USS Carpenter (NCC-1982) — Personal Log Supplement
Stardate 2273.041
Captain's Quarters — 2147 Hours

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MENG OREN: (door chime)

JR MACREADY: Come.

MENG OREN: (entering) Captain MacReady. I apologize for the hour.

JR MACREADY: Commander Oren. I was still up. Sit down.

MENG OREN: Thank you, sir. I will stand, if that is acceptable.

JR MACREADY: It isn't, actually. Sit. You've been on your feet for fourteen hours. So have I.

MENG OREN: (pause) Yes, sir.

JR MACREADY: Now. What brings my Executive Officer and Chief Helmsman to my quarters at nearly twenty-two hundred hours? That's a mouthful of a title, by the way. I keep meaning to have it shortened on the duty roster.

MENG OREN: The matter I wish to raise is private and not suited to the ready room, sir. Nor to any other shared space on this vessel.

JR MACREADY: I see. All right. (pause) Is it Blair again? Because I told him that litter box joke—

MENG OREN: It is not Blair, sir.

JR MACREADY: Childs? Nauls?

MENG OREN: No, sir.

JR MACREADY: Someone made another cat joke? You found toy mouse in front of your quarters again? Come on, Meng, just tell me. Was it one of the gamma shift engineers? I know they've been—

MENG OREN: Captain, it is not a disciplinary matter. No one has said or done anything requiring your intervention. Not tonight.

JR MACREADY: Ah. (pause) Well. That's a relief. Or possibly the beginning of something far more complicated. Which is it?

MENG OREN: I am still determining that myself, sir.

JR MACREADY: All right. Take your time. We have nowhere to be until oh-six-hundred tomorrow. Computer, two coffees. (pause) Unless you'd prefer tea.

MENG OREN: Tea would be preferable, sir. Caitian blend, if the replicator has the pattern.

JR MACREADY: Computer, one coffee, one Caitian tea. (pause) It does. I had it added to the manifest when you transferred aboard. Seemed like the considerate thing to do.

MENG OREN: (pause) I was unaware of that, sir.

JR MACREADY: No reason you should have been. Here. (sound of cups being set down) Now. You wanted to speak privately. We are as private as it gets on a ship of a thousand and a hundred. You have the floor, Commander.

MENG OREN: Before I address the personal matter, sir, I want to formally acknowledge the conclusion of the Setaris operation.

JR MACREADY: We can debrief in the morning, Meng.

MENG OREN: I am not debriefing, sir. I am acknowledging you. Specifically. What you did in that negotiating chamber — the way you held the delegates together when Councilor Veth made that accusation — that was exceptional captaining. I want it on record, even if the record is only this room.

JR MACREADY: (pause) That's... thank you. That actually means something, coming from you.

MENG OREN: I do not offer commendations I do not mean, sir.

JR MACREADY: No, you don't. That's one of the more useful things about you. (pause) You did something remarkable yourself, you know. When the perimeter collapsed and I was still inside that chamber — you had the Carpenter in position before I even called for extraction. Tactical had the shields up. You'd already begun the atmospheric approach. I didn't have to say a word.

MENG OREN: I know the way you think, sir. After a year aboard this vessel, I have learned to anticipate your requirements.

JR MACREADY: You anticipated them before most of my bridge crew had finished processing that the situation had changed. That's not just professional competence, Meng. That's something else.

MENG OREN: I wanted you home safely, sir.

JR MACREADY: (pause) Yes. I noticed. (pause) How are you feeling? After all of it?

MENG OREN: Physically recovered. Somewhat. My auditory sensitivity registered significant overload during the orbital debris phase. Dr. Sheridan cleared me, but there is residual discomfort.

JR MACREADY: And otherwise?

MENG OREN: (pause) Otherwise I am... relieved. That it concluded successfully. That you are unharmed. That the crew—

JR MACREADY: Meng. I'm not filing a report. I'm asking as your captain. How are you?

MENG OREN: (longer pause) I was frightened when you were inside that chamber and the situation destabilized. More frightened than I considered appropriate for a first officer's response to a tactical complication.

JR MACREADY: That sounds like a fairly human reaction to almost losing your CO.

MENG OREN: Perhaps. Yes. I am... I am doing well, sir. Now that we are here and the mission is completed.

JR MACREADY: Good. So am I. (pause) You know, you don't have to be quite so formal when it's just the two of us. And we're the same age, so the sir really isn't necessary. Off the bridge, outside the ready room — you could call me JR. Most people do. Just don't call me Jonron; I had that name during my time at the Academy, and I still don't like it.

MENG OREN: I am aware that you prefer it, sir. I have heard the rest of the senior staff use it.

JR MACREADY: And yet.

MENG OREN: And yet. Old habits, Captain.

JR MACREADY: Is that what they are?

MENG OREN: (pause) No. Not entirely.

JR MACREADY: Then what?

MENG OREN: It is... a form of distance. A deliberate one. That I have been maintaining.

JR MACREADY: Distance from what?

MENG OREN: (very long pause) From this conversation, sir. Which I have been rehearsing for approximately six weeks and which I am now conducting substantially worse than I rehearsed it.

JR MACREADY: (quietly) Ah.

MENG OREN: I have an issue of a personal nature that I feel I can no longer—that I feel I should not—that I believe you have a right to know, regardless of the outcome, because to continue without telling you would be a form of deception, and I have never—

JR MACREADY: Meng.

MENG OREN: Sir.

JR MACREADY: Breathe.

MENG OREN: (pause) Yes. Sir.

JR MACREADY: Take whatever time you need.

MENG OREN: (steadying breath) Over the course of this past year, Captain, I have developed a personal regard for you that exceeds the boundaries of the professional relationship appropriate between a commanding officer and his executive officer. I have made every effort to address this internally and to ensure that it has not and will not affect the performance of my duties. However, I can no longer—in good conscience—continue to serve under you without disclosing it. Because you deserve to know, and because I believe honesty, even when inconvenient, is not optional.

(Silence)

MENG OREN: I am attracted to you, Captain. Romantically. I love you. Have been for some time. I understand if you feel this necessitates a transfer, and I want you to know that I will not—

JR MACREADY: (quietly) I was wondering how long that was going to take.

MENG OREN: I beg your pardon?

JR MACREADY: I said I was wondering how long that was going to take.

MENG OREN: (pause) That is—I don't understand.

JR MACREADY: I think you do.

MENG OREN: Are you saying—

JR MACREADY: I'm saying I am not transferring you anywhere. I'm saying I have been aware of something developing, or possibly already developed, for several months. And I'm saying I chose not to act on it, for reasons I'll get to, but that your disclosure is not exactly a shock to my system.

MENG OREN: You knew.

JR MACREADY: I suspected. There's a difference.

MENG OREN: And you said nothing.

JR MACREADY: Neither did you. For six weeks, apparently. I have had considerably longer.

MENG OREN: (pause) You are telling me you have feelings for me as well.

JR MACREADY: That is what I'm telling you, yes.

MENG OREN: (pause) That was not among the outcomes I rehearsed.

JR MACREADY: You said you rehearsed this for six weeks and you didn't rehearse that outcome?

MENG OREN: I did not allow myself to consider it as a realistic possibility. It seemed— presumptuous.

JR MACREADY: You navigated this ship through a collapsing debris field in near-zero visibility while simultaneously managing tactical, coordinating with medical, and predicting my extraction window to within fifteen seconds. You considered mutual feelings presumptuous.

MENG OREN: Those are different skill sets, sir.

JR MACREADY: (quietly) JR. You can say it. In here, right now. JR.

MENG OREN: (pause) JR.

JR MACREADY: There. That wasn't so bad, was it.

MENG OREN: (quiet pause) No. It was not.

JR MACREADY: So. You have feelings for me. I have feelings for you. We are both adults and Starfleet officers and currently occupying opposite sides of a regulation that exists for very good reasons. What do you want to do about it?

MENG OREN: I don't know yet. I wanted to be honest with you first. Before I decided anything else.

JR MACREADY: That sounds like you.

MENG OREN: May I tell you why? Why I— the reason it became something I could not set aside. I think you should hear it, whatever happens after this.

JR MACREADY: I'd like to hear it very much.

MENG OREN: You are an exceptional captain. I want to say that plainly and separately from everything else, because it is true and it stands on its own. You are bold in ways that require courage, not just impulse. You are genuinely invested in this crew. You push this ship to its limits, but you push yourself harder, and you never ask your people for anything you haven't already asked yourself. I respect you enormously, as a commanding officer. That is the foundation of all of this.

JR MACREADY: Understood.

MENG OREN: But the reason I fell in love with you— (pause) — specifically with you — was the incident at Starbase Twelve. The reception following the Axanar transit mission. Approximately nine months ago.

JR MACREADY: The reception. (pause) I remember it.

MENG OREN: There were three officers from the John F. Kennedy. Lieutenants. They had been speaking with me for some minutes. I was managing it. I am accustomed to managing it. They made several comments about my— about my appearance. My fur. My ears. The usual catalog. And they did it in that particular way that is framed as a compliment and is designed to ensure I cannot object without appearing to lack a sense of humor.

JR MACREADY: I remember.

MENG OREN: One of them called me cute. (pause) He did not mean it as respect. He meant it the way that word is always meant when it is aimed at me by someone I don't know. As a diminishment. As a reduction of everything I am to something manageable and non-threatening and decorative. I have been called cute my entire career. At the Academy, on the Reinard, at every starbase and diplomatic function and awards ceremony I have attended. And every time, I smile, and I move the conversation forward, because making an issue of it reflects worse on me than on them. That is the calculus. You learn it early as a non-human officer and you do not stop performing it.

JR MACREADY: You shouldn't have to.

MENG OREN: No. I should not. But I do. And I was doing it that night, and then you were there, and I had not seen you come over, and you looked at those three officers and you said — do you remember what you said?

JR MACREADY: I told them your rank, and then I asked if they were in the habit of referring to their superior officers by their physical attributes, or if they'd developed that habit specifically for this occasion.

MENG OREN: (very quietly) Yes. You did.

JR MACREADY: You outranked them in grade.

MENG OREN: That is not the point, and you knew it wasn't the point.

JR MACREADY: No. It wasn't.

MENG OREN: You were not angry. You were not making a scene. Your voice was completely level. And they understood immediately. And they left. And you handed me a fresh glass and you said, "You were saying something about the Axanar navigational data?" and we went back to the conversation we'd been having before, as if nothing had happened. You didn't make it about you. You didn't expect my gratitude. You just — corrected it. And moved on.

JR MACREADY: (quietly) It needed correcting.

MENG OREN: Dozens of people have witnessed versions of that kind of exchange over the years, JR. You are the first commanding officer who corrected it without being asked. The first one who didn't weigh the social cost against the inconvenience first. And I— (pause) — I was not expecting that. And I did not recover from it as quickly as I should have.

JR MACREADY: I see.

MENG OREN: I need you to understand what I mean when I say I do not like being called cute. I don't think you fully understand the context.

JR MACREADY: Then explain it. I'm listening.

MENG OREN: There is a phenomenon — it is not new, but it has grown — within certain parts of the Federation, within certain subcultures and certain media channels, of the fetishization of non-human species. Caitians, specifically, have been subject to this in ways that are— that are extensive. There is significant material — holographic, printed, distributed — that reduces Caitians to objects of fantasy. To something exotic and consumable. I became aware of it during my Academy years. I have spent my entire Starfleet career managing my presentation and my interactions in ways designed to discourage that particular reduction. I maintain formality. I hold distance. I dress and carry myself in ways that communicate officer before species. Every time someone calls me cute, they are — whether they intend it or not — pulling me in the direction of that category. They are saying: I see your fur and your ears and your tail before I see your rank and your record.

JR MACREADY: That's exhausting. Doing that every day.

MENG OREN: It is the price of the career I wanted. I accepted it a long time ago.

JR MACREADY: You shouldn't have to accept it.

MENG OREN: And yet. (pause) You have never called me cute. In a year of close daily service, with full knowledge of my species and my background, you have never once — not as a joke, not as a compliment, not in any register — said that word to me. You have called me capable. You have called me infuriating. You have called me right, on the occasions when I have been right, which I note you found difficult.

JR MACREADY: I found the word difficult. Being right came naturally to you.

MENG OREN: You have called me Commander. You have called me Meng. You have never called me an animal, which four separate officers have done to my face over the course of my career, including one who thought he was being affectionate. You see me as an officer who is Caitian. Not as a Caitian who holds a rank. That is the distinction that matters. And in my experience, that distinction is not common.

JR MACREADY: It should be the baseline.

MENG OREN: It should be. It isn't. And that is why I fell in love with you specifically and not simply with someone who was kind to me. You did not discover a new virtue. You operated according to a standard that should be ordinary and is not. And somehow that is more meaningful to me than if you had done something exceptional.

JR MACREADY: (long pause) That's one of the more honest things anyone's ever said to me.

MENG OREN: I told you this would be a personal conversation.

JR MACREADY: You did. (pause) Can I be honest with you in return?

MENG OREN: I am asking for nothing less.

JR MACREADY: I know my reputation. Past tense and present tense. I was— I was not always someone who took these things seriously. Relationships. The people in them. There was a period in my career, and it was not a short period, when I treated personal connections as something that happened between missions and didn't carry over. I am not proud of that. I am actively in the process of not being that person anymore.

MENG OREN: I am aware of your reputation, JR. I served under your sister. She and I had a candid conversation about you before I transferred to this vessel.

JR MACREADY: (pause) Did she.

MENG OREN: She told me that you were a brilliant captain, an occasionally maddening human being, and that if you treated me with anything less than the respect my record warranted, she would find ways to make your life professionally inconvenient that would be difficult to trace back to her.

JR MACREADY: (quiet laugh) That is my sister.

MENG OREN: She also told me that she believed you were capable of better than you'd been. She said she would not recommend me to a captain she did not trust with someone she cared about.

JR MACREADY: She said that.

MENG OREN: She said that. Liz MacReady does not make statements she has not fully considered.

JR MACREADY: No. She never has. (pause) She warned me about you too, you know.

MENG OREN: I would be surprised if she hadn't.

JR MACREADY: She said you were the finest officer she'd had under her command in years of captaining. She said if I made you feel like anything other than what you were — if I reduced you, in any way, to a novelty or a curiosity or something that existed for my convenience — she would consider it a personal affront. And Liz being personally affronted is not a comfortable experience.

MENG OREN: No. I imagine not.

JR MACREADY: She also said — and this is the part she made me promise to take seriously — that you'd spent your whole career being underestimated, that you'd built defenses around yourself that were entirely reasonable given what you'd experienced, and that if I was going to be the kind of commanding officer she'd trained me to be, I would treat those defenses with the respect they'd been earned with. Not try to get around them. Not treat them as a puzzle to solve.

MENG OREN: (quietly) She said that.

JR MACREADY: Word for word, approximately. Liz is precise.

MENG OREN: (pause) I did not know she'd said that to you.

JR MACREADY: There are things your former CO said on your behalf that you'll probably never know about. That's what it means to have someone in your corner.

MENG OREN: (very quietly) She is a remarkable person.

JR MACREADY: She is. And she was right about you. About all of it. Your command presence. Your piloting. Your judgment. The way you'll walk into my ready room and tell me, with complete composure, that I am about to make an error, and then proceed to be correct about it. I want to be angry about that, every time, and I can't quite manage it because you're right and I know you're right and there's something that is— (pause) — there is something that I find genuinely remarkable about your willingness to challenge me when challenge is what's needed. Most first officers accommodate their captains. You improve yours.

MENG OREN: I improve you by disagreeing with you.

JR MACREADY: You improve me by being honest with me when honesty isn't the path of least resistance. That's different. That's moral courage. And it's rare. And I noticed it about three weeks into your posting here and I have not stopped noticing it.

MENG OREN: (pause) We have a significant problem.

JR MACREADY: We have a regulation-shaped problem, yes.

MENG OREN: Which is not a small problem.

JR MACREADY: No. It is not.

MENG OREN: I have thought about this. The fraternization regulations exist for legitimate reasons. Relationships between commanding officers introduce complications that can compromise mission integrity, crew morale, command authority—

JR MACREADY: I know the argument. I helped brief it to two ensigns on my last posting.

MENG OREN: And yet you are not dismissing this conversation.

JR MACREADY: I am not, no.

MENG OREN: Which means you are weighing the complications.

JR MACREADY: I'm weighing everything. That's what captains do.

MENG OREN: Then weigh this: the ship comes first. The mission comes first. The crew comes first. Those are not negotiable conditions I am attaching to a personal request. They are simply true. If at any point a relationship between us compromised any of those three things, it would have to end. That is not a sacrifice I am prepared to make emotionally, but it is a line I am not prepared to cross professionally. You need to know that before anything else.

JR MACREADY: I know that. That's why I didn't act on any of this myself. Because I wasn't certain you felt the same way, and beginning something one-sided with my XO, regardless of what I felt, would have been exactly the kind of command decision my sister would have had words with me about.

MENG OREN: Wisely considered.

JR MACREADY: I have moments. (pause) I should tell you something about my family, since we're being fully transparent.

MENG OREN: Your uncle is an admiral.

JR MACREADY: My uncle is an admiral, yes. My grandfather's name is on a starship. My father's name is on a shipyard. My aunt's name is on a training institute in Edinburgh. The MacReady family is, for reasons I am sometimes grateful for and sometimes profoundly tired of, very well positioned within Starfleet's institutional memory.

MENG OREN: I am aware. The crew is aware. It is not the most closely held information aboard this vessel.

JR MACREADY: I bring it up because: if this comes to an official investigation, there are people who would make it go away quietly. I want to be honest about that. The option exists. And I want to be equally honest that I do not intend to use it, because using institutional family influence to protect a personal decision from professional consequences is exactly the kind of thing that turns good captains into people I don't want to be. So I am not going to rely on it. I'd rather we handle this properly or not at all.

MENG OREN: I respect that. Significantly.

JR MACREADY: Good. So. If we proceed — if we even consider proceeding — we proceed with rules. Rules we set ourselves, rules we both hold to, rules that put the Carpenter first at every decision point.

MENG OREN: Agreed. I have thought about this in some detail.

JR MACREADY: I expected nothing less. What did you come up with?

MENG OREN: No demonstration of personal regard on duty. In any form. No preferential treatment in either direction — not leniency toward me, not additional scrutiny toward me to avoid the appearance of leniency. On the bridge, in the ready room, during any operational situation, we are Captain and Commander. That relationship does not change.

JR MACREADY: Agreed.

MENG OREN: Any disagreement between us regarding mission decisions is resolved on its merits, as it currently is, without personal considerations entering the equation on either side. My standing to challenge your judgment must not be compromised by the fact that I am in a relationship with you, and your ability to overrule me must not be compromised by the same.

JR MACREADY: Also agreed. That one I think we manage naturally already.

MENG OREN: We do. I am specifying it to ensure it remains true. (pause) If at any point either of us determines that the relationship is affecting command performance — either our own or the other's — we discuss it immediately and honestly. Not defensively. Not in service of preserving the relationship. In service of the ship.

JR MACREADY: Those are good rules.

MENG OREN: I have a few more.

JR MACREADY: Of course you do.

MENG OREN: No significant personal discussions during active mission phases. No decisions made about the relationship during high-stress operational periods — including immediately after them. Both of us are currently operating on fourteen hours of accumulated mission fatigue and the emotional residue of a tense successful extraction. We should both note that context.

JR MACREADY: Are you suggesting we table this until we're less tired?

MENG OREN: I am suggesting that we have been honest with each other tonight, and that is sufficient for tonight. I am not suggesting we are making commitments at twenty-two hundred hours in your quarters after a fourteen-hour mission. That would violate my own rule.

JR MACREADY: (quietly) You rehearsed the rules too.

MENG OREN: I rehearsed everything, JR. I have been managing this conversation in my head for six weeks. Some of it I even got approximately right.

JR MACREADY: What did you get wrong?

MENG OREN: I expected you to be kind but ultimately to tell me that you did not feel the same way and that you hoped we could maintain our professional relationship. I had a full response prepared for that outcome. I was prepared to request a brief reassignment to give us both distance before reasserting the working relationship. I had identified an Oberth-class science mission in Sector Fourteen that would have taken approximately three weeks.

JR MACREADY: An Oberth-class? Meng. You'd have hated every minute of that.

MENG OREN: It was a sacrifice I was prepared to make for professionalism.

JR MACREADY: I would never transfer you to an Oberth-class vessel. That's practically punitive.

MENG OREN: You have transferred junior officers to worse for less.

JR MACREADY: Those junior officers had not spent a year being the best first officer I've had in my command career. The Oberth is not in the cards. You should know that.

MENG OREN: (pause) I am glad to hear it.

JR MACREADY: For what it's worth, I thought about what my reaction would be if you ever said something. I had my own version of the rehearsal.

MENG OREN: And?

JR MACREADY: I decided a long time ago that if you came to me like this, I was going to be honest. Even if the honest answer was complicated. You've earned honesty. You operate by it. The least I could do was match it.

MENG OREN: (very quietly) You are a good man, JR MacReady.

JR MACREADY: I'm working on it.

MENG OREN: You are not working on it. You already are one. You simply have not updated your self-assessment.

JR MACREADY: (pause) That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me.

MENG OREN: I have said nice things to you before.

JR MACREADY: You've said accurate things to me before. This is the first one that felt personal.

MENG OREN: (pause) Then you're welcome.

JR MACREADY: You know, for someone who said she wasn't sure how this was going to go, you look remarkably composed right now.

MENG OREN: I assure you I am not.

JR MACREADY: You look it.

MENG OREN: Caitians control their facial expressions somewhat differently than humans do. The emotional state registers in other ways.

JR MACREADY: Your tail, for instance. Which has been moving for the last several minutes.

MENG OREN: (pause) I am aware.

JR MACREADY: You don't have to be embarrassed about it.

MENG OREN: I am not embarrassed. I am— (pause) — I am slightly embarrassed.

JR MACREADY: (gently) Don't be.

MENG OREN: You are being patient about this in a way that is making it considerably more difficult to maintain composure, JR. I want you to know that.

JR MACREADY: Is that what that sound is?

MENG OREN: (pause) I— yes. That is— yes. The purring is involuntary. In this context. I apologize.

JR MACREADY: Please don't apologize. I find it—

MENG OREN: If you say cute—

JR MACREADY: I was going to say reassuring. I was going to say it's reassuring to know that this conversation is having an effect on you, because I was starting to wonder if I was the only one in the room who was nervous.

MENG OREN: (quiet pause) You are nervous?

JR MACREADY: I've been nervous since you walked in and said it was private. I've been significantly more nervous for the last thirty minutes.

MENG OREN: (quietly) You hid it well.

JR MACREADY: Captains practice.

MENG OREN: (slight pause) I should explain the purring, actually, for the sake of complete transparency. It is not— it is not always about contentment. It has several triggers. Happiness. Relaxation. Pain. Stress. And— (pause) — there is also a physiological component that is relevant to our current discussion. My subspecies experiences heat cycles.

JR MACREADY: Cold-climate Caitian.

MENG OREN: Yes. I am from a cold-climate family line. The cycle is monthly, rather than seasonal as it is for warmer-climate subspecies. It is manageable. I have managed it throughout my career. It is simply— contextually relevant, given what we are discussing. It affects certain physiological responses. The purring, in this particular case, is one of them.

JR MACREADY: Understood.

MENG OREN: I want to be honest with you about the physical reality of my species rather than— rather than allow you to discover it later without context. The reproductive anatomy is— (pause) — somewhat different from human standard. Not dramatically. But different in ways that are worth knowing.

JR MACREADY: I appreciate the transparency.

MENG OREN: I have become accustomed to providing it when appropriate. It is not a comfortable conversation to have, but it is a practical one.

JR MACREADY: For what it's worth— and I want to say this carefully, because I don't want you to think I've been— this is not new territory for me, in general terms. I was on an exchange assignment aboard the Enterprise several years ago. I was briefly involved with one of the crew. A Caitian communications officer.

MENG OREN: (pause) The Enterprise. A Caitian communications officer.

JR MACREADY: Yes.

MENG OREN: (quiet pause) Lieutenant Shiboline M'Ress.

JR MACREADY: (pause) You know her.

MENG OREN: I know her. We have— we are acquainted. Fairly well acquainted.

JR MACREADY: Ah.

MENG OREN: Are you still—

JR MACREADY: No. That was brief and it concluded cleanly and there are no ongoing— no. She is well. She was well when I last had any information. But there is no— no. It is done. Has been for some time.

MENG OREN: (pause) I see.

JR MACREADY: Are you angry?

MENG OREN: (considering) No. I am— no. I am actually relieved. I was not certain how much I would need to explain about my species' physiology, and it appears the answer is: less than I anticipated. Which makes this conversation somewhat easier.

JR MACREADY: Then we can skip some of the technical briefing.

MENG OREN: We can skip most of it, yes.

JR MACREADY: And M'Ress?

MENG OREN: What we are is— we are old friends who understand each other. That is all that matters for this conversation.

JR MACREADY: The Federation is smaller than it looks, sometimes.

MENG OREN: (quiet, and something like amusement in the tone) Occasionally, yes.

JR MACREADY: Can I say something that is observational and not reductive? Because I want to say something and I'm aware of the framework we've been operating in.

MENG OREN: You may say it. I will tell you if it lands wrong.

JR MACREADY: Your fur. In the light right now. The orange, and the— there's a creamier tone along your jaw and your throat and below. I had not fully— I had noticed it before, but in this light—

MENG OREN: (pause) You may continue.

JR MACREADY: It's striking. You're striking. I say that as someone who is looking at a person, not cataloging a species. I want that to be clear.

MENG OREN: (quiet pause) It is clear. And the cream coloring is— it is characteristic of cold-climate lines. The contrast. It is more pronounced in winter light or in warm interior lighting. I have been told it is unusual.

JR MACREADY: It's beautiful. You're beautiful. I also want that to be clear.

MENG OREN: (long pause, and the purring is audible again) You are making the involuntary responses significantly worse, JR.

JR MACREADY: I'm sorry.

MENG OREN: You are not sorry.

JR MACREADY: No. I'm not. (pause) Your eyes, by the way. The blue. I have been wondering for approximately eight months what I was supposed to do about the fact that your eyes are that specific shade of blue and you look at me with them on the bridge approximately fourteen times a shift.

MENG OREN: I was not aware I was making that count difficult for you.

JR MACREADY: The count was not intentional. It happened anyway.

MENG OREN: (quietly, something almost warm in the tone) You have— your voice is— I should tell you something, since we are exchanging these observations.

JR MACREADY: Please.

MENG OREN: You have a very deep voice. When you speak on the bridge and I am at the helm and you give a course correction or a tactical command, the register of your voice— (pause) — carries in ways that have made it occasionally difficult to maintain the professional detachment I described.

JR MACREADY: You're telling me that my voice has been a problem.

MENG OREN: Your voice has been a significant contributing factor to six weeks of rehearsal, yes.

JR MACREADY: (quiet laugh) I don't know what to do with that.

MENG OREN: You do not need to do anything with it. I am simply— we are being honest. (pause) The brown hair. The beard. The— the green of your eyes is also a specific shade that does not help matters. I want you to know that I noticed all of it before I noticed the voice. But the voice is persistent in ways that other things are not.

JR MACREADY: I'm glad something about me registers.

MENG OREN: A great deal about you registers, JR. That has been the problem since approximately the fourth month of this posting. Prior to that I had achieved a working equilibrium.

JR MACREADY: What broke the equilibrium?

MENG OREN: (pause) The Starbase Twelve reception. I told you. When you addressed those officers.

JR MACREADY: That was nine months ago.

MENG OREN: Yes. The equilibrium broke nine months ago. I have been managing this conversation since then. Six weeks of formal rehearsal. Two months of informal management before that.

JR MACREADY: (quietly) I'm sorry I made you carry that alone for that long.

MENG OREN: It was the right approach. I needed to be certain.

JR MACREADY: Are you certain?

MENG OREN: (pause) I am here. At twenty-two hundred hours. After fourteen hours on duty. After rehearsing this conversation for six weeks. I have never done anything in my career that I was not certain of.

JR MACREADY: No. You haven't. (pause) Meng.

MENG OREN: Yes.

JR MACREADY: I would like to—

(Brief pause)

MENG OREN: (quietly) I know.

(A moment)

(Meng kisses him)

(Silence)

JR MACREADY: (very quietly, after) I was going to say I would like to have this conversation again. Tomorrow. When we're both rested.

MENG OREN: (pause) I know what you were going to say, JR.

JR MACREADY: (quietly) Yes. I know you did.

MENG OREN: (pause) I should go.

JR MACREADY: You should.

MENG OREN: The rules stand. What I said earlier.

JR MACREADY: The rules stand. We discuss this properly when we're both slept and on steady footing. Nothing is decided tonight that needs to be permanent.

MENG OREN: (pause) Some things may already be decided. Whether or not we have named them yet.

JR MACREADY: (very quietly) Yes. Some things may be.

MENG OREN: (composing herself, and there is a shift in register back toward the formal, though not entirely) I— thank you, Captain. For hearing me. And for being honest in return.

JR MACREADY: Thank you for trusting me with it. It wasn't nothing, what it took to walk in here.

MENG OREN: It was not. (pause) Goodnight, JR.

JR MACREADY: Goodnight, Meng.

(Sound of the door)

(Silence)

---

End of record.

—

Story and characters: Meng Oren and JR MacReady ©  An Orange Space Cat
Art by:  tony07734123/KangWolf

Caitian species and related lore © Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry and owned by Paramount Global.