Chapter Text
Lorca tries eating in the mess hall. He hasn’t done it since he became a captain, years ago, in his own universe. But for the first time, he isn’t serving on a warship, and he finds that he does want to have some sense of the crew’s morale. They have longer and longer to go and little purpose to guide them beyond getting home. Watching a video feed of the mess doesn't work as well as he'd like.
So, the next time he realizes that he’s hungry, he finds the mess hall. As expected, it falls silent when he enters, the only sound the scraping of chairs on the floor as people turn to look at him. He walks to the food synthesizer, and orders roasted chicken and vegetables, which is duly produced with the computer's enthusiastic endorsement.
“Captain!” Saru leaps to his feet. “Are you looking for something?”
“Just food,” he says, with grim good humor. “My synthesizer stopped working.” Not true, but he does need some reason to give everyone for his presence.
“Sir, I can have it fixed—”
“Mr. Saru, are you trying to keep me from eating in my own mess hall?” Lorca doesn’t wait for his answer, some kind of stammered denial; he walks to an open table, where he can see the entire room and have the wall at his back, and sits down. Everyone is quiet. They seem afraid to resume talking, and just as afraid to leave and indicate some discomfort with the captain.
Cadet Tilly saves them all by standing up from her own table, walking over to his table, and plopping down her tray. She sits directly in front of him, which blocks his view of the room somewhat, and says, “What do you think of the food in here? Sir.” She’s halfway through eating some kind of egg-and-vegetable burrito. Behind her, he hears the conversations resume, albeit more restrained.
Lorca looks down at his plate and takes a bite. “It’s fine,” he says. “The same as my food synthesizer.” Just past Tilly’s head, he can see Burnham and Tyler eating together, and Tyler does look at a little better for all the drugs the doctors have been giving him.
“I would think you would have a special one,” Tilly muses. She seems to have decided that they’re friends on the strength of their awkward conversation about his relationship to Burnham and his occasional “Good work” to her, which he finds alarming. But she’s the only one saving his attempt to assess the crew’s morale, so he can’t exactly object.
“No.” He takes another bite. “Cadet,” he says, “how would you describe crew morale?”
“…it could be better?” Tilly keeps her voice low. “People were excited to get home. They were excited for peace.”
Lorca tries to scan the room inconspicuously. There’s little laughter, and there was barely more when he walked in. “What would you do?” She gapes at him and he says, “You’re on the command track, aren’t you? As captain, what would you do to raise morale?” The Terran idea of raising crew morale is to single out a few of the weakest and encourage others to pick fights with them until someone dies, which he doesn’t think will help here.
Tilly flushes and straightens up in her seat. “Well, sir, the training modules say that in times of low morale, it’s good to give crew opportunities for greater socialization.”
“A party.” When Tilly nods, he says, “The last time I allowed the crew to throw a party, our ship was held hostage by a time-traveling madman and I was killed. Frequently.”
She laughs at that and then sobers. “Oh. You were being serious.”
“I’m open to the idea,” he says. “I got the impression that the people who weren’t brutally murdered enjoyed it.”
She laughs again. “Yes, sir, we did. You should let us have another. Six hours of sleep is all well and good—well, no, it’s not really enough—but I think a lot of people would rather do something else for six hours.”
“Not enough?”
Tilly shakes her head and takes a long drink of a glass of…green juice. “Nope, we should get at least eight hours. Nine to allow people time to actually fall asleep.”
He considers that. In normal times, duty shifts are typically eight hours long; on a starship set to Terran time, that leaves ample time for crew to sleep eight hours and pursue whatever off-duty recreation they want. Here, only six hours at a time have been guaranteed to be free of anomalies. “It’ll take us longer to get back at that rate.” This is really a conversation for his first officer, not Tilly, but she gives her opinions much more freely than Saru.
“I think most people would accept that,” she says. Captain Killy has a slight green-juice mustache. “But you should let us have another party.”
Lorca resigns himself to it. “All right. Organize it. Talk to Saru about scheduling shifts for everyone who wants to attend.”
“Thank you, sir!” She jumps to her feet.
“Dismissed,” he says, because she’s about to leave anyway. She stops briefly at Burnham and Tyler’s table to say something, then on to where Elan has just joined Owosekun and Detmer. He can’t hear what she says, but all three turn in their chairs to look at him and then rapidly turn back. The mess hall takes on a certain hum of excitement. Apparently Tilly was right.
* * *
Saru, already beleaguered, once again offers that he would be happy to take the conn if the Captain would like to attend the party. Lorca does not want to attend. And, from his first appearance in the mess hall, he suspects it would ruin the party itself. The crew has grown slightly more comfortable in his presence there, but this party is meant to raise their morale.
“Mr. Saru, you’ll have the conn during the party,” he says, shocking Saru. “But I won’t be there. Comm me at the first sign of a—space fish, or another smoke creature, or a warp signature, or anything interesting.”
“Of course, sir!” Lorca wonders if Saru is as bored as he is.
When the party starts, and after he watches the exodus from the bridge—including Burnham—Lorca goes to the mess hall. No one else is there. It’s his compromise between socializing and returning to his quarters. He brings along a bottle of whiskey—why not—and sits at a table with his back to the wall and stares out the window.
He doesn’t know how much time passes before Elan arrives, announces, “Well, this is grim,” and virtually flings herself into the chair. One of her antennae quirks as though it’s scanning the room on its own. She pulls out her own bottle—Andorian ale, undoubtedly—and takes a long swig.
“You don’t want to go to the party?” he asks. “It’s to improve crew morale.”
“Well, that explains why you’re not there,” she says, and laughs at her own joke. He smiles a little. “So you’re lurking in the mess hall, hoping someone will stop to keep you company without you having to go find them.”
That’s…not wrong, he realizes. “Classic Andorian rudeness,” he tells her, and holds up his bottle for a toast.
Elan takes it instead and offers her own. “To bitter antisocial humans,” she says. He takes it and they toast. Lorca drinks from the bottle, as she does, and finds it surprisingly good. Elan smiles recklessly at his expression and says, “Only the finest made on the moons of Andoria.” She returns his whiskey.
“And my whiskey?” he asks.
“Not bad for a human-made alcohol, but nothing compared to Andorian ale.” She finds a cup and pours him a large measure. “Here. You can drink yours anytime.”
Lorca yields. “Why aren’t you at the party?” he asks.
Elan takes a long drink from her bottle. “Remember T’Lac?”
“The Vulcan biologist you complain about every time you return from a planetary visit? No respect for time, always wants to take one more sample, argues with you when you say no?” He sips the blue ale.
“Yes,” Elan says mournfully. “Yes.”
“Oh.” He realizes what she’s saying. “I thought Andorians didn’t like Vulcans.”
“In the early days. Vulcans were sneaky and they didn’t trust us.” She peers into her bottle. “But we put that aside with the founding of the Federation, mostly. And T’Lac has such adorable ears. I hear that Vulcan ears are very sensitive—”
“Thank you for that.” Lorca doesn’t need to know. “I didn’t realize there was so much…”
“Intermingling? Gabe, you’re very old-fashioned.”
“Lieutenant, that's not an acceptable form of address—”
Elan laughs. “Have another drink. Don’t you know your girl Burnham’s family? Her brother Spock is half human.”
He ignores the reference to Burnham as his girl. “Yes,” he says. He’s only met Sarek the once, never Spock, and hadn’t thought about it much. Vulcans look mostly human, at least.
“It doesn’t matter.” Elan is maudlin again. One of her antennae curves down, as if peering into her bottle. “The problem with Vulcans is that it’s impossible to tell if they even like you. You know what I mean. Your Vulcan.”
“Yes,” Lorca says, before he thinks about it. “No.” The Andorian ale must be very strong. “I don’t have a Vulcan.”
“I know,” Elan says. “We all know.” She reaches over and pats his arm with one hand, refills his glass with the other.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He wonders what’s happening at the party now—Burnham left for it, but did Tyler meet her? He can imagine her taking shots with Tilly, imagine her finding some junior lieutenant to bring back to her quarters.
“She’s not Vulcan and you don’t have her,” Elan clarifies. She turns to squint at the food synthesizers. “We should eat something.” Her antennae are swaying a little.
“I don’t know what Tilly told you—”
“Wait, something happened?” Both Elan's antennae perk straight up. “You had to swear the cadet to secrecy?” She stands up. “I’m going to get you food. Humans are weaker than Andorians. You can’t hold our liquor.”
“Nothing happened.” He gets lost in thought, and only snaps out of it when Elan deposits a large plate of food in front of both of them. “What is this?”
“Fried cheese sticks,” Elan tells him. “I’ve been told that humans eat them when they drink. Here.” She picks one up and holds it to his mouth. “Chomp chomp.”
“You’re demoted,” Lorca says, but he takes a bite. It burns his mouth. “Ensign. Cadet Elan.”
“You aren’t subtle, Gabe.” Elan bites off part of the same cheese stick and chews thoughtfully. “I’ve heard things. I heard you declared your love on the bridge.”
“I told her a mission was too dangerous for her.” He eats a cheese stick.
“I heard we were ordered not to go on that rescue mission for the Ambassador and you did it anyway because she asked you to.”
“She didn’t know I was disobeying orders.” It seems important to emphasize that part.
"I heard you're in sickbay anytime she's been injured." He can't deny that. “Captain.” Elan has returned to her bottle. “You don’t have to lie to me. I’m your chief security officer.” She leans back in her chair and puts her feet up on the chair next to him. “Until you demote me again. But you still don’t have to lie to me.” Her antennae perk up. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” he says. Elan gives him skeptical look and he repeats, “Nothing!”.
“You can tell me that if you want. It’s a little hurtful that you’re lying to me, Gabe, but I can’t make you tell me the truth.”
Lorca swirls his glass a little, watches the different shades of blue appear and disappear. “Unlike you with your Vulcan, I got the information I needed. Not what I wanted.”
She leans over, teeteringly dangerously in her chair, and pats his arm again. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You know, you could branch out. There’s a whole ship full of other people to—”
“I’m trying to be a Starfleet captain. A good captain,” he amends.
“You’re completely gone for her, you mean.” Elan doesn’t comment on his strange phrasing. “We can commiserate together.”
“You can’t commiserate alone,” Lorca tells her, because it’s better than responding to what she’s said. “It’s an…English word." He catches himself before he says Terran. "Co-miserate. It means be miserable together.”
“Commiserate with your drink and I’ll commiserate with mine,” she says. Lorca looks down into his glass and realizes that it’s empty. He holds it out automatically. Elan empties the bottle into it. “Give me your human whiskey. I only brought the one bottle.”
She’s just started in on his whiskey when five people stumble into the mess hall laughing, apparently also intent on the food synthesizers. He sees Tilly immediately, an awestruck ensign on one arm and Rhys on the other. She’s giggling, joyful, and when Rhys tries to kiss her, she allows it only until the computer tells her to enjoy her meal. If Lorca weren’t deep in his own misery, he’d be happy to see her so happy. Then Elan hisses and kicks his chair. The other two are Burnham and a Vulcan—probably T’Lac, judging by Elan's reaction—leaning on each other, Burnham with a tray of food in one hand. All five descend on a table, apparently unaware of Elan or Lorca.
Lorca drains his glass automatically and holds it out to Elan for more. She refills it and pushes the plate of cheese sticks at him. There’s no way to salvage this situation. One of them is going to look over and see—
“Captain!” Of course it’s Tilly, joyful Tilly. “Lieutenant Elan! Come sit with us!” Rhys looks physically ill at the idea.
“We’re fine here,” Elan says. She lifts the whiskey bottle to demonstrate and drinks from it. Lorca hates to admit it, but she may be able to drink more than he can. “The Captain was just going to get us both some water.” She kicks his chair again, still leaning back in her own, and he grimaces and hopes no one spotted it.
He hasn’t stood up since they started drinking. He has to take a moment to gather his strength and collect himself so that he can stand up straight without wobbling. Ten steps over, one step down to the beverage synthesizer. Two tall glasses of electrolyte-enhanced water. Pick up the glasses. One step up. Ten steps back to the table. He’s so focused on counting and stepping straight that he doesn’t realize Elan is talking.
“I found the captain drinking alone and I had to comfort him,” she says. “It was too sad.”
“Lieutenant.”
“Pathetic, even,” she continues. He kicks her chair and she overbalances and falls.
T’Lac starts laughing even as Elan stands up and shakes her head at Lorca. “See, I told you you would understand slapstick when you saw it,” Tilly tells T’Lac, laughing harder. “That was a perfect demonstration.”
It wasn’t, really. It was casual violence, the kind of thing he would have done without thinking in his own universe to make someone stop talking, maybe with a little more malice in it. That isn’t right for who he’s supposed to be here.
T’Lac hurries forward and puts her hand on Elan's arm. “I apologize for laughing. Are you undamaged?” she asks, still smiling. He can’t imagine what they’ve all been drinking, for a Vulcan and Burnham to be so freely emotional.
Elan grins widely at her, white teeth flashing. “Completely. Though I could use some help getting back to my quarters. We’ve drunk a lot.” Lorca admires her for that, envies her recklessness. She seems so confident as she says it, even as she just spent hours bemoaning how she couldn’t tell what her Vulcan wanted.
“Of course,” T’Lac says. “Place your arm around my shoulders for stability,” she instructs, and they stroll off.
“Yeahhhhh, get it, T’Lac!” That’s the ensign. Lorca doesn’t know his name and doesn’t care. “Sorry we drove away your drinking buddy.” No, Lorca does want to know his name and he wants to make him clean plasma conduits for a week for his disrespect. No one is appropriately scared of him anymore.
“I think you could say the captain drove her away,” Burnham says, but he can hear the laugh under it. "Will you join us now, Captain?”
He would rather have Klingons burn out his eyes than sit at a table drunk with Burnham and three junior officers falling all over each other. “No,” he says. “I’m going back to my quarters.” He tosses back the last of the electrolyte water, picks up his whiskey bottle, and stands again with monumental effort.
“Burnham, aren’t you going to help him?” The ensign will be tasked with all EV repairs and will not be given a tether. “He looks drunk.”
“What’s your name, Ensign?” Lorca asks, voice low as he approaches. “I’m going to find out where you come from. And when I do, I’m going to—”
“Captain.” Burnham steps forward just as the ensign is beginning to look frightened. “Let me help you.” She doesn’t put her arm around his shoulders, but she shepherds him with her body away from the ensign. He makes it through the doors of the mess hall without stumbling, but he has to admit to himself that he’s not as steady as he should be. Burnham too is walking freely, limbs uncoordinated, but she steers him forward. They pass a dark hallway on the way to the turbolift and he hears moaning—Elan must have been right about Vulcan ears.
In the turbolift, he allows himself to sag against the wall. “Michael,” he says, and he sees the surprise on her face. “Burnham,” he corrects himself. “Michael Burnham. You look happy tonight. Are you happy?”
She considers the question. “I’m enjoying myself.” She smiles at him and it feels like being struck between the eyes. They step off the turbolift.
“I want you to be happy,” he tells her, almost violently, as they help each other down the hallway. “I can't read you well enough to know if you are and I want you to be happy.”
Burnham stops in the middle of the hallway and he stops with her, turns to look at her. They’re very close. “…I know,” she says eventually. “I never thought you didn’t.”
He should stop himself. Maybe if he were a real Starfleet captain, he would. But he drops the whiskey bottle, leans down, cradles her face in his hands, and kisses her. She opens her mouth to him and pulls him close, fingers around the back of his neck, and for a moment there’s nothing but this. When he has to breathe, he pulls back just enough to gasp in air and she chases his mouth, catches it, until he has to break away for another breath. He lets his forehead rest against hers. “I want you to be happy, Michael Burnham,” he says.
“I know,” she says again, and releases him. “I’m trying.”
Lorca comes back to himself enough to realize that they’re standing in the middle of a hallway on the quarters deck where anyone can see them. From what Elan said, everyone already knows how he feels about Burnham. But that doesn’t mean he wants them to see him like this, cracked open the way that only Michael Burnham can do. He wants to order her to tell him how to make her happy. Instead, he says, “I think I can find my way back to my quarters from here.”
If she tried to follow, he would let her. She doesn’t, though. She lets him go, gives him one last smile, and walks away. He watches her go until she turns a corner and he can’t see her anymore; then he turns and fumbles his way back to his own quarters.