Chapter Text
Part Two
“Help me!”
Natasha jolted awake, looking around at the unfamiliar surroundings and taking a moment to realise where she was.
By all accounts, she had eventually dozed off curled up on the sofa of the guest quarters she had been assigned on Starbase 216, rather than the bed itself. She couldn’t remember precisely when she’d finally managed to fall asleep, or how long it had taken her, but at least she seemed to have made it through until dawn before her nightmares had woken her this time.
The same nightmare. The same dream. The same face.
She stood up, paced over to the replicator and thirstily gulped down a glass of water. As she calmed her breathing, she crossed over to the window that ran along the far wall of the room and tapped the controls to raise the blinds. Her room was roughly halfway up the main dome of the base, giving her fairly unobstructed view out across the planet’s surface. As she gazed out and took a few deep centring breaths, she saw the twin suns of the system casting a bright orange hue across the landscape.
The quarters themselves were entirely nondescript, but as luxurious as she had expected them to be. But even here, surrounded by all the conveniences that Starfleet had to offer, she could find no comfort.
Makes sense, she thought bitterly, after all, what do I have to be comfortable about?
She turned away from the view and looked over at the wardrobe in the corner of the room, where a freshly replicated uniform was hanging up, ready for her to attend her debriefing. The merest thought of the debrief sent a shudder down her spine. She still wasn’t sure what she was even going to say. What could she say, after what she had done?
She took a couple of steps towards the uniform, studying the familiar blue undershirt and the lines of the grey and black jacket. As she reached out and felt the material, she idly wondered whether she still even respected it any more. With another deep breath, she grabbed the outfit and walked over to the bathroom.
A few minutes later, fresh from the sonic shower, she stood in front of the room’s full-length mirror, now dressed in that same uniform. She continued to study it, running her fingers down the seam of the jacket. No, she decided. She definitely still respected the uniform. That definitely wasn’t the issue here.
The issue was that she didn’t respect herself wearing the uniform.
As she turned back to the view out of the window, the door chime rang out, startling her.
“Come in.”
She heard the doors part behind her, and a familiar voice chime out.
“Hey, doc,” Jirel said, “Did I ever tell you I have a real thing for women in uniform?”
Natasha turned back to see the Trill grinning back at her as he walked into her quarters, before he turned his attention to the fancy surroundings of the room. She suppressed a smile, but wasn’t entirely happy with the unexpected distraction. She didn’t want to deal with Jirel’s space captain routine.
“This really isn’t a good time—”
“Yeah, I know,” he said as he idly paced around the room, “Don’t worry, I won’t stay long. Just wanted to see what these quarters were like. Very nice. Very…Starfleet.”
She wasn’t sure from his tone whether that was meant as an insult or not. She was pretty sure, though, that a bunk inspection wasn’t the real reason he was here.
Things had gotten awkward between the two of them when Jirel had revealed his nascent feelings for her during their hunt for the Jewel of Soraxx, and she had hoped she had clarified the situation sufficiently to overcome that particular issue. But then she had seen his reaction to her ex-husband showing up, and she had started to have fresh doubts. She hoped she was wrong. Because she really didn’t want to deal with Jirel’s spurned lover routine.
“Nice view,” the Trill added, casually gesturing out the window.
“Again, I honestly don’t have time for…whatever this is,” she said with a dismissive tone, “I really need to prepare for my debrief.”
He nodded in understanding, but continued to breezily tour the room, leaving her feeling like she had no choice but to force the issue. “Jirel,” she sighed, “Tell me this isn’t about Cameron.”
“Who?”
“You’ve met,” she said pointedly, before begrudgingly continuing, “But, fine, you really wanna do this? Yes, I’m married. Or I was married. We divorced, before the war. It...wasn’t meant to be, I guess. And I haven’t really seen him since. So, is that enough for you?”
Jirel scoffed slightly, doing his best to look offended. “Wh—? You think I came all this way to ask about that? For your information, I came to wish you good luck. Y’know, for the…debrief thingy. And, I’d also like you to note the amount of times we’ve both said the word ‘debrief’ and I haven’t made a single inappropriate joke.”
She studied his face again, which still appeared to be in laid back space captain mode. “Really? That’s why you came over.”
Under the most basic of scrutiny, the Trill’s poker face collapsed. “Nah,” he said with an apologetic shrug, “It was the husband thing.”
“Ugh,” she said with a roll of her eyes “Jirel, I have way too much on my mind right now to waste time with some insane, stupid jealousy thing—”
“Um, what? Jealousy? Who said anything about jealousy? Who’s jealous?”
As she went to answer, the door chime rang out again. She closed her eyes in frustration. “Come in!”
She opened her eyes as the doors parted again and Cameron walked through, not exactly formally dressed. He wore a tight gym top and shorts, drenched with sweat and clinging to his muscular physique. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted the self-diagnosed jealousy-free Jirel trying to draw himself up into a bigger pose. And not entirely succeeding.
“Hey, Nat,” Cameron smiled apologetically, “Sorry for the state I’m in, just finished the morning workout, and I wanted to catch you before you left.”
“Don’t apologise,” she found herself saying before she realised it.
When they had been together, it had been his scientific mind and easy-going character that had been most attractive to her. But the body had definitely helped. He smiled knowingly at her comment, and she instantly felt her attraction diminish. She never liked that particular smile. The smile that was a combination of false modesty with a hint of smugness, one that gave away the fact that he knew exactly the effect he was having on her.
“Working out, huh?” the in no way jealous Jirel chimed in, “Hey, wanna race to the end of the corridor and back?”
Natasha looked over at the Trill in mild disbelief. Cameron, for his part, acknowledged the presence of him in the room with them for the first time. “Sorry,” he offered with a friendly smile, “Who are you, exactly?”
“I’m—”
“Nobody,” Natasha said quickly, mentally flinching at the hurt look this elicited from the jealousy-free Jirel, “I mean, not nobody—He’s a friend. His ship rescued me.”
The two men shook hands, the firm handshake continuing for some time.
“Well, I guess I owe you one, whoever you are,” Cameron said as he pumped the Trill’s hand, “For bringing Nat back, just when I thought she was gone forever.”
“Yeah,” Jirel replied, ignoring the mounting pain in his wrist from the continuing handshake while still definitely not feeling any jealousy, “Aren’t I the best.”
Natasha watched as the two men continued to exchange the galaxy’s longest, most passive aggressive handshake for several more seconds. Eventually, when it looked like they were going to end up fusing at the wrist, she stepped in.
“Ok, so—Stop that,” she grabbed their hands and separated them, “Again, both of you, I really need to be getting on.”
“Of course,” Cameron nodded, “But, hey, I came by to ask if you wanted dinner? Tonight? Officers’ club?”
She studied his face, but there was no trace of the superior smile any more.
“Nothing weird, I promise. Just two people who have a lot of history, and haven’t seen each other in a long time having a fancy dinner and catching up. Hmm?”
Jirel, who as he himself had already made abundantly clear, was definitely not jealous of the situation that was unfolding in front of him, even surprised himself with his next comment. Especially given how he wasn’t jealous in the slightest.
“Hey, if you’re…y’know, if you need dinner, or whatever. You can have—I mean, we can do dinner on the Bounty?”
This time, her glance at the Trill ratcheted up from mild to severe disbelief. “On your ship with the broken replicator?”
“Your ship only has one replicator?” Cameron chimed in with clear amusement.
“Ah, joke’s on you, friend,” Jirel replied smugly, “Because, actually, as Natasha just pointed out, my ship currently has no replicators. So…”
He tailed off, all of a sudden aware that he wasn’t entirely sure what his point was going to be. Mercifully for all involved, the awkward silence that descended on the trio was broken by Natasha’s combadge chirping into life.
“Commander Bari to Lieutenant Kinsen,” an unfamiliar but oddly calming male voice rang out, “I’ve been asked to carry out your debriefing. If you’d be available—”
“Yes, Commander,” she replied quickly, making for the door, “I’m available right now.”
In a strange way, she almost felt like she owed Jirel for this one. In the midst of all that awkwardness and passive aggression, and even though she still had no idea what she was going to say, suddenly her uniform and her official duties seemed a whole lot less terrifying. Or, at the very least, if the alternative was to stick around in her current surroundings, she would rather take the debriefing.
She stepped through the door and exited, leaving Jirel and Cameron looking at each other uncertainly.
“I mean,” Jirel managed eventually, “We’re getting it fixed…”
* * * * *
The pain assaulted his senses before he had a chance to even open his eyes. Piercing shards of fire burned into his skull with an intensity that caused him to visibly flinch and squeeze his eyes even more tightly closed. Even as he considered trying to move, he was forced to hold back a violent wave of nausea that coursed through his body.
This, Sunek was forced to admit to himself, is a bitch of a hangover.
He tentatively opened his eyes and looked around, trying to get his bearings. He could immediately see that he was in a strange room. He lay sprawled on the sofa in a small living area, a replicator recessed in the wall to his right and a table and chairs over to the other side. Aside from a couple of carefully cultivated plants by the table, there was no obvious sign of anyone living here.
But as he took in the decor, he realised that he was definitely in the quarters of a Starfleet officer.
Maybe I got lucky, he thought to himself, despite the fact that he could barely remember anything about the previous night after he and Ensigns D’Amato and Taris had switched from cocktails to shots. Although, if that was the case, one vital memory he was missing was who he had got lucky with.
He forced himself up into a sitting position and rubbed his hands through his messy hair. To his left, he heard a door open.
“Morning, spaceman.”
He turned around to see the blue-skinned Ensign Taris, clad in a fresh Starfleet uniform, walking into the room. Despite his weakened state, he immediately tried a winning grin. “So,” he managed, gesturing at her and then back at himself, “I guess we must’ve—”
He paused, swallowing quickly to control a sudden rush of nausea. Even with Sunek’s usual amount of misplaced confidence, he realised it probably wasn’t a good look.
“If you’re gonna throw up, at least try to aim for the bucket.”
This was a new voice. He turned back and saw D’Amato strolling out of a door on the other side of the room, wearing a similarly fresh uniform.
Bunkmates, Sunek couldn’t help but smile to himself, nice.
“Don’t think I’ll be needing that,” he replied, trying to maintain as much dignity as he could.
“Hah,” Taris snorted, as she grabbed her breakfast from the replicator, “You definitely needed it last night.”
D’Amato let out a chuckle as she joined her bunkmate at the table, scoffing down a bowl of muesli. Sunek forced himself to stand and shuffle over to them, his mind still painfully blank. “Hell of a night,” he offered, grasping for something else to say before simply adding, “Hell. Of. A. Night.”
The two ensigns shared a knowing glance. Taris shook her head as D’Amato turned back to him. “You can’t remember anything about last night, can you?”
“How much is there for me to remember?” he ventured with a slight leer, glancing from one woman to the other.
“Ok, no,” Taris jumped in with a roll of her eyes, “Before you start thinking...that, let me help you out with the headlines: You drank yourself under the table back at the bar, to the point that you couldn’t even remember the name of your ship—”
“Never mind where it was parked,” D’Amato added, as Sunek’s leer slowly vanished.
“So, we took pity on you,” Taris continued, “Got you past starbase security even as you tried to start a sing-a-long of your favourite Catullan drinking ballads and carried you all the way back here, only for you to thank us by throwing up for most of the night and then collapsing on the sofa.”
“It was really hot,” D’Amato added with a smirk.
Not for the first time in his life, and certainly not for the last, Sunek inwardly cursed the fact that all of the rich tapestry of emotions he had chosen to embrace as a member of the V’tosh ka’tur included the concept of shame. “Oh,” he managed, his voice sounding as small as he suddenly felt.
The two ensigns chuckled again and continued to eat their breakfast, as Sunek suppressed another stab of pain in his head.
“Feeling rough, I take it?” D’Amato smiled.
“Like I’ve got a wild sehlat stamping on my head,” he grimaced, “Why are you two so chipper?”
Taris stood and returned her empty plate to the replicator. “Are you kidding? I felt worse than you when I woke up.”
Sunek looked baffled. D’Amato smiled and gestured to her blue undershirt. “Perk of working in the medical wing,” she explained, “I fix us up with a neat little hypospray. Part anti-inflammatory, part mood stabiliser, part antiemetic. The Galaxy-class starship of hangover cures. Got introduced to it by a bunkmate back at the Academy.”
“Fascinating,” Sunek managed sarcastically, as he rubbed his head, “Wouldn’t have any of that going spare, would you?”
“Sorry,” the young ensign grinned, a touch of wickedness in her eyes, “Starfleet only.”
“Now,” Taris added, gesturing to the door, “We’ve got duty shifts to get to, so you need to scoot.”
Sunek, now feeling a whole range of emotions, none of them especially good, gently hobbled over to the door. “Just one thing,” he said, forcing his cheeky side back to the surface with all his willpower.
“What?”
The Vulcan gestured to the three of them and grinned. “This totally counts, right? If my friends ask what happened?”
Feeling slightly better already, Sunek chuckled to himself as he ducked out of the door, moments before an empty muesli bowl smashed against the wall where he had been standing.