Comfortably Mundane

Posted on Sat Feb 14th, 2026 @ 3:08am by Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai & Lieutenant Tork

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Tork's Quarters, Deck 6
Timeline: Mission Day 10 at 1000

[Senior Office Quarters, Tork & Delja, Deck 6]
[MD 10, 1000 Hours]

Emni stepped off the lift onto Deck 6 and turned right, following the curve of the corridor in the direction of the senior crew quarters assigned to Tork and Ezhr Delja. The walk gave her an incredibly strange feeling of deja vu. Walks like this, down dormitory hallways instead of starship corridors, had been a regular thing in the Academy. Whether it was her rooms or his, it had at some point become the norm to find Emni and Tork together on their days off. It was so regular that fellow cadets, thinking they were doing a good job not being heard, would comment that they should just admit they were together already.

They never really did.

She'd chosen comfort above all else that morning. Soft dark leggings and a cozy sweatshirt that had Starfleet Academy emblazoned across it had been easy choices. The sweatshirt bore all of the marks of being a well loved item, worn soft over years of wear and cleaning. Emni may have owned few clothing items that she carried with her from place to place -- it was so easy to replicate things -- but this was one she cherished. Perhaps because she had needed the comfort of something like it at the time, she'd chosen a size that was too big for her willowy frame. The sleeves ran long, covering half of her palm, and the hem hung low across the tops of her things. She was carrying a bag as well, a towel, soap, and the PADD that held the book she'd been reading were all tucked inside.

She stopped outside of the door, the chime sounding when she pressed it. For a brief moment she wondered what she would say if Delja, rather than Tork, was the one to answer the door.

When the entrance slid open and the bulbous head of the Ferengi popped out, the grin that was plastered on his face told Emni that he'd likely heard her approaching even with the issues he'd had with his hearing as of late. He waved the woman inside and passed through the entrance and into the space that was designated as his private area. Several storage crates were stacked against the walls of the room, some lids off and others on, fragments of equipment from a dozen different civilizations scattered around in a pattern that made sense only to the one who had put them there.

"Woke up this morning with an idea for a manifold assembly, been hammering away at it ever since," the engineer explained the state of his living space as if it were a report on the weather before he flopped back down onto the floor in front of the most assembled looking object in the room, "If you need something to drink, the replicator out there has been retooled to suit a discerning palette. Otherwise... make yourself at home. My floor space is your floor space, as the hew-mons are fond of saying."

"Of course you have," Emni remarked with affectionate amusement. She scanned the room, noting the small Tork-like changes. Crates where there might normally be furniture or decor, bits and bobs strewn across nearly all flat surfaces. She picked her way through a few parts that littered the floor like an engineering obstacle course and dropped her bag on the desk, pushing a few pieces to the side to find a clear enough surface before doing so.

"At least you're not sleeping with parts in your bed," she teased, eyeing the very standard Starfleet issue sleeping arrangement. Hers, she decided, was better. The bed was bigger, for one, but also she'd bothered to replicate the kind of bedding she liked best and so her bedroom felt less utilitarian and more a sanctuary to escape from anything else that might demand her attention.

Coming to a stop next to him she peered down at the aforementioned manifold assembly then carefully sank to the floor next to him, legs pulled up under her while she propped herself on one hand. "Where did you find Andorian parts?" she asked, not immediately connecting that said parts had likely been in the shuttle's pattern buffer and thus had traveled here with Tork rather than been found by him on the Sojourner.

"Bought it off a Cardassian smuggling frigate the year before I got sent to this side of the galaxy. Only wanted half a strip for it. I ripped him off for that and the Bolian phase induction coil over there. Slip and a half total," the Ferengi explained without looking up from his work, but his finger pointed to the exact spot of the other part he'd mentioned with the kind of clairvoyance that was impossible if the parts had just been scattered around haphazardly.

There was simply nothing to say to that. It fit with a familiarity so tangible that for a moment Emni had to remind herself that they'd barely been back in each other's lives in any way that didn't involve subspace for a week. She watched him work for a few moments, quietly taking in the way he adjusted, tested, readjusted, and retested bits and pieces of the manifold while working on it. His fingers had always been deft, comfortable with parts from the tiniest contact elements to chunky things that resembled slabs of metal in her eyes.

It had been a long time since she'd watched him work like this. Even longer since she'd tried to follow along. She scanned the design, looking for familiar components amidst the cacophony of technologies he was melding together. It took her longer than she liked to make sense of any of it, but finally she settled on what she thought was the difference in the design.

"This part," she said, reaching a long finger out to hover over the spot she didn't entirely recognize. "Is that the core of the new design or am I missing something obvious?"

"It's the focal point of the design, yes, but in terms of actual function, no. That would be this part here," the engineer said, pointing to a cluster of components just to the right of where her finger was hovering, "Hand me that Xindi plasma shunt over there. Three up and four over from the Andorian part you noticed a second ago."

Emni's eyes tracked the floor, counting parts until she found the piece in question. Leaning forward she snagged the item and offered it to Tork.

Once the part was in his hand, it found itself being crammed into a space that looked almost too small to accommodate it and yet it still somehow managed to be inserted without a great deal of effort being applied to it. "Thanks," Tork said briefly after he was satisfied with what he'd just done, a small flexible conduit pipe finding its way onto the device a mere few seconds after installation, obscuring it from sight.

"Mmhmm," she murmured in acknowledgement, watching for a moment longer before leaning in and brushing a quick kiss against the man's cheek. Once she'd done so she climbed back to her feet, arms reaching for the ceiling in a bid to unkink the knot that had determinedly formed at the base of her spine. "I'll be up here if you need me," she told him, knowing full well that he likely wouldn't need her, but wanting him to know where she'd gone anyway. It was unlikely he'd look up from what he was working on until it was expressly necessary or completed.

She twisted, rummaging in her bag, and pulled out the PADD that bore her book, then plied her toes to the back of their opposing heels to remove her shoes before climbing up into his bed to make herself comfortable against the headboard.

"If you need a more sturdy backrest, I still have that pillow you found at that... oh, what did they call it... swap meet? Second box down, furthest from the right if you're interested," the Ferengi said without looking up from his work. "What'cha reading, anyway? Is it some medical journal or for pleasure this time?"

"You kept that?" she asked, surprised. Leaving the PADD on the bed she sidled off the edge and made for the boxes, lifting the one on the top of the stack indicated before popping open the other and rummaging around. The throw pillow in question was, indeed, tucked into the box along with an array of paraphernalia that appeared to date back to the same era. Gingerly she plucked a t'an, one of the thin silvery rods that made up a kal-toh set from the bottom. "You've got to be kidding me," she said, holding it up to the light. "It took me ages to realize this piece was missing and even longer to get a new complete set. How did this find its way into your possession?"

"You left it behind when you packed up for your first assignment. Your roommate handed it off to me saying you'd ask for it back eventually. Kept it in there with the rest of the stuff you told me to hold onto," the Ferengi said, whacking the casing of his make-shift manifold with the handle of one of his tools several times.

Retreating to the bed she climbed back up, settling the throw pillow at the base of her spine and leaning back before remembering her book was out of reach. With a huff of annoyance she leaned forward to grab the PADD and thumbed open the display. Her reading choices since they had last spent any significant time together had changed somewhat. Medical journals had easily been top of her reading pile in the past along with some of the more familiar Romulan fiction works. Now, though...

"It's, an umm... I think the human word is bodice-ripper," she told him managing to keep her entire tone and expression deadpan despite the slight flush that graced the top of her cheek bones.

Tork snorted at the strange description of the genre of reading material she was now favoring, "If it's smut, just call it that. Nothing to be embarrassed about... least of all around me. Did you forget I come from a culture that thinks clothed females is taboo? Reading novels about clothes-less encounters with females just sounds like a boring day on Ferenginar to me." The engineer shook his head dismissively as he continued to fiddle with the device that had been inspired by a waking dream.

Peering over the edge of the PADD, Emni rolled her eyes in the direction of the man on the floor. "I'm fairly confident the point of a bodice-ripper is not the nudity per se. More the tension of leading up to when the characters finally get together. This one, actually, features a Trill who must choose between being selected as a host for a symbiont and falling desperately in love with someone very late in their training."

"Never did understand that whole... belly slug thing..." the Ferengi muttered as he drove a few stem bolts into the manifold casing, "We usually just boiled or fried slugs... or put them in a carbonated bottle. How did Pierce used to say it? 'Different strokes for different folks?' Took me longer than I'm comfortable admitting outside this room to figure out she was talking about relationship quirks and not swimming."

From the bed Emni snorted. "You can't fry sentient beings," she commented with a tone that suggested she couldn't quite believe she was even saying that. "And since when did you become an avid swimmer? I can think of several different takes on 'strokes' that seem like a much more likely path for you to go down."

Scanning the page in front of her she realized she was taking in maybe half of the text before reaching the bottom. Unlike Tork she had never been quite as good at dividing her attention--at least not when it came to hobbies that required any real concentration. Wrinking her nose she scanned back to the top of the page and started again only to stop halfway down. "Do Ferengi have romance novels or is that a bit outside of the usual what with the whole naked females thing?"

"According to my sister, we do," Tork answered with a shrug, "Something about clothed females being tended to by males so lightly clad that they may as well be nude. Something about them performing domestic chores and staying home with the lobelings."

"And the Alliance allows that?" Emni asked, surprise wrapping the edges of her tone. Certainly things had begun to change for women in Ferengi culture, but it was far from the sort of equality that she was familiar with in other cultures. "That's downright subversive. Convince all the women that such a thing as those fantasies could be their real lives and you'll have a revolution on your hands."

She'd reached the bottom of her page again, but once again it hadn't stuck. With a sigh she tossed the PADD lightly to the side and adjusted so that she was laying on her stomach, head hanging off the end of the bed to look down at what Tork was doing. "I may have to track one down."

"The fact that we have made contact with so many cultures who don't treat their females that way hasn't already inspired wide-scale rebellions probably means we won't see it in our lifetimes just from a few scandalous novels. Besides, according to my moogie, my great-grand-moogie used to write those kinds of books. I think my grandfather made a handsome profit from selling them in his name. Nothing is truly taboo on Ferenginar if latinum can be made," Tork snorted as he lifted the completed manifold up and set it on its smaller end.

"Can you hand me the tricorder on my desk, Em?" he asked while he scrutinized his work.

The Romulan shimmied to the side, wriggling until she'd turned perpendicular to the position she was in before. The tricorder was near the end of the desk and she reached for it, wrapping her fingers around the device and then repeating the entire motion in reverse before dangling her arm over the edge to offer him the tricorder. "I guess I should see if I can find one of your great-grand-moogie's books then. Maybe it includes helpful tips for the uninitiated." This was said with a sly smirk. "I am dating a Ferengi after all. Probably should do the proper research."

"The Ferengi term for it is a mutually beneficial partnership," Tork mumbled as he snapped the tricorder open and gave his newly crafted device a pass, stabbing a few keys before snapping it back shut, "Though traditionally, it would be based more on profits than on feelings, but I've never been a traditional Ferengi. Still, if my father or moogie ever ask, that's the term that won't prompt them to ask any invasive questions after hearing. Not that I expect them to ever actually reach out to me. My siblings... maybe... but as the eldest, I don't have to explain anything to them. Especially my brother, since he still owes me two hundred bars of latinum for helping him buy his way into succeeding the family business right before I joined Starfleet."

"Aw," the Romulan cooed, still teasing. "Here I was hoping to utterly scandalize your parents if they ever tried to contact you. What would the Ferengi term be for illicit non-Ferengi lover who you allow to wear clothing?" She chuckled, more amused at her own teasing than, possibly, Tork was. She folded her arms, resting her chin on her crossed wrists and taking a moment to appreciate the man in front of her. Somehow all of this felt extremely simple--as if they'd always been this way, and oddly new and unexpected. "I wouldn't mind meeting your siblings though," she said. "If it ever seemed like a good idea to you."

"Courting females from other species isn't actually considered illicit. It's a status symbol that tells other males that you are affluent enough to attract a non-Ferengi, since we aren't exactly ignorant of the fact that we don't appeal, aesthetically, to most females in the galaxy at first sight. So if anything, my father would be less scandalized and more jealous, and my moogie would likely pester me with revealing how a broke Ferengi like me managed to seal the deal with a female despite my deficiency of funds. Yuli will probably just want to talk your lobes off about her fashion hobby and try to get you to invest in her clothing line she's been 'developing' since she was old enough to understand the concept of profit. Draxx will just sulk and complain that he has no luck with females while also lamenting his poor sense for acquiring profit," the engineer commented as he rose to his feet and deftly navigated the minefield of scattered parts as if they weren't on the floor at all, placing his newly completed masterpiece up against the crates that obscured the small port holes of his room.

"You feel like going to the diner?" Tork asked in an absentminded tone as he crossed back over the small space between his crates and the bed, climbing onto it and flopping down next to Emni like it was the most normal thing in the world, "Unless you're not in a 'be around people' mood. Just figured I'd ask."

A small warm smile settled on the Romulan's lips and she shimmied until her side was pressed against his, tilting her head to the side to lay on her arms so she could look at him while she spoke. "Could go either way. I was hoping to borrow your shower, but that doesn't have to be now." She made an odd nod of her head in the direction of the floor in front of the bed. "Still got work to do on that or are you done for now?"

"I figured you'd want to borrow it," the Ferengi snickered, "You always did appreciate the luxury that is a Ferenginar rainstorm. And no, the manifold is done. I had all the parts I needed already on hand, which is fortunate, since we're nowhere near a supplier at the moment. So if you fancy a walk to grab something to eat, or if you just want to lounge around for a while... I am your captive audience now."

"We can eat in a bit," Emni answered with the sort of lazy comfort that comes from a rare stretch of time with no impending obligations. "I'm already comfortable here. Besides, I don't remember the last time I just laid in bed with someone with no one demanding my attention anywhere else. This is downright luxurious." With a twist of hips and shoulders she shifted onto her side, head pillowed on one arm. "So in Ferengi culture this is courting." It was a statement laced with a question. They'd discussed so many things at the Academy from plasma manifolds to kal-toh strategy, but she had always been careful about how she pressed on his upbringing.

Like her, Tork's family hadn't exactly been thrilled with his choice to join Starfleet and though they'd navigated some of that blow back together, she had been so engrossed in what was happening on Romulus. She studied his face for a moment, anchoring herself in the clues that she could only derive from his body language. "Have you heard from them much since the Academy? Your family, I mean."

"It is," the engineer answered her questioning statement with a blunt reply, "Though it hasn't been as transactional as a traditional courtship would be on Ferenginar. If you'd like, I can slip you a few bars if you want to feel like a real Ferengi couple."

Tork let the joke hang in the air before his demeanor shifted to a more serious one, "My siblings still ask for loans under the cover of 'keeping in touch'. The side business I still have a stake in back in the Beta Quadrant pulls in enough that I could loan them latinum if I were so inclined... but I am not so inclined and likely won't be until they pay back what is already owed."

"My parents, on the other hand, have maintained their disappointment in my life choices and my abandonment of free labor they felt they were due for allowing me to become such an adept engineer under their care," the man rolled his eyes, "Or to put it less nicely, they are still pissed that I'm not keeping their rust-bucket of a freighter from flying apart anymore and they don't like bleeding the latinum they were saving by not paying me to do it. I probably have about another decade of silence from them before I get so much as a bill from them."

It wasn't anything Emni hadn't already suspected, but she felt her heart squeeze with a touch of grief at being right. Her family was gone entirely--beyond reach. It hurt to imagine them still being alive and unreachable because they were simply too hurtful or too proud to get past their own hang ups.

"That's their loss," she finally said, somehow combining firm resolve with softness in her voice. Absently, she traced fingertips down Tork's arm as if grounding him there in reality or confirming for herself that he was right there and that all was, at least for the moment, well. She gave the moment a beat and then her smile turned towards mischief again, a slight curve to one side of her mouth giving her away. "Think we'd find any of your great-grand-moogie's books in the computer banks?"

"Federation computers? Not a chance. Those sorts of things are never translated from the original Ferengi. Plus she dealt almost exclusively in printed material. Something about having a tangible copy in your hands of something you shouldn't have at all made it more appealing to her and more profitable for my great-grandfather. Now, if you asked if physical copies existed somewhere, my answer would be yes," Tork replied, his answer sounding complete and yet somehow short of absolute truth simultaneously.

The Romulan's eyes narrowed. Her fingers had lingered as they transitioned from seriousness back to teasing. Now she removed them for his hand where she'd been absently drawing a circle in his palm to poke a finger into his chest just hard enough to be playful, but not so hard as to be painful. "What does that mean?" she asked, exaggerating the question as she spoke and raising her eyebrows pointedly to drive home her curiosity.

"It means that a physical copy of a few of her books exist on this side of the wormhole, but they are in Ferengi. And unless you've been studying up on it..." Tork gave the woman a measured look.

"How convenient for me that I know someone who is fluent in Ferengi," she responded, meeting his measured look with a leveled one of her own. "Of course..." She said with a glimmer that met the crinkled corners of her eyes.

With a flourish she shifted, rolling until she was hovering over him. She held the opposition for just a moment and then continued sliding off the bed and coming around to snag her bag. "Your roommate appears to be away and there's a Ferenginar rainstorm with my name on it in the other room."

"Shout if you need anything," the Ferengi said languidly as he remained prone atop his bed.

For the briefest of moments her eyes narrowed, watching him as she debated what she should do. Then, with a shrug, she made for the door. "Got any extra towels or should I replicate one," she called over her shoulder, stopped in the now open door.

"You know I always keep extra towels for you, Em," Tork remarked with an exasperated tone, "Hopefully you have been keeping up with your Ferengi, by the way. The control panel is set for it. I've only got the roommate logged as a Federation standard user. You haven't logged in a session yet and I built the biometric sensor from scratch, it doesn't pull from the ship's database."

Turning in the door, Emni faced back into the room, one eyebrow raised. "First, I don't know that. We have been in a mutually beneficial partnership for 5 days. You're telling me that you have already started keeping an extra towel handy?" She stepped back into the room, moving for the bed with slow, deliberate steps. "Second you know full well how terrible my Ferengi is. I'm as likely to self destruct your shower as I am remember the right words." As she reached the bed where the man was still lounging she paused, hands on her hips. "So what's the price to get you to help me out here?" The question was asked with a tone as close to deadpan as she could make it, but the gleam in her eyes had morphed into something that officially exceeded playful mischief.

"First," the Ferengi said dryly, "The fact that you knew I had rigged the shower to perform well above hew-mon standard meant I was prepared for you to use it, partnership or not. Secondly, yes... I knew you hadn't been studying it because it's a cumbersome ideographic language with more nuance than Romulan and you threw a PaDD hard enough to bury it into the sheet rock in my dorm trying to learn it."

Then the sarcasm disappeared and the evil grin blossomed, "I just wanted to hear you ask me to join you. I'll even wave my usual translator's fee and give you the shampoo you used to love using but couldn't find after your third year as a bonus... because I found the owner of the original recipe and convinced them to sell it."

"Sweetening the pot with good shampoo?" Her grin broadened to match his. "And all you want is an invitation? That sure seems like I am getting the better end of this deal."

She leaned toward him so that her mouth was just by his ear. "Please join me?" She asked with deliberate intensity, breath ghosting against his ear as she spoke. She held still for just a moment and then straightened, making for the door.

The ripple that shot through the Ferengi's body was visible despite his best efforts to hide it. After his autonomic response subsided, Tork hurried over to his stack of crates and grabbed a crystal bottle out of it before hurrying after her, grin still plastered on his face.

--- An Off Duty Day By ---

Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai

Lieutenant Tork