Donnie's Quarters-Day 32-Morning (closed/finished)

[im_a_donnie]

The first sensation Donnie felt upon awaking was a sharp pain in his neck. He fluttered his eyes open wondering where he was. He saw his fish tank in the distance and knew he must be in his quarters. He frowned and tried to turn his head, body still numb to sleep. He hissed, the pain worsened as he turned the craned neck to the other side

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[nurse_cchapel]

So. She was asleep, and it was the nice sort of sleep that she really wanted to keep up. Except her pillow was moving, which was totally unacceptable.

Until it became apparent that her pillow was, in fact, Donnie's arm. Donnie, who was, at the moment, watching her, looking uncomfortable as she turned her head to look up at him. Christine cleared her throat; "Morning."

Then, remembering exactly who she was on, she sat up. One hand numb from being slept on, she stretched both arms up in the air, checking for cricks due to couches. Nothing major, which was always nice.

[im_a_donnie]

That was annoying, the clinging thing. It spoke, she lived

[nurse_cchapel]

"You fell asleep about ten minutes into our conversation." Oh, this was a great way to start the morning, with a frown and some thinly disguised sarcasm. "It was really nice of you."

Donnie tried to stand. It didn't go so well. Christine was torn between dragging him to Sickbay and making him suffer it out. She sure as heck wasn't giving him any more of the other day's analgesic, that was for sure. Asleep, sure. Well, she could call him on it later.

Twisting her torso one way and then the other, listening to Donnie gripe. "Of course," she commented idly, "the first guy I wake up next to in almost a year is you."

[im_a_donnie]

He looked at her, confused for a bit, at Christy's first set of comments. He didn't think falling asleep during conversation was necessarily nice. Then recognition flooded his face and he nodded wisely.

"Sarcasm," he reminded himself. "It was obviously a riveting conversation, then." He tried his own hand at being facetious.

He stretched out and grabbed his PADD.

"Wow, a year," he commented, eyebrows raised. He wasn't one to talk, not in the least. The screen glowed on and Donnie started immediately working, messaging engineering, and catching up on any science news that might have happened in or out of the ship while he was asleep. "You should have woke me up," he mumbled more to himself than her.

"Hey, you can use the replicator if you want to make breakfast or...um...I'd show you around but you have the same layout," he said, with a smile and returned to his PADD.

[nurse_cchapel]

It was hard to be too upset with someone who had to asses sarcasm as such and then rebuke with some of his own. Christine immediately classified it as adorable, just-woken-up or not. The sarcasm continuing into the response about her sleeping around habits, though, was a little less adorable. As in, not adorable at all.

Come to think of it, since when was she so bitter about her lack of sex life that she snarked about it at friends unprovoked?

Christine stood, still impressed with how not-scrunched-up she felt, considering where she'd slept. "You're not narcoleptic, Donnie, so if you fell asleep that easily, you needed to sleep. Thought you might've woken back up to finish our talk, but I guess that never happened."

And, hrm, her feet were bare. She sat back down and bent over to put her boots back on. "You want me to get us some breakfast, then? Or coffee, at least?"

[im_a_donnie]

He huffed at Christy's assessment of his needed sleep. His neck was still sore, muscle pulling angrily at turning his head the opposite of where it had been when he fell asleep.

"Obviously," he said lowly, rubbing the offending muscle with a grimace.

"Uh, yeah, that's fine. Black." he said, almost adding his customary double shot of synthesized caffeine, but thought better of it. The last thing he needed was a health lesson on the negative effects of synthetic stimulants.

When her back was turned he gave a quick rub to the offending knee, hoping to loosen up the muscle a little so that he could prove his ability to walk without hobbling.

He looked beside him and noticed the cushions on his couch scrunched up in the shape that Christy had been in when she was asleep. He frowned a little, not usually OCD, but taking a swift wiping to rid the wrinkles.

[nurse_cchapel]

Crossing to the replicator, Christine ran a curious hand through her hair. At some point, the fastener she usually kept it up with had all but fell out. Between that and the unusual sleepig arrangement, one touch told her it wasn't looking too hot right now. She'd been threatening her wayward locks a cut for years now. She doubted she'd be following through anytime soon.

Ordering coffee and breakfast for two, she bent and straightened her knee a few times. While she was still young enough to avoid neck cramping when she slept at odd angles, nothing seemed to stop her old injury from reminding her off it.

Funny, she thought, returning to the couch, someone on this ship needed to have something other than weak knees.

"Black coffee and waffles," she announced a bit wryly, setting them down in front of him and resuming her seat with her own nearly identical breakfast. "You know, since you wouldn't tell me what you wanted."

[im_a_donnie]

He didn't notice Christy's loose hair until she handed him a plate and cup. He absently took it. He looked at her suspiciously--there was something distinctly different with the way she looked right now. He couldn't pinpoint it.

"Thanks," he mumbled, still throwing glances to her. He took a big mouthful of a waffle and paused, looking over at the stray hair that framed her face. It cascaded down past her shoulders. With a mouth full of waffle, still, he hmmed and nodded at her. "'u look goo'" he attempted to say. It was easily translatable to 'you look good.'

And he didn't know what it was but, for some reason, she did look good right now. Not in a perverted sort of 'I want to have sex with or be in a relationship' with sort of pick up line way but in a 'hey, I never noticed your face before, and it's pretty!' way.

[nurse_cchapel]

Good? Was that what he meant? She looked good?

Making a face, she swallowed the bit of waffle she'd only just got in her mouth when Donnie had made his unusual statement. "Good?" she asked, eyebrows quirking in the direction of her breakfast companion. "I think you mean 'you look like you just woke up on a couch'."

Self-consciously, she ran her fingers through her hair a few consecutive times, untangling a knot near the base of her neck and tucking it behind her ear. Furthermore, since when did Donnie give compliments?

[im_a_donnie]

"You look like you just woke up on the couch," Donnie corrected. "And you look good. Not mutually exclusive." What was the big deal with her looking good. Wasn't that what someone did when they thought the other looked good? He scoffed to himself, shoving another bite of waffle in his mouth.

Donnie was a ravenous eater. Perhaps he ate quickly so he'd have more time for other things. Or perhaps it was a psychological development from all those times his sister had stolen things from his plate if he didn't finish eating before she did.

[nurse_cchapel]

Donnie had earned himself another confused look from Christine. Yes, as a matter of fact, having just woke up on a couch did mean she didn't look good. Not that she was a knockout usually, but... "My hair is a mess," she said, frowning briefly at her waffles before starting back on eating them.

Well, so, Donnie had irrational thoughts on morning appearances and ate quickly. She learned new things every day.

As she was finishing her first waffle, he was done his second.

[im_a_donnie]

Donnie shook his head at Christy's thought process. Women were a creature he could never understand. They were often oblivious of their most beautiful moments and covered that up when they went 'out.' Needless to say, Donnie was most attracted to the natural look

[nurse_cchapel]

"Yeah, but..." She trailed off. The argument was sort of pointless, anyway.

Watching Donnie struggle with his knee, she took a sip of coffee in between bites of waffle. To be fair, she was trying really hard not to whip out her nurse-fu and turn him into a patient instead of a friend. People tended to not entirely approve of her doing that while she was in their personal quarters. That was a life lesson she had her Academy days to thank for. She hadn't even known her xenobiology lab partner knew her middle name until he hollered it for her pestering over a cut that wouldn't stop bleeding.

The cheery smile, though, that warranted thought. "Mmhm," she replied, "I said that already."

[im_a_donnie]

"Really?" Donnie frowned and thought back. So she had. He shrugged, and opened a cabinet behind him.

The door slid soundlessly and he dug for a bit before bringing out his daily hypospray of anxiety medication. Giving it a quick pump into his neck he threw it haplessly back into the cabinet and took another sip of his coffee.

He totally wasn't going to move from this spot, he'd decided, as it required locomotion he knew he would suffer with.

So he remained leaning and made the best of it. He checked on the progress of his fish tank. Vulcan fish was still not getting along with the rest of the pack, he noticed. He removed the fish for the umpteenth time to work on it later and the rest of the fish were able to swim freely. He'd need to work on the AI again.

"So--um--you working today?" he asked in an attempt at conversation. It was weird having someone in his quarters.

[nurse_cchapel]

Christine finished her second waffle about the time Donnie started playing with his - was it a fish tank? It was supposed to be a fish tank. Yes.

Taking another drink of coffee, she nodded at his question. "Gamma shift today. With Anderson. I don't know who I ticked off to get stuck with him twice in one week, but I'll have to apologize. I asked Leonard and, apparently, I'm one of the few that can stand him. Except, of course," she added, smirking, "when I can't."

Another drink of coffee. "You?"

[im_a_donnie]

"He's the...prick that worked on my knee?" Donnie asked, coffee mug back in his hand. He moved the mug as he talked. "He's worse that me! At least I'm p-pretty surprised when I make someone upset. He seems to...to revel in it. See, that's what smiling all the time gets you," he said, pointing the mug at her. "Too much patience. That's your problem."

At her question he sighed. Because now he had to walk to his PADD. He gave her a sour look and hobbled to the couch, clutching coffee, and sat down...and sat down...sitting--sitting--okay, done.

He raised his eyebrows and in a few seconds had the answer. "Gamma!" That shouldn't have been a surprise. 94% of the time he had Gamma. He worked much better with fewer people around him. He sipped his coffee looking over his mug at her.