Tickling the Ivories, Part 2
Posted on Sat Feb 16th, 2019 @ 3:38pm by Major Cornelius Tremble
Edited on on Sat Feb 16th, 2019 @ 10:27pm
1,768 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Episode 6 - Old Habits Die Hard
Location: Casperia Prime - Bungalow TF78
Timeline: MD001 0600 hrs
Neil awoke, only his eyelids opening, as he became aware of his environment. Something was different than the majority of mornings he’d experienced and he’d been taught not to react when waking up in a strange place.
It was dark, but there was something…hair or maybe cobwebs draped over his face and he tried to process that, without moving.
He kind of hoped it was hair. That would mean the encounter with Cami was real and not imagined. If it were webs, that might mean he was back on Pelitar II, and that would be bad.
Neil decided that it was hair. It didn’t feel like it was sticking the way cobwebs would as he rotated his face slightly, testing. He settled back then, fairly sure he didn’t have to worry about an arachnid or some such eating his face.
He breathed in, then realized three things. He was in Cami’s place. She was obviously responsible for the hair in his face and the warmth stretched along his side. And he was naked.
Well, they were. There were sheets involved, but the best way to sum up his current sit-rep had to acknowledge a total lack of clothing. It was going to be a factor in any action that would be forthcoming.
He opted to just lay there for a moment, taking it in. Neil opened his eyes and, through the hair, noticed the darkness had lifted, if only slightly and he could hear birds or similar creatures filling the air outside with their greetings and gripes.
Then the hair started trying to creep up his nose and Neil had to confront that. He really didn’t want to move yet. It was too pleasing and unique to just lay there with a beautiful woman, enjoying an actual morning.
He finally reached up with his free hand and gently pushed the hair to one side and grunted in surprise as his ear lobe was bitten.
“Mmmphf,” she said against his shoulder before turning her face slightly as she stretched against him and murmured, coherently, “Why are you awake? It’s still night.”
“Actually, it’s about three quarters of an hour until the sun comes up here, so it’s dawn,” he said after a moment.
“You’re weird,” she yawned. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Habit,” he admitted, slipping one hand up to his scalp and itched at the dried sweat, before using the palm as a pillow. “Before any landing, you get the broad strokes of the terrain, tides, and all climatical influences you may experience for a given area.”
“That’s just sick. Are you quoting marine regs to me? Now? At way too early in the morning after a fabulous evening followed by hours of not sleeping?” She asked, rolling off his arm to prop her chin on his chest.
“Actually, its more SOP than regs, but it hardly matters. Guilty,” he acknowledged, grinning as feeling began creeping back into his arm now that she had moved. Pins and needles stitched up and down his arm, as he worked his fingers, forcing the blood to flow.
She considered him, then her fingers dug into his ribs causing him to yelp. “Well, if you’re not going to sleep, then there are other things to do than recite your regs.”
After a few seconds, he could only agree with her.
***
The sun was four hours past it’s zenith, when they surfaced again. She had pushed him toward the fresher station while she had pulled on a silken wrap and promised him coffee.
Twenty minutes later, wearing a towel sarong like, Neil wandered through her bungalow and found her on the patio, under an awning. She smiled at him and gestured him into a chair. “Coffee as promised,” she told him, pushing a mug over. “There’s juice too and the mandolin’s will be done by the time I shower.”
“Mandolin,” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee and then another, making an approving sound in his throat.
“Pastries. I learned to make them when I was on Earth.” She stood then, circled the table and gave him a kiss, avoiding the half grab he made at her easily, pushing off his shoulder and headed for the fresher. “Be nice. I need to clean up.”
Neil watched her go, grinning as she looked back over her shoulder at the first corner. She winked at him then, stripped out of the kimono, giving him a fleeting view before disappearing.
He put his feet up on another chair, crossing them and leaned back in the comfortable deck chair, wondering at the fact that not even 100 hours ago, he’d been used as an attack bug’s chew toy. He closed his eyes, enjoying the coolish air wafting in past the foliage and fence that surrounded the patio and the sun light that had him partially enveloped, warming his skin.
Neil must have drifted off because he woke to a light cuff to the back of his head, as Cami slipped past him. She put a towel lined basked full of steaming pastries in the center of the table, a crock of what looked to be butter and finally refilled both of their coffee mugs before sliding into a seat, smiling at him.
“If you are tired, you should have chosen to sleep rather than wake me up at so cruel an hour,” she informed him, smiling over the brim of her mug.
“I don’t think it’s the early hour that made me tired,” he responded as he picked one of the mandolin’s from the basket, broke it in half and applied some of the butter. It was hot to the touch and smelled of citrus. He bit in and tasted the light pastry and the promised citrus: orange was his best guess and the butter was silky smooth and tasted of some sort of nut.
“So, Neil, what exactly happened to you. Now that I can see your face in the daylight…”, she asked curiously, smiling at him as he ate the pastry, taking the other half from his hand and biting in.
“Someone tried to make improvements,” he joked. At her direct look, he smiled “Simple, really. Sparring session with someone that really needed to work off some tension. She looks at least as bad, I’m thinking but these things heal.”
“She?” Cami queried, more than a little curious as she took a mandolin of her own and took a bite.
“Fellow crew person, Fleet type,” Neil informed her, deciding Cami really didn’t really need to know anything beyond that.
“Hmm, not an intimate relationship then? Those aren’t ‘how dare you’ marks?” She queried lightly, but she was watching his face.
Neil took another mandolin, biting into it before replying around a mouthful. “The only other entanglement I’ve had in the past months was not nearly so delightful and included something trying to eat my face.”
She laughed, then sobered looking at him. “You’re serious?”
“That’s the fabulous life of a Marine, Cami. But, it’s par for the course. These mandolin’s are fabulous, by the way. As is the coffee,” he diverted.
She smiled at him again and let him change the subject, though he saw she was still curious. “Well thank you kind sir. I’m glad I haven’t lost my touch. And I hate replicated food, so to answer a question you might have: I bake. And cook, a little.”
They compared notes on food then, which seemed a safe subject and she told him of the food from her childhood, which resembled Thai, and the French influences she’d come to enjoy on earth. He told her of growing up in a heavily Creole influenced household, with influences from all over from his mother’s people, who were gypsy like.
From food, they branched out into music and Neal was shocked when he noted suddenly that the sun was ebbing toward the horizon. They’d talked the day away. She hadn’t seemed to realize it either and looked at him, “It’s getting late? Maybe? When do you have to get back aboard?”
“Leave expires just before midnight, Pioneer standard time. So, I have about five hours," he told her.
She bit her lip, considering things, then asked “I was going to suggest we go out, but if you have to be back…maybe I should order in?”
“If you don’t mind hanging around,” she added with a playful smile.
He finished one mandolin and reached for another, smiling at her. "I'd really like that, though I wonder how we'd amuse ourselves? he asked, as he buttered the pastry and took a bite. She met his eyes and told him, "Oh I have a few ideas. I think I'll introduce you to my favorite thing in the Universe."
"Didn't we kind of cover that last night," he teased around a partial mouth full of pastry.
"Well, okay. Maybe it's my third favorite thing behind that and music. Are you interested or not?" she asked him, a slight blush rising on her face and neck.
"I was talking about the music, but I'd definitely like to find out what makes that list,"he grinned back at her, the smile reaching his eyes as she blushed a bit more and laughed at him.
"Weirdo. Ok come on," she said, standing and picked up the tray with the basket and crock, adding her mug to it and led the way into the bungalow.
***
At exactly 23:58, PST (Pioneer Standard Time) Neil beamed aboard the Pioneer, received permission to come aboard by the Officer of the Watch and headed towards his quarters, still smiling at the memory of Cami, half rolling as she belly laughed and snort-laughed at an old 2D video program called Looney Toons from old earth.
"And she called me Weird," he thought, but couldn't remember when he'd had a better shore leave. The kiss she'd given him before he'd beamed out had left him a bit breathless.
Which was a new sensation for him.
It would bear thought, he decided as entered his quarters and became immediately aware of a flashing message from the CO.
"Back to reality," he sighed as he put the uniform from the previous evening into the cleaner and sat at his desk.
Second Lieutenant Cornelius Tremble
Marine Commanding Officer, USS Pioneer
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