"It's not gonna bite you."
Fred eyed the unapproved personal tablet with discomfort as it rested innocuously on the desk where she'd propped it up for easier viewing. It belonged to one Petty Officer Second Class Hempstead. It wasn't like he wasn't aware crew smuggled things they weren't supposed to aboard, but still. Warm fingers cupped his cheek and he allowed his head to be turned away from the dubious tablet.
The movie was half over when he next paid it any attention and the plot was difficult to discern. Even with his sheltered perception of social interactions, it seemed farfetched to him. He didn't say as much. Just half sat, half reclined against the wall with Khae nestled between his legs, her disheveled hair tickling his chest as she lounged back against him. She'd tugged his arm across her midsection and repeatedly squeezed it in response to rising tensions or loud noises, he figured unknowingly. He didn't mind.
When the credits began to scroll over the screen, she angled her head to peer up at him. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" She'd seemed astonished he'd never watched a film for any purpose other than to learn the finer points of battleground logistics. "Even without popcorn."
His scarred eyebrow rose and her mouth fell open.
"Really, Fred? No popcorn either?" She made it sound like a monumental tragedy. He knew what popcorn was. He'd simply never eaten it. Before he could say as much, she lurched up and off the bunk, to his disappointment.
"What are you doing?" A note of apprehension he hadn't meant to allow to snuck into the question as he watched her take up the tablet and tap its surface deftly. It did provide him an unobscured eyeful of her naked body, however. He'd started to rise at her abrupt departure from the tangled blankets, but sank back again slowly in light of this. The curve of her hip, the fading bruises over her slender wrists, the shadowed valley between her breasts, the still healing puckered skin on her shoulder from his combat knife - he could stare at them, at her, for hours and continuously find some new detail to draw his eye. Everything, every imperfection, enthralled him.
Spinning away from him to hide whatever it was she was up to caused the jagged edges of her hair to swing softly against the base of her neck. "You'll see."
He snorted at the contradiction between her actions and words. "Apparently not." He still didn't mind. She could stand there as long as she wanted if it meant he got to look his fill.
He heard her fingers make several more selections, tapping the tablet's screen, then she set it back onto the desk. "Okay, get up," she prompted him while turning back, gray eyes full of anticipation.
That was when he heard it. The music. It was coming from the tablet, quiet at first but building, with a slow tempo and a female vocalist. He didn't recognize all of the instruments, but neither had he given that sort of thing much consideration before. It wasn't what some of the ODSTs and regular enlisted blasted in the gymnasium at times - that, Fred found obnoxious. He wasn't sure what to think of this, or of the expectant way she was patiently waiting for him to do as she'd said. Sliding to the edge of the bunk, he got to his feet.
"Now, come here."
He did so.
She took both his hands, lifting them from his sides and positioning them on either side of the smallest point of her waist. "All you have to do is move when I move." Her own hands slid up his arms to his shoulders. She stepped back and he followed, maintaining the same distance she'd established between their bodies. Carefully, she maneuvered them in a tight circle in the limited floor space available in the cabin.
"Mind telling me what it is we're doing?" he had to ask, intrigued but more than a little baffled.
Her chin tilted up as she tipped her head to meet his gaze and a corner of her mouth hitched. "Dancing." She shrugged. "Or close enough to it." Her breasts flattened against his chest as she closed the gap between them. "Do you mind?"
He found he very much didn't, and something in his features must have expressed this, since she planted a kiss on his bicep before laying her head there. Her hands rounded to the back of his shoulders and she melted into him.
Fred wasn't sure this qualified as dancing, nor that his limited knowledge on the subject made him an adequate judge of such things. But he held her close and swayed in the small circles until the music faded. And then he did it some more.
She knew he was watching her in the mess hall. She knew, and she was torturing him.
Seated beside the blond Petty Officer in her usual spot, she twined strands of her dark hair around a finger while she listened to the others converse, then slowly released them as she slid her finger free. She touched her throat, her lips, ran her tongue over the lower one. Her eyes slid in his direction intermittently, coy and laughing.
It was maddening and his heart thumped wildly against his ribs, probably loud enough for John, sitting beside him, to hear - but he didn't care.
Four days. Four days before they'd reach the resupply station and part ways and he no longer cared if his teammates discovered what he'd been so poorly hiding this whole time. It didn't matter anymore. Whether he was reprimanded, pulled from active duty for reconditioning, received a black mark on his file, was ordered to undergo physical and psychological evaluation, or some combination of all, it didn't matter, and the fact that it didn't was not something he could even begin to unravel. In four days he was never going to see her again.
Would he return to normal then? Would these feelings fade over time the same way his memories of his life before the program had? Would he forget her face as well, the sensation of her smooth skin sliding against his own, her hot tears rolling down his calloused hand when he'd attempted to wipe them away, her distinctive smell, the way she breathed his name when he was buried deep inside her? The image of her sprawled in open invitation on the blankets remained vivid, but how could he - someone who couldn't recall what his own parents had looked like - be assured this information, too, wouldn't slip from his possession like sand through a closed fist? Was it inevitable? Would that be for the best? And if it was, as the rational portion of his mind was insisting, why was he dreading it?
He looked to Joh, Linda, and Kelly - all calmly ingesting their meals, untroubled by anything which was going on at any of the other tables. All poised and prepared to carry out the day's scheduled duties with confidence. Content to do so. That was how he was meant to be. What he needed to return to being.
But not for four days.
He spent hours kissing her that night, mapping every contour of her body with his mouth, searing it all into his brain. He might not always remember - not in ten or twenty or fifty years, if he lived that long - but he would review the memories daily and would not allow them to erode willingly.
"Wait!"
The lift doors were almost closed when a small yet determined hand shot between them, causing them to jolt to a halt.
Fred knew that voice. And that hand, with its neatly trimmed nails. He watched raptly as the doors slid back to reveal her. Beside him, his teammates looked on with varying degrees of interest at the unexpected delay.
Khae had no sooner stepped inside than John hit the control panel again, prompting the lift to continue to the level he had previously selected where they would return to reviewing details of their next assignment after breaking for lunch in the mess. The fact he hadn't waited for Khae to choose her own deck before doing so hinted at a certain impatience not outwardly detectable from his demeanor. Three weeks idly spent on a frigate following a partially botched mission was not sitting well with him, something Fred might have been more attuned to had he not been thoroughly distracted the entire time. Still, with only 21 hours remaining until they docked in Eridanus system, now didn't seem the time to address it.
After tapping delta deck as her stop, Khae shifted back from the once more sealing doors. "I didn't really get a chance to thank you all for helping me," she said.
So that was what this was about. Fred glanced to the others, who were once again regarding her impassively. He knew what they were thinking. That helping her hadn't been their objective, that if the mission had run smoothly and according to plan, she would have never been their problem, never even been on their radar. That her gratitude wasn't necessary. The same thoughts he might have had if not for what she had come to mean to him.
It was Kelly who responded. "Wasn't a problem." We were there to collect our teammate, was what she meant. You were just collateral.
Had they not been locked in the same area of the cruiser when the nukes had detonated, it would have never happened. She either would have been rescued by boarding teams sent over from the Point of No Return, or she wouldn't have. She might have perished.
No one said anything more.
Khae offered a tentative smile, and Kelly returned it.
Linda took in the brief exchange with characteristic stoicism and John's gaze had returned to the panel, as though he could will the lift to travel faster by mere virtue of staring at it. Hard.
The interim was as quick as the conversation had been. They reached their level, the doors opened, and John exited, followed by Linda, then Kelly.
Fred made to follow, knowing he couldn't dither, and also that he would see her again in a matter of 8 hours or so. For the last time. He shoved reality of the situation away, to be dealt with later - he needed to focus on the briefing - only for his step to hitch at the feel of her slim fingers brushing against his own as he strode past. It was a barely there touch, fleeting and gone in the matter of a fraction of a second, and he was already passing through the lift door besides with his teammates in the hallway ahead. Still, he craned his head to look back over his shoulder.
She remained where she was, that uncertain smile still affixed. Flicked her hand down by her side to discreetly wave to him. Sadness lurked in her soft gray eyes.
He spread his own fingers in an answering gesture. Looked forward again.
Just 8 hours.
It didn't go by fast enough. The minutes seemed to drag on even though he was fully aware it was his own anticipation which made it feel as such. When he reached her quarters, she didn't answer his knock. Not the first one and not the second. He'd touched the panel and the door had let him in, but she wasn't there. Everything looked normal, undisturbed. So he'd waited, assuming she'd made a trip to the lav, or the mess, or somewhere else. He'd waited for the better part of an hour, the longest he'd dared at the risk of being discovered somewhere he was very much not supposed to be, and then he'd returned to his cabin and had lain awake, straining his senses at even the suggestion of footsteps in the corridor outside or perhaps the imagination of them, convinced she would turn up.
Except she never did.