Hot Cocoa and Hard Truths

Posted on Sun Mar 15th, 2026 @ 1:57am by Debbie Gless & Ensign Mei Ratthi

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Debbie's Diner
Timeline: Mission Day 4 at 1930

[Debbie's Diner]
[USS Sojourner]
[MD 4: 1930 Hours]

Mei had not put her shoes on Debbie's upholstery.

It didn't matter that most of it was holographic. There were some rules that transcended technology, and one of them was to never put your shoes on the furniture. Mei was obeying the letter of that law if not the spirit of it, for her shoes were tucked neatly under the table of the booth she sat at. Her knees were drawn up to her chest and her sock-covered toes stuck out from the hems of her floppy pajama pants. Her battered paperback book was braced against her knees, and it looked for all the world like she was engrossed in the story.

Unless you were paying attention, and Debbie was certainly paying attention. While she wasn't staring the girl down, she could tell Mei hadn't turned a single page in the past ten minutes. And by the lack of steam rising from the cup, her half-empty cup of cocoa hadn't been touched, either.

"You know it's called 'hot' cocoa, right?" came the question, accented by the loud pop of a chewing gum bubble. "Not 'warm' or 'room temp' or even 'iced?'" Debbie had moved across the diner like a Hollywood starlet across a soundstage, all oversized, purple-rimmed glasses and nebula-pink beehive hair. The "do" had made something of a comeback a hundred years prior--popular with nurses and yeomen--and leave it to Debbie of all people to make something old feel fresh again. "Wanna warm up on that?" the matron asked, gesturing at the cocoa with her right hand, the various charms of her golden chain bracelet undulating as she pointed. "Or would that go cold too?"

She lowered herself into the booth next to Mei then, not waiting for an answer on the cocoa. It was a prelude to conversation only, not a real offer. But an in was an in and now, the diner matron was nudging the scientist to slide over to make room for her girthier form. "Whatcha readin', toots?" Deb asked then, blowing another bubble and delighting in yet another loud pop.

In the background, a song about some woman called Sue was playing. And for whatever reason, she apparently loved to run around. Though run where, Debbie wasn't quite sure. She enjoyed the bopping beat, thought, and found herself infectiously tapping her fingers along with the rhythm on the table.

"It's called A Star in the Deep," Mei said without looking up. She grabbed her bookmark from the table and tucked it between the pages. "It's a mystery novel from Earth. Late twenty-first century, post-first contact. Human literature from that time is really interesting because they were dealing with the aftermath of a world war and also realizing they weren't alone in the universe. They had a lot of big questions to ask themselves." She looked up at Debbie at last and gave her a wavering smile. "I guess it tells a lot about what's in a person's head when you see what they're reading, doesn't it?"

Debbie had listened thoughtfully to Mei's explanation of the book, her bracelet-laden wrist reaching up to ever-so-subtly adjust her colorful wig in the quiet moment of sitting with the woman. "Suppose so, yeah," she said. "Though if you ask me, it's the way they're reading the book that's more telling." Perhaps sensing that Mei might not be sure of her meaning, she clucked with her tongue, pushing the bubble gum out of her way so she could speak longer without chewing it.

"Overly comfy attire, reading in a bustling hop-and-bop diner," Debbie gestured around them before deepening her voice knowingly, "not turning the pages in said book for, oh, the last half hour..." It'd been less, of course, but the diner matron loved exaggerating for effect and in this particular case, it was warranted. "I'd say your thoughts are less on post-First Contact and maybe a little further...away?" Her tongue slid the gum back into position and with a chew-chew-blow-pop, Debbie folded her arms across her chest. "Well?" she asked hawkishly, clearly aware that this was more than just a casual reading break in her diner.

"I like the bustle. It's nice to have familiar noise once in a while, you know? I don't really get the music, but that's beside the point." Mei finally smiled. Only a little, but it was a real smile. "My mind's all over. My quarters, where Jyl'Eel isn't there anymore. Out to wherever Kaldri's going to head off to when we reach Pathfinder. I was starting to think she'd be here longer, but why would she stay? She has her own family to find. I hope she does find them, wherever they are. Then I randomly remember the Kordra-Lisit , and that's awful but I can't help but think about it anyway. So my mind's all over the place. I thought being here with all the bustling would help take my mind off things, but I guess it didn't really work. I've just got one big recursive cycle going on." She reached for the cocoa, then saw how it had cooled and thought better of it. "I hope your day's been better than mine."

Debbie, by this point in her friendship with Mei, was use to the stream-of-consciousness thought-bombs the little scientist often set off. Where others usually spooled out their thinking in small, digestible spurts, Mei tended towards an explosion of everything everywhere all at once. That was fine by Debbie: as an engineer in her Starfleet life and, later, a bartender and then restaurant proprietor, she'd known people from all walks of life with all manners of different ways of expressing themselves. So she did what she'd done with others who shared a similar approach to Mei's style of sharing inner thoughts: Debbie focused on one detail and used it as an anchor in the conversation.

"The problem with using hustle and bustle to drown out the craziness," the matron reached out to snag a plate from a passing server's tray--offering a "Sorry-not-sorry, just replicate it again" look to the man in question before turning back to Mei--"is that is just adds more crazy. Music you don't know or like," Debbie set the plate down in front of them, gesturing to the mass of miniature, bite-sized tacos covered in gooey cheese and red sauce, "lots of people you don't know. All the random little noises that fill this place..." she snagged the gum from her mouth, stuck it to the rim of the plate, and popped a mini taco into her mouth, "just add more stimuli when your brain's already overloaded."

Well, she was trying to say "overloaded." Around the mouthful of half-masticated tiny taco, it sounded more like "orrvahrloafed" but Debbie's meaning was still clear. Finishing a bout of chewing and swallowing, the matron pushed the plate at Mei. While no words were verbalized, the command in her eyes was clear: eat something. "I've learned that when I'm feeling like a creek inside so clogged with debris I can't flow, what I need is to start pulling out all the sticks and gunk and get it flowing again. Not add more sticks, ya know? Water wants to move. Thoughts do too."

She grabbed another taco before gesturing at the same server she'd stolen the plate from, who was now passing by again. "She'll take a fresh hot cocoa. Bump it to the top of the order queue, along with the replacement tacos for table six. K? Thanks, doll," she offered the server before training a look on Mei. "So which stick are we pickin' first? Something easy from the top of the pile," Debbie asked, "or something a bit more stuck in the center of the whole mess?"

"Pick an easy stick off the top, she says. Like any of those sticks are easy." Mei selected a taco and did her best not to spill any of it down her shirt. She managed not to and downed the taco a little faster than she probably should have. "Losing friends and being taken hostage. Easy topics. Sooo easy. But then you mentioned that coming here to clear my head wasn't maybe the best idea, so I'll go with that one. I came here tonight because I'm used to hustle and bustle. I grew up around it– on the ships and stations, anyway, in their public spaces. Quiet on a ship is unsettling. It's just machines running, sure, but space is weird. You never know what's out there. You might not even be able to comprehend it. And if some unusual noise starts up you can't identify on the spot, things can start feeling really weird. I don't know how engineers manage it. All those noises going on in all this vastness, and if you mess up a repair you could strand everyone a long way from any help.

"But if you have people noise, that's understandable. Get some low-level crowd noise, you know, people talking and laughing, and you have an idea of what to expect. It's safe." The server passed by with a new cup of hot cocoa for Mei, but kept the new tray of tacos far from Debbie before whizzing away. Mei took a sip of cocoa, then picked at the cheese on another taco. "Look at everyone here," she went on, gesturing at the people around them, "they're having fun. They're comfortable. They feel safe, so I feel safe. I'm a people-person. That's why I went into anthropology. Low-level people noise isn't my problem tonight. It's everything else. Sure, I could go back to my quarters, but it's so quiet. Eekit's still on her weird shifts and I don't want to wake her up accidentally. And it feels too quiet without Jyl'eel there. I know I'll start to get used to the 'new normal' or whatever, but right now it just doesn't feel quite right."

Debbie listened...listened some more...and then listened a whole lot more. The taco she'd raised to pop in her mouth--frozen in mid-air amidst the deluging stream of consciousness from Mei--glop-glop-glopped copious amounts of cheese as the young woman spoke. And when, finally, the mention of Jyl'eel arose, the matron nodded slowly, abandoning the taco entirely. Back in the mountain of dripped cheese, of course, because Debbie wanted to charge it back up before trying again.

"I miss her too," she said somberly. Debbie was known for never having a serious look on her face that lasted more than a few seconds. But today, engaging with Mei, it lingered...and then lingered some more. Debbie cleared her throat a little and, on the verge of speaking, sighed instead. The exhalation of air drew her eyes closed, tightened her lips, and caused her shoulders to visibly sag. When her eyes slowly opened again, they more-than-moistly wavered even as a long inhalation began to restore her to herself.

"I totally get what you're saying, Mei," the matron began again, still serious. "And I'm glad being out here," Debbie gestured to the 1950s/60s Americana diner around them, "helps. I think I just see a lot of lost people come in here hoping for an escape. And on the surface," she subconsciously moved the mini-taco around in the cheese, "that sounds fine. But this place isn't an escape," Debbie shook her head. "It's an invitation to get out of the flood and pick at the blockages. Where it's safe," she acknowledged Mei's sentiment. "Where you're cared for."

"So...do you want to read your book?" Debbie picked the taco up again, gesturing towards the readable with it, "or do you want to talk about what's stopping you up? Kidnapping's definitely a good place to start," she nodded before popping the long-delayed morsel in her mouth. As she chew-chew-chewed, her eyes turned kindly, her arms folding over each other to rest on the table, which supported the ample number of friendship, charm, and jelly bracelets around her wrists.

Mei's little laugh verged on the hysterical, but she quickly got control of herself and heaved a long sigh. "You know, I go back and forth on that. Trying not to think about it, and then deliberately thinking about it because you've got to work through it, right? Otherwise it just stays there in the background and haunts you. But also, I don't– I don't want to think about it ever. Worst day of my life and all. It's always there, though." She took another, shakier breath then carefully placed a bookmark in the paperback and set it aside. With a gesture, she flicked an errant curl out of her face and took the cup of cocoa in both hands to savor the warmth. After a long pause, she looked up at Debbie. "How do you get through it after something like this? I wake up in the middle of the night and think I'm back there because it's dark and it takes so long to realize I'm in my own quarters after all, or someone taps me on the shoulder and I jump because I think it's a Kazon guard. It's probably a good thing I'm not in security or I might have whacked someone instead of just squeaking at them."

The matron's eyes—still a little glassy from her own moment of vulnerability—softened even further as Mei spoke. Debbie reached for another taco, thought better of it, and instead let her hand settle on the table between them. Not touching Mei, but close enough that the offer was there if the scientist wanted to take it.

"Honey," Debbie started, her voice gentle but firm in that way that meant she wasn't going to let Mei off easy, "you're talking around it instead of through it." She adjusted her glasses with her free hand, the purple rims catching the diner's warm lighting. "You're giving me the highlights reel. 'Worst day of my life,' 'thinking I'm back there,' all very..." she waved her braceleted wrist in an exaggeratedly circular motion, searching for the word, "...general."

A bubble formed and popped, punctuating the pause.

"But general doesn't cut it, baby. Not when every shoulder tap makes you jump. Not when you wake up thinking you're still in that cell or wherever the hell they kept you." Debbie leaned in a little, her elbows on the table now (her mother would be furious with her), fingers lacing together. "You never let yourself actually feel what happened when it was happening, did you? You went into survival mode—which, good, that's what kept you breathing—but now?" She shook her head slowly. "Now all those moments you shoved down? They're still down there. Unprocessed. Unresolved. And every time something even sorta reminds you of it, your body goes 'OH! We never dealt with this! How about right now?' and boom." She snapped her magenta-nailed fingers. "Panic."

The diner noise swirled around them—laughter from a nearby table, the clink of dishes, that persistent beat of whatever oldies track was playing. Debbie let it fill the space for a beat before continuing.

"So you can keep waking up scared, keep jumping at shadows, keep generally thinking about it..." Debbie picked up the taco finally, gesturing with it. "Or you can do what I've learned to do over the years...and let yourself relive it. With the purpose of letting yourself finally feel all the things you stoppered up in the moment. Cause if you keep dragging that bullshit around without processing it...you'll be jumping at shadows until you're older than I am."

"I know." Mei's voice was so small and quiet it was barely audible over the noise. She tightened her grip on the mug like it would give her the answers to all the hard questions. She drew in a deep breath and for a moment it seemed like she might give Debbie a longer answer, and then she deflated, shoulders and back sagging. Even her curly hair seemed to go limp. "I know, " she said a little louder. "I just– I don't want to. I know I need to face it and deal with it all, but . . . " she trailed off and sighed. "It sucks. It's hard and it sucks, and I don't want to feel that way again. All helpless and everything." She tugged the end of one sleeve over her hand and wiped at her eyes. "And you're probably not going to let me go back to my quarters until I schedule an appointment with the counselor or something like that. That's what I'd do with a friend who was being stupid about their health."

Debbie leaned back in the booth, arms crossing over her chest as she regarded Mei with that hawkish look—the one that said she was weighing whether to let something slide or call it out. Her jaws jawed her gum for several thoughtful moments while the diner noise swirled around them. And then, finally, she leaned forward, elbows on the table and bracelets clinking. The hawk was gone. In its place was a dove.

"Sounds like you already know what you need to do," Debbie said, her voice supportive--reinforcing rather than directive (for once). "And yeah, it sucks. Life sucks sometimes. Maybe more than we'd like to believe." She picked up the cocoa mug and pushed it closer to Mei, wrapping the scientist's hands around it with her own for just a second before pulling back. "But you know how you make it un-suck, buttercup? You do the thing you know you should." A bubble formed and popped.

"You're not stupid. You're scared. And that's fine—scared is human," Debbie reassured. "But scared doesn't get to fly the shuttle forever, you know?" She tapped her magenta nails on the table with clacks of finality. "So here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna finish that cocoa and then yes, you're scheduling that appointment. I ain't leaving this booth until both have happened. Got nowhere else to be, toots."

Except that was a lie. Around them, the diner din had risen by several decibels as new patrons continued to enter the matron's eatery. Debbie's staff was capable of slinging shakes and replicating tacos but there were other people who needed her very special brand of mothering in Subrek's wake. But despite the pull she felt to go help with the sudden rush, Debbie stayed exactly where she was.

"You've got this, baby," she said with warmth and more than a little affection. "And I've got you."

"I know." Mei's eyes glistened, and she brushed at them before picking her cocoa back up and sipping it– quickly; she could see how busy it was getting and that the staff was starting to look a bit harried. Still, she savored the drink and by the time she'd finished it her eyes were dry, her back was straight, and her smile wasn't wavering anymore. She took a deep breath and grabbed her PADD from where it had been languishing on the seat next to her. "Alright. Let's get this done before your servers press me into service for taking up so much of your time."

The PADD lit up with a happy chirp. Mei flicked through the various menus and options, landing on the counselor's schedule and then pausing to examine the options. Her lips moved like she was talking to herself. Her fingers hovered over a couple of different times a couple of days away, presumably the soonest openings that would work with Mei's schedule. Then, with birdlike movements, she tapped an option and confirmed the booking. "There. Booked." She looked like she was going to say something else, then stopped. Her brow furrowed. "You know? I kind of feel a little better already. Like some of the weight's lifted. Hooray for taking steps to make things better, I guess. So now you can stop hovering, because if you don't go and help them, I think we're going to have to fear the wrath of your staff. Seriously. Look at them. They're sharpening the knives and everything." Mei let out a real laugh for the first time that evening. Maybe for the first time all day. "I'll be okay. I've got the counseling booking and everything, mother hen. We'll get through it."

"Yes we will. Proud of you, baby," Debbie replied warmly.

And she was. Seeking out counseling and confronting emotions vs. just running from them was hard fucking work. But Mei was doing the right thing in facing her hardships rather than continuing to hide in a book. And the fact that she was laughing was, indeed, a good sign. She gave Mei's hand a quick squeeze then—just a brief press of warmth—before sliding out of the booth with a jangle of bracelets and a rustle of fabric. The diner called, the patrons beckoned, and Debbie had milkshakes to churn and comfort to dispense in equal measure. Like a sea squall coming from nowhere and passing just as quick, the matron was gone as the diner resumed its rhythms in her wake.


=/\= A joint post by... =/\=

Ensign Mei Ratthi
Science Officer

and

Debbie Gless
Diner Mom Extraordinare