ataraxionlogs | [ OPEN ] we expected something better than before

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[ OPEN ] we expected something better than before

CHARACTERS: Tommy Conlon and OPEN
LOCATION: Poolside
WARNINGS: Swearing on Tommy's part but otherwise, I can't imagine much. Updated as needed.
SUMMARY: Tommy goes for a jog and tries to come to terms with the fact he doesn't want to be here anymore.
NOTES: Action tags or prose equally welcome!

This isn't the worst fucking situation I've been in has been his mantra for the last few weeks. It's what he clung to, stuck in one of those corridors, trying to shake the urge to pound his way out, knowing it would be useless to try. It's what he's reminding himself now, as he collapses sweaty by the poolside, finishing his jog unceremoniously because he's reached that point where the burn in his legs starts to feel less like a burn and more like his muscles going to jelly.

For a moment, he just huddles, half-heartedly stretching his hamstrings and breathing hard against his knees. Then, impulsively, he begins to strip off his shoes and socks. He rolls up his pant legs and wheels around to plunge his feet into the water. It's temperature-controlled, not quite the cold shock he was hoping for, but nice anyway.

This isn't the worst situation he's been in but as he sits there, soaking his feet and staring at the opposite wall, it occurs to him that for the first time since he arrived, he'd actually rather go home.

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Taylor's been putting off going out much since the corridors decided to start making sense again. Getting trapped in one place like that - regardless of how large a place it seemed - had been enough to set her right on edge. She'd dealt with a hundred different dangerous situations, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, espionage missions, but the ship was starting to frustrate her. As much as she tried to view it as another mission, there wasn't any precedent for any of it in her training. She was flying half-blind.

But staying in her room forever wasn't going to make it better, and she had her dogs to think of. They're still only getting short walks, for now, around the passenger quarters rather than wandering deeper into the ship like Taylor used to, but getting out of her room and getting to run any energy off had them excitable. Excitable enough that passing near one of the pools has Windsor belting away from her side, heading for the water. Taylor calls after him, but is completely ignored, and the dog leaps into the water before she can catch up.

"Shit." She stops at the edge of the pool, watching the dog swim further away from her for a moment, before she notices the guy sitting nearby. The one that had fought Dean that time, she remembered, but didn't know his name. "Did he splash you?"

He had, actually. Not a huge splash but enough that there are visible spots of water at the edge of Tommy's pants and around his shoulders and less visible ones on his chin where the spray caught him. The dog hadn't seemed big enough to make a splash that big -- or maybe it was just the surprise of seeing a dog so suddenly here of all places that had kept him from even thinking about. Kept him from thinking about getting out of the way.

He wipes the drips on his chin off on the back of his hand. He's sweaty enough already that it's sort of a pointless gesture, but it's also part of why getting splashed doesn't seem to be bothering him.

"It's fine," he says, in case that wasn't clear and stuffs his hand back into the pocket of his hoodie. His eyes track the dog out in the water because it's the most normal thing he's seen in day. After a moment, he juts his chin out toward it. "He okay out there?"

It's fine saves Taylor from trying to give an apology, but she still watches the guy for a second, as if expecting him to change his mind and take offence at the droplets of water. But he asks about Windsor instead, and she follows his gesture out to look at the dog. Paddling around in large circles happily, splashing up more water when he can, but Taylor knows he isn't built to be out in it long. "For a bit. He'll wear himself out and come back." She gives something like a shrug, a tense movement of her shoulders. "Short legs."

Her other two dogs join her at a more sedate pace, and while one wanders around the far side of the pool and jumps in to join Windsor, the chihuahua shies away from the water. Taylor crouches down and pulls him up onto her knees, giving him a reassuring scratch around the ears, before looking over at the guy again. It was possible they were disturbing his quiet time or something, but the dogs had decided they wanted a swim, and Taylor couldn't see the harm in it.

"I saw you fighting Dean, a while back." She'd seen the state Dean had been left in afterwards, but didn't know if the damage had been mutual, or if had been that much of an uneven match. "I'm Tyke."

The memory of the fight causes Tommy to hunch his shoulders a bit and tense his jaw in a reflexive memory of the injury that has long since healed. It was-- He can't quite think of it as a good fight because thinking of fighting like that is something he left behind in childhood, but it had temporarily scratched the itch better than jogging and thumping on holographic punching bags ever does.

He slides his eyes away from watching the dogs in the water toward her, though there's a brief detour to look at the one in her lap on the way. He vaguely remembers dog scattered around the room on the day of the fights, now that he thinks about it. It hadn't struck him as odd then, but there hadn't been much room in his head for details like that. For a second, he wonders if she brought them all in with her or has been collecting them since she arrived.

"Tommy," he says finally, once he's finished staring at the chihuahua. And then there's another pause before those manners his mom engrained in him prompt him to add, "Were you watchin' or fighting?"

The chihuahua, Chubbs, is still too distracted by the threat of water to notice he's being stared at. Taylor does, though, and while her first reaction is to feel protective, she wonders if the guy - Tommy - just liked dogs.

"Both." Locked up in the brig for several weeks after she'd stowed away to visit Tansei station, Taylor had welcomed the fight club as a place to gauge how badly out of shape she'd gotten. "Ended up being more watching than fighting, though." There's an edge of frustration to her voice. Used to the near constant fighting in the corridors of the Academy, she'd been disappointed in how passive her opponent had been, almost to the point of being envious of Dean.

Tommy nods. It's not a particularly big or focused nod, more like a twitch of his head down than anything else, but it's his way of showing that he's listening and thinking about what she's saying. Given how little he likes maintaining eye contact -- and his eyes did drop back down and slightly to one side again as she spoke -- he gets that it's necessary.

"Yeah," he agrees and starts rummaging around in his pocket for his pack of toothpicks. His mouth twists into something that might almost be wry smile. "Could've gone another round or two myself."

He's quieter than Taylor's used to, on the ship or at home, seems sort of tense, but she figures if he really didn't want to talk he'd make it clear enough. She's finding it sort of comfortable, really, not being bombarded with questions or unusual things that demand questions of their own. She stretches her arms out a little, elbows resting on her knees, a cage over the top of the dog in her lap.

"Yeah?" Half a brief smile herself, looking out at the dogs in the water again. "Should've talked to you instead of Dean."

He snorts which is kind of yes and kind of a no. Grand scheme of things, he doesn't really know Dean all that well, but he thinks he knows enough to imagine what Dean's reaction would've been to the idea of fighting a woman.

"Didn't take you up on it?" he guesses and then has to admit to himself that he honestly might not have been better. Maybe he's old-fashioned or maybe it's because of Pop -- he's never really thought about it before. Back home, there were always weight classes to sort things out for him. It never really came up.

Taylor shakes her head slightly. "Didn't ask," she says. She'd chewed him out for ignoring his own rules on limits and told him to get checked over, instead. "His face was like raw meat."

She tenses slightly as soon as it's dropped out of her mouth, barely noticeable except in the line of her shoulders. It wasn't like she'd forgotten she was talking to the guy responsible, she'd just said it without thinking. But she has no idea what his feelings towards the state he'd left Dean in are, if he's going to have a problem with her observation, or if raw meat had been what he'd been going for.

Tommy tenses too -- not out of guilt or because he feels bad about how that fight went down or anything but because he's waiting for something more than just that observation. Most people don't really get it. Even some of the guys who fight professionally look at him like he's psycho for the way he goes at it. He'd like to believe he doesn't care what they think, but he finds himself bracing for it.

But nothing comes immediately, so he lets his shoulders relax a bit at a time. He finds his pack of toothpicks, pulls it out, and tries to fish one out with fingers that aren't good at that kind of thing. "Never been great with rules in fights," he admits finally.

The tension leaves Taylor's shoulders slowly, even as Tommy reaches to take something out of his pocket. It's just toothpicks, although Chubbs perks up, wondering if it's treats. Taylor doesn't correct him, and he clambers off her lap, heading over to Tommy to investigate properly. She keeps an eye on it, but she doesn't think Tommy will be mean, settles down and stretches her legs out.

"Never had any rules in mine, so I guess that makes both of us." She'd told Dean the same, and gotten a lecture on limits - one that he hadn't followed himself.

Tommy stops moving when the dog trots towards him. It's small and goofy-looking, like chihuahuas tend to be in Tommy's opinion, so it's not like Tommy's worried by him. He just hasn't had a lot of direct experience with pets. He remembers wanting a dog when he was a kid -- who didn't? -- but pop didn't trust them to take responsibility for it, so they never got one. Probably for the best; he'd just have to have left it behind when he and mom left anyway.

Carefully, Tommy holds out his fingers, like he's seen other people do, to let the dog sniff. He keeps his eyes on it, toothpicks momentarily forgotten, even as he says, "I got taught to take down the other guy fast. Doesn't leave a lot of room for being nice about it."

Half her attention on the dogs in the pool and half on Chubb's sniffing at Tommy's hand, but what he says makes her shift, look at him properly.

"What kind of teaching?" The curiosity in her voice is quiet but clear, maybe clearer than she'd really like. She was taught the same, to take people down fast, but it didn't usually involve much damage to their face. On missions, at least. With the other girls, it was all about how much of a mess you could leave them in, make sure it hurt, send a message to anyone else that might think of trying anything against you.

When it doesn't seem like the dog's going to bark or retreat or spook easily if he moves, Tommy finishes the process of getting a toothpick out of his carefully-protected pack of them. He sticks it into one corner of his mouth, gets it settled with his tongue, and then tucks the pack away again.

"I've been wrestling since I was a kid," he says, looking up at her again. "And I was in the Corp. They both seemed to agree you don't fuck around when you see an opening, you know?"

Chubbs doesn't move, settles to sit instead, hoping if he's patient the mystery pack will reappear. It's harmless, aside from the strain he might give himself trying to look as cute and appealing as possible, so Taylor lets him stay.

"Marine," she notes quietly, no judgement either way. Taylor knew about marines the same way she knew about most armed forces, to learn from their skills and tactics, to be able to work around them, or to be able to fight them. The Academy didn't have allies; missions could be for or against anyone.

"Yeah, I know. I was..." She gives another tense shrug. "The same. Sort of." She didn't really know if it was safe to try and explain the Academy to anyone, and it was easier not to, anyway.

He looks surprised, but he doesn't mean to. He knew a few female soldiers when he was in training and in the Corp., but Tyke doesn't really remind him of any of them. Or maybe it's just all the dogs throwing hime off. Who knows? He readjusts his toothpick, rubs his hand over his chin, and tries to consider her again in light of this new information.

And, yeah, maybe there is something there, when he makes himself look for it. Especially if she means it when she says she was trained to go for the knock-out hit too. A lot of guys who look like soldiers don't know how to do that.

"You ever see any real fights?" he asks after a moment. Because it's one of those question one soldier always asks another in his experience (Where'd you train? Where were you stationed? Did you see any action?) But his voices sounds a little reluctant to be asking -- mostly because he's not sure he'd want to answer if she was the one asking.

Taylor's been expecting surprise like that since she arrived on the ship, really. Growing up in an environment that had little to no male presence hadn't just left her with a skewed view of men, but also of how they viewed women. She'd been trying to keep an open mind, to adapt to the ship in order to understand and survive within it, but she still had assumptions that shook loose with nearly every interaction with a man she'd had.

The question confuses her, though. "Plenty," she says, frowning slightly. Girls at the Academy didn't ask anything like that. If you were there, then you'd been on missions, you'd fought. Otherwise Sparrows had no use for you. "Been thinking this whole thing is another mission." She gives a small jerk of her head as she says it, a stunted attempt to gesture at the ship itself as this whole thing.

Tommy snorts and looks away, down at his knees and then over at that little chihuahua. It's small enough that Tommy wonders if he could pick it up in the palm of his hand. Not comfortably, he decides. It would probably wriggle around, try to get away. It might even bite. Tommy knows that's what he'd do if some asshole tried to pick him up just to see if he could.

"You must've been on some weird fucking missions," he says and then suddenly scoots himself back a little, enough that he can pull his feet out of the water. His toes are starting to prune, and the water drips off them and pools, getting his socks wet. Tommy doesn't pay attention to that and pulls his pant legs back down. "Never seen anything like this place before I showed up here."

"Yeah." Taylor has to smile at that, shaking her head a little and looking away herself. She had been on some weird missions, even with her own idea of normal. Traquility was still off the scale. She looks over the water, checking on the two dogs in the pool. They've found their way over to a set of steps and are climbing out, shaking water out of their coats far away from her and Tommy.

"Not sure what to do if it isn't, though," she says quietly, a thought that she might not have shared if he hadn't already said he'd been a marine. Even viewing it as a mission, she couldn't make complete sense of it. Without that framework, she'd be even more lost.

Tommy thinks about asking what kind of assholes her COs are if thinking they sent her here, without back-up, is better than thinking that this is all some accidental fuck-up of science, or whatever the leading theory is these days. But then he thinks about Manny and bombs dropping and decides that he can probably make an educated fucking guess without asking.

"I've been tryin' not to think about it, I guess," he admits and then after a second of chewing on his toothpick, adds,"If someone figures out why we're all here, it ain't gonna be me."

Academy missions were largely conducted with a team, one that was set up from a girl's first arrival at the school and pressed to bond, be sisters. But Taylor's team was an odd group of misfits, cast offs that didn't fit with any other teams and so got left, bundled together. Working solo wasn't that odd. Especially for Taylor with her dogs. But she hadn't been the only Academy girl to wake up on Traquility - she was just the only one left.

Thinking about Jennie just confused things further, though, as did thinking about the rest of her team back at the Academy, or her dogs. In that sense, she could fully get behind trying not to think about things. Just she tended to think about the ship and her place on it in order to avoid all the rest.

"Yeah, isn't going to be me either." If she had to pick anyone, she'd put her money on Capa, or Kirk. Science-minded, used to space - not soldiers (she wasn't just a soldier, was educated to a high standard as well as trained, but admitting such was never something she'd do to herself, let alone anyone else).

"But I'm meant to help. If I knew where to start." She huffs out a breath a moment after she says it, rubbing a hand over the back of her neck. "Now I'm whining like a kid, fuck." She'd tack an apology on, because there was no way he wanted to hear any of it, but apologies weren't something that came easily to her.

She didn't apologize for it, so Tommy doesn't feel the need to tell her it's fine. Which he prefers, honestly, since he's almost as bad with other peoples feelings and stuff as he is with his own. Better to let it pass, it what it is and she's gonna feel about it however she's gonna feel about it.

But Tommy does shrug his shoulders a little just because he knows a lot of what comes out of his mouth is complaining too. Or would be, if he said the things he was thinking more. It's part of why he keeps his mouth shut most of the time. Nothing makes him feel 10 and useless again as fast as talking too much.

"I said I was gonna help with security stuff around here. 'Cause it's something to do, but," he pauses to push his toothpick further back into the corner of his mouth. "It's not really gonna help anything."

Taylor had heard about the security deal from Dean, the whole reasoning behind him setting up the fight club. She hadn't heard anymore on it since, but it didn't surprise her, from what she'd learnt about him so far, that Tommy was leaning that way.

"Might." She gives something like a brief smile, and expression that doesn't linger less because it isn't sincere, but because she just feels awkward reassuring, especially in this situation.

"We've got no real way to check the people who wake up. And there was that stuff with the skeletons." Taylor hadn't seen them herself, but she'd heard from Kirk. And it was unlikely they resulted from any of the people who'd woken from the grav couches, but the point still stood. Potential threats from all sides. Who knew when they might really need a fully prepared security team.

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[ OPEN ] we expected something better than before

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