| Vertebrae By Vertebrae |
| Summary: | Eddie and Martin have a long overdue shouting match. |
| Date: | PHD234 (12/08/09) |
| Related Logs: | None |
| Players: |
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The large, thudding footfalls of Martin's jogging force him to come to a stop at the top of the stairs. Working out his leg after being reassigned to the flight line, he's got his Kharon hooded sweatshirt on and his sweatpants, near the end of his jogging circuit after a stair climb. Moving from the stairs to the wall, he plants a hand against it and lowers his head, catching his breath.
Who knows why Eddie's up in this particular section of the ship, the best guess being she's just aimlessly wandering. While Martin is doing the healthy thing, Eddie's toking on a cigarette as she strolls the hallway, coming in the opposite direction as he was. Her voice cuts through the virtual silence of the hallway, as she notices him catching his breath. "Man wasn't meant to run."
"…and the navy won't let me get fat. Shit out of luck as always." Martin replies between breaths. His head bowed, he brushes the sleeve of his sweatshirt across his face to mop it up before finally rising. Turning his attention to her, he glances towards the cigarette in her hand and rests his back against the wall. Unzipping his tanktop to let his body breathe a little more, he offers her an upwards nod. "How you doin, Eddie?"
Eddie leans her shoulder against the bulkhead, ashing her cigarette with the flick of her thumbnail. "Pissed off," Read: apprehensive, "About the upcoming shuffle. I've finally broken all you frakkers in, and I'm loathe to do it all again in a new squadron. But. Whatever."
"Yeah, not exactly thrilled about being the new kid on the block either." Martin replies, his breathing finally slowing. Folding his arms across his chest, he watches her quietly for a moment before speaking again. "I was telling Wheel of Callsigns last night that they're probably gonna split up me and Peanut, but it's likely that they'll keep some of us together, you know?" He chuckles softly. "Just think, you might not have to put up with so much of my regular bullshit, eh?"
Eddie rolls using her shoulder as a pivot point until her shoulderblades are pressed against the wall and she's looking out into neutral space. "If it's not you, it'll just be someone else pissing on my pretty princess parade. So in the end, it's six of one and half dozen of another. I'm more worried about the bid for CAG. I'm not sure Marek's going to win, and who the frak is going to put up with my bullshit, but him?"
Slipping off his hooded sweatshirt, Martin ties it around his waist and digs into his pocket for his cigarettes and a lighter. Holding off on lighting one, however, he gazes out into the same neutral space with a quiet smirk. "Pretty princess parade…" He huffs, not quite knowing how to wrestle that terminology. "You never know, Eddie, from what it looks like we've seen far more combat than they have, and at the least he could end up Squadron Leader if the Vigilantes get scuttled. Besides, you and I didn't expect people to put up with our shit to begin with, so you never know…"
"Honey, you're sugar-coated compared to me." Eddie's face scrunches up as she takes another drag from her cigarette, using the guise of smoke to glance aside to Martin. "I was meant to live and die a Vigilante."
"You're right, Eddie, I'm just a sugar coated lesser case." Martin replies, a slight tone of annoyance to his voice as he slips a cigarette between his lips. There's the grinding of flint and a clicking noise as his lighter sparks to life, bringing the flame to its tip. "You don't want to leave the Vigilantes because we're your family, but in all reality the oath you swore didn't have anything to do with the patch on your flight suit. I get it. I don't like it either, but have you ever considered that maybe a fresh start might be good for some of us, including you?"
Eddie pushes off her lean, "Frak the oath. I was only ever in the military to get out of my father's hair. Only loyalty I have is being a fighter pilot. I just don't like having to salute someone new that everyone's rushing to play kiss ass to. But don't feed me that new start bullshit." She flicks her still lit cigarette across the hall to kiss the far hull and bounce off in a sputter of ash and ember. "We all have the same frakking baggage, just trying to shove it all into a new bunk."
"It's not bullshit, Eddie." Martin raises his voice just a little, turning his attention towards her. "Seriously, instead of stowing your baggage how about you let a little of it go? It's not like we're not all going to be over there, doing the same godsdamned thing that we do over here. If I got promoted your ass would be saluting me. Things shift, shit changes, but at least now we have a fully armed Battlestar watching our ass right?" Martin asks, raising his eyebrows. "You just keep…" He pauses to airquote "…stowing your bullshit. Eddie, nothing is ever going to get better until you stop that."
Eddie turns on him, getting right up in his grill. Toe to toe, her breath is hot on the exposed skin of his neck. "That what you want, Black? You want me saluting you, saying 'Yes sir, no sir'? Bet that'd get a good rise out of you, wouldn't it?" Where, exactly, she's implying he'll get that rise isn't a secret as her hand roughly cups that part of his anatomy and gives it a bit of a shimmy.
"No, god damnit, Eddie we're frakkin talking for once and I've got some shit to say to you." Martin growls loudly, planting his palm on her shoulder, giving her a hard shove back. Lowering his head, he gives her an angry pair of eyebrows as he hangs onto her shoulder. "Look at me." He seethes. "Don't think that I don't see how little attention you pay to covering your own ass when you fly, Eddie? Don't think that I don't have a frakking idea what goes on inside your frakking head!?" He sneers. "Frakking and not talking about it aside Eddie I give a damn about you and I…GODS!" He shoves her hard, turning away from her, bringing his cigarette to his lips. "Eddie, do you have any idea how hard it is not asking you what I can do to help your world, knowing that the shit you need to hear is the same shit that'll just piss you off?"
Eddie's hand comes up to clamp onto his wrist, yet she doesn't try to forceably remove his grip on her shoulder yet, her words struggling to overlap him as their voices get heated. "We may be friends, Martin, but you don't know a gods damn thing about…" He shoves her away and she just rocks with the blow, taking a few steps away with a little mirthless smirk on her features as is she gets some kind of perverse pleasure in all this. "Maybe your problem is you keep thinking I can /be/ helped."
"Don't play that bullshit with me, Eddie." Martin stops, shaking his head from left to right before he turns, watching her face. Clearly frustrated, yet rooting himself to the conversation, he rubs his forehead as he chooses his words. It doesn't take long. "First of all, you know I know a damn thing about you because that's one hundred percent of the reason why you were so pissed at me when shit between you and I got crazy. How could I have betrayed you if you hadn't let me in, right?" He dares to go there. "Look, Eddie, aside from what you may think I like who you are. You've made changes in your own life that have made you happy even if some shit didn't turn out right, but I'll be god-damned if I stand by and don't say anything if you're gonna slip into old habits that you frakking KNOW didn't do anything good for you." He's now louder, angrily arguing with her.
Eddie steps forward again, closing that void between them once more. Her finger extends, poking him pointedly in the shoulder. A lesser naval officer might get bruised from the dense force, but viper pilots aren't particularly soft, given their chosen profession of frakking with g-forces daily. "Like what? Huh? You think I'm slicing again?" She steps back, showing him her arms. Nothing. If that's not enough, she grips the bottom hem of her tanks and tugs them up briskly and cleanly off, balling them in a fist to launch them down the hallway. Her arms spread wide in a 'see?' gesture, as there's no new marks on her stomach either. If he needs further proof, she's going for the belt next.
Martin lowers his brows again at her reply, flicking his ashes from his cigarette onto the floor beside him. With how he glances her over when she throws her tanks aside, it's apparent that he was harboring concerns. "Or finding something new, yeah…no you don't have to…" He protests with a waved hand towards her belt, flattening his lips as he brings his cigarette to his lips. Dragging, he lowers his head and snorts out his cigarette smoke. "Look, Eddie? Look I know this war's a frakking mess, okay?" He looks up, his words still laced with venom but his overall delivery shifts from shoving his words down her throat to simply lobbing them in her direction. "I'm not pulling some Castor bullshit when I tell you this like I've gotta hold your frakking hand and remind you of how we're all beautiful people and we need eachother. No, frak that. We're both goddamned adults. Just stop being so goddamned angry for once and take a moment to look around and realize that while shit's bad, it isn't that bad."
The smile on her features is anything but happy. In fact it could be down right unnerving if you weren't at least a little bit acclimated to Mooner. "Easy for you to frakking say." Eddie shakes her head in just a quick tick tock back and forth. "You need to stop shagging the shrink, you're starting to talk like her. I didn't think psychobabble was a sexually transmitted disease…" With a snort, she turns away from him to go retrieve her clothes so she stops hanging out in the hallway in her sportsbra.
"We all lost somethin, Eddie." Martin tilts his head to glare at Eddie's back. For a moment, he merely stands there, weighing her words. A second later, he springs into action and steps up behind Eddie and gives her a shove. "We're not done yet." Martin says, putting his foot down. "Who do you frakking care who I'm shagging anyway, Eddie? It's not like you ever spent any time with me when I was frakkin' available." Oh yeah, he just said that.
The shove comes just as Eddie was going to stoop to get her clothes. Unexpected, it causes her to go off balance and stumble forward and hit a knee. Her balled up shirts are whipped in his direction in retribution. As she hauls herself back to her feet, "Because you're suddenly acting like you have some great insight into my psyche just because you're dick's still wet with PhD. You ever stop to ask yourself why you're only frakkable to me when you're dating someone else?"
"No, I haven't." Martin barks at her, angry again as he steps closer, eyes boring holes through the back of her head. His voice is loud, and if not for the closed hatch door to the stairs it'd be a rather public conversation. "I was too frakking busy trying to figure out why you're so mad about me dating someone if you didn't give a shit." He pauses, scowling. "Fine! Why?"
Eddie flicks her hair out of her face, still an annoying length between short and what it used to be in order for her to really do anything with it besides it being annoyance. "I don't give a shit about who you're dating. It's the fact that you /are/ dating, dumbass. Misery loves company…" Some of the piss and vinegar has drained from Eddie, though the tension is still in her frame. "Now I'm left to be miserable alone. Just…" She shakes her head. "Gimme back my shirts and let me go."
Martin's facial features are halted by her words, like a slap to the face. Slowly, his brows unfurl and his clenched jaw muscles relax. "Eddie…" He says, taking a step back so that so much of her personal space isn't invaded, perhaps retreating a little bit for his own room to breath. "…you're not alone." He replies, finally finding his words. "Maybe, I don't know, maybe Jupiter's the rough one in the family, but I never wanted to be your doctor, your priest, or your father. I just hoped I could make you happy." He raises his eyebrows. "I mean, that's not why I did it, it wasn't pitty frakking. Do you remember that day we talked about you and Alex in the laundry?"
If he won't get her tops for her, she'll just have to lean around him and pluck them off the floor. "Some big fat load of bullshit about second chances, wasn't it? That worked out well, didn't it? Kind of poetic justice that Kitty and Icarus are saddling up to each other." Her eyes are on her hands as she fiddles with her shirts, turning them right side out.
"Yeah, that's a little frakking ridiculous." Martin sighs, stepping away from her. Moving back to the wall, he stops about a step from it so that he can turn and drop back against it. There's a small thud as his shoulders connect with the side of the hull. "I was ready and willing to try to put a little more confusion into your life when we had that talk, but I backed away from what I wanted to say because it seemed you really did want to give that what it deserved, with Icarus that is." Martin replies. "For what it's worth, I'm really sorry that turned out the way it did…"
Eddie gives a little dismissive shrug right before she pulls on her tank tops, tugging them back down around her scarred torso but not bothering to tuck them back in for the time being. "He snored and I had bad morning breath, it just wasn't meant to be." Eddie trivializes it. "Look, Dash, don't sweat it. No sense in talking about past moments. You got a girl now, and I'll try to stop being such a bitch about it, alright? No promises."
Plucking the cigarette from his lips, Martin sighs out the cigarette smoke towards the null space in the center of the room. Eyes on the wall, he leans his head back until he feels it connect with the wall. "No promises." He replies, closing his eyes. Something about it makes him comfortable with being more honest. "I am gonna sweat it, Eddie, just don't push me away because I care, okay? There's been mistakes made in the past and those are all gone, but I want you to understand something. Trying to figure you and I out would take far more conversation than either of us is willing to give. I just want you to understand that you're not forgotten." He opens his eyes, looking over to her. "You never were, or never will be. I don't forget about you when you're not around. So please, don't think that you don't exist when I can't see you."
"See? You never used to talk like this. We would just grab each other and frak like naughty monkeys in a closet." Eddie shifts closer, pressing her body up against his in a rare moment of sharing warmth that almost has her purring, that velvet making its way into her voice. "You're getting soft in your old age." She kisses his cheek gently, lets her temple rest against his for a brief second where her eyes are closed, and then she's pulling away with a quiet word of, "Thanks."
"I might be, yeah…" Martin replies, a strange hint of trouble in his own life sifting through his words. Wrapping an arm around her back when she steps up, he returns the kiss to her cheek and simply takes a moment to enjoy the hug. Temple to temple, he lets out a soft sigh. Nodding softly as she pulls away, a small smile forms at the edge of his lips as he braves eye contact. "You gonna be okay, Eddie?" He asks, a hopeful look on his face that suddenly cracks with a smile. "Don't lie."
Eddie's lips curve into a slow smile, "I don't know how you're even really sure when I'm telling the truth." And that, in itself, seems to be her answer. "Take it easy, Dash."
"It's when you refuse to answer." Martin replies softly, tilting his head towards the ceiling to let out a quiet, throaty chuckle. "When you're telling the truth you yell it at me and put your foot down. I've been studying your gun cam footage for almost a year, Eddie." Martin replies, quieting as he lowers his head back to eye level. "Hey, before we head to the Hestia, you wanna figure out who's the better pilot? Oh…and what about that auction?"
Eddie shoves her hands in her pockets, bunching her shoulders up around her ears. "I don't feel like a pissing match right now, Martin." She starts moving down the hall, away from him to put distance between them and forceably end the conversation. "I was never much into slavery, so why don't we just say I bought your freedom for the low low price of two and a half packs of smokes."
Sliding his cigarette back into his lip, Martin folds his arms across his ribcage and leans his head down. Turning his head slightly, he goes silent and watches Eddie walk away. As she nears the stairs, he turns his gaze back to the floor and sucks in on the cigarette. Closing his eyes, he sighs, the cigarette smoke forming a cloud in the center of the hallway. "..hells." He mumbles, his words barely audible.
