A blush spreads up her neck, like his travelling hands that slip an icy flame beneath her skin. It is 0400, middle of beta shift, and though the ships powered lighting would never be programmed darker-performance factors and all that-knowing the time makes everything seem dim and black in her eyes.
This would not have been attempted during alpha shift. Not for obvious reasons, but because she knows he is a creature of the night. The circles under his eyes speak of years of sleeplessness, and so he is at ease, and vulnerable. Together they are very much awake, despite the time.
She cups the back of his head, the hot skin of his neck sliding into her palm, for a kiss. Once, he told her that when their lips touched, it was like tasting water for the first time after nearly succumbing to dehydration. She'd thought it an eloquent comparison, but pretended she hadn't heard him. It was easier, after all, then telling him a kiss was sometimes just a kiss.
The viewscreen shows a cross-section of space speckled with blinking stars, and a round flame-coloured planet with a hydrogen gas ring is sliding slowly into focus. She blinks, twice, at the craters and mountain ranges visible on its surface shaped like a heart. In agony, the corners of her eyes fill with hot tears.
Malcolm moans into the crook of her neck, pulling the zipper of her jumpsuit down, and then kneels before her. He whispers quietly, murmuring into the inside of her thigh, a poem she knows he has always loved. "The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one..." Then his tongue finds her, and she clutches him suddenly.
He loves her. She can feel it in the shudders racking his body, the grip of his hands on her bare hips, and the sound of his voice as he hums low in his throat. The darkness enveloping them knows his secret, and hers.
She glances down again as for a moment Malcolm looks up, and he finishes the stanza. "...Yet the light of a bright world dies, when the day is done." His eyes, bluer than any she has ever seen, are pleading.
She's never cared much for Bourdillon, she remembers, and shaking her head slowly, Hoshi pulls him up to face level and places a kiss on his strong jaw. Her gasp breaks the silence seconds afterwards as he begins moving inside of her, building the strong, militarist rhythm of a soldier. Some time later, Hoshi bites her lip, stifling the scream that threatens to overwhelm her, and he follows soon afterwards.
The ship is pulsing with vibration, as is the blood within her veins. She realizes there are bite marks on her shoulders. Malcolm is stooping to pull up her uniform, looking very vulnerable again, and he zippers it up to her chin carefully.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, tears returning to her eyes. There is a hand tightening around her heart, pushing a lump into her throat. "I'm so sorry."
Malcolm shakes his head, hardly looking at her. "I know," he says, under his breath. His eyes are apologetic as he pulls his own uniform on, tucking the blue undershirt in neatly. "You don't have to tell me." He is squinting as though his eyes are adjusting to the light.
The silence between them, she realizes, is devastating. His hair is sticking up in strange directions, from her hands running through it. Hoshi reaches out to tuck it back in place as a yawn engulfs her.
Malcolm gives the captain's chair a once over, then grins as he suddenly wraps an arm around her waist.
"Do you think we're the first?"
Warp 5 Complex
Star Trek Enterprise fan fiction archive
|
|
All fiction is archived at the Warp 5 Complex with the authors' express permission.
The Warp 5 Complex is maintained by the Archivist.