[B-Deck] Meetings, Patch Ups, & Downtime

[Durant, M.]

Durant sat across from Cruz, not particularly sure how to reply to his comment about the fact that he frequently betted on his rank. It was such a foreign concept to him, and he hadn't met a Marine that had been so pessimistic before. At least, not until having come to know the now-Staff Sergeant.

Cruz popped the cork on the dusty bottle of Scotch and poured its contents into two cups. The man locked eyes with Durant and slid one of the cups towards him. Michael briefly glanced at it, the aroma reaching his nostrils. While a part of him wished to partake, the officer side of him won out. Off duty or not, drinking aboard a UNSC ship was strictly forbidden by UNSC regulations.

In fact, so was its possession. Which begged the question of how Cruz had even managed to procure a bottle and keep it hidden without anyone finding out. Not that Michael cared much. Despite knowing the regs, he wasn't about to put the man on report. Drinking was a part of Marine Corps culture, and in most cases considered tradition.

Who was he to get in the way of tradition?

Durant was torn from his contemplative speculation by Cruz giving him a history lesson on Oscar Company. However, despite what had been said, he soon started to realize it was less about the unit's history and more about Cruz's. The man recounted the events that transpired over the world of Gallifrey, which the Lieutenant recalled was the Staff Sergeant's home world.

The deeper that Cruz got into the story, the more grim Durant's expression became. When the senior NCO had finally concluded the tale, the Lieutenant wracked his brain for a suitable response. Before he could come up with anything particularly inspiring to say, a familiar voice reached his ears, having originated from somewhere behind him. Mike craned his head to see who had entered the room, only for his eyes to fall upon Major Killinger.

Durant jumped to his feet and snapped to rigid attention. "Attention on deck," he barked, his eyes focused straight forward at Cruz.

[Mason, I.]

Mason nodded, “yeah I get that we’re all deserving of the looney bin, but I believe there might be a difference between having strange thoughts in our head or nightmares in our dreams and actually..” He trailed off, not yet committing himself to divulging what he experienced. He thought about it some more as he took another bite of his steak - it was still incredibly delicious despite it starting to cool off.

He felt a chill run up his spine everytime he thought about the vision. When a person is standing out in the dark and looking around, they have a tendency to notice things that aren’t really there. When this happens, a chill runs up their spine. Usually a split second later they’ll recognize that whatever it is they’re looking at isn’t actually what they fear it is, shadows playing tricks on them, they’ll have a momentary rush of relief. When a person notices something and then has the horrendous realization that it is, in fact, what they fear it is, they’ll have a second chill run up their spine. This time, the chill is much worse; their hearts reverberate in their throats, sweet beads form almost instantly, and their breathing freezes momentarily. This is the type of chill he would experience.

“If I tell you about it, you can’t go telling anyone. I know you won’t,” Mason said, “you also can’t go worrying about me or any crap like that while we’re on mission.” He took a sip of his drink and took a quick scan of his surroundings - the cafeteria was now nearly empty aside from the staff and a few other marines scattered about. He leaned a little forward and whispered, “I had a vision.”

[Stone, T.]

Stone listened to Mason and watched him carefully. There was something about his demeanor that was... off. In the time that the Sergeant had come to know him, Mason had always been a straight forward kind of guy. He was almost always direct. He said what was on his mind and really wasn't the kind of guy to sugarcoat things.

So his sudden aversive behavior came as a surprise to Stone. He seemed to evade getting to the point. He was pussyfooting around answering Thomas's question directly, and to an extent he found that aggravatingly annoying. He knew he couldn't rush the man, as the subject seemed delicate, but he wanted to reach the heart of the problem and fix it so that they could move on.

More than anything, Stone was worried. Worried about the man sitting across from him, that he considered to be more than just a peer of his. Mason was his friend.

And he had few of those to speak of these days.

Mason finally spoke again, telling Stone not to worry about him or allow what he was going to say affect him when they were in missions. Thomas nodded and waited for him to finally get to the point.

"I had a vision," Mason said. Stone's brow arched at that, and his expression was that of perplexity. A vision? What kind of vision? What was his friend talking about?

"What do ya mean ya had a vision?"