the ozzie and the kraut - OTA
Heather Cameron wasn't used to second guessing herself, but at the moment she was struggling not to do just that. The decision to come here, to Russia, to join this team... at the moment it wasn't seeming like quite as solid a notion as it had in the weeks preceding.
It wasn't that she was dressed in fatigues instead of shorts and a tank top, or a little slip of a dress. She cared enough about how she looked to pick colors that didn't clash, usually, but she was a girl who spent most of her time outdoors, and a lot of it wet, so no makeup, not much jewelry, and as long as the diggerwear was comfortable to move in and warm enough, that was okay.
The warm enough part was where things started to get weird. It was cold. And snowy. Not snow-ING right at the moment but it had the night before and the skies were still grey and unhelpful. Her home in Surfer's Paradise was close enough to the equator that the seasons didn't change a lot. It was mild in the winter (June, July, August) and hot in the summer but anytime it got too hot you could catch an ocean breeze, take a dip, and hardly suffer.
So the cold made her homesick, a little. That and being so displaced from everything she'd known.
Stop whinging, girl, you took the plunge, just give it a go and get on with it.
At the moment she was kicking her heels, in those buff secondhand army boots, waiting on a ride to the compound that housed her new assignment. She'd fended off a few diggers looking to cozy up to the new sheila, until one of them pulled his mate aside and whispered something. Whatever he'd said, it had cooled things down a bit. Now they were leaving her alone as she waited for the jeep or truck or whatever, occasionally shooting looks she didn't like very much. Heather wasn't used to being looked at that way. It echoed something she didn't want to think about.
She adjusted the strap of the duffle on her shoulder, kicked at a bit of slushy half frozen mud on the ground, and hoped the ride would show up already.
What Kurt realized first and foremost while talking to an MP about a ride was that German and Russian were two very different languages. He'd slip in a German word and wind up with a blank look... and then the MP would lapse into Russian like Kurt should know it. Which he didn't. He had a tough enough time pronouncing some English sounds, honestly; Russian was never going to be his forte. Finally--through a mixture of charades and pure guess-work--Kurt made it outside along the west side of the compound where (he thought) a Jeep should be there as soon as it got back from another run.
Instinct made him glance first at the group of soldiers standing across the slushy way around the mouth of what he thought was a barracks building. Kurt swallowed a bit of thickness out of his throat and touched the watch around his right wrist before looking down at it, making sure that it was a pale, generally hair-less wrist that he saw.
He blew out a breath, feeling a little stupid. And a little ashamed. But it would certainly be better with Stryker, wouldn't it? A team full of mutants. They would understand him, surely.
Kurt noticed the lone woman standing apart from the soldiers and headed toward her, pushing a smile into the corners of his mouth. She was dressed in fatigues (as was he), but they were different from the obviously on-shift men by the barracks, and she had no weapons like they did. Not that Kurt did. Not that he needed them. "Beautiful day, ja?" Some happy sarcasm in a thick German accent. Kurt grinned before he realized that maybe she spoke Russian, too. Fluch. He stopped himself from smacking his forehead.
"G'day," Heather said automatically, turning to the young man who approached from across the drive. "Yeah, it's a beauty all right. If you're a polar bear or something." She half grinned before the expression shifted to something more neutral. "Might want to talk to your mates over there before you waste time hittin on me, though. Or maybe you just like to live dangerously?"
It wasn't said aggressively, just kind of a bluff. Having a jawwag would pass the time while she waited but she didn't relish having to ignore more whispers when his friends decided to set him straight.
"Uh--" Kurt paused at her words and then resumed a forward motion anyway, stopping a few feet from her and shrugging. At least she spoke English. "You're very pretty, Fraulein, but I wasn't hitting on you. And I don't know those men at all." Another shrug and he stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. Polar bears indeed. Even with what amounted to furry long-johns, Kurt was still cold!
The neutral expression on Heather's features softened easily. "Come on, never met a digger yet that didn't try and hit on a girl, no matter what she looked like. That mean you're married?" She didn't glance at his left hand, which was sensibly stuffed into a pocket. "You not part of whatever unit's stationed here then?"
Kurt's eyebrows raised as he laughed and shook his head. "It's too cold for proper flirting. For that you need the opportunity for taking clothes off, not putting them on." The words were light and joking. As for him having a relationship--that was glossed right over. No ring. No girlfriend. Not for a long time.
"Nein." Kurt pulled out a hand and gestured to the open landscape. "I am bound further up the hill." He could have just teleported but he'd found it was never a good idea, teleporting blind. He could end up a blue fursicle inside a glacier somewhere. He shivered a little at the thought.
That got Heather attention, and her interest, though she filed the flirting remark away. Something about it felt a little off. The blokes she knew? Opportunity had nothing to do with flirting. Flirting went on all the time, and the cold just offered a hook of warming things up.
Maybe he was gay...
However, going further up the hill. "The compound?" He looked pretty regular but then so did she. "Me too."
"Ja?" Kurt smiled, sticking his hand back into his pocket. He looked at her again with a little more scrutiny. He hadn't met a ton of mutants but enough to know that it was he that was the unusual one. Being a mutant did NOT, in 99% of cases, mean you had fur. Or a tail. "So you are from Australia? I bet you really are freezing."
"Yeah, I'm an Aussie," she pronounced it Ozzie. "Cold, me? Nah. Why, spray paint this stuff yellow and call it sand and I bet I'd never notice I was away from home." So okay, there was a tad of bravado in that but she grinned to keep it from being taken seriously. "I'm Heather, Heather Cameron. So where you from?" She could have guessed from his accent, but Swiss spoke German, so it was better to ask than to assume.
"Kurt Wagner," he said (Vagner), keeping his hands in his pocket and a little grateful for the cold as an excuse not to offer a shake. He had been told the image-inducer would withstand general physical scrutiny but he wasn't eager to test it out.
"I am from Deutschland." He offered. "Bavaria."
When he didn't offer his hand, Heather just nodded acknowledgement. It felt a little weird.
Better get used to weird.
"Oh yeah? Never been there, but you guys make some decent beers." She glanced up and down the drive. "Not in a big hurry around here, are they?"
Kurt chuckled at her response. "Do not sound so bitter, you have Foster's, ja?" His eyes were a little narrowed in mirth for a moment but they relaxed, along with his smile, as he shifted his attention back down the slushy way. "Not for mutants I don't think, Fraulein. And maybe I am not surprised."
There is was, the M word.
"You sound a tiny bit bitter yourself, mate," Heather murmured, but it wasn't edged at all. "You're a mutant too, eh?"
Kurt's eyes--a bluish grey, not unlike the threatening sky--moved back to Heather. "Ja," he said with a slight nod. That was all. It bothered him all the more that not all that long ago he would have gladly, happily, admitted what he was. Kurt felt stupid and naive.
Heather wasn't sure what it was that made her shift closer, angle her body slightly to put herself between Kurt and the men over there. Wasn't conscious of the protective stance, any more that a mother lioness stopped and thought about moving between her cubs and danger.
"Well then, I'll be in good company then," she said, her tone more cheerful and friendly than at any time before, or perhaps it just lost a little of that self consciousness she'd only barely been aware of. It didn't matter. She didn't sense any danger - yet - but she could feel the aftermath of something.
Kurt's head tilted a little at her movement but he didn't say anything--maybe she just wanted to move to keep warm. "I think we both will be, once we get there," he said with a quiet smile. He was optimistic about joining Stryker's team, about being around people again who would accept him. At least, part of him.
Heather chuckled. "I'll try not to take that personally." It was a teasing tone. "So you ever do anything like this before? Sign up with an outfit?"
It was easier to talk when her sole interest wasn't personal, when she was unconsciously trying to put him at ease also.
"Oh!" Kurt looked a little embarrassed and it was a measure of the technology on his wrist that the fair cheeks that he was wearing flushed slightly. She would have never seen the coloring under the blur fur. "No, I didn't mean it like that! I just meant that we'll be surrounded by mutants. Both of us. And..."
He trailed off with a laugh at himself. "Nein," Kurt said, switching topics since she'd given him an out. "This is my very first one. I wonder if I'll be hazed..." he joked.
Heather hadn't considered that. "Long as it's all in fun I guess," she said, but there wasn't complete approval. Hazing could be dangerous and as a rescue professional she'd seen a few hazing stunts go wrong. "I guess I'm hoping for a bit more maturity than that, though." Wry smile, acknowledging that she might be expecting too much.
She hoped she wasn't though.
Kurt looked at his feet as he laughed. Right, maturity. He'd have to remember that. Leaning back against the cold wall behind him, he crossed his arms loosely over his chest and listened for the sound of an incoming vehicle. Waiting was frustrating when teleportation was an option. He could even take Heather--though she might feel worse for the ride. "Well it is a military operation," he said. "You would think that they might have some strict rules about that sort of thing."
"You'd think," Heather agreed, without sounding too certain. She glanced around, and then back to the young man. "The truth is, I don't really know a lot about this unit, team. I couldn't find out very much, kind of had to just take a chance."
In truth, Kurt only know what Stryker had told him and hadn't bothered to find out more. He hadn't had many other choices. "You tried to dig up information?" he asked.
"Seemed like the smart thing to do," Heather shrugged in the parka. "Lot of good it did me. Everything's hush hush, super top secret." She tilted her head curiously. "You don't much seem like the military type if you don't mind my saying so."
"Jee," Kurt said with a laugh, "what gave it away?" He loosened his arms to pop the collar of his jacket and grin. "I think I make this look good!"
He got a warm grin for his troubles. "Thought you weren't trying to flirt, pretty boy." And she wasn't flirting back, either, but he had a personable way about him, not to mention that he'd tripped Heather's protective toggle. He was cute! And maybe more. But she wasn't going to run full tilt into anything.
Her comment killed Kurt's smile and his whole demeanor faltered for a moment, hands still and suddenly awkward on the fatigue collar. Pretty boy. Yeah, right. The collar drooped as he dropped his hands. "It wasn't flirting," he said, working to get the cheerful back. It wasn't her fault that he had issues. He shrugged. "Just a statement of fact."
"Hey..." Her hand brushed his arm lightly before she could stop herself. "I was just teasing a little. No worries... You look fine in the clothes... anyway, what counts is what's in here, right?" She tapped her chest, her expression reassuring. "Don't mind me, I'm a dag sometimes."
Well, holds up to general physical scrutiny, check. Kurt was actually wearing the same clothes under the image-inducer's display, so the texture would match up to the sight. He preferred clothes that were easier to move in but spandex suits weren't going to keep a man warm in Russia. His circus days were over--might as well get used to the change. "No worries, Fraulein," he said with a quick smile. "But I don't know what a dag is, so I can't say if you are or aren't."
"You know, a nerd, a goof," Heather smiled, self-depreciating, still not sure what the nervousness she could barely feel from him was. He did a great job of covering. Probably best not to poke at it. He was sure to have his reasons.
"She'll be right, no worries."
Kurt chuckled, the smile genuine. "Then I'm a dag too, ja?" His cheeks rose with the expression, even if the word from his mouth sounded a little more like dog. "And who?" he asked. "Who will be right?"
"Ah, you know, she'll be right... um... things... will be... all right..." It almost hurt, dragging the words out like that. Heather thought she sounded like some American on TV, only worse. She grinned a little sheepishly.
Eyebrows rose and Kurt laughed. "I think that maybe I was wrong about you speaking English," he said, leaning off the wall as the rumble of transport rolled toward them from across the snow. "Perhaps Australian is another language all together. It will take some getting used to." His duffel was pulled off the ground.
"Well your first lesson in your new language - repeat after me: Strailyan. Easy off the tongue and no more work than you have to." Heather grinned, shouldering her own kit.
"Strayl-leeen," Kurt mouthed slowly before grimacing at the sound of his butchery. "It is not so natural for me," he said as his nose wrinkled in distaste.
"No worries, mate," Heather chuckled. "She'll be right, you'll see." She patted his back as the truck stopped a few feet away.
"She'll be right," Kurt echoed as he watched the car pull up and then put one foot in front of the other toward it, glancing back over his shoulder. The extra bit of reinforcement as she touched him and seemed to find nothing amiss loosened something that had been clenched in his stomach. "Why do you say 'she'? Or should I say 'he' instead?"
"Um, no, don't say he," Pacing him, Heather took a position that would allow her to cover him if there was anything to be concerned about. She wasn't choosing to, it was just instinct. "I dunno why we say 'she', we just do. I reckon some bloke just picked it up from some other bloke and now we all say the same."
Then there was no more chitty chat, they were asked for their orders and gestured up into the back of the truck.
Kurt tossed his duffel into the trunk and then moved around the car to open the front door for Heather with a smile and a little showy bow. "Your chariot," he said with a smile--unseeing or uncaring of the MP's mutter from the driver's seat.
"If it's all the same, I'd rather ride with you, Kurt," Heather said. She nodded to the driver, so he wouldn't think she was insulting him. Leaned closer to the German. "Please don't make me ride up there by myself, be a mate."
Kurt's eyebrows raised and he shrugged... and maybe puffed up. Just a little. "My luck," he said with a grin to the driver as he closed the front door and opened the back, following Heather into the seat and closing the door behind them. He didn't buckle in--if they went into a spin he wasn't betting on a seatbelt to save him; Kurt would pop all three of them out in a heartbeat.
If they ended up in a skid, Heather wouldn't expect anyone else to save her, she'd be saving them, but she wouldn't know till it happened exactly how.
For now she was content, settling beside her new mate. It did help, after all, having one person she knew instead of heading off alone into a completely unknown situation.
She gave Kurt and smile for that.
Kurt glanced at her in time to catch it and gave her a full smile back. Heather seemed like a good person and it heartened him, made him feel like maybe he really had made a good decision, coming here. Of course time would tell, but. Kurt was optimistic.
The trip out to the camp wasn't a short one. Settled in, and cold, Heather tried not to get sleepy. There was a bit of warmth generated by the person next to her and she found herself leaning closer.
She tried to watch the scenery, to get an idea of where they were going in relationship to where they'd been but without points of reference it wasn't going to be very effective.
"You get snow in Bavaria, right?"
Kurt was also silent, staring out the window. He was thinking of other snowfalls he'd seen in his life but unlike this white nothing, his snow had always been sitting on top of colorful wagons and tents. It was a little strange. "Hmm?" he said when Heather spoke, looking over at her. She was closer than she had been and he shifted a little toward the door in the pretense of facing her more. "Ja. It depends how high into the mountains you go, but we do get a lot, even closer to the lowlands."
"I always wondered what it was like," Heather admitted, looking out the window. She noticed the shift in his posture, without knowing what it was about. "I think I've already seen enough, though."
The drone of the tires cutting into the slush was almost as numbing as the cold.
"Wait, you've never seen snow?" Kurt asked, his voice incredulous. "Never?" Despite his slight shift away from her his demeanor hadn't changed a bit. "Unglaublich," he murmured, shaking his head.
"Unga...blitch?" Heather repeated, laughing. "What's that mean? No I never saw snow before. I grew up in Surfer's Paradise, mate! The only snow we got was the fake kind, in shop at Chrissie!"
"Unglaublich," Kurt repeated with a smile. "Incredible! And I don't know," he laughed quietly, "I'm not sure I can trust someone who has never seen snow before, although..." he shrugged. "I have never been to the ocean. I imagine it's big."
Heather laughed easily. "That's fair dinkum," she said. "It's pretty big. Someday I'll take you swimming, how would that be?" She didn't trip on the trust comment. He was joking.
Kurt laughed and it wasn't forced even though a darker voice in the back of his head said that she wouldn't want to see what he really looked like wet, which was something akin to a big blue drowned rat. "Perhaps the Team will go someplace warm if they move again," he suggested with a nod. "I was told they moved here from Africa."
"Yeah?" That was more than Heather had been able to find out. "I guess I better not hold my breath, though. Wonder why they moved." She realized she felt comfortable with Kurt, even though they'd only just met. She could picture taking him surfing.
One shoulder was shrugged upward in a 'who knows?' sort of gesture. Heather had been right before; Kurt wasn't exactly the military type. Why anyone in the military did what they did... even trying to hazard a guess would be way outside his area of expertise. He looked back out the window and tapped the glass with a finger as a sprawling structure rose over a field of white. "Guess that's it."
Heather leaned over to get a better look at her new home. "Real cheery," she said, quirking a grin.
Sitting back she smoothed back a strand of blond hair that had escaped from the single loose braid down her back. "Well, I guess it's almost showtime, Kurt."
He snorted quietly at her assessment, but when Heather said showtime Kurt seemed to perk up quite a bit. "Ja," he said, and promptly popped his collar again as he sat up straighter. Think of it like a show--not that he was really worried. Other mutants! It had to be better than what the last few years of his life had been.
His reaction got a soft chuckle from her. "You're a real trooper, right? I'll try and take my cue from you then."
The truck finally stopped after pulling into the camp's entrance and showing clearances. The driver would gas up and head back down after a rest, taking whatever mail or packages hadn't been assigned some other transport.
Heather climbed out, thanking the driver for the ride. He shot her a look but just nodded, otherwise ignoring his passengers.
Kurt jumped out to fetch both of their bags and handed Heather's over as he stared up at the building. There were mutants in there, people just like him, people who would understand him...
Not that Heather wasn't--she seemed very nice.
But the prospect of having a mutant roommate just waiting for him was a little too exciting to keep Kurt still after having waited patiently for the transport and then just sat in the car for the whole ride. He shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet for a moment before looking over at Heather with a wide grin. "I'm going to check out the inside," Kurt said in a tone that reeked of conspiracy, still smiling toothily. "Ich sehe sie bald, Fraulein."
There was a puff of rose-colored smoke and a quiet bamf sound, like air rushing somewhere, and Kurt was gone. The smell of sulfur lingered behind him.
Her companion suddenly going poof, or bamf! left Heather blinking and startled.
"Strewth! He up and disappeared on me!"
[subsequently OTA if anyone wants to meet Heather as she finds her way around :) ]
It wasn't that she was dressed in fatigues instead of shorts and a tank top, or a little slip of a dress. She cared enough about how she looked to pick colors that didn't clash, usually, but she was a girl who spent most of her time outdoors, and a lot of it wet, so no makeup, not much jewelry, and as long as the diggerwear was comfortable to move in and warm enough, that was okay.
The warm enough part was where things started to get weird. It was cold. And snowy. Not snow-ING right at the moment but it had the night before and the skies were still grey and unhelpful. Her home in Surfer's Paradise was close enough to the equator that the seasons didn't change a lot. It was mild in the winter (June, July, August) and hot in the summer but anytime it got too hot you could catch an ocean breeze, take a dip, and hardly suffer.
So the cold made her homesick, a little. That and being so displaced from everything she'd known.
Stop whinging, girl, you took the plunge, just give it a go and get on with it.
At the moment she was kicking her heels, in those buff secondhand army boots, waiting on a ride to the compound that housed her new assignment. She'd fended off a few diggers looking to cozy up to the new sheila, until one of them pulled his mate aside and whispered something. Whatever he'd said, it had cooled things down a bit. Now they were leaving her alone as she waited for the jeep or truck or whatever, occasionally shooting looks she didn't like very much. Heather wasn't used to being looked at that way. It echoed something she didn't want to think about.
She adjusted the strap of the duffle on her shoulder, kicked at a bit of slushy half frozen mud on the ground, and hoped the ride would show up already.
What Kurt realized first and foremost while talking to an MP about a ride was that German and Russian were two very different languages. He'd slip in a German word and wind up with a blank look... and then the MP would lapse into Russian like Kurt should know it. Which he didn't. He had a tough enough time pronouncing some English sounds, honestly; Russian was never going to be his forte. Finally--through a mixture of charades and pure guess-work--Kurt made it outside along the west side of the compound where (he thought) a Jeep should be there as soon as it got back from another run.
Instinct made him glance first at the group of soldiers standing across the slushy way around the mouth of what he thought was a barracks building. Kurt swallowed a bit of thickness out of his throat and touched the watch around his right wrist before looking down at it, making sure that it was a pale, generally hair-less wrist that he saw.
He blew out a breath, feeling a little stupid. And a little ashamed. But it would certainly be better with Stryker, wouldn't it? A team full of mutants. They would understand him, surely.
Kurt noticed the lone woman standing apart from the soldiers and headed toward her, pushing a smile into the corners of his mouth. She was dressed in fatigues (as was he), but they were different from the obviously on-shift men by the barracks, and she had no weapons like they did. Not that Kurt did. Not that he needed them. "Beautiful day, ja?" Some happy sarcasm in a thick German accent. Kurt grinned before he realized that maybe she spoke Russian, too. Fluch. He stopped himself from smacking his forehead.
"G'day," Heather said automatically, turning to the young man who approached from across the drive. "Yeah, it's a beauty all right. If you're a polar bear or something." She half grinned before the expression shifted to something more neutral. "Might want to talk to your mates over there before you waste time hittin on me, though. Or maybe you just like to live dangerously?"
It wasn't said aggressively, just kind of a bluff. Having a jawwag would pass the time while she waited but she didn't relish having to ignore more whispers when his friends decided to set him straight.
"Uh--" Kurt paused at her words and then resumed a forward motion anyway, stopping a few feet from her and shrugging. At least she spoke English. "You're very pretty, Fraulein, but I wasn't hitting on you. And I don't know those men at all." Another shrug and he stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. Polar bears indeed. Even with what amounted to furry long-johns, Kurt was still cold!
The neutral expression on Heather's features softened easily. "Come on, never met a digger yet that didn't try and hit on a girl, no matter what she looked like. That mean you're married?" She didn't glance at his left hand, which was sensibly stuffed into a pocket. "You not part of whatever unit's stationed here then?"
Kurt's eyebrows raised as he laughed and shook his head. "It's too cold for proper flirting. For that you need the opportunity for taking clothes off, not putting them on." The words were light and joking. As for him having a relationship--that was glossed right over. No ring. No girlfriend. Not for a long time.
"Nein." Kurt pulled out a hand and gestured to the open landscape. "I am bound further up the hill." He could have just teleported but he'd found it was never a good idea, teleporting blind. He could end up a blue fursicle inside a glacier somewhere. He shivered a little at the thought.
That got Heather attention, and her interest, though she filed the flirting remark away. Something about it felt a little off. The blokes she knew? Opportunity had nothing to do with flirting. Flirting went on all the time, and the cold just offered a hook of warming things up.
Maybe he was gay...
However, going further up the hill. "The compound?" He looked pretty regular but then so did she. "Me too."
"Ja?" Kurt smiled, sticking his hand back into his pocket. He looked at her again with a little more scrutiny. He hadn't met a ton of mutants but enough to know that it was he that was the unusual one. Being a mutant did NOT, in 99% of cases, mean you had fur. Or a tail. "So you are from Australia? I bet you really are freezing."
"Yeah, I'm an Aussie," she pronounced it Ozzie. "Cold, me? Nah. Why, spray paint this stuff yellow and call it sand and I bet I'd never notice I was away from home." So okay, there was a tad of bravado in that but she grinned to keep it from being taken seriously. "I'm Heather, Heather Cameron. So where you from?" She could have guessed from his accent, but Swiss spoke German, so it was better to ask than to assume.
"Kurt Wagner," he said (Vagner), keeping his hands in his pocket and a little grateful for the cold as an excuse not to offer a shake. He had been told the image-inducer would withstand general physical scrutiny but he wasn't eager to test it out.
"I am from Deutschland." He offered. "Bavaria."
When he didn't offer his hand, Heather just nodded acknowledgement. It felt a little weird.
Better get used to weird.
"Oh yeah? Never been there, but you guys make some decent beers." She glanced up and down the drive. "Not in a big hurry around here, are they?"
Kurt chuckled at her response. "Do not sound so bitter, you have Foster's, ja?" His eyes were a little narrowed in mirth for a moment but they relaxed, along with his smile, as he shifted his attention back down the slushy way. "Not for mutants I don't think, Fraulein. And maybe I am not surprised."
There is was, the M word.
"You sound a tiny bit bitter yourself, mate," Heather murmured, but it wasn't edged at all. "You're a mutant too, eh?"
Kurt's eyes--a bluish grey, not unlike the threatening sky--moved back to Heather. "Ja," he said with a slight nod. That was all. It bothered him all the more that not all that long ago he would have gladly, happily, admitted what he was. Kurt felt stupid and naive.
Heather wasn't sure what it was that made her shift closer, angle her body slightly to put herself between Kurt and the men over there. Wasn't conscious of the protective stance, any more that a mother lioness stopped and thought about moving between her cubs and danger.
"Well then, I'll be in good company then," she said, her tone more cheerful and friendly than at any time before, or perhaps it just lost a little of that self consciousness she'd only barely been aware of. It didn't matter. She didn't sense any danger - yet - but she could feel the aftermath of something.
Kurt's head tilted a little at her movement but he didn't say anything--maybe she just wanted to move to keep warm. "I think we both will be, once we get there," he said with a quiet smile. He was optimistic about joining Stryker's team, about being around people again who would accept him. At least, part of him.
Heather chuckled. "I'll try not to take that personally." It was a teasing tone. "So you ever do anything like this before? Sign up with an outfit?"
It was easier to talk when her sole interest wasn't personal, when she was unconsciously trying to put him at ease also.
"Oh!" Kurt looked a little embarrassed and it was a measure of the technology on his wrist that the fair cheeks that he was wearing flushed slightly. She would have never seen the coloring under the blur fur. "No, I didn't mean it like that! I just meant that we'll be surrounded by mutants. Both of us. And..."
He trailed off with a laugh at himself. "Nein," Kurt said, switching topics since she'd given him an out. "This is my very first one. I wonder if I'll be hazed..." he joked.
Heather hadn't considered that. "Long as it's all in fun I guess," she said, but there wasn't complete approval. Hazing could be dangerous and as a rescue professional she'd seen a few hazing stunts go wrong. "I guess I'm hoping for a bit more maturity than that, though." Wry smile, acknowledging that she might be expecting too much.
She hoped she wasn't though.
Kurt looked at his feet as he laughed. Right, maturity. He'd have to remember that. Leaning back against the cold wall behind him, he crossed his arms loosely over his chest and listened for the sound of an incoming vehicle. Waiting was frustrating when teleportation was an option. He could even take Heather--though she might feel worse for the ride. "Well it is a military operation," he said. "You would think that they might have some strict rules about that sort of thing."
"You'd think," Heather agreed, without sounding too certain. She glanced around, and then back to the young man. "The truth is, I don't really know a lot about this unit, team. I couldn't find out very much, kind of had to just take a chance."
In truth, Kurt only know what Stryker had told him and hadn't bothered to find out more. He hadn't had many other choices. "You tried to dig up information?" he asked.
"Seemed like the smart thing to do," Heather shrugged in the parka. "Lot of good it did me. Everything's hush hush, super top secret." She tilted her head curiously. "You don't much seem like the military type if you don't mind my saying so."
"Jee," Kurt said with a laugh, "what gave it away?" He loosened his arms to pop the collar of his jacket and grin. "I think I make this look good!"
He got a warm grin for his troubles. "Thought you weren't trying to flirt, pretty boy." And she wasn't flirting back, either, but he had a personable way about him, not to mention that he'd tripped Heather's protective toggle. He was cute! And maybe more. But she wasn't going to run full tilt into anything.
Her comment killed Kurt's smile and his whole demeanor faltered for a moment, hands still and suddenly awkward on the fatigue collar. Pretty boy. Yeah, right. The collar drooped as he dropped his hands. "It wasn't flirting," he said, working to get the cheerful back. It wasn't her fault that he had issues. He shrugged. "Just a statement of fact."
"Hey..." Her hand brushed his arm lightly before she could stop herself. "I was just teasing a little. No worries... You look fine in the clothes... anyway, what counts is what's in here, right?" She tapped her chest, her expression reassuring. "Don't mind me, I'm a dag sometimes."
Well, holds up to general physical scrutiny, check. Kurt was actually wearing the same clothes under the image-inducer's display, so the texture would match up to the sight. He preferred clothes that were easier to move in but spandex suits weren't going to keep a man warm in Russia. His circus days were over--might as well get used to the change. "No worries, Fraulein," he said with a quick smile. "But I don't know what a dag is, so I can't say if you are or aren't."
"You know, a nerd, a goof," Heather smiled, self-depreciating, still not sure what the nervousness she could barely feel from him was. He did a great job of covering. Probably best not to poke at it. He was sure to have his reasons.
"She'll be right, no worries."
Kurt chuckled, the smile genuine. "Then I'm a dag too, ja?" His cheeks rose with the expression, even if the word from his mouth sounded a little more like dog. "And who?" he asked. "Who will be right?"
"Ah, you know, she'll be right... um... things... will be... all right..." It almost hurt, dragging the words out like that. Heather thought she sounded like some American on TV, only worse. She grinned a little sheepishly.
Eyebrows rose and Kurt laughed. "I think that maybe I was wrong about you speaking English," he said, leaning off the wall as the rumble of transport rolled toward them from across the snow. "Perhaps Australian is another language all together. It will take some getting used to." His duffel was pulled off the ground.
"Well your first lesson in your new language - repeat after me: Strailyan. Easy off the tongue and no more work than you have to." Heather grinned, shouldering her own kit.
"Strayl-leeen," Kurt mouthed slowly before grimacing at the sound of his butchery. "It is not so natural for me," he said as his nose wrinkled in distaste.
"No worries, mate," Heather chuckled. "She'll be right, you'll see." She patted his back as the truck stopped a few feet away.
"She'll be right," Kurt echoed as he watched the car pull up and then put one foot in front of the other toward it, glancing back over his shoulder. The extra bit of reinforcement as she touched him and seemed to find nothing amiss loosened something that had been clenched in his stomach. "Why do you say 'she'? Or should I say 'he' instead?"
"Um, no, don't say he," Pacing him, Heather took a position that would allow her to cover him if there was anything to be concerned about. She wasn't choosing to, it was just instinct. "I dunno why we say 'she', we just do. I reckon some bloke just picked it up from some other bloke and now we all say the same."
Then there was no more chitty chat, they were asked for their orders and gestured up into the back of the truck.
Kurt tossed his duffel into the trunk and then moved around the car to open the front door for Heather with a smile and a little showy bow. "Your chariot," he said with a smile--unseeing or uncaring of the MP's mutter from the driver's seat.
"If it's all the same, I'd rather ride with you, Kurt," Heather said. She nodded to the driver, so he wouldn't think she was insulting him. Leaned closer to the German. "Please don't make me ride up there by myself, be a mate."
Kurt's eyebrows raised and he shrugged... and maybe puffed up. Just a little. "My luck," he said with a grin to the driver as he closed the front door and opened the back, following Heather into the seat and closing the door behind them. He didn't buckle in--if they went into a spin he wasn't betting on a seatbelt to save him; Kurt would pop all three of them out in a heartbeat.
If they ended up in a skid, Heather wouldn't expect anyone else to save her, she'd be saving them, but she wouldn't know till it happened exactly how.
For now she was content, settling beside her new mate. It did help, after all, having one person she knew instead of heading off alone into a completely unknown situation.
She gave Kurt and smile for that.
Kurt glanced at her in time to catch it and gave her a full smile back. Heather seemed like a good person and it heartened him, made him feel like maybe he really had made a good decision, coming here. Of course time would tell, but. Kurt was optimistic.
The trip out to the camp wasn't a short one. Settled in, and cold, Heather tried not to get sleepy. There was a bit of warmth generated by the person next to her and she found herself leaning closer.
She tried to watch the scenery, to get an idea of where they were going in relationship to where they'd been but without points of reference it wasn't going to be very effective.
"You get snow in Bavaria, right?"
Kurt was also silent, staring out the window. He was thinking of other snowfalls he'd seen in his life but unlike this white nothing, his snow had always been sitting on top of colorful wagons and tents. It was a little strange. "Hmm?" he said when Heather spoke, looking over at her. She was closer than she had been and he shifted a little toward the door in the pretense of facing her more. "Ja. It depends how high into the mountains you go, but we do get a lot, even closer to the lowlands."
"I always wondered what it was like," Heather admitted, looking out the window. She noticed the shift in his posture, without knowing what it was about. "I think I've already seen enough, though."
The drone of the tires cutting into the slush was almost as numbing as the cold.
"Wait, you've never seen snow?" Kurt asked, his voice incredulous. "Never?" Despite his slight shift away from her his demeanor hadn't changed a bit. "Unglaublich," he murmured, shaking his head.
"Unga...blitch?" Heather repeated, laughing. "What's that mean? No I never saw snow before. I grew up in Surfer's Paradise, mate! The only snow we got was the fake kind, in shop at Chrissie!"
"Unglaublich," Kurt repeated with a smile. "Incredible! And I don't know," he laughed quietly, "I'm not sure I can trust someone who has never seen snow before, although..." he shrugged. "I have never been to the ocean. I imagine it's big."
Heather laughed easily. "That's fair dinkum," she said. "It's pretty big. Someday I'll take you swimming, how would that be?" She didn't trip on the trust comment. He was joking.
Kurt laughed and it wasn't forced even though a darker voice in the back of his head said that she wouldn't want to see what he really looked like wet, which was something akin to a big blue drowned rat. "Perhaps the Team will go someplace warm if they move again," he suggested with a nod. "I was told they moved here from Africa."
"Yeah?" That was more than Heather had been able to find out. "I guess I better not hold my breath, though. Wonder why they moved." She realized she felt comfortable with Kurt, even though they'd only just met. She could picture taking him surfing.
One shoulder was shrugged upward in a 'who knows?' sort of gesture. Heather had been right before; Kurt wasn't exactly the military type. Why anyone in the military did what they did... even trying to hazard a guess would be way outside his area of expertise. He looked back out the window and tapped the glass with a finger as a sprawling structure rose over a field of white. "Guess that's it."
Heather leaned over to get a better look at her new home. "Real cheery," she said, quirking a grin.
Sitting back she smoothed back a strand of blond hair that had escaped from the single loose braid down her back. "Well, I guess it's almost showtime, Kurt."
He snorted quietly at her assessment, but when Heather said showtime Kurt seemed to perk up quite a bit. "Ja," he said, and promptly popped his collar again as he sat up straighter. Think of it like a show--not that he was really worried. Other mutants! It had to be better than what the last few years of his life had been.
His reaction got a soft chuckle from her. "You're a real trooper, right? I'll try and take my cue from you then."
The truck finally stopped after pulling into the camp's entrance and showing clearances. The driver would gas up and head back down after a rest, taking whatever mail or packages hadn't been assigned some other transport.
Heather climbed out, thanking the driver for the ride. He shot her a look but just nodded, otherwise ignoring his passengers.
Kurt jumped out to fetch both of their bags and handed Heather's over as he stared up at the building. There were mutants in there, people just like him, people who would understand him...
Not that Heather wasn't--she seemed very nice.
But the prospect of having a mutant roommate just waiting for him was a little too exciting to keep Kurt still after having waited patiently for the transport and then just sat in the car for the whole ride. He shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet for a moment before looking over at Heather with a wide grin. "I'm going to check out the inside," Kurt said in a tone that reeked of conspiracy, still smiling toothily. "Ich sehe sie bald, Fraulein."
There was a puff of rose-colored smoke and a quiet bamf sound, like air rushing somewhere, and Kurt was gone. The smell of sulfur lingered behind him.
Her companion suddenly going poof, or bamf! left Heather blinking and startled.
"Strewth! He up and disappeared on me!"
[subsequently OTA if anyone wants to meet Heather as she finds her way around :) ]