Where Things Were Left

Posted on 12 Mar 2023 @ 1:48pm by Lieutenant Commander Maurice Rubens & Moon-Young Chung
Edited on on 17 Apr 2024 @ 9:31pm

Mission: M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Obsidian Command: Maurice Ruben's Quarters
Timeline: MD09: 2300 HR
1360 words - 2.7 OF Standard Post Measure

Rice let the door slide open and leaned out into corridor, head swiveling first to the left and then to the right. No one in sight. He went back into his quarters, the door hushing closed, and he stood with his hands on his hips. He still wore his dirt-covered clothes, forgotten now. Maybe the exhaustion had finally taken its toll and he’d gone completely nuts. The message from Moon, their brief conversation, and his request for Security to escort her up to his quarters. Maybe none of that had actually happened.

Ambling over to one of the half dozen gray boxes that held all the possessions he’d shipped from Earth; he flipped the lid off and peered inside. Glazed pottery, speckled red and blue, wide and round for plants, but empty. They’d been in his grandmothers; the rest of his heirlooms from her he’d left in storage back in New York.

He pulled one of the pots from the box and held it out a foot in front his face, turning around the room and imagining it sitting on a little ledge next to the window. Or maybe on the built-in shelves along the far wall in the living area. Or maybe…

His door chimed and he nearly dropped it, bumbling it from hand to hand before finally clutching it too his chest like a ball. “Yes? I mean…Come! Or enter!”

The door slid open and a young, fresh-faced Starfleet officer stepped into the room, jet black hair cut short. He was holding a phaser rifle, which struck Rice as overkill. “Sir, I’ve escorted your guest. She insisted that her, er, friend join us.”

“Friend?”

The Klingon who stepped through the door was not the tallest nor bulkiest Klingon Rice had ever seen, but he certainly did look intimidating. His gaze pierced Rice like a phaser through cheap cardboard. With a quick nod as if satisfied that the Human was no threat, he hefted a silver case onto a coffee table in the center of the room and unclasped a thick restraint with a snaking cord that attached near its handle.

Rice scratched his head about to ask what was going on when she appeared, red suitcase in tow. Moon glowed. Her smile made his knees weak and his stomach do somersaults. At the same time, he moved not a muscle; there was a tension that sprung up between her and Rice. The feeling reminding him of trying to shove to positive sides of a magnet together.

The Klingon gave her a long look and another quick now. Rice could’ve sworn that it had a hint of warmth to it. Moon gave the Klingon as big a hug as she could muster, though her arms barely made it to his sides. “Thank you, Q’or,” she said. Q’or just nodded again and strode out into the corridor.

Confused the Security guard looked from Rice to Moon to Q’or before deciding that he’d best follow the Klingon. He quickly exited the room, too, without so much as nod of his head.

A silence enveloped the room. Rarely were words a problem for the diplomat and he knew Moon could carry on a conversation virtually alone, but now that Moon was standing here in his quarters a few dozen lightyears from Laurentians Fish House, he didn’t even know how to begin. From the way she was looking at the bare walls, it was clear Moon didn’t know what to say either.

The silence became intolerable for them both and they began speaking at the same instance.

“How was your…”

“I see your decoration…”

“…trip from…”

“…skills haven’t…”

“…Earth?”

“…improved.”

They paused, both wearing an amused look and both waiting for the other to take the lead.

“Sorry, you first,” they said in unison.

After Rice held up his hand and pointed to himself and he asked the question that was really on his mind, “What you doing you here?”

“You want the whole sordid story?”

“Sordid? You have a sordid tale?” Rice asked incredulously.

“I spiraled after, well, you know. There’s a month there I don’t remember. Drinking. Narcotics. I woke up in a strange apartment laying next to a woman I didn’t recognize. No clothes. Don’t know her name…”

“Moon.”

“What?” she gave him a beaming smile. “You don’t think I could get blackout drunk?”

“You’ve never touched anything stronger than Earl Gray tea,” Rice replied.

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t. You broke my heart.”

“I broke your heart?” Rice sputtered. Their eyes met and Moon giggled.
A smirk escaped his lips even as he tried to keep his face smooth. He wanted and answer, so he repeated, “What are you doing here?”

Taking a deep, bracing breath, she told him everything. How what she thought in the beginning was fun and exciting, was banal and bland. She told him about Sebastian. Madeline and her conversation on the terrace. The trip on the Erabaki Ona and its suave captain. She held nothing back. As she ended her account, a terrifying thought hit her like a two-ton weight: what if after all that Rice didn’t want her back? The self-assuredness she constantly walked around with abandoned her; her legs suddenly felt like jelly threatening to collapse and take her to the floor. Why hadn’t she called ahead like her father suggested?

The pair were still standing, staring at each other across the room. Rice said, “Let’s sit.” Moon quickly moved to a lounge chair and sank down on its purple upholstery; Rice perched on the edge of a matching couch. “So…I guess what I’m doing here is hoping…that maybe you and I could…not exactly start over, but…” flustered, unsure of the words, Moon panicked, “Can you stop staring at me?”

“Would you prefer I leave the room?”

“It’s hard enough…I just want…ugh…okay. Here it is: I want to pick up where we left off.” There it was out.

“Exactly where we left off?”

“Er. Yes?”

Rice nodded thoughtfully. “So, what’s the answer then?”

“The answer?”

“To my question.”

“I just answered your question!”

“Not really. You wanted to pick up exactly where were left off. Should I get down on one knee?”

Moon’s mouth formed a perfect ‘o’: that was exactly where they’d left things. “I just told you in the few months we’ve been apart that I’ve dated and slept with another person and had a smuggler suggest I run off with him – just yesterday mind you – and you’re proposing marriage?”

Rice shrugged. This was all off the cuff, a strange sensation for him. His emotion was piloting his mouth. “From the minute you rushed out of that restaurant…I just…I wished I could say I got it. I understood. I’ve always been a planner, which is, I guess, a nice way of saying I can get tunnel vision at best, be inflexible at worst. I’m sorry I did that to you. Whatever has happened since is…it’s…”

“You’re serious.”

“I am,” Rice said. “And I love you. Always. Even if you roll your red suitcase out of these quarters and never speak to me again. You have taken me places I wouldn’t have dreamed of going. I mean that literally. Opening parties, cast parties, wrap parties, awards parties…”

She smiled at the joke.

“I mean it figuratively, too. I don’t really know what possessed me to rejoin Starfleet. It still feels like a dream, but I know that your part of that answer. Not so you’d come back to me…I think…but I know I want to be a man that you can be proud of, whether we were together or not.”

“I love you, too” Moon said. “So. Okay. Yes.”

“Okay.” Rice leaned back into the couch. “Well. Not exactly how I planned my proposal playing out in New York, but easy enough.”

“Get over here and kiss me.”