Chapter Text
Part Three (Cont’d)
“Why the hell do we keep doing this?”
Jirel asked the question to himself as much as the other occupant of his cabin as he lay in bed and stared up at the dull metal of the ceiling.
In the small bathroom area to one side, the water stopped running in the sink and Maya strode back out, somehow back to her elegant best after a quick sonic shower, despite the fact that she was wearing the same clothes she had on yesterday.
“Same reason we do anything,” she shrugged at the Trill as she sat down on the corner of the bed and reached for her shoes, “Because it’s fun.”
Jirel sighed and sat up, shaking his head and gesturing to the two of them. “But, I mean, this absolutely doesn’t work. Right?”
“As a relationship? Good god, no. As a bit of fun? It works more than well enough. And that’s why we keep doing it.”
She finished pulling on her shoes and stood back up, as Jirel shook his head at her. “Is that how this husband of yours’ll see it? You know, the guy we’re supposed to be on a mission to rescue?”
She glided over to a small mirror on the wall and checked her hair, not seeming to care too much about his comment. “Toren will have about as much of a problem with this as I have about him and that dabo girl on Tavis XII. It’s the 24th century, Jirel. Live a little.”
Jirel sighed again as he stared at her from the bed. He couldn’t help but ruefully think how he’d planned everything to be straightforward this time. Just to meet her on Golos III, pay off the rest of his debt and leave it at that.
And somehow, here he was again. On a risky venture into the unknown at the behest of Maya Ortega, and now falling back into bed with her.
“So, what,” he replied, crossing his arms in front of him, “I’m your bit on the side?”
“Don’t go thinking too highly of yourself,” she offered back, as she adjusted her hair, “You’re one of my bits on the side.”
Jirel’s ego sustained another minor blow with that, as she finished attending to her hair and turned back to him, walking over to where he lay on the bed with a twinkle in her eye.
“Alright,” she continued, a little more agreeably, “You really want to know why we keep doing this?”
She sat down next to him on the bed and ran a slender finger down the spots on the right side of his chest. He suppressed a reaction to the tingle that simple gesture sent through his body and mustered a nod back at her.
“Because we both need the excitement,” she whispered.
“Hey,” Jirel managed to reply, “Things are still plenty exciting around here. Ask the others. Just last week we were in a nebula, fighting a bunch of Pakleds who were—”
“But it’s not quite the same, is it?” she cut in with a more insistent whisper, “There’s something missing. The excitement that we had together, living in the grey areas of the galaxy. The sort of excitement you wanted ever since you decided you were going to make a life for yourself out here.”
“Is that right?”
“Of course. It was always so obvious. When you first started out, you couldn’t get into Starfleet, you couldn’t impress your father, but you were damn sure you were going to have the sorts of adventures that he’d told you about.”
He felt a sudden rush of irritation inside. Partly from the presumptuous way she was judging his motivations, and partly because he worried she was judging them correctly.
“And when the two of us were together, life was just one big adventure, wasn’t it? And that’s why we keep doing this.”
Jirel went to counter what the woman who he had stupidly and completely fallen for all over again was saying, just as his cabin’s door buzzer rang out. Before he realised what was happening, Maya had stood up from his bed, idly smoothed down a crease in her clothes, and called out a response.
“Come in!”
“Hey,” Jirel began, “Wait a—!”
The door opened and Natasha stepped in, to be confronted by the entirely unexpected sight of a smiling Maya standing over a significantly more sheepish Jirel, who frantically pulled the bed sheet up to his neck in a curious and futile attempt to rescue some dignity.
“Oh,” she said, after an awkward pause.
“Um,” the Trill managed, “I can explain—”
“Don’t think you need to draw her a picture, Jirel,” Maya scoffed, “Based on the vibes I’ve been getting from you two, it’s pretty obvious that she’s seen it all before.”
Now it was Natasha’s turn to join Jirel in a moment of awkward squirming, as Maya once again seemed to revel in the uncomfortable situation she was cultivating.
“Well,” Natasha managed after a moment, “I’m starting to see why it’s so hard to find someone who speaks highly of you around here.”
Maya’s lips pursed slightly, but she maintained her smile, appreciating the opportunity for a bit of sparring that was presenting itself. “Huh. Feisty, I see. Just a shame that Jirel seems to be getting more desperate for his live-in lovers these days—”
“Ok,” Natasha fired back, heckles now very much raised, “That’s not what’s happening here, for a start. And, besides—”
“Um, ladies?” Jirel managed to cut in from the bed, “Is there any chance we could save this entire conversation until I’m profoundly less naked?”
“Oh, get over yourself, darling,” Maya sighed dryly, keeping her eyes on Natasha.
Natasha, for her part, forced herself to keep her own focus on her actual reason for turning up at Jirel’s cabin in the middle of such an uncomfortable scene in the first place.
“Jirel,” she began, as the Trill continued to squirm, “We’ve left the Badlands. Denella’s arm has recovered. And everyone wants to know what the hell we’re doing next.”
Jirel was forced to concede to himself that he didn’t really have a definitive answer for that question right now. His head was still swimming with too many conflicting thoughts. But fortunately for him, Maya jumped in with a response.
“Yes, that’s a good point,” she nodded, “I should fix myself something to eat, and then we should talk. All of us.”
With that, she turned towards the door, but momentarily stopped to glance at Natasha with a twinkle in her eye as she passed.
“He’s all yours, dear.”
Natasha mustered her best withering eye roll in response to this, as the unperturbed Maya slinked out of the cabin entirely. As the door closed behind her, Natasha turned her withering gaze to the sheepish Trill under the bed sheet.
“Ok, look,” he managed, “I’m sorry. This was all kinda tacky—”
“Jirel, I really don’t care who you’re screwing in here, ok?”
It wasn’t the complete truth, and she was a little surprised to find how much it had affected her to walk in on such a scene. But she also knew that she had been very clear that their latest night together meant as little as the first one had back when she had first been rescued by the Bounty’s crew. Which meant that she couldn’t possibly have any issues of that nature with whatever that might be happening between Jirel and Maya. She must simply be concerned for the safety of their mission and the crew.
She was sure that was it.
“Just…please, be careful?” she concluded, with a particularly knowing look.
Jirel nodded back, catching the wider implication of her words.
“I could turn us around,” he pointed out, to himself as much as to her, “Drop her off at the nearest port and tell her she and her husband are on their own from here.”
“Yes, you could. But you won’t.”
Jirel offered a silent moment of agreement to this. Natasha considered what the others had said earlier about why the Trill wouldn’t just leave Maya to affect a rescue by herself. Because he was too good of a person. And too much of an idiot.
“Well,” she sighed, “We’ll be waiting for your orders whenever they’re ready. Captain.”
She mustered a half smile at the man in front of her, who currently couldn’t have looked less like a captain if he had tried as he sat awkwardly in bed, then turned and exited.
Jirel finally found a moment to exhale, as he slumped back down onto the mattress and stared back up at the ceiling.
Why the hell did he keep doing this?