Especially the Weird Parts

Posted on Sat Apr 19th, 2025 @ 5:51pm by Crewman Mateo Gardel
Edited on Sun Apr 27th, 2025 @ 9:29pm

511 words; about a 3 minute read

Personal Log – Crewman Mateo Gardel
Medical Science Specialist, USS Fenrir

So…

That didn’t go as planned. Not that I had a plan. I rarely do when it comes to people. I just have protocols—internal ones. The kind that aren’t written down, but I follow them like scripture anyway. Don’t initiate. Don’t overstay. Don’t overshare. Keep the volume and tone measured. Smile when appropriate, but not too much or it looks rehearsed.

Tonight, I followed none of those.

And still, it somehow… worked?

There was Aria. And Gabriel. And I laughed. Actually laughed. It startled me—felt foreign at first, like hearing your voice played back to you on a recording—but then it just… stayed. There was warmth in it. From them. Toward me.

And sure, I might’ve panicked a little after I mentioned Gabriel’s abs, but who wouldn’t? It was supposed to be an internal observation. It got loose. My filter slipped. That’s happened before. Too many times, really. I always seem to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or the right thing in the exact wrong way. Like my brain has a twenty-second delay on social protocols. Sometimes I don’t even know I’ve made a misstep until I see someone else’s eyebrows move.

But Gabriel didn’t flinch. He laughed. Like it was fine.

That’s new.

Then there was the stranger.

Brown hair, freckles, soft smile, quiet posture. And my brain fixated. The way it does. Immediate. Intense. All signals re-routed. I could track every movement, every shift of light against his face, and it felt like my body was remembering something my mind never lived through. Which sounds dramatic. I know. But it’s also true.

It was like seeing a brushstroke on canvas and knowing the artist’s intent before the whole image is even clear.

I didn’t want to talk to him. I just wanted to keep looking. Not in a creepy way—Aria said she’d tell me when it got creepy—but in the way someone listens to a favorite song on repeat, trying to find the moment that first made it special.

I still don’t know what that moment was. Just that it was real.

I don’t… do feelings like this. Not quickly. Not often. I understand attraction in theory, in fiction. I read about it, study it in scenes. But in real time? It’s like walking into the middle of a conversation that’s already halfway through, and everyone else knows the ending but you.

So, yeah. I might be overthinking it. That’s kind of my brand.

But tonight, I laughed. I blushed so hard I could feel it in my ears. I didn’t want to leave. And I saw someone I can’t stop thinking about.

So I’m logging that. Not to analyze it. Just to remember it.

Even the weird parts. Especially the weird parts.

End log.

 

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