Gossip, Girl
Posted on Tue Mar 14th, 2023 @ 10:44pm by Fleet Captain Maxwell Culver & Lieutenant Rowena "Rena" Campbell
2,227 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission:
Good Will Tour: Mountain Home [Part Two]
Location: Triton Seabase: Counselor’s Suite
Timeline: MD14: 1000 hours
Max adjusted his uniform jacket as he approached Rena’s counseling suite. Just two days ago, they had been up on the top deck for their session, but now it was raining, forcing them indoors.
Max touched the announce chime and noticed his hair was a bit off. He ran his fingers through it a couple of times until he was happy with it.
Rena was a little surprised when Max had requested an appointment with her so soon after their last session. It meant either REALLY GOOD news or REALLY BAD news. She smiled as she let him in; he didn’t seem upset. She settled in as usual and let him do his thing. Sometimes he sat, sometimes he paced.
How should she approach this? Head on, she decided. “I just saw you two days ago. What happened between then and now?” She projected calm into the room, just in case.
Max smiled brightly. He felt it had to be as bright as Dani’s smile from the other night. He settled into the square armchair, but sat oddly in it. His back rested against the right armrest, his right leg bent at the knee and touched the floor while his left leg dangled off the left armrest. “Date night happened, Rena,” Max answered. “Two days ago, he came here. I’m a little more than infatuated,” he insisted.
Rena smiled again. "Ah. I see. Infatuation is a fun feeling. I can tell you're more buoyant than usual. Tell me what happened. What did you guys end up doing??" she asked. "Do you want coffee? Tea? Water?" She'd forgotten to ask him. "More importantly, will you keep seeing him??" She walked a fine line with Max; between counselor and confidante, and friend. She was always a confidante, and usually was always in Counselor mode while on the clock, but today, she could *also* be a friend.
Max hadn’t considered a drink either, but now that it was offered. “I’ll have coffee, cream and sugar,” he asked.
When Rena handed it to him, Max took a sip. It was a bit too hot, so he would have to let it cool for a minute. There was a lot to unpack there with Rena’s 21 questions in 21 seconds. “I’m, I asked him over for dinner. He brought some wine. My mother always told me gentlemen don’t kiss and tell,” he paused with a knowing smirk on his face.
“I will say this, the pizza was cold by the time we got around to eating it. I’m going to ask this seriously, Rena, because Starfleet requires it be done this way, I would like you to be the counselor who approves the dissolution of my vow of celibacy. As you know, I only asked for it to be placed because of my own insecurities.
“And, if I’m being honest, I already broke it anyway.” He looked at Rena with a sense of devilish pride and amusement.
Rena smiled a wry smile. OF COURSE he had. This wasn't news to her. "I would be more than happy to do that for you. Just tell me what you need from me." She didn't address the second comment; let him enjoy his happiness. "Your mother has a point," she conceded.
“As for plans to see him again?” Max paused, “we have another date scheduled tomorrow, at his place this time.”
Rena chuckled. "Very nice. Please visit the sickbay for...whatever it is you need to be safe if you need to. Do you want me to schedule that right now with Dr. Grocx?" She offered. "And um, don't forget to let the others know you'll be unavailable this weekend."
“I’ve already got the leave time covered, Rena. Here’s the problem, I haven’t been entirely trusting since the whole ’Jack tried to kill me event’.
“I like Daniel very much, but there’s a sense that I’ll never be able to fully trust him. Now, I know from many that El-Aurians that we can use some type of innate truth pheromones to induce the truth from someone.
“It’s ethically wrong to use my biology to get the truth, just so I can feel better, right?!” He raised his tone at the end of the question to imply that he wanted to pretend that there was some doubt.
The Betazed woman - HALF - just shrugged. "Listen. I'd be lying if I said I never used my empathic skills to...help things go a different way. But never in my own favor! That wouldn't be ethical. But you know...just to calm people down or...excite them for something. Things like that."
She sighed deeply. "So...is it ethically wrong? I would say it's an ethically gray area, truthfully. My father taught us - ME - I am the only one of us kids to have inherited his powers - that if it is to directly benefit ourselves in someway, that's probably not a good time to use them. If it's for the greater good, then, use your best judgement. What does your gut say?" She already knew the answer from his tone, but wanted to hear it from the horses' mouth, so to speak.
Max settled back and considered the question Rena had just presented him. If Dani wasn’t trustworthy-regardless of whether it meant he would kill Max or not - it was certainly worth knowing. Doubtless, he held a lot of sway with the Senate due to his family’s business.
Rena continued, "Also, it makes sense to not be completely trusting of people, irrespective of Jack DiBello and his murderous impulses."
She'd gotten the story out of Vi during one of their girly-chat sessions. "I suspect that a hint of skepticism is how you're still alive, Captain." The Goddess's knew it wasn't due to any behaviors. "So...take it slowly, and carefully. It'll happen in time. You will need to start off with little things - say, a secret thing like you might tell me. And then, as he shows himself to be more and more earning of your trust, the things you tell him - and me, likely - will grow over time."
She had always joked that the reason that she was overweight was that it was where she stuffed peoples' deepest secrets, thoughts, and desires. "I trust you'll know fairly quickly though. The unsavory among us usually play their hand sooner rather than later," she said. She sipped a bit more coffee.
"Tell me more."
Max laughed. While Rena had gone on rambling, Max had decided well before her first rant that he would try to use his truth pheromones. He was sure there had to be something in the studies of his people on their and uses how to activate them
“The Terrans have saying, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.” Max sipped his own coffee. “If that’s true, his eyes are the windows to another galaxy entirely. Imagine the lightest shade of blue, just barely shy of white, which slowly spreads from the center changing ever so slightly as the blue swirls to the boarder, emulating the darker colors around David’s blue hole in the Caribbean Sea. Suddenly, this light blue is stopped by a dark blue that becomes a blue almost so dark that it’s black. This exterior boundary is the last color of the iris. Quite remarkable against the white sclera.
Dark, sometimes black, sometimes brown hair hangs in flowing, curled, wavy forms. Sometimes, like its owner, the hair is easily tamed, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Teeth so white hide behind plump, sometimes pink, sometimes red, lips that beg to be kissed, to be touched.” Max paused as he realized how stupid he had made himself feel. “How do you describe infatuation, Rena?” Max asked rhetorically.
“There’s the strong jawline, the strength of muscle, bone, tendon, sinew. The perfect skin. Not unblemished. No. There are freckles, moles, a red from too much sun, the beard stubble, the eyebrows, the shy blush, the even shyer smile.
And then infatuation becomes something else? Hmm? Something romantic. Something lustful. Then infatuation, romance and lust all turn to the dreaded love. That one thing no El-Aurian can have until they have lived one hundred and fifty years…and then, not with a Terran.”
A tear rolled down Max’s cheek. “And even then, never with a man. No!” Max laughed, but you could hear the hurt and anger in this laugh. “No, this infatuation, this romance, this LOVE belongs to a betrothed. A genetic match chosen while we are infants by old men in a building not quite as decrepit as them and their repugnant minds.“
Max gathered himself, stopped his show of tears and real emotion. “I know this probably sounds stupid to you. That a hundred and fifty years are a lifetime for you, but for me…for Vianola, years are like your days, your hours, your minutes, your seconds. And even for us, this time is not enough!”
Rena quietly listened. "You should have forwent a military career for one of the arts, you know." She remarked, wryly. She continued. "So...don't think about it as a true relationship, or even a romance. Just...fun. A one night stand. A really long one night stand." She shrugged. "The oldest known Betazed was a hundred five years old at death. My Terran blood cuts that by about a quarter, even with how strong my Betazed genetics are. You....are lucky. If you don't know it. To be able to EXPERIENCE that infatuation, that lust, that romance many times over. Most of us will only experience it once if we're lucky." At this point in their sessions, Rena was mostly just "winging it" with her education, because try as she might, she still wasn't able to find any resource called "How to counsel your captain when they are an El Aurian prone to dramatics." Her mentor had answered her pleas for help with more of usual, dumb Romulan insights, like "Trust your logic" and "You're a good counselor, you'll figure it out."
So she had. "Are things outside of a binary not recognized by your people?" She queried. Some races were stuck in old ways. Some had managed to catch up. Some just turned the other cheek.
"You know what? Nevermind that. Tell me more...what did you do? Don't...go into specific details. That part I don't need to know yet. Just..the itinerary."
“So you want the tea?” Max asked, seriously. Rena couldn’t handle much more than the PG version, the Disney version. In his mind, Max laughed as he edited the story. “Once upon a time…” he joked. Laughing loudly in Rena’s office, not with her but in front of her.
“But seriously, he wanted a formal date night, so that was how he learned he was going on a date with a Starfleet captain. Surprised may have been an understatement. Once we were back at my quarters, he decided formal was maybe too much, so we changed into some sweats and pajamas, ordered a pizza and had some of the wine Dani brought.
“Let’s just say, the pizza got cold and the wine got warm…” Max said by way of explanation without the details.
Rena smiled. "I am glad!! I know you were worried that he might not be interested in more than the physical, and while that's not unimportant, you need more to a relationship than sex. Not that sex isn't fun-it is, and it definitely has its place. But a heavy connection? That's what matters on those days where you're ragged from a mission, you have a pimple on your chin, and look like a used dishrag. Passion. Love," she sighed.
"Enjoy this, Captain," she said, peering at him over the rim of her glasses.
Max could feel his own amusement at her anger, followed by something not his…melancholy? Maybe even jealousy? Sucking up his own happiness into its own bundle, Max nodded.
Rena felt alone. Not lonely, in the sense that she had no friends, but alone in the sense that she had no one to feel these feelings with for herself. Max looked at the clock and was aware that Rena had him scheduled for a talk to a Klingon, of all species, on the dangers of interspecies, sexual relationships that would be made all the more difficult based on the fact it was a same sex couple.
“Rena,” Max said, tapping at his watch/Starfleet everything upgrade. “Would you join me in Sickbay?” He suddenly felt her anxiety and decided to make it a bit of a prank.
She sighed. “Of course I will.” As mortifying as it will be, she WAS a professional and she could handle it. “We can end here, unless you have more.”
“Aside from being more professional with the new doctor, as this is my first clinical experience with him,” Max answered, his tone light. “Some first impression…”
Rena laughed. "I am sure he's had worse. He IS Klingon, you know." She let out a sigh. How the HELL did her career trajectory lead her HERE?!
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