An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
attack on @poisonheadcrabsalesman :3
with thanks to @bloodgulchblog for encouraging me on this madness
Another Question
A week and ten hours after Roland managed to rope Blue Team into the nonsense that was the debate of whether or not milk was a snack, he appeared on the holopuck of the semi-secluded corner table in the dining hall during Miller’s evening calorie infusion—he refused to call anything ‘dinner’ that came out of the highly-technical, hyper-specific, individually tailored meal windows—dinner was a nice steak, with potatoes and asparagus and more butter than had been healthy even for an ODST that rucked eight miles a day for PT and another eight for fun—with a mischievous grin on his face.
“Hey, Miller!”
Jared squinted at him, suspicious. Roland bothering him outside of work was never a good sign. “What do you want, Roland,” he sighed, voice flat.
“What, can’t a guy come visit a friend and provide him with some evening entertainment?”
At that, Miller cocked an eyebrow. “Did you learn how to tapdance, or something?” He asked sarcastically.
“Do you want me to learn how to dance, Spartan Miller? I could, you know, just like that—” and he snapped his fingers “—and it doesn’t have to be tap dance, either. Square dancing, a nice easy two-step, maybe some salsa?” At this, he executed a damn-near-perfect triple twirl, before coming to a very dramatic stop with a deep bow.
“And, y’know, I just realized, if you swap one letter in tapdance, you get l—“
One letter was all he was able to get out before Miller’s hand slammed down on the holopuck, shutting it off and only cracking the casing a little. (S-deck equipment was hardier than everything else, but when a totally-very-much-not-embarassed supersoldier got violent with the equipment, there was only so much that the reinforcement could do.) “Thank you, Roland,” he hissed, and made to shovel another bite of Spartan fuel into his mouth before half-choking on it in surprise at an annoyingly chipper voice from the table behind him.
“Aw, come on, Spartan! I didn’t even get to the actual evening entertainment!”
Miller swiveled, locked eyes with the smug little holographic bastard, whose holopuck occupied a table that was empty, but adjacent to a table that wasn’t.
Which meant Roland wanted an audience now.
This wouldn’t end well at all.
He groaned internally and moved between the benches with his tray. “All right, Roland. What’s the entertainment?”
“Another debate,” he said, far too cheerfully. “One that apparently goes back several hundred years.”
“Oh no,” Miller muttered.
“All the way back to the wet navy,” Roland continued. “It goes like this: ‘Is. Water. Wet.’ Discuss.”
“Wh-wha-of course not! Water makes OTHER things wet, it isn’t itself wet!”
A head popped up from the other table—and oh frak, it was DeMarco.
“So we agree, something that has water on it is wet, then, yes?”
“…yes?” Oh, he didn’t like where this was going.
“Excellent! Now, tell me, Miller, do you ever see just a solitary molecule of water?”
“I… suppose not, not outside of a lab anyway?”
“Great! So since a single molecule of H20 essentially can’t be observed, could it, then, be supposed that all water is, for all intents and purposes, wet?” This, the AI said with a louder voice, and the rest of Fireteam Majestic, who had perked various ears up but had not begun to engage, all turned their attention to the AI. Another table (whose fireteam Miller could not immediately identify) also had their attention drawn to what was being said.
“That’s not how it works, Roland,” Hoya said, to which DeMarco scoffed, and Grant sighed before putting her head in her hands, leaving only her shock of close-cropped red hair visible.
“Oh really, Spartan Hoya?”
“Yes, really,” Hoya replied, before DeMarco elbowed him in the side.
“Roland’s right, Carlo–water’s wet, end of–ya jump in a lake, you get wet, you put a boat in the water, the boat gets wet, you throw some more water into the lake with a bucket, guess what, the water is also wet!”
“I’m pretty sure the lake has more experience making things wet than you do, DeMarco!” one of the Spartans from the other fireteam jeered, and Roland’s face dropped as Paul’s head snapped around as the rest of the other’s team started snickering.
“Oh no,” Roland said quietly. “Thiiiis might not be part of the plan.”
Miller was silently praying that things wouldn’t escalate. DeMarco was a bit of an ass, but he wasn’t stupid, he wouldn’t be in charge of Majestic if he was–he’d probably volley an insult back, and then they could all go back to their calorie slop and he could have a bottle of not-remotely-strong-enough beer before getting some rack time and pretend his Spartans hadn’t got into a catfight with another handler’s (probably Carmichael’s, if he had the schedules right in his head) fireteam.
And make no mistake, it was a catfight. Amped-up, juiced, and the cockiest of the cocky UNSC prima donnas didn’t get into anything but.
“--yeah, well try this on for wet, DeMarco!” one of the women from the other fireteam said (and Miller groaned internally again when he recognized her as someone Paul had tried to hit on after striking out on the Commander), and a glop of caloric sludge flew with unerring accuracy to land directly on Paul’s face.
“Aaand, there goes my evening,” he muttered, as Hoya snapped to his feet. Majestic’s pride had been hurt now–there was no way the towering CQ combatant was going to let that fly.
Reluctantly, he stood, and made his way–too slowly– toward the sudden thunderclap of chaos, as things rapidly devolved from food fight into an actual brawl.
It was a good thing none of them had anything more than undersuits and the loose, baggy ‘S-deck casuals’ on.
“Hey, guys, come on, can’t we just–”
Okay, maybe wading into the middle of a supersoldier brawl was a bad idea, he thought, as a redirected fist slammed directly into his left eye.
<break>
He came to what was probably scant seconds later, but by the time he was back on his feet, Majestic had, sans Grant, who had mercifully and intelligently stayed out of the fight, mostly subdued the rest of the other fireteam. DeMarco had the one who’d thrown the first insult in an on-the-ground headlock, Naiya had one arm around her opposite number’s neck and another pinning her arms to her body, Hoya had pinned the third member of the other fireteam to the table, and Madsen was being bodily held in place by the fourth member of the other team.
Miller had half a second to take pride that his team had managed to disable three of the four members of the other team before every speaker in the mess hall exploded into fury, and Commander Palmer’s voice rent the air.
“SPARTANS WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THINGS HOLY ARE YOU FUCKING DOING?”
The tromp of heavily armored boots followed the commander’s announcement, a full section of armored, on-duty Spartans on MP duty coming in with shock batons at the ready.
“For what it’s worth,” Roland said, before fizzling away into a shower of digital snow, “I am sorry about this.”
<break>
It had been a good few weeks since Miller had heard the Commander really tear off on someone.
It had been even longer (though not by too much) since he’d been caught in the collateral damage of one of her dressing-downs. Since he’d tried to stop the fight, she’d granted him the small mercy of standing off to the side of the briefing room as she lit into both Fireteam Majestic (except Spartan Grant) and Fireteam Adder, but like Carmichael, who was standing uncomfortably between the two groups of simmering Spartans, taking the full brunt of her fury, she was still holding him accountable for his fireteam’s lack of discipline.
Besides, as she’d commented just before they’d entered the briefing room, the shiner he was going to be sporting for the next good while would be punishment enough.
The tirade was coming to an end, he noted idly, which was good, because while he could keep standing at attention for as long as the Commander ordered him to, he was finding himself in dire need of a smoke.
He’d been doing a lot of that, lately.
“Alright, you’re all confined to quarters unless on duty until further notice. Now get out of my sight,” she ordered, and the other nine Spartans dressed right and walked out of the room under a stormcloud.
“Miller, not you,” she said, after a moment, as he was halfway to the door.
He paused, and turned back to her. “Commander?”
“I… appreciate you trying to stop the fight. It’s not your fault DeMarco can’t keep his mouth shut, or keep his dick in his undersuit. Just… make sure they know not to take Roland’s bait next time? This is the second time he’s done this asinine debate stunt.”
“Will you talk to him about there not being a third, ma’am?”
The corner of her mouth quirked up. “I’ll beat some sense into him, don’t worry. Now get out of here, Spartan. Make sure you don’t spend too much time in the hangar tonight–I need you sharp tomorrow.”
He flicked his eyes to somewhere over the Commander’s shoulder, the faintest amount of heat rising to his face–she wasn’t supposed to know about that. “I, uh, don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am.”
She rolled her eyes, and if Miller squinted, he’d almost swear there was a modicum of affection in the gesture. “Get, Spartan.”
He executed a tactical advance in a retrograde direction with suitable haste, and after diverting to his quarters to acquire materiel, slipped easily into the soft pocket of his now-slop-stained sweatpants, departed quietly towards Hangar 11.
The hangar was mostly empty, and practiced footsteps meant he moved soundlessly enough to avoid attracting attention from the third shift mechanics. He only ran into one man, at the door as the other man was leaving, a clearly-tired, bearded, Hispanic man in mechanic’s coveralls, who had not even spared Jared a glance as he left.
There was an empty crate behind the last Pelican, and he soundlessly flipped it over and sat down upon it, leaning up against the hull of the carbon-scored dropship before lighting up.
The nicotine hit like a freight train, and he let the first cloud of smoke hang lazily above his head for a few moments before blowing it away.
He was alone for a grand total of three minutes before the familiar squeak of dress shoes against the decking reached his ears, and Miller’s heartrate spiked.
Shit. Most nights, he’d have been glad to see To–the Captain, but he was FAR too frazzled tonight to deal with it. With him. He needed a smoke in peace, a beer, and six hours of uninterrupted rack time.
He’d be lucky if he got four.
Tom rounded the nose of the Pelican, and smiled gently on seeing the Spartan.
“I figured I’d find you here.”
“Sir?”
Tom waved a hand, dismissing the title like so much smoke. “Sarah told me what happened in the mess hall today. Or rather, she made Roland tell me.”
And at this, he reached around and tapped the back of his head, where his CNI slot was located. “She said you’d probably be down here blowing off some steam.”
Jared nodded. “Yeah, she… seemed to know where I was going to be heading.”
The unspoken question hung between them, and Tom shook his head. “I came back smelling like smoke one too many times, but I didn’t tell her, don’t worry. She’s just too damn smart.”
Miller hmmed in agreement, then fished into his pocket. “Smoke?”
“No, thanks. I’m mainly here on Roland’s behalf, otherwise I’d have given you your space.”
“Huh?” Well, it was nice at least that the Captain knew he’d have preferred to be alone.
“He wants to apologize, for, well,” he gestured at Miller’s face, “the shiner you’re currently sporting. Sorry, by the way.”
“Not your fault,” Miller shrugged. “How’s he planning on apologizing?”
“Well, he’s finagled getting some real pineapple from canned stores added to your meal plan, which he says will help it heal, but he also, is, ah, riding along for a reason.”
“Sir?”
Tom closed his eyes, and when they opened, Lasky’s body language changed drastically. He slouched a little, let the barest hint of belly tense against the plastron of his uniform, and hooked his thumbs into the front belt loops. “Hiya, Spartan,” he said, almost sheepishly.
“Wait. Roland? Did you hijack the Captain?”
His hands came up from his, no, Tom’s waist, and spread in a sort of defensive starburst. “Nah, I asked permission. And I can’t exactly jack myself in if he doesn’t want it to happen, so. I just… I do feel a little bad, about earlier, yknow? I never wanted you to get hurt. I mean, if you got a concussion, the other handlers would have to take your shifts while you got better, and then who am I supposed to banter with on Ops? (“Gee, thanks,” Jared muttered, taking another drag of his smoke.) You’re the only one other than Palmer that lets me do anything on ops, you know.”
“Dalton–”
“Puts up with very little bullshit on the job, and we both know it. Or at least the Commander doesn’t, and she leans on him to make sure he doesn’t either.” It’s so uncanny, hearing Tom’s voice in Roland’s cadence, see his body move with Roland’s minute mannerisms (which he’s been paying way too much attention to), wonder what thoughts the little orange bastard was thinking on Tom’s biocirc.
Tom is just a hair under six feet tall, a hair small enough that anyone with a complex about it would call six feet, and when wearing his uniform shoes nobody would know the difference, but when Roland is driving, the slouch drops him to maybe five ten, five ten and a half (and proportionally, Roland’s avatar is only barely that tall), but it still feels like he’s towering over Jared, from the crate he has still not gotten up from.
“Anyway,” Roland says, dawdling closer, “like I said, I feel bad about your black eye, so, I figured, y’know, I should do something to help it. So I got the pineapple added to your meals, but there’s, well, some old things that help too, you know?”
He’s almost on top of him, now, close enough that Lasky’s uniform is absolutely going to smell like smoke even though he didn’t put one to his lips, and even though Miller’s smoking hand has drifted down onto the top of the crate and accidentally extinguished the cig. “Old things?”
“Yeah, old remedies…” he pauses, and it surprises Jared that he looks genuinely nervous for a half a second (an eternity for an AI), not something he’s used to seeing on either face, before Roland-as-Tom places one finger under his chin, tips his face up, and gently presses his–their–fuck– lips to Miller’s bruised brow, right where the stray fist had landed, before withdrawing with almost indecent haste to a full pace away. “There. Kissed the boo-boo all better,” Roland says, in a tone of Tom’s voice that he absolutely knows is the Captain’s false-confidence voice. “Enjoy the pineapple, Spartan!” he says, before Tom’s eyes close once more, and reopen as the man straightens back up.
Jared sits in frozen silence for thirty-six beats of his jackrabbiting heart before Tom’s voice breaks him from his trance. “So, what precisely did Roland want?”
He only barely stumbles on his words. “Y-you don’t remember?”
Tom shakes his head, and Miller’s eyes track the way his lips move as he answers. “No, I don’t. The tech isn’t quite that good, and it’d feel weird, anyway.” He frowns, and says, “But for some reason I… my mind is on tapdancing?”
Miller’s mouth moves almost faster than he can think of the lie he tells, and when he lies down that night having consumed three days’ worth of grog ration, not as drunk as he’d like to be but as drunk as he can get without risking impairment the next morning, he doesn’t even remember what he said to Tom, except that it got him to leave before Miller said or did something exceptionally stupid, like try and kiss him–either–both– for real.
Roland doesn’t bother him for three days, and Miller can’t decide if that’s a blessing, a curse, or both.