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Julian poked his nose out of the layer of blankets, staring at the panel ceiling just inches above him. He could hear Miles breathing below him, calmly but not shallow or evenly enough to be sleeping.
Sleep had been hard to come by. Not just because of the stress, the war, or the overwhelming feeling that every step was one closer to a hidden precipe. The shifts were long, but the worst thing still was the lack of Sun, or Star, something to mimic Sol. Most stations synced to some sort of local reference point. Some synced to Earth, or Vulcan. They ran a carefully constructed light cycle in the hallways. Deep Space Nine aligned itself with Bajor’s twenty-six hour day, and synced all clocks with the atomic timepiece at the Bajoran Capital. Night shift meant night. Quark’s could stay open late, and it was possible to be woken up too early. Time had meaning, before they had released the docking clamps and sped off in the Defiant, abandoning the station.
There was no more night, and there was no more day. There was only on duty, and off-duty. Humans had shed the tethers of gravity, broken out of the barriers of language, but hadn’t yet freed themselves from the beat of the Circadian rhythm.
Now, it was only something approximating the idea of nighttime for Julian and Miles because they were both off shift, curled up in the sparse quarters of the Defiant, trying to sleep.
It didn’t help that it was cold.
It had never really been cold before. The starships, the station, even the runabouts were kept at a human-friendly “room temperature” -- 294.3 Kelvin -- most of the time. It was easy to forget that just beyond the station walls was a vast nothingness. Some called it frozen, but really there was nothing out there to freeze, save a few clusters of space dust. It was just cold. The Defiant was rocketing through space that was near absolute zero.
This wasn’t usually a problem. The Warp Core, so carefully tended to by Miles and his team, served a dual purpose. It powered the Warp Drive, but it also leaked heat waste that was usefully redirected into life support. Some Captains, in peacetime, had even been known to fire up their Warp Cores while keeping cruising speeds low to create artificial summer days.
That was peacetime though.
Now, Julian shivered under a double layer of crinkly Mylar blankets. The Defiant’s cloaking system greedily used energy, and the reserves were low. The Federation was stingy with replacement batteries and energy reserves were being prioritized to weapons. Captain Sisko had ordered the ship to save energy, redirected the heat waste from the Warp Core to cloaking and weapons. It made them all much safer, and all much colder.
It was a crisp 277.6 Kelvin.
At least, it was 277.6 Kelvin in the engineering room, and the bridge. The further from the core of the ship you wandered, the colder it got. In the cargo and weapons bays that were one thin wall away from the void of space, the walls had begun to frost, leaving miniature icicles on the rivets and layers of frost on the portholes, and the crewmen could see their breath. Julian knew, any child who had taken basic thermodynamics knew, that it wasn’t the cold that was seeping in but the heat that was leaving. Still, it felt like being encroached upon but some empty, endless, winter.
Julian rolled over onto his stomach, careful to keep the Mylar blankets on top of him, and hung over the edge of the bunk. In the dim light, he could see Miles laying there on his side facing towards him, not quite asleep, covered in his own layers of Mylar and wool blankets. They both were wearing long underwear, double socks -- an absolute necessity to request from the replicator, even on limited replicator rations.
Julian let out a whistling hiss, probing if Miles was really awake.
Miles grunted, nothing with words, but held up his own cocoon of covers to reveal the empty space inside him, and gestured for Julian to get under them, quickly.
He hadn’t expected this, but it was cold, so Julian flipped himself under his own bunk and into Miles’, bringing his own pile of blankets like a cape, and carefully arranging them on top of the both of them now that he was laying next to Miles.
Julian shivered while Miles wrapped an arm around him. They would regenerate that lost heat soon, and it would stay trapped between them and now a luxurious double allotment of blankets that crinkled when they moved. Julian found himself just under Miles’ chin, resting in the space between the Chief's collarbones, and letting out his own warm breath on his friends’ neck.
The Chief had tucked the tail end of the blankets under both of their feet after Julian had settled in, keeping them tucked in and warm. Julian rubbed the top of his foot against Miles, feeling the shape of them through both of their socks. If he stretched, spread his toes wide, creating webbing around his own toes, he could feel Mile’s toes brush past his own. He swung his foot around and probed the bottom of Miles’ foot, right in his arch.
Miles kicked him, and whispered into his ear, “Not now.”
It was late, or at least they had been on duty for far too long. When Sisko had first ordered the heating turned down, there had been jokes about Cabin Fever, the good kind, a time-honored tradition of keeping warm on cold nights on Earth. The jokes had faded when it became too cold to undress, too cold to risk shaking off a blanket.
Julian grumbled, but thought that, maybe, not now could mean later. He pressed his face closer into Miles’ breastbone. Miles smelled of sweat, the cold dried sweat that built up under layers of winter clothing, but also musk, home, and something woody that might have been his own personal scent. Something steady, and rooted, and old like a tree in a forest that had seen eons.
Julian muttered out, “I wasn’t trying…” as he stilled his feet and heard Miles laugh above him.
“Of course you weren’t,” Miles said, pressing a kiss into Julian’s forehead.
Maybe “not now” really had been a firm, “later.”
***
Julian would have felt guilty, if this were any other married man on the station. Another family man, Starfleet through and through. But the O’Brien arrangement had made itself quite obvious early in his tenure at CMO. It was Julian’s second year on the station, and the Chief had popped in for a physical, a standard check up, and returned a PADD with the filled out medical survey to Julian.
It was, of course, only his second year and Starfleet tried to teach bedside manner for every occasion, but The Academy didn’t quite cover how to make your face blank and non-judgemental when the Chief of Engineering indicated that he had quite the number of sexual partners in the last year (more than Julian, and a tickle of jealousy was palapable just under the awkward atmosphere) and yes, in fact, he would like an up-to-date test for sexually transmitted infections.
Back then, Miles’ had read Julian’s face in a minute and scoffed, “Pull it together, lad. Dr. Crusher would have never pulled a face like that.”
Julian had nodded and attempted to rearrange his face, and processed the paperwork and completed the test as requested. He didn’t bring it up again for a year, and in the haze of a night at Quarks, treating themselves to real alcohol instead of SynthAle, the topic had come up again.
“...and she doesn’t mind?” Julian asked.
Miles laughed.
“Have you ever loved anyone, Julian?” Miles said.
“Of course.” Julian replied, mind flashing back to those perfect feet.
“Yes, but like, really loved. Built a life with. Known every side of somebody, known them so well that you can’t tell them apart from yourself sometimes, and the borders between your skin start to seem permeable and melty,” Miles explained.
“No.” Julian spit out. He had been a bit put out that Miles, of all people, seemed to be outdoing him at romance, at speaking poetically, maybe even at being a heartthrob.
“And you haven’t been a soldier yet, either.” Miles kept going. And at the time, he hadn’t been yet, and now that he was, the memory was different, less humorous, more real.
Miles leaned forward, pint held in both hands as he leaned over his knees.
“Julian,” he was whispering then, “here’s how Keiko puts it. She says to me, she says, “If you can’t die in my arms, at home, and old, I want you to die in somebody else’s, warm and held.””
And he had taken a big swig of his pint and changed the subject. But more pieces fell in. The catharsis in the holodeck while they reenacted the Battle of Britain. The little bits Miles let slip about Setlik III. Pieces kept falling into place.
Of course, it hadn’t taken long for Julian to realize that the arrangement was symmetrical. He had put all the pieces together when Keiko had come in for a physical with him, and this time there was no judgment on his face when he read over her updated record.
***
Morning didn’t come. There was no sunrise, and any suns available for the job were left behind in the wake of a warp trail.
But the next duty shift did come, and the computer beeped alarms into Julian’s empty bunk and Miles’ overfilled one just the same.
Miles was up first, climbing over Julian and ordering two raktajinos from the replicator. They materialized in the default thermoses bearing the name of the Defiant and a Federation logo. Miles, of course, had ordered them hot but the energy caps on all replicators had been churning out only lukewarm coffee, tea, and raktajinos.
But as Julian took his mug from Miles, it seemed warmer than it had in the past weeks. Almost actually hot.
They would have dressed, but there was nothing to put on but boots. The thick, winter issue Starfleet uniforms were doubling as pajamas, the outermost layer covering layers of long underwear. Julian rubbed his hands together, trying to warm his fingers enough to make lacing up his boots possible, working out the stiffness of the cold. Miles had already put on his boots, and retrieved his combadge from the table, ready to hop out the door when he dropped a pair of gloves into Julian’s lap.
“Take these today,” he said, not looking up from his raktajino. Julian looked at the gloves. Knitted, not a replicator pattern. Real wool, with the smell of warmth and a halo of aged fuzz. They were personal property, then. Maybe form as far as Earth. Little cable patterns wove throughout the top of them.
“But they’re yours.”
“It’s warm in engineering.”
It wasn’t warm in engineering. It was just warmer. Not by much. Julian opened his mouth to protest, meeting Miles’ eyes above the brim of his thermos. He shut his mouth just as quickly, tucked the gloves into his pocket and then opened the door so they could both make it to their respective duty posts on time.