Lunch, Apologies, Art, and Found Family (backpost)

Posted on Sun Nov 2nd, 2025 @ 6:26pm by Lieutenant Commander Alexander Espersen & Lieutenant JG Rala

Mission: Lower Decks
Location: Deck 3, Lounge
Timeline: A few days after "It's the Ocean!"

Rala walked into the lounge, looking slightly tired and frustrated, and notably absent the normally ubiquitous simple black neckband that concealed her personal translator, and stepped up to the replicator. She mumbled something in Draakri and looked around as it hummed.

Near the large windows, she spotted Commander Espersen, sitting alone with his own meal. Her first right hand grabbed the second’s wrist in a nervous gesture, and she frowned in thought. No, she thought to herself, you said you would, and here’s a perfect opportunity. Sure, that initial meeting is the only time you’ve had a private conversation with him; but what, exactly, from that or any other interaction you’ve had makes you think this will go poorly?

She had to give the rational part of her brain credit; it had a point. But that didn’t negate the hint of nervousness she felt; that of any junior officer considering approaching their XO unbidden for the first time. She shook herself, retrieved her meal—which appeared to be three slices of seasoned steak, cooked medium-rare, and a mug of something dark and fizzy—and headed for the XO’s table.

For his part, Alexander Espersen was enjoying a respite from the mundane life of paperwork. His agenda for the day had him trapped in his office, unable to leave until performance reviews were finished. It reminded him of grading papers—and nobody wanted him grading papers—but the job needed doing. Promotions were based on honest feedback and despite everything quite a few crewmembers were eligible for advancement.

It was almost as if putting the fleet's most unusual, unrefined, and illogical crewmembers together somehow made them find their best selves. Funny, that.

He was freed only by the prospect of lunch. It was the perfect excuse to leave the office and be surrounded by others, even if it was largely at a distance. A PADD containing not paperwork but a book kept his attention as he slowly ate his plate of chicken caesar salad.

The hard-to-miss shape of the Draakri caught his attention, prompting him to look up at her.

Rala stopped beside Espersen's table, and said something in Draakri which...didn't get translated. After a second and the beginnings of a confused look from the man, she winced, shook her head slightly, and raised a finger in a 'wait' gesture. She tapped her combadge and spoke a few words, getting the computer's chirp of acknowledgement in reply, then said, "Sorry, forgot to switch back. Mind if I join you, Commander?"

He was surprised by the request, but had no reason to deny it. He understood that the XO had to at least seem approachable, and in truth he was happy to speak with someone—anyone—today. "Please do, Lieutenant." He gestured to the open seat across from him.

Rala sat. She took a sip of her drink—dark ale, made with synthehol—and said quietly, “Sir...about...what happened down on the beach, the other day? With the teasing? I thought about it later on, and I feel like maybe we went a bit too far.”

Her memory decided it would be a good time to superimpose itself on her perceptions, and for a split second she imagined the two of them sitting there as sky-clad as they had been on that beach as the Commander had walked away. She hurriedly banished the thought and took another drink to hide her blush as her cheeks and the sides of her snout darkened slightly.

She looked down at her plate and speared a slice of steak with a clawtip, leaving it there as she cleared her throat and continued, “If so, I'd like to apologize for my part in it.”

The memory came back to him as well. Both the teasing, and the subtle look she’d given him. The one that said ‘I see you looking and I don’t mind.’ He tried to bury that, not exactly successfully, and nodded to her. “I…I appreciate that, Lieutenant. In truth I’m trying to mostly think of the positive of our beach day. A bit of teasing on the part of the Kellermans wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for a good time, but it didn’t outweigh the fun I had overall.” He smiled, just a little bit. “I accept your apology, Ms. Rala. You’re very kind to offer it.”

“Thank you,” Rala said, moving the finger poking her steak in a little circle, spinning the slice of meat in a slow circle with her clawtip. She gave a soft snort of laughter, looking back up at Espersen with a smirk. “I think a few of the friends I'm making here on the Chimera are rubbing off on me.”

Alex smirked back and chuckled. “Are they now?” he said. “I hope they’re not making too much of a mess. Or if they are, I hope you’re into it.”

Rala chewed briefly, swallowed, and smiled. “No mess,” she answered, then added as an afterthought, “...yet. And certain kinds of mess could be fun.” She smirked again, consuming another chunk of steak. “It’s remarkable how similar this crew is to some of the nomadic clans on my homeworld. People with almost no common ground between them, other than not having somewhere else to be, but somehow it mostly just works, and works well, to a statistically unlikely degree.” She took another sip of her drink, then continued, “Who’d have thought I’d find one out here, let alone so quickly find a new family among them.”

She glanced down at her combadge and frowned. “Not exactly what that term means, ‘family’; although I suppose it’s fairly close. The Draakri word has never been limited to blood relations, and is more about trust and companionship, being derived from an older term for someone whom you’re willing to literally let take your life—” her first right hand came up, fingers brushing the sides of her throat, “—in their jaws without worry.” She tossed the final chunk of that first steak into her mouth and chewed more slowly, thinking, then swallowed and said, smiling, “And here I am, farther away from home than any Draakri in recorded history, starting to feel that way about a handful of aliens.”

“Many humans also define family more broadly than blood relations and spouses,” Alex said. “It won’t be uncommon for your mother’s best friend to be called ‘aunt’, and might even be closer than your actual aunts. We don’t usually associate it with life and death though,” he conceded. He took a second to sip the yellow-orange fruit smoothie he had next to his plate.

“I made the same observation about how well this crew functions. No one chose this specific team, but I dare say we’ve accomplished great things so far.” A short chuckle, almost a harrumph, escaped his lips. “So many of us were sent out here as punishment. No way did they expect us to thrive.”

A thought crossed Rala’s mind just as she was starting in on her second slice of steak, making her pause briefly. She chewed, swallowed, and said thoughtfully, “I’m suddenly curious if anything would have changed, had there been a Draakri there to tell them that such things tend to work out rather well.” She shrugged. “But then I might not have wound up here, with you all.” She was staring over Espersen’s shoulder, out the windows into the warp-distorted starscape, but her eyes seemed to be focused elsewhere.

A second later she shook herself and refocused, glancing at his PADD, gesturing at it with one unoccupied hand. “So, what did I interrupt?”

“It’s the latest works of Aster sh’Reyan,” Alex answered, the comfortable setting permitting his enthusiasm to seep through. “She paints landscapes on uninhabited planets. Mostly canyons and glaciers, but occasionally greener scenes. My brother-in-law sent me a book she released last week.” He reactivated the screen on his PADD to display a white and blue icy chasm, and he spun it around to show Rala.

Rala looked at the artwork displayed on the PADD, then picked it up to get a better look. “It’s nice,” she said, returning the PADD to Espersen a short moment later. “Still art isn’t generally my thing, but I can see the appeal.”

"It isn't for everyone," he agreed. "But art is how I calm myself. And despite how well we all work together, there are those who require me to take measures to seek calm." He speared more chicken, lettuce, and dressing onto his fork as he turned off the PADD. "Tell me, how do you relax?"

“Sometimes I tinker,” Rala said. “Most recently, fixing and trying to improve my personal translator.” One hand came up to her throat, absently touching the spot where the neckband would usually sit. “It’s been...frustrating.”

“Do you want help with it?” Alex asked. “Sometimes a second head and a second pair of hands—or third, rather—can be helpful.”

Rala chuckled. “No. I appreciate the offer,” she said, giving him a smile, “but this is kind of a personal project of mine.”

“Usually, though,” she said, getting back to his question, “it’s either something that gets me moving, or something with a story. Reading, or other forms of audiovisual media. Occasionally I’ll try a holonovel, but I’ve yet to find one I can stick with to completion.”

“I’ve had bad luck with those too,” Alex admitted. “The Captain recommended one to me a few months ago, a detective story, but I think she meant it as a joke.”

Rala’s eyebrows rose by a few millimeters, a hint of a smile touched the corners of her mouth, and her ears perked forward slightly. “Oh?” she asked, raising her mug to her muzzle once more.

“I figured it out when the busty police detective the main character pairs up with took her top off in chapter three,” Alex said with a laugh. “I did play a few more chapters though. I had to be sure, you know?” he added with a wink.

Rala’s single involuntary laugh nearly nearly made her choke on her drink at the XO’s first sentence, but she recovered...just in time to perform an actual, if mostly restrained, spit-take at the last. She managed to get three hands in front of her snout, so she thankfully didn’t make too much of a mess. She carefully set down her mug and grabbed a napkin, giving Alex a mildly annoyed look that quickly dissolved into one of reluctant amusement as she cleaned herself up.

The amused First Officer passed her some of his own stock of napkins. “So I stick with art instead of holonovels. You ever noticed the pencil drawing of the Chimera in the Captain’s Ready Room? That’s one of mine,” he said proudly.

“I’ll have to keep an eye out for it,” Rala said as she finished cleaning herself up. “I’ve actually yet to have a reason to be in there.” She started on her second slice of steak, consuming roughly a quarter of it in mere seconds.

He watched Rala eat and could not help but be impressed. “I’m curious, do you only ever eat meat? Or can your body also digest anything vegetal?”

"We're obligate carnivores, but not exclusive," Rala said, pausing before tearing off another chunk. "We can process most fruits and vegetables, but we can't live on them. We're built to survive almost, if not actually, purely on meat." She took another bite, chewed briefly, swallowed, and smiled. "Certain fruits and vegetables do make for wonderful snacks or seasonings, though.

"That sounds like how I want to live my life," Alex said. "Though I think if I ate like that, Doctor Kellerman would have some choice words for me."

He put more chicken and lettuce on his fork. “You know, you’re one of the few officers on board that I never taught. Did you go to one of the Academy Annexes or did you manage to get Katarina Scott for the generalist Engineering course?”

“Scott,” Rala said, nodding. She took another swig of her drink, and laughed softly. “It wasn’t until my third day in class that I realized—had impressed upon me, really, by a few classmates—the legacy I was sharing a room with. Not to downplay her own skills and achievements, of course,” she added hurriedly. “But as an outsider coming in, you hear all these stories from the old days, especially about the Enterprise, and you’re thinking they’re exaggerated—’cause they have to be, right? And then it finally clicks that, no, they’re mostly not, and here I was now just two or three degrees of separation from that.” She shook her head, her expression briefly growing distant. “It was, uhm...humbling. And inspiring, at the same time.” She refocused on Espersen. “Might be part of the reason I initially went into the Engineering track, come to think of it.”

"Those old scientists definitely lived in interesting times," Alex said, nodding wistfully. "It never occurred to me what reading those old logs and reports might be like for a newcomer. We grow up hearing the heroics of people like them. I was always a fan of Pelia. The time she restored communications during a crisis by running wires across the ship? I could only dream to solve a problem with that level of creativity."

Rala’s head cocked to one side. “Okay, now you’re pulling my tail. That one I have trouble believing.”

“Oh it’s true,” he replied, scooping up the last bites of his dinner. “Hundreds of meters of copper wire, run through Jeffries Tubes or along corridors, with handheld devices to convert between audio and electrical impulses. It permitted live communication between the bridge and two officers manually controlling the RCS thrusters. They were brilliant.”

Rala just blinked and shook her head slightly before starting on her third slice of steak. “So I hear,” she said, changing the topic, “that there’s a small group of crewmembers that you’ve taken a particular interest in.”

“Ah, you’ve heard of them,” Alex said as he finished his last bite. “It started as a disciplinary action, but it’s become a bigger project of mine. See if I can get them to realize their potentials.” He considered how well he was doing, cocking his head side to side. “It’s going…decently. They’re good kids.”

“Tell me about them?” she asked, before quickly adding, “Without breaking any confidence, of course.”

He thought a moment, holding his hands together on the table. What to say about them? “There’s five of them right now, across a few departments. Junior crewmembers. Rough around the edges, more so than other Chimera crew. Definitely ended up here with cause. But they excel at what they do. They need a little more work to keep in line, but we’re by far better for it by putting in that effort.”

Rala nodded thoughtfully as the XO spoke, chewing on another chunk of meat. She looked up at him as he stopped, and swallowed. “Withholding names for privacy?” she asked, a mild bemused smirk on her face. She waved a hand, forestalling any reply. “It’s fine; I’m just a little curious if I know any of them.” She took a sip of her drink, and said, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

"You know at least one of them," Alex said. "If only because Crewman T'Vel is in the Ops department. Regarding your offer, one of the things we're doing is cross-training. Lately we've been helping the engineering department with repairs and maintenance. It might be useful to cross-train them in Operations as well. I'll be in touch, asking for projects I can give them."

“Well, ‘know’ might be overstating things,” Rala hedged, looking thoughtful for a moment as she dug up what she recalled of the young Vulcan. “We haven’t interacted directly very much, and most of that has been both brief and paperwork-related.” She nodded at his suggestion. “I’ll confer with T’Pinga and see what we’ve got that might be good for them.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Alex took a second to gather his dishes. “Speaking of paperwork, I need to get back to mine. This has been pleasant, Rala, thank you for joining me. Can I take your dishes?”

The offer caught her slightly off guard, but she adjusted fairly quickly, snagging her last chunk of steak with one hand and handing her plate to him with another, saying, “Still working on the drink, but sure, thanks,” before tossing the piece of meat into her mouth.

He collected her plate onto his, along with his now empty glass and his utensils. “Have a good day, Lieutenant,” he said rising from his seat. “Feel free to drop by my office if you need anything.” He tucked his PADD under his arm and carried the dishes away to be recycled.

She finished chewing and swallowed, picking up her drink before turning in her seat. “Sir—” she started, but he was already halfway across the lounge. She shrugged, turning back to the windows and sipping her drink, glad she’d asked to join him. It had been a good conversation.