Joint Personal Log - Capt Ivanova & LtCmdr Waterhouse - "Will You Talk to Me?"

Posted on Sat Sep 13th, 2014 @ 12:00am by Admiral Rochelle Ivanova & Commander Amelia Waterhouse

1,928 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Are You Touched?

Amelia strolled to the door that divided her and Rochelle's room. Her soft soled black suede boots were whisper quiet as she moved across the carpet — not even the buckles on the many straps dared make an unwanted noise — and her translucent bright green shirt dress floated around her as it hung off her curves over the skin tight black halter cat suit. Her knuckle met the door in a pattern, she spoke the words that matched it with a grin, "Shave and a haircut." She waited to see if her friend would give the right response.

Getting up from her bed, Rochelle crossed the short distance to one of the doors that connected her room to others. "Two bits." She replied with a sigh, remembering the line from Who Framed Roger Rabbit as if it were a curse against her very existence. Unlocking and opening the door, she motioned her friend inside and took leave back to her bedroom in search of footwear, her jeans hissing the entire way back. "Is there something I should know about the dress code to Klingon bars or am I just fine?"

"You could walk in wearing a potato sack, and as long as you're drinking something, you'll generally get treated well enough," Amelia explained, looking Rochelle's outfit over with a head tilt. Her eyes stopped on the polo shirt her friend had paired with her jeans, and she couldn't help shaking her head, a couple strands of hair that'd escaped her messy bun falling across her eyes. She tucked them behind her ear quickly. "However, there's a difference between treating you like just another person in the bar, and treating you like a tourist. That shirt screams tourist."

"A polo shirt screams tourist?" Rochelle asked, stopping dead in her tracks and pivoting to face the other woman, "I think the fact I'm human screams tourist more so than my polo."

"There's a difference between tourist, and human on vacation. Tourists generally ask stupid questions, hand holocameras around to get stupid shots with locals, and drink too much of the wrong kind of alcohol — ending up in the gutters or being carried home by a local that was hired to escort them. A blouse and flats, and you'll be golden." Amelia grinned wide, setting a hand on a hip. "Is Commander Dahe'el joining us, or is it just us two?"

A soft snort was all Amelia would receive in reply as Rochelle turned again and muttered as she head deeper into the suite's bedroom. A black polo shirt was flung from obscurity a moment later to sail neatly past the open door and into no man's land. "Commander Dahe'el isn't aware of our plans." She finally vocalized something, tugging a new shirt over her head. It was several shades of purple and flowed delicately as if it should have belonged on a fairy or nymph.

"He isn't? I'm surprised," Amelia quipped with a smirk. "Is it so we can gossip about him like teen girls?" Amelia stalked to the door out to the balcony and looked out. "They did give you the better view, there's a generator shack on the edge of mine. Understandable that they'd do that though, since you're Captain."

"There's nothing to gossip about." Rochelle chided as she stepped back into the living area, tugging her hair up and into a claw clip. Her eyes roamed past Amelia and to the sea beneath them. It undulated and rolled, far angrier than it had been earlier that day. "Ferengi are shrewd little creatures when they want to be, they want to make the most profit they possibly can." She mused out loud, watching the way the moon cast its light over the choppy waters, "I think the only exception to that rule may be our engineering officer."

"Zola is an odd one, isn't she?" Amelia allowed, glancing over her shoulder to see what her friend had changed into. She smiled at the new shirt choice. "I find it hard to believe that the man who sends the whole gossip brigade into a tizzy just by dancing with our Phoenix of a captain, and who has been giving you looks that I can read plain as day, yields nothing to talk about." Amelia crossed her arms as she spun to face Rochelle. Her dress floated around her gracefully, looking not unlike a jelly fish for a fleeting moment.

"She is." Rochelle agreed, "doesn't fit the typical Ferengi billet at all." The little Captain's arms folded defensively over her chest the longer Amelia spoke of Almar. Guarding him by way of guarding herself as she looked on with wary eyes. "The ship will gossip as it sees fit, but I assure you there's nothing to gossip about. I danced with a lot of men that night, including your father." She said pointedly.

"You danced with Daddy because he was playing respectable Admiral that night," Amelia dismissed. "You'd just promoted his daughter, gotten a promotion yourself, AND was officially given command of Vindi. He couldn't not dance with you. However, even taking the dance out of the equation, I've seen some of the looks he's give you. He worships the ground you walk on."

A soft scoff left Rochelle's throat and nose in response. "Hardly. He and I have history, he watches out for me and I do the same for him." She retorted, moving towards her hotel room door.

"He flew Vindicator into atmo for you. A ship he designed and therefore knew exactly what sort of hell he was committing himself and his team to repairing," Amelia insisted, following right on Rochelle's six. "That's not the act of a friend, that's an act of someone in love."

In love. Her mind processed the thought for a moment, allowing it to simmer and dissolve through its key fundamentals before being absorbed. Her eyes closed for the process, simply allowing one foot to follow the other along the cobble stone path way. "He's devoted to his post, Amelia. He went in to save the command team as a whole." She replied without looking towards the woman following behind her as her eyes reopened. She knew there was more there, he'd all but said as much during their times alone with one another. The way he touched her, held her, kissed her. She knew, but wasn't ready to accept it for what it was.

"Weren't you the one who told me how he'd said he'd always come for you? And keep coming for you?" Amelia knew that Rochelle could perhaps quibble over the wording, but there was no doubt the meaning was accurate between her words and the words her friend had told her over tea. "Fleet regs by no means allow for risking the whole ship to recover only a couple of officers, even if they are the command staff. Just because he knew the ship because he designed it doesn't make it any less of a risk."

"We all bend the rules for one another, Amelia." The Captain's response was pointed, to the point, concealing a not so thinly veiled double meaning as she flung it to the wind for her first officer to do with as she pleased. "It's all part of being a family, it's expected." This time her words were punctuated with a shrug, "in much the same that you and he have gone out of your way to accommodate the lounge manager without so much as a word consulting me."

"I haven't done anything with the bar manager but tried to keep a very annoying man out of your hair," Amelia objected, the look on her face scrunched up in confusion. "I turned down a bunch of ridiculous requests he made, after getting cornered into personally escorting him to his quarters — which weren't big enough to hold his over-inflated ego... and I grabbed an engineer to help him with one thing I looked the other way on just to get him to shut up. Did Zola do something for him she wasn't supposed to?"

"Something about hot tubs, feng shui and Christ only knows what else." Rochelle muttered as she continued along, "those changes had to be authorized and I'm starting to feel like you all doubt my ability to run this ship so you're running it yourself."

"The feng shui is a load of crap. I moved a lamp across his quarters for him because he insisted it killed his zen or some shit," Amelia dismissed with an eye roll. She fell into step next to Rochelle. "No one doubts your ability, there's just a lot of stuff to get done. So we take the stuff small enough to be little more than an annoyance off your plate, so you can focus on the biggest and more important stuff."

The little Captain's step faltered for a second before she picked her pace back up, considering what had been said. "It's not even about him, Amelia." She sighed softly, catching sight of the woman out of the corner of her eye, "We need to be a well oiled machine, completely and utterly synchronized. I need to know these things. I'm not going to break." She said with a shake of her head, her hands emphasizing her points as they walked along.

"The only thing that'll ever stop you, is you," Amelia returned to Rochelle's comment about not breaking. "If you want, I'll write you a weekly report with a list of all the bandaids I apply without checking in with you first."

"And I go out of my way not to stop myself." Rochelle replied, pausing at a fork in the path and pondering each. One she knew would lead them in a wide arc through the resort grounds and back to the safe warmth of their rooms. The other would take them off the property and into the relative unknown. Once upon a time ago she'd been a rebellious risk taker known for flying by the seat of her pants and defying both logic and conventional wisdom with each defiant breath she took. And then Andrea Levine had gotten a hold of her for a second time and spent years fine tuning the young officer until she became the woman that now stood contemplating what could very well have been defined as suicide. The unknown. The danger lurking out on the streets of Qo'noS during a war where sides were split and lines were drawn heavily in the sand. Almar's words of warning rung freely in her head. Vlimar's concern that had lead him to babysit her out on the trails. They all spoke to the Captain saying NO!.

She took the path leading towards the open streets.

"Please do. You never know when what lies under one of those bandaids will become a roaring infection."

"Like Norby," Amelia returned with an eye roll. She'd half-held her breath when Rochelle paused at the fork in the paths. If she'd backed out, Amelia would have been going to the bar by herself, later... after having to ditch Rochelle. She couldn't come to Qo'noS without getting a bar crawl in. She hoped to get a couple in during this trip since she'd been expected to behave so well recently with her new job.

"Norbert." Rochelle corrected with a nod as she strolled on down the path to either fortune or ruin.

=/\= END LOG =/\=

Captain Rochelle Ivanova
Commanding Officer
USS Vindicator

Lt Commander Amelia Waterhouse
Executive Officer
USS Vindicator

 

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