How did that ancient song from the classical music archives go? You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone?
It’s that one line running on nagging refrain in the back of Christopher Pike’s head as he sits by Marie Batel’s bedside at the med center in Starbase 1. He can’t always be there, but he comes by as often as he can.
The Enterprise is a skeleton crew on restless standby, Federation scouts searching for signs of the Gorn fleet, sensors pinging throughout all quadrants. He doesn’t know where the hell his abducted crew is, and he’s feeling helpless and furious at not being able to do anything. He can’t do anything here, either, but at least doctors and surgeons have been pouring research into her body in stasis. It’s their first time retrieving someone so quickly from Gorn infestation, their first time getting them into stasis and able to study the egg implantation, and they’re confident they’ll be able to save her —
But, still.
He’s practically pacing a groove into the floor as the weeks crawl onwards. The doctors undertake robotic surgery: specialised phasers and lasers and controlled bursts of radiation and sonic waves hammering into her arm, trying to burn out those eggs, practically ripping them out of her veins. Her arm is wrapped in gauze and the skin has been regrown, but it’s still going to ache like hell when she wakes up (if she wakes up—).
The doctors have pronounced Marie Batel’s vitals stable and fine, but Chris is still sitting in a chair in the med bay, chin propped in his hand, half-dozing as he waits for her to eventually wake. The five o’clock shadow has grown in again, that grey beard coming in a little unkempt, an uneasy throwback to his forced downtime on Earth.
She’s one of the only people who had seen him like that.
Batel had expected to die. She knew what was going to happen, the moment she was infected, and she knew she was going to die. In probably one of the worst ways possible. But she knew that, and she’d had a PLAN. It had gotten harder, once Chris had shown up; he’d COME for her. That only made her more determined. She had to protect him too.
Sacrificing herself for her people, and for the man she loved and his people, well, it was an easy decision. Only he never gave up. He REFUSED to give up. On her, on everything. Even once he’d realised she was infected. He’d been as determined as she had been. And his crew had managed to anticipate her plan without even being on the planet, even as she’d adapted it once Lieutenant Scott had provided a way to hide from the Gorn.
When Chapel had sedated her, she wasn’t sure she’d ever wake up again, had made sure that she wouldn’t, if it was too dangerous. Had made Chapel promise. She wouldn’t endanger Chris or his crew. Everything that had come after, she was unaware. Unconscious.
She surfaces slowly. Distantly. And the first thing that begins to cut through the nothingness that is heavy sedation following extended time in stasis is pain. Her arm, the one that had been incubating the Gorn eggs, feels like it’s on fire, almost, the throbbing ache almost too much to bear, even now, as distant and foggy as it feels. (Though it’s been a bit since she’s been aware of feeling anything.)
The fingers on her injured hand flex and curl weakly, her brow furrowing just slightly as she continues the gradual rise to wakefulness, a soft, pained, groggy noise slipping from her throat.
That little noise — the first thing which doesn’t sound anything like a steady rhythmic electric beep — is like an electric jolt to his spine, suddenly rocketing him out of his drowse. He’s fumbling, almost falling out of his chair, then scooting it closer to her bedside and blinking the exhaustion out of his eyes.
He’s has always been affable, likeable, extraordinarily good at bonding with his crew, but at the end of the day he’s still Captain Pike around them. Still carries some instinctive authority and well-groomed distinguishment, even when he’s milling around in an apron and cooking them dinner. But around a certain few— around Una, and Marie—
He’s just a man named Chris, and now Chris has reached for Marie’s uninjured hand, his fingers pressing into her palm, her wrist. There’s a faint haggard desperation carved into his face and his gaze as he takes her in, assessing her state, looking for signs of consciousness.
Chris. His voice, the press of his fingers against her skin. Little lifelines, drawing her back to the surface. Fingers press against her skin, and she curls her fingers around his, instinctively. Holding onto him as she struggles through the lingering sedatives in her system, heartrate and breathing rising. Her last memory was…
She wakes with a ragged gasp, eyes fluttering open. Is she – she has to be, she’s alive and breathing and they know all too well that the Gorn don’t leave their incubators that way, but there’s still that moment of panic as she’s in that moment between sleep and being fully awake. She makes another pained sound,
“Chris?” Marie’s groggy, and still struggling to wake up, but she’s awake enough to be aware and blinking up at him, even if she’s not quite to the being fully focused and coherent point.
“You’re good. You’re okay. You’re here. I’m here.” It’s an uncontrollable slew of words tripping off his tongue, all his usual composure swept right out the window in the effort to give assurance. His grip tightens around hers.
But Starfleet’s alerting systems are quick and so are their medics, and the moment she started to wake up, the monitor had already flagged the patient for review; a moment later, a blue-clad doctor sweeps in and tries to bustle Chris to the side. With a grasp like an iron vise, the captain stubbornly refuses to move, so the other man finally has to roll his eyes and take up position on the other side of the bed, flicking through notes on his PADD and taking a quick review of her injured arm.
“Give us your full name and rank, please,” the doctor says to her, his voice gruff, with a faint Earth-southern drawl.
Chris waits by the side, anxious, Marie’s hand still clasped in his. He could butt in — and very nearly does so — but common sense thankfully prevails. If he can trust M’benga to do his job, he’ll just have to trust this Starbase doctor to do the same. Having picked up on the way the captain’s practically vibrating out of his seat, the doctor glances over, weary.
“Take it easy, Pike. Just a quick cognitive checkup and then I’ll be leavin’ her to rest.”
His words set to ease the panic and worry that are niggling at her, and Marie wants nothing more than to fling herself at him, to hug him as tightly as she can, but she doesn’t have the energy to do more than clutch tightly at his hand and manage a smile as her breathing starts to ease.
She’s able to relax just in time for a doctor to come over and check on her. He tries to move Chris out of the way, but he refuses. Which makes the doctor roll his eyes and move to her other side. She’d laugh if she didn’t feel so awful.
“Marie Batel, Captain,” she answers, still a little groggy and trying very hard to ignore the ache in her chest as she says her rank. The Cayuga. Her ship. Her people. How many of them had survived? She needs to... focus on something else. Which at the moment means the doctor and his questions. She’ll answer them easily, even if she sounds tired as hell when she does. Aware of just how Chris is practically vibrating out of his seat. She’s not the only one, because the doctor glances over at him, and tries to reassure him.
“I’m okay, Chris,” she tells him quietly, giving his hand a little squeeze. Trying to reassure him, too. And maybe she’s trying to reassure herself, too. She knows, they both know, just how close a call it was for her.
Chris hadn’t even realised how his pulse was leaping in erratic jolts, fit to burst out of his chest from sheer anxiety; because after everything, after the loss of their crews, he needed this one thing to go right, needed this one woman in particular to not be torn away from him. Even now, he can’t quite believe it. Even having monitored her progress and having been CC’ed on all the reports from the doctors and the first post-op messages, it seems miraculous that she’s still here, alive, breathing, and not a host for newborn Gorn ripping their way out of her. Chapel didn’t have to press that needle to her vein and kill her in her sleep.
Christ, how close they came.
The doctor continues to bustle around. Flicks a handheld light on, shines it into Marie’s eyes, watches the dilation of her pupils, makes a thoughtful clucking noise against his teeth. Then he undoes part of the wrapping on her arm, and examines the skin beneath. And then the other two — patient and visitor — are craning their heads, also trying to catch a glimpse of how the site looks.
“How does it feel?” Chris asks her, and the doctor shoots him another look. Stepping on toes, cap.
Marie knows how awful it looked when they beamed back onboard the Enterprise, before Christine had sedated her to begin the attempt to save her. She’s not sure she wants to know what it looks like now. It has to look better, she’s pretty sure. But there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to know. She can’t help but try to look, though.
Chris distracts her with his question, and she opens her mouth to answer him even as the doctor shoots him a look, a hundred different answers running through her head.
I’m about to climb out of this bed from the pain.
It feels like my skin was torn off and regrown.
I’m pretty sure I can tell my heartbeat from the throbbing.
Instead she just… winces a little. “Hurts like hell.” But she’s alive to be here with him to feel it. So. It’s worth it. More than worth it. And maybe they were able to learn more from her about the Gorn and their incubation, their biology, on top of that. She hopes so.
Chris can barely remain in his seat — not looking much like a captain, not one of Starfleet’s best and brightest, instead now just any other hospital visitor anxious about their loved one — but eventually, the medic finishes his review. Tells Captain Batel not to overdo it, and that for a while she’ll need to return each day for a checkup and there’ll be a debrief, additional study, additional monitoring; but she can be discharged. She can go continue her convalescence somewhere more comfortable, not this clinical white infirmary, not meant for living.
Chris is instantly by her side again, drinking in the sight of her, even frayed and haggard as she is. “You feeling up for a little walk? I’ve been staying in an officer’s suite, it’s—”
This is too public in front of the doctor, his shoulderblades crawl at the prospect of saying something so openly, but his jaw sets. Decides not to worry about it. It’s pretty obvious that they’re attached, and he’d already sung about it in front of his entire crew, so that particular goose is cooked —
“You can stay with me, if you don’t mind the company.”
The doctor’s words are a relief. She hasn’t been awake very long and she already wants out of this infirmary. She needs out of this infirmary. (She needs to be doing something, is what she needs. But that seems to be a ways off, given that she’s going to need to come back in daily for a while. So she’ll settle for out of the infirmary.)
She can’t help but look at Chris in surprise. Only a little; it is… very public, and other than their song they’ve never said anything so… openly. About the two of them. She thinks the musical number probably makes up for that, though. Several times over. A little hard to pretend they’re not… attached, now. She hadn’t heard the end of it, from her crew, after the whole thing was over. (And how much of her crew is even left to tease her about their little musical moment in front of them? She’d give anything to hear the jokes again.)
His words are music to her ears, and despite how exhausted and frayed she is, she can’t help the little grin that blossoms to life on her face. She nods. “I can manage a little walk, I think. And I never mind your company.”
There’s something almost sheepishly boyish about Chris’ expression, self-conscious — talking to the girl he clearly likes in front of another professional colleague! oh god! — but his mouth quirks into a beaming, pleased smile regardless. He holds out a hand and helps her slowly slide out of the bed, waiting as she shoves her feet into slippers. The medics had dressed her in an anonymous but comfortable jumpsuit, colourless; standard fare for patients.
Then it’s arched eyebrows and a silent look shot in the doctor’s direction, the hint of say anything about this and I’ll stuff you in the airlock, but the doctor clearly doesn’t care. He gives them a tilt of a shoulder, a shrug, and then they’re dismissed.
Chris extends the gentlemanly crook of an arm for Marie to loop her own through, to lean her weight against him, and then they walk out together into the sleek clean hallways of the starbase. He doesn’t need to summon the glow of base directions to point the way; he’s walked this path often enough, day in and day out, to come wait by her bedside.
There are so many things he wants to say, a more dramatic greeting he wants to give, wants to sweep her up in his arms, but— it’s nothing he can do in public, since the hallways are even more exposed than the infirmary, where they were in front of only one other person. They’ll just have to survive the next few minutes. But he gives her arm a reassuring squeeze, a brief promise, as he leads the way towards his living quarters. Away from the medical wing with all its terrible associations: sleepless worry, fretful waiting.
“I am so,” he says quietly, “so glad you’re okay.”
There’s a moment, as Marie is looking up at him, the start of a beard growing in again, sheepish and boyish and smiling, and her heart just… lurches in her chest as the realisation of just how much she loves him dawns on her. It almost takes her breath away, as she reaches out and takes his hand, as she stuffs her feet into a pair of slippers. (At this point she’d walk barefoot through the halls if it meant she got to leave.) She’s frustratingly weak as she finally, finally is allowed to get out of bed, to get to her feet, but it’s such a relief to get out of the stupid bed she almost doesn’t care.
She slides her good arm through his, and leans her weight against him. More than she would like. But there’s no avoiding it, if she wants to get out of the infirmary. She’s painfully aware of how exposed the hallways are, and how heavily she’s relying on him to stay standing as he leads the way to his living quarters.
The urge to kiss him, to fling her arms around him and hug him as tightly as she can is intense, but she sits on it. That will keep until they reach his quarters. Until they’re alone. Instead it’s her turn to squeeze his arm gently, as she tilts her head to give him a reassuring smile. “Me too.”
Starfleet could easily have provided mobility aids, but Chris is more than happy to provide instead: to be that steadying rock, that foundation for her to stand on. Even with her weak and shaky, they make for a dignified pair walking down the halls. After everything they’ve been through, after how close she’d come, there’s absolutely no way he’s leaving her on her own to make her way alone through the base, to stay by herself in some soulless hotel room.
They eventually reach the large sprawling temporary quarters he’s been assigned, and the door slides open for them. It’s not as cozy and lived-in as the captain’s quarters back on Enterprise, but it has a kitchenette, is the most important part — he always requests it specially whenever he’s on somewhat extended leave. His civilian jacket is slung over a chair, and there’s a stocked bar, a couple ancient real-paper books on the bedside table, and the background windows are tuned to the same fake forested backdrop Chris tends to favour.
The moment the door’s closed and they finally — finally — have some precious privacy, his hand slides to the small of Marie’s back and he’s hauling her closer to him, his other hand reaching up to catch her face in a kiss. It’s not the same frantic desperation which had flung him into her arms on Parnassus Beta, but there is still desperation and relief beneath it: a harder kiss than usual, more passionate than the quiet domesticity they’d once settled into (and which he had, frankly, taken for granted).
It’s a relief when they finally reach where he’s been staying during her time in the infirmary, her time unconscious and in stasis. Partially because she’s weak, and shaky, and her arm is still throbbing… but mostly it’s because she’s tired of being in public in any way, shape, or form. She just wants to curl up with no one’s company save Chris’.
That his temporary quarters have a kitchenette comes as no surprise to Marie and she’s going to tease him about it, when the door closes behind them and his hand is warm on the small of her back through the medical jumpsuit as he hauls her closer to him and he’s kissing her the way she’s wanted since they left the infirmary. Harder than usual, more passionate, and it warms her down to her toes. Her hand, the injured one, settles lightly on his hip and her other comes up to cradle his stubbled jaw as she sighs into his lips and kisses him back. Just as desperate, and just as relieved.
Chris is careful to not bump into her injured arm; he might be a reckless wildcard at times, but he’s all kid gloves when it comes to avoiding hurting Marie. (At least, physically. At least, more than he already had when fucking up their relationship.) So he steers clear of her arm, grasping at her face instead, the angles of her jaw, the nape of her neck and the tangled coil of her hair as they deepen the kiss.
Somewhere during that headlong crash into each other, he bumps into the door and it starts to obligingly open again. “Oh, shit,” he mutters, then waves frantically at it to close it again, before he presses the button to lock it properly.
And then his attention’s back on Marie. He runs his thumb across the line of her cheekbone, tracing the corner of her mouth. She looks more drawn and wan than she used to, the marks of her hospital stay still on her, but there’s a radiant buoyant happiness and relief bubbling up in both of them.
After everything, after Parnassus Beta, and the Gorn, and nearly dying… there’s something so grounding about the careful way he avoids jostling her injured arm, how he kisses her, the warmth of his hands on her face, chasing away the chill of the infirmary and the horror of what had almost happened.
Then he’s muttering a curse as he bumps the door and it starts opening again and it pulls a laugh out of her as he closes it again and locks it. That she could have lost this, lost him… Left him alone…
His hands are back on her face, and she doesn’t want him to stop. Doesn’t want him to ever stop. (They will, they’ll have to leave eventually. She has daily checkups and they’re not going to be quite so blatant in front of others. But for the rest of the night. And however much of tomorrow they can manage. That’ll do.) She can’t help but tip her head into his touch.
There had always been that skittish fear wedged beneath his ribcage, that he shouldn’t inflict her with this relationship when he knew he was going to die; and yet somewhere in all that, he’d never stopped to consider the prospect of her death until it stared him right in the face. Until it was Marie in that nightmare of a colony, looking at him steady and level, accepting her own fate, and he realised suddenly that he didn’t want to accept it for her.
Gazing at her, then, he starts overcompensating, words tripping loose on his tongue and seesawing into tangents: “Whatever you need, Marie. I can cook something if you have an appetite? If you just wanna sleep, my bed’s just over there. I’m sorry I didn’t— I do want to go on vacation with you, I want to figure this out, I just—”
Chris can be so eloquent and well-spoken in front of a crew and his subordinates — motivational speeches are his specialty — but something in him just crumbles in front of her, the composure bleeding away. She’s already seen him at his worst. When he’d been an inch away from a grizzled unshaven hermit, she was the person he let past those doors and to stay with him in Montana.
How absolutely, utterly stupid of him, to squander this.
“I mean, that’s a discussion for later. Obviously. But I’m just saying. Whatever you need, I’ll give it to you. Gorn eggs have a way of reorienting your priorities, I think.”
Her heart gives another giddy lurch in her chest, and she reaches up with her uninjured arm to cradle his face with her hand again.
“We’ll figure it out,” she tells him, suddenly certain that they will. That they can. If she can survive something that should have been a death sentence, they can figure out… this. Them. She wants to. Needs to. Almost dying has made a few things crystal clear. And she doesn’t want to waste a second chance she could have easily never gotten.
“I don’t think I care about vacations anymore. I just want this. You. Us.” That’s all she wants. She could have died and she doesn’t want to lose him again. She gives him a slightly sheepish smile. “They do. They really do.” If they do go on vacation somewhere, they can find something that works for both of them. All that matters is spending time together. “I don’t know if I have much of an appetite, but I should probably eat something anyway.” She’s not sure if her stomach is entirely settled, but it seems like something she should try. At least in a bit.
“Mostly I’d like to just stay in your arms a while.” She could probably sleep, shes weak, and shaky, and exhausted, but she’s been unconscious and doesn’t really feel like revisiting that just yet. Even if it’d be voluntary rather than sedation, this time.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
post-s2, spoilers abound.
It’s that one line running on nagging refrain in the back of Christopher Pike’s head as he sits by Marie Batel’s bedside at the med center in Starbase 1. He can’t always be there, but he comes by as often as he can.
The Enterprise is a skeleton crew on restless standby, Federation scouts searching for signs of the Gorn fleet, sensors pinging throughout all quadrants. He doesn’t know where the hell his abducted crew is, and he’s feeling helpless and furious at not being able to do anything. He can’t do anything here, either, but at least doctors and surgeons have been pouring research into her body in stasis. It’s their first time retrieving someone so quickly from Gorn infestation, their first time getting them into stasis and able to study the egg implantation, and they’re confident they’ll be able to save her —
But, still.
He’s practically pacing a groove into the floor as the weeks crawl onwards. The doctors undertake robotic surgery: specialised phasers and lasers and controlled bursts of radiation and sonic waves hammering into her arm, trying to burn out those eggs, practically ripping them out of her veins. Her arm is wrapped in gauze and the skin has been regrown, but it’s still going to ache like hell when she wakes up (if she wakes up—).
The doctors have pronounced Marie Batel’s vitals stable and fine, but Chris is still sitting in a chair in the med bay, chin propped in his hand, half-dozing as he waits for her to eventually wake. The five o’clock shadow has grown in again, that grey beard coming in a little unkempt, an uneasy throwback to his forced downtime on Earth.
She’s one of the only people who had seen him like that.
You don’t know what you got, etc.
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Sacrificing herself for her people, and for the man she loved and his people, well, it was an easy decision. Only he never gave up. He REFUSED to give up. On her, on everything. Even once he’d realised she was infected. He’d been as determined as she had been. And his crew had managed to anticipate her plan without even being on the planet, even as she’d adapted it once Lieutenant Scott had provided a way to hide from the Gorn.
When Chapel had sedated her, she wasn’t sure she’d ever wake up again, had made sure that she wouldn’t, if it was too dangerous. Had made Chapel promise. She wouldn’t endanger Chris or his crew. Everything that had come after, she was unaware. Unconscious.
She surfaces slowly. Distantly. And the first thing that begins to cut through the nothingness that is heavy sedation following extended time in stasis is pain. Her arm, the one that had been incubating the Gorn eggs, feels like it’s on fire, almost, the throbbing ache almost too much to bear, even now, as distant and foggy as it feels. (Though it’s been a bit since she’s been aware of feeling anything.)
The fingers on her injured hand flex and curl weakly, her brow furrowing just slightly as she continues the gradual rise to wakefulness, a soft, pained, groggy noise slipping from her throat.
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He’s has always been affable, likeable, extraordinarily good at bonding with his crew, but at the end of the day he’s still Captain Pike around them. Still carries some instinctive authority and well-groomed distinguishment, even when he’s milling around in an apron and cooking them dinner. But around a certain few— around Una, and Marie—
He’s just a man named Chris, and now Chris has reached for Marie’s uninjured hand, his fingers pressing into her palm, her wrist. There’s a faint haggard desperation carved into his face and his gaze as he takes her in, assessing her state, looking for signs of consciousness.
“Marie?”
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She wakes with a ragged gasp, eyes fluttering open. Is she – she has to be, she’s alive and breathing and they know all too well that the Gorn don’t leave their incubators that way, but there’s still that moment of panic as she’s in that moment between sleep and being fully awake. She makes another pained sound,
“Chris?” Marie’s groggy, and still struggling to wake up, but she’s awake enough to be aware and blinking up at him, even if she’s not quite to the being fully focused and coherent point.
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But Starfleet’s alerting systems are quick and so are their medics, and the moment she started to wake up, the monitor had already flagged the patient for review; a moment later, a blue-clad doctor sweeps in and tries to bustle Chris to the side. With a grasp like an iron vise, the captain stubbornly refuses to move, so the other man finally has to roll his eyes and take up position on the other side of the bed, flicking through notes on his PADD and taking a quick review of her injured arm.
“Give us your full name and rank, please,” the doctor says to her, his voice gruff, with a faint Earth-southern drawl.
Chris waits by the side, anxious, Marie’s hand still clasped in his. He could butt in — and very nearly does so — but common sense thankfully prevails. If he can trust M’benga to do his job, he’ll just have to trust this Starbase doctor to do the same. Having picked up on the way the captain’s practically vibrating out of his seat, the doctor glances over, weary.
“Take it easy, Pike. Just a quick cognitive checkup and then I’ll be leavin’ her to rest.”
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She’s able to relax just in time for a doctor to come over and check on her. He tries to move Chris out of the way, but he refuses. Which makes the doctor roll his eyes and move to her other side. She’d laugh if she didn’t feel so awful.
“Marie Batel, Captain,” she answers, still a little groggy and trying very hard to ignore the ache in her chest as she says her rank. The Cayuga. Her ship. Her people. How many of them had survived? She needs to... focus on something else. Which at the moment means the doctor and his questions. She’ll answer them easily, even if she sounds tired as hell when she does. Aware of just how Chris is practically vibrating out of his seat. She’s not the only one, because the doctor glances over at him, and tries to reassure him.
“I’m okay, Chris,” she tells him quietly, giving his hand a little squeeze. Trying to reassure him, too. And maybe she’s trying to reassure herself, too. She knows, they both know, just how close a call it was for her.
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Christ, how close they came.
The doctor continues to bustle around. Flicks a handheld light on, shines it into Marie’s eyes, watches the dilation of her pupils, makes a thoughtful clucking noise against his teeth. Then he undoes part of the wrapping on her arm, and examines the skin beneath. And then the other two — patient and visitor — are craning their heads, also trying to catch a glimpse of how the site looks.
“How does it feel?” Chris asks her, and the doctor shoots him another look. Stepping on toes, cap.
Chris doesn’t give a damn.
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Chris distracts her with his question, and she opens her mouth to answer him even as the doctor shoots him a look, a hundred different answers running through her head.
I’m about to climb out of this bed from the pain.
It feels like my skin was torn off and regrown.
I’m pretty sure I can tell my heartbeat from the throbbing.
Instead she just… winces a little. “Hurts like hell.” But she’s alive to be here with him to feel it. So. It’s worth it. More than worth it. And maybe they were able to learn more from her about the Gorn and their incubation, their biology, on top of that. She hopes so.
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Chris is instantly by her side again, drinking in the sight of her, even frayed and haggard as she is. “You feeling up for a little walk? I’ve been staying in an officer’s suite, it’s—”
This is too public in front of the doctor, his shoulderblades crawl at the prospect of saying something so openly, but his jaw sets. Decides not to worry about it. It’s pretty obvious that they’re attached, and he’d already sung about it in front of his entire crew, so that particular goose is cooked —
“You can stay with me, if you don’t mind the company.”
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She can’t help but look at Chris in surprise. Only a little; it is… very public, and other than their song they’ve never said anything so… openly. About the two of them. She thinks the musical number probably makes up for that, though. Several times over. A little hard to pretend they’re not… attached, now. She hadn’t heard the end of it, from her crew, after the whole thing was over. (And how much of her crew is even left to tease her about their little musical moment in front of them? She’d give anything to hear the jokes again.)
His words are music to her ears, and despite how exhausted and frayed she is, she can’t help the little grin that blossoms to life on her face. She nods. “I can manage a little walk, I think. And I never mind your company.”
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Then it’s arched eyebrows and a silent look shot in the doctor’s direction, the hint of say anything about this and I’ll stuff you in the airlock, but the doctor clearly doesn’t care. He gives them a tilt of a shoulder, a shrug, and then they’re dismissed.
Chris extends the gentlemanly crook of an arm for Marie to loop her own through, to lean her weight against him, and then they walk out together into the sleek clean hallways of the starbase. He doesn’t need to summon the glow of base directions to point the way; he’s walked this path often enough, day in and day out, to come wait by her bedside.
There are so many things he wants to say, a more dramatic greeting he wants to give, wants to sweep her up in his arms, but— it’s nothing he can do in public, since the hallways are even more exposed than the infirmary, where they were in front of only one other person. They’ll just have to survive the next few minutes. But he gives her arm a reassuring squeeze, a brief promise, as he leads the way towards his living quarters. Away from the medical wing with all its terrible associations: sleepless worry, fretful waiting.
“I am so,” he says quietly, “so glad you’re okay.”
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She slides her good arm through his, and leans her weight against him. More than she would like. But there’s no avoiding it, if she wants to get out of the infirmary. She’s painfully aware of how exposed the hallways are, and how heavily she’s relying on him to stay standing as he leads the way to his living quarters.
The urge to kiss him, to fling her arms around him and hug him as tightly as she can is intense, but she sits on it. That will keep until they reach his quarters. Until they’re alone. Instead it’s her turn to squeeze his arm gently, as she tilts her head to give him a reassuring smile. “Me too.”
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They eventually reach the large sprawling temporary quarters he’s been assigned, and the door slides open for them. It’s not as cozy and lived-in as the captain’s quarters back on Enterprise, but it has a kitchenette, is the most important part — he always requests it specially whenever he’s on somewhat extended leave. His civilian jacket is slung over a chair, and there’s a stocked bar, a couple ancient real-paper books on the bedside table, and the background windows are tuned to the same fake forested backdrop Chris tends to favour.
The moment the door’s closed and they finally — finally — have some precious privacy, his hand slides to the small of Marie’s back and he’s hauling her closer to him, his other hand reaching up to catch her face in a kiss. It’s not the same frantic desperation which had flung him into her arms on Parnassus Beta, but there is still desperation and relief beneath it: a harder kiss than usual, more passionate than the quiet domesticity they’d once settled into (and which he had, frankly, taken for granted).
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That his temporary quarters have a kitchenette comes as no surprise to Marie and she’s going to tease him about it, when the door closes behind them and his hand is warm on the small of her back through the medical jumpsuit as he hauls her closer to him and he’s kissing her the way she’s wanted since they left the infirmary. Harder than usual, more passionate, and it warms her down to her toes. Her hand, the injured one, settles lightly on his hip and her other comes up to cradle his stubbled jaw as she sighs into his lips and kisses him back. Just as desperate, and just as relieved.
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Somewhere during that headlong crash into each other, he bumps into the door and it starts to obligingly open again. “Oh, shit,” he mutters, then waves frantically at it to close it again, before he presses the button to lock it properly.
And then his attention’s back on Marie. He runs his thumb across the line of her cheekbone, tracing the corner of her mouth. She looks more drawn and wan than she used to, the marks of her hospital stay still on her, but there’s a radiant buoyant happiness and relief bubbling up in both of them.
“Hi,” he says.
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Then he’s muttering a curse as he bumps the door and it starts opening again and it pulls a laugh out of her as he closes it again and locks it. That she could have lost this, lost him… Left him alone…
His hands are back on her face, and she doesn’t want him to stop. Doesn’t want him to ever stop. (They will, they’ll have to leave eventually. She has daily checkups and they’re not going to be quite so blatant in front of others. But for the rest of the night. And however much of tomorrow they can manage. That’ll do.) She can’t help but tip her head into his touch.
Her smile absolutely lights up her face. “Hi.”
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Gazing at her, then, he starts overcompensating, words tripping loose on his tongue and seesawing into tangents: “Whatever you need, Marie. I can cook something if you have an appetite? If you just wanna sleep, my bed’s just over there. I’m sorry I didn’t— I do want to go on vacation with you, I want to figure this out, I just—”
Chris can be so eloquent and well-spoken in front of a crew and his subordinates — motivational speeches are his specialty — but something in him just crumbles in front of her, the composure bleeding away. She’s already seen him at his worst. When he’d been an inch away from a grizzled unshaven hermit, she was the person he let past those doors and to stay with him in Montana.
How absolutely, utterly stupid of him, to squander this.
“I mean, that’s a discussion for later. Obviously. But I’m just saying. Whatever you need, I’ll give it to you. Gorn eggs have a way of reorienting your priorities, I think.”
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“We’ll figure it out,” she tells him, suddenly certain that they will. That they can. If she can survive something that should have been a death sentence, they can figure out… this. Them. She wants to. Needs to. Almost dying has made a few things crystal clear. And she doesn’t want to waste a second chance she could have easily never gotten.
“I don’t think I care about vacations anymore. I just want this. You. Us.” That’s all she wants. She could have died and she doesn’t want to lose him again. She gives him a slightly sheepish smile. “They do. They really do.” If they do go on vacation somewhere, they can find something that works for both of them. All that matters is spending time together. “I don’t know if I have much of an appetite, but I should probably eat something anyway.” She’s not sure if her stomach is entirely settled, but it seems like something she should try. At least in a bit.
“Mostly I’d like to just stay in your arms a while.” She could probably sleep, shes weak, and shaky, and exhausted, but she’s been unconscious and doesn’t really feel like revisiting that just yet. Even if it’d be voluntary rather than sedation, this time.