Work Text:
Living on a starship was a lot like living on a submarine. Just rooms and corridors.
A bubble of atmosphere lancing through the vacuum, soundless as the void.
Delilah Shepard - . . . Del, to those who knew her, had come to love the observation deck.
She could watch the drag of stars as Enterprise cruised at a steady warp from the comfort and privacy of her cabin, but she never felt so close to those stars as she did here.
It was the fragility, she thought, rather than the view that kept her.
Everything that once was, and ever will be, was on the other side of that glass.
The observation deck hadn’t come with sofas but crewmen had dragged them up here, one at a time, replacing the hard pews that had been standard. Or so she’d been told. All this redecorating taking place before she came to live on the Enterprise.
Del had never known this place without those couches.
The view was incredible when they were near enough to something to see it through the window, but even when not, the stars were like a dream.
They’d passed through a nebula weeks ago, cruising leisurely straight through to the heart of it, and Del had reclined on one of the sofas. Lying on her back. The superheated gases like wisps of cloud.
Even if she hadn’t heard the door swing open, she would have known he was there.
Senior tactical officer, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed – no one else would have sought her out at two in the morning.
Del loved a man in uniform, and that had become tragically obvious once she actually had one of her own, but there was something painfully raw in seeing Malcolm out of uniform.
Hours past the end of his shift, he’d showered and changed into a pair of black slacks and an olive shirt and only now . . . had he conceded defeat. It would have been clear even to people who didn’t know what to look for . . .
Sweat spiked his soft dark hair.
He was flushed. Heat coming off him like a furnace.
“Oh, Malcolm.” Del came off the couch.
He loitered at the door, having had the presence of mind to close it when he came in.
“I, uh . . .”
He looked lost and sympathy, not amusement, coiled tight in her chest.
He wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t get words out. She thought it had more to do with that he just didn’t know what to say. Here was a man who chose his words so carefully, totally at a loss.
He knew why he’d come, but not how to ask.
The parasites in his head howling at him to complete their biological imperative. Microscopic worms seemingly unaware that in a human host, they’d hit a reproductive dead-end.
He wasn’t contagious.
But he was in pain.
Her attention fell to what he was holding. A small black plate carried up from the ship’s mess, and on it, a slice of coconut cream pie. A particularly thoughtful offering . . . all things considered . . .
She met his eyes.
Those tender, blue-white eyes, heated now with need, a desperate need. They were the same glowing blue as the base of a flame. The man had dragged himself over burning coals by this point and she could almost see him passing through the mess, spotting the plates left for the graveyard shift, and grabbing one.
He couldn’t bring himself to come to her empty-handed.
He even thought to bring her a spoon.
Coconut cream pie was exactly right. She found the chocolate cake Chef made on the weekends too rich, and the pecan too sweet.
She took the plate from him, accepting the offering for what it was. A gift.
“And when you feel better,” she said, setting it safely aside. “We’ll share it.”
It was absolutely fascinating to watch a man simultaneously deflate, and coil tight enough to snap, at the same time.
He made an attempt at conversation. “I wanted –”
“I know.”
She ran her hands over his chest, her touch tentative. Testing to see what he would allow, what he could stand.
The fabric of his olive shirt softer than the familiar uniform.
Malcolm tipped his head, hovering precariously close. Restraint. Actively restraining himself; he found solace in resisting. Surrender would feel too much like total collapse.
He needed this, he needed her, but not . . .
Del had come to learn, as she had come to know him, that it mattered to him that he remember every second.
Never, not even their first time together when the possibility of a treatment was still untested, and Malcolm had been driven to the very edge of what he could tolerate, had he surrendered himself.
He tried again.
“I was, um . . .”
She didn’t interrupt him. This time, he lost his train of thought.
Malcolm seemed very willing to stand there, sweating and trembling, to the bitter end rather than make the first move, though Del thought he already had.
She could smell the sweetness, the cream, from the pie.
She tipped her face up and brushed his lips. There was no hesitation from there. Malcolm sealed his mouth on hers. Taking, and accepting.
Del dragged her hands down over his chest, and then slipped them both up under his shirt. His skin so hot he felt like he was burning.
Moments flared into minutes and Del delighted in touching him, in the feel of lean muscle flexing beneath her hands. He told her, once, that her touch did more than soothe the hurt. She cooled where she touched him, her hands like rainwater on fevered skin.
Those were his words, not hers, and she thought of that, now.
Del slid her hand across his chest, her palm coming to rest protectively over his heart.
Next to them, all around them, the stars flew by.
She broke from his kiss only long enough to suck in a breath, and a few words.
“Malcolm?”
“Hm?”
“Lock the door.”