Noel DelMonde was disgusted by how accustomed he was becoming to living with Pavel Chekov. By this point, his relationships with his previous roommates usually deteriorated from nausea-inducing unpleasantness to all-out war. With the Russian, though, Del had actually caught himself contemplating things he liked about his current living arrangements.

The number one thing was that if you had a brain-crushingly bad day, you could come in and say, “Shut the fuck up and leave me alone.” Incredibly, he would shut the fuck up and leave you alone. Like a good hound dog, he might come over and give you a discreet sniff to reassure himself that you hadn’t curled up to die, but other than that, he went about his business.

Living with the Russian was very like living with a dog… a dog who wanted to become an admiral and who had a certain talent for statistical mechanics. Henceforth Del resolved to teach all his dogs astrophysics. It might give them delusions of grandeur, but it did seem to have great potential to keep them occupied.

Del was therefore very surprised when Chekov gave what in a human would be a “What’s the use?” sigh and switched off his computer. The Cajun was stunned when his roommate followed this uncharacteristic behavior up by taking a big bottle of clear liquid out of his desk and saying, “Noel, would you care for a drink?”

“Does th’ pope wear a funny hat?” Del replied automatically despite the fact his jaw had just hit the floor.

The Russian blinked at him blankly.

“The answer is yes, you heathen,” the Cajun said, stepping over to his roommate’s desk to accept the glass. “And don’t call me Noel… An’ why th’ hell you drinkin’?”

The Russian pulled back the glass. “That could be seen as a prying question.”

Del raised his eyebrows. The only clear “gentleman’s agreement” they’d been able to work out thus far was a prohibition against prying questions. Del had suggested the rule never thinking that he might actually want to ask one.

“Fair enough,” he conceded, pulling a chair put to his roommate’s desk. “I withdraw my query.”

Chekov poured a glass of clear liquid for both of them.

“Must be a special occasion, though,” Del persisted casually. “For you t’ share your liquor wit’ me.”

“I am going to be drinking…” The Russian paused to toss back the entire glass. “Quite a bit. It would be rude not to ask if you wanted to join me.”

“True dat,” Del agreed, sipping his drink like a normal person. The reason the Cajun rarely wanted to ask questions was because he rarely needed to ask questions. He could lift the lid on the teeny tiny toybox that was his roommate’s brain and take a peek around with less effort than it took for him to breathe. What he glimpsed there almost made him drop his drink. “You gonna turn yourself in an’ resign from the Academy?”

Chekov frowned at him. “Who told you that?”

“The tooth fairy,” Del answered, exasperated.

“I am being serious.” The Russian warned as he poured himself another drink.

“So then you gonna believe me this time when I tell you I know what you thinkin’ ‘cause I a telepath?”

Chekov snorted and downed another shot. “No.”

“’Course not.” Del rolled his eyes, before he focused in on his roommate’s abnormally quiet psyche. “Well, lemme see what th’ Easter Bunny can tell me ‘bout how you got into this mess…”

“Noel…” The Russian began defeatedly, as he poured himself another small glass of vodka.

“Don’ call me Noel,” Del warned, topping off his glass since his roommate seemed to be intent on polishing off the whole bottle in a few swigs. “So… a midshipman been pickin’ on you… and not jus’ you…”

“This is the sort of trick fortunetellers use,” Chekov accused. “It is all a matter of asking leading questions and watching body language.”

“Yeah,” DelMonde agreed facetiously. “An’ the way you holdin’ your pinkie tell me this clever bastard got him a system figured out. If there some problem in his homework he can’t work, he ambush a bunch of plebes outside the Nav Lab an’ make them calculate it fo’ him under the pretext o’ testing ‘em on the fundamentals.”

“I suppose someone could have told you,” the Russian grumbled into his vodka.

“Yeah. Santa Claus, th’ tooth fairy, an’ the Easter Bunny all drop by to discuss your progress wit’ me on a regular basis,” the Cajun confirmed, then added. “That who really drinkin’ up your liquor, you know.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Chekov agreed, downing another shot like it was water.

“An’ from what they tol’ me,” Del said, easily pursing the narrative being replayed inside his roommate’s orderly little brain. “T’ings was goin’ fine ‘til this clever dick decide to pick on you. Eager beaver that you are, you done already workin’ problems out o’ the advanced level textbook so you recognize what he doin’, work th’ problem fo’ him then work th’ next one on that page an’ ask if he couldn’t figure that one out either….” The Cajun paused and shook his head. “Damn, son, you got balls. I gotta admit that much. You ain’t got shit fo’ brains, but you do have a big ol’ set o' Bolshevik balls on you.”

Chekov apparently saw no point in disagreeing with either of these assertions.

“So,” Del continued. “Along come another midshipman who jerk you aside an’ tell you you better shut up ‘bout this whole t'ing ‘cause t' him it look like you givin’ out answers to th' advanced class homework an’ if you make a fuss he gonna turn you in for cheatin’.”

Chekov sighed. “I suppose that everyone must be talking about it.”

“You overestimate people’s interest in your personal life,” Del informed him coolly, despite the fact that he was appalled at how a couple of scumbags could get a straight-arrow kid like his roommate into so much trouble in a matter of minutes. “So now you decided you gonna go turn yourself an’ make a full report on that midshipman even though you t’ink it gonna get you kicked out too.”

“You are simply drawing conclusions now,” the Russian replied, refilling his glass glumly.

“Yeah and my main conclusion is that you too much of a dumbfuck to realize that Midshipman #2 was not an innocent bystander outraged by your actions.”

“Who was he then?”

“One of Midshipman #1’s friends who saw a way to save his sleazebag ass.”

Chekov blinked at this new interpretation of the scene. “You think so?”

“The Easter Bunny is 90% sure that th’ case,” Del confirmed, taking a long sip of his vodka.

The little Russian blew out a long breath and put his glass down as he puzzled through this fresh data. He turned his head to one side; his stubborn chin stuck up and out, his childish mouth slightly pursed and curved downwards. Tiny frown lines made his usually kind and guileless eyes look stern. His brow was lowered.

In other words, he had The Look.

There was only one other human who Del had ever known who could pull off The Look… and this was a Double Triple Secret reason why DelMonde was less and less tempted to strangle the Russian with each passing day.

“Your mama has her princess face on, boy,” Del’s daddy used to say. “Tryin’ to figure out why th’ rest o’ the world not manage to be as good as she is.”

Del loved his mother’s princess face – despite the fact it usually meant she was about to come down on someone’s erring ass like the wrath of God… and despite the fact that sometimes that ass was his own.

Pavel Chekov got The Look because his null brain did not give him sufficient clues to help him figure out why others did not hold themselves to the same high standards he did. Louisa DelMonde had more than ample information as to why people fell short of her similarly strict code of personal ethics. She got The Look when she just could not accept those reasons as being sufficient.

In a dusty Art History text Del had once read, The Look as it appeared on some of Michelangelo’s angels was described as “the righteous arrogance of the unthinkingly virtuous.” It was a rare and beautiful thing to see in person…particularly when it was not directed at you.

“No wonder your parents never let you out the house,” Del chided, outwardly not giving in to this sentimentality. “You so green they probably scared they lose you in th’ grass.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Chekov asked.

“You so gullible if somebody ask you fo’ th’ time, you run out an’ try to give ‘em all the chronometers you can lay hands on.”

“Noel...”

“An’ don’ call me Noel,” the Cajun warned, refilling both glasses. “Now if you turn yourself in, what you t’ink happen?”

“There will be a formal investigation by the…”

“Don’t quote th’ damn manual to me,” Del interrupted firmly. “What I mean is, what you hope to achieve by turnin’ yourself in? Why you doin’ this for?”

Chekov took in a deep breath. “That midshipman is guilty of breaking the honor code…”

“An’ are you guilty too?”

“Well, technically…”

Now this was the sticky point. The Academy prided itself so much on being such a hard-assed organization that if Chekov turned himself in, he’d probably get kicked out – even though doing so was the sort of brave and honorable decision they were trying to train the cadets to make. The Russian had knowingly given the answers to a homework assignment to another student -- even if it was only to expose that student’s more serious violation of the honor code.

“Technically, my ass,” Del retorted, cutting through this Gordian knot of ethical obligations. “Were you cheatin’?”

“No,” Chekov replied as stoutly as his roommate knew he would.

“Was Midshipman Scumbag cheatin’?”

“Yes,” the Russian answered with equal vigor.

“Then who need to be turned in, you or him?”

“Him,” Chekov admitted. “But I am obliged to tell the complete story…”

“But if this fella was to get caught wit’out you sayin’ nothin’,” Del proposed. “Would justice be served?”

“I suppose so, but…”

The Cajun crossed his arms. “So all that need to happen is fo’ him to try to pull this one more time an’ get caught.”

Chekov drank his next glass of vodka no faster than the average person might drink a very small glass of water. “I doubt that he would do that,” the Russian concluded, setting his glass down.

“You t’ink he scared you gonna turn him in?”

“He should be,” Chekov replied grimly.

“He might lay low fo’ a few days at that.” Del paused and sipped thoughtfully on his vodka. “But you not gonna wait a few days to tell on him, are you?”

“I have already waited longer than I should have.”

Del began to smile as a plan began to coalesce in his brain. “If Midshipman Fuckhead get convinced there gonna be a pop quiz, though….”

Chekov frowned. “Who would convince him of that?”

“Oh, Santa Claus might decide to whisper somet’ing in his ear.” The Cajun smiled to himself. “Big t’ing is, we need a teacher to witness… but someone our Mr. Cheater not immediately pick out o’ the crowd… Maybe someone from Engineering…”

“Someone from Engineering wouldn’t recognize that the problems were out of the advanced text,” Chekov pointed out.

“Unless someone else is standin’ beside them sayin’, “You know, I have a lifeless bookworm fuck for a roommate an’ that sounds like some o’ the questions from th’ junior level textbook he busting’ his li’l brains on fo’ fun.”

The Russian looked into Del’s eyes questioningly. “You would do that?”

The Cajun leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “Someone might.”

“Why?” he asked – not meaning to be insulting, but simply and completely unable to fathom his roommate’s motivations.

“Maybe it because I a decent person,” Del suggested pointedly. “Or because I sick o’ you prancin’ ‘round here like Prince Galahadovich t’inking that I owe you one ‘cause you woke me up th’ other day… Or it could be because I an unprincipled individual who enjoy causin’ disorder --- so it would be a laugh.”

Although he seemed to be impressed by the quantity if not the quality of these potential subtexts, Chekov still shook his head. “It would not work,” he decided, downing another glass of vodka. “Too many unpredictable variables.”

Del grinned. “Not fo’ a good fortune-teller like me.”

The Russian chewed on his lip and considered. “It would not work.”

“Wanna bet?”

“What?”

“50 credits,” Del specified. “Gimme 24 hours. And 50 credits says I can fuck this bastard up royally.”

The Russian frowned. “I do not know.”

“Scared to put your money where your big Slavic mouth is, huh?” Del goaded.

“It is not that…”

“24 hours,” the Cajun persisted. “If it don’t work, you still got plenty o’ time to fall on your saber, right?

“I suppose,” Chekov said slowly in a 'this really means no' voice.

Del picked up the vodka. “50 credits and the rest of this bottle o' firewater say I can do it.”

After a moment, the Russian sighed, seeing that his roommate was not going to let the proposition go. “If you insist.”

“I do.” Del put the stopper back on the bottle. “Now get back to your homework.” He even confiscated the Russian’s glass. “An' stop drinkin’ my liquor.”

When Pavel Chekov arrived back in his cabin late that afternoon, Del had a set up a convivial little tea party on his desk. The Cajun had ordered a chocolate bunny and a tiny Santa hat for the decorative nutcracker dressed as a Cossack Chekov kept on a shelf with his books. Del hadn’t been able to think of anything to represent the tooth fairy, so he’d just put a tutu on the toy bear the Russian kept on his bed. Each guest had a small glass of vodka.

The Russian grinned from ear to ear when he saw the display. “50 credits, I believe you said?” he inquired, graciously conceding defeat.

Del was more than a bit surprised by his roommate’s cheerfulness. After all, he had set this scene up to purposefully piss the Russian off. Something had to be done to prevent Chekov from thinking crazy things like assuming the two of them were friends just because Del had spent the better part of the day saving him from being expelled. The Cajun had blatantly touched several of his roommate’s precious belongings in creating this diorama set up to mock the Russian’s idiotic disbelief in telepathy.

“We could make it 75 fo' the trouble,” Del replied gruffly. After all, framing the cheating midshipman had been more bother than the Cajun had anticipated. The first run had been a dismal disappointment.

Instead of arguing, rolling his eyes, or sighing, Chekov shook his head in jovial wonder as he took the requested amount out of a compartment under his desk. “You certainly earned it.”

“That I did,” Del said, catching the credit chips his roommates tossed to him. He waited for the inevitable stomping of feet, scolding, or disparaging remark making to begin in vain. Instead Chekov went through his normal routine of putting away his books with a little smile on his face, jolly and content as a fat uncle who’d just put away half a Thanksgiving turkey.

Del supposed it could be pure relief. After all, the poor dumbfuck’s life up to this point had been narrowly focused on getting into the Academy. If he’d been kicked out for cheating… Del wasn’t sure what Russians did to off themselves in for behaving dishonorably. Maybe bash themselves in the head with a samovar or something? In Russian literature, they seemed to just mope to death…

“I heard rumors about unscheduled tests all day,” Chekov said, chuckling a little.

That part had proved too easy. Not only the dishonest upperclassman but everyone in his circle of friends was at a near fever-pitch of anxiety about their grades. Del’s gentle push to their ringleader’s brain had sent them all into a veritable feeding frenzy of paranoia. Finding an upperclassman doing something less that completely ethical to ensure his or her class standing would have been like shooting fish in a barrel that day…. Which was a good thing since Del had been forced to try twice.

His initial choice of a witness had proved less than optimal. Lt. Samisvarush was so enraptured by Del’s feigned interest in his research project, that he wouldn’t have paid attention to a 10-ton weight being dropped on his head.

For his second choice, Del went back to the basics of picking someone who was just desperate to get into his pants. Lt. Anderson was content to follow him to lead her to a part of campus quite off her beaten track on a very flimsy pretext and listen raptly to his distracted excuse for conversation while he pushed Midshipman Cheater to a sufficient level of recklessness. Anderson was more than happy to dive in like a pit bull in hopes of impressing Del when he pointed out the hapless upperclassman’s suspicious browbeating of a very studious but defenseless looking plebe.

The Cajun was, in fact, so pleased by Anderson’s vigorous defense of the Academy’s code of honor that he fully planned to reward her with a very discrete indiscretion – which, since he was currently one of her students, was itself explicitly prohibited by that very same code of honor. The irony of this was not at all lost on Del as he sat drinking the sweet vodka of victory.

“Why you play wit' dolls?” he asked, making another last ditch effort at being unsociable as Chekov took the toy bear out of his chair.

“Sebastian?” the Russian asked, removing the tutu and tossing the toy back up onto his bunk. “He’s a pillow.”

“Pillows not generally have names,” the Cajun pointed out, pouring himself anther shot of his hard-won vodka. “Or gender.”

“Sebastian does,” Chekov replied unperturbed, taking the bear’s place. “He was a good luck present from a friend.”

“A girlfriend?” Del speculated.

“Of course,” the Russian admitted easily. “Do you have male friends who give good luck pillows?”

The Cajun shrugged as he sipped his vodka. “I got male friends who’d happily volunteer to be good luck pillows.”

Chekov raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, now don’t give me that look when you gonna have your arms around Sebastian all night,” Del scolded.

Again, remarkably, the Russian failed to rise to this bait. Instead he good-humoredly raised a glass to his roommate. “I did not believe it was possible for you to bring that lying, cheating styervo to justice, but… Spasiba, Noel.”

“You are very welcome, kind sir,” Del replied, trying to match him in gentility as he clinked his shot glass against Chekov’s.

“I am afraid everyone is going to be upset with you when they figure out all those rumors you started weren’t true,” the Russian said, after they’d both downed their shot.

“The words ‘pop quiz’ did not leave my lips.”

“Whatever you said, it must have been vague and ominous,” Chekov replied. “It was if everyone were imagining the thing they were least prepared to face. I heard talk of very difficult assignments – assembling a field density generator in zero g, or navigating while blindfolded. Some said there was going to be a new psych screening that at least 75% of the incoming class was guaranteed to fail. One person was convinced that they were going to institute a new height requirement for pilots.”

Del inwardly groaned. His gentle push toward paranoia directed at Midshipman Cheater must have been less gentle and less directed than he thought. He hoped his efforts hadn’t been strong enough to cause a blip on the mental radar of those bastards in the Psych Department. “That must’ve had you shakin' in your boots,” he said, pouring his roommate another round.

“No, but that individual was working on a plan to make his boots much, much taller,” Chekov informed him with a smile.

Del frowned. If the effect of his push had been as widespread as the Russian reported, then with no shielding, his roommate should have been consumed by paranoia. Instead, there he sat, as happy as a bullfrog with a belly full of flies. “You not worry, though, huh?”

“I did spend 20 minutes of my lunch break coming up with salient arguments for classifying Neo-Thomism as a dialectical methodology with my study partner for Comparative Philosophy before I realized that she too was under the influence of your rumor mill.”

Del snorted. “Sorry I made you spend an extra minute wit' that flat-chested, buck-toothed ol' t'ing.”

Chekov grinned since his study partner was undeniably a very scrumptious piece of girlflesh. “Again,” the Russian said, raising his glass. “Spasiba balshoye, Noel.”

“Nezachto, Pavel Andrievich,” Del replied genially. Inwardly, though, he was puzzled. As an experiment, he looked directly into his roommate’s thoughts and gave them a little push. Chekov’s thoughts were like thousands and thousands of tiny ants, as Del’s push came through, they offered no resistance. It was as if each ant instantly became clothed in a marching band uniform displaying the color of Del’s emotion.

Since he’d not thought of anything specific to push, Chekov’s thoughts began to reflect his own curiosity back to him. The Russian tilted his head to one side and bit his bottom lip. Del belatedly realized that this mirrored his own expression.

As the Cajun had observed before, just at the point where an average human’s neural oscillations of emotional energy would have started to project outwards, Chekov’s energy started to collapse back in on itself. The effect was more pronounced this time, though. It was as if the bottom of his toy box brain had fallen open to reveal there was a suction hose attached to the bottom. The vacuum was strong enough to pull the marching band uniforms of emotional overlay off Chekov’s ant-thoughts. Occasionally it even ate a whole ant.

Del realized with fascinated revulsion that this… null-ness was… eating emotion. Furthermore, it was sucking in a slow and steady stream of the very same sort of energy from him.

“Why are you staring at me, Noel?” Chekov asked as the Cajun hastily drew his thoughts back in.

The false bottom of the Russian’s toy box brain closed and the suction effect faded quickly enough to make Del wonder if he’d imagined the whole thing.

“I tryin' to figure out how someone can be as stubborn as you an' still live,” he replied as his roommate’s ant farm of thoughts resumed its normal orderliness.

“Stubborn?” Chekov repeated as if amazed the term could be applied to him.

“You see how I able to fuck that guy over single-handed,” Del said. “But you still not a bit more convinced that I ‘pathic.”

“All day everyone kept asking, ‘Isn’t that your roommate DelMonde? Why is he loitering around the Nav labs?’ I said you must be interested in some girl.” The Russian added. “Next time I won’t be so gender specific.”

“You an' Sebastian mind your own business. I mind mine,” the Cajun retorted. “So you t'ink I jus' spread some rumors then hung around waitin' for them to work?”

Chekov shrugged. “What else?”

DelMonde sighed to the chocolate bunny before biting into one of its ears. “Next time we try that, non?”

“I ain’t gonna do it!”

Dr. Braily thought that he’d seen the telepath get angry before. However, as his shielding shuddered under the hurricane-force wall of emotion suddenly battering them, he realized what he’d witnessed before was mild pique at the most.

The psychiatrist took in a deep breath and folded his hands on his desktop. “Del, we’ve already been over this sort of thing before,” he replied with Vulcan-trained calm. “At the Academy, an assignment is like a direct order. Refusing it is not an option. It’s insubordination.”

The telepath crossed his arms and glared hot waves of resentment towards him. “I not fuckin’ gonna do it!”

“And you’re doubly not allowed to express a refusal in that way,” Braily corrected resolutely. “As I have tried to explain to you…

“I not give a flyin’ fuck what I not fuckin’ allowed to say,” DelMonde replied hotly. “I not gonna write no motherfuckin’ thirty-five page research paper on the motherfuckin’ ethical dimensions of telepathic manipulation of fuckin’ non-telepaths.”

“If you did what we think you did,” the psychiatrist pointed out, “you’re getting off very lightly.”

The telepath glowered dangerously. “What make you so hellfired-sure I the one that fuckin’ done it?”

“A sudden wave of paranoia grips more than two-thirds of the student body, faculty, and staff of the Academy for nearly four hours.” Braily paused and gave the telepath a non-smile. “Let me assure you, Cadet, the list of people capable of being responsible for such a thing is very, very, very, very short.”

DelMonde’s anger abated a little but his frown deepened. “How short?”

“There’s only one name on the list.”

“Other than me?” the telepath asked stubbornly.

“No.” Braily sighed wearily. “It’s just you, Del.”

“You mean to tell me that none of ya’ll coulda done it?” DelMonde’s gesture indicated his “ya’ll” included the Psych research staff.

Part of Braily’s brain noted that the question might indicate that they were not entirely successful in shielding against the telepath. “None of us would have done it.”

The cadet snorted contemptuously. “‘Cept under orders, non?”

“A side benefit of doing the requisite research to write this paper is that after doing so, you will have a more complete idea of what the answer to that question is,” Braily replied blandly.

“Motherfuckin’ sons of…” the telepath growled, then paused. “What if it were an accident? I not sayin’ I done it – but what if it were an accident?”

An alarming number of gifteds either on his staff or under Braily’s supervision had been affected by the incident. The doctor was surprised by how many of their paranoid fantasies had centered on DelMonde’s ferocious temper and the doubts they all shared about the limits to which they could control or even measure his abilities.

“We are assuming that this incident was somehow unintentional,” the doctor replied with a frown of his own. “Otherwise we would have reported you to the dean of students, recommended that you be expelled from the Academy, and alerted the civilian authorities.”

“Motherfuckers…” the telepath muttered, but the assault on Braily’s shielding eased off as the young man digested this indication of how seriously the uproar he’d caused was being taken in some quarters.

“Thirty-five pages,” the doctor said firmly. “At minimum. All sources correctly cited. Delivered to my in-box by seventeen hundred hours two weeks from now.”

“Motherfuckin’…” the cadet muttered as he rose, taking this a dismissal.

“Del.” Braily stopped him before he reached the door. “I can believe that this was merely a lapse of control or judgment on your part. However, you’re going to have to work a lot harder to convince us that you’re willing to do what it takes to be a Starfleet officer.”

“Yeah?” The telepath sneered over his shoulder before exiting. “An' who gonna convince me?”

“You low-down, mother-fuckin’ son of a bitch.”

Instead of taking the sensible option of fleeing in terror before his wrath, Noel DelMonde’s roommate sighed deeply as he put his books down on his desk in their shared quarters.

“Hello, Pavel,” the little chipmunk greeted himself satirically. “Hello, Noel,” he answered himself cheerfully. “How are you doing today, Pavel?” the Russian inquired of himself. “Fine, thank you, Noel. And you?” he asked, stepping past DelMonde to take a seat at his desk. “I am afraid that I am very agitated about something and have discovered a way to blame it on you. I hope you do not mind if I rant on obscenely for the rest of the night?” Chekov said, activating his computer. “No. Not at all, Noel. Please, be as rude as you wish.”

Del crossed his arms, unamused by this charade. “After I save your no-good Slavic ass, you rat me out to Braily an’ his brain-bangers.”

Chekov gave him one of his 'this does not compute' looks.

The Cajun towered over him forbiddingly. “You t’ink you can deny it?”

The Russian shrugged. “I am not certain what 'ratting out' is.”

“I saw you come out th’ Psych Dept. grinnin’ this afternoon,” Del accused. “If you not there to tattle-tell to Braily, then what the fuck were you doin’ there?”

“I participated in a research project for extra credit,” Chekov replied without so much as a second’s worth of guilty hesitation.

“You not need no fuckin’ extra credit,” Del growled, less because it actually seemed like a hole in the Russian’s alibi and more because he wanted there to be a hole in the Russian’s alibi. He really hated to believe that he’d accidentally pushed hard enough to affect two thirds of the Academy. That’s what came of not getting a decent night’s sleep in a couple months, though…

His roommate made a rueful noise as he called up his homework. “I do in my Abnormal Psychology class.”

“Don’t see why you’d have no problems wit’ that subject,” the Cajun sneered.

The impudent little chipmunk gave him a pointed up and down look. “I suppose I am not very observant,” he said faux-pleasantly.

“Fuck. You.” Del swore, investing the phrase with as much venom as possible.

Although such an assault would have been sufficiently deadly to curl the toes of any normal mortal, his abnormally insensitive roommate merely shook his empty teddy bear head and rolled his shoe-button eyes.

“An' fuck this place.” Del angrily flung himself down on his bunk. “I not even know why th' fuck I fuckin’ hang around.”

He looked up in time to see the Russian give him a 'oh, sure' look.

“What?” he growled. “You t’ink you know somet’ing?”

“The normal motivation for an Engineering cadet to be in the Starfleet Academy is the hope of becoming a Starfleet Engineering officer,” his roommate replied, as if reciting from his Super Junior Space Man manual.

“I could be a motherfuckin’ engineer any fuckin’ place I wanna be,” Del retorted contemptuously.

“You would not be working on starships, though.”

Like the broken clock that was still accurate twice a day, this was one of the rare occasions when the Russian – who had absolutely no insight into human emotion – was absolutely right.

Del glared up at the underside of the bunk above him. There was no denying it, though. The lure of working on the biggest, fastest ships in this half of the galaxy already had him hopelessly enthralled. There was not much Braily, his army of skull-fuckers, this snotty blank-brained chipmunk, or any of the other loathsome denizens of this tin-plated lunatic asylum could do to break that spell.

“So you think I told Dr. Braily what you did to help expose that midshipman?” Chekov was saying, looking like he thought there was some possible reason that he might have an excuse to be pissed off. “Is that what the 'rat you out' is?”

“Yes, that what 'the rat you out' is,” Del replied irritably. “Damn. Learn t’ speak motherfuckin’ Standard, why don’t ya?”

“I do not think that would help me understand you,” the Russian shot back automatically. He then paused and continued in a very aggrieved tone, “Do you truly think I am so completely lacking in honor?”

“No,” Del replied ungraciously. “I t’ink you a grade-grubbin’, apple-polishin’, brown-nosing, motherfuckin’ moron. That what I t’ink.”

“Moodozvon,” his roommate muttered.

Russian, Del had discovered, had a really wonderful variety of new swear words – if you could get the pronunciation down. “Past' zabej, padla jebanaja.”

From the look on Chekov’s face, the Cajun still had quite a ways to go on that front. “Learn to speak Russian, why don’t you?” the chipmunk requested smugly in that language.

“Oh, he t’ink he so smart,” Del sneered back. “I not know why th’ fuck I put up wit’ your sorry, snotty ass.”

“Don’t,” the Russian advised.

“What?”

“Don’t inconvenience yourself on my account,” Chekov replied, copying a problem down onto his data pad. “Request a different room assignment. Maybe they will listen to you.”

“What you mean maybe they listen to me?” Del asked, feeling unaccountably outraged by the notion. “You already requested a transfer?”

“Three times,” the Russian replied heartlessly.

“Three times?!! I only been here a week an’ you done try to get me kicked out the room three fuckin’ times?”

“After the first three refusals, they threatened to give me a demerit if I asked again,” Chekov reported.

“Why, you stuck-up, motherfuckin’, son of a bitchin’, hooyesos,-in’, moronic, self-satisfied, snotty li’l prick…” Del growled, rising threateningly up onto his elbows.

Once more, instead of being sensibly terrified at having so roused Del’s ire, his roommate was just stubbornly and stupidly annoyed.

“To hell wit’ this,” the Cajun spat as he stalked to the door.

“Where are you going?” the Russian asked, like it was any of his business.

“I gonna get a fuckin’ drink,” Del replied – quite politely under the circumstances, he thought.

“Wait.” Chekov quickly saved his work. “I need to get my jacket.”

“What you gettin’ your fuckin’ jacket fo'?” the Cajun asked in puzzled affront as the Russian shut down his computer and made ready to leave as if he’d received an engraved invitation to something.

“I want to go for a drink too,” his roommate said matter-of-factly.

“But.. but..” For the first time in his life, Noel DelMonde was outraged beyond the power of expletives to express. “I don’ like you.”

Chekov blinked him as if this was an unexpectedly stupid response. “I thought you said you were going to drink, not talk.”

The best relationships are based on compatibility. The most enduring and enjoyable of all human connections are, in the vast majority of cases, firmly buttressed by an array of shared attitudes, aptitudes, and interests. However, it is also true that sometimes two people can share such a deep and abiding accord on one subject that an entire relationship can be established and maintained simply on that unity of opinion or devotion.

Del had to admit that the little fucker did understand drinking better than any non-Cajun he’d ever met.

“All right,” he relented. “Get your damned coat. But we gonna have t’ make this quick. You gotta start work on seventeen an’ a half pages of an Ethics research paper.”

“What?”

“C’mon.” Del reached into the locker by the door and handed the jacket to him. “You gonna love the topic, trust me.”

“Seventeen and a half pages?” Chekov repeated, struggling into the garment.

“Is that what you heard me say?” Del asked, ushering him out. “I meant twenty-seven pages…. Or maybe it best we jus’ go ahead an’ round it up to thirty-five...”

The End