Kobayashi Blues

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Thaitla's usual morning routine involved a good stretch (which took no less than five minutes), the hottest shower she could stand, and then whatever else she had time for. On the good days, that was a vegetarian breakfast and yogurt. On the bad days, it was a hurried thermos of coffee and a pinch of profanity as she raced for the door.

The moment her feet hit the hardwood floor, she knew what kind of day it was going to be. Her head still felt swimmy from the night before. Somewhere deep within her, a nagging voice that had been strangled by alcohol and Orion...whatever the hell Orions do to people...that voice had a second life, and was shrieking in her head.

Stupid, stupid stupid. She mouthed silently, aware of the figure still in her bed. Attempting to salvage grace from her situation, Thaitla began her much-needed stretch, pausing in the midst when it was clear that she was too weebly to be arching her back on her tiptoes. She frowned into her body-length mirror adjacent to the bed and her desk, looking at the sad state of her hair, and trying to work out exactly how to salvage it all in time for morning assembly. She stretched low, bringing her hands down to the floor so that her wrists intertwined her ankles as her head tucked to her kneeEEEEES....

...a little stumble, and she recovered. Still, the remnants from last night were barreling into the order of her morning routine, and it was pissing her off. The Caitian stood back up, a look of contempt as she whiffed her own morning breath. She padded over to her desk chair, donned the bathrobe that was draping over it, and headed towards the bathroom, pausing at the door to turn back to her desk. Thaitla looked at the green cadet snoozing in the rumpled sheets, swiped a PADD from the drawer nearest her, and retreated to the shower.

Thaitla turned the hot water on, but didn't get in immediately. Instead, she began working on the PADD, typing up a message.

[Jorann Lokar]

As soon as he heard the hiss of the shower, Jorann sprang into action. The sheet went fluttering down the length of the bed, and he stepped right into his boxers where they'd pooled on the floor. His black undershirt, crumpled at the foot of the bed, went on next, and then his uniform trousers, which had been draped haphazardly over the back of the chair by the desk - he didn't know if it was Thaitla's or her roommate's. He spotted his jacket hanging on the corner of a bookshelf and his boots piled by the door, but first he needed his socks... socks... oh, there was one. He could get by without the other.

With his communicator gripped in his teeth, the Orion cinched up the belt around his trousers and bandy-legged over to his boots. He was wriggling his bare, green foot into one of them when the bathroom door swished open again.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

That Caitian trait of being easily startled kicked in, and Thaitla bounced back a half pace, her tail going stiff. The surprise quickly turned to something else when she saw Jorann in his present situation, and pieced it all together.

"You're ducking out on me?"

Her eyes rolled as a breathy incredulous laugh boiled over.

"Of all the...that's such a...a...Orion thing to do!"

Finding the missing mate to Jorann's lone sock, she balled it up and threw it at him. Advancing, she prodded at his shoulder with her PADD.

"I get it, we're both adults with careers and responsibilities, and yeah, we probably have better things to do than pretend last night was anything more than...whatever it was, but kajeh, not even breakfast, or coffee, or hell, just bye?"

[Jorann Lokar]

"Oh, I was wondering where that - woah, watch it!"

She was stronger than she looked, and Jorann found himself stumbling into the bookshelf at his back with one boot half-on. He snatched the PADD out of her hand as a matter of self-defense.

"So I didn't want to wait around naked while you showered. It's not like you invited me to join you. Hey!"

She'd swiped for the PADD, and he reflexively held it up out of her reach. Suddenly curious, he thumbed through the document in the active editing window.

"'Dear Jorann, last night was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did. Sorry I couldn't stick around to say goodbye. Help yourself to the fruit in the fridge if you want something on your way out. Best of luck with your career, Thaitla.' Huh."

Jorann offered the PADD back to its owner with a look of bemusement. "I guess that's the Caitian thing to do?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Caught with her hand in the cookie jar and with her moral high ground collapsing underneath her, Thaitla glowered a little, at last snatching the PADD back before tossing it on the bed.

"Well, at least it says something..." began her lame defense, which irritated her when she heard it coming out of her mouth.

She paused.

Her eyes narrowed.

"You just wanted to be the first one out, didn't you?"

[Jorann Lokar]

"And you wanted to leave me alone in your room with a nothing but a note and a fruit cup," Jorann replied. "I hope you were at least going to leave the sock on the doorknob."

He stepped past her and reached for his jacket.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"We don't use a sock on the door, my roommate and I we..."

Thaitla's mouth gaped and she threw her hands up.

"...why am I even telling you that?!"

Before Jorann could get his jacket, she intercepted it, holding it in such a way that she was between the Orion and his duty-required article of clothing. She gave him the haughtiest of smirks.

Yes, she was being that petty.

[Jorann Lokar]

He folded his arms, about to spit off something petulant. Then he shrugged.

"If you wanted a souvenir, babe, all you had to do was ask."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Thaitla grit her teeth in frustration, turned, and headed back into the bathroom with her 'hostage'. The door slid shut, but she spoke loudly enough to be heard through it.

"I'm getting a shower! If you even think about leaving before me, I'm throwing your jacket in and leaving it in a wet heap!"

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann rolled his eyes up to the heavens. "You know, you're not really convincing me that I made the wrong decision."

He sighed and glanced around at the kitschy tapestries on the walls until he heard the shower's stream interrupted by a body stepping under the spray. Then he sidled over toward the front door. No sock on the knob, huh?

"Don't mind me," he yelled. "I'm just gonna take a look at your door."

Yes, he could be that petty, too.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

The voice was faint through the water and the door, but still audible.

"Oh no, you've completely undone my den of ill repute! The Federation will never be the same again!"

Head full of lather, the Caitian stared at a fixed point on the wall and shouted at it in Kolari.

"Natessi eignas chenda su nuva thantana masa minsha ku Jorann nash!"

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann leaned out the door and grabbed the edge to keep it from retracting all the way into the wall. He didn't see anything immediately obvious on its outer surface.

"Hey, that's pretty good," he called back. "You almost sound like my little sister."

He released the grinding door and swaggered back into the room. "So, what, do you mark it with pheromones or something? My nose probably isn't quite as good as yours."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"What?!"

Making a face of disgust, Thaitla hurriedly went about rinsing her hair.

"I'm not a housecat! I picked up a communicator and called her! Ugh!"

Finally resolving the hair crisis, the Caitian quickly went to work with the rest of her, applying body wash to her loofah and scrubbing angrily.

"Besides, do you really want to start asking about pheromones, Orion Fly?"

[Jorann Lokar]

"What?"

Jorann turned toward the bathroom door and gave his underarm a quick sniff.

"Well, if they bother you that much, you should've let me have the shower. You didn't seem to mind last night."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"I...well I..."

Finally rinsed off, she didn't waste a moment, killing the water while she snatched her towel from it's perch on the rack perpendicular to her shower stall. Drying fastidiously, she continued to talk through the wall.

"Look, it's not a big confessional here. You're a cute guy, yeah, and it was good sex, yeah that too. I had a good time."

Thaitla was having trouble articulating why she was mad, while stepping over the things she obviously wasn't mad at all about, and that was...well...making her mad.

"I don't think I'm over the Kobayashi, Jorann. I'm not used to losing."

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Well, you shouldn't be used to losing. Losing sucks. But we both know the Kobayashi Maru is a rigged game. Get 'em down to a one-on-one fight, and the Klingon captain probably turns into the second coming of Kahless or something."

He vented a sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose in an effort to chase away an oncoming headache. It wasn't from drinking - by a happy accident of biology, Orions didn't get hung over. But he still wasn't sure he was up to playing counselor through a bathroom door to a woman he'd met and bedded just last night.

When he spoke again, it was with uncharacteristic frankness.

"Look, Thaitla. You're smart, you're talented, you're great company, and you're smoking hot. You've got nothing to be ashamed of. If you feel like I took advantage of you, then I'm genuinely sorry. That wasn't my intention."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

The door to the bathroom whooshed open again, and Thaitla returned to her room with her hair wrapped in a towel and her robe cinched around the middle. Her tail slinked out from a slit she'd altered by hand, since nobody bothered selling Caitian clothes on Earth, it seemed.

"It's cheating. I know it's cheating. I know I shouldn't be mad about it, but I'd probably pick a fight with a little kid for their candy right now just to get a win in my system."

Thaitla hurried past the Orion to sit at her desk, beginning the process of triage to determine the minimum amount of makeup she had to bother with to get out of her dorm on time. Compact in hand, she swiveled in her seat to look at him again.

"So it's not you taking advantage. I mean, it is, but I'm giving as good as I'm getting, and so I hooked up with a sympathetic ear and a tight ass."

Tracing eye shadow as she talked, Thaitla broke her attention away from Jorann.

"I just woke up a little bit tipsy and a little bit petty, and I guess being a bitch is my easy win."

Something almost passing as guilt crossed her face, and her tail tucked around the post of the chair.

"Essha, that's not even an apology. Let's just...can we...let's just get ready and leave together. I'm not mad, it's just absurd."