Nesting

Posted on Thu Feb 21st, 2019 @ 2:31pm by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Lieutenant Mona Gonadie

Mission: Recovery Trek
Location: Deck 8, Crew Quarters
Timeline: 2396

It had been a hectic week on board the U.S.S. Hera but most of the refugees that had been on board have been successfully moved along or were now on the station the ship was still docked at. The crew had been keeping busy with either duty or much-needed downtime.

Lieutenant Commander Thex had a wedding to plan and Lieutenant Mnhei'sahe Dox and Commander Rita Paris had been enjoying working on retrofitting a trip of recovered Romulan Scorpion fighters for their uses. It was work, but also a lot of fun.

Returning to her quarters late after an extended day as Chief of the Flight Control Department, Mnhei'sahe Dox was looking forward to getting out of her uniform and seeing Ensign Mona Gonadie.

The two had begun a relationship that had quickly become quite serious. Its intensity was fueling Dox's natural tendencies towards anxiety and self-destructive thinking. But she was working hard to push past that to be the woman Mona needed her to be. As such, she was very much looking forward to seeing her new love.

While the two still had separate quarters, they were spending more and more time together off hours and Mnhei'sahe knew that Mona had gotten off work earlier this evening and would be waiting.

As she approached her crew quarters on deck 8, the door slid open with a woosh as she pulled her uniform tunic open. The lights were on so Dox assumed Mona was waiting. "Hey, are you here?"

The brightly plumed Miradonian was at the main table looking over a series of PaDDs. "I am. There are a few things I wanted to talk with you about. Ila gave me some plans for a transformable power armor that Intel was working on but didn't have a way to stabilize for warp flight or even combat so it was scrapped. I think I might be able to adapt the principals with those of the Scorpions to make a new... Something..."

As Mnhei'sahe stepped over, she sat down next to Mona, leaned in and kissed her tenderly on the cheek with a smile. "That's fantastic. I was talking with Rita about some of her ideas and I know that with a little brainstorming, you can make these work. What are you thinking?"

Mona cooed softly at the kiss before bringing up a joint schematic. "They tried using interlocking joints and hull plates, but at anything more than warp 1.2 or with anything considered medium speed maneuvers, they just broke apart no matter how much they reinforced them with SIF fields and rigidity lock plates. The stresses just shook everything apart. However..."

She then pulled up the scale sealant on the cockpit dome of the Scorpion. "This obviously doesn't even budge. I think I can use the same tech keeping the cockpit and turret from shearing off to build a semi-transformable... Exo-suit?"

"That's the idea. Rita calls it a 'mecha' based on some holo-program she used to watch. Maybe that weird 'Wizard of Oz' thing, I don't know. But the ideas are very interesting. If you could pull this off, I would kill to fly it." Mnhei'sahe smiled, leaning over the table on her elbows as she spoke.

"With the variable configurations it'll be capable of, I think most pilots would love to," Mona replied, leaning in and giving Mona a quick kiss on her cheek. "Oh Minay, I can't wait to start putting these ideas floating through my head to the simulations."

Then Mona turned a bit more serious. "I had a couple other things I wanted to talk to you about though. About me... and you... and how serious our relationship has gotten in such a short time."

At the shift in tone, Mnhei'sahe's stomach tightened up just a little. She was immediately concerned as she quickly began to fear the worst. She put her hands on the table in front of Mona as she responded. "W... What's wrong?"

Mona took a deep breath, not even believing she was going to really be saying these things. Then she turned off all the PaDDs around her and placed her hands on Dox's. "Minay... I'm going to start my mating season soon. I don't know how many I'll have left and... I want to have your chicks." The last words came out in a rush as Mona scrunched her eyes shut.

Across the table, Dox's eyes went wide with shock at the words. For a moment before Mona spoke, she half expected this to be a 'break up' talk, when the reality was quite the reverse. "You... my... I don't understand. Mona, we... we just started this."

"I... I love you. As scary as it is for me to believe, I do." Dox was terrified by the idea but held tight to Mona's hands over her own. "I... Mona... I barely know who I am, really. I couldn't... I'd... I'd ruin..." She trailed off as she spoke.

"And I'm here to here to help you figure out who you are and Minay? I've figured out that you would be a wonderful mother. But if you don't want to, that's fine. I'm sure there's plenty of time to make that decision later." Mona smiled that special smile of hers that she reserved only for her Minay. "Can I at least move in though?"

"You've never met my Mother. I... don't come from a background of wonderful Mothers, Mona. I'm... I'm a mess. You've only seen a little bit. I'm..." Dox hung her head as she spoke. "I'm... broken... Mona. And I'm scared that those broken edges are going to hurt you the longer you're with me."

Dox gestured to the empty corner of the room. "I used to have a practice dummy there. I got rid of it after the Section 31 base fiasco... I lost it. I... I shattered my hands on it. Split my skin open and broke six bones. Asa... Asa heard and rushed in and helped me. They've helped me when I've hurt myself a few too many times. I'm... trying to be better. I'm trying to not be her anymore. I'm scared of that woman. And I never, never want to be that woman again. Especially for you."

Mona lifted Dox's hands and started kissing the knuckles tenderly. "Minay... I noticed you hurt your hands. Not on the mission, but after at work. I worry about you and what you may see as flaws, I see as cracks that I can pour my love into. If you'll let me. I'm not perfect either, but together I think we make a pretty great couple. Don't you?"

Shaking her head slightly, Dox allowed a slight smile to crack her cheeks. "I do. And I do want you to stay. I hate it when you're not here. I hate waking up alone. I hate coming back to no one. I... I miss you whenever I'm not with you."

Mona kissed Dox's hands a few more times. "Then it's settled - I'll move in tomorrow. How do you want to do the furniture? Keep your bed? Use my nest? I'll need my cookware, wardrobe, and modeling holographics at the least."

With a laugh, Dox's emotional tension cracked a bit. "My bed is barely big enough for me by myself. There's... There's not much to this room. But it's bigger than your quarters. Way bigger than I ever needed." She looked up with a smile, using the Rihan term for 'Angel Bird'. "If it's ours now, make it what you want it to be, Jhu Dhael."

Then, a quirky smile went across her face as she spoke with a chuckle. "So, was this all about asking for children so I'd give in on moving in finally?

Mona shook her head as she nuzzled on her 'Nightfeathers' hands. "No Minay... My mating drive will be pretty high for a few months and I do want children, but I want that to be a decision between us. Not a hormone driven one."

"Well... no matter what we decided... It's not like we could just rush into something like that in the heat of the moment, Anyway." Dox replied, as she turned her hands around to cup Mona's cheeks. "I mean, unless you've got some miraculous biological secrets to reveal, I don't even know how that's going to be possible. I mean, us both being women is it's own hurdle on top of my copper-based blood and being two different species."

In spite of her misgivings, Dox was now thinking about the mechanics with a bit of concern. "To say nothing of the regulations against having children on the ship."

"My species can mate with either gender. As for crossing the species barrier, I have faith in Doctor Dael." It seemed Mona wasn't to be dissuaded. "And with the rise in pregnancies... The Captain has to be rethinking the policy on children, especially since the last XO is gone."

Rolling her head back, Dox sighed in an exaggerated, comical manner. "We are officially terrible at taking things slow." She laughed nervously. "I've never once thought seriously about having a child. I mean... up until Asa fixed the genetic damage, I didn't even think it was a possibility. Doctors thought that because they believed I was mixed, I was sterile. I... I never had a period until... well... you noticed when I did."

Laughing awkwardly, Dox looked at Mona with a slightly uncomfortable expression. "And now... now I have you and I can't even imagine not having you. And I'm learning what I am... who I am. I just... how can I be what I would need to be to a child when I'm terrified that I'm just going to fail you?"

"Then let's not worry about that for now and worry about you being the best you that you can be. Together." Without another word, Mona stood and pulled Dox into her arms, cooing softly as she did so.

Holding Mona tight, Dox tried to relax, but her mind was still racing with both the enormity of everything and her own anxiety. "But Mona, you... you said you didn't know how long you would be even able to... "

Stopping herself, Dox sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm... I'm overthinking everything."

Mona ran one hand over the back of Dox's head softly. "It's ok. This won't be my last mating season. I just don't know how many more I'll have is all. I know you'll live a lot longer than me and probably outlive our children if we have any... But I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about the here and now. I want you... Us... To be happy. That's what matters most to me because it's better to have love in your heart than not. And Minay? My heart is full of love for you. I want to spend the rest of my life in your arms."

Clutching Mona tighter, Dox was well aware of their significantly different potential life spans and the idea that she could lose Mona at what would essentially be the middle of her own was heartbreaking to think about. But she was thinking about it as a tear ran down her face. "The... the here and now, then. And in the here and now, this is our quarters now."

Calming herself down a bit, Dox wiped her cheek as she stepped back slightly to look at the two small shelves with her few personal items and pictures. "It's... It's pretty sad in here now. And I don't have much that needs to be worked around. But I'm looking forward to seeing you all over the place in here."

"Then I'll let the Quartermaster know and have my things transported in. I'll replace your bed with my nest and keep your bedding I had made. My wardrobe should fit easily enough in the space next to yours. I assume most of the stock furniture is ok to go but we should keep the table and chairs." Mona turned her head to look over at the small office space. "I'll have to bring in my holographic workspace by hand and adapt it to the desk here. As for my roost... I think that might be a bit weird for you... So I'll just have that recycled..."

"I am not worried about 'weird', Mona. If it's yours, bring it to our room. If we're doing this, then we both need to be able to be ourselves, right? You're going to... you're going to see plenty of my weird." Dox walked up behind Mona and put her arms around the Miradonian's waist as she spoke.

"And I'm looking forward to our nest being here."

The brightly plumed Miradonian rested against her Minay and thrummed softly as she considered those thoughts happily. "I can't wait until we can ravish each other in our nest in our quarters, then. And the ah... Bean bag chairs?" Mona had to recall the name most people called them since to her they were just chairs. "You probably saw that I had several in my quarters during the party. Miradonians sit in them differently than most races. Just warning you now. I've had to get used to sitting in these weird four-legged chairs since joining Starfleet and... Well, that's why I don't spend much time at my desk at work and why I lean forward so far when piloting."

"Jhu Dhael, I am intimately familiar with the details of your wonderful posterior and it's adornments... so you sit however you like." Dox lightly kissed the side of Mona's neck as the spoke. "If we're doing this, we do it right. No... no airs. No facades. I will be myself. I'll always try and be by best self, but I will always be my real self for you. And you can always be your real self with me."

"That sounds perfect to me. Now how about we explore our real selves together a bit more, Minay?" Mona fluffed her tail feathers against Dox and rubbed against her enticingly.