Chapter Text
The Roci had flipped and was a day from its final deceleration burn when the whole crew started to show signs of crash couch fever. The nearer he got to humanity and the chaos that awaited them, the more panicked Holden felt, like his skin was dissolving his barrier between self and other. Alex and Amos had been getting in childish flights about flight plans and reaction mass conservation that frequently devolved into shouting matches and increasingly petty pranks. Naomi had turned inwards - normally she would jump headfirst into such family squabbles, but in the last few days, she had pulled herself into a shell.
Holden reluctantly decided to call a 6-hour moratorium on high- and mid-G burns, setting the Roci just barely short of 0. Chrisjen be damned, Fred be damned, humanity be damned - he could not afford to have his crew fall apart at the seams when all eyes would be on them. He could not have them fall apart at the seams when he himself felt on the cusp of unraveling.
He easily intellectualized the need for the float - prolonged burns were terrible on the body and juice was running extremely low, on a skeleton crew he could not afford to lock any one of them in the brig if these petty squabbles matured into a brawl. But he was terrified. Sure, the high burns were uncomfortable physically, but they were comforting emotionally. He felt swaddled by the pressure of his own body being accelerated through space. The prolonged pain was a release for him, and it pulled his attention away from his swirling thoughts and back into his body. He knew, instinctively, that if his thoughts had the chance to congeal he would be paralyzed by them.
He also knew his time to man up and talk to Naomi was long overdue. His conversation with Alex had been an effective balm - Holden slept like a bear for 12 hours afterward, but it had ultimately heightened his anxiety about talking with Naomi. She hadn’t returned to their quarters that night and since then, they had not had more than a few moments alone. The cabin fever was, in part, heightened by everyone's personal battle with seeking isolation versus for reaching the comfort of eachother.
Holden encouraged Alex and Amos to take their liberation to opposite ends of the ship and he did not have to work very hard to convince them. Amos retreated to his bunk with a teetering pile of the Roci’s last remaining snack stash. Alex found himself in the gym listening to death metal and working himself to exhaustion. Which left Naomi and Holden alone on the OPS deck. Holden found Naomi deep in her own thoughts, a vacant look on her face and her unbound hair creating a soft halo around her face.
"Got a minute?" he asked, breaking her reverie.
"I have about 350 of them in fact."
He grabbed her hand and led her back to the captain's quarters. His heart thumped wildly in his chest and the closer he got to the room the more his panic rose in his throat. What do I say what do I do how do I tell her I love her I'm not strong enough to explain.
“Naomi. I -”
“Shush, just for a minute, and let me hug you, okay?” She unlocked her mag boots and wrapped herself around his torso giving him a strong squeeze. “I just need to hold on to you.” She placed her hands around his neck, thumbs brushing against the stubble on his Adam's apple and sending a ripple of shivers down his back.
“How are your hands so soft? Engineers shouldn't be so beautiful,” he said, stupidly. “I thought you would want to talk?”
“Yes, but for now, I just want to be close to you.”
He staggered backward to their crash couch, the mechanics of his mag boots curbing his haste. He brought the two of them down together, still attached at the hips.
Using her body weight, reduced as it was, Naomi pinned him to their crash couch. She placed one hand on the slanted ceiling above them, pushing up to drive herself down. The other hand explored the planes she knew so well. The distance from his chin to the dips of his neck, the swell of his muscles against his shirt, the gentle heat of his chest. She pulled one of his hands to her lower back, the other to the top of her leg. The gentle guidance awakened something in Holden and he felt a rush of adrenaline and rushed to kiss her. I can’t tell her, but I can show her. He tightened his grip until Naomi let out a small yelp and pulled away.
“Ah, sorry, I just - I don’t want to let you go.”
Naomi nodded, one arm still overhead, the other now tangled in his undershirt. “You never did learn to be on the float - you tolerate it, I think. You earthers and your gravity and weight. Don’t you even feel claustrophobic?” She playfully headbutted him, the force causing her to lose grip on the overhang and draw upwards.
“But that's just it Naomi, I don’t think you get it. You were raised with this freedom - you grew up… unfettered. Gravity is a burden to you, something to make concessions and calculations for. But… if I let go I will float away entirely. Every move I make out here pushes someone or something away, like this” - he unraveled Naomi's grip on him and shifted their weight, sending her in a wide arc across the room and pushing him deeper back into their makeshift bed.
“This is just physics, Jim. We know how to overcome that,” she said, using the wall and floor to launch back towards him.
“No, it's bigger than physics. All of my actions always seem to have this unpredictable push or pull. Our whole crew is constantly being separated because of the choices I make. I just, for a minute, want to be in one place. To be grounded and unimportant, to push on something solid and not have to accommodate for anything else.
I am just so afraid of losing you Naomi and we are so fragile, we are tired and old and there are so many things against us and while you were on the brig of a ship run by a literal madman, I was planetside rationing medications, trying not to die.”
“Physics is inevitable, and I am learning our involvement with the scary and unknown parts of the universe is inevitable, too. But maybe we can take this time we have right now - floating, yes - but we are protected by The Roci, by our family. All the time in the world. Well, at least a few hours."
“Kissing you does make my world stop," Holden said with a sly grin, tugging at her hand to pull her closer. He let himself be laid on his back. Naomi put her hand on the center of his chest, pinning him to the crash couch hard enough to sink him into the gel. “You don’t have to worry about anything now, OK? I got you.”
She leaned down to kiss him, and indeed time seized. Something had changed between them, a wall brought down. Their personality and cultural differences were often stark but Naomi now understood how primal Holden’s anxiety was and she channeled her intention into every caress and grind and thrust.
"I have you, I have you, I have you, I have you." She whispered. A prayer, a devotional. She continued to repeat it even as they uncoupled and settled face-to-face sharing a pillow. His hair was matted with sweat and she brushed it aside. She could sense a lingering anxiety in him, his arms a little stiff, his fingers fidgeting.
"You know what, turn around."
He did as told, spent as he was, and let himself be embraced by his lover. She gripped his opposite shoulder, placing equal pressure across his chest, using that force to press her front along his back and wind their legs together.
"I have you. I won’t ever let you float away, okay?"
"I’d be okay with floating as long as you are with me. I’ll follow you anywhere you go, Naomi Nagata" His voice was already clouded with sleep, his breathing growing longer and slower.
"I'll follow you anywhere you go, James Holden." She breathed in his scent for a long moment, willing herself to experience this moment through him. To see and feel the universe through his eyes and body. She stayed awake for a long time after him. He was her missing piece, her anchor in the sea. Maybe they weren't so different after all.