For Science! (And Smack Talk)

Posted on Tue Aug 25th, 2015 @ 7:00am by Lieutenant Rianna DiMarco & Lieutenant David Windsor

Mission: The Belle of Bellatrix
Location: Main Science Lab

"I'm giving you one last warning.." DiMarco said as she reached out and flicked the bottom of Windsor's ear. "Get up and get dinner or I'm telling Wesley that you really like show tunes and impressing you with a vast array of tap dances might be his shoe in to promotion. You haven't eaten since yesterday. I bet your butt's molded to the shape of the damn chair."

"I ate." David replied, his tongue poking out of his mouth as he worked at a small access hatch they'd managed to find on the device. It wasn't much larger than a postage stamp, and it was shallow, but there was some circuitry in there and he'd be damned if he didn't figure out what it was.

"You had three crackers and an olive." Ri sighed, sitting down on the edge of the desk farthest away from the device. If it wasn't for one of the other egg heads tipping her off about how much time he'd been spending on the device, she wouldn't have been as worried. "That isn't eating unless you weight less that 2 pounds and squeak. You make me worry over you and you'll regret it, I promise. The last thing you want is me deciding to feed you if you ever want to see your feet again. The thing will still be here when you get back and you still won't know what it is then either."

David sighed and pulled the mag lenses off of his face, rubbing his eyes, "Ri... what time is it?" He asked her.

"Twenty-three-oh-seven hours my un-sha-ven brute," she emphasized the last four syllables with an little bit of an extra flourish. Dressed in sweatpants and a worn thin athletics shirt left over from the Academy, her appearance certainly fit in with the time that she rattled off. "Nice bristles by the way. I bet Wesley is jealous."

David frowned and shook his head, "That can't be right... I started work on this at twenty-three-hundred hours precisely..." He said,, looking confused.

The engineering chief wrinkled her nose as she sat there, nodding in agreement with his statement. He looked so sweetly lost in his stupor that it almost made her giggle and she did not giggle. "That was yesterday, honey. You need a bite to eat, a warm bath and a few hours of bunk time."

"Hm." David seemed to ponder that bit of information before nodding his head slowly. "I suppose it has been over twenty-four hours that I've been in here," He agreed. There was another pause, followed by a bright grin, "All for the pursuit of knowledge!" He declared happily.

Ri rolled her eyes and gave a long suffering sigh. "And gluing your ass to your chair with several layers of bum sweat. Will you get the hell up already so I can take you to go get food?"

"Oh, I'm perfectly fit to go and get food myself," David said, standing. His scrunched his nose, "My god what is that wretched stench?" He asked, utterly disgusted.

"Bad case of swamp butt if it was my guess. It can keep you company if you don't need me then." Ri slid off the table rather gracefully for being clad in sweats and headed for the door. She stopped a step or two back and spun back around. "Protein, green stuff, sugar, caffeine. Follow the food groups and all."

"Hmm... perhaps a shower is in order... and then I'll meet you in the mess?" David asked with an embarrassed grin.

That perked Ri up, who was no longer feeling grumpy about giving up her late night run to go pull Windsor out of his literal funk. "Okay.. I'll see you there then."

--

Less than an hour later, a significantly better looking WIndsor strolled into the mess, his still-damp hair slicked back and his face freshly shaven. He spotted Ri and waved, swinging by the food dispensers, he made his way over to where she was sitting, "I apologize for keeping you waiting so long," He told her, smiling. "It took longer to clean myself up to acceptable levels than I expected," He told her sheepishly.

"For science!" she reminded him cheekily over the rim of her coffee mug.

"Indeed," David replied with a chuckle. "I'm fairly certain I could advance the field of biology significantly with what I just washed down my shower drain," He joked.

"We've all had that a time or two. Don't worry about it." There'd been more than a few all nighters in Ri's history where someone had to come smack her on the forehead and remind her to take a few hours. " Just get something in your stomach so you don't keel over or something."

"Absolutely," David said, raising his fork with a piece of grilled salmon on it to show her before he shoved it in his mouth, "I say - for the sake of novelty - we talk about our selves this time around, rather than our work. What say you?" He asked as he chewed.

Brows raising slightly, DiMarco made a face before taking a bite of the noodle dish that she's ordered. "You start though. I'm terrible at talking about me."

"Oh... well," David chuckled. "I'm so boring, though. Nothing to speak of growing up, constantly covered in dirt and mud. My parents are wealthy for various reasons that I never bothered trying to understand. Something about manufacturing or something... I'm not sure. Anyway, they were none to pleased that I chose Starfleet over some lab job... but... I just couldn't turn away the stars," A hint of sadness crossed his face, "We don't talk much..." He seemed to consciously pull out of the touch of sad as a bigger smile came around, "But! I love what I do, my job is fantastic. My mind... the wonders of this universe are more than I can contain," He said, excitedly.

"Boring is good though. You get a good start when you've got a boring life." Twirling a noodle around her fork Ri watched it more than David. "I did most of my short years in a corporate orphanage and then worked off my tuition for a bunch of years before I got into Starfleet. It was my ticket out of the mining life. I don't miss it."

"Mining life?" David asked, curiously.

"I was born on a mining platform to an entertainer. You'd call her a lady of ill repute from our past conversations. Lovely bit of psychotic fluff that lost the right to have me around after my brother died in her care. It's too expensive to move kids off asteroids when you're born in the way out. After my mom lost me, I stayed put until the asteroid was dry. By then I still wasn't a legal adult. When I was, my care charges had to be paid off. Legal indentured servitude." She took a bite of her dinner automatically, not really tasting it as she spoke. She hated talking about her background, hated looking backwards. It annoyed her that it got to her though so she poked it with a stick any time someone said that they wanted to swap stories, hoping that eventually it'd just mean nothing. "We probably supplied some of your folk's base metals. The company had a hand in just about everything fabrication-based for awhile there. They went bankrupt a few years back."

"Hmph," David nodded, taking another bite, "Serves them right for enforcing slave labor on an orphaned child," He said, shaking his head. "I must say, I'm quite impressed you've made such a damn fine officer of your self. It's hard to recover from disadvantages such as that," David told her, "Though admittedly, the common sense earned from a life like that must be substantial. Look at me, I grew up with everything and I'm a loopy loon who can't remember to eat," He said, laughing.

"I wasn't disadvantaged.." Something in what he said hit a nerve just right in Ri. She found herself smiling- which was never a good thing when her temper started piquing. "I had better training to work with metal by fifteen than most grown men born feet down got by twenty. I didn't grow up thinking that men were better than women or that there was anything that I couldn't do for this reason or that. All of that crap- I was spared. I just didn't have a childhood."

David arched an eyebrow, "Which, believe it or not, is a severe disadvantage," He explained. "My dear, I'm not pitying you right now, nor am I in any way discrediting you for your upbringing. You have maintained - through some miracle of space and time -what most people that have grown up as you have lost irrevocably. You maintained your heart, your passion, and your imagination," He replied. "You let it forge you instead of destroying you, which is what a situation like that tends to do. You had no family to encouraging you to do better, no one you could immediately trust showing you how to be a good person, but here you are. You're full of life, full of fire. You're an inspiration to every person on this ship, if you ask me. " He said, taking a sip of his soda. "Do not mistake what I'm saying for anything less than the highest admiration and appreciation for who you are and what you've become. AND what you've been through."

The expression on Ri's face rather clearly said that she still wasn't sure about anything that he'd said. She let go of the urge to kick him soundly under the table, though, so that was something. They weren't friends enough yet that a good fist fight would be forgiven the next day. "So you always wanted to poke at stuff and see how it worked?" She offered as a wary form of truce-by-way-of-redirection.

"Everything," David replied. "Animals, electronics... I can't tell you how many birds and squirrells lived long happy lives because of young Doctor Windsor," He said with a chuckle. He'd missed entirely that he'd been in trouble, but something in his gut told him changing the subject was a fantastic idea. Though, why that was, he had no idea.

"I can picture that. You as a squirt with a hand full of fuzzy baby things.." The engineer gave David a lopsided grin. "What brought you to Starfleet with it though? I bet you couulda had any lab that you wanted."

David sighed, "The stars," He said, simply. "On earth, in the nice cooshy labs, you either rehash the same thing that's been studied for centuries, or you get the refuse from the scientists up here. So rather than get the second hand discoveries, I'm here. Getting to see these wonders with my own eyes... there's no telling what I might discover," He said, smiling happily.

Having finished up her meal and moved onto dessert, Ri broke in half whatever dense chocolate dessert-type thing that had come out of the dispenser and dropped half unceremoniously on the side of David's plate. "Well I'm glad that you're here. You keep it interesting."

"I keep it interesting?" David said with a wry chuckle. "You're one to talk."

"All I do is take care of my people and try to have a little fun here and there. Unless you're talking about that bowling challenge thing that I issued your department. I was just being creative, you know. There won't actually be broken bones or anything. You smack talk in sports. It's just part of the game." Mind you it was her favorite part, but Ri glossed over that fact.

"Oh... there'd be broken bones," David replied, casually taking a sip of his drink. "Yours." He looked off over the occupants of the mess as though nothing in the world had been said.

DiMarco laughed as she leaned back in her chair, regarding Windsor as if he'd just said something positively adorable. "I could be frightened- I mean really worried- if you could manage a little chutzpah when you said it. It was almost cute- and then you did the look away thing? C'mon.."

"You're just scared," David replied, suddenly turning back around and leaning over the table, "All talk, Chief. That's what I think," He told her, a wicked grin on his face.

"You remember how scared I'm supposed to be when we wipe the floor with you Thursday. Nothing shakes me, genius." Ri stood and gathered up her tray, pausing just long enough to press a quick kiss to the scientist's temple. "You keep being cute though. Maybe practice that whole fierce thing. I've got to get some sleep."

David tried to act offended, but it fell into a laugh as she walked away, "Rest well, Ms. DiMarco! Thank you for keeping me sane!" He called to her as she left.