Unforeseen Possibilities
Posted on 28 Dec 2022 @ 8:30pm by Ensign Marcello Wiser & Lieutenant JG Maxwell Tilmer
Edited on on 15 Oct 2023 @ 7:52pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Pathfinder, Wiser & Tilmer's Jr. Quarters
Timeline: MD08 0750
966 words - 1.9 OF Standard Post Measure
Marcello Wiser had his breakfast early as usual, cleaned up, finished shaving and was ready to report in for duty. But he had something to take care of first.
He'd been fixing to make an apology to his roommate, Max Tilmer, for having called him out in front of their peers and then giving his friend a fat lip later the same day as a reaction to the verbal challenge when Tilmer had egged him on. It wasn't going to be a wholecloth apology, exactly. Tilmer was still wrong on both counts as far as Wiser was concerned. Tilmer had actually slacked on his duties in engineering and had mouthed off way too far, carelessly insulting the memory of Wiser's mother, the loss of whom had always been raw with Wiser. But it had been a couple of days cool down time since, and Wiser knew he had to be a better leader among his peers. Being honest with himself, Wiser was pretty sure in hindsight he could have gone about pinning Tilmer down about his lazy work habits in private, and he shouldn't have let Tilmer's thoughtless running off at the mouth get under his skin, either. For that he really was sorry. Even if Tilmer was never going to treat him like a friend again, Wiser knew he had to apologize for his own part.
Since being selected for more command track training, Marcello was realizing that there was a weird new division between himself and the people he'd called friends, some of them from as far back as Academy. The invisible but very real wall was composed of all of the responsibilities that were on him, the tough training calls and the discipline he was responsible for maintaining among his peers. It wasn't like he was anywhere near being the actual captain of anything, but the taste of it wasn't as sweet as he'd always romanticized. It was one bitter pill, especially for his social life, and besides that, Wiser knew he had been making errors in delivery, if not exactly in judgement.
For that Wiser had some trouble falling asleep the night previous, playing through his head just what he was going to say to Tilmer. It could go one of two ways, as far as Wiser could intuit precognitavely. In his best possible scenario, once Tilmer came out to grab his own breakfast and report for duty, Wiser could get him aside for just a minute, give him the genuine apology as a friend, let him know he had no real hard feelings and he wanted to move on and patch up and do better by him. Tilmer would take it all as intended and they'd more or less shake on it. That was the best case scenario. But Wiser was quickly learning from his crash courses in the simulator that best case scenarios were outliers. As some historical figure was supposed to have said, no plan actually survived contact with the enemy.
It was more likely that Wiser would say his piece and Tilmer would then take that moment to grind Wiser's nose in his admission as if he had some kind of upper hand in the face of what would smell like weakness to him. That was always the trouble with being big enough to say sorry for anything. You had to take the risk of getting knocked down for it. Or maybe in a third version, Wiser would give his spiel and Tilmer would take it as insincere or a saving face move and tell Wiser off for even trying, leaving the situation between them even worse than if Wiser had said nothing at all.
He watched the door to Tilmer's room and looked at the chronometer as if it were the countdown on a bomb. Wiser had made it a point his entire career to always report in early. Always. First one there, last to leave. Dedication. That was the way upward. But if Tilmer wasn't up soon that sorry excuse for an engineer would be reporting to his station late. And if Wiser stayed much longer to make his apology, he'd be equally as late to his bridge post.
At long last he resolved that he would have to wake Tilmer up. He squared his shoulders and started to march across the floor of their shared living space, prepared to pound on Tilmer's cabin door—
— when it swished opened and an incredibly beautiful, completely naked young woman, dark skin glistening, hair somehow attractively askew, strolled out casually. At the sight of Wiser, she startled a little and swung around to grab a cushion off the nearest armchair for some kind of makeshift modesty. Wiser seemed incapable of not tracking her motion right up until the shock of recognition seemed to jolt him.
"Wonai!?" He shouted reflexively. Admittedly, it hadn't been her face that had caught his attention first and it had taken him a few beats to place her as the science officer.
"Oh my god! Max! I thought you said he was definitely gone by now!" Kaiki Wonai exclaimed, waving the throw pillow in a little shooing motion, as if to ward Wiser off with it.
Tilmer was the next one out of his room like a shot, his inside-out service trousers caught up in one fist but otherwise equally exposed. "What in the actual hell, Wiser?"
Wiser was blanched, caught somewhere between enchantment, disgust, anger, and the inexplicable impulse to laugh. But the feeling trumping them all was one of incredible embarrassment. "I'm... Gonna be late," he said.
And with that, Wiser backed out of his quarters and into the corridor realizing that, ultimately, there were outcomes to his scenario of waiting around for Tilmer which he had never, ever considered possible.
