Indoor Swimming Pool.

Posted on Wed Mar 11th, 2026 @ 8:33am by Lieutenant Commander Andrew Star & Ensign Toran Vos

1,133 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Ghost Starship
Location: Deck 6 - Crew Quarters

The newly appointed Chief Engineer, dressed still in his messy Teal uniform covered in every engineering oil. He was skipping, an engineering bag in his hand, along the steel corridors of the Missouri. The ship was still recovering from the battle, and he still hadn't had time to reorganize his department, hence why he was skipping along to an engineer callout.

Stopping in front of a door, he pushed the bell and waited for it to swoosh open.

Toran glanced towards the door, muttering under his breath, glancing back to the mess he was trying to mitigate. "Come in!" he called out rather than trying to get to the door himself.

"Hi!" Andrew said with a big wave, "Somebody called for an engineer?" He asked

"That would be me!" Toran called through from the modest bathroom. His tall, athletic frame was knelt on the floor, caught in the middle of a thankless task, trying to mop water as fast as it was pouring from the faucet. "It won't...turn...off...."

Andrew walked into the bathroom and saw a soulless man kneeling on a soaked towel in a puddle. He must be a Betazoid. Andrew himself knelt down, under the sink, located the bronze valve, and turned it clockwise. Within moments, water stopped bathing the floor. "My fault," Andrew admitted, "We had to fuse the primary variance capacitor with the molecular phase grid after the battle." Realizing he was babbling, he introduced himself. "Andrew Star. I'll tighten the pipes." Pulling a hyperspanner out of his engineering bag, he got to work tightening the pipes. He wasn't a plumber, but it was a skill he gained.

Toran let out a breath of relief as he knelt back on his feet, shaking his hands to try and dry them off. There was a bitter taste in his mouth though...from just how easy it had been to control. "It...it's just a loose pipe?" he asked with half dread at being caught out by something so simple.

Andrew wasn't aware that he spoke in engineering just now. "Yeah," He quipped, after the pipe was locked, the soggy engineer stood up and with a big smile said softly. "Hope this hasn't spoiled your day."

"Hm..." Toran looked down at himself with a sigh, pushing himself up to stand, grabbing one of the few dry towels to press to his chest. "Too late," he shrugged with annoyance. "At least I didn't break it, I suppose..."

Andrew packed his engineering tools back up. "There's plenty of hours left in the stardate! Maybe you can um... Oooo, enjoy some ice cream. Me, I love chocolate chip ice cream!"

"Chocolate...chip....I don't think I've...?" Toran's brow furrowed thoughtfully as he dried his hands off, before running them through his dark hair to try and tame it back to neatness. He couldn't remember ever having chocolate chip ice cream. In fact...he was pretty sure he'd only ever had ice cream once, on a day trip to a beach. "That cheers you up?"

"It's more of a comfort food," Andrew said, but was unsure if Betazoid knew what it was. "Comfort food is something that reminds you of growing up or a happy memory... For me, my happiest moment would be when Sheng Chai and I dressed up as women and took membership in an all-girls gymnastics team to escape an Orion Syndicate attack

Andrew let the memory take him, babbling on like a grandfather telling a story of his youth. "We were terrible,” he went on gleefully. “The disguises. The leotards were two sizes too small, the wigs were synthetic disasters, and Sheng insisted on padding his chest with bandages. Very lumpy banadges. Extremely unconvincing.”

“Sheng fell off the uneven bars twice and blamed ‘hormonal imbalance,’” Andrew added. “They bought it.”

He smiled, genuine and a little crooked. “Every time I eat something sweet and cold, I think of that day... I think I was 12 then..."

Toran watched with a small, half smile, his arms folding comfortably across his chest. He tried to imagine it...which was a mistake, because he almost made him choke with laughter. "Doesn't sound like a bad memory to surface when you eat ice cream," he conceded.

"Do you have a favourite thing?" Andrew said, pushing the boat out, trying to make a new friend as he stood on a water-soaked floor, eating chocolate ice cream with his new friend, is this friendship? He hoped it was.

"Hm..." Toran gave the question serious thought, wanting to give him a sincere answer. "I...still haven't tried a lot of things," he smiled, embarrassed at how naive that made him sound. "But anything...rich and sweet and indulgent...I'm all for it. I should have tried chocolate ice cream years ago."

"Oooo." Andrew said that the idea that Toran hadn't tried any human food and liked sweets, well the biggest kid on the ship could have fun showing his friend all his favourite sweet treats. "If you like choc ice cream, then you will loooove welsh cakes!"

"Welsh cakes?" Toran asked with confusion, genuinely never having heard of them before. "What's a Welsh?"

"It's a Human Culture," Andrew replied back. "They have this super cool flag with a dragon on it!"

"Huh..." Toran rubbed his jaw, making a note to look it up. "Well honestly, I've never met a cake I didn't like..."

A statement everyone could reliate too. But he knew everything had to end. "I gotta go now," Andrew said with a hint of disappointment. "I got tons of things to do."

"Fair enough..." Toran pushed himself up carefully, steadying himself on the still slippy floor before offering his hand down to help him up. "Maybe you can come by with some of those welsh cakes sometimes. I can even break something to give you a good excuse..." he chuckled to assure him the last was only a joke.

Andrew laughed along. "I would love to hangout again," Andrew admitted. "I'm not a baker, so expect replicated Welsh cakes though."

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