Chapter Three: Commiserations
Hoshi stood at the entrance of the room, quietly looking up at where Travis hovered upside-down in his gravity-free zone. His eyes were closed and he did not seem at first to be aware of her presence. Most of his attention was apparently concentrated on his deep breathing: in and out, in and out.
She'd been on her way to dinner when she'd run into Liz Cutler, apparently upset and trying hard to control it.
"So I broke up with Travis," was the way that the conversation had begun.
"Really? Why?"
"Because … because I'm attracted to someone else," Liz had said, and stormed off toward the mess-hall, leaving Hoshi somewhat adrift in the corridor before she'd decided to go and find Travis and see how he was doing.
Hoshi found this reason, personally, to be somewhat wishy-washy … but if Liz didn't want Ensign Mayweather anymore, then she had every right to terminate their romantic association … it was just that it had come as kind of a shock. You would think that she would have discussed it with her closest friends before deciding to just go ahead and do it.
And as for who Liz preferred to the helmsman, well, it would've been easier pulling teeth with a mechanic's pliers than getting that information out of her.
"Travis?" Hoshi said finally, after watching him for quite some time.
He opened his eyes and looked down at her, surprised. "Oh, hi, Hoshi," he said. "Didn't know anyone was in here."
"I actually came looking for you," Hoshi said.
"Oh," Travis said. "I don't go on duty again until tomorrow morning, barring emergencies. Is there an emergency?"
"No, actually, I came looking for you," Hoshi said, smiling slightly.
"Oh good," Travis said. "Any particular reason?"
"I wanted to see how you were doing," Hoshi said hesitantly.
"Oh." Travis closed his eyes again and smiled in a flash of startling white. "They do say that the only thing that travels faster than Warp 5 is news."
Hoshi folded her arms over her chest and tilted her head back to get a better look at him. "Who says?"
"They," Travis said. "You know. The ones who are the they in the them but that aren't ever the us."
"Your grammar," Hoshi said, laughing softly. "It hurts."
"Sorry," he replied. "Want to come up here?"
"All right," Hoshi said, hesitating a little. "How do I …"
"Oh, it's not hard. There's no gravity here, so you just … push up from the floor … here, I'll give you a hand," Travis said. He maneuvered easily through the air and offered her his hand.
She let him pull her up, pushing off from the ground with a little more momentum than she expected. He steadied her with both arms. His hands were warm through the fabric of her uniform jumpsuit.
"And then you just …" Travis said, helping her swivel so that she was upside-down, just as he was. "Neat, huh?"
Hoshi floated there for a moment, not moving a muscle. Then, slowly, she relaxed. "It's … odd," she said. "But it's … like floating. It's very nice."
"Liz never liked it," Travis said. "She never really explained why, but I think she got a little motion-sick because the floor being the ceiling kind of disoriented her."
"Did you ever …?" Hoshi started to ask.
"No, not once," Travis said sadly. "Pity, really, I think it would've been a horizon-broadening sort of thing to do."
Hoshi felt herself reddening. "Um … I don't think we're talking about the same thing," she hazarded after a moment.
Travis looked at her innocently. "What? You mean you weren't going to ask if we ever had an upside-down picnic in here?"
Hoshi stared at him for a split second, and then she laughed. "Travis Mayweather," she said, "you are too much."
"What were you actually going to ask?" Travis inquired after a brief silence in which they floated, carelessly, in the belly of the Enterprise.
"If you ever noticed her seeming dissatisfied or anything," Hoshi said, looking away. "I mean … she never said anything to me."
"No," Travis said sadly, "it came out of nowhere. I mean, sometimes she would get a little moody for no apparent reason but I figured that she was just, you know, being a girl."
Hoshi laughed. "Being a girl?" she said.
"You know how girls are," Travis said, grinning at her. "Irrational … prone to fits of emotion, blowing things out of proportion, getting moody about nothing … getting angry at me for things and not telling me what they are when I don't even know I've done anything wrong …"
"Yes, Travis," Hoshi said drolly, "women are totally irrational creatures beyond the comprehension of the male gender because nothing they do ever makes logical sense …"
"Hey, you said it, not me," Travis said playfully.
Hoshi glanced toward the ceiling – which was, in this case, the floor. "Why do I talk to you?" she asked in a long-suffering tone.
"Hmm," Travis said, "don't know … for luck, for laughs, for the unknown."
"I guess two out of three isn't bad," Hoshi said, smiling at him.
Travis chuckled.
They floated there in companionable silence for a few minutes, looking up at the floor. Hoshi had no idea she could have so much fun just floating around doing nothing … but the company probably had something to do with it; Travis had an infectiously mischievous personality and it seemed like nothing could get him down. It was as though once he had an audience – to listen to his tomfoolery or his tales of terror – he simply couldn't let himself stay serious for too long.
Hoshi wondered whether or not he was afraid of what he might say or think if he weren't keeping things at least partially in the world of having fun.
Finally Travis spoke again. "Thank you, Hoshi," he said quietly.
"For what?" Hoshi asked, a little surprised. She hadn't done anything much as far as she could tell; she'd tried to steer the conversation towards his break-up with Liz, so that he could spill it if he needed to and use her as a confidante and shoulder to cry on should it be necessary, but he'd just turned the conversation back around and made teasingly sexist remarks about irrational female behavior, trying to get her feminist gander up … and she hadn't even risen to his bait, so what was he thanking her for?
"Just for coming to find me," Travis said, as though he were admitting a guilty secret, and he laughed a little, sheepishly. "I guess sometimes I miss the Horizon … living on a ship completely surrounded by people who really care about you at every turn. Even the ones that you don't like very much are still … family, even the ones you're not related to by blood, you're all part of the family. You know? I miss people caring about me."
"Of course people care about you!" Hoshi exclaimed. "Everybody cares about you."
"It's not the same," Travis said. "It's like, they care about me because I'm a vital member of the crew or whatever, not really because I'm me."
"I care about you," Hoshi pointed out quietly.
Travis grinned at her suddenly, and it was a somehow more heartfelt expression than any smile of his she had seen on his face. "I know," he said. "That's what I was thanking you for."
