwork of the culinary arts. "Just. I'm. Gonna go, okay? C'mon." /So/ gawky, all of a sudden.
Cora sits up abruptly, scrambling to her feet. Everybody else is doing it. Her eyes cross a little as she goes pale suddenly and she blinks rapidly, head given a brisk shake to clear it before she grins, "I knew it!" about the sharing. She looks at Tis's cookie and then at her own, and then nods and nods when the pilot says she's going to go. "Okay," she says, "Umm, thanks for doing this trade. This was an awesome trade. We should do it again. Like… soon."
Psyche drops her butt back onto a crate, smiling in a way that begs little animated birds to twitter around her shoulders. With hearts in their beaks. And… like… some flowers. And other stuff. "Go share your cookie, Tis," she nods serenely, like Aphrodite herself giving the whole affair her blessing. She nods again at Cora. "Soon," she agrees.
"There's not much left," Tisiphone realizes, very belatedly, frowning down solemnly at the cookie. She improves this problem, naturally, by breaking off another crumbling-away morsel and chewing it savouringly. "This was… this was really…" She looks slowly from one of her smoking compatriots to the other, and that awkward, gawky smile blooms into something sunny and perfect. An onlooker might well ask who the pale-eyed pilot was, and what they did with the /real/ Tisiphone. "This was great. I haven't. Had fun like this in frakking forever." With that, she ambles bonelessly toward the hatch, bumping gently into the frame before she redirects herself. "Be careful in the hall. S'dark." And the hatches jump out to get you, too. There's a muzzy glance back, a muzzier smile, and then she's off, the last scrap of her cookie in tow.