Baby, can't you see
I'm calling
A guy like you should wear a warning
It's dangerous
I'm falling
There's no escape
I can't wait
I need a hit
Baby, give me it
You're dangerous
I'm loving it
She finds him, as she knew she would, alone in his laboratory, working on another 'upgrade.'
"You should not be here," he observes hearing the door slide open to admit her. "It is late. You are sacrificing your rest and the well-being of your child."
"Our child," she corrects. "Our child. She's awake, so I'm awake. What are you working on?"
He turns toward her, and she sees the green-glowing implant where his left eye should be. "Borg tech? Must you? After they took so much from us?"
"This implant improves my general visual acuity by seventy-three percent," he responds coldly, as if he is reporting to a commanding officer. "If I engage the night vision option, it allows for near-perfect clarity in pitch-black situations."
"Data," she reminds him gently. "The battle is over. The good guys won. Do you expect to need that implant while we're on leave?"
"They took Lal," he says, bitterness coloring his voice. "They took her and rebuilt her as one of them, and I could not save her. They took the captain, and I did not prevent that either."
"You gave him a dignified death, in the end." She walks across the floor, careful not to step on any of the discarded parts or bits of metal. She should have put shoes on – or at least slippers - before coming into this room. "You and Will and Geordi stopped the incursion. The Empire is safe because of you."
He rips the eye-piece from his face and replaces his own amber eye. She watches as he presses the skin closed, allows it to reform into his customary smooth visage. The tears flow as soon as he lowers his hands.
"I have tried for so long to be human, Zoe, and in the end, I failed… I failed to save Lal or the captain, or any of the others, because I was not enough of a machine or enough of a man."
Too high
Can't come down
Losin' my head
Spinnin' 'round and 'round
Do you feel me now?
This is an old refrain from him, heard often when his brooding devolves into attempted upgrades. He mastered emotions only to find the darker ones constantly eating at him: depression, loss, survivor's guilt.
She arrives at his side and wraps herself around him. "It is not your fault, Data. You are not a failure. You are enough." She repeats these things to him, over and over, but his hands are still clenched around the optical implant. His fingers make divots in the casing.
"I love you," she tells him.
His hands relax. The implant clatters to the table.
He turns away from the collection of parts, and pulls her close, tucking her against his body, under her chin. "I cannot allow them to take you or your child."
"Our child," she reminds him, stressing the word.
"Our child," he repeats, and she hears the note of wonder in his tone.
She relaxes against him. This isn't one of the nights he will find himself lacking because he couldn't sire this much-wanted baby, that he will accuse her of still having feelings for the person who was willing to donate sperm, so this life could be created.
It won't be the night he urges her to go back to her mother's home on Earth and live the life the Prime Minister's daughter deserves.
It won't be the night that she refuses to leave him again.
"You need rest," Data tells her, setting her away from himself so he can place his hand on the curve of her belly and gauge the status of the baby within. "She is sleeping."
"Come with me?" she asks.
"Yes."
She starts for the door, feeling his heavier footsteps behind her, but when her nightgown catches on a discarded piece of tech, he whisks her off her feet.
"You don't have to…" she begins.
"Let me," he asks. "Please, let me do this."
She hears the need in his tone. She understands what he's asking: Let me use my android strength to protect the woman I love. She links her hands behind his head and rests her head against his shoulder. "Thank you."
Oh,
The taste of your lips
I'm on a ride
You're toxic I'm slippin' under
With a taste of a poison paradise
I'm addicted to you
Don't you know that you're toxic?
And I love what you do
Don't you know that you're toxic?
He places her on her side of their rumpled bed then sits on the opposite side to remove his boots. Still sitting, he strips off his shirt.
She moves closer, caresses his bare shoulders, his rigid back. She places a kiss on the back of his neck and breathes into his hair. "I love you," she tells him. "I will always love you."
"I do not deserve you," he says. "Zoe, how can you…?"
"Shh, love. It's not about deserving. It's about belonging. I belong with you. We belong together." The words are his, spoken when he was a young officer, and she was a cadet on her first tour. Before the Emperor died. Before darkness took the Empire down a path of treachery. Before the Borg came and decimated the population. Before grief and loss galvanized a new peace.
"We fit," he says, echoing her words from the same time.
"I apologize for worrying you."
"You only do it because you care."
"That is true."
She kisses his shoulder. "Show me," she urges. "Show me how well we fit."
"I do not wish to harm yo – our child."
Her laughter is a trill into his ear, but he does not pull away. "You won't. We just have to do it spooning."
He makes haste in stripping off the rest of his clothing, and then in pulling off her nightshirt. Lying on his side, he forms a chair from his bent knees, and she settles into it, smiling as his arm drapes over her to cup her breast. "Is this acceptable, Zoe?"
"More than. Don't stop."
He doesn't.
She has the sense that he's burying himself in his body – his face is nestled into her hair, and his cock presses into her in that sweet, satisfying way she loves so much. They have always connected well this way – without words – as they do in conversation.
He's gentler than he would be if she wasn't pregnant – no – more careful- but still thorough, and when her climax begins, he triggers his own, pulling her closer as she murmurs his name into their darkened room. "Data…."
Sticky, satisfied, she turns in his arm, and finds his mouth with hers, pushing all her love for him, all her trust, into his mouth with her kiss.
"My Zoe," he says softly, that same note of wonder in his tone.
"My Data," she responds.
He is still holding her when she falls asleep.
It's getting late
To give you up
I took a sip
From my devil's cup
Slowly, it's taking over me
Too high
Can't come down
It's in the air and it's all around
Can you feel me now?
Morning finds her alone in their bed, but she can smell coffee. She knows it's decaf – she's been off caffeine since the test came back positive – but he made it for her, so she'll drink it anyway.
She dresses in comfortable clothes – one of his old t-shirts, a pair of sweat pants, her favorite sneakers – and goes to find him.
The laboratory door is closed. He's on the patio with his brush and palette, a stretched canvas resting on his easel. She lingers, watching him paint – every stroke as sure as if he were following a sketch.
He never paints from sketches.
She pours her coffee into a favorite mug, adds cream, and brings it out to the patio.
"Morning," she greets him.
"I hoped you would sleep longer."
"If that were true, you wouldn't have brewed coffee."
"My dark periods are getting worse," he says, without preamble. "I spoke with the counselor this morning. She believes I will 'mellow out' once the baby is born."
"She's probably right," she tells him. "Deanna usually is, about these things. How's Worf?"
"He said that between managing a two-year-old and running the Klingon government, the two-year-old is the more challenging task."
She laughs at that. "Sounds just like him."
"Why do you stay with me?"
"Aside from the fact that we're having a baby together?"
"Aside from that."
"I've loved you since I was eighteen, Data, and we've been together for ten years. Maybe I'm just used to you, or maybe I'm afraid of what would happen if you were alone. Maybe you're my addiction. Maybe it's all those things. Maybe it's because I know you the way no one else does, and I know how to walk with you through the darkness. And maybe it's because I can't imagine being anywhere else, with anyone else."
"I am toxic, Zoe."
"Maybe we all are."
"Hmh."
She smiles at his nonverbal noise. He isn't conceding anything, but neither is he pressing her for more specifics or better reasons.
"Maybe," he says, "it is simply that we belong to one another."
She decides to let him have the last word on that subject. She drains her mug and sets it on the patio table then moves closer to see what he's painting.
He sets down the brush as she approaches and reaches to pull her close to his side.
The painting is of her, nude, pregnant, lying on her side, and of him, curled around her, one hand underneath her breast, the other curved protectively around her belly. He chose an impressionistic style, rather than going for photo-realism, and the work knocks the breath out of her.
"Oh… Data."
"I love you too," he says.
Oh,
Taste of your lips
I'm on a ride
You're toxic I'm slippin' under
With the taste of a poison paradise
I'm addicted to you
Don't you know that you're toxic?
And I love what you do
Don't you know that you're toxic?
She knows it's only a matter of time until she finds him in the workroom again, experimenting with upgrades, trying to make himself invincible.
She knows that life with an android who experiences depression is never going to be easy.
She can't conceive of any other way to live.
I'm addicted to you
Don't you know that you're toxic?
Notes: The third version of the Mirror CrushVerse. This is NOT inspired by Britney Spears' song "Toxic," which was written by Christian Karlsson & Pontus Winnberg (aka Bloodshy & Avant). Rather, it's inspired by the Postmodern Jukebox cover of "Toxic" which presents it as a 1930's torch song. It's on youtube. Highly recommend.