| To the Future |
| Summary: | In which Allan Rejn melts down at last. |
| Date: | 27 Dec 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | Very Satisfied |
| Players: |
         |
| Galley — Deck 9 — Battlestar Cerberus |
|---|
| Behind the two hangar decks, the Cerberus' Galley is the largest room on the ship. Nearly half the size of a football field, the eating area is made up of long lines of stainless steel tables that can be folded up and placed against the wall for larger events. Individual seats are the standard military issue, boring and grey with lowest-bidder padding. The line for food stretches across one of the shorter sides of the room while the kitchen behind works nearly twenty-four hours a day to produce either full meals or overnight snacks and coffee for the late shifts. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #304 |
Mid-shift. Some people are here trying to catch the tail end of lunch. The older guy in orange coveralls at a table by himself seems like he's not in any hurry to be anyplace. Hell, he probably already had lunch. The top is unzipped and folded around his stomach as he leans lazily back in a chair, watching the room with idle curiosity. Especially a group of about a half-dozen female pilots and ECO's across the room. Enjoyin that coffee, yep, Mark seems quite at home to enjoy his six hours off Right Here.
Devlin is one of those trying to catch the tail end of lunch, it seems, shifting the gym bag over his shoulder as he moves through the line with his tray. It spits him out near-ish to Mark's almost-empty table and he takes the few extra paces that way and nudges a free chair with a toe, asking the engineer, "Mind if I sit?" He doesn't quite set his tray down just yet, but he does tilt his head to look where the other man's looking, spotting the group of female Air Wing-ers across the room and chuckling. "Picked the seats with the view, huh?"
There are three things in the world nobody wants to know about: the creation of sausages, the passing of laws, and the process by which Libran's former Secretary of State has obtained far more than his alloted portion of vouchers for a tipple at Colonial Pete's. Allan Rejn's drink of choice this balmy afternoon is some vile approximation of a Bloody Mary, the smell from which surrounds his portly figure like miasma about a swamp. It's coming from the dented metal flask that's perpetually by his side, one reclaimed from the MPs a few days after his truly epic bender. The cap bangs loudly against the neck of the thing as he walks, causing the — is that a tiny wiener dog? yes, impaled as it is on a toothpick — garnish, let's call it, to sway where it's perched on the lip of his drink.
Well. This is taking 'hair of the dog' to a whole other level.
Evandreus himself plugs along rather listlessly in Stiffy's wake as she goes off to sit with the flock of wing-sporting females. Either the double shifts getting to him or some other anxiety wearing at his person, but he doesn't seem quite up to joining them, like he might on an ordinary day. He goes to make himself up a cup of tea, instead, spotting Abs and bobbing the tea into the hot water a few times before shuffling closer. "Hey, guy," is aimed at the Abs, and a sort of awkward do-I-know-you smile wavered out toward the orange-clad one. He doesn't quite go as far as to sit.
In dashes Psyche, skidding up to the counter, still half in her flightsuit (unzipped, around her hips in the slouchy, celebratory, Survived Another CAP fashion). She pants a moment, catching her breath, then pleads with the folks on kitchen duty, "Pleasepleaseplease tell me there's mac and cheese left? You're still serving, right? I NEED processed orange cheese powder. Badly." She stares at the poor guy with the serving spoon, who's staring back. "Don't look at me like that — Doc promises my birth control's still working." She thrusts her tray forward with a big smile. "Doubles, please?"
Mark looks up to Devlin on the approach and smirk. He gestures wide to a seat with his half-full mug and nods. "Pick a stool and ye shall reap the benefits." He hangs his other arm over the back end of his chair. "Lovely, isn't it? I don't get over here much so I try to enjoy large rooms with ah, a 'diverse population', whenever I can. You understand." The older gent winks to Devlin and swings his mug back to take a sip. There's a short dude-nod to Evandreus before he spots (and hears) Rejn. "Sweet Gods. I had no idea you people had livestock! Dunno if I'd wanna eat that thing, though. What is it???" Mark's head tilts to the side as if to try and identify Rejn better. When Psyche bounds in, though, Mark perks up and nudges Devlin. Unsuspecting, yes he is.
"Hey, E," Devlin greets his fellow pilot with a smile and a little shoulder-bump as he sets his tray down, laughing along with Mark and his smirk, "Totally understand," he confirms as he tugs out a chair and takes a seat, shaking his head about Rejn, "I don't know him, sorry. Looks like a civilian, though. Maybe one of those government whatever types?" He's halfway to a bite as Psyche skids in and he catches the words 'doc' and 'birth control' and his head swivels towards the line. He spends a second blinking until Mark nudges him and he catches the older man's expression and grins. "I know, right?" he replies, "Can't not stare at an ass like that, huh?"
Evandreus takes the nod for as good as an invitation and knees himself down onto a seat, ending up sitting for the most part atop his leg, perched there as though he might fly away again at a moment's notice, tea mug held close to his chest in both hands. His eyebrows loft lazily at the fellow's line of questioning, and he turns to look, his features greying further when he sees whom Mark must mean. "That," he replies, voice gentle, "Is a human person, you know." He turns back to eye Mark almost harshly. "You oughtn't talk about him that way. It's not nice." But there's very little umph behind the words. As if he hardly had anything left in him to put into his Mr. Manners routine beyond a weary disapprobation.
Rejn's pretty easy to identify, all things considered: dressed as he is in his (newly-laundered) beige suit, he strikes a fairly obvious figure as he stomps toward the collection of ECOs that are the current objects of attention. As he draws closer, his unique scent becomes a little easier to identify: tomato powder, hot sauce, and an undercurrent of bad aftershave that causes his own nose to wrinkle above the bristles of his moustache. Evandreus receives an absent, almost fatherly pat on the back as the older man passes. What can he be up to?
And over in girl-land: "Scuse me," says Stiffy to her girlfriends, her reedy voice just a little bit strained. "That's my date." And fiddling with something in her pocket, she veers away from the Black Hole of Estrogen toward an unoccupied table — the same one at which Rejn the human person has now deposited himself, dress shoes tapping aimlessly as he sits.
Hmm.
The ass in question, and the girl attached to it, come sashaying triumphantly over with more bright orange mac & cheese than one person should reasonably know what to do with. "I think he might've been exclaiming over the cocktail weinie being brandished by the human person, and not the human person himself, Bunnyheart," she says to Evan, kissing his cheek. She tilts her head over toward the table where Devlin and Mark sit, inviting Bunny along now that he's been abandoned by Stiffy, and then plunks herself down at said table, beaming. "Hi, boys!"
"Well not so much stare as admire. Staring is rude, or so I'm told. I kind of prefer to admire from afar. Beautiful creatures no doubt, though." But Mark laughs to Evan and shakes his head. "Someone who cares that little? They want to be taken seriously? I challenge that assertion, young lad!" The orange-suited New Guy watches Rejn pass by and catches a wonderful whiff. "Holy Hell. You make a concious decision to smell that good, man?" Though when Psyche comes over, Lieutenant Makinen is struck silent, watching her sit. "Uh. Hi. Welcome to our table? I'm Mark, by the by. And this gentleman next to me is.." He gestures to the as-yet unidentified Devlin. Gotta be polite to the new arrival after all.
"It's an admiring stare," Devlin tells Mark with a bit of a grin, adding in a low, conspiritorial tone, "Wait 'til she turns around, she's got a rack to match." He takes a bite of what seems to be canned spinach, and then watches Rejn and Evan and Stiffy without comment, just eating his lunch. Psyche's approach to the table is followed with his eyes and he glances at Mark, and then back to her, smiling as he admits, "We've met. But I'm Alex," he offers helpfully.
There's no question Rejn's acting a bit more furtive than normal. Taking another judicious sip from his flask — gods, does he really think that drink's going to cure his hangover? — he retrieves what looks to be a handful of potpourri from within his breast pocket. Crumpled up balls of laminated paper in blue, pink, yellow, and black tumble onto the table before he scoops them all up in his voluminous palm, concealing them from sight. They're easily recognizable to anybody with a love of alcohol and half a brain cell: drink vouchers, all of them, obtained from only the gods know where. And so concerned is he about this latest transaction that he doesn't even bother responding to the jibes from Mark and Devlin's table, jibes that would usually elicit a typically scathing response.
Hmm, again.
As for Stiffy? She looks around with those twitchy brown eyes of her, scanning the galley to make sure she's no longer the center of attention. And then from a pocket of her own she withdraws — well, something. "Nice to see ya!" she chirps, her slightly frazzled expression echoed by her quavering soprano. Then her hand's grasping his, initiating the transaction with awkward determination. "How's it hanging?"
"Flaccid," is Rejn's tightly-phrased response. Then it's his turn to grab her hands, and in little less than a second the transaction is complete.
Evandreus tips his cheek toward Psyche to accept the kiss there, then reciprocates with a gentle touch of chapped lips to the woman's cheek, followed by a sip of hot tea and a return to his sitting in ashen-faced quiet. But Rejn's in good hands with Stiffy, and even if the meeting surprises him somewhat, he at least knows that Stiffy will probably be kind to him in between her threats of sodomy. "Maybe," he'll grant Bubbles, for lack of interest in arguing the point. "Hi, Bubbles." Young lad? The moniker gleans a skeptical look from the Bunny.
Psyche's smile falters as Mark proves her wrong. She looks at him a moment. "Huh. Y'know? I'm at the wrong table. Quasi-nice almost meeting you." She flashes a smile at Devlin, though. "You should call me, though. You're cute." And up she gets, tray back in hand, and walks over to where Rejn and Stiffy sit. There, her tray is redeposited — and she sits herself down in Allan Rejn's lap. "Hi!" she beams at the man, hooking a thumb at Stiffy. "Did I hear this was your date? 'Cause I could totally take her. All we need is a kiddie pool and some jello, and it's on."
Damnable civilians are still running wild aboard the Cerberus despite the new corral called Elpis they are supposed to be penned up in. In comes another one, only this time it's Sawyer Averies with a coffee cup clutched in her hand and a sheer deterimination etched on her features. She will obtain coffee, oh yes she will. Her high heels click in a crisp rhythm as she marches right past the rows of tables for the coffee urn.
Mark lifts a hand towards Devlin, the lazy bend of the wrist saying 'hold off' with the appropriate cool. "All in time, my friend. Admire, do not shove through." Though he quirks a brow at the 'we've met' remark. "Alex. Well met. I'm Mark." The Engineer can't help but give a few glances over at Rejn and Stiffy, though. It doesn't linger but there is a bit of a doubletake. And Then Psyche is off to sit on the man's lap. What the Frak just happened?? "Alex." He claps the other man's shoulder in case he isn't paying attention. "What the hell just happened? I get that this is a big ship with lots of beautiful people but explain something to me. How does That Guy manage to serenade a sweet thing like that?"
Devoid of loud fanfare or attention-grabbing antics, the open Duty Greens jacket hangs about McQueen's shoulders as he swings a laundry bag into a more comfortable position with a lazy swipe of his arm. The other one proceeds to meander through the chow line balancing a tray on its surface, shifting it to and fro to juggle the every-growing collection of its nebulously edible contents. Bending downwards to sniff at a pungent bowl of — something, he edges away from the line, scanning the unusual suspects gathered here with only the faintest of overt attention.
Okay. Well, that manages to call a smile to its accustomed place on the Bunny's face. Not a grand one, but one, no less. "Maybe it's because he's actually got a heart," he posits in response of Mark's question, chin lifting a little to twist the words into an intonation that implies that Mark himself obviously hasn't got one. But beyond that he's happy enough to settle in and watch the antics of Bubbles and Stiffy fussing over Rejn. How sweet.
Rejn freezes like a deer in the headlights as a tiny blonde woman prevents him from making his unobtrusive exit. But this man wasn't named QUODEL Cerberus' Special Rapporteur for nothing: in an instant, he's got his response, which is delivered with that familiar smirk just a few degrees shy of being smug. "Shit," he drawls, his free hand rising in an attempt to slap her on that bodacious bootay. "Better not make me pay for this, lady." His left hand, in the meantime, has formed a fist around whatever he received from the other woman at the table — a woman who makes her exit back to the rest of the ECO flock with a deliciously satisfied grin on her face, leaving the white-knuckled lecher behind.
How sweet indeed.
Devlin looks disappointed as Psyche abruptly gets up to leave, brows and head both lifting as she does. "See ya," he replies with a little wave that's a beat too late. He turns back to Mark then and shrugs, replying, "Pretty sure she's doing it to spite you and make a point." He takes a long swig of water, and then turns to watch the blondes and Rejn, asking Mark and Evan, "Did you see what she traded him for those vouchers? I missed it."
Objective: Caffeine complete, Sawyer finally takes a moment to turn around and survey the crowd. Apparently the blonde reporter has a few minutes to kill and she's looking for a victim-er-person to occupy her time with. If the tick tock of her eyes is any indication, her choices are between Devlin and Bunny and some man she's unacquainted with or the lech. For whatever reason, she choses the latter's table to occupy and happenstance has her dropping into the chair Stiffy just vacated. Maybe she's next on Deal or No Deal, Rejn style.
Psyche's jumps a good foot as her backside's smacked. She stares at Rejn a moment, then puts on a sweet smile and a dopey little giggle. "Oh, Allan!" You rogue. She twines her arms around his neck and leans in to whisper something to him. The shift surreptitiously puts her knee against his groin. Something the rest of the galley might not notice, but Mr. Rejn certainly cannot fail to.
"Aw c'mon," Mark says, gesturing towards Bunny with an upturned palm. "Because I made a joke about the guy, now I don't have a heart?" The Lietuenant shakes his head and looks back to Rejn and the hand with the large man's prize in it. Devlin's remarks get a slight roll of his eyes, then. "Lords. One of you knuckleheads check your shoes because I think someone stepped in a friggin doublestandard pie somewhere. Ain't ever heard of a couple women giggling over a guy passing by? The hell you think they're talking about? The shine on the toe of his boots?" The man waves it all away once more and sips at his coffee. "Yep. Sure did, Mister Alex." Apparently what it is, though, he isn't saying. The man known only as 'Mark' just turns his chair to watch how the rest of this is going to unfold, sipping on his black gold.
You sense: Psyche whispers sweetly, "Smack my ass again and your ball's'll be squatting where your tonsils live. Okay?"
"Vouchers?" Evan can only ask back, his powers of observation obviously having been left in the cockpit of his raptor. And something in that upturned palm disperses his sprig of agitation, and his eyes get cast back down into his tea. "Sorry. People keep giving Rejn a bad time. It gets old really, really fast these days."
Devlin watches Psyche and Rejn, and then starts to wave to Sawyer before she too detours to join the QUODEL rep. Or former rep. Whatever he is now besides drunk. "He is the guy with the booze vouchers," he points out to Mark, "Maybe they're just sucking up for freebies. Or," he adds as Psyche coos and leans in close, "Maybe they know something we don't. I'd rather not think about it." As for Evan, Alex just watches him for a second and then turns back to his lunch, though one eye's kept on the scene across the room.
Boots clomping along, the bedraggled McQueen-figure manages to shift his burden away from the lunch line throng and begins carrying it all in the vague direction of the dining area, stopping only once to shift his tray. Just as he hears Evandreus speak. "Oh. Somebody's readin' my mind here." He rumbles, thick eyebrows waggling as his eyes go from Evan, to Psyche, and finally towards Rejn. He shakes his head in an overtly deliberate attempt to appear somber. "Bad timing?"
"Doll, you came to me." Rejn speaks in a low, hoarse whisper, and his beefy hand is summarily withdrawn from its (oh-so-comfortable) landing spot to greet Sawyer with a complete lack of shame. "I do moustache rides, too." This to Psyche, whose slight body he now attempts to shove away. "And sausage." He's clearly referring to the little wiener still clinging for dear life onto the rim of his flask. Clearly. Gritted teeth force themselves into a smile, grinding together almost as tightly as the fingers of his other hand. It's a smile that only widens when he sees the pilot who now clomps over.
Yup. This is really getting uncomfortable.
As for the mystery? Stiffy's about to clear it all up. "Don't know why people hate him," she calls toward the crowd, her voice matter-of-fact. It's like she knew exactly what Evandreus had said, despite being out of earshot. "Sure, he smells bad, he doesn't shave, and I don't think you'd be able to find his dangly man-parts under all that fat, but he's nice enough if you have something he wants." And to giggles and rolled eyes from the chorus line of ECOs, the skinny girl waggles her hips in the worst demonstration of seduction any of the men have ever seen.
Sawyer just sits calmly across from Rejn, either unfazed by or just completely ignoring the man's innuendo. "We should talk." That's the only thing the fellow civilian offers before she lifts her coffee mug for a sip of the hot strong brew. When Stiffy's voice pipes up in defense of Rejn, one eyebrow quirks in silent question: what /does/ Allan Rejn want.
"Well it might get old but I'm new and he doesn't look like that great of a guy to me. Might be a smidge deserved." He lifts a hand to show just how much of a 'smidge' it is, but he keeps his attention on the group. Mark gives an idle wave to McQueen as if it were permission to take a seat - like he's in control of it. The orange-clad scruffian doesn't seem to care either way. "Who was the chick he was trading with? What's she do?" Mark does not sound as if he is looking for a date or a phone number. Nor is he replying. The man starts looking between everyone and feeling the discomfort. Riiiiiiiight. It might be time to evac.
Psyche requires little shoving, shifting herself from Uncle Allan's lap to an adjacent chair. She gives Sawyer a flash of big, in-over-her-head eyes, sighs, and steals the wiener from Rejn's drink. "I've sat in Father Solstice's lap, too, sweetie, but I never rode his moustache," she tells the man. "Some things are actually just friendly."
There's a tight-lipped almost-grin on McQueen's face that doesn't quit. "HERE HE IS. THE LAST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE. ALLLLLAAAN REJN!" The pilot's head immediately darts about for an open seat, however close he can get to the crowd, to deposit his tray, dump his laundry sack, and his grin broadens. "Glad to see you crawl out of whatever hole you've been hiding in. He then flashes a wave to the recognized pilots collectively as he kicks out a chair, as well as Sawyer and Mark who he doesn't apparently know. They get a nod of their own, however.
"Yeah, dunno," Alex replies eloquently to Mark with a shrug, "First time I've seen him around that I remember." He's watching the interaction between Rejn and the blonde (the second one that is, Psyche, not Stiffy or Sawyer) and then lifts a hand to wave at the next pilot to arrive. "Hey, McQueen." The grin and the shout get a blink, and then he glances back at Mark as the man asks about Stiffy. He smiles crookedly. "I'll tell you if you tell me what she gave him."
"Yeah, yeah, off you go." And just in case Psyche wasn't serious about leaving, Rejn opens his mouth and allows himself a horrendously loud belch before shaking that ruddy head back and forth like a twitching walrus. To clear it of the smell, see, and send it drifting toward his charming dining companions. Punishment for interrupting a private exchange, enough to drive away all but the most committed of interlocutors. Unfortunately, Rejn has a sneaking suspicion that the category of 'committed interlocutors' includes both Sawyer and McQueen. And so it's time to fire arrow two in his quiver: the brusque cold shoulder. "I'm busy," he snaps shortly, still making damn sure whatever's in his hand stays hidden from view. Maybe that's why he hasn't just up and left: the fact that he still hasn't managed to transfer his booty (Stiffy's, that is) into a location safe from prying eyes.
Evandreus wraps up the teabag in a napkin, loosely, perhaps saving it for another cup down the line. He doesn't give up the details of Stiffy's job, since Abs seems intent on using the information for barter. Or maybe he just isn't up for all this socialization. Queenie's given a quiet nod, but then the Bunny's up and going to put the mug with the rest of the dirties. "See you guys later." He'll turn, almost at the door, as Rejn starts up the belch, waiting there for a moment to see if he can catch his eye and give him a frail-looking but cordial wave before he goes.
Sawyer smiles serenely through the gaseous exchange and the bark from her fellow QUODEL member, "Whenever is convenient." She says simply, followed by another sip of coffee. Finally the journalist breaks out of her tunnel vision of Rejn and lets her features warm a few degrees as she looks across to Psyche. "How's married life?" And with that question, there is a little up nod to the nearby table and presumeably the other half of that equation.
Psyche's sense of social justice is strong. It ended her up over here, in that most loathsome of laps, and it's gotten her manhandled. And breathed on. Truly, no good deed goes unpunished. Her eyes narrow slightly and she very deliberately eats her purloined cocktail wiener, chewing slowly, before helping herself to a swallow of Rejn's drink. All the while fastidiously not breathing through her nose. "It's fantastic," she tells Sawyer with a bright, determined smile. "How's the backbone of our new civilization shaping up?" This she directs at Rejn, because she's not excluding him from the conversation. Oh, no. She will bludgeon him into a bloody pulp with kindness, frakdamnit.
"Nah, its okay, Alex. Flight suit? She's only one of a few. I'll peg her down eventually." Mark tips back the coffee mug and slowly stands from his chair, watching Rejn out of the corner of his eye as he kicks teh chair back under the table. The Engineer climbs back into his orange coveralls and rank and zips the gear up the front. "He's hard to miss." The Lieutenant takes up the mug and nods to Alex as he makes his way slowly for the door, angling to keep watch.
"Ooooh. Right. Busy. Let me know how your one-man war against the Spirits of Booze plays out." McQueen says with the faintest of derisive snorts. "Somehow I expected more from the Twelve Colonies' highest surviving Government Functionary." One of his bushy brows arcs at the larger man, and he begins shovelling in a pile of mushy substance on his fork. "Then again…"
"Later, gator." Stiffy of the limited attention span loses interest in the goings-on nearby once her pilot stands up to leave. "Poor baby," she calls in Evan's direction, her voice pitched in that obnoxious sing-song usually reserved for dogs and infants. "Feel better!"
Rejn, for his part, doesn't bother waving back, instead fixing McQueen with a truly frosty gaze. "Last surviving functionary? Zeus' massive balls, I hadn't realized that." Translation: 'I realized that.' "Guess that means the Cylons really did a bang-up job, doesn't it?" Cocktail wiener stolen? No problem. It just allows him to take an honest-to-gods swig from a rapidly emptying flask. "It's like that frakking story about that frakking egg. Knock his ass off the wall enough times and he won't be getting back up for shit. Civilization." The last word's spoken with not-quite-drunken venom, spat out along with a few droplets of red-stained spittle. "Don't let all this fool you. We're still monkeys with clubs, deep down. Pity only a few of us are honest enough to admit it."
Devlin lifts a brow at Mark and shrugs, "Well, good luck. There're quite a few pilots around, actually." Not so many that sound like Stiffy, but… whatever. He lifts a hand to wave farewell to the engineer before turning back to watch as McQueen joins the Rejn-fray. Reluctantly, after a long moment or two, he sets his fork down, drains his glass, and gets up to walk over to the other table. One hand is set on Psyche's shoulder and a little nod given to Sawyer in greeting.
"So, who's your friend?" Alex asks after a second's pause in which he tries to discreetly peer at Rejn's fist.
"It's all in how you /use/ th' club, yeh Blondie?" McQueen's response is chipper, although he manages to swallow the first noxious bite of chow without talking with his mouth full, his utensils being handled in fluid movements. He gives Stiffy a flat glance with that same magical eyebrow he's been using liberally since he walked in. "I dunno. Forgive me, I was bein' presumptuous. /I/ don't really know what a leadership role is like, after all. Which is fine."
"What he means to say," Sawyer addresses Psyche with a tip of her coffee cup towards the woman, "is that in light of the recent attack on Cerberus and the prolonged existance of Condition Two, the civilian population aboard the Elpis is remaining cautiously optimistic about their budding attempts at restoring some level of self-directed government." She non-chalantly tugs a napkin from a holder and flags it over in Rejn's direction. "Even monkeys with clubs have some social graces."
Psyche helps herself to another swallow of of Rejn's faux bloody Mary — and if the faint grimace and clenching of her jaw is any indication, it's heavy on the faux. "I had a boyfriend in high school used to write songs like that," she replies to Rejn's assessment of civilization. "Other interests included the excessive application of eyeliner and recreational cutting." Bright orange mac & cheese, now cold-ish, is shoveled into her mouth. She does smile legitimately for Devlin's arrival — big and warm — then makes introductions. "Alex, this is Allan Rejn, one of our distinguished Quorum delegates. Allan, this is my husband, Alex Devlin."
Khloe enters, following the nearly ever-present line of folks lining up for food. And, as usual, she gets her usual dairy protein in the form of some sort of pre-packaged cheese product, and a varied assortments of whatever passes for vegetable matter these days. Canned peaches constitute her dessert. Once she clears the line, her eyes scan the room, looking for a reasonably secluded seat. Finding none, she chooses a seat by the Rejn-debacle, but doesn't even as much as greet anyone there. No, she's got her stealth mode engaged.
"Lucky you," is Rejn's acid retort. No, he's not referring to the bit about Alex being Psyche's husband, but rather to McQueen's blithe derogation of all responsibility whatsoever. Not that his intent is clear, muddled as it is by his irritated and slightly drunk manner. But it's that same drunkenness that causes his expression to soften ever so slightly when Sawyer takes it upon herself to translate — and squinting eyes widen ever so slightly beneath the misted yellow lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses. It's why he accepts the offered napkin, dabbing at his be-crumbed moustache ever so gently. More than that, however, he doesn't grant. "It's like we learned nothing. Just like a boneheaded three-legged dog who tries to jump over an electric fence. Everyone's just carrying on like nothing's changed. Recreating the old structures of power — admirals, commanders, colonels, president. Close your eyes, kids. It's all going to be okay. Bullshit."
"Then step up, my surly companion, and do something about it. Otherwise it's going to be business as usual." It's a casual challenge presented by Sawyer. Her eyes eventually shift to the others at the table, a wryness to the twist of her lips, and the journalist goes back to her coffee.
"Uh-huuuuuh," is Devlin's reply to Psyche introduction, or more specifically, Rejn's total rant in place of acknowledgement. He drums his fingers absently on his wife's shoulders, listening as the erstwhile politician speaks and Sawyer challenges and McQueen needles. He doesn't seem, just at the moment, to have any desire to interject.
Psyche leans her elbows on the table, taking another stab at her mac & cheese as she listens to Rejn hold forth on the doom. She doesn't look like she disagrees, at all. "What would you suggest we do, Allan?" she wants to know. There's no challenge and no defensiveness in the query. He has ideas, she'd like to hear them. Pretty simple.
"Yeah, What the ladies said." McQueen's hand reaches upwards, fork still in it, and he juts out a calloused finger towards the large Rejn-figure. Strangely, he adopts a slightly more concilatory tone. "You're half-right. We need to adapt to these situations. But that doesn't mean the folks in charge get a 'get out of job free' card just because the whole bloody house o' cards collapsed from beneath them." He pauses to chew on another bite. Khloe's approach earns a nod, too, and he waits until he's finished downing this mouthful. "Lo, sir."
"What do I think? I think we should run like yellow-bellied cowards." That's a simple answer. "But I'm the little boy who cried wolf one too many times." Rejn snorts at the thought. "To think I once thought that if we could just get rid of Mikey boy — " That would be Admiral Abbot, now on trial for being a Cylon collaborator. "If we could just get rid of him, we'd get some sanity back in this fleet. Now we've got an illiterate half-wit for a commander and a ship crammed full of a thousand special forces goons who'd love nothing better than to waltz into the inner Colonies and whip out their collective irradiated cock." Rejn crosses his hands over his belly, closed fist still stubbornly closed. "Just like that frakking dog. Fence shock it once, it doesn't give a shit. Just thinks to itself 'Shit, guess I just done gonna hafta git 'im good next time.'" His attempt to mimic Pewter's accent fails miserably, but the point remains. "We're all dead anyway. Least I'm having fun on the way to Hades' palace of pleasure."
"Why," Khloe says to no one in particular, stabbing at her food. She's had a few mouthfuls without finding the need to interject, but it's too much to ask for peaceful meals nowadays. "Why bother fighting, then? Why waste everyone's time?" She asks, turning in her seat, eyeing Rejn with a characteristic, stoic scowl. "Why not just take a bullet and stop fighting? Or, better yet, jump into Cylon-protected space and let them kill us? What, sir, is the point, then?"
"Well, I suppose it's better than the dog rolling over and playing dead." To use the man's own metaphor back. Sawyer gives a little nod to Khloe in some sort of vague agreement or acknowlegement. The bit about 'getting rid of Mikey boy' seems to have bristled the reporter somewhat, but she's trying her best to remain remarkeably detached from the conversation. Good little journalist.
"Allan, sweetie… I've had fun, and what you're having looks nothing like it." Psyche eats another bite of day-glo mac & cheese. She pushes the remainder around a bit, her interest in the stufff having substantially waned. "Look, nobody tells me anything except where to fly and when to shoot, but it doesn't seem to me like we're trying to take the fight to the Cylons. It seems to me like we're trying to salvage whatever and whoever we can before we do exactly what you suggest. Get the frak out." She frowns. "We're never going to be able to live on what's left of our homeworlds, even if we had a chance in Hades of winning the war."
"Run where?" Devlin asks curiously from his post behind Psyche, where he doesn't have to see the poor excuse for mac n'cheese that she's currently eating. He reaches down to steal her glass of water and take a sip, shrugging a little as he asks, "I mean, won't they just follow us?" He sets the glass back down as the blonde begins speaking, hand returned to her shoulder as he nods a little bit, agreeing silently.
"Well I'm glad /someone/ is having fun." McQueen's nostrils flare after he digests Khloe and Psyche's commentary, and he sets the fork down with a deliberate drop, settling on the plate. "Like a shiny corn kernel made of pure gold, you've got a nugget of truth in all that shit." He pointedly ignores the mention of Abbot, or really anyone in the command structure. "Bubbs is right, though. Time to think about finding a new home. If those shitheads can stop shooting at us for five minutes. And I mean a /new/ home. One that hasn't been wrecked by triggerhappy zealots like that /freak/ in the brig."
"Better than staying here, kid. And that — " A chubby index finger pushes his glasses up on his nose as Rejn swivels to face his newest sparring partner. "That right there. That, boys, that's the frakking problem." The fact that he's talking to a captain doesn't seem to register; if anything, it only seems to encourage him. All that awful Bloody Mary mix isn't helping, either: mixed with Colonial Pete's moonshine, it's only become more potent. "We can't let the Cylons take from us that which makes us human: our honor, our dignity, our sense of duty, our loyalty — " Each platitude is listed with increasing disdain. "We've got to fight for the fallen. News flash: the fallen don't care because they're dead. And we'll be dead too if we stick around, because you can bet your sweet bubble-butt — " Psyche, presumably, is the target audience here. " — that sooner or later the Cylons'll get tired of whacking us around like a ball around a putting green and nuke ball, green, and the little frakking flag." Rejn pauses to gasp for air. Mmm. Sweet air. "Gods only know why they haven't done it already," he finishes. "Because I get the feeling that if it were up to that crazy bitch we've got in the cooler, we'd be hood ornaments on the nearest basestar." Oh look: he and McQueen agree on something.
Khloe gives a faint nod to Rejn, regardless on whether or not he sees it. "That's right. The dead don't care. We mourn and pay service because it's their memory that we fight for, not because they're in some Elysian paradise smiling down on us, or in Hades' cauldron boiling away, shaking their fists in rage at us from the Underworld. We fight because we must keep carrying on our honor and traditions because it's all we have left."
"Sentimental horseshit," Rejn interjects.
Sawyer has no more opinions on the subject herself, nor does she need to feed the beast to keep the back and forth going. Now the journalist just sits back and does what she should do best: observes.
Psyche's free hand slides up over her shoulder, finding Devlin's, her fingers lacing through his. "It's not all we have left," Psyche says, softly and distinctly. "We have a future. Wherever we end up — we have a future." She looks at Rejn, adding, "So maybe you better sober up and make sure we have a government that sustains us when we get there."
"Well, unlike the /Cylons/," comes McQueen's careful, pointed cough, "We're all going to die. Anyway. That much is a frakking certainty. So, I have to fall in line with Poppy, here." A slight jut of his chin is directed towards Khloe, in a gentle motion. "Clinging to these things may be all we have left. Unless we find a new home. I'm not going out as a hood ornament, that's for /damn/ sure."
McQueen adds, faintly, eyeing Psyche, "Listen to the lady, /fat man/. She's right." His mouth just twitches, ever-so-faintly.
"But we were all always going to die," Devlin points out, frowning a little even as Psyche takes his hand, "And we didn't say then that all we had then was to cling to duty and honoring the memory of the dead. I mean…" he pauses, listening to the others and then goes on, "I'm all for doing what we must and what we can and whatever, but if our goal is to just keep doing what we're doing right now until we're all dead without ever trying to find somewhere else to just live and start over and continue the human race, then I mean… well, that seems kinda dumb. Or something. Why're we trying to rescue survivors if we're not going to try to give them a future longer than a few months?" He shrugs, and shuts up, clearly uncomfortable.
"Sure seems dumb to me, but what do I know. I'm just a washed-up bureaucrat. You have a problem with it, you do something about it. Me, I don't care. I'm good either way." Rejn smiles tightly as he tries to push himself up from his chair. It doesn't really work: his right foot lands awkwardly on the ground and he has no choice but to flail out with his hands. At long last the mystery is revealed, for as his palms spread open to brace his fall, the object he's been safeguarding with such dedication comes loose. A little orange bottle designed for prescription pills falls forward onto the deck, its translucent plastic clear enough to reveal the twenty-odd hexagons inside: sleeping meds, judging from their shape, and strong ones at that.
There's a pregnant pause as Rejn scrabbles to reach them from his position on the ground, minding not in the least that he's spilled what remains of his drink all over his newly pressed suit. It takes a full five seconds before he manages to thrust them into the pocket of his slacks, and another three seconds before he speaks again. "Tits," he says, ever so softly, and the stench of grain alcohol fills the air as he crawls to his feet. How the mighty have fallen.
Sawyer's eyes shift to the floor to follow the little rolling bottle of pills. It takes a moment, maybe two, for the reporter to process the scene and her eyes shift back up to Rejn's face. "C'mon big guy. I'll walk you back to your bunk." She says quietly, hands pressing into the table's top to hoist herself to her feet.
Khloe quirks an eyebrow. "Pills, and alcohol? Note to self, don't let Spiral have any pills. He won't fit into a cockpit, then." And on that note, the Captain begins digging into her meal in earnest, perhaps in an attempt to hide her smirk.
"See, that's the thing about the society we're still laboring under the illusion of, or whatever. Me, Alex, Queenie — we can't do shit about it. We can fly planes, though," Psyche says, watching Rejn move to rise. "And buy -you- time to do something about it. We've all got our parts in this little drama, farcical or not." She pauses a moment, as he stumbles and the pills clatter, eyes taking in the bottle. But she doesn't comment on them. Just lifts her eyes to Rejn once more. "We're counting on you, Allan."
"Tits. I like 'em." Queenie says, sagely. "I second that. Don't trip and bust your head open, Secretary — you'd be missed." His mouth screws up as he again nods at the 'fly planes' bit. "All this makes you wonder how the ancients felt when they came to the Colonies in the first place, yeh? The flight from Kobol. That probably felt pretty much like the end, but that's ignoring the long view. So maybe there's something else out there. Maybe."
"Missed. Hah!" A hollow laugh that soon turns into a grunt as Rejn rolls over onto his back to assess the damage. It's worse than it looked: not only are his lapels stained a furious orange-red, his favorite red power tie is now covered in brackish black polka-dots. But the important thing is that he's still got his flask in hand, in which — wonder of wonders! — there's a few drops left. And as he pulls himself to his feet, collared shirt pressed tightly against his bulging belly, his tight smile transforms into a vacuous, shit-eating grin. "On me?" he slurs. "Careful — "
Burp.
"Careful what you wish for, doll." Up goes the flask; glorious alcohol scourges his throat as he embraces the burn. "Heh. To the motherfrakking FUTURE!" And he hurls the now-empty thing across the galley, watching it skitter across the deck to land somewhere at the feet of some very surprised-looking ECOs. Bloodshot blue eyes scour the room, twitching so quickly it's almost like he's physically tearing his gaze from Khloe to McQueen to Devlin-and-Psyche to Sawyer and finally to himself. Then, very quietly: "May she choke on her own shit." Slowly, ever so slowly, he begins to limp away.
Sawyer dutifully, for whatever sense of obligation she seems to have for the man, follows the walking disaster known as Rejn out.
Devlin stays silent now, glancing between pilots, reporter, and…Rejn. He doesn't seem sure what to make of the man, and though he starts to shift, almost like he might help him to his feet, he settles back with faint relief as the man manages it on his own. "So," he begins slowly as Rejn heads away, voice not particularly loud, hoping, it seems, not to carry: "Why're we counting on him to be the government or whatever, again? He kinda seems… well, not like a good choice."
Psyche turns in her chair, watching Rejn's egress and the Sawyer-assist for a moment, then turns back to sigh at her now entirely unappetizing meal. "Because like so many other things," she says, standing her fork up in Mt. Mac-n-Cheeze and flicking it idly, "he's all we've got left."
"Martial law," Khloe comments quietly. "It's the only way to ensure idiots like him don't ruin things until we're ahead enough of the Cylons to even think about letting drunk, fat bastards like him ruin things all over again."
"Oh. Right. Martial law. Don't say that around /Commander Kepner/" McQueen mentions, offhandedly as his fingers wrap around his fork and clutch it tightly. "Stay classy, fat man."
"But…" Devlin frowns, thoughtful for a moment, and then goes on, "I mean, isn't the point of democracy that anybody can run? You don't have to've been a politician forever or anything? I mean… like, I get he's QUODWEL or whatever it is, but he seems like a total mess. Wouldn't anybody smart and well-educated and sober be better? There've gotta be plenty of other choices."
Psyche pushes her hair back, sighing deeply. "I dunno, baby," she says to Devlin. "There's plenty of new blood in the new government, right? I guess maybe we're hanging on the hope that Allan… can be salvaged. And we can have someone who knows what the frack they're doing sitting at the table." She flicks a hand, demonstrating no contest. "But I mean, yeah. He's frakking useless right now. Which is a real shame."
It's not hard for Sawyer to catch up with Rejn, as impaired as his motor functions are. Uncaring of his soiled clothes, she loops an arm around his back and ducks under his arm to steady him. It's not as if she stands a snowball's chance in Hades if she needs to support his full weight, but it's the thought that counts, right? Even if that means they'll both die a horrible broken-necked death on the stairs. She mutters something quietly to him, and out they go to leave the galley in relative peace free from civilian infestation (for now).