John Marston (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bornuntotrouble) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thedudeabides2018-03-05 01:41 am
bornuntotrouble) wrote in thedudeabides2018-03-05 01:41 am
bornuntotrouble) wrote in thedudeabides2018-03-05 01:41 am
trap queen pls
as featured in Traps Illustrated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpA8uQNbJhU
Out here you can hear yourself think, or so the joke goes. You can barely drive a spade through the ground, it’s so frozen over. Frost coats pine leaves. Fog shrouds the mountains. Lie still and you can hear your heartbeat in your ears. Cough and you could swear snow rattles off tree branches. The expanse seems to stretch out and entrap you as the evening chill settles into your bones and the sun dips down over the horizon, dusking the sky like a red fan spread upwards.
It’s been a long hike. All the days have been long hikes - it’s in the name, Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. She’s starting to think this is someone’s idea of giving them a paid vacation, except you couldn’t pay her to vacation in some of the places they’ve scoped out over the past week. Too many guns, not enough sun.
(Yesterday it was a supply depot full of supposed-to-be-decommissioned nerve agents. Today it was a truck route full of deuce-and-a-halves riding low with covered beds. Tomorrow it’ll be a training camp full of foreign nationals in the country on expired tourist visas. After that, it’ll be extraction via SPIE rig off the western slope of a local mountain just before dusk. A debrief and two days of leave and they’ll be back on active duty. So it goes.)
Their light and noise discipline is per protocol. They don’t need to talk through making camp or setting up the tent, and Tina ties a cloth around the head of her mallet so nobody hears the clink of metal on metal as she drives the stakes into the ground. It’s not an ideal spot, but it’s the best of a bad lot: good drainage so they won’t wake up soaked, a bluff on one side for concealment, and trees on any side to buffer them against the worst of the wind.
(The cold hasn’t been - won’t be - an issue. Their gear is rated for it, and she’s been through worse. More than likely he has, too.)
When Tina speaks, it’s been the first words either of them have said since dawn:]
I’ll take first watch.
[The rest of her hand on his shoulder is gentle.]
You should get some rest.
letting jesus take the wheel how 2 kapkan
maxim basuda travels with tina lin tsang because of his skills. he doesn't particularly mind and says yes, and brings along his usual equipment that he thinks will do the job. things that protects him from russia's harsh environments should work where they're headed. he's never traveled through canada before and a dark curiosity wishes to know if it has means to kill men, kill him if it can try. he's a survivor and he refuses to die because of the ice and the wind, and bullets whenever they come. maxim ks always ready, he refuses to be unprepared. he'll keep breathing until he can't
then there is tina.
maxim pulls down his hood whenever something creeps at the back of his mind because that shouldn't have mattered. not like this. not with the likes of team rainbow. he isn't sure why, he refuses to tell anyone even if timur notices the subtle changes but doesn't ask — he realizes that he looks at her far too much these days. thinks about her. the smile she has on now and then. hearing her laugh — it's an uncomfortable warmth that he has yet to solve. or rather, refuses to.
thinking of the obvious makes him feel ridiculous and young and that isn't the kind of man he is. he's almost thankful for the mask on his face. that doesn't mean his emotions get in the way during the start of their travel. it shouldn't and he won't allow it.
... and yet the hand on his shoulder is comfortably warm. he doesn't shrug it off as he lets his ears pick up something. anything that doesn't come from their campsite. he doesn't remember what canada has im their woods; the knife he keeps is quick to remove. ]
I am not tired yet.
[a lie, though he does have a restlessness sort of feeling inside that he doesn't mention. it always comes out at night after he sets up his bed for the night. the difference, however, is that he's normally a lone wolf. even after the military he still is. of course maxim learns to work as a unit, but under normal circumstances — ]
Let me have the first watch. I'm more used to the night life.
[ because I won't be able to sleep even if I try; maxims thoughts speak more than his mouth. ]
i feel like letting jesus take the wheel would make your rates go up like hella though...
Maxim-
[She pauses. Weighs the words in her head. On paper, it's her op - she has rank on him, and the mission comes first, but she doesn't want to resort to ordering him around. It's just not her style.]
I can take it. It's nothing.
[Really, she wants to add, but Maxim doesn't seem the type to appreciate someone insisting on doing him a favor. Russia is a hard country and has bred hard people; they take pride in having it worse and excelling despite. It takes a certain kind approach to work with that.
Her smile is a game attempt at an icebreaker - not showing teeth, but an upward quirk of her lips and a spark in her eyes that would be hard to miss.]
We'll share it. I'll cover the southern sector, you take the north. [She holds her hand out to him.] Deal?