Overcrowded

The mess hall had a few people still grabbing dinner when Mei-Lin and T'Vara sat down. Nothing busy, just the tail end of the service, the replicator going every few minutes for whoever was passing through. They found the table by the viewport and settled in without talking about it.

Mei-Lin had rice and broth. T'Vara had whatever T'Vara always had. They ate without feeling the need to fill the space between them which Mei-Lin found mildly surprising given that T'Vara had been aboard for all of two days. Some people you just figured out quickly. T'Vara was one of them, not warm exactly but not uncomfortable either, just present in a way that did not demand anything back.

Lindsy showed up about ten minutes in, bowl in one hand and PADD under her arm. She looked around and came straight over.

"Taken?" She nodded at the empty chair.

"Sit," Mei-Lin said.

Lindsy sat and put her PADD face down which meant she was done working for the night. Mei-Lin had picked that up quickly about her. PADD face down meant Lindsy had decided to be present rather than productive and it was worth noting when it happened.

"I tried the suit on this afternoon," Lindsy said. "The thruster placement is perfect. And the visor just works. I didn't have to adjust anything."

"Good. Wear it for a few hours before you trust it completely. The shoulder sometimes needs a small tweak after a full range of motion."

"I'll let you know." Lindsy looked at T'Vara. "Have you seen yours yet?"

"I am still considering the suit question," T'Vara said.

Lindsy nodded and left it there. Nobody on this ship pushed T'Vara on that and nobody was going to and that was the right call.

The last few people cleared out and it was just the three of them and the hum of the ship and New Ferenginar doing its slow turn outside. Mei-Lin had been staring at that planet for six days now and she still had not gotten tired of it which probably said something about where her head was at lately.

Or who had been in it.

She took a spoonful of broth and told herself to focus on the food.

T'Vara looked at her. "Can I ask you something."

Mei-Lin looked up. "Go ahead."

"You seem like someone who is thinking about something and trying not to," T'Vara said. She said it the way she said most things, without apology and without softening it. "I have only been here two days so I could be wrong. But it seems that way."

Mei-Lin glanced at Lindsy who was getting very interested in her dinner. Lindsy was doing the thing where she was very carefully not doing anything which was somehow more obvious than if she had just reacted normally. She had been doing it since she sat down, the PADD face down and the careful attention to the bowl and the way she had not quite met Mei-Lin's eyes directly yet.

"Lindsy tell you something?" Mei-Lin said.

"Lindsy has told me nothing," T'Vara said. "I am going on two days of observation and a general read of the room."

"Two days is not a lot of data," Mei-Lin said.

"No," T'Vara agreed. "But some things don't take long to read."

There was a silence. Mei-Lin decided there was no point dancing around any of it. It was a small ship and these were the two people she spent the most time with and if she could not say it here she was going to be carrying it around in a way that was going to get exhausting quickly.

"Fine," she said. "Zedd and I had dinner last night in the captain's mess. Work conversation that turned into three hours of nothing to do with work. I told him I wanted to spend time with him off duty. He said yes and told me he liked me." She put her mug down. "That's what you're reading."

Saying it out loud still did something to her chest that she was not entirely prepared for. She had thought saying it to Lindsy the night before would make it feel more ordinary. It had not. If anything it felt more real every time she said it which was either a good sign or a sign she was in more trouble than she had initially calculated.

T'Vara nodded like this made sense to her. She looked at Lindsy. "And you seem like someone sitting with something too. If that's not out of line to say."

Lindsy was quiet for a moment and Mei-Lin watched her decide something. The small shift in posture, the decision to just say it rather than find a way around it.

"I like him too," Lindsy said. "I noticed it early and I put it away. It's not my situation and it's not going to be. That's it."

T'Vara looked at her for a moment. "That's a straightforward way to handle something that probably isn't straightforward."

"It's easier when you just say what it is," Lindsy said. "Carrying it around quietly takes more energy."

Mei-Lin looked at her. She had known this since the alcove the other night and she had been thinking about it since, about what it meant to sit across from someone who was being genuinely honest about something that was costing them something. It was more than gracious. It was the kind of honesty most people were not capable of when things actually hurt.

"You sure you're okay?" Mei-Lin said.

"Ask me in a week," Lindsy said. "Tonight I'm mostly sure."

The corner of her mouth moved just slightly and Mei-Lin felt something ease in her chest that had been sitting there since the alcove conversation, not gone but lighter, which was probably the best she was going to get and was enough.

T'Vara looked between them. "You're both more direct than most people I've worked with," she said. "Two days is enough to notice that."

"Is that a compliment?" Mei-Lin asked.

"Yes," T'Vara said, and went back to her food like the matter was settled.

Mei-Lin topped up all three mugs. T'Vara accepted hers without looking up. Lindsy pulled hers closer with both hands and looked back out at the viewport and the planet below kept doing what it always did, slow and indifferent and lit up at the edges where the marsh caught the orbital light.

Nobody said much after that.

They didn't need to.