Blurred Lines

Posted on Mon Jan 16th, 2023 @ 11:37am by Lieutenant Kevan Dash & Ensign Ziahli Lorel

Mission: Wrath of the People
Location: Corridor/Personal Quarters
Timeline: After Avalon Mission
2496 words - 5 OF Standard Post Measure

"Looks like you'll live to toss another Romulan."

The voice from behind Dash, several steps away from entering his quarters, danced with a light-heartedness that was perhaps a little out of place given recent events, at least judging by the general mood of most of the other crew Ziahli had encountered since leaving Sickbay. Not one to discredit the seriousness of a mission gone somewhat awry, the Betazoid also wasn't the type to lean into misery if there was another option. She also had her race's inherent ability to read a room and, in this particular case, it didn't seem likely that dwelling on close-calls would be this particular officer's preferred method of dealing with things.

She was checking up on him. He had been shot, after all.

Zia, for her part, looked none the worse for wear. The damage to her cheek had been superficial and easily healed. More to the point, rather than seeming spooked by their near-death shoot-out, the brunette exuded the kind of energy that heralded an invigoration of purpose. She wasn't easily scared, and nobody had promised her that deployment was going to be easy.

Approaching, she stopped within a metre or so and leaned against the bulkhead, arms folded across her stomach. "According to a little birdie I overheard in Sickbay, you're supposed to be resting."

"I'm not running around the ship chasing pretty Betazoids," he retorted. "Looks like they're the ones chasing me, actually. Might have to start batting them away at this rate." He made a minor motion towards his quarters with his sore right arm. "I really can't help it if they're inviting themselves over to my place to help with the healing process."

"You make it sound like I was lying in ambush." An amused deadpan pinned him for a moment. "I don't have any control over where you turned up when I was finally let out of Sickbay and had five seconds to myself." Zia lifted her chin and thwarted a grin's attempt to escape. "But I would love a coffee now that you mention it, thank you."

He tapped the door control and nodded at it with a flick of his head. "You read my mind." He stepped back from the door frame, allowing just enough space for her to squeeze past: a deliberately small space so that she would have to brush against him to get through.

And, because it didn't take a telepath to read right through his intent, Zia obliged by squeezing through whilst facing him, content to make eye contact until her natural momentum shifted her past the point of friction and into the room beyond.

Once inside, the Betazoid hesitated a moment before helping herself to a space on the sofa. As far as ulterior motives went, there was a purpose to her visit, something she wanted to get out of the way before bringing it up became an awkward throwback. It could wait for the coffee, though.

"So, what's the damage?," she asked, indicating with a flick of her head his injured arm.

"Well, I'm not dead," he said, moving to the replicator to request the hot beverages. "Doctor said I might end up with a scar, though, so that's pretty cool." He handed over the steaming mug. "What about you? No lasting damage I hope."

Reaching up to accept the drink she was offered, Zia hunched a nonchalant shoulder. "It could have been worse." Which was, for the most part, why she'd decided that now was a good time to hunt him down. Whilst she wasn't prone to bouts of gushing, the Betazoid had been given plenty of time to realise the significance of her colleague's actions in regard to her own survival. "And how many people can say they survived a shoot-out with Romulans in their first few weeks of service?"

"Not many, you're definitely special," he acknowledged, saluting with the cup. He relaxed back into a seat and let his gaze linger just for a moment. The fact that she had made a concerted effort to find him outside his own quarters spoke enough purpose to him. Yeah. She digs me.

Zia paused with her cup pressed against her lips to raise an eyebrow. Poised over a delayed sip, her eyes studied the Trill's face in search of any moment of realisation and the recollection that he was projecting, rather forcefully, in the presence of a recently-unfettered telepath. She wasn't offended but she was curious because, not for the first time, the force with which that devil-may-care arrogance dominated Kevan's thoughts seemed unnecessary. It was tantamount to shouting at yourself in the mirror when nobody else was present.

Unless he'd entirely remembered he was dealing with a telepath and had meant for her to drown in his bravado. It was honestly possible.

"So..." he said, breaking the silence. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you didn't just stop by to check on my health. Come on, what was your real motive?"

"It was a decent part of it," Zia retorted, her brow puckering into a faint frown of amusement. She was willing to concede that perhaps it was a rookie's mentality but as cavalier as he wanted to be about it, Zia had never been fired upon by anyone who'd meant her harm before. That, coupled with the telepathic intensity of the moment, had stuck with her and she really didn't have anyone else to reach out to. Dash wasn't a perfect confidant, there were too many walls up for her to feel any sense that he'd take kindly to an emotional debrief, but it was enough to just remind herself that he was okay. That she was okay.

"And surely part of building new friendships involves an element of taking interest when they trying to get themselves shot to pieces. That and," Zia added with a roll of her eyes, "just the notion of hanging out. Or is that off the cards now?"

Her eyes flashed at him, teasing and yet very open in their challenge. He wouldn't be the first guy who took what he wanted and checked out.

"Hanging out is cool. We can Holodeck and Chill any time you like," he grinned. Although she talked about friendship, the fact that she was here, and staying, gave him the impression that it was more than that. And he was perfectly willing to go along with any kind of pretense that it was a casual thing. He lived in the casual space. Commitment was for people far older than he was. Or they had a symbiont telling them how to behave. "Tell me more about your interests," he added. See anything you like?

It took a sip of her drink to keep Zia from grinning, which she clearly needed to avoid because the barrage of arrogance he was making sure she got hit with didn't deserve her amusement even if it took all her strength to quell the laughter he so easily evoked. Perhaps he thought this was charming. Actually, she was pretty sure that's exactly what he thought.

"Well, first and foremost I make a point of always leaving space for new interests. There's only a few things in life that warrant repetition in my experience." Here, her dark eyes toyed with him intentionally. "But there will come a time where I need to figure out who the other musicians on board are."

"You like music?" he asked, intrigued. "What's your go-to kind?"

"Depends what the muses have me write." Pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged, Zia squinted off to one side as she tried to think of the best way to answer the question. "If I'm consuming it, I like music that lets me move. Or provokes thought." Looking back to him, the Betazoid tapped her temple with an index finger. "I'm a sucker for strong lyrics."

He'd not thought about her with that much depth up to this point. As with most connections he formed, his recognition of her was mostly skin-deep. Or entirely based on appearances and aptitude in the sack. "So you've written something before?" He leaned forward, expressing a little more interest. "Feel like sharing any?"

There wasn't an immediate response though the Betazoid's expression was pensively reflective and not automatically dismissive of the idea. It was unlikely to be bashfulness, she didn't seem the type, but protectiveness perhaps. The eventual dip of her head to say, "With the right audience," offered some insight. Zia, even without a telepathic advantage, would have had to be dense to have missed the surface-level treatment and though there was nothing inherently wrong with it as long as it came with a healthy dose of honesty, it was her psionic gifts that left her feeling like it wasn't quite right. Too intentional. Too absolute. Too intensely disconnected for someone who threw himself into the line of fire without second thought. Casual fun wasn't the same as casual indifference and Zia, above all, didn't play games all that well. Music was personal. "Bonus points if said audience ever wanted to pitch in with their own ideas."

"You could write a song about me," he suggested, teeth flashing with a characteristic grin. "A song of the brave and heroic Trill. You know 'Dash' rhymes with plenty. Flash...smash..." he half-disappeared into the idea before blinking back to her expectantly.

"Trash. Goulash."

And, just like that, he'd lost her again. As with most of her withering glances to date, Zia's expression lacked any real heat and it wasn't lost on her to be slightly amused by his persistence. She had several remedies for swollen egos, time would tell if he had the stamina to endure any of them.

"Usually the advice is to write about what you know, so trying to script a song about you would be...short."

"Being with Kevan is like...being in heaven! It writes itself," he mused, proud of himself for coming up with a line that not only rhymed but made him sound cool. Realising what she'd said, he blinked. "Oh, well. We've known each other what - a few weeks? Plenty of time for that."

A slow grin got in the way of her being frustrated with him. "Well, at this pace, I might manage a verse before your next promotion." As far as backhanded statements went, it was one of her finest. "I'm also not that sure that hanging out with you is that close to dying," she teased. A reflection of recent events dissolved Zia into soft huffs of laughter. "Mostly, anyway."

And yet he was intriguing. Little glimmers of depth, something about the music conversation had stirred interest but he hadn't allowed himself to indulge in it. The forensics of this mind was intriguing enough that Zia could feel her own investment strengthening despite what might perhaps have counted as better judgment. Forever the investigator at heart.

"Do you have a genre preference?"

"Anything but Klingon opera," he replied. "I'm easy. But if it's a song about me then it's got to be something upbeat. With a great tempo, and perfect rhythm." He punctuated his words with a wink.

This time, without much consideration for his injured arm, Zia threw a cushion at him.

"It's lucky for you," she teased, and it was a tease because despite how inevitably frustrating it was to get him to hold any decent sort of conversation beyond his own self-estimation, the Betazoid found enough about Dash's overall disposition that warranted persistence, "that the only word that rhymes with 'shallow' that I can currently think of is 'marshmallow'."

He didn't react quite fast enough to catch the cushion before a corner of it struck him in the face. It didn't hurt, but it stirred him to return the favour and toss the same cushion right back.

"You wound me," he said, in mock protest. "After all, I took a phaser blast for you!"

An indisputable fact, and one that brought Zia's head to a tilt as her expression wavered between exasperation and defeat. It was an undeniably sound tactic and capitalised nicely on the reason she'd come to check up on him in the first place. It also served as a reminder of how utterly different he was when he was focused during an emergency.

He was, as it turned out, a very charming jerk. Entirely too much her type.

"Marshmallow is great, in moderation. Can't have hot chocolate without it."

"S'mores, too," he observed. "Hey - we should do that someday. Next time we have shore leave. Little camp out in the woods, marshmallows by the fire. What do you think?" he suggested brightly.

And then he did that. The rapid shift was the psionic equivalent of an elastic suddenly giving way and the Betazoid was left blinking at the unexpected prospect of being eaten alive by bugs in the pursuit of culinary excellence. "Do you know how to camp?," Zia queried, entirely willing to admit that it wasn't part of her repertoire.

"Better than you would think," he chuckled. "My dad used to take me out into the woods every summer. Camping, fishing, hunting..."

A considerable pause followed, pensive in nature. The dart of the Betazoid's eyes around the room seemed indicative of an internal back-and-forth, a weighing up, perhaps, of the benefits against the perceived tribulations. "Okay," Zia eventually replied, her features softening into a whimsical smile. "I've never been, not actually camping-camping. Sleeping-in-a-tent camping. I'd give it a shot though." Brave words.

"Hey - I promise it'll be more fun than one of those Starfleet wilderness survival trips they make you do." He smiled, a more genuine, heartfelt smile rather than his classic confident one. "Guess it's...uh, a date?"

"I don't know if I'd count something that could end with me eaten alive by bugs as a date..." Zia's voice trailed off as she considered the accuracy of her statement and her lips twitched to contain a grin. Who was she kidding; it was exactly the kind of thing she'd call a date. "But I'll allow it if s'mores are on the menu."

She stretched then, both arms held taut for a moment before she finished the last of her drink and dropped the cushion in her lap back onto the sofa beside her. "Well, I guess you're supposed to be resting, I should probably let you get back to it."

"Resting. Sure." His lips curled back into his standard grin again. "Don't be a stranger. My poor, wounded arm might need some tender loving care later..."

This time, she didn't even let go of the cushion before it hit its mark. It gave ample opportunity for a second blow.