Okay, so. I’m developing this Star Trek Lower Decks fan fiction I call The Wedding Crusher.
There’s a wedding on the Cerritos. Traveler Wesley shows up because he loves to crash Starfleet weddings. It’s kind of his thing.
When he gets there, he runs into Mariner. For the rest of the time he is on the ship, all he wants is for her to think he’s cool, because they went to academy together when he was decidedly NOT cool.
There’s a quick scene where Ransom runs into him, and is absolutely POSITIVE they know each other. Wesley says they’ve never met. Ransom says that they definitely know each other. Maybe from when they were kids?
Meanwhile, Boimler is just BESIDE himself that Wesley Freakin’ Crusher, who piloted the Enterprise, who knows and works with a lot of Boimler’s heroes, is on Boimler’s ship. So Boimler wants Wesley to think HE is cool, and we enjoy Wesley being both Boimler AND Mariner in these various interactions. But Boimler is being that delightfully exuberant dude we love, but he’s just trying too hard.
Right around the time Wesley is about to just lose it at him, Boimler nerds out REAL HARD at Wesley about some technobabble science thing, and it speaks so loudly to Wesley’s inner nerd, they end up on a major science project together that brings in Rutherford. When it’s done, they all sign it, and OF COURSE it ends up saving the Cerritos in the third act.
In the denouement, they are all in the ship’s bar, celebrating. Mariner is setting Wesley up for the thing he’s wanted so badly. She’s about to tell him how cool he is … and instead she pulls a switcheroo and just ROASTS him in the most hilarious way possible. I haven’t figured out what it is, yet.
Wesley is so severely burned, he sort of chokes on his drink, tries to do a comeback, fails, tries again, fails again, and then does this Traveler thing where he basically Men In Black’s them with an “I was never here” snap of his fingers. They have a beat together where they play most of the scene again, only this time it’s Boimler who did it with Rutherford’s help. Fade out.
CUT TO: Wesley sitting with the OG Traveler, who asks him how it went, and Wesley is like I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. The Traveler gives him a slice of wedding cake to ease his pain, and Wesley gratefully devours it. “You really gotta come with me to one of these things,” he tells him while he eats.
The final shot is the Cerritos cruising away while we hear a voice over from Boimler and Rutherford wondering how Wesley Crusher’s signature got on this thing.
THE END.