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I already survived this once [ota]
A starship never sleeps. Even the third watch, in what would be the wee hours of the morning in an equivalent planetside clock, functions enough to keep a capital starship under control. Which is to say, hundreds of people are going about their duties. But, a starship does have rhythms, and this shift represents the time when people are least active socially.
Which is exactly why Hugh Cambridge sits himself down in Ten-Forward now.
Because the nightmares are back.
They haven't been around for years. Oh, they'll rear up, one night in a very long while, usually aimless strung-out sequences, endless starship corridors, shaking lights and fires and ever-morphing enemy encounters. Cambridge's nightmares are never specific things, but they're not subtle, either. He's afraid of what's coming, just like he used to be afraid of what had already happened.
He rests his forehead on the bar after the second Scotch - the real stuff, not synthehol - and begins to breathe deep and quell his panic.
-
On another night, after another nightmare, he quells it in a different way.
Open the holodeck doors - they're not locked for privacy - and there's a studio, mirrors all along one wall. Cambridge dances with a single partner - female, lovely - in some pseudo-jazz number, something old-fashioned.
It's easy to see that he's trained, on first glance. His movements are precise and practiced, and he is flexible, strong enough to do lifts, jumps. But, next to a professional dancer, he wouldn't look very good. Technique or no, Cambridge isn't an artist of dance. He doesn't elevate the dance, doesn't make it his own. He just does it. It makes him an unusually good dancer among laypeople, but not much at all among dancers.
Doesn't matter to him. He's there to be distracted, not to show off.
Which is exactly why Hugh Cambridge sits himself down in Ten-Forward now.
Because the nightmares are back.
They haven't been around for years. Oh, they'll rear up, one night in a very long while, usually aimless strung-out sequences, endless starship corridors, shaking lights and fires and ever-morphing enemy encounters. Cambridge's nightmares are never specific things, but they're not subtle, either. He's afraid of what's coming, just like he used to be afraid of what had already happened.
He rests his forehead on the bar after the second Scotch - the real stuff, not synthehol - and begins to breathe deep and quell his panic.
-
On another night, after another nightmare, he quells it in a different way.
Open the holodeck doors - they're not locked for privacy - and there's a studio, mirrors all along one wall. Cambridge dances with a single partner - female, lovely - in some pseudo-jazz number, something old-fashioned.
It's easy to see that he's trained, on first glance. His movements are precise and practiced, and he is flexible, strong enough to do lifts, jumps. But, next to a professional dancer, he wouldn't look very good. Technique or no, Cambridge isn't an artist of dance. He doesn't elevate the dance, doesn't make it his own. He just does it. It makes him an unusually good dancer among laypeople, but not much at all among dancers.
Doesn't matter to him. He's there to be distracted, not to show off.
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"Quite palatable," he says. "It's not a night for synthehol."
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He's not being a great conversational partner, he knows. He wants to be more interesting. He'd like, ideally, to be interesting all the time, around people that he vaguely wants to impress. He has no faith in his ability to do that. Makes him a little less than gregariously social.
And it's always nice to be liked by beautiful women.
He doesn't really make an attempt to hide that thought. It's not like Emma doesn't know that she's beautiful, and it would be difficult not to realize that he is, in fact, mostly attracted to women, and that attraction therefore exists. He has no intention of it affecting his behavior towards her or pressing it on her. No reason to suppress it.
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She sips her drink and tries not to think about how long it's been since she felt truly appreciated by a man. Two martinis is her limit and Cambridge doesn't need her faceplanting on the bar now that he's stopped.
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"Ah, bugger," he mutters. Then, a little more firmly, "She is here, but from a time years before she ever met me. And, besides all of that, I think it was over by the time I left." Something that hurts keenly and awfully, perhaps out of proportion to the overall consequences of such a thing. He much prefers being afraid of the Borg to being heartbroken over Seven.
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She sips her martini and tries to find any other subject to discuss. In her current state it's unwise to let her thoughts linger on Scott, lest she become weepy or angry. Unfortunately there isn't a whole lot of common ground between them just yet. At least not that she knows of.
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It's something he's vaguely contemplating. Going and dancing. Trying out a few of the routines that he remembers from his youth. There are some that are just easy to slip back into, like old and tired clothes, ways to occupy his mind just enough and exhaust his body.
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