Work Text:
“Hi Captain,” Celci grins wickedly.
There’s a confused little smile on the Captain’s face, and Mark absolutely does not like where this is going.
It’s the last night before the rest of the remaining colonists in cryo would be brought down onto the new planet, effectively retiring the Invincible as a transport ship. Mark feels bittersweet about the whole thing—he did create her, and he loved every second of it (adventures with the wormhole notwithstanding), but they were at their new home now. The Invincible can be repurposed for other things. At the moment, he’s with Burt, Celci, Gunther, and the Bandit (a fact that he’s still trying to wrap his head around) in the lounge, and Celci had called the Captain through her comms, inviting them over to their little get-together.
Right now, though, he’s eyeing Celci warily, wondering what fresh hell she’s about to put him through.
The Captain waves a hand. “Hi…?”
“We wanted to ask for your opinion on something.” She pushes Mark to stand in front of them, and the Captain staggers slightly at the close proximity.
“Kiss,” Burt says simply.
“Kiss!” Bandit cheers, raising her glass as a toast. The Captain does a double-take.
“When did you—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she says coolly, then raises her glass again. “Kiss!”
Mark watches the Captain’s face closely. It’s as if they’re trying to figure out why their crew is suddenly acting like this, at which—Mark has to agree. Why is the crew acting like this? He rubs a hand down his face, setting his beer aside. He doesn’t want the Captain to feel uncomfortable. Especially not around him, not with everything that’s happened.
They narrow their eyes. “Why ‘kiss’? Who ‘kiss’?”
Celci purses her lips. “Who else? The head asshat himself.”
“Hey!”
“But…why?” the Captain tilts their head in confusion. Skittish, their eyes flick between Mark and Celci.
Mark swallows nervously. There’s something ugly coiling in the pit of his stomach, and he doesn’t think it’ll unfurl anytime soon.
“Help us settle something,” the Bandit pipes up, sliding closer to the Captain.
Celci’s voice is saccharine sweet. “See, all of us here are of the thought that there’s something between you and our beloved head engineer.”
It puts Mark on guard. “Something?”
“‘Something,’” the Captain raises an eyebrow. “As in?”
“Chemistry. Sparks. To be honest, we’re tired of seeing the two of you pine after each other.”
Gunther hisses through his teeth, taking a swig from his beer bottle and looking anywhere else. Burt makes a small, affirming noise. The Bandit smiles mildly, enjoying this turn of events. And the Captain has been giving Celci the same dumbfounded look that’s been on their face for the past five minutes.
Mark understands. He feels like he’s been hit with a sucker punch. What the hell—pining? Him? The two of them? For each other?
“P-pine?” they scrunch their brows. “What do you mean pine?”
She groans. “Is it not that obvious to you? It’s obvious to everyone on this goddamn ship!”
“What is obvious?!”
Gunther jumps in to save the situation. “What she means is that you and Mark have a thing for each other. And it needs to be resolved now for the sake of peace on the ship.”
They’re absolutely bewildered. “Peace?”
“She’s not wrong, Captain,” Bandit rests an elbow on their shoulder, mouth cocked to one side. “When I met you guys at the USA, you were giving each other some vibes. Like, ‘I want to jump you’ vibes. I mean,” she shrugs, “who wouldn’t? Your boy over there is a snack. You’re a whole five-course meal. You had eyes for no one but each other.” She takes her elbow off. “Pining is a good word for it. Is this how you humans date?”
The Captain turns to Mark, who had been watching the exchange in abject horror. Although flattered by Bandit’s words, he shakes his head in disbelief. “Guys, our relationship is strictly professional. We’re friends! Just friends. That is how we view each other. No other vibes are being put out,” he narrows in his eyes at Bandit pointedly, who raises her hands in mock defense.
However, there’s an odd expression on the Captain’s face as soon as he says those words.
None of the others seem to notice. “The entire crew begs to differ,” Burt mutters, inspecting his wrench. “I’d say they’re all sick of it.”
“We’re sick of it,” Celci stresses. “Please, just—if you two kiss, and there is no—absolutely no chemistry whatsoever—then we’ll leave you alone. And we’ll never speak of it again. Or whatever.”
Mark sighs through his nose, resisting the urge to tell the Computer to eject Celci from the Invincible. They still need her to safely load the rest of the colonists onto the planet tomorrow.
The Captain, though—
The Captain’s pensive. They worry the inside of their bottom lip, staring at nothing on the ground.
“Captain, you alright?” Mark asks.
Their head shoots up. “Oh—yeah.” There’s a strained grin on their face. “Yeah. Peachy.”
Does the thought of kissing Mark make them that uncomfortable? He frowns. “Listen, it’s just a stupid dare—”
He gets cut off.
There’s a hushed silence around the room.
The kiss is nothing special, just a simple press of the lips against the other’s, and yet—
Mark feels how warm they are. Slightly chapped, as if they had been worrying their lips between their teeth all day, but it didn’t detract from how soft they were. It sends a tingle down his stomach, blooms in his chest, clouds his brain, makes his palms sweaty. He feels the Captain’s nose bump against his, their hands cradling his face, and the sweet way their thumbs lightly swipe over their cheeks.
When the Captain pulls away, it feels like hours have passed, not seconds. They don’t meet his eyes, clearing their throat. “There. You guys happy?”
When no one says anything, they jerk a nod and head out of the room, striding with purpose.
It takes Mark’s brain a few seconds to catch up.
“So did you feel anything?” Celci asks, hushed.
“They kissed me,” Mark blinks. “The Captain kissed me.”
“That kiss may have knocked something loose in his head,” Bandit notes.
“As opposed to all of the other things already loose in his head?” Celci’s smirk comes slowly, looking like the cat who ate the canary. “There was totally something there. Totally. Totally!”
Mark swiveled his head, as if just now realizing the Captain wasn’t in the room. “Where’d they go?”
It gives the rest of them pause. “Don’t know,” Gunther muses. “They ran off as soon as that happened.”
“I’ll go find them.” Mark had only taken a few sips from his beer bottle, but with the kiss, he already feels intoxicated.
The thing was, the kiss was simple. Nothing special, nothing to brag about, really.
But it made Mark’s head spin. It made his heart flutter and his whole being yearn for something less close-mouthed. As much as he hates to admit it, Celci…might be right about this.
When Mark steps out of the lounge, the Captain is nowhere in sight.
He observes the door that leads to the bridge, but he dismisses it—they wouldn’t go straight there. He heads towards cryo and the reactor, past the warp core room (don’t look, don’t look, don’t look at the central pedestal), and to the elevator up to the offices.
Their office, near the end of the hall, is closed when he comes across it. He falters as soon as his footsteps stop in front of the door, fist raised to knock.
What would he say? Hey, Captain, I know that I said we only view each other as friends but I kinda like the idea that we could be something more? Or, Hey, Captain, I wasn’t too sure about how I felt when you first kissed me, maybe we could try that again? Or, even worse:
I think I like you. A lot. Despite everything. And I’m sorry for not realizing it sooner.
Well, it’d be out of the blue if he said that, but it’s definitely not the first time he’s thought of it. A strange black-and-white memory pops up in his mind, one in which he’s wearing a trenchcoat and a fedora, holding a glass of scotch, and eyeing the Captain with a little more than just friendly intent.
He huffs heavily. They’ve got to resolve this, one way or the other. It’s the only way to make their relationship right again.
Before he could make the first knock, the door slides open, and the Captain stands on the other side, not making eye contact.
“Hi,” they say softly.
Mark lowers his arm. “Hi.” They must’ve known that he was about to knock. Maybe it was the Computer. “I was looking for you.”
“Oh.” Once again, they worry their bottom lip between their teeth. Mark doesn’t know what drives him to do it, but he reaches forward with his hand, resting a thumb on top of their mouth.
The Captain freezes.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he jerks away, hiding his hand behind him, and the Captain lifts their head in surprise.
“No, no,” they shake their head, “I should be the one to say sorry.” They fidget with their fingers, and Mark realizes that their gloves are off. It’s rare that he ever sees the Captain’s hands bare, but he finds that he likes looking at them, at their shape, and how they felt against his face when they kissed him.
They heave a sigh. “I just—I must have made you so uncomfortable, and…what I pulled back there wasn’t very…” Searching for words, they end up slumping. “It wasn’t very cool of me, I guess. I should’ve shut it down as soon as Celci and the others suggested it. And I’m very sorry that I gave into it, because it wasn’t fair to you, especially when you’d been trying to get them to leave it alone.”
A plaintive smile. “I don’t want to make you any more uncomfortable than I already have. If you’d like to spend some time away, or be on a different rotation from me whenever we’re running errands or on-calls around the ship or the colony, I totally—”
“Wait. Wait,” Mark blinks, taken aback. “Captain, can I—can I say something?”
Nodding, their jaw closes, looking down at the floor.
“I didn’t mind it,” he says lowly. “The—the kiss, I mean.”
“Oh.”
“If it’s alright with you,” he steps forward, tilting the Captain’s chin up, “I’d like to try that again.”
Their eyes fill with wonder and unbridled hope. “Again?”
“And again, and again, and again, for a very long time. If that’s alright with you.”
The disbelieving smile on their face is nearly enough for Mark to surge forward and assuage their fears, but he restrains himself, waits for their permission.
“Yeah,” a hitch of a breath, “I think it’d be alright with me.”
When Mark slots their lips together, he feels everything all at once, and he presses closer to the Captain, shifting his hands to cradle their face, and the Captain’s own finding their way to his hips, grounding him.
It’s perfect. Nearly so. Mark parts and kisses them, again and again and again, just like he said he would, and he can feel the giddy smile on their face, their racing heart, and the warmth of another person, after spending so much time alone, breathing and alive.
“So you were pining for me?” he says later, bracketing the Captain between his arms and the office door, staring at their kiss-bitten lips, and they roll their eyes. It’s adorable. “Giving”—he wiggles his eyebrows, and it causes the Captain to roll their eyes again— “vibes?”
They pull at the open lapels of his flight suit. “Shut up, or I actually won’t jump you,” they mutter against his lips, and Mark does as told, instead kissing the Captain with more vigor than before.