AN: Prompt fill for webbieafan on tumblr, who wanted a Tom/Rachel based on Hozier's "Take Me To Church" and revolving around the forbidden hints of the lyrics and the couple's willingness to defy cultural norms (Navy/ recent losses.)
Not a dark!Tom fic, but, I guess, a slightly more aggressive Captain Chandler than we're used to seeing. (Just imagine that he's finally been pushed over the edge by something and he's reached a point where he just doesn't care anymore…)
Set somewhere vaguely in the near future, spoilers up to the most recent episodes.
He knows it's wrong, but then again, so does she.
It's too soon after Baltimore, after Darien, after all the shit that he and crew have gone through just to survive the first six months after this fucking virus emerged to wipe out the human race.
Tom Chandler, however, doesn't give a damn about these things.
He's more concerned with pressing Rachel Scott against the door of his cabin. He's more focused on holding her wrists above her head with his left hand while his right ghosts a tortuously slow path down her body. He's more worried about keeping her as quiet as he can while his XO sleeps in the room next door.
These are the things Tom Chandler gives a damn about.
He knows the looks he gets from the crew, suspects that most of them are fully aware of what is happening between him and Rachel. He understands why he gets frowns from Green and Foster. He recognizes the look of jealousy that crosses Tex's face whenever Tom is anywhere in the vicinity of the good doctor. He gets Mike's disproving glare every time his XO sees the two of them together on the bridge.
Tom knows he's taken the rules and regulations of the Navy, the same ones he's held dear for so many years, and essentially said 'fuck you.'
He presses closer to Rachel then and plants a kiss to the side of her neck before dragging his teeth across her pulse point. Tom smiles against her skin as she bites back a groan. He chuckles, deep and husky, as Rachel's nails dig into his shoulders and her legs wrap around his waist, her skin gloriously bare to him; most of her clothes discarded somewhere behind them…
This is his favourite way of stopping an argument.
He knows that Rachel has suffered losses too, is struggling with her own demons in the wake of Baltimore and the horrendous weeks that followed. Tom had held her while he wept for Doctor Hunter, had listened while she spoke of Michael, had been sympathetic when she admitted that she felt the loss of every single civilian and military personnel who'd been lost in the Ramsey's attack on the labs.
They're using each other as an avoidance strategy, a way of ignoring the deeper feelings and implications of their roles in the post-apocalyptic world.
He knows it.
She knows it.
Neither of them cares.
What they are doing is forbidden and dangerous and likely to end in tears (or worse.) But for once, Tom decides, as he finally pushes into Rachel and holds her roughly against the cool metal door behind her, he's going to defy what is right and good and honest and be happy.
He thinks he deserves that much.
He thinks Rachel deserves it too.