A Tipsy Visit, Part I
Posted on Tue Feb 17th, 2026 @ 9:49am by Lieutenant JG Ryan Kellerman & Lieutenant Darius Korveth
1,679 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
What was Lost is Found
Location: Open Mess/Lounge, Deck 11
Timeline: Prior to Arrival at Kril'es
Ryan had been sitting at the bar in the Open Mess on Deck 11 for so long that the room had time to change shifts around him. Faces had come and gone. Conversations rose and fell. Somewhere in that period of time, the music playlist had looped back to the beginning.
He had started with a glass of bourbon. Real bourbon. Or as close as a standard Starfleet replicator could manage. It was still amber and warm and it felt like it belonged in his hand. After that, he’d asked for another. And another. Not in any great hurry, of course. But there was a constant need to prevent the tumbler from being empty.
Two and a half hours passed.
He wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. That was the point, really. The mission had been quiet for him so far. Very quiet, in fact. He’d found himself filing low-level Intelligence reports to the sector chief at Starbase 152 about their encounters with the Defiled. It was important work, according to her. Necessary, even. But it left a man alone with his thoughts and a lot of unspent energy at the end of a shift.
Five, maybe ten years ago, he would have done this more often. Back when he was more social, could be the life of a party. Back when his temper was quicker and his patience far thinner. Back when a few drinks felt like releasing a pressure valve. It had never ruined him–never cost him anything he couldn’t get back. A hangover or maybe a few sharp words, but nothing career-ending. But it had come close one or twice at the Academy. Darius had been there to keep him grounded.
He lifted the glass again and took a swig. The bourbon tasted different.
Ryan frowned at it, rolling the liquid around on his tongue as if hesitant to swallow.
“Hey,” he said to the bartender, his voice a few notches too loud. “This isn’t–this is synthehol.”
The bartender, a women in her late-thirties with a reddish-brown beehive hairstyle and a perpetually sour expression didn’t even bother to look up from drying a glass.
“It sure is, Lieutenant.”
Ryan blinked at her. “I didn’t ask for synthehol.”
“You didn’t ask for another bourbon either,” she said gently, her brown eyes landing on him in a mixture of pity and amusement. “I made discretionary decision.”
Ryan considered this. He seemed to be having trouble getting his thoughts to line up in a clean and straight row.
“Well,” he muttered, “I disagree with your confectionary decision.”
Still, he drank it. There was something about synthehol to him that separated the taste from real alcohol. Of course, non-imbibers might not tell the difference. But Ryan knew.
There was a couple sitting beside him. Young. Both were laughing softly about something private. Ryan turned on his stool and tried to join in.
“Y’know,” he began, leaning a little too deeply into their orbit, “when I was at the Academy, there was this–this thing, where–”
The story fell apart into tatters before Ryan could even formulate a premise. The words came out slow and tangled. He couldn’t quite find the right end of the sentence.
The couple smiled politely. It was quite literally the kind of smile strangers use when they’re trying to be kind to someone who’s had a long day.
“Excuse us,” the woman said. “We promised to meet someone at a table.”
“Sure,” Ryan said, waving a hand. “Yeah. Of course. Tables are good.”
They slipped away, and the empty space they left behind felt like a gaping chasm.
A few minutes later, two security officers–Ensigns–approached. They were careful about it. No sudden movements. No hard expressions. Just two young officers in uniform bellying up to the bar on either side of Ryan. It was their way of doing a job with a bit of grace.
“Lieutenant Kellerman?” one of them said. He was young, bald, with kind eyes and dimples.
Ryan looked up at them, squinting as though the midday sun were in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said, then added, “Present.”
They exchanged a quick look, not entirely unkind.
The second Ensign was man roughly the same age as Ryan. His hair was dark and close-cropped with a part on one side. It was quite clear to Ryan this man was built for security with his large frame and square jaw.
“Sir, we’ve had a couple of reports that you might be causing a… minor disruption. Nothing serious. We were wondering if maybe it’s time to, you know, call it a night?”
Ryan stared at them for a second. Then it all seemed to make sense at once.
“Oh,” he said quietly, dropping his eyes to the glass of bourbon. Syntheholic bourbon.
He slid off the stool, a little slower than he meant to. The room tilted slightly, in an unhelpful way.
“Right. Yes. I–I’m sorry.” He straightened his uniform out of habit more than anything else. “I didn’t mean to be a problem.”
“You are not a problem, sir,” one of the Ensigns said. “We just want to make sure you get back to your quarters okay.”
Ryan nodded, earnest and a little embarrassed. “Thank you. Really. I’m sorry.”
He turned to the bartender. “And I’m sorry. For arguing about the synthehol. That was… probably the correct dis–discretionary decision.”
The bartender gave him a knowing smile. “Have a good night, Lieutenant.”
Ryan nodded once more, then headed for the door, walking carefully. His brain was trying to convince him everything was normal and that he was indeed walking straight and appearing casual. In fact, he was not.
The doors like shut behind him.
The two Ensigns watched for a second, then exchanged a quick grin.
“He knows his way to his quarters, right?” the big one asked.
“The other shrugged. “Gosh, I hope so. He’s the Intelligence Chief.”
The bartender froze mid-polish, then slowly pointed at the door Ryan had just gone through. He fixed the bald security officer with a look that could have cut glass.
“He is our Intelligence Chief?”
Out in the corridor, Ryan was humming to himself.
It might have been a song. It might very well have been three songs stitched together and half-forgotten. He drifted along the deck with a sort of wandering confidence, one hand trailing lightly along the wall–just enough to keep himself steady without drawing too much attention.
He paused at the turbolift, stared at the doors as they opened, then closed again without him. He peered around the corner of the corridor like he was checking for something important. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it.
So he kept going.
A few doors down, he stopped. Then he leaned in close, squinting hard at the nameplate like it was written in an ancient language.
“Korr… veth,” he sounded-out carefully. “Darius. Lieutenant.”
Ryan smiled, satisfied with himself. He pressed the chime and leaned one shoulder against the frame to keep the floor steady while he waited. Sober Ryan would never have approved of this discretionary decision.
The man on the other side of the door was sober. Stone cold sober. It wasn’t as though he opposed drinking. Far from it. Nor was it that he hadn’t been drunk before. He had more times and more hangovers than he could remember. But that night, he hadn’t even had a drink.
He hadn’t thought about his ex, not ex, husband in days. Instead, his focus had been on mission parameters and power outputs. There was a stack of PADDS on his desk that he was poring over. He squeezed his eyes. It was late, and he didn’t bother to check to see how late.
Nothing was critical; it could wait til the morning.
A quick shower, he had a habit some would consider unusual, he took showers at night, before he went to bed, rather than in the morning after waking.
He moved through the cabin to his bathroom and the shower, opting for the water version instead of the sonic version. He heard the door chime sound and rolled his eyes. Who in hell would be at his door so late, or more accurately, so early?
He slipped into a pair of boxer briefs and moved to the door.
“Who is it?” he called out.
Through the door, Ryan heard the muffled voice of Darius calling. He blinked, and for a moment considered showing up unannounced to the quarters of his estranged husband could very well be the biggest mistake of the night.
“Ah, it’s… Ryan,” he shouted. “Ryan Kellerman.”
This time, the half-Orion didn’t roll his eyes, but one brow rose to his hairline. He punched in a code, and the door slid open.
“Ryan? It’s like 0200. Not that I’m complaining, but what are you doing here?”
It was not an unwarranted question given the hour and the distance between them, but Ryan was far too inebriated to catch the bluntness of Darius’s question.
“I thought maybe you–you’d want to–” Ryan looked over Darius’s shoulder and into the Orion’s quarters. “Do you think I could use your replicator?”
Darius let out a long breath. “You’re. Drunk.” he observed, trying to keep his tone neutral instead of accusatory. “And you didn’t come here to use my replicator. Why are you here?”
Ryan found himself staring at Darius’s lips for a long moment before looking up at his eyes. If he took any notice of his ex standing in the doorway in boxer briefs, he made no comment.
“Ari,” he said, shaking his head as if he’d just lost a bet. “I just thought…”
~To Be Continued~
Lieutenant Darius Korveth
Chief Strategic Operations Officer
USS Valkyrie
Lieutenant JG Ryan Kellerman
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Valkyrie
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