This is the day after, Tucker. And the day after what startles you out of comfortable lethargy is the sound of dishes breaking.

A brief and pointless glance across the room displays the vacant bunk and no Caboose and you're just about shitting the sheets already flung from your waist. Snatch your briefs halfway down the cot, getting one foot then the other through, curses sputtering out your lips as you stagger out the doorway.

Caboose already has his head up when you're scrambling into the kitchenette. The base had been well stocked while Captain Flowers was around, most the inventory being freezer burnt meals and canned products that maybe shouldn't have been canned but you're not complaining. The variety of goods with unpronounceable ingredients has been one of those few highlights to your time here, and at the present moment there are several days worth of perfectly good batter packets sifted out over the floor around shards of broken bowl.

..."I saved the eggs." Caboose says quietly.

The exhale comes hard and fast, and you add a couple more to follow it because this is your goddamn life. "Caboose. Why?"

When his eyes immediately grow wide a better part of you has to resist an urge to march back to your room and take back what's left of the morning. A painfully cut short morning.

"It's a present!"

..."What's a present?"

"Waffles!"

"Waffles."

Caboose bounces from one leg to the other, precariously close to the glass shards nearing his feet. "My sister would make me waffles with chocolates and chips at home. I would be watching sad movies, and so then I was sad, and she made me waffles, and they were always made chocolate-"

"Right, right, I got that." Reach to cover a yawn. "Why are you making waffles?"

His next face comes across bare and befuddled. He looks you up and down, clinging the compressed tin of yolks over his chest. ..."Because waffles are for when we're sad. Church needs his waffles."

...Right.

So apparently there's a system around here. System goes: Caboose wakes up at the dick-crack of dawn, and Church gets up with him. This is less of a voluntary process and more so a wake up call of squealing smoke detectors and emergency alarms that Church clearly can't get himself to sleep through. Because you go out like a fucking light Tucker, the system flexes. You're pretty used to getting off easy.

This morning though, where it's you getting up when the dishes clatter, when it's you that smells the something that's burning...

'Shit,'

Scanning through damp boxes and the batter that's dripping down cupboards to the floor, your eyes narrow in on the hot palate. Dark slabs mar and smoke up from the grill plate, so dry they're actually crackling against the heat. You clear the floor in twice as many strides as usual to avoid the mess, reaching over counter space to jerk the plug from the wall. Your bare feet squelch in a puddle of batter.

"I will clean it up. Every bit of it!" Caboose exclaims with all the zealous and volume of a prideful five-year-old. "Church will not have to do a thing, I promise." His voice gradually transcends down to a whisper and if this is a form of punishment you really feel it to be unjust. "This is a super secret surprise. He will never, even, know."

You're pretty sure Church will know soon as he walks into the kitchen and tries his shot at breathing. Already a blend of charcoal and candy frost has begun working its way up your nose, laying out a trail to your brain. Church isn't up though and that's kinda weird. Not like 'out there' weird or anything, but still. Weird enough.

"Sure, dude whatever. ...Did you, need some help, with the stove part?"

"Nope!" He bounds, letting his tin down beside another plate on the counter. A plate stacked with dark brown slabs speckled with a handful of bulk cocoa pellets from one of their many brandless cereals. The face of this unsalvageable mountain has been messily glazed with a toaster strudel icing pack, hence the smell of plastic-vanilla plastering the inside of your lungs.

..."Looks great, Caboose." You say after a beat, mentally plotting how to rectify this. "Why don't you go take those over to Church? He should be getting up and ready by now."

When Caboose grins it's as though every light in the base has been dialled to burn out your retinas. He's got this kid-like bound in him, something that locks in way too right with the baby face and that fucking explosion of curls. What you've suggested seems to have re-inspire the thrill of motivation behind his intent. There's a very slim window given for you to press back into the cupboards as a delighted hulk of man-child charges past.

"Jesus, walking, Caboose!"

The human hazard lopes out of the kitchen and you peel away from the cupboards, shifting view for the assessment. Broken dishes, a floor to be mopped, hot plate that's going to need a good soaking. As far as Caboose inflicted casualties go, this one isn't so bad. But there is that dish on the floor, and some of the batter and icing has begun pooling into crevices.

"Good fucking morning Blue base..."

There's a damp towel in the sink that you pluck up to start wiping. The wet dough and icing paste clings on, picking up a good layer of crumbs and dried food bits with it.

Between Church ripping into meals straight out of their boxes and Caboose banned from any and all forms of equipment with a function, one would expect there to be very little worth wiping. You might be the only one here who thinks to clean between meals, and you're definitely the only one who has ever really used this kitchen for cooking. That had been a huge error on your part.

At one point there had been a bag of fruit in the freezer. That fruit, half a can of eggs, brisket mix and a treasured ziplock of processed mozzarella had gone into four hours of thankless labor over a toaster oven. Visually, the peach cream cheese cake turned out alright, and that's all you have to say for it. Church ate more than half of it in one sitting and threw out the rest, then went on a bitching tangent about how it- "didn't even taste like peach- the fucking cantaloup contaminates every piece of fucking fruit! Motherfucking package melons."

Doesn't pay to be too good at anything around here.

Just as you've gotten down on your knees and have started on the bits of plastic china, a pair of boots drag in from the doorframe behind. You glance back and there's Caboose standing in the doorway, a good deal more crestfallen than you recall him being three minutes earlier.

"When does Church get better?"

You look at Caboose, flicking over those dopey to the way he's slouching. There's not a single trace of understanding in there, like he's got absolutely no fucking clue how the human mind work. Alright correction, how the excessively jacked up, 'I hate the goddamn universe', mind works.

For some out of this world reason, Church is Caboose's fucking hero. His ridiculous ass of an idol that shoots the blue end of rainbows out his ass. Right now Caboose doesn't get why he's acting so non-ass-ish.

..."Dude, nothing's wrong with him. He was made that way, nothing we can do."

"I think he's sleeping."

Mid reach with half a plate you stop, watching the floor.

"I asked if he wanted some special happy waffles and he didn't answer."

"Caboose, you made pancakes."

"Oh. Where are they?"

"He didn't shout or anything? Tell you to get the fuck out?"

"The blankets were over his head. He was also really quiet... Maybe we were playing hide and seek and Church is supposed to be hiding. That makes sense, I forget we're playing sometimes."

Because it's Caboose and the floor is actually pretty gross, you tilt off your knees into a supported crouch. "He's not talking?"

"Church is hiding, for the game. You can't play, because of rules. If Church is hiding, I'm seeking and the waffles can be for later. We can make new ones together!"

..."You are so much fucking louder today than you were yesterday."

"One! ... Two, three! ..."


Down the hall to the conjoined barracks you begin to recollect how this day started. Church's bunk is next to yours and yet he wasn't the one flying out of his sheets when Caboose was on his mad rampage through the kitchen. Thinking about it now, that was something that really shouldn't have slipped your mind.

The cot furthest from the door resembles an odd fort of limbs and bed sheets over a mattress. You move a little into the room, checking out the tented mound with swallowed amusement. This is something new.

Through the medley of Church's moods you are just starting to piece together each's precipice. That it's the tone he wakes up with that holds all the cues needed to predict which side of Church will be gracing you with his presence. He's got a shitty blend for sure, but you'd think time would make it easier to swallow. 'Bow chicka-'

Well shit. Caboose wasn't exaggerating.

For a good minute or so you hover at the foot of his cot, and when the mound doesn't move you put a foot to the mattress and shove. Half an inch of the bed sheet slips down, the dark head of a hijacked helmet poking into view.

"You dead, asshole? Oh wait, that's not right. You still dead?"

The bump of armor beneath sheets stirs, rolling away to the left and tugging the thin blankets tight around himself.

"Last call for breakfast. Wouldn't try to eat those pancakes, man."

"Callate..."

"Huh?"

An arm reaches out above the covers, fiercely jerking them back over his head and tucking under the pillow.

"Just saying, we've got some pretty okay food lying around, provided Caboose doesn't get into any more of it. You should try to eat something." Does a ghost inside a robot need to eat? Whatever, still counts as an attempt- the only one you're obligated to make.

"Ir. Lejos." You make out, Church's words muffled beneath the blankets engulfing him.

Way overdone.

This is such an obvious invite to a variety of counter attacks, but staring down the unmoving lump of armor does something to you. Spurts a small voice murmuring how it might not be cool to flip that mattress out from under him.

..."Kay, whatever then. Guess it's not gonna kill anyone if you take the day. No problem. I'll uh, be going. Gotta go put Caboose out to pasture. We'll just, let you know if somebody's dead."

"...No se moleste."

"Right, okay man. Totally." You rock for a moment on your feet, looking up to the ceiling. The door is right there, so fucking close... -"Do you know you're speaking Spanish?"

"Lárgate fuera."