Soundproof
Soundproof
Summary: Eddie and Roubani hide out a while in a storage unit. Predictably, the talking takes unexpected turns.
Date: PHD09
Related Logs: None
Players:
Eddie..Roubani..

Kharon - Storage Area

Roubani follows Eddie with his hands in his pockets, halting his steps when he sees the interior of the storage area. "Are you sure there's nothing…combustible in here?"

Eddie eyes the cases of toilet paper, giving a shrug. "Of course I'm sure." She, however, is pretty used to lying. Besides, that's just a tiny fib. "Just watch the end of your cigarette like you would the muzzel of a loaded gun, and we should be fine." Tossing her little bag ontop of a box, she then bends over to give it a shove next to another, essentially creating two seats.

That Roubani doesn't believe her is written all over his face. But he still sits down, folding his wiry frame in half and resting his arm down on his knees. His fingers dig absently in one of his pockets. "I haven't got a lighter."

Eddie pulls up the bottom hem of her sweatshirt, pulling out the pack of cigarettes Yuuri just gave her and another nearly empty pack. Out of the latter, she worms out her trusty silver lighter she was lacking on Warday. "Got it." She assures, plopping down next to him. "Why do I feel like I'm buying beer for an underaged teen?" She smirks lopsidedly.

"I'm only a few months younger than you are." Roubani draws the spare cigarette from his pocket and turns it in his hand, waiting for her to light up first. "I suppose it's your imagination."

Eddie pulls one of the sticks out of her pack, tapping the unfiltered end lightly on her knee before she tucks it in her lips. "I think it's more a guilty conscious for giving you a new vice." She then curls her lips in, and flicks a flame to life, taking a long drag to light her smoke, then holding the same flame out for Roubani.

Roubani pauses to light his own. It's a clumsy manuever still, that sends a larger than necessary cloud up into his face. He takes the cigarette from his mouth and coughs quietly. "I'm not sure it counts as a vice when you're regarded as more of a freak for not doing it."

Eddie snicks the lighter shut, then makes a gimme motion with her free hand. "Alright. Hand it over. Who gives a frak what people think. Just because all the cool kids are doing it doesn't mean that you have to too. Do you even /want/ to smoke?" With lighter palmed, she plucks the cigarette out of her lips and cants them towards the shelves to exhale the stream. "You going to drink, frak, cuss and fight, too?"

"No," Roubani answers. "I don't think I could." The question of whether or not he actually wants to be smoking goes unanswered. The gimme just gets a raised brow, and he does not hand it over.

Eddie pulls a foot up, hooking her heel on the edge of the box and casually hugging her knee after the request for his cigarette is denied. The lighter is set atop the packs of smokes and she settles in to smoking in silence with her friend for a minute. "You're not a freak." She says, after some length of time.

Roubani exhales a thin veil of smoke through his nose. He still has his elbows on his knees, and the smoke drifts towards his boot toes. "Neither are you."

Eddie gives a little tiny smile that's actually genuine. "Well, there just might be hope for humanity then." She's quiet again, letting the small room fill with the smell of them smoking and the sound of them breathing. "You know." She muses. "It's the second time I've been in this room with a guy, doing something completely innocent. That has to be some kinda record."

"I suppose it isn't terribly condusive to much else," Roubani comments, taking a sweep of the storage area with his eyes. "All the same, thank you. I don't believe I've been part of someone's personal record before."

Eddie gives a smirk. "I didn't mean personal record. I meant record for this particular room. Shit, I've been on a dry spell since we left port on this tour originally." Which is the truth, which is odd for her. Usually, she embellishes her personal conquests.

"Oh." There go Roubani's ears at her clarification, slightly red. And that's even before the dry spell comment. There's a pause. "You, um. Must get a lot of use of that washing machine." Cheek. Was that /cheek/?

"Honey." Eddie replies flatly, "At this point I need a power tool to even make a dent. There's not enough spin cycles in Colonial Space." But by the end of her own statement, she can't quite help herself, and laughter bubbles to her lips like a fountain spilling over its basin.

Right, buh-RIGHT red goes Roubani's whole face. Sitting right next to her it's impossible to hide, even as he puts a hand over his nose and mouth. "How could it possibly be so difficult?"

Eddie never talks down to him, never sounds condescending when she takes the time to clarify something he says. Normally, she'd make some snide comment. "It's like…" She searches, "Your favorite thing in the world is ice cream. And you haven't had ice cream for so long, then when you finally get it, one little bowl isn't going to satisfy you. You're going to eat and eat until your fat and bloated and can't lift the spoon anymore." His fire engine impression just earns him a little smile from Eddie, like she actually finds it endearing.

Roubani listens to that whole thing without looking at her, taking a drag off the cigarette in the middle. His face is gradually cooling off, back to its normal dusky tone, though his ears retain some of the lingering blush. When he talks finally, it's much quieter. "Do you…really enjoy it?"

Eddie quips lightly, "Not as much as ice cream." Her smile spreads from ear to ear, showing off some nice Caprican dentistry. "Okay, c'mere." She takes another quick drag of her cigarette, exhaling out her nose like a slumbering dragon. "Let's do an experiment. Close your eyes."

Roubani's brows knit. It takes him a while to actually do it, and his shoulders tense a little bit.

Eddie turns a little bit in her seat, planting both feet on the floor, "Alright, now. Keep your eyes closed. No cheating. Now, take a drag of your cigarette and tell me what you feel….keep your eyes closed."

Roubani does as she instructs. He still has the smoke in his lungs as he speaks, and smoke puffs in short billows as he talks. "I feel the filter on my lip…pressure in my mouth and something burning my throat. I can smell it in my nose."

Maybe it's what she intended since the moment she told him to close his eyes, or maybe it was a spur of the moment thing. Either way, Eddie closes the distance between them, her head canted to the side. She goes to touch her lips softly to his, to taste his last words and the smoke on his breath.

Roubani's head doesn't whip back as one might expect, but he does tense up until his body is trembling. Fear, something deep-seated that goes way beyond the person touching him right now. She can feel his lip shivering and then he tilts his head down, rubbing his fingertips over his eyes so his hand shields them from her. "I'm sorry." His voice is thick.

Eddie pulls back, swallowing hard. "No that was…um." Exhale. Inhale. Breath, Eddie. "Sorry, that was. That was foolish of me." She rushes out, before her throat chokes up on her. "Are you okay?" She asks with a croak.

Roubani nods slowly. He takes a shaky breath, raising his head, and she can see his eyelashes are wet. His gaze lingers somewhere near her cheek and he takes a while to breathe. "I wasn't always like this," he says, whispering more than talking. His dark eyes finally look back at hers, still shining. "I would…give anything to be what I used to be."

Eddie chews on the inside of her lip, clearly torn between trying to give him comfort and fleeing. Then there's always the fact she's not precisely the best in the world about giving comfort. "You…you wanna talk about it? Nobody here, but us chickens." Even her hand is shaking as she takes a final puff of her dying cigarette and is digging out another to piggyback the light from her first one. Chain smoking at its best.

Roubani exhales slowly. Even with all this he hasn't moved away from her, sitting just as he was. He rubs his thumb against his eyelashes. "You shouldn't have to deal with this." He looks down at his hands, the cigarette burnt down nearly to the filter. "But you know, I think. How it is when you feel like you're all shut off, and you just need to feel /something/."

Eddie offers him the newly lit cigarette in exchange for his stub, fingers poise far down in it's pinch near the cherry that she'll burn her finger soon if he doesn't take it. "I want to." She murmurs. "I want to deal with this." Assuring herself as much as him.

Roubani takes the cigarette from her, giving her the old one. He doesn't look at her face, keeping his slightly turned away. "How old were you? When you first…were with someone."

Eddie licks her fingers and extinguishes both of their butts by pinching them between her moistened fingers, little parlor tricks that seem handy now. The spent things are tucked back into her pack and a new cigarette is withdrawn. She lights this one the old fashioned way, with her trusty lighter. "Fourteen or Fifteen. Fifteen I think." He doesn't ask for elaboration, so she doesn't give it.

Roubani sucks the corner of his lower lip between his teeth, keeping his focus down on his boots. "Who was it?"

Eddie shifts a bit, so she can prop her back up against the shelf, leaving her perpendicular to Roubani. There's a scrape of her boot on the deck, a shuffle of fabric on cardboard. "Neighbor kid at the time. We actually used to play doctor together when we were just kids. Ended up stationed at the same base again when we were older. Decided to play doctor again…" She drifts off, not really knowing where he is going with this. "Name was Bobby…something or other…"

The talking, aimless or not, seems to be comforting Roubani a little bit. He's no longer shaking, even if he still can't seem to look at her. "Is it a good memory?"

Eddie shrugs slightly to that, "I mean, the first time for a girl usually hurts, for a guy it's usually over quickly. But I mean, I guess so? It was awkward and strange but also…sweet and tender. Good, yeah." She studies him through the haze of smoke that drifts up from her partially parted lips.

Roubani hehs, watching ash tumble off his cigarette as he flicks it with his thumb. "Maybe I'm really a girl, then."

Eddie opens her mouth when her brain is flooded with sudden information overload. "Wait. You're not…a virgin?" She doesn't say it like 'virgin' is a cuss word, but she's a bit surprised to say the least. "Wait. It hurt?" She leans forward slightly, curious as all Hades now.

Roubani's fingers are leaving crush marks on the cigarette. "It was a long time ago." Simple, quiet. Slightly raw. "I should have gotten over it." He lifts his hand, taking a drag on the cigarette. "I can't do this right now."

Eddie exhales a breath she wasn't aware she was holding, like waiting for the climax of the movie, then just realizing this was a teaser. "No, I get it. I do. It's…it's cool. I shouldn't have crossed the boundry anyways, right? You don't have to do anything, okay? We can just…we can just sit here and smoke."

"Boundary," Roubani repeats, tiredly. "I'm sick of pushing people away. I just don't know how to fix it." The statement seems final on the matter, one small admittance. If the door's cracked, it can't be pushed further right now. He flicks ash onto the floor, falling into a silence that's calm rather than awkward.

Eddie pulls at her bottom lip with her teeth, tongue working as if tasting something lingering there. She lets the silence build between them, like snow piling up in a drift. "You know, I always wanted a hamster."

A quiet laugh bubbles up through Roubani's nose, the kind you can't quite stop even if it's ridiculous. "Really?"

Eddie smiles vaguely. "Mmhmm. They were always so adorable. Their twitching little wiskers, their wiggly little noses. Cute and fuzzy like cats or dogs, but compact little poop. Kinda like me, too, in that if you irritate them too much, they'll just bite you and go hide back in their little burrow. I never had a pet, though. Moved around too much my parents didn't think it was practical. Did you?"

"No." Roubani shakes his head, lifting a hand to scratch the side of his hair. "One of my brothers bought his first son a dog. It had these…ears." His hands move to the sides of his head, making a vague llustration. The fond sentiment trails off and he falls silent for a while. "Why do you do that to your arms?" Gear shift, no clutch. His soft voice brings that out of nowhere, and it's not a tone that expects a snide answer.

Eddie hesitates for a moment, then slowly pushes up the sleeves of her sweatshirt until they hitch on her elbows. She rotates her forearms gradually, looking at them in the dim light as if he's just reminded her that the scars and new scabs still exist. "Because sometimes you just need to feel…something." She paraphrases his own words back at him, finger brushing over the four newest marks that are still angry and red.

Roubani doesn't touch, of course. He looks at the scars for a long time. "But you do feel things," he says, quietly. "You feel pain. You feel desire. You feel compassion."

Eddie considers them for a moment longer, before she tugs her sleeves down over her abused skin, to spare them both the sight. "Maybe I don't deserve to. Maybe the pain reminds me of my place. It's cleansing, when nothing else works out the way you intended. It's an old friend, welcoming you home." Nonchalantly she picks up her little toiletry bag, that she's lugged all the way from berthings down here to their little cacoon from reality. The zipper obnoxiously loud in their little haven as she undoes it, fingers dipping in until they come up with a shiny clean razor blade with its wicked blade catching the light.

Roubani's dark eyes watch the blade glint. "Everyone deserves to feel." He exhales quietly through his nose. "Sometimes…I'm so jealous. That you can let yourself get angry like you do. Or…desire someone else. Or 'get off' on flying." He quotes her from the very beginning of their acquaintance. Stuck in his mind, clearly. "I wish you didn't have to think you didn't deserve it."
<FS3> Eddie rolls Sleight Of Hand *CASUAL*: Good Success.

Eddie holds the razor blade up for Roubani to see, then she opens her mouth, and seems to place it on her tongue. Lips close over it quickly, and she makes and exaggerated show of swallowing it before saying. "First time I cut myself. I was twelve." Amazing that she remembers this more clearly then when she lost her virginity. "I had just ran over a stray cat with my bicycle on accident, and broke his neck. I didn't cry. I couldn't figure out why I didn't cry. I tried. I really tried to work up some tears. But.." She shakes her head, "I went home, unscrewed the lightbulb out of my closet and broke it. First time I cut my arm to make sure I was still human instead of some Cylon, it was with thin as shit lightbulb glass." She reaches out, without touching him, to a flurish of fingers behind his ear, only to pull back the razor blade for him to see again.

Roubani's head turns away, just a fraction, when she reaches for his ear. "No one cries over everything. I'm sure if we did, there wouldn't be time to feel anything else."

Eddie lets the razor blade rest in her palm, staring at it like some odd specimen. "I was only twelve. A dead cat seems like something you should cry about, at the time. Old habits die hard, hmm?" She asks, finally tucking the macabre thing back into the bag that doubtlessly contains others like it and various other impliments of her self mutilization.

"I don't think I would have cried either," Roubani admits, quietly. He watches the razor blade tuck away, in a similar manner that he'd watched her cigarettes for a while before asking for one. "WHat is it you think you should be crying about now?"

Eddie zips the bag shut, tucking it into the waistband of her pants at the small of her back. Her shirt is pulled down over it, the bulky thing able to hide quite a bit. "Sometimes now it's just about a release. Like needing to scream." She says quietly, suddently feeling awkward about this, as she obviously grabbed her kit with the intent of doing /something/ tonight.

Roubani watches the wall for a while, hands folded in reserved fashion on his knees. "We could just scream."

Eddie raises a dark brow, "Scream? Like now?" She looks around, "Just. Scream?"

Roubani picks at his thumb's cuticle. "It's soundproof." He looks at her, carefully. "You said it's like needing to scream. I'll do it if you do it."

Eddie licks her lips like they're about to commit some great carnal, a nervous laugh escaping her throat at first, but there's a feeble scream at the tail end of it.

That makes Roubani smile, barely. Well, he did promise. He unfolds his hands and sets them on the crate on either side of his legs. Granted it takes him a while, but when he finally makes sound it's like someone with a sudden impulse to jump off the edge of a pool in their business suit. He draws a breath and makes a /really/ loud, long sound.

Eddie seems to gather courage from Roubani's earsplintering noise, her fists balling up at her sides as she gains her feet. When she stands, her scream becomes louder, rivaling his until her eyes are pinched shut and she's giving it all she's got, screaming until her lungs are empty of air and she's left panting.

It's hard to tell whose voice lingers longer. Both sounds echo for a while long after breath's run out. Roubani is still seated, with his thumbs pressed against his ears for the last of the raw sound he makes. As he stops to regain his breath, he exhales so hard it makes his shoulders slump.

Eddie collapses against the shelving unit, her legs barely looking adequate to hold her up. She gasps deeply for air, breath a hard thing for her to catch again, being a smoker. "Phew." Eddie verbalizes, "That wasn't bad. huh? How are you feeling?"

Roubani coughs softly. "I'm a touch hoarse. I…can't say it's unpleasant. What about you?"

Eddie gives a slight shrug. "Helped a bit, I guess. Moreso at the good chuckle of seeing you like that." She grins a bit sheepishly, looking to him from the tops of her eyes while her face is canted at her shoes.

"Dionysus would be proud," Roubani muses thoughtfully. He blows air out slowly and leans forward, standing up. "I'm going to stop at the mess hall and get something to drink. Do you want me to fetch you something?"

Eddie shakes her head in the negative. "Nah. I'll catch up with you later. Thanks though." She pushes until she's standing without the aid of the shelves again. "And you know. About before. I mean…you know." Cue awkward 'oh frak I kissed you and you damn near cried' song and dance.

Roubani looks at her for a while. "It's not you," he says, his tone apologetic. "I'll see you at berthings." He offers her a small smile and turns to start out.

Eddie smiles a bit and gives a noncomittal, "Sure." Then she holds up the pack of cigarettes, silently saying she's going to stick around and have another.

Roubani makes it out before he can think to ask her for another one.

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