tampered | one more day in paradise (forward-dated to sunday)

Entry tags:

one more day in paradise (forward-dated to sunday)

When; February 9th
Rating; let's say PG-13 for the half-Klingon being in the same room as the omnipotent being. There might be an honor issue in here somewhere
Characters; Chakotay, Kathryn Janeway, B'Elanna Torres, Harry Kim, Pavel Chekov, Hikaru Sulu, and Q. Yes, even Q
Summary; Chakotay decided that it would be nice for both crews to get together and talk / bond. And Q would've turned up to party crash anyway.
Log;

They were all going to meet at Chekov's little cottage in the woods for this get-together and Chakotay hoped it would be a success, if not a smashing one. He was well aware that it might be a slightly more volatile situation than any of them really wanted simply because Q would be there -- and he knew Q would've been there even if he hadn't been invited -- but he had to hope that everyone would be able to keep their tempers in check and Q would take what he'd said about respect to heart. Maybe then they would be able to enjoy this dinner without hostilities.

Chakotay had done a good part of the cooking. Anyone else was welcome to have cooked or brought something -- no dishes by the captain please -- but he was ready and willing to bring the majority. Cooking was something he was used to and he'd come to like it, especially in this place. It meant he could provide something interesting and it took up a good part of the time he might otherwise spend working in the labs or just being bored. Or trying to meditate or contact his spirit guide. That had been hit or miss lately and he had a feeling that had more to do with the City itself and less with him in general.

But none of that mattered. What mattered was this dinner and how everyone would take it. Hopefully it would all work out. With the food all set out now they just had to wait for everyone else.

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In anticipation of the dinner party, the cottage has ever-so-subtly grown to accommodate the guests. Should anyone go exploring, they might find that the cottage's layout isn't as set as that of most buildings. Most of Chekov's crew just looked at him like he was crazy when he informed him that his home was magic; perhaps Janeway's crew (and others) will be more open-minded.

Chekov has been at the laboratory, mostly to avoid getting underfoot. He can cook, mind, but the recipes he knows aren't usually received with much enthusiasm. It's best that Chakotay takes the wheel.

The eighteen year-old gets home well before dinner's set to begin. He has tidied up, mostly, but there are still some projects in the living room that he should probably stash somewhere. Those obstructions aside, the cottage looks good. Everything is in its place, the dog has been bathed, and Chekov even went so far as to dust the shelf upon which he keeps the various antique navigational devices he has collected. One doesn't have a captain over without ensuring that one's quarters are clean enough to pass muster.

He peers into the kitchen after stowing away the last of his projects. Chakotay has been nothing if not productive. "How is the cooking?"

Chakotay's just grateful they have a decent place to have this dinner. It's better than taking it to the labs or using someone's apartment. Either of those would work, but this one felt more homey, much more relaxed. He's about got everything ready and on the table. It's mostly waiting on everyone else to arrive.

In all honesty, he's been enjoying the new location. It's different enough for him to be interested and out of all of them, he'd be the most likely to accept the magical aspect of it. But explorations can happen later. Right now, the important part is dinner.

When Chekov pokes his head in, Chakotay offers a warm smile, obviously pleased with how this whole thing has turned out. "I think it's almost done. I should thank you again for the location. This is much nicer than any of our other options."

"Fine, I imagine, since I had no hand in it."

The captain, dressed down in blue jeans and wandering about the place barefoot, is considerably shorter than usual, having kicked her heels off at the door. She's staying away from the still cooking food for now, knowing that getting too close to the pots will attract Chakotay's attention — if only to ensure that she doesn't touch any of them, so as not to contaminate the contents with what she dares to call cooking.

Just as promised, Kathryn arrives without rank or ceremony. Her combadge isn't even pinned to her chest, which is a rare feat in and of itself. ...not that she left it or her tricorder and phaser at home. No, they're stored in the deceptively quaint handbag she's brought along with her, there to be within reach if and when she needs them. She never leaves home without them, casual setting or not, but she is, for all intents and purposes, actually trying not to be the captain around her subordinates.

But steering clear of the pots and pans still cooking on the stove only last so long before curiosity gets the better of her and she wanders close to something with a lid on it. Tempting fate, she finds a pot holder and carefully lifts up one side of the lid to peer inside at the contents. Just to look. Not to touch or even stir it — though it looks like it could do with a good stirring.

Uh-oh. That looks like trouble. It's probably a good thing that Chakotay hasn't left the still-cooking food completely alone or he might return to an explosion. As it is, when he does reappear moments later, he spots Kathryn and immediately makes his way back over. Having her in the kitchen is like bringing Neelix to a game of Parrises squares.

Still smiling as though he's not interrupting anything, he carefully plucks the lid from her hand. "We're not even to the taste-testing part yet."

There's no fanfare. There's no fantastic flash of light, look at me, pay attention display. He comes alone, without a show and dance, no host of dancing ladies behind him, and he even uses the door. In fact, it's about as far from normal Q behavior as it's possible to get. Suspiciously demure, subdued in a darker shade of red than usual and even going without his pips and combadge, he might even be mistaken for a regular person.

It's sort of the point.

So he knocks, and pushes his hands into his pockets, waiting for the door to open.

Edited 2014-02-09 20:31 (UTC)

Joke as they may about Neelix, Kathryn misses him. Were the Talaxian here with them, this get together would've likely been his idea, and he would be infinately pleased with Chakotay for coming up with the idea all on his own.

As for the other half of the command team, she's holding both hands up as if Chakotay's got her at gunpoint. "I was just looking."

Right on time, Harry arrives in perfectly acceptable civilian garb, a long-sleeved black polo and dark jeans. (Don't worry, Captain - his combadge is in one of the pockets of his jeans. He's not about to go back on his word of carrying it everywhere with him.)

He's actually decided to try to contribute - but rather than fumble through cooking it himself, he's gone to one of the City's bakeries and picked up an apple pie. Not quite the same as mom's, of course, but it's a taste of home to be shared. He just pops into the kitchen quickly, to find somewhere to put it out of the way for later.

At some point after Q finds himself let in, Chakotay will pass by with a plate of... who even knows what that is? Probably something non-leola root. Spirits, no one even knows how happy the crew of Voyager is not to be forced to eat something containing leola root. Whatever it is on this plate, it smells good and as Chakotay passes, he notices the newcomer.

Well look who decided to use the door. Maybe this idea of respect might actually get somewhere.

Pausing, he glances back and even smiles. "Glad you could make it, Q. The festivities are this way if you'd like a sampling of the food." He may or may not have been working on this all day, but hey, if it makes the crews happy, all the better. It's a gathering; it's supposed to be a time to relax and chat out of uniform and without rank, as people and not as officers.

Neelix would have added his own flair to it and chastised them all for taking this long in the same breath. They all miss him. All four of them miss the entire crew. Some days it's easier to see than others, but it's always there. Whatever their initial intentions when their two ships were lost together in the Delta Quadrant, they had united into one, a family, and that was hard to shake after so long.

Good-natured as ever, Chakotay moves to give the pot a bit of a stir before lifting a small bit of the stew in the spoon and offer it to Kathryn to taste. "Would you care to be my taste tester?"

They are all such perfect Starfleet officers. Even off duty and in civilian garb, they're armed and connected. Combadges everywhere and phasers with those who have them. Chakotay's are tucked away in his shirt and jacket, close enough should he need them.

Harry's contribution is met with a broad smile. The more food, the better and it seems perfectly acceptable to eat, store-bought or not. So Chakotay makes his way over to shuffle some of the items already out on what has become more like a buffet table than anything else.

"Is that apple pie?"

He might just change it all to leola root everything if he knew that, call it a taste of home and regain the crown of mischief that he is sorely feeling the lack of. Q is on a knife's edge of indecision. He's behaving because he should behave. He's overbehaving because it makes him feel like it's his decision, a choice he's made for some unannounced reason. It's a thread that he's holding onto and it might unravel all at once, because Q is pressingly aware that he is soon going to be himself again. That there's a very real possibility that none of this matters, because not one member of this wretched crew can keep their memories.

Chakotay will never remember reaching a level of decency with him. Chekov will not remember dog sled racing. B'ellana will not remember punching him in the face. And Kathy - sweet Kathy - she won't be able to remember a single iota of it. It's devastating. Frustrating. And he wants to make everyone else feel as wretched about it as he does. But he isn't. Out of respect.

Tentatively.

His smile is very nearly nothing at all. Dispirited, it's but a quirk of his lips, belying a tumult of thought just below the surface. He indulges in one of the things off the tray, but only because his treacherous human stomach is insisting on it.

"I appreciate your hospitality, Commander."

Definitely overselling it.

"I should thank you. You are doing the cooking."

The boy slips in to inspect Chakotay's work. "I wish that I could have been of more help."

"Captain!" Chekov salutes automatically before remembering that, yes, dinner party. Ahem. At least he's in jeans and a novelty tee instead of his uniform. "Does the cottage meet with your approval, sir?"

He could. If he decides to wait until most have eaten enough or leave a few dishes untouched, Chakotay likely won't be as angry as if he changed everything right now. The fact that Q is behaving at all is odd enough, but the words make Chakotay pause just a little longer, as though he's trying to decide if Q is really being honest or if he's just trying to get Chakotay's guard down.

"Thank Chekov. It's his cottage."

And a very nice cottage it is.

Chakotay turns to head into the main room, setting down the dish where there's a spot for it and motioning for Q to get in there too. If only the poor omnipotent being knew there's a weekend he doesn't remember, he might not be so wretched. Or he might be worse. Who knows?

"I think we're going to treat this as a buffet. Help yourself and try a little of all of it. I don't think the Continuum ever had anything quite like this."

Chakotay shifts to the side so Chekov can have a better look at the stew and other options. No leola root stew, thank the spirits. "Your hospitality is more than what I would have asked for. Besides, I don't mind cooking. When Kathryn and I shared an apartment at first, I would do all the cooking. This isn't a problem at all."

"At ease," she urges, doing her best to adhere to Chakotay's insistence that they leave their ranks at the door. "Don't let Chakotay hear you call me that. If I can't use ranks tonight, neither can you. Call me Kathryn."

He was behaving himself, and Kathryn wasn't sure whether to interpret that sort of behavior (or lack thereof) as alarming or not. Q was not a docile entity; she knew that well in spite of how close she'd grown to him. Certainly he wasn't playing nice with her crew and the boys from the Enterprise just for her. Of course he wasn't. There was something else to this, and she'd gone from keeping a casual distance to actively keeping tabs on his location throughout the cottage as the night progressed.

It's in the kitchen that she finally siddled up to him, the first time she'd put herself within two meters of him since this get together began.

"What, no fireworks?"

By the end of the night the accurate descriptor was sullen. Q was as sullen as an entity who was anticipating getting back the power to unequivocally alter the fabric of the universe could be. And why? Because Chakotay's vegetarian...lump things were actually quite nice? No, that wasn't it at all.

It was because in the grand scheme of things Q had never felt so small.

It suddenly seemed to matter not a single jot what he wanted, because the universe - damn the thing - had to come first. He couldn't whisk Kathy away from her miserable timeline because that miserable timeline needed her. Who would there be to convey messages between Starfleet Command and her fleet in the future like some overpipped version of a space secretary? No, she had to forget, they all did, and that made all of this rather pointless, didn't it?

Q was the one who still had a fifty-fifty chance of remembering, when all was said and done. And if it came to it, he couldn't even obliviate himself! And so he also had to sulk about whether or not he even wanted to. He'd earned Chakotay's respect, Kathryn's love, the friendship of Chekov, the ability-to-exist-in-the-same-building as B'elanna. He felt human, and it felt wonderful, and it would all soon be gone. It made him want to go straight to the labs and smash the transporter to pieces with his own hands, just to have some sort of power over it.

But he also missed his son, wanted to go home, needed to get back to the Continuum and fix whatever might have happened in his potential absence, make his excuses.

It was too much uncertainty, too much choice, too much regret for a Q to bear. It was like the weight of the universe had been put on his shoulders--you know, if it had ever felt like there wasa weight to the universe in Q perspective.

And of course tonight was lousy for other reasons. Chakotay was being friendly, offering him food and generally not throwing him out the door on his ear. Q had briefly considered acting up just to make it stop, but he'd been too miserable about his lot to even do that. Janeway hadn't come near him in hours, not even to make some remark about behaving himself so that the rest of them could hear. It was most unusual, and it made him feel even more useless. A dead weight. Perhaps he should transform himself into a piece of furniture for the rest of the night...

He blinked as she found him at last, startling out from his self involved stupor to look up at her.

"Is it traditional to have fireworks?"

Totally missing the point.

Edited 2014-02-13 02:46 (UTC)

If only he'd thought that far ahead. Just getting all their guards down so he could pull the ultimate practical joke! That's more like the Q we know and love! But no, he's sullen because he's rather appreciating the nice things about being - for the first time in his entire, long existence - liked.

Ugh.

Q heads and follows Chakotay, frowning. The cottage is cramped but pleasant, and despite how small it seemed it seemed to go on forever, with all sorts of nooks and crannies--easy places to get lost, and easy places to hide. But what was the point in sulking if nobody could see you do it?

"You cooked all of this? Absolutely nothing replicated?"

Missing the point entirely, but Kathryn couldn't help but find his misunderstanding of a simple human phrase endearing. It puts a small, fond smile on her face while her back is turned to the rest of the congregation, safe from the wandering eyes of those who would see what they ought not to.

"Sometimes, but in this instance I was referring to the lack of a mess to clean up." She shrugged, pulled open a drawer to rifle through the contents — spatulas of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. "I don't know what I expected, but it certainly wasn't good behavior on your part."

He watches her, like a cat watching a fish in a fishbowl, but not before catching her helpless smile and feeling just a flutter of reassurance in his tiny little heart. His mouth moves, working away a smile that threatens to break the surface of his own, not that smiling would break character and give their clandestine relationship away, but because he refuses to be comforted so easily. He's meant to be sulking.

It's childish on his behalf, but then so is he.

"It seems you've been misbehaving enough for the both of us. What are you looking for?"

It's true; she has. Kathryn wandered too close to the still-cooking food more times than necessary, partly out of a need to indulge her ever unyielding curiosity and partly to keep her first officer on his toes. It was both running joke and unfortunate truth that Kathryn was unable to cook to save her life. Even the replicator in her quarters rebelled against her half the time. Her going anywhere near the pots and pans was a disaster waiting to happen and she knew it, but she tempted fate anyway.

Why? Because she could, that's why. And she left rank at the door.

Her answer came first in the form of jabbing Q in the side with one of the spatulas, the flimsy, plastic end bending in against his shirt. "Something to stab you with."

Q is startled by her playfulness--in fact, she just about gets a laugh out of him, certainly a surprised scowl-smile and an outraged expression! And then all at once he reaches out, and as he pins her close against him the lights in the house flash out for a few seconds. Just long enough to press a peck of a kiss against her mouth.

It happens without warning, in almost no time at all, and by the time the lights are on he's standing by the counter keeping his hands to himself again, one eyebrow raised in challenge. His elbows are propped behind him on the edge of the counter.

Retaliation. If she can play then so can he.

It looks like food. As such, Chekov is pleased; he doesn't have the most discriminating of palates.

"Russians are famous for their hospitality," he states, straight-faced. "My father would be very upset if he knew that I was being so inhospitable as to allow a guest to cook, but it's for the best. My cooking is not... ah, appreciated by everyone."

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one more day in paradise (forward-dated to sunday)

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