Happy Hour, Part VI
Posted on Mon Nov 3rd, 2025 @ 4:58am by Lieutenant Commander Corin Layal & Lieutenant Ezra Van Wijnbergen
Edited on on Mon Nov 17th, 2025 @ 5:09am
1,649 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Cold Cases
Location: Residential Sector, Starbase 315
Timeline: 2386
“Ezra, why wouldn’t you want the Infirmary to just take a look?” Layal asked. She looked at him sternly before following his instructions to the desk. “Why do you have your own dermal regenerator, anyway?” She asked as she opened the drawer to the desk finding not much else other than an old book and writing pen. She turned around, the regenerator in her hand to see Ezra now shirtless.
“Please,” he said, his eyes pleading, “just don’t call medical. The blade is angled and there isn’t that much blood.” He ignored the question about the regenerator, unsure if his response would satisfy the attorney.
He sat there, bare-chested, the light catching the planes of his body in a way that made them seem sculpted, each muscle the result of years spent in discipline and motion. Broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist, cords of muscle running along his abdomen, subtle but very insistent. There was a fine dusting of dark hair in the shape of a heart along his chest. To say Ezra was in good physical shape might have been an understatement, though, with a Nausicaan dagger embedded at an angle in his right side, it was now a complete wash.
She took a few rushed steps toward him and tossed the regenerator to the side as she dropped to her knee to look at the wound. Her hands hovered over the hilt, afraid to touch anything.
“We have to get you to the Infirmary,” she insisted.
Ezra shook his head over and over. “We can’t,” he said vehemently. “Listen to me, Layal. Please.”
He reached out and took her small, delicate hand in his. With pleading eyes, he spoke. “I need you to trust me.”
“Why?” Layal shook her head. “I don’t understand.” Still she stood up and walked to the replicator and ordered a few sterile clothes, a bowl of warm water, and an antiseptic that she was familiar with.
She tucked the bottle of antiseptic and the towels under her arm and carried the bowl back over to Ezra carefully, and placed it on the floor next to his feet, letting the antiseptic bottle fall beside it. She took one towel into her hands, and positioned the others on a nearby table.
“If I am going to do this, you need to tell me why,” she insisted. “Shit, I need to wash my hands.”
She stood up and discarded the towel, and oriented herself to his quarters again and found the washroom. She took off her own uniform jacket, revealing a black tank underneath. She washed her hands carefully before rushing back to Ezra. She gave him another stern look before picking up a second towel and dropping back to her knees.
She readied herself to put pressure on the wound before removing the blade.
“Now, speak,” she said to him. It came out like an order.
Ezra inhaled slowly, hoping the air in his quarters might give him some courage. Or maybe just some strength. The motion drew his ribs tight, his side flaring with pain. He lifted an arm, then the other, and turned just enough for her to see his back.
The light from the desk lamp struck his skin, and what it revealed was not the smooth strength she had imagined beneath the uniform, but a landscape of ruin. His back was a map drawn from a patchwork of scars–thick ropes of tissue, faded burns, patches where the skin had healed in uneven tones. Across his shoulders the scars ran like old and deeply-carved rivers, twisting and intersecting until they disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers. Some were neat, others ragged, as if torn open more than once.
Her face showed little reaction to the scars other than recognition, an acknowledgement, she looked up at him with some familiarity, though they didn’t know each other and she didn’t know his story. There many on Bajor that wore scars like this, keeping them despite medical advances that could easily disappear them. And the reasons why people kept them were as varied and intricate as the stories behind what gave them those scars to begin with.
“Take a deep breath in,” she told him, her words firm, but gentle. “And when I tell you, I want you to breathe out slowly. You got it?”
Ezra nodded, several beads of sweat from his brow splashing into his chest. He took a slow, deep breath in through his nose, eyes locked on Layal.
Layal had the towel ready at Ezra’s side. “Okay, nice and slow,” she said as she carefully pulled the knife from his body, watching closely to make sure she followed the same path out. When the knife cleared, she quickly and firmly pressed the towel to his side, applying pressure.
“How are you doing?” Layal asked evenly, one hand pressed firmly against the towel covering his wound. The other on his opposite thigh, helping her brace herself so that she could continue to apply pressure without losing strength. She looked back up at him and made eye contact.
“Are you still with me?” She asked, giving him a slow and encouraging nod.
He smiled weakly at her, his chest heaving in short but fast rises. “I’m still here,” he croaked. “I’m glad you invited me for a happy hour with the rest of the office.”
Ezra glanced down at the towel that was barely soaked in blood. He laughed painfully–a wince passing over his face. “See? Hardly any blood.”
Layal gave him a doubtful look as she adjusted herself on the ground in front of him so that she could reach the bowl of water and a clean towel.
“I didn’t plan this out very well, did I?” She noted, offering a bit of self-depricating humor as she awkwardly stretched to pull the bowl closer to her free hand so that she could wet a clean towel.
They’d never called for the lights once they’d entered his quarters, so she had worked in the dim lighting of the consoles and a weak lamp in the far corner. As she squeezed the excess water out of the towel, she kept her eyes mostly focused on his face. Now she knew a hint of why his eyes looked older than his years, though the actual stories behind his scars remained untold. He’d brought her into his quarters out of necessity - it was an emergency, and necessity forced him to trust her as he had pleaded with her to trust him.
She looked down for a moment as she swapped out the dry, blood stained cloth for the now damp one and brought it to his torso. He was still bleeding, but surprisingly, not badly. As she cleaned the area around his wound and realized that it wasn’t as serious as she first thought, it was now that she noticed what else was there, other than the scars. It was difficult to not notice the strength, the definition in his muscles as she gingerly dabbed the blood away. The connection that she was about to run away from in the hall came soaring back, only now she felt like she had nowhere to go. No where else that she wanted to be.
She became lost in this thought for a moment, when she suddenly remembered the dermal regenerator. “You got lucky,” she said, breaking the silence. “Let’s get you patched up.”
She reached across him to where she had placed the regenerator earlier, and took it into her hand, and drew back to her spot on the floor, still perched on her knees as she set the towel aside.
Ezra watched her move—careful and composed, as though she would have made a good nurse or surgeon had she not followed a path into law. Her hand hovered above his skin, the regenerator’s blue light beginning to purr as it spilled over his ribs and side, painting their faces in soft cobalt.
He wasn’t sure how to explain his scars to her. Or his reticence in going on the record as having been stabbed just outside of his quarters. All he knew was that this woman leaning over him with a dermal regenerator, was suddenly and thoroughly a part of his life.
“Do you think security was dispatched?” he asked, his breath having returned to normal.
“I tapped my commbadge,” Layal told him, glancing up only briefly as she worked. “I started to call them, I don’t know if it went through. They might have caught the tail end of it if they had. They’d know it was me, too.”
The wound had sealed. An unbroken stretch of skin where moments ago there had been blood and pain and a dagger buried to the hilt. Ezra watched as she switched off the regenerator, but before she could set it aside, his hand came up and caught hers.
His palm was warm, unsteady. The regenerator still glowed faintly between them, the blue reflection trembling across her fingers. He didn’t say anything at first; simply looked at her as if trying to memorize her face in that moment.
A Joint Post By
Lieutenant Commander Corin Layal
Judge Advocate General, USS Artemis
Starfleet Criminal Investigations Unit
Lieutenant Ezra Van Wijnbergen
Victim Advocate Counselor, USS Artemis
Starfleet Criminal Investigations Unit
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