Posted by Lieutenant Helena Laursen (Helm/Nagivation Officer) in side - sim: It’s Tradition

Posted by Captain Marceau Renault (Commanding Officer) in side - sim: It’s Tradition

Posted by Lieutenant Helena Laursen (Helm/Nagivation Officer) in side - sim: It’s Tradition
Posted by… suppressed (18) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Sojo was cruising along at a steady 3.8 warp. Helena had stayed at the helm as she and Logan went back and forth about how fast to accelerate and testing the engine stability out through Sojo’s paces. And then she was constantly double checking their trajectory against the navigation equipment and maps, just to make sure it was calibrated right. Helena was a bit of worry wort that way, always double checking things to ensure there were no surprises or malfunctioning equipment. Once she knew there were no bugs in the system she’d relax a bit.

It was now 2330 and En Beckham had arrived on the bridge to relieve her. He looked a little nervous. Helena stepped on the release for the chair and swiveled around and got up. He took the seat and looked like he might be sick. He confirmed with her their course and speed. She started to walk away, “Um…Lt?” Helena turned around and set a hand on his shoulder. “Relax, a ship is a ship no matter the size. You’ll be fine. You flew the Bonnie, right?” He nodded, “Yeah, but she wasn’t all shiny and new.” Helena grinned in understanding. “You’ll be fine, promise. But if you need anything, just comm me, okay.” She patted his shoulder and left the bridge.

Helena stopped off at the Galley for a fast meal and then headed for her quarters. About 15 minutes later she came out and headed down the corridor. She was dressed like it was the middle of winter. She had a small pack over her shoulder with what looked like a champagne bottle neck peeking out the top. She stopped at Marceau’s door and pressed the chime.

Helena

Marceau was off duty at the time, and it took him just a moment to answer the chime, dressed in, unluckily for him, a plain neutral toned t-shirt and a pair of comfortable casual pants. When he saw Helena, he gave her a look like Why are you wearing all that? “Aren’t you warm?” He asked, and then he spotted the bottle… Not champaign but sparkling grape juice. He stepped aside to let her into his quarters.

Marceau’s quarters were neat and orderly, partly because he didn’t usually bring much with him. There was a French flag hanging on one wall. His clothes hung in the small closet. Otherwise the room looked like he hadn’t changed anything about it since arriving on board. There was a queen bed against one wall, and on the other, a small work desk above which the flag hung. There was one chair at the work desk, and a small bathroom off one side of the room. There wasn’t a lot of extra space, but enough to move around comfortably. On Sojourner, the Captain’s quarters were the same size as all senior officer quarters.

~ Marceau

Helena just gave him a look of You know why and if you forgot you’re in trouble. “A bit, but figured I better be safe. I want my necklace back, Marceau.” Then she laughed. and walked in. It was bigger than Helena’s quarters. Hers were about 2/3rds the size of the senior officer quarters. The layout basically the same except with a twin bed rather than a queen. Helena was just glad that she didn’t have to share. She spotted the flag, it bringing a happy smile to her face. Some things just felt right and seeing the French flag over Marceau’s desk was one of them.

Marceau grinned and pulled the necklace out from under his shirt, displaying it. It wasn’t an overly girly charm and he could get away with wearing it. “You’ll have to win it back.” He said, smiling and laughing. “And it’s the last thing I’ll give up.”

The grin on her face slipped a little bit. He was wearing it. That did funny things to her stomach. That last thing he’d give up? Helena wasn’t sure what to make of that. It was just a homemade charm of blue apatite that she’d found on a hike with her family in Iceland as a child. It wasn’t expensive or really have value except to her. Why was he wearing it? Why did he want to keep it?

Marceau watched her carefully, his own grin fading slightly. “Is it not okay that I wear it?” He asked, making a fist gently around the charm. He wasn’t sure why he liked it so much, he knew it wasn’t valuable in any way. He just… Liked it. It was comforting to wear.

She looked up at him, surprise of the question and the way he was holding it making her blurt out what she was thinking. “Of course it is…I just didn’t realize you wore it. It’s such a girly piece.” Helena had several pieces of jewelry but she wouldn’t call them ‘girly.’ This pendent was hand made, but the chain and wire were delicate and just long enough to hang over her heart. To keep a piece of home close. Her grin softened into a smile, “You kept it safe, thank you.”

On Marceau, the pendant hung just a little higher but it worked all the same. He shrugged, “I don’t care how girly it is. I haven’t gotten any grief over it.” Personally Marceau didn’t see it as particularly girly. Besides the delicate chain (rather than say a cloth cord or another material like that), the pendant just looked like a blue rock. He smiled at her comment and nodded. “Of course I did. Even if I didn’t choose to wear it, I know how much it means to you.”

Marceau was her best friend, she told him things she never told anyone else, and Marceau told her the same. Theirs was a very easy friendship and it had lasted a long time.
But then....then Marceau said things like that and Helena wasn’t sure if she should tell him things she never had, or run as far from her best friend as possible.

She set the bag down on the bed and pulled out the bottle of sparkling grape juice and passed it to Marceau, “Do the honors?” Then she pulled out two glasses and set them on the desk. She tossed the bag in a corner after pulling out a small box. She sat down cross legged on the foot of the bed and opened the small box and pulled the cards out and began to shuffle. “You got the poker chips?”

Helena

Marceau popped open the bottle of grape juice and poured it into the two glasses. He grinned at the question and shook his head. “Non, no chips.” He looked at her again, “You have to start with a few less layers than that!” He said, grinning and shaking his head.

~ Marceau

“So our usual currency then.” Helena shook her head, “Nope! Just because I remembered and you forgot, doesn’t mean I get penalized. Besides I’ve been on the receiving end of you poker face. You don’t need the extra currency.” Helena laughed, put the deck down and turned, taking a glass from him. A weird look crossed her face as she looked at him, it stretched for long moments. Then she grinned, shaking herself a big. “To you, Marceau. The best CO I’ve ever served under. We all knew it that first mission and we’ve never been wrong. Félicitations, Capitaine Renault.” It was horribly accented, but apparently she’d been practicing…but when had she had time?

Helena

Marceau grinned, clearly pleased with the effort she put into it despite her awful pronunciation. “Merci, Helena.” He gave her a look. “Since the first mission? Really?” He smiled and took a drink of the sparkling grape juice and then set it down. “Deal the first hand.”

~ Marceau

She sipped the grape juice, the taste bringing back 13 years worth of memories. “Oh yes really. We all knew it that very first night.” She took another sip and then set the glass down. She picked up the deck, shuffled again, let Marceau cut it and then she dealt out 5 cards each. She looked at the clock on the wall, it was just after midnight. “7 hours and counting down.”

Helena

Marceau looked doubtful. To his memory, he hadn’t been very leaderly back then. It had taken time to become that way. He waited for her to deal the cards, picked up his hand, and examined the cards, his face a blank slate. By the end of the round, Helena had won.

~ Marceau

Helena knew that Marceau had no idea how his ability to handle Lucy and her tantrums had affected that decision. It would embarrass him. But it had also been the way he’d taken charge to get them all to muster in time and his poker face. It was a lot of little things, and then over the years their confidence in him and proven true. When she won the hand she laughed and snatched her spoils teasing Marceau that his poker face was failing him. But she lost the next 5 games.

Helena

Marceau won the next five rounds, but the seventh round he let her win once again, grinning playfully. He wasn’t worried about losing the necklace, he was sure he could win. But even if he did lose it, it was going back to Helena. He didn’t want to let it go though.

~ Marceau

That was why she brought extra currency. She won but not by a lot. But she couldn’t help but grin back at him. Marceau didn’t relax a lot unless he really knew the people he was with. The same with Helena. Except around people they didn’t know Marceau was quiet, reserved, whereas Helena was out spoken, a little wild, and just ‘one of the guys.’ They never got away with that with each other. They’d been through too much.

Helena was pretty certain Marceau was letting her win, but she wasn’t positive. He bluffed too well. The grin made her think so but at the same time it could also be he was embarrassed he lost or happy she actually won a hand. If Helena was anyone else and Marceau wasn’t so shy she would think he was flirting with her. Helena lost the next two rounds. She refilled their glasses. Marceau lost 3 hands in a row, giving up a small portion of what he’d taken from her. Only to take it all and then some back in the next several hands. As his winnings grew, Helena shook a finger at him laughing. “This, this right here, and that face! This is how we knew you would be CO. Nothing rattles you, Marceau.”

Helena

Marceau grinned, laughing. “The game doesn’t change depending on how much I have on.” He had won back everything, and then lost some again, and he smiled up at her, showing her another losing hand. “Looks like you win this one.” He said, grinning, a mischievous look in his eye.

~ Marceau

Helena stared at him a moment, was it suddenly really hot? Was something wrong with the environmental controls? She turned really red a moment before she snatched up the small pile. What…oh and she laughed. “Nice try. You can’t rattle me that easy.” The next few hands said otherwise.

Helena

The next few hands Marceau won easily, he knew he’d rattled her and he wasn’t sure how or why. Cards willing, he made sure he lost the next few hands after that, keeping things even. Soon all he had was the necklace, and he was furiously trying to win every hand to keep it.

~ Marceau

Now that her necklace was part of the pot, Helena was determined to get it back. She was focused solely on the cards in her hand. She was not going to get distracted by Marceau and his never fail poker face. Now normally Helena didn’t give much away, she wasn’t as chill as Marceau but she wasn’t an easy target, unless she was having too much fun to care. She wanted her necklace. Marceau had had it for …well a whole year....had he been wearing it that long? Why? She was distracted, chewing on her lower lip, moving cards around in her hand trying to decide what to discard. Finally she choose two and put them face down and waited for Marceau to give her her new cards.

Helena

Marceau dealt out her two new cards, looking at and pondering over his own hand. While Helena was determined to get the necklace back, Marceau was, surprisingly, determined to keep it. He’d always assumed the next time they played he’d give it back. But then it had been so long he’d gotten used to having it, especially when she wasn’t around with him. He discarded one card, drew one, and looked at her.

~ Marceau

Helena picked up her two cards determined not to give away what she did or did not have while she waited for him to decide. She looked up from her cards at him after he drew his and grinned. She set her cards down, “Two pair, Jacks high.” She waited and glanced at the clock. 1 hour left. It didn’t seem like that much time had passed, but that was always how it went. Sometimes they played in silence sometimes talking about this and that, but always the time seemed to fly.

Helena

Marceau seemed immediately disappointed when he set down his cards. “Pair of nines, ten high.” It was a bad hand and he’d been hoping to bluff her out. It hadn’t worked. He took the necklace off and handed it to her, and then smiled. “Back to its rightful owner, eh?”

~ Marceau

“HA!” Helena grinned and laughed softly. “Yes, thank you.” She took the clasp in each hand and pulled the chain around her neck and clasped it. The metal and stone were surprisingly warm from contact with his skin, rather than the cool smoothness of the gold and stone. Helena tossed his things back at him as she grabbed her own. “I think that’s the first time I’ve come out the absolute winner in....six years?”

She got up closing the bottle of grape juice and then went to rinse the cups and shoved them all back in her bag and sat in the desk chair. “Breakfast?”

Helena

Marceau nodded. “Six years… Right before that mission with the Vulcans.” Not the Nausican mission. There had been another mission the Vulcans had been involved in. He grabbed his things and nodded. “Of course.”

Helena nodded. That mission had gone smoothly, if not frustrating in the negotiations. But her job had been to fly, not rub elbows with the glitz and glam.

Breakfast in the galley was an assortment of earth breakfast foods like pancakes, waffles, scrambled eggs and bacon, thing like that. Marceau picked a spot and sat down after picking something, then waited for Helena.

~ Marceau

Bacon, eggs, toast with jelly, and orange juice. Helena made her way over to the table and sat down. The Galley was mostly empty. There a few people here and there, but it was mostly quiet at this hour. Helena ate silently for a few moments. “So how did it feel? Sitting in the big chair and knowing it was yours?”

Helena

Marceau looked up, almost shyly, and shrugged. “It was great. But scary also. You know, when we’re way out there, it’s just me. There’s no one else, not within reach.” He wasn’t sure if he was explaining his thoughts perfectly well, but he thought Helena might understand. He reached up towards his chest, as if looking for something, and then dropped his hand.

~ Marceau