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CHARACTERS: Maryle Bone & Dom Flores Romero
WHAT: Maryle and Dom make up.
WHEN: Wednesday, 4 Feb, ~10:30am & later
WHERE: Dom's room.
WARNINGS: Nooot really, standard Dom chip discussions and drinkin.
WHAT: Maryle and Dom make up.
WHEN: Wednesday, 4 Feb, ~10:30am & later
WHERE: Dom's room.
WARNINGS: Nooot really, standard Dom chip discussions and drinkin.
On Wednesday, Maryle is exhausted from arguments about experiments and not having Dom to talk with. She's sick of being upset. It doesn't mean that everything has been smoothed over, since that's impossible without talking to him, but it does mean that most of her rage has subsided into a dull burn of embers. She's still certain she's in the right, but even so she's done punishing him. The both of them, honestly — he's so close now, stuck on this tiny ship with her, that it feels extra painful to not be able to see or talk with him.
So, she's going to do this. Every ounce of brainpower that she's not using to keep her nerves she is using to will Dom into his room and Kit out as she approaches and hesitantly knocks.
The door opens to a man who might be Dom. The eyes blink slowly as they adjust to the light, the curls travel every which way except the ones they're supposed to, and the wool sweater's pulled to one side. But slowly: glasses slide on, hair gets pushed back, and recognition dawns. And little things do little flips in his chest. No, little things do big flips. Really big flips. And then they realize that's probably premature and they freeze.
He just steps back to let her into the room while his brain and mouth catch up with his eyes. After a few seconds he does manage: "Good morning, Maryle." Was it even still morning? Whatever, he could have fallen asleep until dinner and she'd still be the only thing that mattered.
Dom kind of looking like shit helps a lot more than it really should, like when she'd first seen him on the ship, unexpectedly bearded and uncomfortable in the now more permanent closeness of the Mnemosyne. Quietly she watches him morph a little more back into himself, and as he steps back she steps inside easily, automatically. And then she just stands there. For some reason, she's also having a difficult time conjuring up words. (Ok, not for some reason, but she's trying to pretend like she's stewed on this enough that she's unaffected.)
She chews on her lip for a moment before forcing out her own words. Or word.
"Hey."
More words need to happen.
"Were you sleeping?"
"It seems that way, doesn't it?" Dom replies almost automatically, wry and a little defensive — exactly what got them (him) into this mess. So when he scrubs his hands down his face to wipe away the weariness, he clarifies: "I was reviewing some documents after an early appointment in Med." 'Documents' being papers scattered over a folding table, which he sweeps into a neat pile.
"Are you..." Well? Mad? Furious? Forgiving? Done? "... staying?" But maybe that's presumptuous.
Ignoring the slight edge in his tone, Maryle watches as Dom organizes the papers on the table and takes the opportunity to again bite her lip once, hard, when he's not looking. While not so grounding as she'd like, the sting does at least partially knock her back into her head, even if it's still churning with too many thoughts and feelings. She had planned out what she was going to ask, how she was going to handle this, but it's hard to stick to a script when all she wants to do is hug him.
"Yeah. I..." Deep breath, tense fingers fussing with a knot in her hair so they have something to do that isn't hugging him or strangling him. "I didn't just come here to see your bedhead. How was your Med appointment?" Which others might be needing soon thanks to experiments, though she tries to banish this thought as soon as it occurs.
"Tiring, frustrating. They're determining baselines for all of my symptoms, or... something." Dom waves his hand dismissively. While the air between them's still pulled taut, he can't help but grasp at the little glimmer of hope Maryle's given him since he doesn't know how long he has before her putting-up-with-his-shit tank runs dry. What a weird sensation being on the other side of the apology was.
"Maryle, may I–" Too formal. He's not about to bite her (that's a one-way show of alleged affection) but he needs to feel less like he's about to ask Bishop for a favour. He tries again: "Can I say something?"
Maryle's head bobs, and even though she really and truly does care about how his appointment went, it's hard to focus on anything but keeping herself as composed as possible. She shifts, continues undoing the knot, pulls in breaths that are deeper than usual, and all the while she's trying to read Dom. A losing game, with his extended number of years undercover, but she'll try anyway. Unfortunately for her, she's much easier to read; though she's slightly frowning, her eyebrow ticks up at the 'may I', skeptical and lightly judgmental because, really, way too formal.
"I guess." Non-committal, only because she sort of just wants to blurt out all of her own words before he can potentially complicate things. "I have questions, though."
Dom's exhale can almost be called a sigh but he just refers back to the big sign set up in his mind that reads YOU DID THIS.
"You can ask anything after, but I..." He purses his lips — this conversation can't be considered fully medicinal without a salve, especially not when it's with Maryle, so he turns away only long enough to root for something in a drawer under his bed. He might also need to get away from that eyebrow for a few seconds, even though her eyes still bore holes into his back. "I didn't tell you because I didn't know what would happen when Bishop found out: I thought cutting us loose was a real possibility and I couldn't be responsible for you losing Dislinked along with everything else."
He rises to place his peace offering on the cleared table: a bottle of tequila, first-rate and unopened — worth far more than its weight in gold aboard the Mnemo. Something he'd expected to save for months, if not years. "I do trust you. I always have." Two small plastic cups (decorated with dinosaurs) are placed beside it. "And please believe me when I say that I made the wrong decision. Nikola substituted for you in your absence and made sure I understood that I'd... fucked up, to be frank — well and truly."
Truth be told, Maryle does understand where he's coming from now that the dust has cleared some. She's not actually sure if she would have told him had their places been reversed. Curling her hands tightly to her sides, she once again bites her lip for a moment.
"I told Sloane you keep ruining my life," she starts, watching as the bottle (wow) and the cups (wow but in the opposite way) are set on the table, her fingers itching to ease her mind with a drink. "But I would've taken getting kicked out of Dislinked instead of this."
She's not sure if her words are meant to chastise him or just show that she cares about him more than anything else. It doesn't really matter. She needs to say the latter part a little more clearly regardless, because an important question is still ringing in her head. It would be so much nicer to just tell him he's stupid, agree that he'd fucked up, and move on, but she needs some clarity or she'll never actually be able to let it go.
Up to this point Maryle's been faring well, but now her eyes start to water with the feeling of exposing her throat to a predator.
"...you're my person. I just want to know if we're on the same page, because I thought we were and if we're not that's… useful information for me."
The tequila bottle's stopper clatters to the floor when Dom makes his way across it (a dramatic way to phrase the journey since it's only, like, three steps). He wraps his arms around her and pays no mind to where hers can go because he knows he's about to spend thirty seconds hugging a plank of wood.
"You're mine, too. I've no desire to stop ruining your life." Guilt needles through his gut because he knows it's true: what he'd described to Niko as 'uprooting' her life was also destroying everything she'd had before because he and his agenda believed there was some higher purpose she could serve. UnVeiling, Laos, Dislinked — they were all evolutions to him, but to Maryle, they'd rebuilt her out of rubble.
The sound of the stopper hitting the ground makes Maryle jump, her startle response working overtime with how on edge she is. And, just as Dom expects, she freezes as his arms wrap around her, tense and unsure and just generally overwhelmed. She's trying to listen to him and also force her body to relax, reminding it that she's safe, that this is love and comfort and not some trap to try to extricate herself from.
She gets there, arms slowly shifting so they can wind around him as she presses her watering eyes to his shoulder, trying her best to keep her breathing even with middling success. It feels a little pathetic how miserable she's been the past few days, but it's almost worse how quickly the relief is hitting her.
"I'm so mad at you." Quietly said, with no hint of anger but an edge of sadness. "I wish you had told me, you stupid fucking idiot. What was I going to do if something happened to you?"
"Stabbed me to death," he suggests as he braces to be punched and/or bitten.
And Dom is, in fact, bitten, short and sharp, right on the collar bone as Maryle lets out a weak laugh. Not if you were already dead, she nearly says, but she doesn't want to think about that right now. She just wants to feel grounded again.
Slowly, Maryle leans back some and wriggles her arms free so she can look Dom in the face and cup his jaw in both hands, his stupid beard feeling just a little less offensive in the moment. While her eyes are still damp, she has managed to only shed a tear or two into his sweater, and she thinks she can keep that up as she forces herself to speak again.
"Will you tell me things from now on?"
Dom, half expecting her to yank his beard, scrunches up his nose and tries to angle his face just a little further away. "All non-classified information will be yours, I'm even burning the 'Need to Know' box as we speak." A beat. "Which I suppose was more of a safe I'd welded shut."
"I'm being nice to you, stop trying to get away from me," Maryle complains, trying to hold his face firm. Things are starting to feel a little more normal. Even though there's still an awkward anxious fluttering in her chest.
"But good. I… can't really deal with this again."
"I promise this was and will be my only secret." He punctuates this with a kiss to her forehead, more than a little satisfied that the beard she allegedly hates so much has to be all up in her face for him to finally show her affection again. "I'll share every sordid detail of my life with you from now on and if there's anything you'd like to know, you can ask." (He immediately knows he'll regret this but he also knows it's what he deserves.)
Maryle receives her (very much deserved) kiss on the forehead, and after a moment pops up on her toes to return the gesture.
"You'll regret that," she says afterwards, as if reading his mind. And, after a moment, she smiles, tired but genuine. Her feelings still feel loud, but she's secure in her and Dom again. Properly back on her feet. There are more things to talk about regarding his condition, but that can all wait.
"I'll tell you everything too, obviously. Because I already did, because I'm not a shithead." She squeezes his cheeks together to force his lips into a pucker, simply to be a menace. "I love you, Chirp. Now let's get wasted so I can cry a bit and you can tell me how sad you were without me for four days."
***
It's been at least an hour since Maryle shot back a glass's worth of very expensive tequila like it was Fireball at a sorority party and Dom was left agape, a'gasping, and aghast.
Now—on the floor with his back against his bed, hair in almost as much disarray as it'd been when she'd first arrived, cheeks rosy—he's just done the same thing. He committed the crime. It might as well be a felony.
He's too drunk to care.
"What's worse than everything else's how–" He pushes his glasses back into his hair like that's going to do literally anything about the whack-ass perspective the room's taken on. "–How pres cities made me a lightweight."
Also on the floor, Maryle has partially draped herself over Dom's legs, her chin pillowed in her crossed arms across his knees and a part of her upper half resting on his calves. Her dinosaur glass is empty, from sipping this time, and she's got a nice tipsy glow going on thanks to her unweakened tolerance. She laughs brightly at this complaint, her head lolling from side to side for a moment as though trying to properly judge it.
"That really the worst of it, Dom? The fact that you're a cheap date now? Worse than everything else, including the fact that you made me very very very sad and we didn't get to talk for four days, which is like, five million years?" She's smiling when she asks this.
"Worse than that, which was five million years," he replies sagely. "Worse than the vapid music and the droids, than only getting laid once a..." The English word runs away from him and he squints after it, even as he sections off part of Maryle's hair into three. "Quarter."
Maryle laughs again, like she's been storing up all her potential good feelings from the past few days and they're all coming out now (which, maybe, isn't that far from the truth).
"Ohhhh my god, you poor thing, counting your sex in business quarters." She shuts her eyes as Dom messes with her hair, wondering if they both need more to drink. Maybe. Probably. In a few. Her eyes open again as she grimaces in sympathy.
"Sucks it's so messy up here you can't just jump right in."
There's a stupid little smile on Dom's face, all relief and contentment at being back where he should be (with Maryle).
"That may have been another lie. Half-lie, smaller." He pinches fingers in front of her face to support his point and it's all very scientific before he returns to braiding her hair. (Trying to.) "I simply didn't want to yet." Articulating why is, as it turns out, impossible while an uncounted but definitely too-high number of drinks in, so he swerves instead. "D'you have any big secrets left?"
Maryle's face screws up a bit at this admission of another lie, but at least it is really something small. Or, at least, not earth shattering. Probably? No, she's not going to spiral out. She mocks a bite at his pinching fingers, pondering just how she wants to press this when he asks her a question.
Her expression is very serious (though likely undercut by whatever Dom has currently managed to do to her hair), when she says "I've been dead for twenty years."
A long silence stretches between them. Eventually, Dom grimaces. "Maryle, disgusting. We were together."
Obviously, Maryle's controlled expression breaks instantly, her head tilting to the side even though it pulls her hair a little taut in Dom's hands. Unwinding her now slightly more free arm, she blows him a kiss.
"And you have to live with that for the rest of your life. At least it was a good year, huh?"
But, she should really at least make an attempt to tell him... something.
"...it's been whatever up here, Dom. Just work, and books, and being mean to people. I worried about you a lot. But that's not exactly a secret."
"None of those are secrets." Dom tugs on what he was so sure, moments ago, was going to turn into a braid but is definitely now about as tangled up as their last week became. But if he can undo one, he can undo the other... right? Maybe? (He gets to work.) "Did you spit in anyone's coffee?"
"I'm boring without you," Maryle replies easily but sadly. Thinking back on all the time she's been up here, punctuated with Dom visits and missions and nothing much more, it really does seem painfully uneventful. She eyes her hair and huffs at the mess, but figures Dom will take care of it.
"Not yet, but might soon." Adri, for example, has it coming.
But as she watches him work at her hair, soft and right and himself to her once again, something comes to mind and she frowns.
"...hey Chirp. Are... I should've asked but I was too mad. Are you... ok? Are you scared? Because of your chip being fucky."
Whatever lurches inside Dom isn't the tequila—thankfully for both of them—but he almost wishes it was. He glances up as the guilt rolls back in, catching her eye– dashing back to the not-braid– more guilt as he remembers he's meant to be honest and that means– eyes back up. It's a little like he's caught in a trap and his mind can't catch up but he quickly schools himself back into whatever drunken version of calm he can muster.
"Less than before," he admits. "When I could tell it was getting worse and that made my job more dangerous but I couldn't accept the..." He waves his hand and the hair around. "Everything of it all. But now I'll have access to Med's resources and I'm somewhere safe with you, so..." He trails off, uncharacteristic and with a shrug.
Listening quietly, noting the multiple averted gazes and the final one that settles, Maryle's expression is relatively soft and open — she's had just enough tequila that there's no use hiding anything. She hates hearing this, only because she hates hearing that he's had a hard time, but the fact that he's telling her (alcohol aside) is good. Really good.
She settles her head back down on her arms on his knees.
"Yeah. I'm sure a lot of the... everything of it all feelings will even out, now that you have proper support." She squeezes his calf with one hand. "Plus, I'll take care of you, whether you like it or not."
Dom smiles down at her with glassy eyes and warm cheeks and, in one last act of rebellion, tosses the knotted lock of hair onto her face. "I'll regret every moment."
So, she's going to do this. Every ounce of brainpower that she's not using to keep her nerves she is using to will Dom into his room and Kit out as she approaches and hesitantly knocks.
The door opens to a man who might be Dom. The eyes blink slowly as they adjust to the light, the curls travel every which way except the ones they're supposed to, and the wool sweater's pulled to one side. But slowly: glasses slide on, hair gets pushed back, and recognition dawns. And little things do little flips in his chest. No, little things do big flips. Really big flips. And then they realize that's probably premature and they freeze.
He just steps back to let her into the room while his brain and mouth catch up with his eyes. After a few seconds he does manage: "Good morning, Maryle." Was it even still morning? Whatever, he could have fallen asleep until dinner and she'd still be the only thing that mattered.
Dom kind of looking like shit helps a lot more than it really should, like when she'd first seen him on the ship, unexpectedly bearded and uncomfortable in the now more permanent closeness of the Mnemosyne. Quietly she watches him morph a little more back into himself, and as he steps back she steps inside easily, automatically. And then she just stands there. For some reason, she's also having a difficult time conjuring up words. (Ok, not for some reason, but she's trying to pretend like she's stewed on this enough that she's unaffected.)
She chews on her lip for a moment before forcing out her own words. Or word.
"Hey."
More words need to happen.
"Were you sleeping?"
"It seems that way, doesn't it?" Dom replies almost automatically, wry and a little defensive — exactly what got them (him) into this mess. So when he scrubs his hands down his face to wipe away the weariness, he clarifies: "I was reviewing some documents after an early appointment in Med." 'Documents' being papers scattered over a folding table, which he sweeps into a neat pile.
"Are you..." Well? Mad? Furious? Forgiving? Done? "... staying?" But maybe that's presumptuous.
Ignoring the slight edge in his tone, Maryle watches as Dom organizes the papers on the table and takes the opportunity to again bite her lip once, hard, when he's not looking. While not so grounding as she'd like, the sting does at least partially knock her back into her head, even if it's still churning with too many thoughts and feelings. She had planned out what she was going to ask, how she was going to handle this, but it's hard to stick to a script when all she wants to do is hug him.
"Yeah. I..." Deep breath, tense fingers fussing with a knot in her hair so they have something to do that isn't hugging him or strangling him. "I didn't just come here to see your bedhead. How was your Med appointment?" Which others might be needing soon thanks to experiments, though she tries to banish this thought as soon as it occurs.
"Tiring, frustrating. They're determining baselines for all of my symptoms, or... something." Dom waves his hand dismissively. While the air between them's still pulled taut, he can't help but grasp at the little glimmer of hope Maryle's given him since he doesn't know how long he has before her putting-up-with-his-shit tank runs dry. What a weird sensation being on the other side of the apology was.
"Maryle, may I–" Too formal. He's not about to bite her (that's a one-way show of alleged affection) but he needs to feel less like he's about to ask Bishop for a favour. He tries again: "Can I say something?"
Maryle's head bobs, and even though she really and truly does care about how his appointment went, it's hard to focus on anything but keeping herself as composed as possible. She shifts, continues undoing the knot, pulls in breaths that are deeper than usual, and all the while she's trying to read Dom. A losing game, with his extended number of years undercover, but she'll try anyway. Unfortunately for her, she's much easier to read; though she's slightly frowning, her eyebrow ticks up at the 'may I', skeptical and lightly judgmental because, really, way too formal.
"I guess." Non-committal, only because she sort of just wants to blurt out all of her own words before he can potentially complicate things. "I have questions, though."
Dom's exhale can almost be called a sigh but he just refers back to the big sign set up in his mind that reads YOU DID THIS.
"You can ask anything after, but I..." He purses his lips — this conversation can't be considered fully medicinal without a salve, especially not when it's with Maryle, so he turns away only long enough to root for something in a drawer under his bed. He might also need to get away from that eyebrow for a few seconds, even though her eyes still bore holes into his back. "I didn't tell you because I didn't know what would happen when Bishop found out: I thought cutting us loose was a real possibility and I couldn't be responsible for you losing Dislinked along with everything else."
He rises to place his peace offering on the cleared table: a bottle of tequila, first-rate and unopened — worth far more than its weight in gold aboard the Mnemo. Something he'd expected to save for months, if not years. "I do trust you. I always have." Two small plastic cups (decorated with dinosaurs) are placed beside it. "And please believe me when I say that I made the wrong decision. Nikola substituted for you in your absence and made sure I understood that I'd... fucked up, to be frank — well and truly."
Truth be told, Maryle does understand where he's coming from now that the dust has cleared some. She's not actually sure if she would have told him had their places been reversed. Curling her hands tightly to her sides, she once again bites her lip for a moment.
"I told Sloane you keep ruining my life," she starts, watching as the bottle (wow) and the cups (wow but in the opposite way) are set on the table, her fingers itching to ease her mind with a drink. "But I would've taken getting kicked out of Dislinked instead of this."
She's not sure if her words are meant to chastise him or just show that she cares about him more than anything else. It doesn't really matter. She needs to say the latter part a little more clearly regardless, because an important question is still ringing in her head. It would be so much nicer to just tell him he's stupid, agree that he'd fucked up, and move on, but she needs some clarity or she'll never actually be able to let it go.
Up to this point Maryle's been faring well, but now her eyes start to water with the feeling of exposing her throat to a predator.
"...you're my person. I just want to know if we're on the same page, because I thought we were and if we're not that's… useful information for me."
The tequila bottle's stopper clatters to the floor when Dom makes his way across it (a dramatic way to phrase the journey since it's only, like, three steps). He wraps his arms around her and pays no mind to where hers can go because he knows he's about to spend thirty seconds hugging a plank of wood.
"You're mine, too. I've no desire to stop ruining your life." Guilt needles through his gut because he knows it's true: what he'd described to Niko as 'uprooting' her life was also destroying everything she'd had before because he and his agenda believed there was some higher purpose she could serve. UnVeiling, Laos, Dislinked — they were all evolutions to him, but to Maryle, they'd rebuilt her out of rubble.
The sound of the stopper hitting the ground makes Maryle jump, her startle response working overtime with how on edge she is. And, just as Dom expects, she freezes as his arms wrap around her, tense and unsure and just generally overwhelmed. She's trying to listen to him and also force her body to relax, reminding it that she's safe, that this is love and comfort and not some trap to try to extricate herself from.
She gets there, arms slowly shifting so they can wind around him as she presses her watering eyes to his shoulder, trying her best to keep her breathing even with middling success. It feels a little pathetic how miserable she's been the past few days, but it's almost worse how quickly the relief is hitting her.
"I'm so mad at you." Quietly said, with no hint of anger but an edge of sadness. "I wish you had told me, you stupid fucking idiot. What was I going to do if something happened to you?"
"Stabbed me to death," he suggests as he braces to be punched and/or bitten.
And Dom is, in fact, bitten, short and sharp, right on the collar bone as Maryle lets out a weak laugh. Not if you were already dead, she nearly says, but she doesn't want to think about that right now. She just wants to feel grounded again.
Slowly, Maryle leans back some and wriggles her arms free so she can look Dom in the face and cup his jaw in both hands, his stupid beard feeling just a little less offensive in the moment. While her eyes are still damp, she has managed to only shed a tear or two into his sweater, and she thinks she can keep that up as she forces herself to speak again.
"Will you tell me things from now on?"
Dom, half expecting her to yank his beard, scrunches up his nose and tries to angle his face just a little further away. "All non-classified information will be yours, I'm even burning the 'Need to Know' box as we speak." A beat. "Which I suppose was more of a safe I'd welded shut."
"I'm being nice to you, stop trying to get away from me," Maryle complains, trying to hold his face firm. Things are starting to feel a little more normal. Even though there's still an awkward anxious fluttering in her chest.
"But good. I… can't really deal with this again."
"I promise this was and will be my only secret." He punctuates this with a kiss to her forehead, more than a little satisfied that the beard she allegedly hates so much has to be all up in her face for him to finally show her affection again. "I'll share every sordid detail of my life with you from now on and if there's anything you'd like to know, you can ask." (He immediately knows he'll regret this but he also knows it's what he deserves.)
Maryle receives her (very much deserved) kiss on the forehead, and after a moment pops up on her toes to return the gesture.
"You'll regret that," she says afterwards, as if reading his mind. And, after a moment, she smiles, tired but genuine. Her feelings still feel loud, but she's secure in her and Dom again. Properly back on her feet. There are more things to talk about regarding his condition, but that can all wait.
"I'll tell you everything too, obviously. Because I already did, because I'm not a shithead." She squeezes his cheeks together to force his lips into a pucker, simply to be a menace. "I love you, Chirp. Now let's get wasted so I can cry a bit and you can tell me how sad you were without me for four days."
It's been at least an hour since Maryle shot back a glass's worth of very expensive tequila like it was Fireball at a sorority party and Dom was left agape, a'gasping, and aghast.
Now—on the floor with his back against his bed, hair in almost as much disarray as it'd been when she'd first arrived, cheeks rosy—he's just done the same thing. He committed the crime. It might as well be a felony.
He's too drunk to care.
"What's worse than everything else's how–" He pushes his glasses back into his hair like that's going to do literally anything about the whack-ass perspective the room's taken on. "–How pres cities made me a lightweight."
Also on the floor, Maryle has partially draped herself over Dom's legs, her chin pillowed in her crossed arms across his knees and a part of her upper half resting on his calves. Her dinosaur glass is empty, from sipping this time, and she's got a nice tipsy glow going on thanks to her unweakened tolerance. She laughs brightly at this complaint, her head lolling from side to side for a moment as though trying to properly judge it.
"That really the worst of it, Dom? The fact that you're a cheap date now? Worse than everything else, including the fact that you made me very very very sad and we didn't get to talk for four days, which is like, five million years?" She's smiling when she asks this.
"Worse than that, which was five million years," he replies sagely. "Worse than the vapid music and the droids, than only getting laid once a..." The English word runs away from him and he squints after it, even as he sections off part of Maryle's hair into three. "Quarter."
Maryle laughs again, like she's been storing up all her potential good feelings from the past few days and they're all coming out now (which, maybe, isn't that far from the truth).
"Ohhhh my god, you poor thing, counting your sex in business quarters." She shuts her eyes as Dom messes with her hair, wondering if they both need more to drink. Maybe. Probably. In a few. Her eyes open again as she grimaces in sympathy.
"Sucks it's so messy up here you can't just jump right in."
There's a stupid little smile on Dom's face, all relief and contentment at being back where he should be (with Maryle).
"That may have been another lie. Half-lie, smaller." He pinches fingers in front of her face to support his point and it's all very scientific before he returns to braiding her hair. (Trying to.) "I simply didn't want to yet." Articulating why is, as it turns out, impossible while an uncounted but definitely too-high number of drinks in, so he swerves instead. "D'you have any big secrets left?"
Maryle's face screws up a bit at this admission of another lie, but at least it is really something small. Or, at least, not earth shattering. Probably? No, she's not going to spiral out. She mocks a bite at his pinching fingers, pondering just how she wants to press this when he asks her a question.
Her expression is very serious (though likely undercut by whatever Dom has currently managed to do to her hair), when she says "I've been dead for twenty years."
A long silence stretches between them. Eventually, Dom grimaces. "Maryle, disgusting. We were together."
Obviously, Maryle's controlled expression breaks instantly, her head tilting to the side even though it pulls her hair a little taut in Dom's hands. Unwinding her now slightly more free arm, she blows him a kiss.
"And you have to live with that for the rest of your life. At least it was a good year, huh?"
But, she should really at least make an attempt to tell him... something.
"...it's been whatever up here, Dom. Just work, and books, and being mean to people. I worried about you a lot. But that's not exactly a secret."
"None of those are secrets." Dom tugs on what he was so sure, moments ago, was going to turn into a braid but is definitely now about as tangled up as their last week became. But if he can undo one, he can undo the other... right? Maybe? (He gets to work.) "Did you spit in anyone's coffee?"
"I'm boring without you," Maryle replies easily but sadly. Thinking back on all the time she's been up here, punctuated with Dom visits and missions and nothing much more, it really does seem painfully uneventful. She eyes her hair and huffs at the mess, but figures Dom will take care of it.
"Not yet, but might soon." Adri, for example, has it coming.
But as she watches him work at her hair, soft and right and himself to her once again, something comes to mind and she frowns.
"...hey Chirp. Are... I should've asked but I was too mad. Are you... ok? Are you scared? Because of your chip being fucky."
Whatever lurches inside Dom isn't the tequila—thankfully for both of them—but he almost wishes it was. He glances up as the guilt rolls back in, catching her eye– dashing back to the not-braid– more guilt as he remembers he's meant to be honest and that means– eyes back up. It's a little like he's caught in a trap and his mind can't catch up but he quickly schools himself back into whatever drunken version of calm he can muster.
"Less than before," he admits. "When I could tell it was getting worse and that made my job more dangerous but I couldn't accept the..." He waves his hand and the hair around. "Everything of it all. But now I'll have access to Med's resources and I'm somewhere safe with you, so..." He trails off, uncharacteristic and with a shrug.
Listening quietly, noting the multiple averted gazes and the final one that settles, Maryle's expression is relatively soft and open — she's had just enough tequila that there's no use hiding anything. She hates hearing this, only because she hates hearing that he's had a hard time, but the fact that he's telling her (alcohol aside) is good. Really good.
She settles her head back down on her arms on his knees.
"Yeah. I'm sure a lot of the... everything of it all feelings will even out, now that you have proper support." She squeezes his calf with one hand. "Plus, I'll take care of you, whether you like it or not."
Dom smiles down at her with glassy eyes and warm cheeks and, in one last act of rebellion, tosses the knotted lock of hair onto her face. "I'll regret every moment."