Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in side - sim: Head Case

Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in side - sim: Head Case

(snip)

By the time Roman woke up again, he was over an hour late for duty. But he didn’t notice that right away. He was too comfortable and happy, and he snuggled a little further into Rand instead of getting up. He stayed there for a few minutes, blissfully thinking it was still early.

Wait. He’d said a few minutes more. What time was it? He sat up and looked at the clock. 0700 he was expecting in the lab… It was 0840?! He’d never been that late! Trying not to wake Rand he rushed into the bathroom, threw on a uniform, and ran a brush quickly through his hair.

Randy was acting yeoman. He needed to find Randy. Why, when Roman was that late had Randy not coming looking for him? Not that it was his job to, but it seemed like something he’d normally do. He first headed across the hall and checked for Randy in Rand’s office.

~ Roman

The door to the office was open, so Randy could hear when Roman came out. Hearing the door open and his quick foot steps he stood from the desk. He held up a hand to stop any protest. “Cmdr. Come in and have a seat.” On the desk was Roman’s tea in a travel mug and his regular toast and egg. Randy allowed the door to close. “I know you are very upset I didn’t wake you. As far as today goes, you and I have been in a meeting all morning going over incident reports for the last month. Command wants more details. You are expected no later than 1000 hours. I was going to get you in another 20 minutes.”

Randy

Roman opened his mouth to protest but Randy was one step ahead of him. On Rand’s desk was his usual breakfast and his tea. He sat down and grabbed the tea, taking a long drink. The fact Randy had covered and Roman wasn’t thought to be late by the rest of the crew, seemed to help calm him. But still when he finally set down the tea, the first thing he said was, “Why didn’t you wake me at 0700?!”

~ Roman

Randy sat back down. “Well I came to check on Rand when you weren’t in the lab. I thought it must be bad if you didn’t comm me, but on the off chance you were just busy and she was sleeping I only knocked once. You were both asleep and didn’t even flinch when I came in, stopped a rabbit escape and left. You needed it. We haven’t really talked about it much, but you haven’t been sleeping well with everything going on.” Randy meant not just Roman’s own nightmares, but Rand’s and the extra work, her concussion, his heart, the exhaustion that makes it hard to sleep. There were a lot of factors. “I decided to let you sleep. You look better this morning for it. And yes I did check the lab schedule and know you had nothing scheduled for this morning. The reports are done, you just have to review and sign.”

Randy

Roman grumbled something about ‘being fine’ and ‘not needing extra sleep’ while munching on the breakfast Randy had ready for him. He looked at Randy when be said he had nothing scheduled. “I had lots of things to do! They don’t have to be scheduled meetings to need doing.” Knowing Roman, those ‘things to do’ were doing his reports, watching his animals, and ‘observing’ things that didn’t actually need him there. “All the reports are done?” That he sounded happy about. Rand and Randy both knew how much he hated paperwork.

~ Roman

It was getting harder for Randy to draw that line between personal and professional. Professionally he knew Roman needed the sleep but it wasn’t his place, unless he used medical orders, to stop Roman from going on duty. He didn’t exactly stop him though, he just didn’t wake him up. On the personal he was worried about Roman and his sister and well, he was being a nosey, bossy big brother. He could say that it was good for Rand and Roman would settle down a bit. She hadn’t paged him yet so that meant she was still asleep. The problem with saying that, though, was Roman would just assume Randy did it for Rand and not for Roman. It would allow Roman to perpetuate the lie in his head that no one cared about him, but Rand. That Randy only helped him because of his sister. That wasn’t true, so Randy didn’t say it. So he shrugged. “Not anything that couldn’t wait an hour or so. You would have been spending that time doing reports anyway. So,” he handed over a PaDD, “look at them, sign them, and then I can file them. Then you can go to the lab, no one the wiser.”

Randy

Roman took the PaDD and went through each of the reports. There were a few he had to send for revision. The rest he signed off on and handed the PaDD back to Randy. Then he took the time to finish the breakfast. He did look, and feel (not that he’d admit it) better than he had in the last few days.

~ Roman

Randy sent back the unacceptable reports, filed the others and then shut down the computer. “All done.” Then he leaned forward, arms folded on the edge of the desk. “I’ve been pushing Rand hard the last couple days and thought she might could use a break, before she never forgives me. I thought I would let her read the lab notes about the animals if that’s alright. I know she has to miss them and it will let her start getting used to using the computer again, a little bit at a time.” Randy wasn’t really worried about Roman’s permission to let Rand use the computer, but he thought it polite to ask Roman about accessing the logs and reports before he let Rand read them. He wouldn’t let her work on the reports, just read them and know what was going on, especially with that little mouse she was so fond of.

Randy

Roman nodded, “She can read whatever she likes. I was going to take her to see them after my shift, anyway.” He stood and picked up the empty breakfast tray. “I’ll take this down. I need to get to work.” He nodded again to Randy, “Thanks for the breakfast. And the meeting.” Then he headed down to the lab for his shift. It was a slower, easy day. With his reports done, he had to finish a little other paperwork, and then he had time to do things he liked more, playing with studying Mushu, changing the water in the goo lizard’s tank, checking on the Chinzillas. They were definitely big enough to be sent away, but Roman hadn’t had the time to get to that, or maybe he just didn’t want to. He also pulled up the letter from the place they’d sent Mr Wyvern, so he’d have it ready for Rand when she came by after his shift.

~ Roman