Party Preparations
Posted on 18 Jan 2024 @ 12:00am by Commander Calliope Zahn & Lieutenant Commander Christophe Leblanc
Edited on on 18 Jan 2024 @ 12:31am
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Timeline: M4 D8 Late
4725 words - 9.5 OF Standard Post Measure
Chris had managed to find an enlisted man to give him an in-depth tour of the Upper Utility Ring. He’d applied himself with interest to every inch he was shown, asking questions as if there would be a test at the end. When he was satisfied that he had done enough for the day, however, he thanked the man and returned to the turbolift. From there, he had made his way down to the civilian promenade. There were a thousand interesting things to see there, but he settled for looking for a merchant, acquiring what he was there to find, and leaving.
Chris approached his neighbor’s door, a bottle of pastel pink liquid in one hand and a teacup in the other. He was in his uniform this time instead of a sweat-stained shirt, and his hair had been combed. He pressed the chime with a free pinky and waited.
When she came to the door she was obviously still pulling an oversized sweatshirt over. She didn’t look like she had been sleeping, and behind her, the apartment looked significantly neater. She’d obviously been working on it all day.
“Hi?” she said as more of a question, maintaining her stance in the doorway. The bottle he had on hand made her a little wary and her eyes skipped down to it and up to him again to let him offer what she expected: some attempt at smoothing things over.
“I’m cross with you, Calli.” He said, his face seeming no more than a bit annoyed. He waited then for a response as if he’d said something profound.
“I’m not sure you’d understand if I told you.” She said quietly, but firmly. “I have my reasons.”
“It’s not that you threw me out, though that was…odd. It is because you sent me into an ambush, mon fleur.” He raised his eyebrows.
“What? What ambush?”
“Your husband was in my office when I went down there. He saw the decanter you gave me and got all misty eyed and short. I’m sure he thinks we are making love.”
Calliope’s face changed three darker shades of green. “You didn’t.”
“I didn’t what?” He asked, furrowing his brow in confusion. He wasn’t sure what she was asking, but he knew whatever it was, he might have.
She put a hand on her forehead pushing her hair out of her flushed face. “You didn’t let him think that, did you?”
“For the record, I was completely uninformed,” he said, throwing up his hands with a bottle and teacup in them respectively. “I had no idea he was there or who he was. To be honest, I instantly hated his guts, and so I didn’t think much about his feelings. All I told him was that a beautiful woman gave it to me. He reacted as if I slapped him in the face. That’s when I found my way out of this maze you sent me into.”
“Shit.” Calliope hadn’t expected the bottle to end up back in eyeshot of Lance, but she realized too late now that she’d practically mailed it to him by giving it to the guy who was taking his office.
“Oui.” He said with a sympathetic lift of his brow. “I gave him the bottle, because he needs it more than me.”
Calliope bumped her head gently against the door frame three times as if she could knock the stupid out of herself symbolically. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “That really wasn’t fair to you.”
“That’s true. But I have good news for you. You get to make it up to me by being my friend for a few minutes.” He smiled as if this was some great honor, but there was an aire of humor to his speech. “I left everyone I know back on Earth. Not to mention, I think I deserve a bit of explanation.”
“I… I would hang out with you.” Calliope said, uncertain about drinking alone with him again, knowing he was taking over for Lance, but also keenly guilty that she’d set him up for that kind of misunderstanding. She hooked a thumb over her shoulder, the baggy sleeve bunching up around her elbow. She had a legitimate excuse. “But I have this big open house party tomorrow. I’m trying to make the house… more open in time.”
“C'est des conneries.” He said, shaking his head with a smile. “I don’t buy that for a second, mon fleur. I might be an engineer, but I’ve met a woman before. If you really wanted to hang out with me, you would ask me to help you.”
He grinned. It was light hearted and non-judgemental.
“Tell the truth. There is no better way.”
“I mean, if you’re not totally put off about helping me again.” Calliope shifted, hiding her hands in her sleeves. “You can stay. But… let's leave the bottle next to the charcuterie board for tomorrow, when you come to my party. I mean, you’re going to need to make some new friends.”
“I knew you’d come around,” he said, stepping into her apartment with a reasonable speed. As soon as he was inside, he walked back to the kitchenette and placed the bottle and tea cup down on the counter. He looked around the apartment with curious eyes. “Much nicer than before, I say.”
“Thanks?” She was a little surprised when he pushed past her so quickly.
“I wanted to get in as soon as I could. Nothing good could come from my predecessor seeing me standing in the corridor holding a tall bottle of Bajoran Kava Whiskey.” He winked at her as he walked over to her sink and started to rinse the tea cup. “As interesting as that would be.”
Calliope tilted her head and raised her eyebrows imagining the words that would fly. Lance was unlikely to take a swing, but it was possible he had some other kind of comeuppance brewing.
She moved back to what she had left off doing when she had gone to get her old academy sweatshirt from the wardrobe and answer the door. The task at hand was simple. She had cleared all of the surfaces in the place and now needed to fill them up in a somewhat presentable manner. She lined up a number of empty bins and boxes, knocking any loose dirt or debris from the bottoms and wiping them down as she went.
“I think… I mean I read some pop psych stuff when I was going through counseling,” she said. “And I think he’s projecting.” She tried to explain, hoping to make up for the situation she’d put Chris in, being unfairly accused. “I think he’s wanted me to be unfaithful. So he would have a reason to… act on things. Or maybe… just something else to feel superior about. I know his family is… they’re like that. Cheating and affairs.”
“A lot to unpack there.” Chris said, finishing the teacup and grabbing a clean white towel to gently dry it with. He placed it with the others neatly and then turned his eyes back to her. “A bunch of liars and cheaters? Did he always expect the same of you?”
She nodded, sadly. “We didn’t exactly talk about it. He only admitted it recently, while we were fighting. We had a long distance marriage. Took our shore leave together. Everyone in the fleet has to work around deployments. He just assumed… someone like me would.”
He didn’t have any experience with long distance marriage, but he certainly knew a thing or two about having to choose between his career in Starfleet and a woman he cared for.
“That’s never been an option for me so far. It has been together or nothing at all.” He said, moving around the counter and then leaning on the opposite side a bit. “In my opinion, too many moments get lost; too much growth happens in the opposite direction, when people who love are apart too long.”
She didn’t disagree, but she couldn’t imagine convincing her younger self the kind of pain she would be setting herself up for. She put out a couple of baskets and began to lay out all the costume jewelry she wanted to part with. “We were really in love. For me, it was hard to see anything else. When we had the chance to move here together, I thought that would be enough.”
“But what then? You weren’t who you thought you were?” He asked, seeming genuinely interested in the answer. He looked at her like her answer would change his entire way of thinking. “Or maybe he wasn’t who you thought he was?”
“I… went through a lot of change. Lance has never preferred things changing.” She lined up a bunch of folded silk scarves, thinking about all the worlds she bought them on, often vacationing with Lance. Even as she was talking, she revised her own thoughts. “I guess for him too, really. He wasn’t the same lost sort of lab recluse I fell in love with.” She smiled sadly at the memory. “He gained a lot of professional prestige and notoriety. It didn’t change him so much as bring out some things about him, I guess.”
That was vague enough for him to dig deeper, but Chris had managed to learn over the years that people weren’t like pieces of machinery; you couldn’t just crack them apart, and sometimes turning the wrench harder only closed them off more. Instead of asking, he simply looked at her, his eyes intrigued and his expression full of expectation.
He stood next to her, placing one of the scarves in the same way she had been, though he never allowed the task to overwhelm his focus on her. He was an excellent listener when someone actually managed to get his attention. He could leave everything else behind.
She waved a scarf in hand, as if she could brush off the past. “He’s going back to Sol to take the same job he left to come here. Once he gets there, he’ll probably forget all of this and be glad to be rid of it. I tried to just rip off the bandaid when I moved out last week. I know he’s grasping, thinking I’m bluffing or something.” Seeing as Chris was arranging the scarves now, she moved to a box of mixed knicknacks– gift store tchotchkes she’d amassed– and began lining up the figures in their original boxes and wrappings first.
“And where do you go back to?” He asked, looking down at the scarves and taking some of the pressure off. He’d also learned not to be too intense when he was interested, whatever that meant. He placed another scarf, using his limited sense of style to try and make it look good. It was fair to say decorating wasn’t a gift he was given.
“Back to? I promised myself I don’t move backward. For now though? Seems like a holding pattern. My transfer requests were denied. I’m launching on patrol duties in a few days, assigned to the station’s garrison ship, the Pathfinder.”
He had taken time during the mysterious period of earlier to read her file. He knew everything that was on the record, as long as it wasn’t classified. There was something about her that confused him as a result, but he had decided earlier not to probe into it, at least that evening.
“Well, at least all of my dreams are coming through, eh?” He said with a grin. It slackened though, almost immediately, “or most of them, anyway.”
“The universe seems to keep forcing impossible decisions,”Calliope mused, thinking not just of her personal life, but about how hairy some scenarios on her recent mission had gotten. “Like some galactic toll on moving ahead.” She sighed. “But at least you want the job. That alone will turn that entire department around with someone helming it who doesn't think the whole thing is beneath him.”
“He’s trying to take all of his project research back to Earth with him. Ignored all my questions about whether that was even authorized.” He said, thinking about it.
“He’s a propulsion engineer of the theoretical kind. All his personal projects were about alternative propulsion concepts. I mean,” she amended, realizing how little he actually told her in retrospect and would divert when she had asked anything about his work. “I assume they were.” She started to hang a row of crystalline and stone carved decorative baubles on a dowel on the wall. “I’m pretty sure he guarded his blueprints and data jealously in his own data cores too. But if he hasn’t shipped them yet, you might be able to put a claim on them in Operations. I doubt he hand packed everything himself. There will be a move request.”
“I’m not specialized in that area, and I’m only curious what he was up to in the end. If they are his, he can have them. He didn’t really say that clearly though. I think he thought I was a bit dim; beneath him.” He clarified, moving on from the subject a bit. “I’m a components engineer for the most part. Fine tuning ship systems and designing new ones; that’s what I love.”
Calliope bit her lip, resisting an old impulse to apologize for Lance being insulting. When the impulse passed she settled for explaining. “For Lance, if you don’t walk in speaking particle physics or quantum theory for your ABCs, he doesn’t engage with you. It doesn’t mean anything about how smart anyone is or isn’t. Integrated systems management is much more valuable here. And personnel management skills, which I’m guessing you have. Either that or you’ve missed your calling in counseling.”
“I wouldn't choose to be a counselor, mon fleur. Most people are incredibly boring.” He said with a wave of his hand as he dodged the compliment like he didn’t notice.. “I would be falling asleep in my chair for some of them. But, when I find someone interesting, I am insatiable.”
He looked at her then.
“You for example; I wish to get to know you. Maybe it’s the intrigue of the part of your life I’ve seen, perhaps it’s those gorgeous eyes, or perhaps it’s something else entirely, but I want to know more. Your husband though; he is an asshole. And he bores me.”
His hand moved to the cloth he had been working at. He pulled it tight to make it straight, but had no idea whatsoever if it looked good or not.
Calliope bit her lip again. Chris was entirely different from Lance, but there was a stripe of personality there that rang familiar as he declared most of the population boring and wrote Lance off, even if he just meant it to set her apart with hyperbole… “Glassware,” she said suddenly, pointing to another crate. “All that should go out, maybe tallest in the back, to shortest in the front.”
As he took her distractionary cue, Calliope adjusted a nearby environmental panel for the room. It was the comment about her eyes and something about his fixed stare that made her feel the same as overly long rides in shuttles and turbolifts could sometimes become, sealed in with men and her unintentional effects on them. Chris needed the vents on a little more, she suspected.
He reached into the crate and began to set out the glassware as she had requested. He was perceptive enough to notice she’d had no response to what he had spoken before her. He had no idea why, but understood she was likely the type where he could never know by asking.
“If there’s anything you want to claim, you can put it aside before the party starts.”
“Is this some kind of garage sale or something like that?” He asked with a raised brow.
Calliope laughed like a tension in her was broken, happy to explain her latest scheme. “You ask a lot of questions, and you’re just wondering this now? It’s a reverse housewarming! I just invented it. At least I'm going to say I did. Everyone comes over, takes something with them, and leaves me free to start over. That’s the idea. I think I should patent it, or publish a paper or something. I’m a godsdamned genius.”
“There’s the spirit.” He said with a chuckle. “I’d say that’s a better plan than just setting everything you own on fire. Yet still, unfortunately, somehow less interesting.”
He looked through the glassware as he finished setting it out. His mind now wandered over the possibilities, but he kept it to himself if he saw anything he wanted.
“Fire’s so blasé. Everyone is doing fire.” But the idea set her to looking for a particular box and she came up with a couple of old fashioned lighters. “Maybe take one of these?”
“Fire is blasé until your apartment is on fire, mon fleur. Then it’s very engaging.”
She put the lighters out on the table anyway. Someone would think they were a real find. “Oh, the fire suppression systems snuff anything bigger than a candle anyway. This place will be interesting enough tomorrow when it’s full of friendly faces.”
“I can turn off the suppression system if you’d like. Just remember that, if you change your mind about fire.” He said. “I see you have some shot glasses here. That would have been convenient earlier.”
“Put those beside the teacups for next time,” she agreed.
He did as she asked, moving the shot glasses to the shelf where she kept her teacups and placing them there carefully.
“So, are you going to tell me what went through your mind when I told you I was the new Chief Engineer?” He asked, moving to the next crate. “After all, it’s not like all engineers are trouble makers.”
Calliope hauled out one of the heavier bins and plied off the lid. Books. She took out a few volumes and seemed to be staring through them, trying to find a way to answer. What had she been thinking? It was more like a reaction. A reflex. “I was just surprised, that’s all.”
“I’m very good at asking questions, and you seem to be a master at not really answering them.” He said as he brought out holonovel cartridges. He reacted with interest, looking at the titles. “Bonjour, what have we here?”
She looked up from where she was rotating all the books spine up in the box. “Hm? Oh. My old racing, puzzling, and exploring simulators. They don't run in any of the newer holodecks anymore.”
“Holodecking is one of my hobbies. I could update them very easily.” He said, turning from the question he had asked about her reaction to him earlier to the next thing that had his attention. “Is there anything particularly good in here?”
She stood up from where she was crouched and went to look at the loading cartridges. They were already old when she had gotten them, clearly first generation holodeck programs. “I used to have a copy of First Arrow, which was sort of an action adventure puzzler. But I already played it through and everyone knows it ends with–” she paused; maybe he didn't know how it ended. She looked at him to see if he had any recollection, but he seemed more interested than bored. There was so much media out in the known galaxy, there was no way everyone had experienced even a small fraction of everything made. “Well. It had an iconic ending.”
He didn’t know how it ended at all. Looking at the box it was associated with, he read the description quietly.
“I didn’t step into a Holodeck until I was nearly a teenager. My father isn’t a big technologist and never took me to one. As soon as I saw it, though, I was mesmerized. Infinite possibilities to test out my ideas..” his eyes lit up like he was talking about an amazing experience. “I could pretend to be anything. I used an inappropriate amount of the money I made at our boat repair shop to rent holodeck time.”
“Take them,” she said, pleased they would get any use. “I only train in the holodecks anymore. If I need to drive, I can borrow wheels planetside.”
“I will, thanks.” He said with a grin as he replaced them in the crate and pushed it to the side. “You don’t even go down for fun anymore? Is it because you are too busy?”
“My job is better than most holonovels. High fidelity, lots of randomization. Then when I go to a holodeck these days it feels less immersive. Flimsy. And I know the safeties are on. It's not the same as when I was dropped off at the arcade so my mom could go on another date.”
“Well you had no choice but to have fun then.” He said with a shrug, “but it sounds to me like you went for action. Now that you are a Starfleet officer, going toe to toe with enemies might not be your thing, though I must admit I harbor a secret love for playing as a French pirate.”
Calliope laughed in a fake french accent. “Le scurvy dogs!”
He chuckled and looked at her. She was beautiful, really, and that impression had started to grow on him since they’d met earlier in the day. He stared just a bit too long, and then he caught himself, and averted his gaze to the box she was working on.
“Don’t you ever go in for a murder mystery or something like that?”
She shrugged. “I have a whole digital board of unsolved real mysteries. And a former commanding officer friend who works as a private eye; sometimes we trade cases and work together on things. I recently finished a remote op on Freecloud. Technically that was in the holodeck. Does that count?”
“No, it does not.” He said without hesitating. “Though you sound like as much of a workaholic as I am, which is encouraging.”
He turned his eyes back to her, risking another glance.
Calliope looked away as he seemed to search her for some kind of reaction. “I don’t know. I guess so. I always wanted to do this work, lead away teams and run investigations and solve complex problems. That’s what I was dreaming of when I was at the arcades, after all.”
“I’m afraid you are telling me you are no fun at all, though. Do you ever do anything non-work related just because you enjoy it? Perhaps something real?”
“All the time. Play the piano, read, train for a marathon, go out with friends. Plan parties.” She shrugged. “But work and fun just overlap a lot. When you work the frontier it's a lifestyle thing.”
He smiled at that, remembering a time, almost a decade ago, when his work and play were closely related.
“I was stationed as the Agitant to the Head of the Corps of Engineers for four years, and I was on Earth Spacedock four years after that. I am absolutely starved of wilderness and unpredictability.” He said with a sigh.
“That’s a lot of starchy-collar life, for sure.” Just a few days ago, she’d weighed her options, giving up her work out on the border to take a maintenance facilities job or something of the sort and travel back to Sol with Lance. But she followed it out and knew that wasn’t going to solve the foundational problems even if she did. They didn’t really have a marriage to sacrifice for. “No. There’s no way I could have lived like that. I’d have been going to the holodeck daily, too. I’d be out of my damn gourd.”
“That is why I was so quick to accept this position when it came up. I want adventure and a chance to get lost in my work again. I had to make some sacrifices to make it happen.”
“You miss her already. Your fiance.”
He sighed, his mind drifting to Greta. He pictured her standing in their kitchen near the semi-rustic, semi-industrial island, warming her hands on her favorite mug.
“I do. We were together for three years. I’m the one who broke it off, so I feel guilty on top of it. It’s like I shattered all her dreams.”
“Me too. I mean. It was me who ended things.” Things Lance would have preferred to let carry on forever, though she still reserved that level of detail from her new friend. She sighed a long heavy sigh. She hadn’t shaken the whole decision out of her nervous system yet. “I’m not sorry. Things are already better. But I have to distract myself from it. I have made a lot of friends here, and they’ve gone a long way so far supporting me. You’ll find your feet here too. Oh, hey–”
While she was talking, Calliope’s eyes caught sight of something in one of the mixed bins and she sprang up. “I knew I had one!” She pointed out a woven mat with the word “Welcome” printed on it in multiple languages. “I can cover the carpet I ripped. No one will even know!”
“Or… you could put in a work order and have it patched.” He said with a chuckle. She was an Ops officer by background, so he figured she knew that, “but this will do for tomorrow very well, I think.”
He lifted the mat and looked at it.
“Do you welcome Klingons into your quarters often, Calli?”
“Absolutely. Drinking songs, storytime, and fun games with knives? They make great party guests.”
“On that we agree.” He said, walking over to the door and placing the mat in front of it. After making a slight adjustment with his foot, he looked up at her and raised her hands in a questioning motion. “C'est bon?”
“Yes. Very bon.”
He smiled at that and then raised his wrist to check the time. His eyes went wide at what he saw.
“Mon Dieu, look at the time!” He said with a shake of his head. “I’ve got an early start tomorrow to meet some key staff. I have a new Assistant as well, so we’ll be orienting ourselves at the same time. 00:33 hours is too late for me. I must go, mon fleur.”
“Thanks for helping me out. Oh. And don't forget the holodeck programs.” She put the box into Chris's hands. “Good luck in engineering tomorrow. Now, hurry up and rest.”
He gave her a wink, his eyes lingering on hers. He said nothing for a handful of seconds, but eventually his lips started again.
“I will see you tomorrow, Calliope.” He said quietly, then he turned and walked through the opening door.
“I guess that makes one more for the will attend list….” Taking stock of the progress, Calliope put a hand through her hair, then turned down the air in the room, tugged off the sweatshirt and sighed another deep sigh. It was quiet again, but it wouldn’t be for long. If it was past midnight, that meant she had less than twelve hours to prepare. She would need to fit in a few hours of work from home, following up on the Pathfinder’s readiness, and maybe slip in a short nap. And she still had to set up the mood music, finalize the catering, and pick out what to wear… She didn’t feel herself falling asleep as she sat down, just for a moment.
