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the things we do for the people we love (the ones we should hate)

or, the fic where the Engineer and the Captain finally have a much needed conversation about everything that happened. (while the Captain blames themselves for everything that happened even though they did the best that they could in the situation that they were in)

tw: angst with a happy ending, cursing, mention of passive self-harm as a form of coping/visibility, intense self-hatred (from the Captain), crying

word count: 6111

The lights of the warp core are starkly, obviously non-blinding when you walk in – and somehow, that's more uncanny than anything.

It's dusty – that you notice right away, with the kind of dust only machines can provide when giving a good amount of output, when they’re working hard - the kind of dust that’s mostly made up from ground metal shavings, that permeates the air like a sheer smog, cloying enough to hold some difference between it and fresh air, but not enough to smother you. It’s dusty, and dim, cast over in the soft, orangish light coming from the surrounding LED lamps plastered against the walls. Despite its hospital-like appearance, despite the cleanliness of the walls and the sleekness of its interior, it cannot escape what it is – a frigidly cold, unbearably hot, pumping vein of the ship, an experience behind closed doors, a ray of energy which could surpass any known fuel’s performative capability – and even when it’s squeaky clean, it’s still filthy. Because it’s metal. Because it’s a part of the ship. Because it represents the creaking heart in the grooves of the machine that stomps its way through space, carrying it all in its belly. Sensing the temperature, it wasn’t that far off from the sticky, acidic crevices of a human stomach, anyways. (Because of what it’s done. Because of what it’s doing to you. Still.)

But it isn’t on.

Only the lights around it are, providing a soft halo circling the enclosure of it – gently illuminating each passing body within the confines of it with a gentle caress, with a straightening of their suit’s fabric, pulling them down further into putty, into that warm sludge of blending together, or tearing apart. Sometimes you can’t imagine that it’s not a magnet, pulling you in further into its thrumming, encompassing warmth. Into the complexity of its design – cold, and meaningful yet incomprehensible, at least to you. You could stare into the lightning-like energy it produces for hours trying to figure it out, and you’d have not a barren clue. But that’s not your job, anyway. You’re better off doing other things. (You can imagine him doing that. Doesn’t he do that? You hope not, but… you have a feeling he does.)

You’d come here for this exact reason. To simmer away, to glue yourself to its heart and let it empty you out. The day was… well, for a change, it was more than you’d hoped for. Everyone needed you today, it seems, and you- you just, always tend to be the most attentive when the worst of you comes out. As if it’s a distraction for the oncoming storm, as if you could divert yourself into another state of mind just by dealing with something else for a change. Today was… scary. It’s the kind of pressure that overwhelms you, the kind of annoyance that laces your brain with a more than formidable opponent, the kind of bravery that renders you ignorant to every other problem except your own. You didn’t want to think today. Didn’t want to think about – everything that had happened, because what’s the goddamn point? It’s over, dead, done, finished, complete. What’s there to ponder over? Alas, like a wounded animal, it catches up to you – nuzzling against your leg, begging for attention. So, when you attempted to lay down and rest, ignore it again…

The simplest way to put it – you couldn’t. And ain’t that a fuckin’ joke?

One that the universe keeps bashing your head against, too. Someone else, you hope, didn’t have the same idea, but you’re quickly proven wrong – as when you enter, the first sight you’re greeted with is your Engineer’s back. Sweaty, the undershirt clinging to him like a wet towel, half-translucent where it’s been soaked, and the other, dry parts stained here and there with grease and remnants of smoke. The door shuts behind you with a hiss, sliding into place behind your feet, the standard-issue boots you have on clanking against the metal flooring, steel against titanium. As if it’s solidifying your place in this, as if it’s a prophecy, a hand against your shoulder that tugs you back into reality. ‘Don’t go.’, it whispers from the confines of your own imagination. God, you wish you could run, but the twitch in his shoulders, his wince at the sound – it’s enough for the pity to sink in, for the absorption of it to become fully rendered, and you hesitate. He doesn’t.

The Engineer looks at you – not turning his body, but tossing his head over his shoulder, only slightly twisting in place as to not injure himself, as to keep himself steady, yet aware. There’s a tiredness to him – and your own bones ache in solidarity. It’s not the kind of tiredness that tugs at your heartstrings, not the kind of tiredness that makes you sympathetic, or reliable, or coddling. It’s the kind of tiredness that makes you ill, makes you sway, makes your vision swim and bile rise in the back of your throat. (No matter how much you love him, no matter how much you care, you can’t reject that feeling, you can’t undo it. You wish you could. You wish you could look at him the way you used to.) “Captain.”, he addresses you – small, and weak, breathy, as if he’d just run a mile at moderate to high speed, suddenly now without air to support his own speech. And you aren’t faring much better, stuck there, a statue in a sea of stars, a wooden cross stuck into the abyssal dirt. A crossroads that doesn’t even know where to spread its wings, where to lay its pathways. He’s looking at you expectedly, a slight smile, as he always is – but you see beyond that. You see beyond the tired smile, the dust gathering at his waterline, the way his hands shake slightly, the way he stutters and stops at your presence, the way his eyebrows crease his face (Some would think in concentration, but no. His are always relaxed when he’s concentrating, always an emotionless expression, always aloof and knowing. He’s never confused – instead, just a step away from the right solution. Well. Except that one time. Or was it just once? You can’t remember. So when the creases start, you know what they mean. It’s nothing good.)

There’s an air of staleness that you sense potently, as though it’s coming from you. Those theories about people being able to sense emotions through scent keep ringing through your head, mainly because you can see his gears turning in his head, trying to grasp the picture completely – sniffing you out like a bloodhound. The picture of you, hesitating at the door. God, the feeling of wanting to vomit is getting worse. Your legs skid – catching on the metal before they turn into a full step, just a hair away from backing away completely. You didn’t come here for this. You didn’t come here to moan, to grieve, to reminisce – and yet here he is. Like an old war veteran at a run-down, edge of the universe kind of bar, those you saw when you were just starting out, older generations who’d done the space exploring for you, giving you new horizons to spring off of. Some were happy. Some were like you. Destroyed, you guess you could say. And Engineer? You weren’t too keen on splitting a drink with him. (You didn’t want to remember. You didn’t want to say the things you could say. The things that sound suspiciously like ‘It gets better.’ and ‘We’ll be okay.’, because frankly? You’d been hearing yourself repeating it in your head the entire day, hell- since you’d come back. As if a lie could be the foundation for a better future. As if it could erase all that’s happened.)

“Captain?”, he asks again, the wrench in his hand clinking where it meets the surface of the warp core (deactivating it fully, you hope, just like you'd agreed) – crouched in front of it, hands on it to keep him in place as he moves even further towards you, swinging his body around – like a child he means to protect from you. Or from himself? Or use it as a crutch? Who knows. This was a mistake, coming here. But a pull nonetheless – a solid, concrete block on your brain that was only relieved when you entered here. (Maybe because he’s here.) Is it something that will rid you of your misdeeds? Or is it just a ploy, just a killer coming back to the crime scene? “Funny.”, you mutter faintly, before catching yourself. You hadn’t meant to say that, you think as you cough awkwardly, fist curled in front of your mouth and legs shifting from place to place, swishing your body weight around. “Funny,”, you repeat, trying to pull of some sort of saving of your own dignity, “- uhm, seeing you here. Isn’t it late?” For all intents and purposes, he gives you the grace of not doubting you. You know he does – who wouldn’t, seeing your less than graceful entrance – but he doesn’t show it. (Shows how good of an actor he’s become, since…) His shoulders loosen, if only a tad, and with a grumble of his own, he’s hoisting himself to his feet, the wrench set aside into the toolbox he’s brought with him – producing a sound akin to sliding rubber against rubber, a muffled squeak combined with the ever-shifting dirt that crumbles beneath the sole. His knees creak with the action, though you know they didn’t use to. He was always bouncy – smiling, bright, so much so you thought you could throw him against a wall and he’d bounce right back to smile at you, to say it was fun for you to do so, to ask you to do it again, all squishy and melty like a gummy bear left out in the sun. Now he creaks like an old man (Don’t go there. He’s not there yet.), a grumble being the undercurrent to his chipper voice, sickly sweet but drenched in a soft rumble that used to make you feel safe. Now all it does is make you ill. (Everything does.)

When he turns to you, you notice everything. The little sparkle in his eyes, that used to be so vibrant but now sits like a soaked ball of fur, right there, next to his pupil, a torn-apart rag left out in the rain. The way he hadn’t shaved his face in quite some time, leaving him with a stubble. The way his undereyes darken, even more apparent under the dimness of the lights, heavy and pregnant with deep, yearning cascades of hurt, waves that pulsate throughout the capillaries underneath the skin, that show shed and unshed tears alike, that prick with that sudden solemnity of a life relived, lost, relived, relived, relived. The way his hands seem almost bruised, heavily red with viscous traces of irritation, from gripping tools too hard to manage and the imprints of nails and otherwise sharper machine parts from where it dug into his skin. It hurts just looking at it. And you have to force yourself to meet it all. It’s like a funeral – the more you look, the worse you feel, but you have to look. You can’t ignore it forever, no matter how harmful it may be to your own psyche. (You can’t look away, because a part of you is grateful for it. For something that hurts on the outside, for something visible, because this – just seems like an endless scream for help nobody can really see. At least, when he’s hurt, people can ask him if he’s okay – and then, he’ll have a chance to say something. You doubt he will. But at least he’ll have a chance.) “Yeah. It is.”, he mutters, the calm in his voice somehow more relieving than the high-pitched, expressive tonality of his usual spiel. More real. More, him. The way he is, not the way he’s supposed to be. The bare feet, instead of those covered by the very shoes he’s meant to fill.

Your eyes flutter, and you hesitate. Again. It seems like you’re always hesitating these days. A part of you – that nasty, self-destructive part, wants to rush in and comfort. Wants to lie, say that everything’s going to be okay, that you’re alive, and real, and he’s him again. That you saved him for a reason. That it’s you, and him, and that nothing else matters. But it does. Everything matters now. How many years will you have to keep pretending until you’re free of the memories of it all? Will you ever be? Free? And so, the pitying stance of a fellow survivor feels more like chewing on bark – harsh, coarse, tough, gamy, ripping apart and damaging to the teeth – but a method of survival, the very last option that you never want to need to reach for. It feels like tearing a piece of you apart to give to him. But, unfortunately, you’re all out of yourself to give, because you’re rotten yourself. Because you feel like nothing, like a numb piece of equipment, like a part of the ship in a way that makes you into another machine that he has to fix. But he can’t fix everything. And neither can you. “And you?” The Engineer is looking at you from the corner of his eye, like someone who can barely meet your own gaze himself. Like he’s waiting for you to pounce. Like he’s waiting to be comforted. Would he push you away? Would he jump into your own arms? Or would he hurt you? Just to spite you? The brown in his eyes used to be like that of a loyal dog, of a friend. Now? It feels like the void, threatening to comfort you into numbness. Now, it feels like a blanket that wants to suffocate you, an illusion of what it used to be, and a picture of what it always could be, but chose not to be around you.

“What are you doing here?”

You sniffle, feet sliding against the floor until they come together. Standing as stiff as a board, you feel everything. The weight of your suit, of your rank, of your badges, of your responsibility – it feels like a truck dumped on top of you, smells like the sea you could drown yourself in – and oil grease, and regret. And tastes like the bitterness of the tears, of which you’d bore witness to so many times since you’d come back, staring back at your own reddening eyes in the floor-length mirror embedded into the wall of the Captain’s quarters. It’s so heavy. All of it. So for a second, you decide, you’re too tired to sit here and make up some dumb excuse. Pretend you’re a paper mache doll that twiddles around his fingers as if hooked up to a carousel, round and round the same set of emotions, and doubts, and fears. There’s no point. So why not be honest? “I don’t know.”, you almost whisper, the lump in your throat bigger than any other you’d faced. The sides of your pharynx burn with a fire that clogs it up completely, and you know that’s the first warning sign you have before you dissolve completely, a pill in an overfilled glass of water. The suit you have on is too large. It’s exactly your size, and it’s still… too large for someone like you. Someone not worthy of your position. Someone not worthy of his time. Someone who could actually gather up the balls it takes to sit there and show you’ve got some spirit, someone who could encourage, gather up all his bits and mend him into wholeness. But you can’t. How did you get here? You’re not worthy of this man. You’re not worthy to be called Captain. It’s too much. You don’t want to do it anymore.

“’M just…”, you’re hesitating, “Tired.” But the truth is so much more painful. Admitting to yourself that you’re tired, that you’re too little, in your head – sure, fair play. But out loud? To him? It feels like a death sentence. And as you trudge to the side of the room, sliding against the wall under his curious gaze, a soft squeeeeak as your uniform collides with it, irritated underneath the slickness of the plates, the lump grows even further, a snowstorm that travels down your esophagus and lands in your stomach, a lump of steel that fills it completely. You can feel him looking – tracing your silhouette with those wide, peering eyes – and you want to cry and vomit at the same time. Because you have… nothing. There is nothing. In that void, in the loops – you’d lost pieces of yourself you feel like you’ll never get back, and him? He has too. And now, it’s your responsibility, yours, to find them, to fix him, to put him back together, to form your group back together, to be a soon-to-be Colony Leader, and you just, can’t. You can barely get out of bed. It takes you hours to get ready. You’d even started taking what little sedatives you have in the Infirmary to try and stabilize yourself, to get through the day – miniscule portions, enough to zombify you, enough to make you back into a machine. And you keep going, keep moving, keep braving on – because they need a Captain. (Maybe not you. But you’re all they have.) There’s a silence that overtakes you both. A soft humming of the core, as if it’s breathing alongside you, your face in your hands, knees bunched up to your chest, breathing into the space of your palms. Just breathing. Just existing. Just for a second.

You don’t know how much time passes, but there’s an equally pathetic squeeeeeeak, though this one sounds more slick, right next to you, and a soft thump created by the meeting of fabric against the hard floor, a sharp skr-skr-skr of boots as they inch more towards the center, making room for the body next to you in small increments. A warmth to your right, but you don’t react. It scares you – being comforted. The idea of it. Alike you, you feel as though he would try it. As though he would attempt to be nice, attempt to comfort, to sling an arm across your shoulders and pat your back with an open arm, to embrace you. You hate that. You hate that you can see him doing that – because you shouldn’t be letting him. He shouldn’t be able to do that, to give himself away, just like you can’t. It’s only fair. And yet, you know he would try, rip himself apart to help you, like he has all these years, and that only makes you want to cry harder. “Yeah.”, comes a close, warm, response, just inches away from you. Makes you slink back, makes you regret coming, again, makes you shy and vulnerable all at the same time. Because it sounds hurt. It’s a never-ending conflict – either the guilt of surviving or the guilt of being too much. Either guilt for him, or for you, and you don’t know even where to begin to discern which one is worse. Or where to start solving either, so that, at least – there can be only one to bother you. It’s a war, in your head – to love, to be loved. And at the very tip of the sword pointed at your throat, down the barrel of the gun looking at you straight in the eyes, it sits – the nihilism of it all, the ending tag question of ‘What’s the point?’. Because, really, what is the point? Sitting here, crying over it? Getting angry? Throwing a fit?

The only solution you have, really, is to live.

One day at a time, even if that day is just painful, over and over again. Even if you have nothing to hold on to, except… living for other people. They have no one else. And you’re stuck here. It’s a fitting punishment. Living through what you know, not being able to share it with anyone else. (But you do. You just don’t want to overburden him. You’re just scared of talking about it. You’re scared you’re so fragile, that he’s so fragile, that you’ll break something. Again.) When you get your hands off your face, you’re frozen. Just sitting there. Breathing. Forming wormholes in your head, loops in loops, but not really going anywhere – like a pipeline screensaver. Breathing. Staring at the scruffs along the floor of the warp core room. And feeling his warmth, right beside you, an inch away – not enough to touch you, but enough to let you know he exists. You hate that it helps, to some extent. The faux leather of your gloves feels wrong. Constricting. Itchy. But you don’t have the energy to pull them away. The Engineer’s breath, a steady sigh and inhale next to you, provides a rhythm to it all – like a star map to an unknown system, to another Milky Way, exactly like this, but with parts removed, or added, with crevices unexplored, planets moved an inch to the left. Familiar, uncanny. Grounding, but hurtful. The guilt eats away at you further. “You know, uh-“, he starts, slow and languid, at the speed of dripping honey, with a gulp in between the sentences, “I was, really happy to see you. In the end.”

Your brows furrow slightly. They would’ve even more had you had the ability to emote more than you were able to, frozen in space and time with the same intensity as you had frozen your own thoughts over, pushing them out of the painting of the gnawing hurt you feel. “Hm.”, is all you can manage, a little thoughtful hum and no more. You’d ask him questions, usually – but you can’t. An immobile, devoted therapist – a walkie-talkie he can put all his thoughts into. In one ear and out the other. (But you know your brain will dig the conversation out later.) “Like-“, There’s a shift of fabric to your side, a glide of a hand over his beige pants, with a press like how he usually does it – that, you can imagine without even thinking about it – pushing hard into his skin as if he can rub off the sweat gathering on his palms and at the same time, eliminate the glands producing it, scrape them off him. “I was angry, but-“ He sniffs, a small, barely audible sound, scrunching up his nose in that particular Engineer way that it does, “I was happy to see you. You, specifically. I didn’t tell you about that.”

The act of having to focus and face that sentence makes you doubt yourself. Are you hearing correctly? Happy? You suppose he would be, if what he said was true, but – he would be happy regardless, no matter who it was. Stuck in that small, warp core room outside of any known loop, fixing it over and over again, like he is now – that is, if what he said really is true. That no one had visited him. That no one had been in that loop until you, until the end, and even then… you were not the determining variable. That much must be true. It’s just the elation, just the emotions present in the moment, just- “I don’t think you were.” You hate being contradictory, but, you don’t really have the strength to be anything but brutally honest, right now. “You would’ve been happy to see anyone, at that moment.” You blink, shifting your hands around as if to wipe imaginary dust off your clothes. The soft whooshing sounds of the fabric glide over your words like a tarp of a tent, shielding them against the rain brewing in your head. “Don’t give me more credit than I deserve. Please.” Your voice is rough, aged, crumbling away like parts of a mountain, except your words don’t make an avalanche, or a landslide. More like a creeping dusk, settling into the night with underlying terror and a petrified whistle into the dark. Your knees are more relaxed, away from you now and spread apart enough for you to settle in between them – a bit away from you, but with your back not entirely plastered to the wall, whereas his is. Two gazes, two different directions – his, into the ceiling, and yours – into the floor of the warp core room. Clashing diagonals of sight. “I was.”, he insists, with a firmness in his voice that almost sounds like stubbornness. Well, that’s new. He’s usually one to lay low, to follow your lead – now, standing up for himself? Even if it is something to just piss you off? You’re both annoyed and in a weird way, proud. Only takes, what, the universe colliding into itself and collapsing for him to start trying to contradict you? (Something about a joke, again.)

“I really… missed you, Captain.”

That title makes you inhale sharply and your face contort into an aching grimace, eyebrows twitching out of line and the bags under your eyes zipping rapid fire into squinting your eyes, relaxing them moments after. Your chest feels heavy with regret, filling like an aquarium with fish that bite at your lungs, drowning you and eating you alive at the same time. For a second, you’re speechless – it takes quite a bit of effort to say something again, the air bubbling up your throat in a sway that leaves you breathless, pushing out in one big wave that stays put in your mouth, as if you were just punched there – right there, underneath your ribcage. And then the hurt pours in, the mistakes, the feeling of ‘You shouldn’t have’ but not in the way a friend says it, in a way that a long-lost one does, now turned enemy. Really, you think to yourself, he should hate you. He should want to kill you. Even if it was him, in the end, you didn’t make the situation any better, and even if it was the two of you, a team, together, it was also you- together, sharing the weight of the universe. Sharing the guilt in front of a court you had no idea existed. And even if you didn’t know, that doesn’t erase it. He should hate you. (The way you hate yourself. How many universes in which you didn’t survive? Do they keep going? Do they stay the same? Or are they destroyed with you? Are they anchoring themselves onto you? Onto your existence, onto your character as a pivotal role? You hate that you don’t know, but maybe that’s better. Maybe you’d hate yourself even more if you did.)

“Don’t call me that.”, you finally manage, voice gruff and gravel-like, strained like a taut wire. “Then what should I call you?” He responds immediately, and you can feel his eyes on the back of your head, nestling their laser precise gaze between the strands of your hair, underneath the fabric of your own beret. “Nothing.”, You mutter. The silence returns, more echoey than ever, vibrating between you – as if the intensity of your emotions could relay exactly what you want it to, without any words, but you know it can’t. Most things you want right now can’t happen, and that hurts you like a knife to the back, piercing, shimmying between your spinal discs and twisting sideways. Why are things always difficult? Why can’t things go back to what they were? “Captain.”, he repeats himself, and you have half a mind to not turn around and slap him. In fact, you don’t even have that, too lost in your guilt, but that’s exactly what stops you, too. “I was hoping you’d find me. I don’t… blame you.” “Well you should!” The way you whip around is violent, and you can see the surprise in his eyes at the outburst.

He looks almost angelic in the way he straightens up against the wall – back straightening from its contorted, shrimp-like bend with his pelvis jutting out into the floor, into a board nailed across the wall with a fervor that could make a shape in the wall with its swiftness. But his eyes – just a small inclination of surprise, a small widening with a gentle parting of the mouth, till you could only see the bottom of his front teeth – eternally soft, all around, the kind of plushness that makes you jealous and then feel even worse, because he’s been like that forever. He’d never changed, and yet now he has. And you hurt him. This soft, genuine, outspoken version of him – you hurt him. (He’ll never be the same.)

“How many times did you die?”, You ask seriously, the gulp at the back of your throat growing as you look at him. The way his eyes flicker, remembrance flooding in, flicking through all the memories, hands barely trembling and grasping onto his pants for stability. He’s not looking at you as he’s remembering, and when he does, it’s with a steady kind of grief in his irises that makes you want to sink into the floor. “I don’t know.”, he whispers, and then, with a more sure voice, continues, “A lot.” “And how many of those were my fault?” Your words stab at him accusatorily, like a pointer finger being pressed into his chest, and the Engineer almost flinches at them as you spit them out. Your gaze is burning into him now, the same way his did when he was looking at the back of your head. He blinks a couple times, gaze veering off to the side of your head, off into the distance as he barely noticeably squints before he finishes thinking about it, seriously thinking about it, and gazes back at you. “I don’t know, most of them? But they're not-”

That’s all you need as you collapse against the wall, your shoulders hitting the metal with a soft thump, fabric moving out of the way, bunching up together to serve as some half-assed pillow. “And you missed me.” You never look away – the gaze you hold empty, disbelieving against his now concerned, warm one. You want to kill him. (Again.) You want to get out of here. You want to go back to your quarters and cry into your own bed, but you can’t move. Your legs aren’t listening to you, and for that matter, neither is most of your body, copying his positioning, both of you looking to the side over your shoulder at each other. The tone with which you say it is sarcastic, borderline trying not to laugh and cry at the same time.

There’s something warm on your hand. For a second you think it’s your suit’s self-heating mechanism that you had built in ages ago, but then it moves, and there are fingers interlacing with yours, nervously inching their way over your hand. Hands laying on your thigh, his fingers finding the spaces to fit as he blankets your hand with his, worming his way in as his eyes soften at you, becoming smaller in that upturned way that they do, lighting up the way he used to whenever he saw you. They’ve somehow gotten more brown, more human that you’ve ever seen him to be. Or maybe that’s just you, seeing him for who he truly is. You’ve always treated him like a tool, haven’t you? “You’re a good person.”, he hushes, voice soft and malleable where it surges from his mouth to your ears, a wool padding against your rusty battle armor. “And I care about you. I wanted to see you safe, no matter what happened. So, I really, I think, was happy, despite everything, that it was you who came through the door.” While holding your hand, he scooches closer to you, a small shift, bumping to your side, until you’re almost nose-to-nose. You can barely see it – something murky and muddled that clouds your vision, and there’s a warmth across your cheeks that seems wetter than your own sweat from the heat of the core.

“’M not.”, you sniffle, the sound echoing through the core with ease from the volume of it. “’M not a good person.”, you clarify, and there’s a squeeze at where he grips your hand. “Then nobody is.” He coos, looking at you as if you’re weighing him down from becoming better than you, and as if he loves the feeling of it. As if he’d stay down here with you, rather than be anywhere else. “If you aren’t a good person, then nobody is, has been, or will be.”

There’s a small smile tugging at his lips at that, a joke that burns you like someone opened the hatch of your torso and threw in a sizzling mound of coal into it. There’s a wet line from your left eye that’s reached your chin now, crooked from the way your head leans against the wall. “You are.”, you protest, your right arm lifting weakly in protest if only to point a small accusatory finger at him before it flops back to your side. “You shouldn’t- sniff – be comfortin’ me. I’m- I- did bad things. I killed you. So, many times. And- and-“, you stop for a second to gulp down the air needed to continue, too out of it with your crying to breathe properly, “And you’re- you still- care, about me. And, you’re hurtin’ too. It’s- sniff – selfish to, be cryin’, like thi-is.”, you complain between sobs. The entire time, his breath, steady and warm, fans across your cheeks as he listens to you.

In a controlled, slow movement, he shifts – (a part of you wants to grip onto him, to stop him-) only to readjust, shimmy his hand across your shoulders and pull you into him, your head now leaning back into his chest, torsos half intertwining, like a zipper left half open. “Then be selfish.” His voice is breathy, but safe and soft when he speaks inches away from your ear, your own hand gripping his like a lifeline, “I’m being selfish too. It’s okay.” The breath he lets out after is stuttery, small hitches laid throughout, but you can’t see his face. “H-how?”, you whisper, gulping again and again in order to try to keep the tears down enough to talk, to not completely dissolve in his arms, in his love. In his stupid, stupid, blind affection. “’Cause I’ve been wanting to be this close to you, too. Selfish in how I wanted to hold you since we got out of that… paradox.” Now he’s gulping, right next to you, where you can hear it – and right against you, where you can feel his chest, “I just wanted to make sure you’re real. I was hoping you were.” A deep exhale. “So just cry. I know you need it.”

And when he leans his head next to yours, his other snaking underneath your free arm and pushing you into himself, you can feel wetness that collides with the one on your own face as you cry. (Two kinds. One silent, a hushed, layered kind of weeping, and the other loud and unabashed, like a child finally coming to your senses.)

You don’t remember when you pass out. But you know it’s warm, and wet, and that the hurt you carry is a little less.

“I’m tired too, Captain. So be selfish, just a bit, with me. For me."

You don’t talk about it hours after, when you wake up in his arms, his back against the wall and arms circling you like a nest, or an overlapping of limbs feeling faintly like home. You just wait there. Savoring it. Nuzzling yourself further into him. (After all, how long until you can feel this again?) There’s a faint sense of normalcy that makes you think about the fear of someone walking in on this, the kind of small embarrassing moment that makes you feel human, if even for just a second. A Captain, tear-stricken, with the sticky residue of salt coating their cheeks, settled into the greased-up arms of their Engineer, breathing in the dust of the warp core room. Eventually you’ll get up. Continue with your day. Breathe in normal air again. But for now… you can stay. A little longer. The universe can wait. Just for another minute.

And when you meet again, during one routine check or another, he doesn’t push. But you do, gripping his hand in a fond squeeze that sounds awfully like ‘Thank you.’.

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