Chapter Text
Part Three
Natasha groaned as she slowly stirred from her deep slumber.
She recognised the tell-tale split second moment of cognisance in her mind. One that she had felt plenty of times before throughout her life, and one that was immediately familiar to anyone who had the pleasure of indulging in the dubious delights of real alcohol.
It was the barely perceptible instant between waking up and being hit with the full force of the hangover. The tiniest of liminal moments between one state and another, which always seemed like your brain’s way of telling you to brace yourself for the misery that was about to be unleashed.
And then, an instant later and right on schedule, the sledgehammer hit home. The intense pounding headache, the sudden rush of nausea, the myriad aches and pains throughout her body. Plus an unerring and unshakable sense of shame.
It seemed that, despite what she had been telling herself at the time, shots had been a bad idea.
“Ugh,” she managed to grunt to herself as she shifted around in her bed.
The cabin was otherwise silent, save for the gentle chirping sound coming from Spotty, the infertile tribble that she had adopted on their last adventure. As it always did every morning, Spotty sat patiently trilling in its cage on her desk, waiting for its morning meal.
As she shifted around and started to force herself to open her eyes, she felt a growing sense of something else, alongside the barrage of unwanted sensations that her hangover was punishing her with.
She got the distinct feeling that she wasn’t alone.
“Ugh,” a second voice said.
She forced her eyes fully open with a few painful blinks, then looked over to her side.
“We’ve really got to stop doing this, you know,” Jirel managed, forcing a grin onto his face despite the fact that he was undergoing a similar internal trauma to what she was going through as the hangover fully coalesced. Alcohol’s effect on humanoids was almost a galactic constant.
Natasha didn’t return the grin. Instead, she pulled the bed sheet up over her head and groaned again, more deeply and painfully than before.
She forced herself to try to remember what had happened after her fateful drinks order in the Treaty of Organia. Piecing together fragments of half memories to try and figure out how she had chosen to end up, for the second time in her life, spending the night with the Trill.
“What the hell happened last night?” she miserably muttered, her voice sounding slightly muffled by the sheet.
Jirel did his best not to take too much offence from this particular reaction from someone who had discovered themselves in bed with him, and forced himself to sit up as he tried to deal with his own pounding headache by rubbing his hands on his temples. “Um,” he managed eventually, tasting the post-alcohol fuzz on his tongue, “I remember shots. Lots and lots of shots.”
“Ugh,” she grunted, “Yep. Remember those.”
“Then I remember we walked all the way back here. Except halfway back you said your feet were hurting and you insisted I carried you the rest of the way on my back.”
She stifled the latest in a long series of unhappy grimaces and nodded under the sheet. That had been one of her trademark methods of rudimentary drunken flirtation in her Academy days.
“Um,” he continued, “Then I think we went for the liquor cabinet when we got back here. And we definitely drank some Scotch whisky, Saurian brandy, and something we figured out was probably an old bottle of Kanar that had gone bad.”
“This ship has way too much booze on it.”
“And then…oh god,” he winced, “Then I’m pretty sure we started singing.”
Another, more prolonged grimace took shape underneath the bed sheet. “Yep,” she sighed, “I remember the singing.”
“And then, after all that, you…came on to me.”
In a split second, she snapped the sheet down from her face and glared up at the Trill. “Um, excuse me?” she scoffed, “I did no such—You came on to me!”
“Nope,” he insisted with a definitive shake of his head, “I was halfway through a pitch perfect rendition of an old Klingon drinking ballad that Klath once taught me when you just…launched yourself at me from across the room.”
“Wh—? Ok, that’s not what happened. I think you’ll find that I was just getting to the end of my Academy karaoke playlist when you made your move. You took advantage of me!”
“Hey, no. I didn’t—If anyone took advantage of anyone last night it was you taking advantage of me!”
She went to retort again, but the growing fog that was covering her brain was stifling her usual power for rational debate. Instead, she just lifted the sheet back over her head and screamed into it.
“Look, I get it,” Jirel continued, his grin making a return to the discussion, “It’s hard for most women to resist me at the best of times—”
“Don’t, Jirel. Don’t joke about it. Don’t do that stupid little grin of yours. Don’t try to make me breakfast. Just—Get dressed and get out!”
Jirel tried his best not to take further offence from that tirade. Especially the reference to the elaborate breakfast feast he had cooked up the morning after their previous liaison. One that she had casually declined in humiliating fashion after explaining that it had just been a one night thing.
“Really? You’re gonna kick me out? Just like that?”
“Just like that,” she affirmed from under the sheet, “And do it quickly. I need to get up, feed Spotty, and then work on some way of erasing my short term memory.”
Jirel sighed and shook his head, then swung his legs out of the bed and reached for his clothes. “Fine,” he said as he got dressed, “I can go. But don’t tell me this doesn’t mean—”
“And don’t do that,” she snapped, pulling the sheet back down to emphasise her point with the firmest of glares, “This didn’t mean anything, so don’t go pretending that it did. Please.”
“Come on, Nat. A one night stand is one thing. But twice? Plus, you’re the one that suggested we do shots. You’re the one that was flirting with me on the walk back. You sure this was a mistake?”
“After this conversation? Definitely.”
The Trill shook his head as he slipped his boots on.
“Fine. Be like that.”
“Oh no,” she shook her head, pointing at him with an accusing finger, “Don’t do that either.”
“What now?”
“That thing where I’m telling you it was a mistake, and it’s obvious that it was a mistake, but you still think it wasn’t a mistake. Because it was. A mistake.”
“You done?”
She went to add something more, but concluded that nothing more needed to be said.
“Ok then,” Jirel continued, “You win. It was a mistake.”
She eyed him up warily as he stood up, ready to leave. “You mean that?”
“Yep. You’re absolutely right about everything. We got horrifically drunk, we weren’t thinking straight, and whoever came on to who, it was all a mistake.”
She continued to eye him up warily, as he offered back an entirely credulous poker face. “Ok, good,” she nodded eventually, “I’m…glad we agree.”
“Cool. So, if there’s nothing else you wanna talk about, I’m gonna go find some breakfast. A light breakfast. For one. Just for me.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
With their conversation having reached an apparently agreeable conclusion, Jirel turned and exited her cabin.
As he walked out the door, she was unable to see the slight trace of a grin that crossed his face as he did so. Because he knew there was no way this had just been a mistake.
As the door closed behind him, Natasha flopped back down onto the pillow with a frustrated groan. The cabin was now silent, save for the now distinctly insistent chirping of a tribble still awaiting its morning meal.
As she lay back and stared up at the ceiling, she tried to organise her terribly jumbled, confused and hungover thoughts into some sort of coherence. And as she did so, one particularly nagging and annoying thought refused to go away. A thought that was as surprising to her as it was unwelcome.
What if it hadn’t been a mistake?