Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in side - sim: Honoring the Ardent

(snip)

Some of her own tension left as he joked with her. If she could remember in the morning, she would make two cups of tea for him, one with extra sugar, just because. She laid her head on his shoulder when he tripped her hand. Rand felt like she had won a massive victory when he began to eat without argument. She came around and sat, taking a second plate and eating as well.

Roman ate the snack she’d brought him, all of it. Rand seemed almost surprised he’d just gone with it. Really, it was a combination of her being right and him being too tired to spend a bunch of energy arguing about it.

Returning to the lab she looked at the disks and reports. “Why don’t you text Mushu’s reflexes while I sort this?” She sat down and started going through the disks. She put one away, Roman’s personal logs. Then she moved all the projects around on the disks. Only leaving him with those files for the projects he still had to go over. She took the other disks and reports to file away later. She left, doing as she promised.

When they returned to the lab, Rand suggested he play with Mushu… And Roman knew that was what she meant. He’d have to change his excuse for playing with the lizard. He went over to Mushu’s enclosure and opened the top, playing with the lizard while she sorted them. He put his hand down by Mushu and the little lizard climbed onto his hand. Eventually he set Mushu back in the enclosure and sat down to work.

Two hours later, Rand was sick of tossing and turning and if she didn’t settle she would end up with an angry brother. She slipped on her robe and down the corridor to her office and tried to work. She was tired, but careful that she didn’t make mistakes. She wanted to go down to the labs, but she had told Roman she would sleep. She couldn’t, but didn’t want to worry him.

Rand

Roman was glad Rand was sleeping. He spent the night working on the second project. He was using the PaDD and the computer console to compare the notes from the project, as well as look up anything he needed more information on. He was nearly halfway done when he fell asleep at his desk around 0500, his head resting next to the PaDD.

~ Roman

Rand worked on the final recommendations Roman had finished for a couple of hours. Then, still not tired enough to sleep, she slipped into Roman’s quarters. She let Pipkin out and spent some time letting her play. Rand tried to sleep, a couple of hours, but instead she ended up wearing the rabbit out, and at 0430 Rand gave up, placed Pipkin in her cage, and went to get ready for the day.

Franks appeared early in the lab. He had some tests that finished running at an odd hour. He saw Alden working, still, but didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t odd to see him working long hours. It was odd to see him fall asleep. He stopped Rand on her way in. “Rand, what’s going on?” He nodded toward the sleeping CSO. Rand shook her head, “I’m not at liberty to say, but the work may take awhile. You may need to step in for science.” Franks had kept the other officers from noticing, even sending Scott elsewhere so she had no gossip fodder.

Rand walked over and sat down next to him. It didn’t look like he was done, and she hated to wake him, but he couldn’t sleep in the lab. She set a cup of tea near him, the normal one, not the extra sweet one. “Cmdr?” She touched his hand lightly and then leaned in, lowering her voice, “Roman, wake up.”

Rand