Held in Reserve: Fourth-Day Afternoons [2/2]

Posted on Mon May 25th, 2026 @ 10:29pm by Lieutenant Darik Moreau

1,657 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Ghost Starship
Location: Tycho City, Luna
Timeline: [Character Backpost] 2382

Continued from part 1

The first few questions were simple enough. Founding charter ratification. Launch of the NX-01. The Articles of Federation. They quizzed each other, with Cian first, who did okay, but after a few wanted to switch for Darik to answer. Darik answered without too much effort, the dates arriving where they always did when he knew material properly, connected to structures and sequences rather than sitting alone.

Cian held the PADD, glancing down at the module and back up at Darik in a rhythm that ought to have become ordinary and somehow did not. “The Tomed Incident,” he said at one point.

Darik looked up at the whiteness of the domed ceiling, with what looked vaguely like the first Moon landing worked into the architecture. “2311,” Darik said before adding, “Treaty of Algeron, same year, which is probably what is confusing you…”

Cian’s mouth shifted with quiet satisfaction as he said, “That one I knew. I was checking whether you bluff,” and he leant closer for a moment, auburn hair falling across his forehead.

“I don’t bluff on quizzes,” Darik replied with a smile, looking at him fully for the first time since he had sat down, one sleeve cuff smoothed absently beneath the table by the fingers of his other hand.

“Good to know,” Cian said, and there was something absurdly disarming in the fact that he sounded as though he meant it.

They worked through the module like that for the next half hour, the questions moving from Federation formation through command reforms and exploratory milestones, and what should have been ordinary started becoming dangerous in exactly the sort of small, private way Darik mistrusted most. Cian was not only easy in himself, he was easy around Darik. No guardedness. No extra note of politeness settling in too late. No visible curiosity about the Cardassian parts of him, which was somehow more noticeable than curiosity would have been. He only seemed interested in whether Darik knew the material, and when it became clear that he knew rather a lot of it, that interest sharpened in a way that made Darik increasingly aware of his own hands, his own voice, the exact distance between them across the table.

And Cian, in that time, just…became more fascinating for Darik. He noticed the small things, like when Cian got something wrong he made a face at the PADD as if it had personally betrayed him. He ran one hand through his hair and made it worse. Once, when he realised he had reversed two dates that really should not have been difficult, he let out a breath through his nose and muttered, “That’s embarrassing,” under it, with enough genuine annoyance that Darik almost smiled. At one point Cian stopped midway through the next question and tilted his head slightly, studying Darik with the sort of frankness that would have annoyed him in almost anybody else. “You do the sequence backwards,” he said. “Not the dates. You remember what happened first and then fill in the numbers.”

Darik hesitated, because being observed accurately by a near-stranger felt more intimate than it should have, then answered, “Yes,” and saw Cian smile properly for the first time.

It changed his whole face. That was unfortunate, for Darik anyway.

“That’s irritatingly efficient,” Cian said, leaning back slightly in the chair, finger tapping once against the edge of the PADD. “I’ve been trying to force the dates into place for a week.”

“You’re making them isolated,” Darik said, because talking about history was easier than acknowledging the smile or the way his heart had just kicked harder for no good reason. “That makes recall harder.”

“And here I thought I was just being stupid.” Cian said with a soft sigh, resting his chin in his hand, eyes going to the PADD.

Darik looked at him despite himself. “That sounds unlikely,” he said and found his voice was…sluggish? Certainly it sounded odd to his own ears. And…it got another smile, smaller but no less troublesome, and the freckles seemed more obvious when Cian smiled, as though the expression pulled warmth into the whole face and made the details sharper. Darik looked down again at once, finding the corner of the screen and focusing on it with determination that would have been better used elsewhere. He adjusted the PADD again, though it had not moved, then reached for his tea mostly because it gave his hands something else to do. His palms were still damp. This was ridiculous.

By the time they reached the section on 23rd century command reforms Cian had stopped checking every answer against the module and started asking from memory, using Darik’s corrections to build it cleanly in his own head. It should not have worked as well as it did. Darik was not usually easy in conversation with people he did not know, particularly not boys older than him and particularly not boys who looked like this and seemed entirely comfortable leaning in to share a PADD as if such things were nothing at all.

But the subject gave the interaction a reason, and the task gave Darik something to talk about. That was the only reason it felt manageable. It had nothing to do with the fact that Cian listened properly, or remembered corrections, or looked pleased in a very specific quiet way whenever Darik answered before he had finished asking.

Eventually the PADD lowered and Cian let out a small breath, sitting back in his chair with the expression of somebody moderately pleased with himself for having remembered more than expected. “Right,” he said, glancing down at the answers one final time before looking back at Darik. “That’s definitely better.”

Darik, who had by then become acutely aware of his own pulse and wished he was not, nodded once.

Cian looked down at Darik’s screen then, at the preparatory module still glowing there, and back up again. Again, there was no pause and no carefulness. “You’re applying next year,” he said, not asking so much as observing. “To Starfleet.”

“Yes,” Darik said and nodded, not meeting his eyes. Instead he looked at his now empty mug, picking it up and then putting it down.

“Then Federation history is either your favourite subject or your preferred form of self-punishment,” Cian commented, and there was warmth in his voice.

“Both,” Darik said, before he could stop himself.

Cian laughed softly at that, not enough to draw attention, just enough to make Darik aware of the sound of it and hate how much he liked it. “Right,” he said, picking up his PADD again, though more slowly than necessary. “Good to know.” His fingers rested against the edge of it for a moment and then he added, a little less neatly this time, “I’m usually in here on fourth-day afternoons, if you want to do this again sometime...or, you know...Thursdays...” he added quickly, as he realised how it sounded.

It had worked well, Darik realised. Studying together. It had been efficient…and it had helped both of them. And his father was doing late shift, so he wasn’t expected home until around the time the Study Hall closed. He…had reasons for it. That knowledge did absolutely nothing to settle the quiet lift in his chest. “I’m usually here,” he said, and immediately disliked how insufficient that sounded. His hand went to his sleeve again, smoothing the cuff once.

But Cian only nodded as though the answer had been perfectly adequate. “Okay,” he said, and there was the slightest colour high on his cheeks that Darik could not tell whether he had imagined. “Good.”

He left a moment later, moving back through the rows of terminals with the same outward self-possession he had arrived with, though once he nearly clipped the corner of a chair with his leg and muttered something at himself under his breath that made him seem, abruptly and reassuringly, less impossible. Darik watched him for exactly one second too long before forcing his attention back to the screen in front of him. The module remained open. The text had not changed. The timeline of Starfleet expansion still sat there in patient Federation Standard, waiting to be read. He looked at the first line and retained none of it. Read it again and nope, nada, nothing. Around him the Study Hall continued as it had before, quiet voices, shifting chairs, the low hum of systems behind the walls, somebody laughing softly three tables over. Nothing of significance had happened. He had revised history with a Senior student for the better part of an hour. That was all.

Nothing in the room had altered, which somehow only made it stranger.

Darik sat very still with his fingers resting against the edge of the terminal and became, with slow unwilling clarity, aware that speaking to Cian Wells had left his palms damp, his heartbeat unreasonably loud and his entire body feeling as though it had been too carefully put together to survive this sort of thing. He also now knew the exact colour of Cian’s hair in study-hall light, the pattern of freckles across the bridge of his nose, the slight asymmetry of his smile and the fact that his voice changed a little when he was actually amused rather than only being polite.

This was excessive.

He closed the history module and opened a blank note file instead, because doing something practical felt preferable to sitting there having whatever this was. The cursor blinked in the empty space for a moment before he typed, very neatly:

Fourth-day afternoons.

He looked at the words, frowned at himself, and deleted them at once. And after a second he opened the note file again and typed them back in.

[OFF]

Lt. Darik Moreau
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Missouri

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