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Malcolm looked up from his computer as his door opened. Hoshi stood framed in the doorway for a moment, and he felt his lips curve as she stepped into his quarters, the door closing quietly behind her. She carried a gym bag over one shoulder, to go along with her yoga pants and teal t-shirt, and looked like the best thing he’d seen all day.
“Hey,” she said softly, smiling.
“Hey back,” he responded, rising from his chair to take her gym bag and place it on his desk before turning back to give her a proper welcome.
It felt right to slide an arm around her waist and a hand around the back of her neck, drawing her forward for a gentle, welcoming kiss. It felt even better when her arms wrapped around him, hugging him to her, and she went up on her toes to kiss him in return before easing back down.
With a contented sigh, she snuggled her face into his neck and burrowed against his chest, enjoying how close he was to her in height so that she didn’t have to crick her neck. Malcolm dropped a kiss on her dark, silky hair, and bent his head to rest against hers. For a few minutes they simply held each other, enjoying the comfort and closeness after a hard day at work. Then she lifted her head and looked up at him, leaning forward to rest her forehead against his.
“So, Lieutenant-Commander,” she murmured, “are you ready to be read to tonight?”
It was one of their favourite shared pastimes - usually on a Wednesday, as they generally had Thursdays off shift, but this time they’d swapped for Sunday, as Malcolm’s birthday was the next day. That first year of their journey into deep space, they’d kept running into each other reading in the mess hall or the observation deck or the hydroponics bay. Eventually one of them - Hoshi couldn’t remember which - had invited the other to read in their quarters to escape the inevitable disruption as other crewmates had entered the rooms they were in, wanting to talk. And for the next couple of years, they’d simply sat in one or the other’s quarters, a cup of tea or warm and comforting hot chocolate at hand, with just the right amount of rich chocolate, just enjoying the companionship of another quiet person in the room.
By the time they’d ended up in the Expanse, they’d graduated to sitting back-to-back or beside each other, craving human contact. Hoshi’s presence had somewhat tempered Malcolm’s deep-seated resentment of Major Hayes and the MACOs; his had given her the courage and determination to see through the mission. The time she’d been off the ship, sequestered with the telepath Tarquin, had been some of the hardest days of Malcolm’s life, no reading companion close by, no urge to read by himself as he worried about her.
Shortly after her return, as they read, he’d moved to sit on the floor by her legs as she’d curled up on his couch. He’d leaned his head against her knees, and she’d started stroking his hair almost unconsciously. In turn, he'd sat by her bed and read to her as she'd recovered from her time with the Xindi, until she was well enough to take the book from his hands and begin reading it back to him, her voice shaky but strengthening as she read.
Some time later their relationship had progressed naturally into something deeper and more vital. Their friends had nodded and not-so-quietly muttered things such as “finally” and “about time”. And reading together remained one of their most treasured shared activities.
Now they’d cuddle up together to read, enjoying the closeness and companionship. Sometimes they’d sit on either end of his couch, feet intertwined; she liked watching him surreptitiously as he read, the concentration on his face and his brilliant smile if he happened to look up and catch her staring. If they were in her quarters, one or the other would sit up against the bulkhead while the other lay, head in lap, having their hair played with as they read.
Hoshi couldn’t decide whether she preferred playing with his soft, fluffy dark hair, or feeling his fingers gently stroke through her silky strands, lifting every now and then to turn the page; although they had PADD readers, they both enjoyed physical books when possible. If Malcolm's head was in her lap and she was lightly scratching his scalp, he’d sometimes grab her hand and press a kiss to the pulse on the inside of her wrist, smiling up at her with unguarded emotion that still made her heart clench with something beyond mere happiness.
She enjoyed the times one or other of them would read aloud. His voice was deep and soothing, and he had a gift for imbuing the words with emotion and action; his reading of The Iliad brought that classic tale to life, and when he read from one of the Horatio Hornblower or Aubrey-Maturin or Temeraire series, she could almost see the action as he described it. When he read one of Terry Pratchett’s City Watch books, he’d act his way throughout the scenes, adopting different accents for each of the characters, never failing to both awe and amuse her with his renditions.
For her part, Hoshi had been taking him through her preferred list of women in science fiction and fantasy. Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Tamora Pierce, Becky Chambers, Trudi Canavan. Her favourite Terry Pratchett series - of course they shared a love of the offbeat author - was the witches. She was nowhere near as skilled as he was at acting out the scenes, but he found her voice soothing and melodious as she read to him in a dimly-lit room, her fingers drifting through his hair or over his shoulders and chest as he closed his eyes and listened.
Tonight, in honour of Malcolm's birthday, it was his turn to relax and be read to. She watched his eyes light up at her question and that wonderful smile appear on his face, the smile he reserved for her. Pulling her book out of her bag, she reclined on his bed, pillows at her back as she leaned up against the locker. He lay down on his side between her legs, his head on her chest, arms around her waist, listening to the steady thump of her heart and her low, calm voice as it vibrated through her chest and against his cheek. Her fingers threaded through his hair and drifted across his cheek and ear, down his neck, as she gentled him while he rested on her as his living pillow.
She read to him from A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers.
“Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see the world around them. You and I—we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?”
And slowly, gently, he fell into a dreamless sleep, enclosed in warmth and softness, safety and serenity, and the certainty that he had found his place.