Written for a request someone gave over at LJ. Italics are lyrics from Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.
"46. Grateful: Dee/Gaeta, CIC officers aren't anything like pilots, so they confide in each other."
We'll do it all, everything, on our own /We don't need anything or anyone /
If I lay here /If I just lay here /Would you lay with me /And just forget the world/
I don't quite know how to say how I feel /Those three words are said too much /They're not enough /
The racks of the CIC officers are some of the quietest. Not like those of the Pilots and Deck Crew, where at any one moment you could find someone throwing back a few shots of Ambrosia. No, the only time the CIC racks were occupied is when someone is sleeping.
It's a quiet bunch. They talk all day in the tangled code of the Military with heads filled with protocol. They don't have the outlet of adrenaline the pilots do, or the sense of accomplishment the Deck Crew might feel when setting the ships out and keeping them in peak condition. No fancy names or earned nicknames. No, they have to sit alone with the voices in their ears and bottle their fear when the enemy arrives.
It's no surprise that they find each other then, because they are the same. It's nothing really sexual of intimate because that's not what either of them are looking for, and it's not what either of them really need. They just talk, mostly in the dark, when there's no one else in the room.
There was no talk of procedure. She didn't call him 'sir' and they didn't mention the enemy. It was all reliving their past lives, as though sharing it with another soul could somehow bring it back; make it more real, more meaningful. It was a connection, one that she couldn't ever share with Billy or Lee or anyone else.
Once, she broke apart and told him about her father and how much she missed his deep, gravely voice berating her and how she missed his roaring laugh even more than that. He showed her the dragon tattoo he got during a shore leave with little company and a lot of alcohol.
And one night, just another among all the rest, they came together in a different way. That time he talked about how he felt as though he had failed himself, only being an officer and never anything else. She talked about how she felt as though she had failed her family and now could never make it up to them. And she climbed up onto his bunk and he wrapped his arms around her, and they breathed as one. They were connected in their grief, in their failure, and in their present lives.
That next day reality settled in as the artificial dawn spread and they went back to the way things had been. But each felt a little better when talking to the voices and could fall asleep a little easier the next night, because they were grateful. Grateful for the connection, the moment and the inexplicable bit of peace it brought.