Day 2, reveille
Michael Burnham snores!
I don't say that as: 'Aw! That's cute! Michael Burnham snores! How cute!'
Really? Cute? Me? Say something like that?
No.
I mean, it was cute, her cute, little ah-hem! ah-hem! But that's entirely beside the point. The point was that she's was snoring in my very sensitive Vulcanoid ear! That's the first thing. The second thing was drool from her open mouth was dripping onto my perfect, dark-chocolate Vulcan hair!
You do not mess! ... with my hair. I thought murderous thoughts toward her for that, getting her human-drool-stank all drippy into my hair!
Do you know how long Vulcan, well, Vulcanoid, women spend grooming their hair, per day? Cats ain't in it, my friends.
Okay, but the snoring thing, and the drooling thing? People didn't do that on Hellguard. You snored, alerting the local predators the location of easy half-breed prey?
You were pelted with rocks until you stopped snoring. And the rocks got bigger and heavier as the boys were roused, annoyed, grumpy, sleepy, ...
Then, if you kept snoring, you were dragged out of the camp. You could snore, then, all you wanted in the wilderness, ... for the few moments of life you had left.
The predators on Hellguard were big and mean and noisy as they devoured you. Or small and vicious and noisy as they burrowed into you.
Either way, you died, screaming.
People didn't snore, ... on Hellguard.
Michael Burnham snored softly, holding me into her, and I simply marveled at how it went on and on, and how peaceful she was, just snoring like that.
'Peace.' One of the Vulcan Pillars, a cornerstone of the Vulcan Philosophy.
'Peace' was not something I had in my life, not even after I snuck into – that is: 'joined' – the Federation. Before, on Hellguard, my one solace was 'survival,' after Hellguard, it was 'pretense.' And the looming shadow that stalked me my young adult life in the Federation – when are they going to find out about me? What will they do to me when they do? – receded into background white noise of my day-to-day existence.
But it was always there. I was a fugitive from ... everyone. And 'peace' was not my portion.
Michael Burnham's snores were 'cute,' sure, and that was, well: cute. And that was something that the savagery of my life from before had no room for, but her snores were also peaceful! And that, and her holding me into her, like I was hers, that I wasn't just me against the entire Universe, that I wasn't alone anymore, but I was...
Oh! Words cannot describe this feeling I was feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don't know what it is. All I know is I never wanted it to stop.
bee-bee-beep! bee-bee-beep! bee-bee-beep! "One. hour. to. Captain. debrief. Mandatory. meeting."
Like clockwork, Michael Burnham's alarm rang out from her rack. It was now 06:43.
Michael Burnham murmured faint complaints then removed her hand from my breast and swatted at her alarm, ...
That was beside her rack, not mine. She muttered: "Go 'way!" grumpily, and replaced her hand to its natural resting place – my breast, in case you missed this relevant fact – and resumed snoring, a bit petulantly, I must observe, as the alarm, all obedient, went silent.
Being late to a debriefing, however. I didn't think that would sit well with the Captain, given the debriefing was to him.
I shifted, slightly.
Michael Burnham murmured faint complaints, then squeezed me, hard, ... well: for her, then resumed snoring.
I sighed. I would be just as happy as her to say 'fuck the Captain's briefing!' but I knew, too well, the long-term consequence of this rebellious approach.
I bumped her, not so gently, with my butt.
"Nnn!" she growled, then she ... pinched my boob? HARD?
People have died for less, I'll have you know. Much less.
Damn! Damn! Damn! and double damn! If I forced her awake, on my rack, she'd be a complete mess at the Captain's debriefing, being caught in flagrante delicta, as it were. Managing her melt-down and the Captain's at the same time is not something I was willing to sign up for.
What to do? What to do? I looked over at my alarm.
Aha! I thought.
I gently reached out to my alarm, and reprogrammed hers remotely.
It went off.
BEE! BEE! BEE! BEE! BEE!
I reprogrammed the volume, setting it to maximum. Not only the quarters next to ours would hear it, ... possibly the whole deck would.
"WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?" Michael Burnham screamed, awake now.
Then she jerked, and was very, very still. And then, joy of joys, ... this:
"Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitomygodshitfuckingshit!" she whispered, rapidly extricating her hand from my mammary, then rolling out of my bunk, pitterpattering over to her alarm to silence it.
The smile on my face ... Good thing I was turned away from her. She ...might have noticed, otherwise.
The only difficulty, for me, was: how was I going to explain sleeping through some very intimate, albeit frenetic, moments with a partner in my rack that had accommodations for one only, and how was I going to explain sleeping through Burnham's 'alarm-from-hell'?
Fortune smiled on me here, for Burnham supplied the explanation, herself.
"Lt. S'Vrall," she called out to me, by my side again. "Lt. S'Vrall, you have to wake up now!"
I did not stir.
Burnham paused for a moment, then: "Sir, I believe you are in healing trance, due to the events yesterday that may have caused you psychological harm. I am now going to attempt to revive you. Please understand."
Ah! The Vulcan healing trance! I thought.
Vulcans, when harmed, descend into a meditative trance so deep that all outward stimuli fade to nothing for them, and they appear to the unpracticed eye as to be in a coma so deep as to be near death.
And there was my excuse.
Michael Burnham straddled me on my rack – nothing sexual at all in that, no: with her hips pressed to mine.
Nothing sexual in that, at all.
But I digress.
Then, raising her hand above her head, she brought it, full-force, across my cheek.
The slap echoed around the quarters.
I swear, if I weren't going to kill her before, ...
She reversed the blow and backhanded my other cheek.
"Lt. S'Vrall!" she shouted, and struck me again. Smack!
And again. Smack!
And again. SMACK!
For a little, tiny, petite human, her blows were actually starting to sting.
"Lt. S'Vr-..."
I grabbed her hand and let my fury seep through my eyes, opened to slits. With my other hand, I grabbed her pajama top by the collar and pulled her face down to my face.
"Give me one reason not to kill you, right now." I hissed.
Michael Burnham looked at me, and saw her own death. I saw it in her eyes.
She may have been afraid of me in this moment, but she did an admirable job of projecting a calm demeanor. "Lt. S'Vrall," she said carefully, "we have to brief the Captain in less than 40 minutes. I tried to wake you, ..."
"By this? By mounting and assaulting me?" I demanded.
"No," she said, "I tried to wake you by calling out your name. You did not respond to my voice, and my alarm was set on high for some reason, but that did not rouse you, either, so I believed you were in a healing trance and therefore took steps to revive you. If I was in error, I apologize for my mistake."
Her face was less than one inch from mine, and it would be so easy, right at this moment, to do anything I wanted to do to her. Vulcan women may be smaller than Vulcan men, but to think we were any less deadly would be the last mistake you ever made.
I looked up at her. "You are very calm," I remarked.
"Not three hours ago I faced you with two fully-charged phasers pointed at me," she reminded me. "You didn't kill me then, so I had reason to believe you wouldn't now."
I looked into her eyes. Her gaze did not flinch. "A reasonable assessment of risk, but still a risk." I removed my hand from her collar, and, as an afterthought, smoothed out the wrinkles there.
"Would you please release my hand?" she asked.
"Oh," I said, and let her go.
She dismounted me, rubbing her wrist.
"Did I hurt you?" I asked.
Humans are such frail creatures.
She just glared, still rubbing her wrist. "We have to get ready now." And headed to the shared shower.
That was a bit of a misnomer: we wouldn't have to share. It was still too early for any crew member relieving the morning shift.
Three hours of sleep. Oh, well. For a Vulcan, three hours of sleep was nothing. A Vulcan can work seventy-two hours straight, then work seventy-two more, if needed.
But me: I needed to meditate a lot, like I did last night after being relieved from all duties.
Not my fault.
I needed to sleep a lot. Why? When you're living a double-life, you tend to burn the candle at both ends. Highly illogical, yes, but such was my life.
I stepped into the shared bathroom.
"Eek! Don't you knock?"
The wall of sound hit me. I saw white, and realized that I had a headache, so the ringing in my ears did not help at all.
Michael Burnham was just stepping out of the shower and grabbed a towel to cover herself.
Something else:
"You took a sonic shower?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied, "we have to get going! We're going to be ..."
"'We' nothing," I stated firmly. "You have to take a hotel shower. Now."
A hotel shower: a shower with actual running water. A luxury on Vulcan afforded to very few, and on board a Starship?
Well, the detritus from the matter-antimatter intermixer supplied us anything we wanted, and water was one of the most basic compounds in the Universe, but it was also considered a very special privilege for Ambassadors, VIP guests, or other special envoys, most definitely not for crew in their daily performance of their duties.
"A hotel shower? Why? We don't have time for that!" Burnham complained.
"A hotel shower, yes. Because if you show up in front of the Captain like this...?" I warned.
"Like what?"
"You stink," I said.
Michael Burnham blinked.
"Terribly," I added. "Even a human would notice. Do you want to show up in front of your Captain smelling like ..."
"Like what?" Michael asked defensively.
I shoo-shoo-shoo'd her toward the direct of the showers. "Go!" I added empathically.
Michael Burnham gave me the stink-eye, but turned tail and reentered the shower.
"And hurry up!" I shouted. "I need to shower as well. Is it because I'm on a human vessel that I stink so badly?"
"Um ... did you serve on a Vulcan vessel before?"
Did you notice Michael Burnham trying to change the topic instead of answering my question?
I did.
It's the Vulcan way. Instead of answering a question, they would deflect with an entirely different one.
"Yes," I said. "I served three years aboard the D'Kyr after graduating the Vulcan Science Academy, and ..."
Michael Burnham pushed the frosted shower guard aside.
"You went to the Vulcan Science Academy?" she asked with wide eyes.
"Yes," I said, "and then I..."
"How was it?" she demanded.
The shower guard still concealed most of her body, but she was far more interested in me, and my experiences, now, to care about her own personal modesty.
I looked at her levelly. "It was ... a disappointment."
Michael Burnham blinked. "What? Why?"
I shrugged. "It was all Vulcan-this and Vulcan-that. The sum of all knowledge and wisdom began and ended with Vulcan. I found the self-congratulatory lectures and lessons rather tiresome after a while. I think Vulcans, today, have forgotten Surak's most important lesson."
"Logic?" she asked.
"No," I said. "Humility. 'Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not its end.' That's what Surak said as one of the tenets of Logic, but ask any Vulcan today which race is the best, the brightest, the most capable, the wisest, the most ... anything? And you won't get an answer. You'll get a smile, because they know, and they know you know."
Michael Burnham just stared at me.
"Hurry up," I said.
She shook her head in disbelief, but returned to her shower.
"I never thought I would hear that from a Vulcan, ever," she whispered. But she knew I heard her.
"Do you want me to answer that?" I said.
Michael Burnham showered for a moment more, and then said: "Yes."
"Well, then, get out of the shower, because it's my turn."
Michael Burnham took a moment more in the shower.
"Now," I said.
"I'm rinsing!" she shot back, but came out seconds later, giving me a dirty look as she grabbed her towel.
I stripped and walked right past her into the shower.
I put the water on hard and hot.
It was a cool shower for me.
Damnable human-designed vessels.
"You grew up in ShiKahr, right?" I asked.
"Well," Michael Burnham replied, "after I was adopted by Sarek, yes."
"And by Amanda Grayson, correct?"
"Sarek was the one who adopted me," she corrected me.
"And Amanda was the one who loved you," I supplied.
"What does that have to do with the current conversation?" she demanded.
"Have you asked after my parentage?" I countered.
"... no." She said quietly.
"No," I said, "you haven't. So, how can you dare to ask me my experiences, and then use them against me in judgement, ..."
"I wasn't judging you!" Michael Burnham interrupted, her voice defensive.
I talked over her: "...when you, Michael Burnham, have parents who love you, and I had ..."
I stopped. My throat had constricted making saying even one more word an impossibility.
I didn't have parents who loved me. That had never bothered me before. But now, in the face of someone who had two sets of parents who loved her just ... it just ...
I realized I had just squeezed the soap bar into a paste.
I reformed it as best I could and scrubbed the stank of sex off me. I scrubbed vigorously.
I exited the shower, and I faced Michael Burnham's pitying eyes.
She knew.
I stood before her naked, and I did not care one iota about that, but I stood before her, exposed, and the look in her eyes smote me.
"Did you, ... did you want to talk about ..."
"We're going to be late," I snarled quietly, ripping a towel off the rack, and pushing past her to our quarters as I dried myself.