Gentle Rage
By Zuzu Petal
AN: not sure how long this will be.
PART I
Sharp
They had been working closely since his return; it seemed only poetic he should be placed within her care. Perhaps Michael didn't see it as emotionally as everyone else, logically it was counterproductive in her opinion. The reason being was that she had the most intimate look into what had transpired with his counterpart. Whatever the fates had in store for her, she was finding herself drawn into something she was not entirely equipped to handle.
Would she voice these concerns? Of course not. It was not done. She simply nodded her head and accepted the responsibility. He was silent most of the time. Working diligently with her; a far more scientific mind than the man she had once known. But they were not the same man.
There was a quiet fury about him. Unbidden if left unchecked. Many times she felt the rush of adrenaline should the wrong word be spoken. This fury was never directed towards her but at others who simply could not understand. He was broken. She had been there once too, in many ways, she still was.
A broken, haggard road with too many hazards along the way.
Technology could advance, new species and worlds could be discovered but the human condition would remain the same.
"Is it uncomfortable?" Tilly asks her over a drink when Michael finds a free night to have to herself.
"No. We've only just met a few weeks ago." Michael says but of course her redheaded friend is far more astute than all that.
"Michael, it's me you're talking to."
With all that the Discovery crew has been through in such a short period of time, with all she and Tilly have shared, Michael finds little point in deflecting. All that she has learned about him, for she seems to be the only person he will open up to, leaves her wishing she could take whatever pain torments him for him. They were not friends. But they were bonded together through the mysteries of the universe.
"I see a great rage inside him," Michael begins quietly. "It leaves me on edge, anxious. But I seem to gentle it, in a way. He could be whole again but... I don't know why they think I'll be any good at fixing him."
"Maybe it's not about fixing him." Tilly says simply. "Maybe it's just about mending him."
Michael takes Tilly's advice to heart.
But days and soon more weeks pass and he is still introverted. Only bits and pieces of what he went through are revealed to her and even then she must put the jigsaw together herself.
The slightest things set him off; the ship rocking about, a crewman running into him, words taken out of context. She knows why... she's felt that too.
When Saru informs her via intercom that the man in question hasn't responded from his quarters to a request for his presence on the bridge the new captain sends Michael to fetch him.
She waits outside the door, he isn't answering and she fears the worst. She fears for him. In the short time that they have known each other she has grown a strange affection for him. A protectiveness she's never felt with anyone. She wants to shield him from his pain, to be his shield.
Michael overrides the security lock and enters the darkness of his quarters. Nothing is out of place except the soft sounds coming from the bathroom. Upon entering, quietly calling out his name, she finds him leaning back against the wall with his elbows on his knees; fully dressed in uniform but his hands are shaking.
He's looking anywhere but at her...
"Gabriel." She says, her voice placid and a distinct sound comes from him. He's weeping. Going to him, she approaches with care, not to crowd him or overwhelm him. He's having one of his moments... he's not on Discovery he's in his cell.
"Let me out." He begs.
"You are out. It's me, it's Michael." She says, crouching low in front of him. The bathroom is cold, the tiled floor offers little comfort and she doesn't know how long he's been sitting there, alone in the dark.
"I'm not who you think I am." He says, still unable to look her in the eye.
"You're Gabriel Lorca, you're an officer of Starfleet. I know you." Reaching out slowly her fingertips barely whisper across his wrist before he lashes out and grabs her forearm. She falls to her knees but remains balanced, wincing in pain.
When Gabriel's eyes finally meet hers confusion wrapped in the furious rage affix his orbs. After steady breaths, the corners of his eyes relax, then recognition and realization. He releases her, ashamed and broken anew.
"I'm sorry." He says hurriedly and she moves around to sit beside him. Unthinkingly, her arm goes around his shoulders and his head drops onto her shoulder.
"It's alright." She assures him.
Michael knows how he feels; he feels stonewalled, he feels he's not making any progress. He's lonely despite her company. He has very little distractions. Survivors guilt coupled with a manic paranoia and depression. She wants to distract him from it, give him something else to think about...
Strangely, something she is not entirely familiar with but not heinous comes to her.
Tilting his bearded chin upward she brushes her thumb over his cheekbone.
Kissing him was different. Different from Ash, different from everything. He didn't kiss her back immediately, but when he did she was taken aback by the amount of longing was behind it.
Desperation and lust, that's what his kiss tasted like. In his bedroom, he all but tears her clothing from her unable to keep his hands from feeling every inch of flesh she has to offer him. She wants to tell him he can have all of it. She's his to do with what he wishes.
Standing naked before him he kisses her soundly, his tongue demanding she give in to his desires. Little did she realize just how long she had desired him.
Her body is bare to him, his hands cupping her backside and grinding his heavy erection into her soft belly. She had begun this, he would end it.
The first time is quick, he's rough and she's sore afterwards. He doesn't verbally apologize but she knows it's there. The second follows quickly after the first, perhaps only hours later. It feels better, but her body needs time to adjust to his size and his passions and the demands he makes on her.
Control is important to him when he fucks her because outside of their affair he has little control over anything else.
The third time he goes slower than before, getting to know her, pulling two blissful orgasms from her. Whispering things to her she would have otherwise found depraved and sleazy but coming from him it wets her between her legs.
On top of him the forth time he submits only slightly, raising his hips to slam into her from below, even as she presses firmly down onto his chest with her smaller hands.
Sitting up he wraps his muscular arms around her, by comparison, puny waist, drawing her close to him,
"Say something," she whispers in a breathy and timid moan. Despite the times he has seen in such a state of rapture she is still shy when it comes to many things. She doesn't like asking him for things when they're intimate, she doesn't exactly know how.
"Like what?" He teases and she presses her mouth to his shoulder.
"Anything."
"I like the way you ride my cock," he whispers in her ear, his hand cradling the nape of her neck and sliding down her naked back. "The way your cunt tightens around me. The way you tremble when I'm rough, you like it rough though, don't you?" She nods quickly, feeling herself coming closer to cumming. "Yeah, I know you do. You like it hard in that proper little pussy, don't you?"
"Oh god." She whimpers through his borderline pornographic litany.
"I think about fucking your mouth under my station," he whispers, licking the shell of her ear. "I think about fucking you with my tongue buried inside you- ugh, fuck- I want you to cum around me."
She doesn't realize her hand has traveled towards his throat, she doesn't squeeze she simply leaves it there; almost as a reminder that she's in just as much control as he is. That she has power over him too.
"But you like to feel helpless sometimes, don't you?" He goes on as if reading her mind. "You like it when I take you like a barbarian. It's alright, I like it too."
Gabriel stops her movements and she whines, so close to the edge. She begs him to have mercy and he lays her flat over him, his slow thrusts pleasurable but they won't get her there.
"How badly do you want to cum, Michael?" He asks her and she groans.
"Please... just let me-"
"How badly?"
Michael kisses his collarbone, she can't see his face.
"So badly," she finally gives in. "It hurts, it always hurts."
Gabriel moves her onto her back, her right leg pushed towards her chest and he resumes his thrusting, slow at first, then faster and deep. Penetrating every inch of her willing sheath.
"Yes... yes." She can't help but whimper as the heat and the tension grow and grow.
"Right there?" He whispers against her lips, his beard scratching and tickling her mouth and she nods. "Yeah? You want me to let you cum?" His eyes are terrifying and beautiful all at once.
Merciless and benevolent. Kind and cruel. Kindred and baleful. There is no shared power now, he is the keeper of the keys, the black hooded man at the gates. He holds her life in his hands.
"Please." She begs again, her eyes slipping closed and she feels his teeth scrape at her neck and she cries out; he's so deep... he can't possibly be any-
"Ah!" She cries out, she feels herself cumming, not just the twitching and the spasming of her muscles but her fluid rushing from her and coating both of them in a erotic wave of their shared pleasure.
He's still fucking himself inside her, all she can do is hold him through it. She's too weak for anything else. Her whole body is on fire for him. Every nerve and atom pleads with him.
Gabriel says nothing more as he erupts inside her, his thick seed coating her inner walls, and she strokes his back with gentle hands.
And the fifth time is dangerous and she insists they do not but he insists that they do and before she knows what's happened she's pressed face first into a bulkhead with her pants around her ankles.
He's kneeling behind her, fucking her with his tongue as he had promised and she's biting her lip to keep quiet.
He was right, she did like feeling helpless and at his mercy. She wanted to feel his hands grope every inch of her, to make her feel wanton.
"Shh," he says as he slides into her wet and welcoming heat. "How would this look?"
Michael knows what it would look like and she can't help but picture it herself. He doesn't waste his time once he's inside her again, fucking her hard and snapping his hips against her backside and she does all she can within her limited power at the moment not to give into the desire to scream.
Christ, he's bigger like this. Michael had not been the type of woman who ever would've conceived that what she was missing from her life at times was a big throbbing cock shoved inside her, relentlessly pumping waves of pleasure through her. The thought was base and ulcultured and quite frankly, filthy.
But there was that forbidden element as well, which is what flooded her panties with the thought of him bending her to his will.
The last thing she ever thought could ease her frustrations was a phallus. Yet here she was, taking part in a ritual as old as time itself and reveling in it.
Since the first time they had sex she had done things with him and let him do things to her she had never imagined herself ever doing. She had allowed him to perform oral sex on her and in turn allowed him to teach her how to pleasure him with only her hands and her mouth. Her favorite, by far, was like this; with him inside her, dominating and trusting her all at once.
"Fuck, you're so fucking tight." He says harshly behind her,
"Ah... please. Don't stop."
Gabriel couldn't get enough of her. He had never met a woman like her before; he had never needed someone the way he needed Michael. He enjoyed teaching her all of the debased things she was willing to learn from him. The way her face had first squinted and frowned in pain at the size of him entering her, the rough way in which he manhandled her but enjoyed it all the same, seized a part of himself he didn't know existed.
He liked the way she blushed when he said filthy things, because they were filthy and it wasn't him. But he found he liked this new side of himself when he was with her.
The dirty, erotic part of himself that had lain dormant until she had awoken it. Cumming inside her felt like the first time every time.
"Cum for me, honey," he says against her neck, her back pressed completely against his chest. He's so deep and so close to her he can barely pull out far enough, so he settles for sharp thrusts that shake her breasts and leave her whimpering that he's almost sure she's in pain.
"I... I'm cumming-"
"Fuck." He cums with her and not for the first time.
He's angry with her the next time she comes to him. She had stood him up because of work, he understood but he missed her sorely. He makes her kneel in front of him and remove her shirt.
"Touch me." Her hand reaches out, gliding down his front until she's cupping his aching erection in her hand, palming him until she feels the tip of his cock leaking precum even through his trousers.
"You know what I want." He tells her and she doesn't object but nor does she hurriedly unfasten him. She takes her time, prolonging his agony as well as her own for he knows how hot it makes her to please him in such a way.
Her mouth envelops his cock and he goes to heaven, his stomach tightening as her tongue travels up the length of his shaft.
"You like my cock in your mo-uff-" he's cut off by a tickle and a hum and he's silenced by her, once more the power exchange happens in the blink of an eye and he's left at her mercy.
Fine, it's better this way... he thinks as he lets himself sink into the heated current of her carnal torture.
It is better, this way he can't let himself lose control again. He knows he's hurt her, he knows he's too rough and... well, she would call him "passionate". Gabriel believed he was tipping further into madness. But it was different from the mania he had experienced upon his return from that wretched place.
And though he hadn't outwardly said it, he did think less and less of that hell the longer he remained intertwined with her.
Intertwined... let's face it, Gabe, you're fucking a crewman...
He couldn't find it in him to care, though. Michael had brought an absurd reconciliation to his life.
After nine months of loneliness, coldness, isolation and psychological torture he felt the first beginnings of a rebirth. And it had all begun with the healing hands of Michael Burnham.
Gabriel feels her climb up to his lap, her nude form covering his own as the darkness of his quarters turns their flesh into a unified tone.
Once inside her again he's already so close, nearly at the pinnacle of ecstasy. He can barely stand it but he forces himself to stay in control of himself; he can't hurt her again, he won't. But she encourages that side of him, the earthy male conqueror.
Why can't you be both?
"I want you," Gabriel finds himself saying, her eyes glued to his.
"You have me." She says, bringing her lips within centimeters of his mouth, her tongue snaking out against his lips and he wraps his arms around her waist.
"No... I want you."
Through the haze of a lust filled brain, the musky scent of sex in the air, his double meaning hits Michael in her heart. The implication of being more than what they already were to one another frightened her more than a Klingon boarding party.
"Stop." She raises a hand, squirming it in between their sweaty bodies. His head falls to her neck, licking and kissing her as she attempts to force him from her.
"No." His reply is a raspy hiss in the dark, grating sand against concrete. This was meant to be a simple, easy thing. A way to distract him from the boundless rage within him. She had only meant to use herself as a conduit for that fury, a way for him to connect without hurting himself or others in the process.
Michael had never planned for him to lose his heart to her... nor had she planned to grow to care for him in ways she couldn't comprehend.
She felt trapped with and without him; seeded by him, planted and removed from everything she had ever known. Of all the dismal and bittersweet pills she had had to swallow in her life choking down the astringent medicine that would heal her of his power over her was not one she was ready to take.
And yet she couldn't give in any further than she already had. It was too upsetting, too many things could go wrong. But she wanted him with her as he was in her mind at all times.
Was he eating? Was he happy? Was he healing...? Was he... loved?
"I can't." Michael shakes her head but their fucking doesn't end there, he won't let it. He'll convince her, he has to. He needs her more than she realizes. Little does he know of the doomsday that is reaking havoc on her own mind.
"Tomorrow. Then it ends." He finally blurts out, unsure of where such a thought came from. Perhaps it came from the want to do whatever it was she asked of him. He was at her feet, cruficified before her, willing to take anything she was willing to give or take from him.
"Tomorrow." She says, though her watering eyes tell a different story.
As if they couldn't be anymore connected he refuses to let her look away as he slams himself into her body again and again. Her vessel is his and he is hers. He had wondered briefly after the first tryst if anything between Michael and his counterpart had taken place... but her reactions to his manipulations of her body told an entirely different story.
She wasn't a virgin but she was ignorant of other things; so much so that he was still surprised by her reactions. Innocent to the ways in which he could get her off without even being inside her, discovering how timid she was behind closed doors when on the bridge she commanded respect.
In Gabriel's quarters, he stripped her not only her clothing but her dignity and she had willingly allowed him to. But as much control and power he had over her she in turn held his life in her hands. He felt small compared to her, weaker. She brought forth from within him his most base desires.
Who was this strange creature to awaken something so primitive?
"I'm close." The words flit from her lips like the tightening of a noose, he feel every inch of her soul. He doesn't want to ever stop but knows the time is drawing near. He nails are like talons sharpening themselves on the meat of his bones.
Tomorrow they had said.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day;
To the last syllable of recorded time...
"Cum for me." He manages before the inevitable bow breaks and she's reached her summit and entered into the kingdom of heaven. He follows and he falls.