Against the Cold

Posted on Tue Aug 23rd, 2022 @ 12:36am by Chief Helmsman Kalahaeia t'Leiya & Executive Officer Jake Ford

Mission: Mission 15: Adrift
Location: Cargo Bay
Timeline: MD-05: 09:30
3074 words - 6.1 OF Standard Post Measure

Of the two Romulans on board, Jake was relieved he had drawn the one least likely to tear him to tiny pieces. Of course, that didn't mean the conversation was going to be that much easier. Kali came from a people who preferred their own space and had an increased sensory perception of things like smell and touch. So figuring out how to get her to agree to 'cuddle' was going to be a challenge.

Spotting her perched on her own, a little tucked out of the way yet with a decent sight-line of the rest of the bay, he consciously noted that he had actually picked up on that little clue: in his slightly tweaked mind it was among the first things he picked-up. Another troubling reminder that his mind was not entirely his own anymore.

"Got a minute?" he asked, approaching her openly.

"Sure." An impressive cocoon of comforters and blankets resembled nothing so much as a giant poof with Kali's head sticking out of it, or possibly a softsided beaver dam, built for maximum retention of the heat generated by her jacket and gloves, and a subtle sign that the builder and occupant actually did know a few things about how to stay warm in a colder environment. "What's up? Because it sure as hell isn't the temperature." She rolled her eyes and her gloved hands briefly popped out of the cocoon to pull a hood over her head and the unnaturally pale points of her ears.

"Yeah. Speaking of..." he said, sympathising with her bundled-up state. "We were worried about you. And Liha, and Cassie, too. Your physiology isn't the best suited for the conditions," he explained, clearly telling her something she was fully aware of. "Wanted to see if there was anything we can do. That includes...sharing heat, if needed." He tried to word it a little more carefully than he would with most people.

One pert eyebrow trended up slightly. “Jealous of my heated jacket?” She joked. Though, in the back of her head, she was trying to calculate how long the charge on it would last; running it at max like this probably decreased the run time between charges from weeks to mere days; if she had to guess, she’d put it possibly 50/50 on the current battery levels lasting till they cleared the storm.

"If only," he retorted. "Actually, worried that it might not be enough." He felt awkward even going to this place, but the necessity was there and he was supposed to be acting like a leader in Gregnol's absence. "The offer was to share space, if that's not too personal an option for you. I figure you're not as stubborn as Liha, but the ball is in your court."

“Just to be clear; whether that last part is more of a compliment or more of an insult depends on whose lens you view it through.” Kali reminded him with a slight smirk; what a highly-adaptable human heard as a positive somewhat had connotations of ‘you don’t have Liha’s ability to endure and stick to her convictions’ when heard through pointier ears. The smirk faded as she considered the issue. “Wouldn’t you rather be sharing with Cassie?”

"A thousand times," he nodded. "But needs must. And we couldn't find anyone else Liha even might be willing to share some personal space with. Having my girlfriend and my nemesis all cuddled up together isn't particularly high on my list...as bizarre as that image is. So, I'm available right now." And given his size, he dwarfed Kali enough to the point where he could probably serve as a shelter for two of her. The logic of it all made sense, if not the strange unconscious relational elements of it.

A few moments of silence as Kali seemingly considered everything were followed by a shrug, possibly as the practical training of 'someone raised in a place capable of getting several feet of snow during the winter' overrode the instincts of a touchier species: In this case, the 'Boston' was beating out the 'Romulan', or possibly any old fleet survival training was.

"Sure." She shoved some of the careful layers of blankets and exceedingly poofy comforter--and seemingly, one of the reflective emergency blankets sandwiched in there too--to the side slightly to make an entry point, waving at it with one gloved hand, the other one playing across the side of her jacket, turning the heat level down somewhat; if a second body in the mix made up the difference, the lower setting would let the battery last longer.

Jake glanced left and right at first. It was a momentary hesitance, recognising that there would be more than a few whispers about him jumping into the proverbial sack with Kali literally days after apparently getting close to Cassie. But this was strictly platonic. He had very little doubt in his mind that Kali would see it as anything but a practical necessity. But crews talked, and Jake was conscious of his reputation.

Even so, he lowered himself to the deck and pulled the blankets across them in a makeshift bedroll. He lay rigidly on his back for a moment, not sure the best way to approach things.

"So...do you want to lie against me? Or...little spoon...?" he asked tentatively.

For all the usual human nature as a more explicitly forward species in a variety of areas; there were certain areas where Kali was convinced they suddenly tended to just lose it on the curve; and anything that even potentially had the appearance of romantic or mating interactions seemed to be high on the list: A Starfleet crew would have assumed it was blatant survival tactics thanks to training in such; a Romulan one too, probably; for similar reasons. Romulan civilians, for their part, would likely have accepted nothing was afoot so long as the women in question didn't later end up tangling with one another; and if Cassie failed to try to off Kali (or Jake himself) or otherwise react badly, then clearly Kali was not attempting to take another woman's mate. Humans, though...Well. They did weird stuff like this, instead; making 'things that look like cheating but actually are not' one of the few areas where humans were seemingly more concerned with appearances, optics, and saving face than Romulans tended to be; not less. Maybe because humans didn't have any easy answer for third parties to interpret it from a distance, like 'if anything was going on, we'll know it when someone gets stabbed for it'.

"Actually; unless you're particularly attached to taking a nap I'd rather just stay sitting up for now." Kali shrugged. "Seems weird to lay down all day and then try to sleep all night later, too." She started to carefully rearrange the layers of comforter and blankets in a poof that tucked the edges under and mushroomed out to trap air and heat before sealing at the back against the wall and leaving just a small hole up top for their heads to poke through, from a distance almost resembling a bizarre cupcake with their heads forming a pair of candied fruits on top of it. "I'd suggest a movie--" she waved a PADD briefly with a hand sticking through the blankets around her neck "--but that would also burn lots of battery power, so we may be stuck with reading."

"Oh, uh, yeah. Of course." Jake propped himself up. It was still relatively early in the morning after all. Where was his brain at? Frosted over? "What about something simple? Tell me a story. Doesn't even have to be a true one. Something...I don't know - something that will remind us of warmer times."

Somewhat awkward silence stretched for a moment as she thought about what might possibly fit the bill - she doubted he wanted to be regaled by tales of her one-woman vendetta against cheating goons and Ferengi; and by the looks of him, using human math, he was possibly even whole decades too young to have any Dominion War stories of his own to swap for hers. Might as well start off with taking 'reminded of warmer times' literally. "Uhh. So, I was the sector intelligence officer on Starbase 83; my time and Burnie's time there overlapped a bit. But one time, a couple of other officers and friends I knew from there and some other postings all decided to all take leave and meet up on Risa to hang out on the beach. So there's me and these other chicks; two from felinoid species, and one an Orion. And we all are minding our own business trying to sunbathe, and these annoying tourist coordinator types--I think it was some tour group that was on the same beach, not the local staff--keep coming over and trying to get us to put on sun block. And well--" Kali shrugged, the shoulder part unseen as much more than a ripple in the blankets, leaving only the eyebrow movement easily visible "--by the time an Orion and a vulcanoid burn, the rest of the place would've been fried to the Gamma Quadrant and back, so, I'm trying to explain to this complete idiot that it's superfluous;when over looks my Caitain friend and she seriously does this like whisker flick thing I can't even quite describe at the moron with the sun cream and says: "No thanks, I'm already wearing SPF-Fur."

Jake chuckled. "Not bad." He'd not thought about Kali having friends. She was affable enough, but plenty of people likely had preconceptions about getting close. "Do you keep in touch with them? Your beach buddies?" he asked.

"Those ones? Yeah." There was a longer, slightly awkward pause. "And a couple of the people I knew as a pilot. Some of the rest....I think all the stuff that went wrong all around the same time in the mid-to-late 80s, not even one crisis or tragedy or failure after another but multiples all at the same time....I think it all splintered a lot of people from one another, actually, even in the Federation. People disagreed over Mars. People disagreed over synths, or the responses to it. People disagreed over pulling out of the rescue effort. In the fleet and the government, some people disagreed over the best response for themselves to take even among those who agreed with each other that it was wrong to pull out; some of them resigned with Picard, others stayed to try to advocate on the inside. I just had...additional complications maybe in some people wanting to keep in touch with me or not, even beyond those points; considering I, uhh, almost went prison. And that most humans and a lot of other Federation species tend towards being rather less intense, and not quite approving of those who are more so." One corner of Kali's mouth curled up into a half-smirk for a moment. "Though, not all of them. One of the pilots I stayed in touch with was an Andorian, and when he heard what happened with the admirals, he just threw his head back and laughed."

"That's one way of reacting to it all, I suppose..." he chuckled. "I see where you're coming from. It's strange how sometimes you build an idealised version of something in your head and want it to be true so much...it just doesn't quite turn into the thing you wanted. That was what my career was like. Jack was always the Starfleet 'true believer' out of the two of us. Me? I guess I expected I was going to 'find myself' or something." His expression was distant momentarily as he thought back on that. "Strangely, I feel like it took me coming on board Rosie to really find something that felt like I could fit into."

"....The thing I wanted to be true didn't really work out either, no. I mean, beyond the Starfleet stuff even." Kali's voice dropped appreciably. "All my life I was an alien, an outsider. Closest I ever came to belonging anywhere was during the war, when for awhile, so many things didn't matter to people that might've mattered otherwise, so long as you were fighting against the Dominion. Then later, after...everything else happened...Thought maybe I'd do better, back when I tried my hand at living in the Republic. That I'd finally fit in somewhere." The longest pause yet followed. "Discovered I was still an alien and an outsider there, too."

Jake could only nod sympathetically. Were it not Kali he was listening to he might have offered some sort of comfort, a hug or a word of encouragement. But there was something deep down that told him she wasn't expecting that. These were facts of her existence, not a plea for emotional support. And perhaps he was learning to think a little more like a Romulan after all.

"In some ways I wish I could have seen what it was like, at least a little. The stuff rolling around in my head is more like instincts and subconscious elements, not actual memories." He paused. "I suspect my experience would be much the same as yours."

"Not quite, actually; unless you found yourself a great disguise." The irony in her voice was almost palpable. "There would be things people wouldn't say or do, around you, or places they wouldn't let you go, and also things they wouldn't expect from you; because you have the 'wrong' ears. I had the 'right' ones, but while that opened up more of what I saw or could access, it also changed what people expected from me, and when I only halfway met it...I think the human concept of the 'uncanny valley effect' comes into play a bit, maybe, in being all the more disturbing to some people that way. Or just all the more infuriating or disappointing for not measuring up." Kali smirked again for a moment. "You'd get a pass on not measuring up, because they'd expect a human to not." Now it was her turn to pause. "Though; depending on how much you did or didn't decide to lean into any of whatever stuff transferred into your head, you might disturb them in the reverse way - being too much like them when they think you shouldn't be." She paused again, and decided to just go for it this time. "Exactly how did that happen, anyways?"

He snorted, recalling the whole affair. "Believe it or not, some sort of space magic?" he offered. "I don't know the science of it. Just a temporary consciousness exchange among a few of the crew. I was lucky enough to be traded with Liha." He recalled the moment of waking up in her body, feeling the hair, the shape, the way it felt to look into the mirror and see her face staring back. A deeply-suppressed part of his mind felt a certain comfort at the memory. "We were linking up with the Rangers at the time...trying to pretend to be each other so we didn't cause all kinds of problems..." He also recalled his encounter with Taev in the corridor. Given what Kali had said about 'getting a pass' he didn't suspect that would have been the same under any other circumstances. "In dealing with Romulans it was a great disguise, just like you said."

"Wait, wait; you guys changed bodies with each other for awhile?!?" This time, the incredulous tone and reaction in Kali's voice was pure Earth. "Daaamn. See, I had some different theories; based on the fact that some of the stuff you've said indicates some level of sharing of memories, and some of the rest seems to get at subconscious instincts, and even beyond that at trained reactions. My leading guess that could have caused all three was that maybe some sort of powerful telepathic link had been in play or something. Physically swapping skin was...Not on the list of theories, I admit. That's the kind of crazy stuff you expect to find in some old mission report that Kirk wrote."

"You're not wrong. And it was a hell of an experience, I'll tell you." Jake shrugged. "Not quickly forgotten. And probably why Liha hates me as much as she does; I literally got under her skin. For some people that sort of thing would break down barriers. For her...just put up more."

"We tend to be...choosy...about who we lower them for. Having that choice taken away...Yeah, not a great start." Kali shrugged again. Explaining that (if Liha was really who she said she was, that is) the reaction to that sort of involuntary sharing and exposure with someone would probably lead to not just a sense of violation but plain, simple fear of the advantage the other person now had over her and the ways they might be able to use it against her, that then simply got expressed as hostility...Explaining that was a bridge too far even for Kali. The humans could figure that part out on their own, or not. "Ever thought of...augmenting...that occasional language knowledge you got stuck with, though?" A half-sheepish, half-sly grin crossed her face for a moment; possibly another fairly unique expression or gesture of hers that one was unlikely to see on either most humans or most Romulans. "Have to admit I like the idea of more people learning how to speak my language, because then I could speak it more myself."

He looked sidelong at her, very much surprised. He'd not expected such openness to new ideas. "Honestly, I think you could teach me a few things. It's a little jumbled." He held the thought in the air for a second, though. "If it means I can actually understand some of what's coming out, though...I'd actually really like that." He shifted his position, not quite leaning against her but more facing towards her smaller frame. "We seem to have a lot of time on our hands now, too. So...shall we begin the lesson?"