It was pride day on the Enterprise. Data had heard about an old earth tradition called pride where queer people celebrated their identities. Picard approved Data's request to make it a ship-wide holiday, and everyone had been excited to partake in the old earth tradition. Riker and Data helped set up the celebration in ten forward. They put all of the pride flags up around the room. There were even some flags they didn't know the meaning to but they wanted everyone to feel included.
Soon ten forward began to fill up with excited queers. Everyone was drinking and laughing and even dancing to the old earth music that Riker played, someone called lady gaga and dolly parton seemed to be his favorites. He had discovered these classic musicians through watching footage of pride parades from the 21st century.
"How do you like pride so far?" Riker asked as he sat down next to Worf.
"I'm not a homsexual, please don't refer to me as such." Worf said before taking a sip of his prune juice.
"Chill bro. Anyway I'm going to go, see you in a bit." Riker had already started drinking but he wasn't drunk enough to talk to Worf.
Crusher walked in with an unenthused Weasley. Weasley who was homophobic and gay (a double threat) didn't want to go to a celebration where people flawnted their sexuality and gender. He wandered over to Worf, he looked just as miserable as him.
"I'm not gay either, my mom made me come here."
Worf sipped his prune juice and thought about what to say to this kid. He saw Weasley's mom in a shirt that said "I love my gay son."
"Are you sure?"
Weasley started to get pissed off.
"Yes! I don't understand why my Mom is so convinced I'm gay. I went to the holodeck with a girl once."
Worf knew from poker night with Crusher that all they did was look at some lame ass planets. Worf didn't want to press this very obviously closeted child into discussing his sexuality. No one knew why Weasly was so in denial but nobody really wanted to say "Hey kiddo let's talk about your internalized homophobia."
Q showed up and nobody seemed to notice but Picard. Picard was too tired to deal with his shit today. He was a bit annoyed because for once in his life he was actually enjoying a party.
"Q this is for queer people and allys only."
"I am queer. What did you think the Q in my name stood for?"
"I don't know I just thought y'all were bad at naming yourselfs."
"I'm offended, mon capitaine." Picard didn't really care.
"So what's going on here."
"Data and Riker put this together. It's called pride, it was an earth celebration for LGBT people."
"Weird. Why would you humans celebrate your sexuality or gender? I mean I barely understand sexuality or gender. Anyway I'm here for another trial."
"Q can you not? I'll let you stay if you just won't with this nonsense today."
"Okay but I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"Just talk to people and all that. I'm going to stay here and finish my drink."
"So... how have you been?"
"I was better before you were here."
"Well I'm better now that I'm here with you."
It went silent for a few moments and Q spent those few minutes figuring out what to say.
"Oh umm... What's your shirt?" Q knew what his shirt represented.
Picard finished drinking beer from a silly straw.
"It's the asexual pride flag."
Q looked up at the pride flags and saw the flag for leather kink and laughed.
"Did you really let them put that one up?" He said as he pointed at the flag.
"I am honestly afraid to ask you to elaborate."
"It's the leather kink pride flag." Q said laughing harder than before as Picard's face went red.
"I didn't know kink was a sexuality." Picard was unsure what else to say.
"It's not but it is mine."
"This is more information I could've gone my entire life not knowing."
"Well this has been fun but I'm going to explore the ship now bye!"
Riker walked by and Weasly saw him in a button up trans shirt with a bi flag pin and was furious. He couldn't believe the man he looked up to (and had a crush on but he wouldn't deal with that until he had a breakdown at age 19) was queer. Weasley quickly speed walked his way out of there with tears in his eyes.
Several minutes later Worf turned his attention away from the window and noticed the overly emotional teenager he had been sitting with was no longer there.
"Hey Data did you see where Weasley went?"
"I think I saw him walking out of ten forward. I can go find him." Data let go of Geordi's hand and walked out of ten forward. Worf and Geordi shared an awkward minute of silence before going their separate ways.
Data eventually found Weasley and Q talking in the hallway. Data could tell that Weasley had been crying Q did not.
"Weasley, are you okay?"
"Yeah I'm fine." He was not fine. "I think I'm going to go back to my quarters. Could you tell my Mom."
"I will. Do you want me to assist you there?"
"No, I'm good." Weasley got up and left to go cry himself to sleep.
Tasha and Troi walked into ten forward holding hands, and quickly found Crusher. "Sorry we're late babe we had to finish up our jazzercise, it took longer than we thought." They both gave Crusher a kiss in greeting. The three of them made their way over to the bar and ordered some fruity cocktails (just like them) from Whoopi Goldberg.
Data walked up to Crusher.
"Your son left early."
"Any reason?"
"Not that I know of, he just wanted me to tell you."
"Oh okay."
Data went back to Geordi.
O'Brien and Keiko walked into ten forward and O'Brien looked around him with confusion. "What's going on?"
"They're having a pride celebration today. Did you not know? That's why I wanted to come here."
"Oh is that why you're wearing your pride dress? I thought you were just feeling extra bisexual today. If I knew it was pride I would have worn my trans shirt."
Riker walked up to them then. "Hey guys! How are you enjoying the party so far?"
"Everything looks amazing Will. You and Data put all of this together yourselves? Impressive work."
"Thanks Keiko! I love your dress! I have the exact same one! I thought about wearing it today but decided on this instead. But you look amazing!" Riker was obviously very drunk, he could finally talk to Worf, and was struggling to stand up straight (haha get it cause he's not).
Picard noticed Riker's drunkenness and decided to take him home.
"Come on number one I think you've had enough, let me take you back to your quarters so you can sleep this off."
"Nooo!" He slurred "Plus you're gonna miss the party, you don't wanna miss the party."
"It's fine I want to go home anyway, and your quarters are on the way."
"Finnnee!!" He slurred even louder this time, wanting to protest, but not being able to as Picard grabbed his arm. "Have a good night O'Briens." Picard said as he dragged Riker away from them and out of ten forward.
