Rowan put her hands behind her head. She smiled at the bed above her and drifted off to sleep.
Someone woke them up a few hours later by pounding on the door. Everyone scrambled into their clothes and stood at attention. Rowan caught a glimpse of Nora in nothing but her undershirt and her underwear. She ducked her head as she felt her face grow hot and buttoned the rest of her buttons on her uniform shirt.
Nora was less than thrilled at the early morning wake up call. They had been told about their mornings beginning at the crack of dawn but she hadn't quite believed it. That had been a big mistake. She scrambled to get dressed and stand at attention. In the chaos, she spots Rowan fixing her shirt. "I much prefer how it looks unbuttoned." She winked suggestively at her.
“You haven’t even seen it unbuttoned, how would you know?” Rowan teased quietly. “What if I have hideous scars all over my torso?”
"That shirt is fitted enough for me to make an educated guess." Nora ginned boldly at her. "Then join the club." She lifted up her shirt a smidge to reveal a couple of scars that lined her stomach.
The sleeves of Rowan’s shirt were rolled up, exposing her forearms. She held her right arm up for Nora to see. A large burn scar covered most of it. “It’s not my torso but it is a pretty nasty scar.”
"Cooking accident?" Nora joked, not one to keep things too serious. "I got this one from a grease fire." She rolled up her pants to show off a burn scar covering part of her ankle.
“Nope.” Rowan bent down and started putting on her boots. “I was welding, put the welder down and accidentally put my arm down on it. Don’t recommend it.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t too bad though. I have a pretty high pain tolerance.”
"Damn, that's a helluva lot more interesting than a cooking accident." Nora studied her with interest. "What's welding like? I hear that it's hard. It was on my bucket list for awhile but it expensive and I just never got around to trying it out."
“It’s great.” Someone came into their room and yelled at them to line up. Rowan stood at attention next to Nora. “It’s my favorite part of mechanics,” she murmured.
Nora huffed at the shout and lined herself up next to Rowan. "I'd ask you to teach me but I doubt we have the resources for any welding lessons."
Rowan smiled. "Maybe when this is all over." The lines turned and started marching out of the room. They were lead into a large hall packed wall-to-wall with other soldiers. Groups were assigned and given their tasks for the day and it was announced that they could have free time in the hall after everything was done. Rowan was surprised at how sad she was to find she was in a different group than Rowan. The day dragged by. After a millenia, it was over and the soldiers all raced to their rooms to get ready for the evening.
Nora chuckled before she followed the line. All day long she was stuck doing what seemed like pointless tasks. The people she talked to were insanely boring and she had found herself desperate to get away from them. By the time the day is over, she was more than ready to see the only person so far that doesn’t annoy her, Rowan.
Rowan was sitting on her bunk unlacing her boots when Nora showed up. Rowan looked up, excited, then quickly looked back down, not wanting to seem over-excited. She finished taking off her boots and stood. "I have to shower. Can you dye my hair?"
Nora flashed a smile at Rowan. It was good to be back. “Not even going to say hi and ask me how my day was?” She laughed and climbed onto the top bunk. “Let me just find the red dye and then I can do it.” The bag on her bunk is chalk full of different hair dyes. She just had to find the right one.
Rowan climbed halfway up the ladder and rested her head on her hands on the edge of Nora's bed. "How was your day today darling? How was your day of worthless labour? Was it good?" She blinked at Nora to show her innocence.
“My day of worthless labor was nothing but boring. Thank you for asking, honey, sweetie, darling, angel, cupcake, love bug, babydoll.” Nora gave her a shit eating grin. “And how was your day, sugar plum?” She pulled out two boxes of red dye and hands them to Rowan so can could pick a shade.
"Ah, you know. Just doing some tinkering. The second engine was failing so I helped fix that. I swear every other mechanic on this ship is incompetent," Rowan said as she handed Nora a brighter shade of red. "The army really needs some standards."
Nora chuckled at the response she was given. “Well, they can’t be too picky or they’d have no soldiers.” She could definitely complain about the morons she had to work with today though. “Good choice.” She took the box back and studied it for a moment.
(Do you wanna go through the process of dying the hair or do you wanna just time skip?)
(Let's do a skip.)
(Okay. I'm gonna go to the hang out thing that they all have tonight and Rowan and Nora can dance or something)
(Let me know if this is ever going too slow and if we should just skip to the angst.)
Rowan inspected herself in the mirror, fluffing her now-red hair. It didn't look bad. Nora had done a good job and the color suited her. She kept her grey uniform pants on and pulled on a black t-shirt and a black jacket. She came out of the bathroom and moved towards Nora. "You want to go to this thing?"
(Yeah, the hang out thing is good with me.
Let's do a couple of more bonding scenes and then we can go to the angst.)
Nora stood by the beds and finished getting ready. She had pulled on some ripped jeans and a black and white ACDC t-shirt. "We might as well. There's not much else to do." She turned and smiled at the sight of Rowan with red hair. "That color looks really good on you."
Rowan felt her face grow warm but she didn't let it affect her. "Like I said, signature color. You look nice." She gestured toward the door with her head and smiled at Nora. "Shall we darling?"
Nora chuckled, grabbed her jacket and turned to Rowan. "Yes we shall, gorgeous." She flashed her a big charming smile before she headed out of the room.
Rowan and Nora walked to the hall together. They talked and mingled with their fellow soldiers, standing by each other the whole time. Some of these people were fairly interesting, though no one that was in their room. Someone had a flask and they passed it to Rowan who took a swig. She offered it to Nora.
Nora talked and played nice with everyone they met. A couple of people were pretty interesting but they were all unfortunately in other rooms. Everyone else in their room was boring as hell which was unfortunate. She accepted the flash from Rowan and took a big swig. "Now things are finally starting to resemble a party."
Rowan took another quick swing from the flask and handed it back to the person who had given it to her, a woman who was a pilot. Music was blaring from somewhere, making it hard to hear, but Rowan didn't mind much. She didn't talk a lot at parties anyway. Nora was a ball of energy next to her and Rowan was simply enjoying being next to her.
Nora spun around to face Rowan the second the music came on. She grabbed her hand and tugged her out onto the spacious area in the middle of the room that served as the dance floor. "Dance with me!" The music was loud which caused the words to come out as a shout. She laughed loudly and began to dance around the room, she was full of energy.
Rowan sighed and let her head roll back as she allowed Nora to pull her onto the dance floor. She wasn't much of a dancer, but the alcohol was helping and so was the pretty girl she was dancing with. "Only for you," she shouted back, struggling to keep up but laughing all the same.