Cuppa and a Cuddle

Posted on Mon Jun 22nd, 2020 @ 11:38pm by Cailus Griffin & Lieutenant Kalin Brennan-Griffin PhD
Edited on on Fri Jul 10th, 2020 @ 5:15pm

Mission: Divided We Fall
Location: Brennan-Griffin Quarters

A Mission Post by Lieutenant Kalin 'Shae' Brennan-Griffin PhD & Lieutenant Cailus Griffin
Mission: Divided We Fall
Location: Brennan-Griffin Quarters
Timeline:
Wed Oct 3rd, 2018 @ 8:09pm

Shae was tired; they had only walked from Sickbay to their quarters, but by the time Cailus settled her down onto the couch, she was utterly exhausted. It was understandable, she had been in the coma the longest, a little weakness was to be expected at this point in her recovery. And the shivering! She had been assured that the cold she felt was all in her head, that the shivering would fade as the memories of the Bubble began to fade, but it was still quite disconcerting. Thankfully, Cailus was quick to notice and grabbed a blanket to drape over her to help put the shivering to an abrupt end.

"Thank you love," Shae said, almost sounding out of breath from her walk. And her eyes, the way she stared at things, that ageless quality in her gaze was even more wearied than her body, the years spent in the Bubble as it collapsed and the weight of tending to everyone as she watched them die, it had taken a painful toll on her psyche. From the sound of it, everyone else seemed to be coping with the reality of their situation and readjusting quite well, but Shae suspected that it was going to be a bit harder for her to start feeling 'normal' again.

With Shae properly settled in her blanket, Cailus crouched down in front of her, ignoring the phantom strain of his formerly arthritic knees. "Welcome home," he said with quiet sincerity. "I can make you a cup of tea if you like, your favourite. I know it's been a while since your last one."

"Oh my, tea..." Shae said wistfully. Proper tea in a proper cup, with sugar? Truly, she was in heaven! "You really do know the way to a girl's heart," she said with a small smile. "Tea sounds lovely, thank you."

Cailus smiled wryly in turn, getting to his feet to head for the replicator. After a minute or so spent remembering what Shae's favourite tea was (he eventually gave up, simply checking the replicator logs), he returned with a steaming cup of blackberry tea.

"I don't need to be on duty for a few more hours, so I'm all yours until then," Cailus murmured as he handed Shae the cup. Their quarters were pleasantly silent while Aoife was at Daycare and the ship was cruising peacefully at warp, so he was keeping his tone barely above a whisper so as to not disturb the ambiance.

Shae held the cup for a moment, simply breathing in the aroma; they'd had blackberries in the Bubble, but without any actual tea, it just wasn't the same... She took a slow, cautious sip, just in case it didn't taste as good as she remembered it, plus it was quite hot, but as the first sip washed over her tongue, she knew without a doubt that she was back where she belonged, because nothing could solve all of life's problems quite like a cuppa, and with a second sip, the chill she felt was banished.

"Oh, that's nice..." Shae remarked as she relaxed into the couch. Then with her free hand, she patted the space on the couch next to her so Cailus could join her. She was grateful that he had left Aoife in Daycare for the day; as much as Shae loved Aoife and missed her, Shae was simply too weary to be a mother at this moment, and Aoife's sudden chattiness and her little flute, as joyous as it all was to hear, was quite harsh on Shae's ears. Not just that, but trying to enjoy the peace and calm was difficult with the sound of plasma racing through the conduits in the walls, pounding in her ears like a pulse. It was quite distracting!

"Oh, before you sit down," Shae said, even though she had just invited Cailus to join her on the couch, "could you bring me a PADD? I'd like to write down a few things before it all fades away."

Already halfway in the motion of sitting, Cailus rolled his eyes before duly going over to a chest of drawers and retrieving a PADD. At an offhand thought he took off his uniform jacket and gold-shirt and neatly tucked them away, now stripped to a far more comfortable vest as he returned to the couch.

“What do you want to write down?” Cailus asked curiously as he handed Shae the PADD before stretching an arm around behind her. “Letter to your family?”

"No, not exactly," Shae said as she cozied up to her mate, drawing her paws up underneath her as she got comfortable. With the PADD now in her lap, stylus in one hand and tea in the other, she began to write out the formula that had been seared into her brain and carved into the walls in the Bubble, but unlike before, she was calm rather than distressed. "Just wanted to get this down before too many of the details faded; if I can work out the missing pieces, it will make a fascinating article, and it has been a while since I've released anything new for publication."

"Oh," Cailus muttered softly, feeling his guts churn as he watched Shae start to write the complex mathematics on the PADD. "But it took you weeks to write all this out the first time," he added hesitantly, trying to keep the faint tone of hope out of his voice. "Are you sure you can remember all of it? That's a huge volume of data, isn't it?"

"I, uh, kept working on it... after you were gone... It's actually considerably longer than it was before, so it might take me a while to get it all down, but I'm just copying what I've already worked out, not doing any actual calculations; I can get the computer to do that for me once I'm ready to start working on it again," Shae assure him as she continued to write, pausing here and there to take a sip of tea. "I promise, this won't be like before, but this is important enough to get down before I forget it all."

"Hmph," Cailus grunted noncommittally, then he sighed in acquiescence. "Alright then. But if you start carving into the bulkheads again, I'm putting my foot down."

"I swear, I have no desire whatsoever for a repeat of all that," Shae said, turning her head to nuzzle into him. Not that she could remember the compulsion to carve, but from what she had seen and heard, it had been bad. To emphasis her point, she set the stylus down to give Cailus her full attention. "I vaguely recall that I apologized to you once before, but it doesn't feel like it was enough. I'm sorry you had to see me that way, I never wanted to hurt you."

Cailus raised a sardonic eyebrow as he looked down into Shae’s alien eyes. “And I vaguely recall telling you that I never blamed you. Or that I forgave you. Something along those lines. The important thing is that it’s over. We’re home.” He glanced down at the PADD in Shae’s lap, frowning in concentration as he tried to read the few equations that she’d already written before swiftly realising that they were far, far beyond his skills. An aptitude for mathematics and physics was required for any officer who handled starship weaponry, but the formulae that Shae had so casually just written down were so esoteric that Cailus could barely recognise what branch of physics the equations were describing, never mind what they meant.

“There are times when I forget just how brilliant you are,” he muttered, slightly irritated at his inability to comprehend. “Do you want me to leave, so you can concentrate on this properly?”

"You're more important than some equation," Shae said as she nuzzled against him again. She closed her eyes with a sigh of contentment; she was home! "Sometimes when I would close my eyes, I would catch glimpses, just fragments of memory, from when I was carving this formula. Even then, I never wanted to forsake you for my calculations, it hurt to know I was hurting you. But I couldn't stop. I can stop now, and I want you to know that I would never willingly choose some obsession over you. Yes, I think there's a lot we can still learn from this formula, and if I'm right it could blow a whole field of science wide open and make me famous in the process, but I don't care; sod the formula, you and Aoife will always come first."

At that promise, Cailus sighed, surprised at how relieved those words made him. "I never really doubted it," he mumbled, keeping a strong, protective hold around Shae's shoulders as she nuzzled his chest, "but it's good to hear, nevertheless. I love you too."

Sleep was something that had not come easy to Shae since waking from the Bubble; memories and fears of finding herself back in that terrible place often left her rest fitful, and the sounds of the ship made sleep even more difficult to achieve. But safe in her mate's arms, she slowly started to drift off, tea and formulas long forgotten.