Ladies First

Posted on Thu Sep 1st, 2022 @ 12:43am by Ensign Vivienne Conrad & Ensign Kateyo Fenn

Mission: Scylla and Charybdis
Location: Corridor headed towards Sensor Control
Timeline: MD03
2105 words - 4.2 OF Standard Post Measure

"So, Starfleet builds a ship full of prototypes, big hush-hush, sends it into a veritable shitstorm of radiation and particle debris, and now we're having to fish it out like nobody thought for a moment that wasn't potentially a really stupid idea?"

A fumble of fingers worked at tying the scarf in a knot at the base of her skull, thwarted every now and then by a wayward curl that had other ideas. Vivienne, caught at an awkward angle with a PADD captured under her chin, was doing her best to minimise her jaw movement as she spoke. Trapped between her ankles, her toolkit tipped precariously towards the floor.

"You really should work on your career trajectory," she taunted her work partner, lips tugged sideways in a half-grin. "If this is the kind of half-witted planning the hierarchy are pulling, you'll fit right in."

"Coming from the lady who is literally struggling to dress herself?" Teyo replied. The vague gentleman in him, the one who grew up around ladies his entire life, wanted to interject and help the woman out; the troublesome Trill who was known for not taking things too seriously was enjoying watching her struggle. Her quip about his career trajectory made the troublesome Trill win this particular tug-of-war. "I don't think you know me well enough to know where and why I would fit in anywhere."

Finally yanking her hair into some semblance of obedience, Vivienne raised an eyebrow. "Just how steeped in mystery and intrigue do you think your onboard performance is?" Lifting her chin so that the PADD dropped into her waiting hand, the engineer bent to pick up her toolkit. "Have you got the calibrations Keating sent through?," she asked, changing the subject without adjusting her scepticism.

Teyo raised an eyebrow at her remark at the same time of raising his hand that was holding the PADD with the details of the calibrations they were due to make. As much as he complained about boring George he kinda wished he had been paired with him instead of the attitude with the hair issues. "That's the second time you have implied something about my work ethic," he pointed out, somewhat defensively. "I'd rather you come right out with it if you have something to say, Ensign."

There was heat in Vivienne's deadpan that didn't stray into ongoing unprofessionalism simply because she managed not to speak her displeasure at being reminded of her lack of career advancement. Instead, she took off towards the nearest turbolift at a pace that suggested she'd quite happily leave him behind if she could. Despite working in the same department since her arrival several months ago, Conrad had mostly avoided being paired with the erratic Trill and had not lost any sleep over it. Scuttlebutt could be relied upon to embellish but even taking that into consideration, Kateyo came with a reputation that oozed dramatics. Several people had patted her on the shoulder when the duty roster had been released, as if to offer silent support for a problem she hadn't even had yet.

She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

Entering the turbolift, the engineer turned and faced forward to wait for her partner, and may have been marginally successful in her attempt to give him the cold shoulder had she curbed the desire to roll her eyes. "If we don't pick up the pace, we'll end up behind schedule for the first assignment of the day. I'm not pulling overtime because you dragged your feet."

The stubbornness in him wanted to leave her waiting in the lift for him or more still, turn around and find a different route. He doubted she would have cared and clearly the day didn't need any tension than what was already on offer. He had never interacted with the woman before, so her hostility towards him was irksome, to say the least. He wasn't one to care what others thought about him, especially people who clearly put more faith in the rumour mill than even trying to get to know him, but he wasn't after another bad report to Finn.

So with silent resignation, Teyo headed into the lift, stood next to Conrad and clasped his hands behind his back. His very own silent protest.

It was not lost on Vivienne that, were she back home, her current attitude would have stood out like a sore thumb for all the wrong reasons. If she was honest, it wasn't Fenn himself that she was frustrated with, he was just the only one in the firing line and made an amply impressive target. What's more, none of this was bearing any resemblance to the way she'd promised herself she would approach this situation. One finger-flick at her pride and she'd fired up, right on cue.

Conrad, her service record pointed out at every opportunity, did not find working with others particularly easy. That wasn't to say she was always this bad-tempered about it, that was a result of the ridiculous amount of false sympathy she'd been plied with despite having no personal predisposition to supposed Fenn would be any more problematic than all of her other work partners. Having been self-sufficient for most of her life, Vivienne struggled to divide the workload of tasks that, in her head, were a systematic set of steps that were much easier to achieve if she kept account of them herself. Nobody had forced her to join Starfleet though, her father pragmatically reminded her every time she earned another conduct strike. His constant insistence that there was plenty of work back in the orbital resorts was more than enough impetus to renew her resolve.

Clearly her attempt to use humour to address the volume of expectation flung at her hadn't worked. Oh, if she could only say it was the first time that had backfired. Then, predictably, her temper had spoken for her before she'd had a chance to intervene. Glancing sideways, Conrad considered her options and decided the Risians probably had a point when it came to diplomatic honesty.

"For what it's worth, I wasn't trying to insult you."

Teyo gave the woman a glance as he measured his response. His instincts were telling him to attack whilst her guard was down, but he was trying to be better than the sum of his parts these days. It was working, mostly, he had even managed to have a civilised conversation with Mason recently, but he was still a work in progress and he was very much aware of that.

"Then what were you trying to say?" He asked earnestly.

"It wasn't so much what I was trying to say as it was what I was attempting to find out." Part of Vivienne's natural disposition hated these kind of conversations but she'd grown up amongst people who just loved to talk everything through as if diplomacy was some shiny accolade that demanded constant pursuit. Without realising they were in very similar boats, Conrad consented, however, to making an attempt to smooth things over because she really did need to keep her head clear of the target for a while. "I figure someone who features so often in other people's departmental summaries is either actively encouraging the infamy or just doesn't care about it."

"I suppose that's for you to decide," Teyo said with a shrug as the lift doors parted and deposited them at their required deck. "I know I have a reputation, but then we all do," he added. He had no time for officers that were only out for themselves and from what he had heard so far, Conrad was that very type of officer. Without another word, he left the turbolift and made his way to sensor control.

Narrowed eyes watched him go, though Conrad kept to her own counsel and held her tongue. Following after him in silence for a moment, the engineer dwelt less on what he'd meant by his last statement and more on an attempt to further explain her original intention. The truth was, though she was often oblivious to it until someone pointed it out, Vivienne was just as likely to be judged harshly by other people's analysis of her external behaviour without having any context of her internal motivation. For that reason alone, she should have known better.

Personal growth was hard.

"The point is, having heard just about all I care to about everyone else's expectations of your behaviour, I was..." Just joking sounded incredibly lame but poking fun at him fitting in with Starfleet's dim-witted admiralty had been more a mockery of everyone else's estimation of him than an attempt to belittle the guy himself. It just hadn't worked. She was, at best, a terrible comedian. "...just trying to lighten the mood."

Teyo stopped and turned back to face the woman, he eyed her for a second, trying to judge if she was telling the truth or not. At this point, she had no reason to lie and he had no reason to doubt her sincerity. He wanted to apologise for being so defensive and taking her light-heartedness the wrong way. He had been in her shoes far too often and sometimes you just needed someone to cut you some slack. However, he was still Teyo, "you suck at that," he said.

A returned deadpan was not without it's own spark of indignation but Conrad had resolved not to conform to the crew's expectations on this. A stubborn streak that cut through to her core had balked at being told how she ought to feel about working with someone, and whilst she had held some trepidation of her own, it hadn't taken much to provoke contrariness. She didn't want to deal with his fuss but she likewise wasn't going to allow everyone else dictate what she was supposed to think of him. Vivienne lifted her chin, raised her eyebrows in a mockery of haughtiness, and declared, "I am aware." A far more pragmatic smirk resulted in a shake of her head. "But that doesn't change the fact that I'll be damned if anyone is going to hand me an opinion and expect me to adopt it."

"Finally something we can agree on," Teyo said with a wide grin. Maybe he had gotten her wrong too and he was man enough to admit that; to himself. "We both might survive this assignment after all," he added. "Shall we?" He motioned to the door that read: Sensor Control.

Buoyed by a sense of having dodged a disciplinary bullet for once, Vivienne sized up the Trill and then extended her own hand towards the door. "By all means, age before beauty." This, of course, bore much closer resemblance to jest and was accompanied by a look of such devious challenge that it was likely much harder to mistake it for intentional obstruction. That being said, her tone toyed with playful competitiveness which possibly had the potential to wear out its welcome, at least with less robust personalities.

Teyo looked at the woman, finally getting the sense that he was understanding her sense of humour, or at the very least, what she considered a sense of humour, and smiled. "I get it, you want to admire the view," he said with a grin. "Can't say I blame you, I have a nice tush."

An amused snort carried an element of dissent. "Have you been told that or is it just an ass-umption." It was, in all premeditated seriousness, a terrible joke and Vivienne knew, before it even left her mouth, that it was awful. Word play was a feature of her childhood though, a banter first shared between father and daughter. Boldness was another core trait and so, with an intentional lean to the side, the Ensign considered the sculpted scenery on offer and offered a conciliatory hum. "Could be worse."

"It's a shame the same can't be said about your jokes," Teyo said with a loud laugh. He wondered if she could see that he was tensing himself so hard he could barely walk straight. "Come on, let's get these modifications done before Keating kicks me so hard in the tush, that I can no longer brag about it."

"Something tells me," Vivienne observed as the pair of them stepped through the doors almost in tandem; a compromise, at least for now, "that wouldn't stop you."