Dishonourable Discharge: Grace Augustine

18

Ivory yawned, leaning back on her chair and checking her watch. The little hand was crawling towards the small black three, telling her that it was the middle of the night. She gave Jake a sideways look, sliding a wad of notes into her bag. Jake lifted his head off his hand briefly to roll his eyes at her.

"Marine get back to work, if you want to pass as a Na'vi you're going to have to work a whole lot harder." Grace looked up from her file.

"Grace it's three in the morning." Jake complained.

"And? Learn the words I've given you." She got out of her chair and stretched her back out. "I'm going for a drink."

"Grace please can you get me a coffee? With two sugars?" Ivory called after the woman as she disappeared from the lab.

"I don't want to do this anymore." Jake groaned as soon as Grace was out of earshot.

"Me neither but since Quaritch decided to poison everyone I've had to read up on even more stupid plants." Ivory grumbled, pulling a new wad of notes out from one of the desk drawers.

"Do you think she'd notice if I went to bed?"

"Almost definitely."

Grace reappeared carrying two steaming mugs. "Here." She put one down in front of Ivory then returned to her seat, cradling her own mug as she scribbled more notes on an already crowded piece of paper.

"Thank you." The dark haired woman frowned, tilting her mug. "What's this?"

"Cocoa." Grace said shortly.

"Please can't I have coffee?"

"No. You're getting hardly any sleep as it is, you don't need caffeine to keep you awake even longer."

"I'm sleeping plenty."

"Hill every time I go past your room during the night you've got your light on."

Ivory sighed, pulling her phone from the pocket of her cargo trousers. She plugged her headphones in and put her music on shuffle, turning the volume up as high as it could go.

"What're you listening to? Heavy metal?" Jake asked, drumming a pen on the tabletop.

The dark haired woman pulled out one of her headphones. "What?"

"I said what are you listening to?"

"Country, Waylon Jennings."

"Seriously?" Jake raised his eyebrows.

"Seriously."

"You're from Kentucky and you listen to country music?" The corners of the mans mouth curled upwards into a smirk.

Yes. I have a cowboy hat too but I left that back on Earth. It's a shame, I wore it every day." Ivory said sarcastically

Jake sat looking at her with his mouth half open, struggling to work out wether she was being serious or not.

"Can you two stop messing around and get on with what you need to do? We've got to be up at oh six hundred." Grace drained the last of her coffee and pushed the mug away.

"I don't even want to be here, can't I just go to bed?" Jake shoved the sheaf of notes that Grace had given him aside.

"Fine, go on." The redhead said begrudgingly.

"Night."

"Goodnight." Ivory pushed her headphones back into her ears.

Jake wheeled himself out of the lab and down the darkened corridor.

Ivory turned back to her work, rubbing her eyes. Her music stopped abruptly as her headphones were pulled from her ears. "Hey-"

"I want to say something to you." Grace let the headphones drop onto the tabletop.

"What?"

"I'm... sorry." The older woman said with difficulty.

"It nearly made you sick to say that didn't it?" Ivory's mouth quirked in amusement.

"Yes." Grace said matter of factly. "I mean it though. I... misjudged you. You helped me out when I was sick and I haven't seen you use that gun on anything in Pandora. You're still a pain in the ass though, that bit hasn't changed. I just don't think you're as much of a dick as I originally thought you were."

"Watch out Grace or you might accidentally say something nice to me."

Grace made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.