TITLE: Bone
AUTHOR: Aviatrix
RATING: PG-13 for non-explicit sex
CATEGORY: M/M slash, angst
CODES: Tu/R, and an ExpositionMan!Archer
SPOILERS: The Expanse
DISCLAIMER: Paramount's and whoever wrote the episode, not mine. I mean no harm.
SUMMARY: Trip remembers when (way back when).
x
Trip Tucker's not the type to spend his free time locked in his quarters drowning in alcohol and memories, but he feels he's more than earned it. So he sits in his uncomfortably grey Starfleet chair and nurses a bottle of gin, flipping through photographs.
He's got a head full of things he couldn't bear to forget, but that make him feel like he's being punched in the stomach every time he thinks of them. Being six years old and seeing his sister for the first time. Seventeen, and she's the only one who doesn't laugh when he says he wants to be an engineer. Twenty years old, drinking tea together after their aunt's funeral. And on and on and on, til they skip up into just glimpses of faces and flashes of dialogue, and he's not sure if it's the memories or the gin that's making his head spin.
He has a picture of Elizabeth and himself, taken when they were kids. They're on their uncle's farm, wheat fields in the distance. She's wearing a yellow sundress with orange flowers, sitting in the tire swing Uncle Jack had put up for Trip when he was five. Her head's down, watching her feet scuff in the dirt, but her smile's still visible behind her hair. Trip's standing next to her, one hand in his pocket and the other wrapped around the frayed rope. He's grinning awkwardly, adolescence unbalancing him.
Trip remembers that less than an hour after the picture was taken, she had climbed the old dead tree in front of the house, feet scraping up the bark with childhood grace. The branch that she had been standing on snapped, and she fell to the ground in a jumble of yellow cloth and tears. Her wrist was broken, and she spent the rest of the summer in a cast.
Things like that happen, sometimes.
x
"Any... remains?" he had asked Captain Archer, trying and failing to keep his voice steady.
"Trip, I... I'm sorry. Your sister, if she was there - the heat was so intense, anyone caught by it... they'd be... disintegrated."
"Disintegrated," Trip repeated, his face blank.
Archer stared at a point somewhere beyond Trip's shoulder. "I don't know what to say, Trip." He reached out in what was presumably supposed to be a comforting gesture.
Trip dodged Archer's hand. "Then don't say anything at all," he snarled.
x
He wasn't comforted then and he's not comforted now, not here, not by Malcolm Reed, who managed to land himself outside Trip's quarters with a shy half-smile and a bottle of wine, and who had (more than a little drunkenly) kissed Trip with chapped lips. He smelled like burnt conduits and dust, and Trip didn't mind at all when he was pushed against the bulkhead and stripped by trembling hands.
He's still leaning there now, one hand tangled in Malcolm's hair and the other held flat against his back, feeling the bone beneath the skin. Malcolm's mouth leaves his and kisses its way down his chest, and Trip thinks: No, not comforted at all. But maybe that's not a bad thing, though; this is probably one of those times when it's okay to not move on, okay to keep his head down and watch Malcolm sucking him off. Malcolm, who smells like burning, who's all knees and elbows and sharp shoulders, all bones and self-defence.
So he savors the bitter taste in his mouth and the tingly, achy feeling like he's caught in a transporter beam, and watches the way shadows catch in Malcolm's face. He comes with a gasp and eyes screwed shut, thinking of yellow dresses and disintegration.
AUTHOR: Aviatrix
RATING: PG-13 for non-explicit sex
CATEGORY: M/M slash, angst
CODES: Tu/R, and an ExpositionMan!Archer
SPOILERS: The Expanse
DISCLAIMER: Paramount's and whoever wrote the episode, not mine. I mean no harm.
SUMMARY: Trip remembers when (way back when).
x
Trip Tucker's not the type to spend his free time locked in his quarters drowning in alcohol and memories, but he feels he's more than earned it. So he sits in his uncomfortably grey Starfleet chair and nurses a bottle of gin, flipping through photographs.
He's got a head full of things he couldn't bear to forget, but that make him feel like he's being punched in the stomach every time he thinks of them. Being six years old and seeing his sister for the first time. Seventeen, and she's the only one who doesn't laugh when he says he wants to be an engineer. Twenty years old, drinking tea together after their aunt's funeral. And on and on and on, til they skip up into just glimpses of faces and flashes of dialogue, and he's not sure if it's the memories or the gin that's making his head spin.
He has a picture of Elizabeth and himself, taken when they were kids. They're on their uncle's farm, wheat fields in the distance. She's wearing a yellow sundress with orange flowers, sitting in the tire swing Uncle Jack had put up for Trip when he was five. Her head's down, watching her feet scuff in the dirt, but her smile's still visible behind her hair. Trip's standing next to her, one hand in his pocket and the other wrapped around the frayed rope. He's grinning awkwardly, adolescence unbalancing him.
Trip remembers that less than an hour after the picture was taken, she had climbed the old dead tree in front of the house, feet scraping up the bark with childhood grace. The branch that she had been standing on snapped, and she fell to the ground in a jumble of yellow cloth and tears. Her wrist was broken, and she spent the rest of the summer in a cast.
Things like that happen, sometimes.
x
"Any... remains?" he had asked Captain Archer, trying and failing to keep his voice steady.
"Trip, I... I'm sorry. Your sister, if she was there - the heat was so intense, anyone caught by it... they'd be... disintegrated."
"Disintegrated," Trip repeated, his face blank.
Archer stared at a point somewhere beyond Trip's shoulder. "I don't know what to say, Trip." He reached out in what was presumably supposed to be a comforting gesture.
Trip dodged Archer's hand. "Then don't say anything at all," he snarled.
x
He wasn't comforted then and he's not comforted now, not here, not by Malcolm Reed, who managed to land himself outside Trip's quarters with a shy half-smile and a bottle of wine, and who had (more than a little drunkenly) kissed Trip with chapped lips. He smelled like burnt conduits and dust, and Trip didn't mind at all when he was pushed against the bulkhead and stripped by trembling hands.
He's still leaning there now, one hand tangled in Malcolm's hair and the other held flat against his back, feeling the bone beneath the skin. Malcolm's mouth leaves his and kisses its way down his chest, and Trip thinks: No, not comforted at all. But maybe that's not a bad thing, though; this is probably one of those times when it's okay to not move on, okay to keep his head down and watch Malcolm sucking him off. Malcolm, who smells like burning, who's all knees and elbows and sharp shoulders, all bones and self-defence.
So he savors the bitter taste in his mouth and the tingly, achy feeling like he's caught in a transporter beam, and watches the way shadows catch in Malcolm's face. He comes with a gasp and eyes screwed shut, thinking of yellow dresses and disintegration.