Ensign Sark’s personal log, supplemental,

From medical student to ambulance driver. It happened so fast it gave me whiplash. Trapped in a zone of warp blackout, I’m piloting a shuttle at full impulse to Caelum Station to deliver two patients to the training hospital. We’re taking a circuitous route, hoping to travel far enough past the subspace blackout that we can engage warp engines to make the rest of the trip back in a flash.

Romal Nnekin is my co-pilot, and it’s been six hours since our first kiss. Maybe five hours and forty-seven minutes. We haven’t talked about it yet. He alluded to it once, but I was distracted by the sensor panel. Maybe I felt too much pressure to put it into words in case he said he didn’t like it or I had bad breath. Maybe.

He changed the topic when I didn’t say anything, and, for the life of me, I can’t think of how to pilot a route back to that topic. That kiss.

“I think I took it all for granted?” Sark said, pontificating to distract himself from the lack of movement to be seen through the viewport. At full impulse, his position didn’t appear to be changing in relation to the starfield.

They were at a standstill, practically.

Sark explained himself, saying, “It’s chilling how alone we are without warp drive or comms. What’s even the point of all this technology if we can’t keep our patients breathing in the back of the shuttle?”

Nnekin stretched on arm above his head and braced his hand against the bulkhead protruding from the overhead. Between his steady breathing and focused gaze, he looked like he was holding the shuttle together himself.

In the silence between them, the hiss of the life-support proved deafening.

“We could make a life anywhere,” Nnekin said; “Without any of this.”

“We?” Sark pointedly asked, wondering if he meant Nnekin and he.

Nodding, Nnekin said, “Any one of us,” which sounded like an encouraging statement of inclusion. Any member of their training squad. Any Starfleet officer.

Sark rolled his shoulders back, searching for a new position in the chair to stretch out his cramping lower back. Somehow, his uniform felt even tighter than it had that morning.

“It’s the where that’s conditional,” Sark riposted. “Argelius relies on the machine of the Federation for our infrastructure. And tourism. Without warp travel, my planet would need a whole new system of government!”

Nnekin lolled his head in Sark’s direction, his golden eyes glittering. At his typically sedate pace, he scratched his chin with the pads of his fingertips. Oh, how Sark longed to be those fingers dragged over Nnekin’s stubble.

“You would be eagerly welcomed,” Nnekin said, in his distinctive drawl, “on the Rhaandarite colony where I grew up. I’d make sure of it.”

Sark breathed out sharply, vocalising a short sound of surprise.

“Weren’t you raised in a barn?” Sark asked, and he leaned in closer to Nnekin.

Nnekin stared at Sark blankly for what felt like an eternity. His eyes seemed to smile first, and then his lips caught up eventually. Only then did Nnekin laugh. It was a deep sound, like a bass guitar warming up.

“A pastoral community,” Nnekin replied. “Our family structures are complex, based more on role and resonance than bloodlines. The whole village raised me.”

Nnekin pursed his lips suddenly, swallowing a laugh at some private joke.

“What?” Sark asked, immediately distraught at being left out. “What is it?”

After popping an eyebrow at Sark, Nnekin said, “Your studying might be more focused in a barn if you couldn’t access a Federation database every thirty seconds when you learn about a new case study. Or diagnosis. Or song.”

Gasping to disagree, Sark said, “How can you stand not to know something? How can you stand it? I have to know.”

Instinctively, Sark’s eyes darted to his LCARS panel. A flickering light reminded Sark that the shuttle remained unable to reach any other starship, relay or Starfleet database. A reminder that Sark was all alone out here.

Sinking back in his pilot’s seat, Nnekin waved a dismissing hand at Sark. Again, the hiss of life support made the conversation break feel like an eternity.

“I’ll know what I need,” Nnekin affirmed. “So many labels and binaries in Starfleet culture. That’s not what’s matters.”

Sark was incensed by that philosophy. It lacked agency and seemed like a theoretical ideal more than a strategy. Every time, every time, Sark blundered unthinkingly into a situation, he failed.  Whenever he wanted to take it easy, he couldn’t. Learning on the go simply wasn’t an option for him. Even he couldn’t remember exactly how many times he’d failed the application to Starfleet Academy.

Caught in the wave of that emotion, Sark said, “I’ve met so many doctors like you.”

“Have you now?” Nnekin said in a manner that Sark assumed was intended to sound charming, but it landed as condescending.

Sark summed it up as “The mysterious saviour.” Unable to contain himself, he explained, “You stroll into the patient’s room, you say little, and somehow it comes across as confidence. As expertise.”

“Hunh,” Nnekin said, dragging out the vowels. His eyes weren’t sparkling now.

“You think I’ll swan in,” Nnekin asked through a sneer, “and let the nurses do all the work? Is that what you think?”

A trap. Sark had tripped a conversational trap. The worst part? He’d walked right into it– no, sprinted. Headlong. Lost in the argument, in the idea of being right, forgetting who he was actually talking to. What he wanted with Sark. And now he was falling.

This time, Sark held his breath. This time, Sark didn’t answer. Didn’t answer for a long time.

Nnekin nodded at him heavily and then reclined his seat back, crossing his arms over his eyes.