Work Text:
Their command meeting had been scheduled to begin at 0600 hours, but Isaac observed, as had occurred before in varying instances since his arrival aboard the Orville, that his biological counterparts had seemingly very little regard for beginning on time. Captain Mercer himself was leaning over in his chair, whispering into Commander Grayson’s ear, sporting a wide grin that presented most of his teeth. The Commander giggled into her coffee cup, and Isaac curiously noted to ask for Claire’s opinion about this interaction between their commanding officers later.
Finally, after approximately 3 additional minutes of delay, the Captain cleared his throat and Malloy hurriedly collapsed into his usual chair at the long table, Commander LaMarr following suit beside him. Isaac observed the judgmental gaze Bortus cast at the rambunctious human males. The Kaylon recalled Claire dubbing this as “the stink eye.”
“Morning, crew,” said the Captain, and he punctuated the greeting with a barely stifled yawn. “As you all know, in around 3 hours we will be making rendezvous with the USS Calliope; we’ll be bringing aboard Dr. Whitman, who will be assisting Dr. Finn and Isaac with an experimental update to our regenerators. Talla, have you prepared all necessary security checks and…”
Isaac allowed himself to process the Captain’s address as a secondary task, instead using this time to run logistics for the upcoming installation. He estimated a 26% increase in functionality and a 12% decrease in time spent regenerating in med bay if the technology was as advanced as the human scientist hoped it would be. Isaac would, of course, be able to make considerable optimizations to the technology that the biological’s inferior intellect could not have foreseen.
The meeting ended shortly, the command crew going their separate ways to prepare for boarding. Claire was, as he had heard her refer to it in the past, in a ‘tizzy.’ Commander Grayson observed that the Doctor was “jumping out of her skin,” which Isaac initially found both alarming and impossible before surmising that this was yet another illogical human colloquial phrase (which he added to his ever growing database).
Claire squeezed Isaac’s hand when he met her in the corridor, smiling sweetly up at her husband. “I haven’t seen Dr. Whitman in years,” she mused, and her thumb rubbed against his metallic palm like a worry stone. “The last time I saw an old friend, it didn’t end very well.”
“Were you also married to Dr. Whitman?”
Claire blanched. “What? No, Isaac… We were just research colleagues on my second assignment, the USS Geraldine. We developed new standard operating procedures for non-invasive gastro-intestinal diagnostics. We were so proud.”
Isaac cocked his head, earning Claire’s adoring gaze. “I imagine that took much time and hard work for two young doctors. I commend you both.”
She giggled, and her eyes seemed to be far off, recalling. “So many long nights in the lab, just him and me. Gee, we spent almost all our time together. Some nights we’d just curl up in the lab and get as much sleep as we could before getting back to work!”
This struck the Kaylon as perplexing. He was, however, finding it difficult to propose a question that would both clarify and sate the curiosity.
“Anyway, I guess I’m just a little nervous - still shaken, after last time. I’m starting to feel like a bad luck charm.”
Isaac lifted Claire’s hand in his own, pressing her warm skin against the shell of his chrome plated face, mimicking the gentle kisses she often pressed to his knuckles. This action caused Claire to smile softly, as Isaac had intended. “Luck is a fallacy. It is impossible that your mere presence at any given time would impact the probability of any negative outcome more so than if you were not present.”
“Oh, Isaac,” Claire giggled, giving her mate’s hand a squeeze, “you always know what to say.”
~
“You’ve got quite the impressive Medical Bay, Claire,” Dr. Whitman said, following Dr. Finn as she completed a short but thorough tour of the facilities. “I think this is the perfect place to implement our new technology.”
Claire smiled politely, lips pursing. “I couldn’t agree more, Craig. We use our current regenerators quite a bit more than you might think. And Isaac here will be able to optimize the technology even further.” She gestured behind her toward the Kaylon. Dr. Whitman rolled his bottom lip beneath his teeth, casting a quick glance behind him at Isaac. Isaac observed the man extend his hand and place it gently on the small of Claire’s back, his ocular sensors catching the rapid rise of Claire’s chest as she inhaled sharply; a familiar reaction to Isaac. Just three nights ago in the simulator, she had gasped in a similar fashion, Isaac having placed light pressure beneath her belly using his first and second fingers. Only then, her eyes had shut, and face relaxed - now, she blinked thrice in rapid succession.
At any rate, Isaac’s anecdotal data identified that the placement of the officer’s hand was upon a common human erogenous zone. The touching of a fellow crew member in such a way during on-duty hours was in direct violation of Union Code 27, Subsections 1 through 15. Head cocked, Isaac went to alert Dr. Whitman of his misconduct; “Doctor, you are-”
“Hey, one second,” he interrupted, holding up a thick finger in a gesture Isaac had learned to mean ‘hold on.’ The officer leaned in, mouth approximately 5.08 centimeters from Claire’s ear, and spoke in a hushed voice, “I don’t think that will be necessary. This is some of my best work.”
Isaac found it odd that Dr. Whitman would lower his voice. If he was attempting to exclude Isaac from the remark, surely he would know that Kaylon aural processing was far more attuned than that of humans. And if he were not attempting to exclude the Kaylon, then lowering his voice was impractical for the limitations of Claire’s hearing.
Dr. Finn swallowed, looking over at Isaac with a wide eyes. “Well, I guess we’ll see once we set it up. Let’s get started, shall we?”
~
Isaac had anticipated far more involvement in the installation of the new regenerative technology, however he found himself merely standing to the side, observing Dr. Whitman input code into the first regenerator. It was puzzling; both Isaac himself and Dr. Finn had expressed that he would be far faster and much more efficient for the task, but the officer had insisted. “It’s my baby, you know,” he’d said, earning a curious head tilt from the Kaylon. Further confusing, the grey-haired doctor was expressing far greater rates of distraction than Isaac had ever recorded in other biological crew members before; almost constantly Dr. Whitman would still his hands, turning his head to the side to talk with Claire. At first, simply a few questions about her personnel or patient base, but soon he was taking unnecessary breaks for unrelated comments, anecdotes, and the occasional “joke.”
“… but by that time, I had my pants back on and the Admiralty was none the wiser!” said Dr. Whitman, laughing at what was meant to be, Isaac assumed, an amusing story detailing an act of great unprofessionalism.
“You were always a wild child,” replied Claire, and she punctuated her reply with a breathy chuckle.
Craig pursed his lips, eyes zeroing in on a spot beside Claire’s nose. He lifted his index finger, hovering mere inches from her face. “You’ve got an eyelash,” he said, coming down from his laughter.
Claire’s hand rose to her face, manicured nails softly brushing the skin. “Let me,” he interrupted, and he used his thumb to quickly brush the offending eyelash from the doctor’s cheek.
Isaac was compelled to speak. He was unsure of the violation Dr. Whitman had made, but judging by his own reaction, he must have. The Kaylon scoured his database of Union regulations to try and find a source for the - as Captain Mercer would call it - “gut feeling.” In a moment, Craig’s finger was held before Claire’s lips. “Make a wish?”
Isaac experienced what could only be considered a processor error, his internal search engine buffering for .05 seconds as he watched Claire pucker her lips and blow the eyelash off of their colleague’s finger.
“What’d you wish for?” asked Craig, and Claire looked over at her husband with a shake of her head and a sly smile.
“Can’t share, or it won’t come true.”
Isaac noted another jolt to his internal processor, a delay in correspondence lasting 0.082 seconds as his visual sensors observed Dr. Whitman place his hand on Claire’s upper arm and squeeze. This drew her attention back to the man, face donning a curious expression. It seemed he was about to speak, eyes darting over to Isaac and back again as his mouth worked. “Why don’t we take-”
Unfortunately for Craig, her comm chimed: “Keyali to Dr. Finn.”
Claire startled slightly, creating space between her and the other doctor as she responded to Talla; “Heard.”
“We are en route to Med Bay. Ensign Davis went a little too hard in training. I’m thinking multiple broken bones.”
“Understood, thank you,” she said, then turned back to Dr. Whitman and Isaac. “I told you we use our regenerators plenty! I’m going to prepare a bed for monitoring. Do you think we could test this out on Ensign Davis?”
“I think so!” Whitman replied, grinning, and Isaac identified a dark green piece of food stuck between his incisor and canine. “Let me run one last diagnostic super quick.”
“Great, I’ll leave you boys to it.” She turned and walked across Med Bay; instead of beginning the diagnostic, which Isaac estimated they had roughly 14 minutes and 24 seconds to run successfully in order to treat Ensign Davis with the new technology, Dr. Whitman’s gaze followed Claire as she approached the monitors in the far corner of Med Bar. His eyes scanned her body up and down, his tongue rolling against his bottom lip.
Again, Isaac was compelled to interject; “Doctor, I must request that you attend to the task at hand or allow me to take over. We are moving 8% slower than I had projected.”
The officer’s head whipped around sharply. “I don’t appreciate your tone,” he said, voice sharp, and he rounded the regenerator to approach the Kaylon. “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? I have contributed more health technology to the Union in ten years than you could in your life.”
“That is incorrect,” Isaac replied. “My intellect is far superior than yours. During my time aboard the Orville, I have made countless optimizations to medical technology that you would not have been able to conceive of. My projections for the optimization of this current project-”
“You got an off switch, buddy?” Craig growled.
Isaac cocked his head. A silent moment passed between them, before, “I believe you are ‘threatening’ me. Am I correct in this assumption?”
“First smart thing you’ve said all day,” growled Whitman. “Listen, bud, I don’t know what fucked up Kaylon mind control you’ve done on Claire, or everyone else on this goddamn ship, but I know your kind. I know what you did, and what you will do again. This charade of yours doesn’t fool me.”
If the doctor’s sentiment were not so highly shared among biologicals in the union, Isaac anticipated he would have been impacted more by the statement. Alas, if the motivation behind Dr. Whitman’s alienating treatment toward him was hatred for the Kaylon race, he surmised that perhaps removing himself from the equation would allow the biological to focus on the task at hand. “I see,” Isaac said, head tilting to the side as Craig continued to come closer, and closer. “You share a common sentiment with many of your kind. If my presence has been a distraction-”
Craig laughed, gruffly, from somewhere deep in his stomach, and a nasty smile spread across his face. “Oh, you bet it has. Get lost, bucko! She ever tell you about all our long nights together in the lab? Cuddled up, nice and cozy, changing medical history?”
The sensor reaction Isaac had in place for detecting imminent threats pinged. “Dr. Finn briefly detailed some of your time spent together researching in your youth.”
“I was her best friend. Real flesh and blood, capable of listening to her, sympathizing, careing for her. Now why don’t you let us catch up in peace. Capisce?”
Isaac did not respond. Instead, he took a full intake of the doctor; height, weight, cardio health, medical history, everything that he could surmise. There was an… urge, one could call it, to reach out and push the man over. He wouldn’t stand a chance, crumpling beneath the Kaylon’s superior strength. This… instinct was not one Isaac had experienced since Kaylon’s attempt to take Earth.
Luckily for Craig, and Isaac’s reputation as harmless, Claire walked back toward them with a scanner held in her palm. “Isaac, Craig, how’s the diagnostic going?”
“It has not-”
Craig cut him off, turning to face Claire completely, painting on a smug grin. “Great. In fact, Isaac was just telling me he thinks I’ve got this all handled, and he’s got so many other things to attend to, that he’s going to take off.”
Dr. Finn looked up at her husband, eyebrows coming together in question. “Really?”
Isaac quickly weighed his options. Considering he had considered using physical strength to deter Craig from making further remarks, and his systems were buffering due to some unforeseen stressor to his processors, he decided taking a break to run a diagnostic would be beneficial, even if it meant allowing Dr. Whitman to get what he wanted.
“Yes, Dr. Finn,” he answered in the affirmative. “I am needed elsewhere. Idle hands, as Captain Mercer says.”
“Of course… Well. I love you. See you later, Isaac.”
Craig’s eye twitched. Isaac caught it.
“Thank you, Claire.”
~
After running a diagnostic, which had shown no internal errors, Isaac headed to the mess hall in hopes of speaking with Commander Lamarr about the incidents he had experienced at Med Bay. After detailing all that had “gone down” in the moments preceding the errors, Lamarr’s eyes widened in a sign of shock. “Man, that is fucked up,” observed Lamarr, and Gordon nodded his head to show agreement.
“I was likewise perplexed by these system anomalies,” Isaac replied. “However…”
“Nah, man,” interjected Gordon. “Not your anemones. Your system whacked out because you got pissed.”
Isaac quickly scoured his database. “Pissed. Adjective, slang; vulgar. To be drunk, intoxicated. To be irate, greatly upset. I suppose you are referring to the latter definition, Lt. Malloy?”
“Remind me never to play Scrabble with you,” grumbled the pilot.
Lamarr shook his head. “He’s right,” he said. “Dr. Whitman came for your marriage and pretty much told you he was trying to screw your wife. I think you’re jealous, Isaac, and rightly so.”
“I am incapable of such-”
“Yeah, yeah,” Malloy dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “We get it, you don’t feel like we feel. Doesn’t change that some silver fox is putting the moves on Claire, and you’ve absolutely got to do something about it.”
Isaac considered this line of action. “Such as?”
Gordon grinned, devious, as he did before a particularly ruthless prank or difficult flight maneuver. “Rub it in. You have what he wants; show him that he’s never getting it.”
~
“Claire, there you are.”
She looked up almost as soon as she heard her name, smiling wide when she saw him. “Isaac,” she greeted, voice soft, nearly a sigh. “There was an issue with the-“
He held up a finger, effectively shushing her, and his wife raised a curious, somewhat dangerous eyebrow at him. “Claire, your shift ended 32 minutes and 17 seconds ago, and mine ended 1 hour, 12 minutes, and 47 seconds ago. Yet, you are still working.”
Craig rolled his eyes, raising his head from the wire-covered panel he and Dr. Finn had been working on up until Isaac’s arrival. “Yea, because she’s working, can’t you-“
“Pardon me, Doctor, but I am talking to my wife, not you.”
Dr. Whitman was visibly taken aback, his eyebrows furrowing as Isaac placed a hand on Claire’s low back, right above the swell of her rear end. His sensors indicated an almost immediate increase in heart rate, visually supported by the flush that colored her cheeks and ears. “Claire, when you are done here, I would like you to return to our quarters and change into something ‘nice’. I am taking you dancing. I have already discussed these plans with our boys, and programmed a healthy, nutritious meal into the synthesizer which will be generated in the case they request any foods such as ‘pizza’ or ‘ice cream’ for their supper.”
Claire’s eyelashes fluttered when he referred to Marcus and Ty as ‘their’ boys, a cause-and-effect Isaac became aware of two months and seven days into their marriage, and generated quite the well of data that night in the simulator. Already her pupils were blown, causing her eyes to appear dark and never ending.
“But, the regenerator…”
“May I run a diagnostic, Dr. Whitman?”
The man pinched the bridge of his nose, leaving behind a thumb-sized blotch of grease beside his eye. “Claire, I don’t need-”
Dr. Finn cleared her throat. “Craig, it’s been almost an hour. Let Isaac take a look - I know it’s your ‘baby’, but my husband is quite capable.”
“Am I,” Isaac remarked, allowing his fingers to ever-so-lightly squeeze the upper cleft of Claire’s bottom. This was a ‘move’ he’d observed from Malloy once, with an Ensign he had become entangled with for a short time. It took a while for the Kaylon to decipher, but he now understood it to be a double entendre, and judging by Claire’s quickening pulse, it had worked.
Whitman had himself turned red, as if he were an early-Earth kettle about to whistle, but nevertheless moved aside for Isaac. Once he tapped into the regenerator, it was easy work finding where Craig had made crucial mistakes during his distracted installation. Not even a full minute had passed before Isaac removed himself from the wiring and announced, “Done. The regenerator is now in working order. You are welcome, Dr. Whitman. Claire…?”
Dr. Finn approached the regenerator, checking for herself that all commands and diagnostics were in fact functional. With a smile, she threw her arms around her husband. “Wonderful job, dear. He did it, Craig! We can test it out as soon as we have another broken bone.”
Craig was clearly worrying his cheek between his teeth. “Great,” he grunted. “Claire, I wanted to ask you if you wanted to grab a drink and catch up?”
Dr. Finn smiled, but it was soon replaced by a small frown. “Sorry, Craig, but Isaac and I haven’t had a night to ourselves in quite some time. Can you take a raincheck?”
Another twitch of Whitman’s eye. “Sure. Sure, yeah, I can take a rain check.”
“Great,” Claire said. “Besides, you worked hard today. Get some rest. We’ll catch up tomorrow.”
“Right. Sure. You two, uh, have a good night. Bye.” And with a grumble, he headed out of Med Bay.
“Claire,” Isaac said, looking down at her. “You lied to Dr. Whitman - we had date night two days ago.”
She grinned, taking his hand in hers and leading him out of Med Day and down the corridor towards their quarters. “I know. I forgot how annoying Craig was… Besides, dancing sounds wonderful after the day I’ve had.”
Isaac squeezed her hand. “I concur.”
“Plus, it’s sexy when you get territorial.”
He had the urge to tell her he was incapable of such feelings as jealousy, and that she was not territory for him to lay claim to, but instead he pulled her in a little closer and enjoyed the rest of their walk in silence.