Trip walked back into sickbay, blinking sleep out of his eyes.
The late hour was starting to get to him, but he had promised the chameleon some food, and he was there to deliver. He balanced a plate of pecan pie in each hand, a lucky score on a hard day. The guard gave him a once-over, but let him pass.
The chameleon was sitting with her legs over the edge of the bed. She was slightly different than when he'd left, barely recognizable as a "she" by now. She looked like an amalgam of the doctor's features and his own, a jarring mix of portly and jovial, clean-swept and boyish.
She looked up expectantly. "Oh, good, there you are. My stomach was starting to digest its own lining."
His eyes widened. "You ain't serious, right?"
"Of course not," she said.
He sat down, and set both plates down on the bed between them. Before he could even hand her a fork, she descended on the pastry like a starved animal, picking off bits with her fingers.
"Whoah, slow down," he chuckled. "You'll get a stomachache like that." She ignored him. "At least you could bother to not use your hands," he said, holding a shiny metal fork out to her.
She looked up slowly, licked the filling off her fingers, and held the utensil in her fist. "I find it hard to believe that your people eat with these things. It seems like a very impractical way, especially when the food's this good."
Trip made a move to take the chameleon's hand, but as soon as his fingers brushed hers, she recoiled. "Oh... Can I?"
She relaxed her hand. "Sorry. Force of habit. Go ahead."
He started curling her fingers around the fork's handle. "See, the reason you thought it was so inconvenient..." He took his hand away, leaving her gripping it like any native Earth citizen. "Is because you were doing it wrong."
She went back to eating her slice of pie. "Thanks. I just love learning pointless alien customs."
He started on his slice, not nearly so enthusiastically as her. "You bein' sarcastic?" She didn't respond. "No, seriously. I can't tell."
She gave him a wry grin and rolled her eyes a little. "Actually, I wasn't entirely joking. From what little I've seen, I really enjoy learning alien myths and legends. I suppose it... gives me an escape."
Trip noticed that her attention had gradually been drifting away from him for the past fifteen-odd seconds. He thought she looked far off, maybe in one of the myths she liked so much.
His lips pressed together in wry amusement. "So I take it you were kiddin' about the, uh, pointless alien customs?" She blinked her eyes, snapping her gaze back to him.
"What? Oh, uh, yes. I hate having my own culture's niceties shoved on me, let alone someone else's."
"Well. Sounds like your mama wasn't big on manners."
The chameleon snorted derisively. "I'll say she wasn't. The one thing I know about her," she muttered, "is that she sold me. For drinking money. She was an addict."
Trip's eyes softened a little. "Don't know what to tell you. I would say 'sorry', but somethin' tells me it's more'n a bit played out."
She laughed, a low sound that he could tell, like her voice, was underused. "Ah, this man right here, he gets it. Just what all those shopkeepers and busybody old ladies couldn't understand." She fixed her eyes on an invisible audience, somewhere between the wall and Trip. "Stop saying sorry," she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe, gesturing emphatically. "Not only does it not fix things, it gets really, really annoying."
He cleared both their plates off the bed, seeing as they had both moved on, not to mention completely demolished the pie. "Tell me about it. I mean, I probably ain't had the same kind of things happen to me, but that doesn't mean I ain't never been annoyed."
His point of focus drifted somewhere nearer to the ceiling, but the chameleon had her eyes fixed on him, her knees pulled up against her chest. He rambled on. "I remember one day, when I was in elementary school... my dog had died over the weekend. I couldn't stop crying. Hell, I was probably as depressed as a third-grader could be. But what really pissed me off was how people just wouldn't stop sayin' sorry."
He looked back at her, bright grey eyes tinged with nostalgia and sympathy. "Anyway. I'm ramblin' again. You probably wanna hear about somethin' more exciting than my childhood."
"Actually," she mused, "it wouldn't be too bad. Better your childhood than mine."
He yawned subtly, trying not to squinch up his face. "If you wouldn't mind too much, I'd like to get some shut-eye. It's late, and, with any luck, I can get some repairs done tomorrow." He quite deliberately gave her a look, though it was more plaintive than anything else.
She rolled her eyes, an amused sort of gesture. "You don't have to guilt me into anything. Go get some sleep, you look like hell."
He cracked an indignant smile. "Says you! You look mostly like me, anyways. I wouldn't go insulting myself, now would I?"
She made a shooing motion at him, smiling. "Ugh. Just go."
He stepped out into the doorway, turning down the lights on his way out. "Y'know, we're really gonna have to find you a name sometime."
From inside the darkened infirmary, he heard, "Trip. Go to bed."
Over his shoulder, he called out, "Goodnight!" He walked away, shaking his head and smiling. It looked almost the same as the smile the chameleon wore in that same moment, topped with a strong Cupid's bow, and filled with pearly teeth and giddiness.