[ She doesn't go to John at the Perimeter Guard, doesn't seek him out in RR-1's offices. It takes her a while to work herself up to it, up to telling him...
Telling him everything, or as close to everything as she can force herself to get.
She goes to his rooms in communal housing, after dark, after spending an hour pacing on the rooftop trying to talk herself into it and out of it over and over again.
Chyler knocks. Definitively. Forcefully.
And about one second later, she turns and heads for the stairs. ]
[John sticks his head out of the quad door, catching her in the hallway.
She's never come to his quarters before. They spend a lot of time together, but it's always on the job. At the PG, or in the field. They'll grab a bite to eat sometimes, but they're in uniform. She still calls him sir.
Right now he's wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon rabbit on the front and some track pants, his hair even messier than usual. Bare foot. Off-duty Sheppard at his most leisure.]
The quad is asleep, or out for the night. Almost everyone on the floor is in the PG and works long shifts and odd hours. It's not much to look at, but it's clean, more or less. There's no one living here that's into decorating.
John rubs the back of his neck, already worried. He tries not to look it.]
Do you want to hang out on the living room, I don't think we'll run into anyone, but we might. There's my room, too. Rodney's still working.
[ Chyler considers it, considers the possibility for interruption. If she gets interrupted she might not be able to start again. She walks in, trying to keep her posture straight, her chin up. ]
We're not on the clock, Chyler. Call me John. Or don't.
[He steers her towards the double room he shares with Rodney.
It's easy to tell whose side of the room is whose. Rodney's is messy, scattered with coffee cups, papers, and socks. John's is neat, everything in its place, including his many toys. There's also a strangely motivating poster of Poe Dameron taped to the inside of his closet door, which he closes almost as soon as she enters the room.]
You can take a seat on the beanbag chair.
[Of course John has a beanbag chair. He's from the 2000s.]
[ ...Oh, the thing that looks like a giant bean. That makes sense. In its own stupid way. The stupidness of it is strangely comforting. Chyler climbs into it, starts to draw her knees up toward her chest, and forces herself instead to sit as straight as a person can in a beanbag chair.
She takes a breath. Presses her lips together, suddenly not sure where to start. She didn't tell Marco much, really. The only person she's told much to is Alexander Pierce, and she's had moments where she questions her own sense in doing it. ( She was new, scared, shocky, and he was there and he was kind. )
Even he didn't get everything. ]
They were teaching us to fight Insurrectionists, at Corbulo. Human enemies, human targets. [ She bites her lip. She's not sure that's the place to start, but it's the only one that seems remotely close. ] I had no problem with that. I hate Insurrectionists. When we lived on Mamore--
[ Chyler closes her eyes, trying to sort out her thoughts. ] My parents were stationed on Mamore because of an Insurrectionist attack that killed two million people and injured eight million more. Innies used a commercial nuclear explosive, the kind miners use on asteroids, and planted it in a truck full of scrap metal that they drove to the middle of an arcology. They murdered two million people and never thought about the nuclear fallout and the generations it would effect. When I was ten, they bombed my cousin's school. A school, with children. That's what Insurrectionists are. They're monsters.
[ That word. Chyler stops again. ] My brother died in a suicide bombing when I was thirteen. My parents were KIA not long after that. I was ready to kill Innies. From the moment I got to Corbulo, I was ready and willing.
[ She shifts on the chair, tucking her legs up underneath her so she'll stop feeling the urge to curl into a ball. ] That's--that's what we were there for. To learn to fight and kill human targets.
[John takes a seat on the edge of his bed, just listening. He's good at listening. Better than he is at thinking of the right thing to say.
He's always known Chyler had more than just a rough upbringing, that she's been training for war since before she was old enough to understand what war meant. Child soldier. John's met plenty of them in his career. All of them victims, no matter which side of the line they were on.
They're from different universes, but Chyler's story isn't a new one. Even on Earth, people are born into fights with too much hurt and too much history to quit. Violence begetting violence begetting even more violence.
John remembers the night they met, Chyler vomiting by herself in a back alley while most kids her age were out celebrating. PTSD comes in all shapes and sizes, and it doesn't discriminate.]
What happened?
[Not consoling, not yet. Chyler's still talking, and he's still listening. He doesn't want her to stop until she's said her piece, and gotten whatever it is that's poisoning her out of her system.]
Things were... strange. For a few days beforehand. Disruptions with communication. Orlin--the AI that runs... that ran the school had more maintenance routines and lockouts from our media stations than usual.
[ For a few seconds Chyler doesn't say anything, just stares straight ahead. Then, a deep breath. Blinking, her eyes burning already, she tries to find her place again. ]
Sully, Michael Sullivan, he was part of Hastati squad. Incredible with media manipulation. Hacking. He was always into things he shouldn't have been. He pieced together a vid he intercepted in pieces from the Office of Naval Intelligence. It showed Insurrections fighting with Marines, helping each other against... something. We didn't see what. I didn't understand it. I couldn't... I couldn't understand what would make Marines assist the enemy. Why the enemy would want to help.
[ Now she does curl up, shifting her legs out from under her to tuck them up against her chest and wrap one arm around them. She feels lightheaded, not wanting to go back to those memories. They're still so vivid, so flashbulb intense. ]
That night the evacuation sirens started. We were supposed to go to the tether, stay with our squads, wait to be lifted to the station. We saw shock troops start dropping in from orbit, and... Dima didn't want to wait. She cut ahead, got on the lift--
[ Chyler closes her eyes, biting down hard on her lower lip. ] Ships. We'd never seen anything like them before. They blew the tether to pieces. It collapsed on top of us. We lost Dima, Shere, and Kaye, all at once, just like that.
Their weapons-- [ She's getting ahead of herself, but she can feel the start of panic in her heart. She gets up, climbs onto the bed, sits as close to John as she can without touching him. She doesn't let herself think about why. ]
They shot needles at us, while we were running. We were running away, and they just-- kept shooting, green lights and glowing needles and if someone took more than one-- I'd never seen someone blow up before. I'd seen what it looked like after, but I'd never seen it happen. It was like they swallowed bombs.
[ She leans against him, turning her face toward his arm. ]
We hid. The thing that found us was huge. Huge. It stabbed Junjie with some glowing white weapon, lifted him right off his feet and hung him in front of us and laughed. It shot Vickers when he tried to distract it so the rest of us could get away.
[ Chyler leans back and reaches for the pair of chains around her neck, pulling out one set of dog tags. ] His were the only ones I could get.
[ She runs her thumb over the bumps and ridges of Vickers' name, playing the sight of him being shot over and over in her mind. ] A Marine killed it. Saved us. Tried to escort us to an evac point. We were the only survivors they found. The only ones. On the planet. If other people survived, search and rescue couldn't find them. The whole school was dead. There were Marines and cadets everywhere, just. Piled on top of each other. Some of the cadets were holding hands. I knew them. I didn't know all of them, but I knew their faces. I.
[ Staring into space again. Lips parted, breathing slow and hard, her mind locked a universe away. ]
We. [ Report, cadet. Report, cadet. Report. She leans against John, fingers still running over the dog tags. ] We were making our way through the woods to the evac point when they attacked us again. They--injured me. Then I was here.
[It's a lot to process, but John processes. Understands.
He doesn't want to picture what all that was like from the eyes of a sixteen-year-old girl, no matter where or when she's from. John's seen hardened men and women cave under less.
There are no words. Nothing he can say will undo those losses, or take away the pain she'll carry inside of her the rest of her life. Scars can only fade with time.
Moments like these, he wishes to god Teyla, or Elizabeth were here, someone who would know what to do in a moment like this. On this terrain, John is at a disadvantage. He barely knows what to do with his own emotions.
So John does what he can do, which is pull her into his arms. She's so small, and in some ways, so fragile, that John is almost afraid to hold her. Chyler the soldier is strong, loyal, and competent. He would trust her to hold any line. Chyler the girl is someone he's only beginning to meet, both sweet and vulnerable, and it's her that worries John.
Chyler the soldier might kill her in order to survive. Just like John the soldier killed John the man.
[ She startles a little when he puts his arms around her and draws her in. She's not sure when she was hugged last. A long time. It's been a long time.
Then he calls her Chy. He calls her what her parents used to and he tells her that he's sorry, and something cracks open inside her. She presses her face against his chest and starts to cry. To sob. To empty herself out in that weeping, gasping, wild way that there's no coming back from once you start.
It occurs to some part of her to be embarrassed. It's small, fierce, angry, and humiliated that she couldn't keep it together, telling him all this. She's bawling into his shirt like a child.
It occurs to some part of her to feel guilty. He gives her stories of Atlantis and she gives him stories about death.
But the momentum of tears carries her until she's spent, until she's doing nothing but breathing and shuddering and feeling the damp on his clothes pressing against her cheek. She swallows and tries to straighten up. ]
[John strokes her hair as she cries into him. Awkwardly, at first, because he's just as scared comforting Chyler as she is being comforted, but then more easily. His shirt soaked with her tears, her every sob vibrating through his bones, penetrating, it's almost like John's crying with her.
He wants to, and could, if he didn't have decades of experience in holding himself back. His eyes burn, his chest tight with that all too familiar feeling of the kind of emotion that threatens to swallow and choke, but Chyler is already in pieces, and for her sake, John keeps himself together, trying his damnedest to be the man she needs him to be.
He brushes her tears away with a callused thumb and smiles down at her, tired, frayed at the edges, but no less there.]
You don't have to be sorry for anything, okay? You did your best. Sometimes, that's all anyone can do. Life isn't always fair. All that matters is you're here now, and you remember them.
That kid whose tags you're holding, he can rest because you made it out. His sacrifice wasn't in vain.
[ She almost starts crying again. She might, if she weren't so spent. ]
I did. I did do my best, I really--
[ She closes her eyes and swallows against the tightness in her throat. That's part of why it hurts so much, why everything hurts so much. She did her best, she tried to stay alive and keep the others alive with her, but they were lost, and then so was she. She can't bring herself to tell John that. She can't make herself say I died. She failed them. She failed the dead. She didn't make it anywhere.
I know you did, Chy. I expect nothing less from you.
[John crushes her against him, bracing the back of her neck with his hand.
He can't tell if time is passing more quickly or slowly with her in his arms. All John knows is he'll hold her as long as she needs him to hold her, and he won't let go before she's ready.]
Crash here, tonight. We'll go together in the morning.
[ She'd been bracing herself for this to end, to have to get up, walk out, go to the elevator and to her own room, huge and empty and without Tom on the other side of the wall to knock out their signal before going to bed.
She wipes her face, sniffing, trying to get an embarrassingly runny nose under control. Then she nods, because going back to sleep in an empty room after telling him all of that feels like a nightmare in itself. ]
[John dabs at her wet face with the hem of his shirt, it's not like he isn't already wet, and he couldn't care less if there's some snot in the mix. There are worse body fluids to be covered in. Like her blood.
He doesn't want it on his hands, or to even think about it right now. Can't. John knows what happened to Chyler now, knows the loss she's experienced on some level, that she's already been hurt, but he still can't stand the thought of it happening. Not while he's living and breathing.]
Take off your boots, cadet. I don't want dirt in my damn bed.
[She's still practically in uniform, but since when has that stopped a soldier from getting sleep? John rubs at his face, substantially more tired now than he was before this conversation. Emotions.]
Do you need a t-shirt, track pants, something more comfortable, or are you good?
[ Wearing John's clothes would be just too weird. She has her uniform. She'll just have to suffer through wearing yesterday's clothes to the PG in the morning, and all things considered, that's a small enough price to pay.
Chyler wipes her eyes with her fingertips and leans down to unlace her boots, kicking them off instead of pulling them off properly. Apparently it's a night for going against established habits. ]
I can sleep on the couch, sir. Or on the bean bag.
[ She's taken by surprise and goes down with a startled noise. For a second she just lays there, exhausted, staring at the roof. Then she looks at John. ]
My friend Tom... we shared a wall in the dormitories. [ She stops, suddenly not sure she wants to give away a memory that small and precious. What if John thinks it's stupid? ]
We would knock on the wall before bed, he started it, one day when I was mad at him. Three knocks, over and over, until I knocked back. And then we just... We kept doing it.
[ She looks back at the ceiling. ] When I go to bed I keep waiting for him to knock. [ Almost too quickly: ] It's stupid, I know it is.
No. It's not stupid. Stuff like that is what's important. What keeps you fighting for the right reasons. Those are the details you don't want to forget. I don't keep track of how many battles I've won or lost, or the people I've killed, those aren't the things I want to remember.
[John grabs the comforter, folded back at the end of the bed, and drapes it up over her. He doesn't linger, it would be too much to linger, for both of them, so he stands up and turns the lights off instead. Rodney's bed creaks in the dark as he collapses on top of it, not uncomfortable with the way that it smells like him.
Glad Rodney is still here, and it isn't all he has left of him, because sometimes that's all you have, when you lose someone.
The crackle of their voice over a radio, the scent of their sweat, or three knocks on a wall.]
Goodnight, sir. [ She curls under the blanket, running her fingers along its hem, back to him, face to the wall. And she waits. She waits until she thinks it's safe, until she thinks he's probably asleep and can't hear her do it.
Then she reaches out and very softly knocks against the wall. Under her breath: ] Goodnight, Tom.
[ Chyler turns her face toward the pillow, closes her eyes, and sleeps. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oh look another thing that's backdated to right after her encounter with marco
Date: 2018-03-02 07:05 am (UTC)Telling him everything, or as close to everything as she can force herself to get.
She goes to his rooms in communal housing, after dark, after spending an hour pacing on the rooftop trying to talk herself into it and out of it over and over again.
Chyler knocks. Definitively. Forcefully.
And about one second later, she turns and heads for the stairs. ]
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-04 01:32 am (UTC)[John sticks his head out of the quad door, catching her in the hallway.
She's never come to his quarters before. They spend a lot of time together, but it's always on the job. At the PG, or in the field. They'll grab a bite to eat sometimes, but they're in uniform. She still calls him sir.
Right now he's wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon rabbit on the front and some track pants, his hair even messier than usual. Bare foot. Off-duty Sheppard at his most leisure.]
What's up?
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-04 05:15 am (UTC)And the hair. But that's not as surprising. ]
John....
[ It's small, quiet, uncertain. Chyler bites her lip. ]
Can I talk to you?
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-04 05:26 am (UTC)[John holds the door open.
The quad is asleep, or out for the night. Almost everyone on the floor is in the PG and works long shifts and odd hours. It's not much to look at, but it's clean, more or less. There's no one living here that's into decorating.
John rubs the back of his neck, already worried. He tries not to look it.]
Do you want to hang out on the living room, I don't think we'll run into anyone, but we might. There's my room, too. Rodney's still working.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-04 05:43 am (UTC)Your room, please, sir.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-04 06:04 am (UTC)[He steers her towards the double room he shares with Rodney.
It's easy to tell whose side of the room is whose. Rodney's is messy, scattered with coffee cups, papers, and socks. John's is neat, everything in its place, including his many toys. There's also a strangely motivating poster of Poe Dameron taped to the inside of his closet door, which he closes almost as soon as she enters the room.]
You can take a seat on the beanbag chair.
[Of course John has a beanbag chair. He's from the 2000s.]
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-04 06:32 am (UTC)[ ...Oh, the thing that looks like a giant bean. That makes sense. In its own stupid way. The stupidness of it is strangely comforting. Chyler climbs into it, starts to draw her knees up toward her chest, and forces herself instead to sit as straight as a person can in a beanbag chair.
She takes a breath. Presses her lips together, suddenly not sure where to start. She didn't tell Marco much, really. The only person she's told much to is Alexander Pierce, and she's had moments where she questions her own sense in doing it. ( She was new, scared, shocky, and he was there and he was kind. )
Even he didn't get everything. ]
They were teaching us to fight Insurrectionists, at Corbulo. Human enemies, human targets. [ She bites her lip. She's not sure that's the place to start, but it's the only one that seems remotely close. ] I had no problem with that. I hate Insurrectionists. When we lived on Mamore--
[ Chyler closes her eyes, trying to sort out her thoughts. ] My parents were stationed on Mamore because of an Insurrectionist attack that killed two million people and injured eight million more. Innies used a commercial nuclear explosive, the kind miners use on asteroids, and planted it in a truck full of scrap metal that they drove to the middle of an arcology. They murdered two million people and never thought about the nuclear fallout and the generations it would effect. When I was ten, they bombed my cousin's school. A school, with children. That's what Insurrectionists are. They're monsters.
[ That word. Chyler stops again. ] My brother died in a suicide bombing when I was thirteen. My parents were KIA not long after that. I was ready to kill Innies. From the moment I got to Corbulo, I was ready and willing.
[ She shifts on the chair, tucking her legs up underneath her so she'll stop feeling the urge to curl into a ball. ] That's--that's what we were there for. To learn to fight and kill human targets.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-19 11:18 pm (UTC)He's always known Chyler had more than just a rough upbringing, that she's been training for war since before she was old enough to understand what war meant. Child soldier. John's met plenty of them in his career. All of them victims, no matter which side of the line they were on.
They're from different universes, but Chyler's story isn't a new one. Even on Earth, people are born into fights with too much hurt and too much history to quit. Violence begetting violence begetting even more violence.
John remembers the night they met, Chyler vomiting by herself in a back alley while most kids her age were out celebrating. PTSD comes in all shapes and sizes, and it doesn't discriminate.]
What happened?
[Not consoling, not yet. Chyler's still talking, and he's still listening. He doesn't want her to stop until she's said her piece, and gotten whatever it is that's poisoning her out of her system.]
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-20 12:07 am (UTC)[ For a few seconds Chyler doesn't say anything, just stares straight ahead. Then, a deep breath. Blinking, her eyes burning already, she tries to find her place again. ]
Sully, Michael Sullivan, he was part of Hastati squad. Incredible with media manipulation. Hacking. He was always into things he shouldn't have been. He pieced together a vid he intercepted in pieces from the Office of Naval Intelligence. It showed Insurrections fighting with Marines, helping each other against... something. We didn't see what. I didn't understand it. I couldn't... I couldn't understand what would make Marines assist the enemy. Why the enemy would want to help.
[ Now she does curl up, shifting her legs out from under her to tuck them up against her chest and wrap one arm around them. She feels lightheaded, not wanting to go back to those memories. They're still so vivid, so flashbulb intense. ]
That night the evacuation sirens started. We were supposed to go to the tether, stay with our squads, wait to be lifted to the station. We saw shock troops start dropping in from orbit, and... Dima didn't want to wait. She cut ahead, got on the lift--
[ Chyler closes her eyes, biting down hard on her lower lip. ] Ships. We'd never seen anything like them before. They blew the tether to pieces. It collapsed on top of us. We lost Dima, Shere, and Kaye, all at once, just like that.
Their weapons-- [ She's getting ahead of herself, but she can feel the start of panic in her heart. She gets up, climbs onto the bed, sits as close to John as she can without touching him. She doesn't let herself think about why. ]
They shot needles at us, while we were running. We were running away, and they just-- kept shooting, green lights and glowing needles and if someone took more than one-- I'd never seen someone blow up before. I'd seen what it looked like after, but I'd never seen it happen. It was like they swallowed bombs.
[ She leans against him, turning her face toward his arm. ]
We hid. The thing that found us was huge. Huge. It stabbed Junjie with some glowing white weapon, lifted him right off his feet and hung him in front of us and laughed. It shot Vickers when he tried to distract it so the rest of us could get away.
[ Chyler leans back and reaches for the pair of chains around her neck, pulling out one set of dog tags. ] His were the only ones I could get.
[ She runs her thumb over the bumps and ridges of Vickers' name, playing the sight of him being shot over and over in her mind. ] A Marine killed it. Saved us. Tried to escort us to an evac point. We were the only survivors they found. The only ones. On the planet. If other people survived, search and rescue couldn't find them. The whole school was dead. There were Marines and cadets everywhere, just. Piled on top of each other. Some of the cadets were holding hands. I knew them. I didn't know all of them, but I knew their faces. I.
[ Staring into space again. Lips parted, breathing slow and hard, her mind locked a universe away. ]
We. [ Report, cadet. Report, cadet. Report. She leans against John, fingers still running over the dog tags. ] We were making our way through the woods to the evac point when they attacked us again. They--injured me. Then I was here.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-20 12:49 am (UTC)He doesn't want to picture what all that was like from the eyes of a sixteen-year-old girl, no matter where or when she's from. John's seen hardened men and women cave under less.
There are no words. Nothing he can say will undo those losses, or take away the pain she'll carry inside of her the rest of her life. Scars can only fade with time.
Moments like these, he wishes to god Teyla, or Elizabeth were here, someone who would know what to do in a moment like this. On this terrain, John is at a disadvantage. He barely knows what to do with his own emotions.
So John does what he can do, which is pull her into his arms. She's so small, and in some ways, so fragile, that John is almost afraid to hold her. Chyler the soldier is strong, loyal, and competent. He would trust her to hold any line. Chyler the girl is someone he's only beginning to meet, both sweet and vulnerable, and it's her that worries John.
Chyler the soldier might kill her in order to survive. Just like John the soldier killed John the man.
Truth is, one can't survive without the other.]
I'm sorry, Chy. That sounds like hell.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-20 01:16 am (UTC)Then he calls her Chy. He calls her what her parents used to and he tells her that he's sorry, and something cracks open inside her. She presses her face against his chest and starts to cry. To sob. To empty herself out in that weeping, gasping, wild way that there's no coming back from once you start.
It occurs to some part of her to be embarrassed. It's small, fierce, angry, and humiliated that she couldn't keep it together, telling him all this. She's bawling into his shirt like a child.
It occurs to some part of her to feel guilty. He gives her stories of Atlantis and she gives him stories about death.
But the momentum of tears carries her until she's spent, until she's doing nothing but breathing and shuddering and feeling the damp on his clothes pressing against her cheek. She swallows and tries to straighten up. ]
I'm sorry. I don't know what-- I'm sorry.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-20 01:50 am (UTC)He wants to, and could, if he didn't have decades of experience in holding himself back. His eyes burn, his chest tight with that all too familiar feeling of the kind of emotion that threatens to swallow and choke, but Chyler is already in pieces, and for her sake, John keeps himself together, trying his damnedest to be the man she needs him to be.
He brushes her tears away with a callused thumb and smiles down at her, tired, frayed at the edges, but no less there.]
You don't have to be sorry for anything, okay? You did your best. Sometimes, that's all anyone can do. Life isn't always fair. All that matters is you're here now, and you remember them.
That kid whose tags you're holding, he can rest because you made it out. His sacrifice wasn't in vain.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-20 02:06 am (UTC)I did. I did do my best, I really--
[ She closes her eyes and swallows against the tightness in her throat. That's part of why it hurts so much, why everything hurts so much. She did her best, she tried to stay alive and keep the others alive with her, but they were lost, and then so was she. She can't bring herself to tell John that. She can't make herself say I died. She failed them. She failed the dead. She didn't make it anywhere.
She failed the living, too. ]
I don't even know if the others made it.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-20 10:15 pm (UTC)[John crushes her against him, bracing the back of her neck with his hand.
He can't tell if time is passing more quickly or slowly with her in his arms. All John knows is he'll hold her as long as she needs him to hold her, and he won't let go before she's ready.]
Crash here, tonight. We'll go together in the morning.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-30 09:02 pm (UTC)She wipes her face, sniffing, trying to get an embarrassingly runny nose under control. Then she nods, because going back to sleep in an empty room after telling him all of that feels like a nightmare in itself. ]
(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-08 04:45 am (UTC)He doesn't want it on his hands, or to even think about it right now. Can't. John knows what happened to Chyler now, knows the loss she's experienced on some level, that she's already been hurt, but he still can't stand the thought of it happening. Not while he's living and breathing.]
Take off your boots, cadet. I don't want dirt in my damn bed.
[She's still practically in uniform, but since when has that stopped a soldier from getting sleep? John rubs at his face, substantially more tired now than he was before this conversation. Emotions.]
Do you need a t-shirt, track pants, something more comfortable, or are you good?
(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-12 01:57 am (UTC)[ Wearing John's clothes would be just too weird. She has her uniform. She'll just have to suffer through wearing yesterday's clothes to the PG in the morning, and all things considered, that's a small enough price to pay.
Chyler wipes her eyes with her fingertips and leans down to unlace her boots, kicking them off instead of pulling them off properly. Apparently it's a night for going against established habits. ]
I can sleep on the couch, sir. Or on the bean bag.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-15 01:11 am (UTC)[He knows her. Tomorrow, she'll probably be beating herself up about this. John could never be harder on Chyler than she is on herself.
To punctuate his point, he shoves Chyler by one shoulder and back onto the bed. He's a lightweight, but she's a feather. A seventeen-year-old girl.]
I'll take Rodney's bunk, he won't be back until tomorrow afternoon anyway.
And I'm not taking complaints.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-20 05:22 pm (UTC)My friend Tom... we shared a wall in the dormitories. [ She stops, suddenly not sure she wants to give away a memory that small and precious. What if John thinks it's stupid? ]
We would knock on the wall before bed, he started it, one day when I was mad at him. Three knocks, over and over, until I knocked back. And then we just... We kept doing it.
[ She looks back at the ceiling. ] When I go to bed I keep waiting for him to knock. [ Almost too quickly: ] It's stupid, I know it is.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-21 05:48 pm (UTC)[John grabs the comforter, folded back at the end of the bed, and drapes it up over her. He doesn't linger, it would be too much to linger, for both of them, so he stands up and turns the lights off instead. Rodney's bed creaks in the dark as he collapses on top of it, not uncomfortable with the way that it smells like him.
Glad Rodney is still here, and it isn't all he has left of him, because sometimes that's all you have, when you lose someone.
The crackle of their voice over a radio, the scent of their sweat, or three knocks on a wall.]
Goodnight, Chy.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-22 02:22 am (UTC)Then she reaches out and very softly knocks against the wall. Under her breath: ] Goodnight, Tom.
[ Chyler turns her face toward the pillow, closes her eyes, and sleeps. ]