"I noticed," he said.
"It is a known issue," she said.
"I know," he said. "Come on."
They walked off the bridge together and into the corridor and she matched his pace, naturally, and the Deck 2 corridor was quiet and warm at this hour withher quarters a few doors down on the right. They walked the corridor together in the comfortable silence that had developed between them in the last several days and had a different quality to it now than it had before two nights ago.
Outside her door she stopped and looked at him and he looked back at her and the corridor was quiet enough that the ship's hum was the only sound available.
"Have you eaten?" she asked.
"Not since 1400" he said.
"Neither have I" She paused for exactly as long as the next thing required. "Come in. I will replicate something and you can tell me what you think of the secondary route properly instead of looking at it from the captain's chair."
He looked at her. "Is this dinner or a route briefing?"
The corner of her mouth moved in the way it did when she was about to say something that was more honest than it needed to be. "Both," she said. "Come in anyway."
She opened the door and he followed her in and the quarters were warm and dim with the viewport showing the planet below and the meditation mat along the wall and the navigation library arranged on the desk in the order that made sense only to her and the two chairs angled toward each other by the viewport that told him something about how she had arranged this space and what she had been thinking about when she arranged it.
She went to the replicator and he sat in one of the chairs and looked at the planet and thought that the Dutchman was leaving soon enough and the Gatrao System was waiting at the end of a nebula transit and whatever was in the Gatrao System had been sitting there long enough that a ship had run from it at maximum warp without filing a report.
He thought about all of that and he also thought about Lindsy at the helm at 2300 in her off duty clothes with a cold mug and a route calculation that needed doing and the particular quality of someone who did not know when to stop because stopping felt like leaving something unfinished.
She came back with two plates and set one in front of him and sat in the other chair and looked at the planet and then at him.
"The secondary route adds two hours" she said.
"I know" he said. "It is the right call."
"I think so too" she said. "I just wanted you to say it."
He looked at her. "You already knew it was the right call."
"Yes," she said. "But it is a long transit and I wanted to have had the conversation before we were in the middle of it."
He held her gaze for a moment and then looked at the planet and picked up his fork and thought that he had built this crew specifically to find people who thought the way she thought and that the fact that one of them had ended up being this particular person was either very good planning or very good luck and that he was not going to examine the distinction too closely tonight.
"Eat" she said.
"I am eating" he replied.
She looked at the planet and ate and he did the same and the room was warm around them and the ship hummed in its departure eve quiet and New Ferenginar kept its slow turn below and neither of them was in any hurry to be anywhere else and the route was saved and the mission was ready and the morning was going to come when it came.
They talked for a while after the plates were empty, the easy kind of conversation that happened when two people had stopped performing anything for each other and were simply present in the same warm room. She told him about the first deep range transit she had ever plotted solo, a run through the Antican frontier at nineteen that had gone sideways in two specific ways she had not been trained for and had resolved through a combination of calculation and instinct that she had not fully understood until years later. He told her about the first ship he had ever taken out of dock alone, a bulk freighter that should not have been in service and that he had pushed to warp four on a bet and had regretted for the six hours it took to limp back to port.
She laughed at that and he watched her laugh and thought that she laughed the way she usually did, fully and without reservation once she had decided it was warranted, and that it was one of the things he had been cataloguing without meaning to since the cantina.
The plates had been empty for a long time when she looked at him across the small distance between the two chairs with the direct expression she brought to most assessments.
"You need a shower" she said.
He looked at her. "I beg your pardon."
"You have been running around most of the day and then on the bridge later, and you smell like a man who has been working since 0700 and it is now past 2300." She said it, without apology and without cruelty. Just the direct delivery of an accurate observation. "The sonic shower is through the door over there."
He looked at her for a moment. "You are telling me I smell."
"I am telling you that you need a shower" she said. "There is a distinction." The corner of her mouth moved. "With me."
He held her gaze for a second and then the corner of his own mouth moved. "Is that a promise?"
"It is an observation with a strong recommendation attached" she said, and stood up and held out her hand and looked at him with the warm composed expression that was the version of her he had been trying to get a clear look at since the Rusty Lobe Cantina and that was considerably more present than it had been back then.
He took her hand and she led him through the door to the bathroom. The sonic shower had plenty of space, warmly inviting, the ship hummed around them and New Ferenginar kept its slow orbit below. However as they got ready for their shower, there was nothing more important than their focus on each other over the rest of the night.
Outside the viewport the stars were very bright and the planet turned and the Dutchman held its position accordingly, the evening had become what it was going to be and the night cycle ran its quiet course around it.