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Michael’s foot sits on the couch beside him, just out of reach of where Ash’s hand sits on his thigh. She’s removed her socks and his fingers itch to stretch and erase the gap between them, to explore the soft skin at the top of her foot and along her ankle.
But he hesitates, and drums his fingers uselessly on the side of his padd.
The Ash he thought he knew wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have brushed the back of his fingers along her toes, circled them around her ankle and pulled her foot into his lap. That Ash would have held it there as he continued to read, allowed himself to become distracted by the drag of his skin along hers and the soft hitches of her breath as he worked his way up the back of her calf.
Ash in the here and now wants to lean over and kiss her. He images she tastes like the tea that sits abandoned on the floor below them, but he wants to know what lay beneath the tang of black leaves and spice. He thinks she wants to know the same about him.
But yet, he hesitates.
He wonders whether it is her who makes him hesitate, or if the Ash who came back with Lorca is fundamentally different from the Ash he was. He never was one to be afraid, not about this at least. Anger creeps through his chest at the thought. But Ash also knows Michael isn’t one to be pushed, that what impulsiveness he’s seen from her is measured and thought out. So maybe it isn’t his fear that’s driving him.
Maybe.
It still chafes, though, that he can’t seem to push himself to do what he knows he would have only months before.
Tapping his thumb hard on the front of his padd, he leans his head back and takes a deep breath. From the corner of his eye, he can see Michael’s brow twitch but her attention doesn’t waver from her own screen.
Ash closes his eyes before he does something stupid, like reach out and wrap his hands along her waist and tug her to him. It doesn’t help though. Because here in the darkness behind his eyelids, all he can see are images of her straddling his lap, her strong hands gripped at his shoulders, her dark eyes studying him, cataloguing each of his reactions to her touch.
He needs to stop.
He needs to find some other way to channel this energy. Turning his head, he opens his eyes and watches her. She’s wearing the standard issue tank and sweats, one foot curled beneath her as the other stretches out towards him - the one that started this whole train of thought. Her eyes continue to scan over her screen, and she bits her lip in concentration as she absorbs whatever it is telling her.
It’s the hottest thing he’s seen in a while, and the old Ash would have laughed at him for getting hard over something so simple and routine.
“I thought you were reading.”
He answers the wry pull the words bring to her lips with a slow smile of his own. “Could have said the same about you.”
“It’s hard to focus when you are being stared at.”
Ash shrugs and moves to stand. “Feel like a run?”
He asks more for want to distract himself than for any real desire to move from this spot before he’s called for his next shift. His mind seems bent on shattering the comfort of the routine they’ve established and he needs something to cling to before he does something stupid like push her back into the cushions.
“Sure.” She lowers her feet to the ground and slips on her shoes. Reaching for her balled up socks, she asks, “Meet you in 10 outside my quarters?”
He nods in answer as she slips out the door, his eyes focused on the way her sweats cling and fall around her hips and down her legs before the doors close quietly behind her.
“Get it together, Tyler,” he whispers. “Now is not the time.”