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“There's an expectation on them to get married and be happy, but they leave it too long before saying what they want. Who they really want.” — Darem, 1x08
The Jaqh-VoD had been creeping up on Jay-Den all day: the burning in his throat, the sneezes, the ache pounding at his temples, the stiffness and chill in his limbs and the scrape of his uniform against his skin like the bark of an Arhksamm tree.
He had set the discomfort aside. He was a Klingon, after all, and there were assignments to read and lab results to record and term papers to write—and most crucially, a Klingon opera to share with his fellow cadets.
“Are you alright?” Darem had asked, and Jay-Den had insisted that he was fine.
But as he returned to his room following his dismissal from theater class, kicked off his boots, and sank into his bed, Jay-Den had to admit that perhaps the Jaqh-VoD was affecting him more than he wanted to believe. Even the thought of rising again to remove his uniform or fetch a glass of water or another blanket left him feeling untenably weary. He closed his eyes, and drifted on the tides of half-formed thoughts. Beside his bunk, his PADD blinked a message, and blinked again. He fumbled it to silent and rolled over and fell asleep.
When he awoke, it was to greater disorientation than before. His head felt as if it were caught in the jaws of a targ. His mouth was parched as if he had just spent hours on the hunt with no water. He shivered under a blanket that seemed to be made of nothing. It was dark but he did not know the hour.
His door buzzed again. That was what had awoken him. He pulled his pillow over his head to muffle the noise and closed his eyes.
There was another buzz, and then another and another in quick succession, followed by the pounding of a fist, and a strident, “Jay-Den! Open up! I know you’re in there!”
Darem.
Surely, if Jay-Den did not answer, he would go away eventually—but the banging resumed, loud enough to disturb the cadets in adjacent rooms. Suppressing a groan, Jay-Den dragged himself out of bed. The room lurched and his head pounded harder as he staggered over to the door. He slammed the door panel with his palm to open it.
“What. Is. It.”
“Finally,” Darem huffed, pushing past him into the room and waiting until the door had shut to spin around and face him, moving with a strange, nervous energy. “Jay-Den, why in the galaxy haven’t you been—oh.” Wide brown eyes blinked as Darem took in his ruffled appearance.
Jay-Den took the opportunity to say, as firmly as he could, “You should not be here.” He concluded the statement with a sneeze.
“I shouldn’t?” Darem managed to sound affronted, despite being the one who had barged in uninvited. Then he took Jay-Den by the elbow, led him back over to the bed, and helped him sit.
“I do not wish to give you the Jaqh-VoD,” Jay-Den protested. “Do you not have a Calica tournament the day after tomorrow?”
“I’ll be fine.” Darem waved a hand dismissively, then announced, “You, on the hand, look awful. You sound awful. And you’re burning up.”
Jay-Den folded his arms around himself. He perched on the edge of his bed where Darem had steered him and tried not to shiver.
“I am fine. Why were you banging so incessantly on my door?”
Darem seemed to deflate, his shoulders slumping. He let out a bracing breath. “Something’s happened. You weren’t answering your messages.”
With those words, Jay-Den’s pounding headache and the chill of fever seemed to recede. A different kind of icy sensation flooded through him. Fear.
“What has happened?”
Darem sank down next to him on the edge of the bed, bracing his forearms against his knees. He looked as serious as Jay-Den had ever seen him. Then he told Jay-Den about SAM’s collapse and all else that had happened since Lieutenant Tilly had sent him from the class.
“Will they be able to help her?” Jay-Den said when he was done. The image of his friend, earnest and cheerful and so much an outsider like him, made something in his chest clench painfully.
Darem shook his head. “None of us know.”
Jay-Den glanced guiltily at the silenced PADD beside his bed. There were a handful of messages from Kyle, asking when they might see each other again, but most were from his classmates: Caleb, Genesis, Ocam, and—yes. Darem. Again and again. As insistent as the pounding on his door.
“Everything’s awful,” Darem said in a strangely strangled voice, staring at the floor, “and there’s nothing we can do to help, and on top of it, we still have to do this stupid play about a stupid wedding. I told the Lieutenant I’d much prefer your hearts and testicles but… it doesn’t matter.”
He broke off, and peered at Jay-Den, his eyebrows furrowing. Jay-Den was uncomfortably aware that sweat had begun to bead along his forehead ridges.
“Are you sure you’re alright? Do you need to lie down? I could call the Doctor.”
“No,” Jay-Den said forcefully, then sneezed, then cleared his throat. “Do not call the Doctor. I simply need…to rest. You do not need to be here.”
It would be preferable to battle the Jaqh-VoD and his fears for SAM and his concern for his classmates alone. He had hoped his words would push Darem away. Yet when Darem nodded, stood, and walked out without a word, Jay-Den nevertheless felt a sharp stab of disappointment.
Jay-Den climbed beneath his covers again and pulled them up to his chin. He simply did not understand Darem. Did not understand how one person could be so rude, so arrogant, an asshole, and at the same time, kind, and selfless, and caring—turning up when he had not been asked with his lhyene ritual, attempting to sacrifice his happiness in duty to his family, his planet, his old friend, and even then throwing his own needs aside in favor of Jay-Den’s comfort. Jay-Den suspected their classmates had seen even less of that side of Darem than he had, and he also could not understand why Darem insisted on hiding it. He closed his eyes again, and in his drifting there were memories of Darem’s hands, deft and careful, positioning him, clasped between their chests as their voices joined—how desperately Darem had stared at Jay-Den believing he bore the weight of Khionia on his shoulders—how he had wrapped Jay-Den in that ridiculous ceremonial coat, surrounding him in his scent, then pressed in close, eyes wide, lips parted—and then he had walked out. Leaving Jay-Den alone, with his Jaqh-VoD, and his fear and his sadness and his pain. He pressed his hot face into the pillow and wondered why in the name of Kahless it mattered to him at all.
The door swished open.
“Well, I wasn’t sure exactly what might see a through Klingon the Jaqh-VoD so I replicated everything I could think of that wouldn’t require the Doctor's approval,” Darem said, as if there had been no break. “You know, I had a nasty bout of Rigelian fever a couple years ago and the only thing that got me through it was, believe it or not, plomeek soup. Bowls and bowls of it. Don’t ask me why.”
Darem stopped in front of Jay-Den’s bed, his arms loaded with tins and packages from the communal replicator down the hall, cast about for somewhere to set them down, and settled for dumping everything on the mattress next to Jay-Den.
Jay-Den sat up against his pillow, blinking. There was only one thing he could think to say.
“Why?”
Darem huffed a laugh. “Like I said, not a clue. Can barely even look at the stuff now. Anyway, this is for a fever,” he said, pressing a hypo tab into Jay-Den’s hand. “And I know you get cold, so—” he tucked a thick, heated blanket around Jay-Den’s shoulders, “and you’ve got your choice of tea, there was nothing Klingon but—“
“Darem, I do not care why you ate the plomeek soup. Why are you back? Why did you bring me all this?”
“Because…” Darem spread his hands. “You’re sick. The cadet replicator’s out there. I don’t think anyone would want you lurching around the common areas in your condition.”
Jay-Den frowned, certain that was not the answer. “You did not have to come here in the first place.”
“You’re my friend, right?”
“Caleb is your friend. Would you have come to see Caleb? Would you have replicated him…everything?”
“Well, he and I share a room, so it’s a little different, I wouldn’t exactly have a choice but to…”
Jay-Den stared at Darem flatly. “You know what I mean.”
For a moment, Darem was uncharacteristically silent. He fidgeted with the packet of tea still in his hands. He opened his mouth, and closed it. He stared at the floor. “Jay-Den, I—“ he shook his head slightly, then met Jay-Den’s eyes again. “Well, I never really thanked you for all that Ko’Zeine business, did I? Or apologized for that matter.”
Jay-Den tilted his head quizzically. “I do not…”
“I mean, it’s not like you asked to be there,” Darem went on bullishly, “and you had to give up your vacation, with Kyle, so…you know. I owe you one after all that, right? Anyway I’ve got plenty of points on my replicator card, I might as well.”
They stared at each other. Darem’s expression was shuttered, his lips pressed tight, his wide eyes inscrutable. As if he were desperate for Jay-Den to accept his explanation and stop asking.
“Here,” Darem said. “Have some tea, at least.”
Darem fussed and then a steaming mug was pressed into Jay-Den’s hands. Jay-Den sipped it, and found that the hot liquid did in fact soothe his throat. The taste was delicate, but alien. He took another sip. And another. Slowly, too, the hypo tab was kicking in, and the heated blanket Darem had wrapped around his shoulders had banished the chill. Darem perched on the edge of his bed and watched him, a small, hopeful smile on his face.
As the discomfort of the Jaqh-VoD faded, Darem’s earlier words returned to him.
“This play the class must perform,” Jay-Den said. “You said it is about a wedding?”
Darem’s brows drew together at the change in subject, his smile disappearing, but he said, “Yeah. It is. And no one’s happy about it, believe me. It’s been a whole thing.”
Jay-Den sipped his tea. Remembered how Darem had looked at him, vulnerable and hurt, when he heard that Jay-Den had told Kyle about the failed sealing ceremony. That had been unavoidable, due to his missed vacation, but Jay-Den had not said a word to their other friends.
“Did you ever tell them?” Jay-Den said. “Our classmates. About your wedding. The sealing. All that…Ko’Zeine business.”
Darem huffed a sad laugh, and there was that same terrible expression on his round face again. “After the Miyazaki, and everything? And now SAM? No. No one needs to know about my—“ he gestured vaguely, “—situation. Well. I guess maybe they could all use a good laugh.”
“There is nothing funny about it,” Jay-Den said.
“No? B’Avi’s dead, SAM’s going through who knows what and maybe won’t make it either, and I—I got left at the altar and let down everyone I’ve ever known ‘cause I couldn’t, what, smile convincingly enough about the wonderful person I was supposed to marry and the planet I was supposed to inherit? It’s at least a little funny.”
Jay-Den swung his legs over the bed so that he, too, sat on the edge of the mattress beside Darem, and gripped Darem’s shoulder. Beneath the pressed fabric of his uniform, the muscle was tense, almost trembling. Jay-Den said nothing, but after a few seconds, Darem let out a slow breath, closed his eyes, and leaned his shoulder into Jay-Den’s.
“Thank you,” Jay-Den said finally, “for bringing me all of this. I am feeling much better. The tea is delicious.”
Darem glanced at him. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” Jay-Den said honestly.
Darem’s lips twitched into a pale smile. He swallowed thickly, laid his hand on Jay-Den’s still resting on his shoulder, and squeezed it. His fingers were strong and calloused and warm.
“I’ll let you get some rest now,” Darem said. “If there’s anything else you need, don’t hesitate to call. There’s more tea where that came from.”
Jay-Den smiled. “Thank you. I will.”
Darem stood, started toward the door, then hesitated in the middle of the room and turned around. There was an odd look in his dark eyes. “Do you really want to know why I came?”
Another flash of memory—of Darem’s hands and voice and body pressed close, his eyes wide—and a stab of curiosity, of hope, ran through Jay-Den despite the Jaqh-VoD. Maybe…maybe the mystery that was Darem was not so hard to solve after all. He liked the thought, and all it implied, more than he wanted to admit.
“Yes,” Jay-Den said earnestly. “I would like to know.” Then he sneezed, and sneezed again. A few sips of tea tamed the Jaqh-VoD, but apparently the moment had fled with it.
Darem inhaled sharply and let it go in a short, self-deprecating laugh. “Forget it. Not the time. Get some rest. I’ll check in later.”
This time he spun on his heel and left without delay. Jay-Den watched him go with disappointment and hope warring oddly in his chest. Had Darem been about to…? No. Better not even to wonder.
Jay-Den settled back into his bed, pulled the heated blanket tighter around his shoulders, picked up his mug, and pulled his PADD toward him. The messages from his classmates—and from Kyle—still awaited him. Kyle.
Not the time, Darem had said.
The medicine had helped. The blanket had warmed him. The alien tea was very good. Chamomile, the package said. The other items Darem had left would be waiting for him when he had the need. He would defeat the Jaqh-VoD soon. Then, he would find out what Darem intended to say.
Jay-Den set aside his empty mug and curled into the bed again. This time, when he closed his eyes, and drifted, it was with the certainty that no matter what happened next—with his illness, with his classmates, with SAM—he would not be left to battle it alone.