Chapter Text
He was stuck in my head. Why was he stuck in my head?
I had, as the saying went, been asleep since then, but even as I stood in the main engineering lab while the chief engineer doled out assignments, my mind kept wandering to the doctor. Little things kept reminding me of him, and I was wishing for an excuse to talk to him again. It would probably be weird and awkward and distant, but it would have been nice to just say hello.
“Savannah?” The chief snapped me out of my strange, doctor-related daydreams.
“Yes, Chief?”
“They tell me you’re one of the best computer techs available. Now’s your chance to prove it. There’s a subprocessor going bad in the air handling systems in upper pylon 2. It’s a tedious job. Think you’re up to the task of replacing it?”
“Yes, sir!”
I had never met the officer who was sitting next to me in the Jeffries Tube. He’d been assigned, apparently against his will, as my navigator for the day. He had blonde curls and dark eyes, and he was young, maybe younger than me, but he seemed determined not to let his age stand in the way of his being as cynical and unpleasant as possible. I was detaching a panel from the wall to access some faulty components, and he was complaining.
“I get the worst assignments.”
“I don’t know, I think I can think of many worse assignments. All you’ve got to do here is sit there and do nothing while I fix the problem.”
“They never let me do anything interesting. It’s always shit like this.”
“Sorry to be such an inconvenience to you, I guess?”
“It’s not your fault anyway. Sorry.”
“I won’t hold it against you.”
The subprocessor was fried – blackened, crusty, disintegrating, fried. I carefully removed it, detaching the tiny wires one at a time.
“That’s like doing surgery,” my grumpy companion said.
“I suppose it is!”
“At least you’re easier to be around than that surgeon.”
My ears pricked up. “What surgeon?”
“You know, the doctor,” he said. “He had some kind of antique sounding name. ‘Arthur’ or ‘Fredrick’ or –”
“Julian.”
“Yeah, that was it.”
“I don’t know, I met him yesterday and he seemed very easy to be around.”
“He’s a nice guy I guess, but he’s on the annoying side of friendly.”
“How long have you been on the station?” I asked him.
“3 weeks.”
“That’s not much time to decide if someone’s aggravating.”
“Once was enough. I went to fix a console one day and he wouldn’t shut up about ‘gravitational properties of wormhole proximity’ and how ‘this sector contains quantum vibrations’ that were ‘affecting his research.’ It was excruciating. Any time we get work orders from the infirmary I make myself as scare as possible.”
“He didn’t mention any of that to me. But I’m not sure he had time; he was too busy trying to get me to stop crying.”
“Why on earth were you crying?”
“Long story,” I said, snapping the new subprocessor into place. Talking to Julian again had just skipped all the way to the top of my priority list. If my grumpy companion’s complaints were accurate, this doctor was about to be the most interesting person I’d met in years. I flicked the power switch on a nearby block and watched the conduit glow immediately with activity, tiny green, red, and blue flashes indicating the system was working again.
“Nice job,” my companion grumbled, almost begrudgingly.
“I sort of know what I’m doing,” I answered back.
I dropped my PADD full of notes on the Chief’s desk triumphantly. He picked it up and read it before he would meet my face, but when he did, it was with a hearty smile.
“Good job, kid! Looks like you’ll be very useful around here.”
“I certainly hope so! Where am I needed next?”
“For once I don’t have any emergencies,” the Chief said, motioning to the panel on the wall. “All the standing problem reports are up there. Take your pick.”
I scrolled down the list of maintenance and repair requests on the wall. With nothing marked as urgent and no real experience with the station, there was nothing to differentiate one request from another. I was considering picking a request at random when I scrolled right past the solution to my problem.
“Is anyone handling any of these requests to repair the computers in the infirmary?”
“They weren’t considered emergencies. We’ve been so swamped we didn’t have a chance.”
“I think I’ll take them, if that’s okay.”
“Do you know anything about repairing medical equipment?”
“No, but does anyone else?”
“You’ve got me there,” the chief said. “They’re all yours if you want them.”
“I absolutely do,” I said.
The infirmary felt a little less frightening the second time, but only a little. This time it seemed to be empty. There was no sign of the nurse from before, or of anyone.
“Anyone home?” I called.
“Just a moment!”
Julian was exactly the same as he had been the day before. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it was still comforting somehow to see that he was just how I remembered him.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you again,” he said.
I held up my toolcase. “Not a patient today! You mentioned that you were having issues with the computers?”
“That’s an understatement.”
“That’s why I’m here!”
“Wonderful! You can start with that console over there. It won’t come on at all.”
I nodded and settled myself in front of the black screen. For some reason, I had been expecting him to go back to whatever he had been doing, but instead he hovered over the console eagerly, watching me poke at it. Something about his energy made me feel all warm inside.
“So what do you think is wrong with it?” he asked, a hint of excitement creeping into his voice. “Preliminarily? I know you need more time, but, if you have a theory, I mean. I would have tried to fix it myself but I didn’t know where to begin. I’ve never really understood computers, at least…not…really. I’m sorry. I think I’m rambling again.”
He was even more endearing this way, a little sparkle in his green eyes.
“No! You’re fine! Ramble all you want. I don’t know yet. I’m probably going to have to get under it to find out. It’s not even giving me a beep code so I have nothing to go on yet. It’s probably the memory or the main board, if I had to guess. Those are the most common causes of things not coming on at all.”
I crawled under the console and rolled over onto my back.
“Can I ask you a random question?”
“Sure.”
“What are you researching? I was talking to another officer and he mentioned something about quantum vibrations and the wormhole.”
“Uh – well – there’s a theory that cells and microscopic entities can be affected by subatomic phenomena. It’s not exactly well received by the wider medical community, but preliminary tests on certain types of cell replication are giving me vastly different results in this environment than they were in my old lab. I’ve controlled every variable. The proximity of the wormhole is one of the only variables left. I know it sounds impossible, but I’ve got a hunch, and I’ve learned it’s best to follow them.”
“That’s so cool, though,” I said.
“…I think so, but it’s rare that anyone agrees with me.”
I yanked the panel off the underside of the console with a loud crack. “They always sound like you’re breaking them,” I explained. “But you’re not, they just make awful noises. Do me a favor and try to boot this up again?”
I watched the components of the system as Julian attempted to power it up. From where I was I could see the cooling units trying to power on, but stopping almost immediately.
“It’s gotta be the memory,” I thought aloud, and unsnapped a memory unit from the underside of the device. The contacts had started to corrode after years of no maintenance, and they were coated in a thin layer of greenish nastiness. I sat up and demonstratively held out the damaged component to Julian. “It’s not supposed to be green,” I said with a laugh. “Do you have – this is a stupid question to ask a doctor – do you have some alcohol around?”
“I’m sure I do.”
What he ended up bringing me was not just a container of alcohol but a small plastic basket of cotton pads and swabs, a damp cloth, and gloves.
“That’s basically computer surgery you’re doing.” he said. “I figured some basic tools might be helpful.”
“Absolutely! Thank you! I didn’t even think about asking you for the rest of it, but I guess you would have all this on hand.”
“Doctor? We need your signature on this.” The nurse from the day before had reappeared. I wondered where she had been hiding the whole time.
“I’ll be close by if you need anything else, alright?” Julian said, smiling at me.
“Thanks.”
I folded myself back up under the console and set about my task of cleaning the computer parts. It was oddly cozy under the console, cool and dark. I felt like some kind of small animal in a burrow. There was that warmth again. It was nice, too, to have gloves on for once. Not covering my hands in corrosion felt like living in luxury.
I snapped the freshly cleaned parts into their slots, unfolded myself from under the console, hit the power button, and prayed. I never knew whether these things were going to work or not, even when I felt sure I had fixed them. I cheered as the console flickered to life.
“That sounds like a cheer of triumph!” Julian said from behind me.
“It was indeed the memory. Hopefully it doesn’t have another part horribly broken but if it dies again, I guess we’ll find out,” I said.
“If it dies again, I will know exactly who to call.”
He grinned at me and I giggled like a loon. There was no hiding it. “What’s next?” I asked, doing my best to keep it together.
“There’s a panel in the wall that turns a different color every time you turn it on.”
“Lead the way.”
I tapped on the screen of the panel. It flickered and buzzed and flashed red and green, and generally made a series of noises a wall console should not make.
“Can I tell you something?” I asked, using the damaged panel as an excuse not to make eye contact.
“Of course.”
“I only took this work order because I wanted an excuse to talk to you again.”
“Did you really think I couldn’t tell that immediately?”
I was glad I was facing the wall and he couldn’t see the neon pink blush that had settled over my entire face.
“You didn’t need an excuse, you know,” he continued. “You could have just come and said hi.”
“That would have been too weird.”
“Why?”
“That would be…making it a little too clear that I just wanted to talk to you.”
“As opposed to what you actually did, which had me completely fooled and didn’t seem like an excuse to talk to me in any way.”
“I can’t believe I’m telling you these things. I’ve known you for two days and I’m already just laying out everything I’m thinking.”
“Is that a bad thing?” he asked.
“I’m usually not this – come on, come out of there – not this open,” I said, pulling the offending screen off the wall. I finally turned to face him. I hoped my face wasn’t still bright pink. The self satisfied look on his face told me it probably was. At least he was nice enough not to point it out. The panel in my hand sparked, exactly on cue. I wondered how it was possible for an electronic component to have comedic timing.
“I think this one’s broken beyond repair. I need to look more closely at it but in my experience, things that spark are usually not fixable. I’ll see if I can find the original replicator patterns for this component and hopefully just replicate a new one.”
“I figured as much.”
I tucked the broken screen under my arm. “I’ll let you know as soon I have any news.”
“Oh, take your time. It’s not a particularly important screen.”
“That’s good to know.”
“If you feel the need to say hello before I break something else, just stop by, alright? No excuses needed.”
“I’ll try.”
Knowing I had a standing invitation didn’t actually make me less anxious about the idea of openly stopping just to talk to him. He even knew, now. I’d already admitted plainly that I just wanted to talk to him, and he’d already given me clear, undeniable permission to do so. But it still felt wrong. Surely I needed some kind of excuse. For the next few days I caught myself wondering how easy it would be to twist my ankle, but only a little. I was still weighing the weirdness of being forward against the questionable motivations of deliberately hurting myself when the universe – or more accurately, the commander, did my work for me. I was elbows deep in a console when my PADD beeped. I caught the “from” address out of the corner of my eye and stopped what I was doing to read the details. “From: Commander Sisko. Subject: Senior Staff Dinner.” I speed read the body of the email. I only had to catch a few words to know exactly what I was reading: new, senior staff, recent transfers, commander’s quarters, invited, 2100. The concept of a dinner party with the entire senior staff hit me right in the space between ecstatic joy and crippling anxiety. Did it have to be a dinner party, Commander, I mumbled aloud as I worked.
I trotted past the infirmary on my way back to my quarters after my shift, and quietly prayed my actual question would be enough justification not to seem weird. You don’t even need a justification, my anxiety’s anxiety reminded me. I did my best to shut them both up.
“You coming to dinner?” I called, as nonchalantly as I could. Julian smiled at me.
“Where have you been?”
“Working,” I said. “All the time, pretty much. Anyway, are you coming to dinner?”
He gave me a suspicious look, but didn’t press the issue. “Of course! When commander Sisko invites you to dinner, there’s no good way to turn him down.”
“What’s the dress code at these things? Is the uniform okay or do I need to like, dress up?”
“Uniforms are fine! I’m not changing.”
“Good. See you in a bit.”
He opened his mouth to add another thought, but I bolted before he got the chance.
Since I ended up looking the same it felt like a pointless exercise, but I showered and put on a clean uniform anyway. If I was turning up for dinner with the commander, I figured it was worth not smelling like lightly burnt computer components. My brain never once slowed as I got ready. Maybe you’ll have an excuse to talk to Julian. Maybe you can even sit next to him at dinner. What would you even talk about? What are you even going to eat? Oh god, what are you going to eat.
Why was this the one thing it was still socially acceptable to be rude and intrusive about? We had a broad cultural agreement that it was rude to comment on someone’s appearance, accent, likes and dislikes – but for some reason, what people were or weren’t eating was somehow fair game. Is that all you’re going to eat? got old fast. It was harder still to explain my reasons – and to overcome the bizarre shame of simply being picky. “Dinner party” was one of my least favorite combinations of words in the world. If it hadn’t been for Julian, I would have invented a creative excuse.
I was relieved, at least, that the so called dinner party was more of a roving, snacking event. At least if we weren’t all sitting around a table, I had a higher chance of flying under the radar with a plate full of bread, fruit, raw vegetables, and dessert. The entire senior staff had shown up, and they were all milling about and talking to each other. I was immediately reminded that I didn’t actually know anyone other than Julian and the Chief and a couple of the other computer technicians, all of whom seemed deeply involved in conversations with people they already knew. I nervously surveyed the table full of food instead. I felt my heart sink. I wasn’t even sure what half of it was, and the list of things I was comfortable eating was even shorter than usual. Commander Sisko was clearly an excellent and adventurous cook, but the pickings were slim for someone with the approximate taste of a toddler. I awkwardly obtained a plate, praying no one was paying attention to me, and dotted it with the few things on the table that looked edible – a couple of rolls, some moba fruit, and a couple pieces of halofish sushi. I hoped the sushi would be off the wall enough to push back the quiet judgment of someone with absolutely no adventure in their tastebuds. I shuffled myself and my deeply embarrassing, and very sparse, plate over to the nearest small gathering of people I passively recognized.
“Diplomacy was never my subject, but with these people it’s almost impossible,” an officer in a red uniform was saying. “I never liked doing admin work, but it’s so much worse when everyone hates each other.”
“You think you have it bad? I have to arrange quarters for them. They don’t even breathe oxygen!” the other officer complained.
I faded back out of the conversation. It was abundantly clear I had nothing to add here. Julian was easy to spot, a head taller than anyone else in the room. I subtly slid up to the group of people he was talking to, and waited for a chance to break into the conversation. Whatever they were talking about was way over my head – something about the Bajoran economy. Upon closer inspection, it seemed like it was a step or two above Julian head as well. From a distance I had assumed this was a multi-person conversation, but from inside the conversational circle it was much clearer that there were two officers talking about Bajoran finances, and Julian hovering next to them looking just as awkward as I did. He smiled broadly at me when he caught my eyes, and seized the next pause in the conversation to introduce me to the other two officers.
“Ah, there she is! Allow me to introduce Savannah. She’s been fixing the many computer problems we’ve had in the infirmary. Savannah, this is Lieutenant Eccleston and Lieutenant Romo.”
I nodded awkwardly at them.
“It’s got to be a difficult task, working on computers around here,” Eccleston said. “All those competing systems.”
“It’s a challenge. The code languages really don’t cooperate a lot of the time. The Cardassians don’t even use base 10, so even the basic numeric functions have to go through abstraction programs.”
“At least you’re the right size to fit under the consoles,” Romo added, not particularly kindly. Julian looked minorly horrified. Eccleston sized me up like a lion considering a meal.
“Is that all you’re planning on eating?” he asked. My heart tightened. This had to be a speed record for someone firing off an unpleasant comment.
“Not particularly hungry,” I flat out lied. Eccleston seemed content with that, but I was still starting to feel slightly nauseous. Julian made a face, and quickly pulled the attention of the other two officers.
“Have you met Jadzia yet?” he asked. “Lieutenant Dax is the life of any party.” The other officers shook their heads.
“I think it’s time we fix that,” Julian said, and deftly pulled them away. I took myself and my depression sushi over to the nearest sofa. Julian was next to me a minute later, and sat down on the coffee table as if it were a seat.
“Are you alright?” he asked softly.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“I’ve never met most of the people here. I was only just beginning to realize those two weren’t particularly pleasant, but they certainly sped up that conclusion.”
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt, right?” I said.
“Something like that,” he agreed. I took a slow bite of my bread. Julian leaned in.
“I know we’ve only known each other for a couple days, but we’ve already established you’re willing to be honest with me. Are you really not hungry?”
“Honestly? I’m starving.”
“Why don’t you get something you’d like out of the replicator? That is what it’s there for, after all.”
“When the commander has put all this effort into cooking this gorgeous spread? Not in a million years. Everyone’s already judging me enough for this.” I held up my plate demonstratively.
Julian thought for a moment. “Does anything sound appetizing?” he asked.
“I just want a ham & cheese sandwich,” I said quietly.
“Stay there, alright?”
I just stared at him as he unfolded himself from the coffee table, approached the replicator with complete confidence, pressed a couple of buttons on it, removed the incredibly simple sandwich on a plate it had created, and retook his not-a-seat on the coffee table. He extended the plate to me. I was speechless.
“Swap the food, but keep the plate, he said, pointing out the difference in my plate from the buffet table and the one from the replicator. “If the plates are the same no one will notice.” I nodded and quickly traded my rather pathetic combination of food choices for the sandwich, which I happily bit into. Julian traded plates with me and surreptitiously sent the failed plate back into the replicator. I was already preparing my mouth-full thank you to him when he got pulled into some kind of conversation with the commander. I filed it away for later. I was fairly certain nothing in my life had ever tasted better than that sandwich.
With my stomach actually full it was much easier to face down conversation, and I managed a couple of not-entirely-awkward interactions with a few of the other officers. As soon as I spotted Julian sufficiently alone on one end of a sofa, I snagged my chance, and sat down next to him.
“I can’t thank you enough for what you did.”
“I couldn’t just let you go hungry,” he said. The affection in his voice seemed genuine.
“How did you know what was wrong, though?” I asked. “Most people assume I’m on a diet or something.”
He shook his head. “Not with the combination of things you had. You clearly made your choices based on nothing but taste. It wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on from there.”
“It’s one of my greatest embarrassments. I’m an adult – or at least they tell me I am. I’m good at a lot of things, but I still have the tastebuds of a toddler.”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about. Everyone’s into something different. Taste in food is one of the most varied things among every species.”
“You’re not wrong, but it doesn’t take the edge off the comments.”
“I know.”
“I’ve been fighting with this my whole life. I can’t tell you how complicated the emotion was when I read the words ‘dinner party.’ I only came because you were going to be here.”
“You kind of gave that away earlier when you stopped by just to ask if I was coming,” he said with a smile.
“Sorry. I try to be so chill but I always end up wearing my heart on my sleeve a bit.”
“If this happens again at an event we’re both at, try to corner me and let me know, okay? I’ll make sure you’ve got something to eat.”
“You don’t have to take care of me like that, you know.”
“I know. I’m fully aware I don’t have to. But I want to. It’s how I…face the world, you know? I take care of people.”
“I knew there was a reason I liked you,” I said softly.
Jadzia appeared and settled on the facing sofa, grabbing Julian’s attention with a question about some sort of cell or other. That was perfectly fine with me. I was happy to just sit there. The warmth that rose in my stomach was beginning to become familiar. I examined the feeling, turning it over in my mind. I was fairly certain it was…safety. I allowed myself to inch slightly closer to Julian. What even are you, I wondered. It wasn’t like it actually mattered. All that mattered was that I’d somehow been given the opportunity to get to know this person. I settled back into the sofa and closed my eyes, happy just to soak in the feeling. “Warm safety” was a sensation my anxiety, and my anxiety’s anxiety, kept me from being particularly familiar with, and I had every intention of enjoying it for all it was worth.
My pillow shifted under my cheek. I grumbled slightly and repositioned myself.
“Sorry,” my pillow whispered. My eyes snapped open. I slowly processed that the thing I had my cheek against was a man’s shoulder. I didn’t have to see that the fabric under my cheek was a deep teal blue to guess who’s shoulder it was. My first instinct was to sit up with a start. For some reason, the secondary voice in my head told me to fight that instinct.
“You’re fine,” Julian said softly. “You can go back to sleep.”
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to – oh my god”
Julian tightened the arm I was only just realizing was wrapped around me. “You’re fine,” he repeated. “I didn’t even mean to wake you up. As long as you’re comfortable you can stay right where you are.”
“If I’m being completely honest, this is the best I’ve slept in years,” I whispered.
Julian rubbed my arm.
“Seems like you should get back to it, then.”
“Looks like you’ve got a problem,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“I’ve gotten attached to you. When I decide I approve of someone, there’s no getting rid of me.”
“That,” he said, “seems like the opposite of a problem.”