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Someone is humming in my dream. It’s faint but there in the background. The tune is vaguely familiar, but the lyrics are just out of reach. Ignoring it, I snuggle deeper into the covers and reach out … and find the other side of the bed empty.
Blinking sleepily, I raise up on my elbows and glance out the window. Which tells me absolutely nothing other than the ship is still at warp. But looking outside to gage the time is an instinctive habit. I decide it feels like the middle of the night. My first thought is, did I sleep through a call for Chris from the bridge?
Evidently not as Chris is sitting in the chair near my side of the bed. Working? No. Doing … nothing? That’s odd. If he’s awake he is usually working, frequently running or engaging in some other physical activity, regularly talking with the crew, occasionally playing chess, or sometimes indulging in a favorite book, but he’s never idle.
And he is humming.
My tone-deaf, ‘I don’t know the names of any songs, popular or otherwise’ partner is actually humming, and for him fairly well.
“Is everything alright?” I ask.
He nods and smiles.
“Come back to bed.” I say as I start to lay back down.
“Soon.”
I sit up completely and lean against the headboard.
He looks slightly abashed, like a small boy caught in the act of misbehaving. When he answers my implied question his tone is unsure, “Watching you sleep.” He hurriedly adds, “I like to watch you sleep, you look peaceful … happy and content.”
“I am. All of those.”
“And you take those cute little breaths that we don’t call snores.”
I clear my throat in response to his utterly ridiculous untrue claim.
He grins back at me, his expression the epitome of ‘You know I’m right, but you won’t admit it’ tolerance.
“What song were you humming? I can’t place it.”
He appears embarrassed now, his cheeks are slightly pink. Chris runs his hand through his hair, a gesture he only uses in front of me, a clear tell he feels unsure. “You heard that?”
“I thought I was dreaming it.”
“It’s … it’s our song.”
My unsentimental, unromantic partner thinks we have a song? This is news to me. “I’ve heard the melody before, but I don’t remember the title.”
“Have you ever watched Disney’s Little Mermaid?”
Of course, that’s it! This is intriguing. “I have nieces, so yes, the original many times and all the remakes. The more interesting question is, have you?”
“Why?”
“Not a movie I imagine little Chris slowing down to watch.”
“I didn’t watch it as a child. I did see it a few months before we met. Six times.” He went silent and looked away from me and down while brushing imaginary lint from his pants.
“Seriously, that’s all the explanation you are going to give me?” I ask, disappointed.
He chuckles. “As if you would allow me to stop there.”
In a more serious tone he continues, “We answered a distress call and found a mother and her daughter in a failing shuttle. The woman was critically injured; her daughter was terrified. Because I happened to be the first member of the rescue party to board the ship, the child, her name is B’Lania, latched onto me.”
And for other reasons as well, few radiate safety like Chris does, his physical presence is enough to calm even the most anxious moments.
“Once we returned to Enterprise, she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Wouldn’t go to any other crew member. While her mother was in Sickbay, B’Lania stayed in my quarters. The first night she cried easily, refused to eat or drink, fought sleep. I discovered The Little Mermaid is her favorite movie. And she was extremely impressed that I had met the merpeople on Aquanias V. Anyway, she settled when we watched the movie. And then she wanted to watch it five more times.”
I hold up my hand to pause his explanation so I could spend a few minutes appreciating the image I conjured of Chris, small girl tucked in beside him, patiently watching the movie over and over and over. And over and over and over. How, at some point, she curled up in his lap and fell asleep. Then him bundling her into bed and sitting nearby in case she needed him during the night. If I weren’t already in love with him that would have sealed it.
When I nod, Chris continues, “B’Lania knew all the songs and sang them as she watched. That one stuck with me.”
I wait patiently for the second part of his story. And wait. “And?” I demand.
“And what? Oh, yeah that. After your first week on Enterprise I knew I was in love with you. But if I approached you and you weren’t … well, taking me on would be challenging … so I held back. Then …”
“Then?”
“We had all those random … almost dates … like when you were preparing me for the treaty negotiations … and that shuttle trip to Starbase 6, ok that wasn’t random but rather Una and Phil’s clumsy attempt at a fix-up.”
“Also we had all those accidental late-night chats in the mess hall.”
I caught his faint smile before he answered. “Only the first one was by chance, after that I stopped by the mess hall every night at the same time hoping to see you.”
“I started doing the same after the second one.”
Chris moved to sit beside me on the bed and took both of my hands in his. “By then I believed you cared for me as well … but I still hesitated, now looking for the right moment … if I picked the wrong one, I might lose the chance for something lasting with you. I saw you sitting alone on the bench in that little garden. The group you were on leave with had gone on to lunch.”
“I didn’t know them well and I can be …”
“Shy.” Chris finished my sentence as he often did. “When I saw you, I remembered that song from the movie and it convinced me this was the moment.”
He recited the words.
There you see her
Sitting there across the way
She don’t got a lot to say
But there’s something about her
And you don’t know why
But you’re dying to try
You want to kiss the girl.
Yes, you want her
Look at her, you know you do
It’s possible she wants you too
There’s one way to ask her
It don’t take a word, not a single word
Go on and kiss the girl.
You better do it soon
No time will be better
She won’t say a word
And she won’t say a word
Until you kiss the girl.
Chris reaches up to cup my cheek. “That’s why our relationship officially started with me in that garden asking permission to kiss you. And that became our song.”