Recriminations on the Eve

Posted on Sun Sep 21st, 2025 @ 5:49pm by Petty Officer, 2nd Shaun Noakes

1,842 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Long Night
Location: Stanford Court, San Francisco, Earth
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 0000

[San Francisco, Earth]
[December 31st, 2155]
[0830 Hours]

The recriminations of the evening before resurfaced with an involuntary groan. Stirred by the clang of an old-style trolley— more tourist trap icon than useful— Shaun's consciousness felt expanded well beyond the means of his mortal skull. And it throbbed. It throbbed to a languid heartbeat, regular and alive, but nonetheless no more thrilled about consciousness than the entity it kept alive.

Shaun smacked dry lips, drool connecting them to a wet spot on a white linen pillow. His eyes clenched shut for a more disgusted utterance of his condition. He pushed up onto his elbows and began to assess the damage. His eyebrows rose without opening his eyes. Cold. But not cold enough to shiver. San Francisco didn't get that cold, even in the dead of winter. Sheets. Felt less like Starfleet microfiber and more like hotel cotton. He tilted his head at the next sensation.

Naked. OK. Sheets draped or cocooning against... everything. All the parts. That wasn't usual. Not completely welcome either. That meant there were follow-up questions— where was he? Where were his clothes? And did he have to acknowledge someone before his morning carbonated drink? His eyes opened. Fake gold filigree wallpaper. Interesting texture.

An errant thought from a memory. Shaun winced and looked up for a ceiling fan, his back arched slightly. "Unh... ugh... okay..." His head throbbed anew. But the ceiling fan had been clear of garments flung without care. Good. Small favors. Instead, the ceiling fan stood idle; its dark double fan blades weren't churning the air.

Shaun smacked his lips again. The flavor returned some memory. Right. Oh, okay.... right. That one bar. The one owned by that strange lady with the interesting taste in hats. He tilted his head. Or was it? Wasn't that bar in... Los Angeles? Or San Diego? Maybe it wasn't her's...

Well, his mouth tasted like a mission-style burrito anyway. Shaun looked down blearily. If he'd had a burrito, then the chances he'd... received a gentleman caller... were slim to none. He leaned over this strange bed and peered with a grunt at the floor. His bag was there. Empty. "Ah." His outfit for performing last night was strewn over the antique-looking 1970s-inspired wing chair. Doctor Long Legs had done her dance and spectacle. Which far more explained the tension in his hips and shoulders than any other intimate engagement. That idea, Shaun felt, he could neatly put away.

He felt confident then that he could hog the sheets and wrap them around him like he was Cleopatra herself, ready for her date with Caesar. He shuffled with a mimicry of a Geisha's footwork— the Berber carpet was cold against long feet. A shoji-like sliding door lay between him and the bathroom. Nausea was... middling to low? So the burrito worked at least.

His previous judgment came crashing down.

Click. A gust of fresh air. "Morning." It came from the short corridor made between the wall of the bathroom and the wall of the next hotel room. There was a savory waft.

"Morning!" Shaun overemphasized. In a move he'd intended to be liquid, he tried to open the door, slide in, and close it so he could have a minor anxiety attack over his life choices. Instead, his cocoon became the coffin of his dignity. He tried to take a step too far, he stumbled, and nearly landed ass up in the threshold of the bathroom door. In his peripheral, a body appeared, holding in an arm a paper sack.

"Got some croissants." The bleary face said. With the crinkle of paper, the bag held the place of attention with a slight lift. Shaun tried to focus on it and failed. Its buyer tilted his head at Shaun's odd position. "Are you alright?"

"Great." Shaun rolled like a clumsy caterpillar and blinked. He wiped crust from the corner of his eye. "I'll be right out. Gotta pee." And seriously re-examine my life, he thought. With a winced eye, he realized how close his trip nearly landed him in face planting against a golden bar that opened on the vanity for storage.

He wobbled to knees, and then from knees to feet. He worked a bare, willowy arm out of the gripped cocoon and shut the bathroom door with a glide. Behind its relative privacy, he clawed his hand in a silent shout of "Fuck!" He sighed and raked fingers through his hair. With a roll of a hip, he leaned against the vanity. The cocoon toppled back to nudity, but at this point, Shaun wasn't sure he cared.

OK, don't panic. What was this guy's name? He squinted. Fuck, what was this guy's name? Earth did stupid things to Shaun. Why was it every time he came here, he got himself into trouble? Name, name, name... he mentally muttered. Eric? Aaron? Eleric? A spark of a memory told him it was something unusual to his ear. Leaning against a bar. Neon lights, primarily blue and purple... His arms were against the cold metal bar running the wood of the barkeep's station. Alaric?

Elvak?

Oh, right. He followed the thin stream of remembrance between sucking face and hands down the fronts of each other’s pants that Elvak had explained his parents had named him after some famous Vulcan musician they liked. Elvak. It'd sounded like a charming name under the effects of alcohol. Now Shaun kind of wondered if it was the name of a level six lore bard of those resurgent table games from before the wars.

Shaun looked in the mirror. Well, at least he'd wiped off most of his stage makeup. But the eye shadow had definitely stained the lids and recesses of his bedroom eyes. He tilted his head. His brows rose, and his eyes closed. "Okay then...“ he muttered to himself. He raised his voice, "Is there a can of pop in the mini bar?"

"Uh, probably." The voice was flat and patient from the other side of the shoji-like door. Movement. A pause. "Yeah. There are a few. Why? I brought some coffee."

Shaun chuckled and shook his head, his chin dropped toward his chest. "Yuck." He winced at even the idea of that taste, "Thanks but no. I don't drink coffee." He shook his head again, irreverent, his palm rubbing his bleary eye. Shaun rolled his shoulders and straightened his back. OK. You're on. Shaun turned and opened the bathroom door. He leaned into the wall and smiled. "Sorry. Good morning, Elvak." He said.

Elvak was some beautiful mixture of many human groups. Probably predominantly Latin-x, with a soussant of perhaps... Indian or Persian? Did it really even matter anymore? Human was Human. "Morning." The gaze was appreciative with the pop of eyebrows when Shaun felt Elvak study his nudity. He paused and then he moved to find his street clothes. "You don't drink coffee? Seriously?"

"Yeah." Shaun winced as his long legs collapsed into a squat before the mini bar. He fished out a cold can of Quafe. With a crack, snap, and hiss, he opened it. He smiled widely at the exquisitely oversweet taste, with an under-something akin to prunes or cherries as its fizzy cola-dominated flavor. "I never developed the taste for it. Coffee's really expensive on Mars."

Elvak blinked, "Oh right, don't you have some kind of... equivalent though?"

"Caff." Shaun said, leaning against the minibar with a butt cheek rested atop it. "It's..." He rolled and closed his eyes, "Horrible. Truly horrible." He sipped the sweet fizz again, the bubble tickling his long nose. "So croi-"

- His words were interrupted by an incessant tonal beeping. It drove Shaun into motion. He bent over— Elvak's eyebrows popped again— and fished from his bag a small device. With a flick of his wrist, he opened it. The clamshell shape was silver and black, the part that had flicked away a sort of satin nickel color with regular holes punched in it. "Noakes here."

Shaun held up a single finger, asking Elvak to wait. The man crinkled his thick, manicured eyebrows with curious concern. He looked at the paper bag. "Crewman Noakes, good morning. We have two officers we need you to pick up today. Report to the Presidio shuttle base. You’ll be collecting an Andorian dignitary—

“

“Andorian?" Shaun's eyebrows popped and he blinked.

"That's what my console says, Crewman. Lieutenant Jekebb ch'Bari of the Andorian Imperial Guard..." Shaun looked over at Elvak with a dark-eyed blink, his mouth forming a line. "... Then you'll need to make another stop in Sao Paolo for a Lieutenant Tarek Sousa. Take them both back to the Challenger."

Shaun nodded and with a sigh, he reached up to rummage through his messy brown hair. Elvak's gaze was increasingly disappointed, though it fell on the Crewman's lean arm and the delicate valley of his underarm. "Is the Scobee still there?"

Over the comm, the voice crackled. "Unless someone took it for a joy ride, it should still be there. I'll comm you the rest of your orders when you check in at the arrivals desk at Starfleet Command. Challenger out."

Shaun rolled his eyes and closed his communicator. "Huh, you never said you served in Starfleet. I thought you were a dancer." Elvak finally broached space between them. Shaun smiled in a wily fashion and leaned over. He captured lips in his own. His nose wedged against the warm cinnamon brown of Elvak's cheek. He pulled away and hovered close.

"I can do both." He smiled wide. "Burlesque is a hobby. Starfleet's just for paying for school." He straightened. "I figure... a couple of more years and I'll get my discharge, and I can go to nursing school."

“Oh, I see." Elvak smirked. "Starfleet's OK with their people doing burlesque?"

Shaun chortled in gentle amusement as he started to pull on his underwear. "As long as I don't wear the uniform, yeah." He sighed once his parts were covered. "Sorry. I've gotta go. I'll comm you next time I'm in town. But uh. This was fun." Shaun slightly lied. The effects of letting go last night were still mostly obscuring any real notion of what had happened.

Elvak offered a nod and a smile that didn't quite meet his eyes. "Yeah. Yeah. Comm me. See you around. I'm going to take off." Elvak thumb-jutted toward the door even as his head bobbed in the noncommittal yes-no chin sway many people from India used. He rose. “Croissants in there." He pointed at the bag. "See you. Alavida. Chukria." A kiss grazed Shaun's high cheekbone.

"Yeah. Chukria. Zaijianchau." Shaun offered back. His lips tried to graze the other's cheek in return but missed. He waited for the click of the door. And then Shaun dressed, down the rest of his soft drink in a tilt of his head and an undulating chug, crammed the croissant between his teeth, shouldered his bag, and he too departed the hotel into the humid, rainy San Francisco morning.

 

RSS Feed