Fic: "Winning Bets"
Title: Winning Bets
Summary: Phil and Cait think Pike and One are doin' it.
Pairing: Cait/Phil; implications of Pike/One
Rating: PG-13
Content Advisory: Somewhat cracky.
Word Count: 1900
Notes: This fills the "everyone thinks they're doing it" square on my PikeOne bingo card. Also, I sliced a giant hole in my right thumb, so I'll fix typos later.
Apparently the sap of the native trees on Cyleon Beta IV, when mixed with human sweat, turned into something not entirely unlike old-school cyanoacrylate glue. So when Captain Pike and Commander One returned from the away mission with their hands stuck together, it certainly looked like they were holding hands.
Lt. Commander Caitlin Barry, Chief Engineer, happened to see them walking through the hallway, possibly hand-in-hand, and twenty or so minutes later, when she got off shift, sent a comm burst to Dr. Philip J. Boyce, CMO. >Were Pike and One holding hands?< Because if so, it was 2251.36 and that meant that . . . She checked her padd. Damn. It meant that Waldorf would win the pool.
Fortunately, ten or fifteen minutes later she got back a, >No. Glued together.<
Cait frowned at her comm unit. On one hand, Ginny Waldorf winning the pool would mean that she would be out some large number of credits. On the other hand, she really did rather think that One and Pike would be significantly happier if they’d stop pretending they didn’t want each other and just fall into bed.
Of course, if they were going to fall into bed-and there were days when she was pretty sure it was inevitable-she’d prefer that they did it between 2251.47 and 2251.59, or between 2251.103 and 2251.115, or any of the other dates she had claimed. Ensign Waldorf would be insufferable if she won.
* * *
Phil Boyce had been friends with Chris Pike for years; he’d been second in command of Sickbay when Pike was April’s XO, more years ago than he wanted to think about. When Pike had gotten his captaincy, he’d asked Phil to be his CMO, and they’d been on the Yorktown together for years. Phil rarely had trouble telling Chris when he was being an idiot-Chris usually returned the favor-but this . . . this was different.
It really wasn’t every day that one walked into the mess hall and saw the captain of one’s ship kissing the XO while she lay on her back on a table.
Phil, prior to that point, had been almost a hundred percent certain that Chris and Number One were attracted to each other; he had claimed a few sets of days in the shipwide betting pool that, of course, neither he nor Cait knew anything about. He and Cait regularly got together over martinis to discuss the situation and lament the fact that by putting money in the betting pool, they’d lost the right to tamper with the process. But he really hadn’t expected to see . . . this.
A moment or two later, Chris looked up, his face red. “Phil!” he said, as their eyes met. “Help!”
Just then Phil registered that One’s lips were blue and she wasn’t breathing. He grabbed his hypospray-no, he really didn’t ever leave home without it-and sprang into action.
Some distant part of his brain, however, reminded him that he definitely had to tell Cait about this.
* * *
Cait had her loyalties. First and foremost, the ship. Second, Starfleet. Third, her friends. Unfortunately, it was those in the category of the third section that were causing her current difficulty. Was her loyalty to protecting her best friend’s privacy greater than her loyalty to the rest of her friends?
Because in one of the null-G ball courts, it really, seriously looked like Pike and One were . . . well, having sex, pressed up against the wall. They were still dressed, Cait was pretty sure, but since it was skimpy Starfleet-issued athletic gear (and no, she wasn’t looking at Pike’s butt in those shorts-or One’s butt, for that matter), it was hard to tell. Arms and legs were definitely entwined, and it looked like Pike’s face was buried in One’s neck.
Well. It couldn’t hurt to keep some proof . . . She hacked quickly into the security cameras and grabbed a few still shots, saving them to her padd, before . . .
Oh.
Pike had pulled just far enough away for Cait to be able to see what they were actually doing, which was, of course, practicing close-quarters hand-to-hand combat in zero-G situations. Of course. He was rather clearly demonstrating a pin on One, one hand holding her hands above her head and his knees across hers. His gestures and facial expressions were clearly consistent with what Cait recognized as Captainly Lecture Mode.
Damnit.
Nonetheless, she sent the shots off to Phil, captioned: And, as it turns out, they actually were practicing wrestling moves.
Even though he didn’t reply, she thought she could hear his snort, even from several decks away.
* * *
Phil rounded the corner on Deck 5, intent on getting back to his nice warm bunk where he had been until Donhowe decided he couldn’t deal with Andorian physiology that night, and stopped short in his tracks as he caught sight of the XO apparently just having walked out of the captain’s quarters. The doors were still closing with a soft shick behind her.
He nodded at her as she walked by, and went to his own quarters, several doors down. She’d looked composed, had been wearing her uniform, but . . . it was almost 0300. What was she doing visiting Chris at this hour?
Cait was probably asleep, but he sent her a comm burst anyway. Five minutes later, he got a whistle at the console, and accepted the vidcomm message. “Tell me everything,” she demanded before the picture had fully appeared.
When it did, though, Phil almost choked. Cait had apparently been asleep, because her hair was a wild mass of waves around her head, and although he could only see her shoulders and down to just below her collarbone, she appeared to be wearing a tank top or camisole, revealing an awful lot of bare skin. Damn. He’d been fighting the fact that she was distractingly attractive for, oh, close to three years now, and the image of her on the screen right now wouldn’t disappear from his mind any time soon. Anyway. She’d asked him something. “I just got back from Sickbay,” he said, and described the scene for her.
Cait tapped at something off screen-probably a padd-and said, “Oh, my God, Phil, are you certain? Because if so, you’d win.”
“Really?” Huh.
“Yeah, really. You’d better buy me a drink with your winnings,” she said, and smiled. The smile disappeared a moment later, though. “Wait,” she said, and shifted in her chair, obviously reaching for something. He caught a brief glimpse of her chest-no, she wasn’t wearing a bra-and then her face reappeared. “Damn. She’s on gamma shift this week.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Also, now that I think about it, don’t the captain’s quarters and the XO’s quarters share a bathroom?”
“Right,” Phil said, starting to feel sheepish. “It’s three in the morning. Cut me some slack.”
“Hey, no problem,” she said. “I’d probably have done exactly the same.” She smiled at him, blindingly bright. “You can by me a drink anyway.”
He found himself returning the smile. “Sure, Cait.”
Damn, damn, damn.
* * *
“Computer, where’s Dr. Boyce?” Cait asked, as she didn’t quite run to the turbolift.
“Dr. Boyce is in his quarters,” the computer replied.
“Deck 5, then,” she said, and the turbolift moved. It was the end of beta shift, after all; she should have expected that he’d be there.
The ‘lift stopped, and once the doors opened, she checked for people in the hallway, and seeing none, decided to run. There was no point in pounding on his sound-absorbing doors, so she touched her fingers to the annunciator and jogged in place instead.
The doors opened, revealing Phil there, a moment or two later. His hair was sticking up, but more interestingly, he hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt before answering the door. “Whoa,” she said, eyes widening. “Did I know you look like that shirtless?”
He shrugged. “What’s up, Cait?”
“Can I come in? You have to see the footage from the away mission.” Although she was debating whether she should bother showing him first, or perhaps see if she could push the pajama pants just a little lower on his hips . . . Snap out of it, Cait, she thought. Business first. Then, if you’re lucky, pleasure.
“Okay,” he said, and stood aside, gesturing her inside. “Lights, fifty percent.”
His quarters, lucky dog, were large enough to afford him a couch, so she perched on the end of it and patted the seat next to her. Phil sat, gingerly, carefully keeping a good six inches between them. She tapped ‘play’ on her padd and held it out in front of them, and they watched a clip from a ceremony on the planet where Pike and One were requested to kiss by the aliens, and both shrugged, smiled warmly at each other and kissed. Not a brief peck, no; a full-length, open-mouthed, tongue-entwining kiss, complete with arms around each other and an obvious reluctance when it ended.
“If I had to guess,” he said when the clip ended, “I’d say that’s not the first time they’ve kissed.”
“You think?” she said, and grinned. “Do you think I can submit this to the pool and claim the prize?”
“Is it your day?” he asked.
“Yep! Time-stamped and everything.” Her grin grew wider.
“Well, then, you’ll have to buy me a drink with your winnings,” he said, leaning back on the couch, a half-smile on his face.
“You keep sitting around half-naked and I’ll buy you a hell of a lot more than that,” she said. Out loud. Without meaning to. Shit. Well, there was no taking it back now. It wasn’t like it wasn’t true.
“Cait,” he said, his tone half exasperated, half a warning. But the expression on his face-
She stopped thinking, just reacted, swinging her body over, straddling his lap and pressing her lips to his. After a moment, he kissed her back, angling his head, and bringing his hands up to her waist.
“Cait,” he said again, when the kiss ended. Now he sounded more as if he were pleading with her, but she couldn’t tell what he actually wanted.
Well. Not by his voice, at least. His hands were still at her waist, fingers pressing just slightly into her skin; his gaze, almost black in the darkened room, darted from her eyes to her lips and back again. And that wasn’t even mentioning . . .
Yeah, he wanted her. And she wanted him. “Phil,” she said, “shut up and kiss me.”
He shook his head and leaned in; just before he reached her lips, he said, “You only want me for my body.”
She snorted. “Yeah, and before this, I only hung around with you for your booze collection. Seriously-shut up and kiss me.”
He did.
* * *
The next morning, Chris Pike looked up as the CMO and the Chief Engineer came in together to the senior staff meeting, carefully not touching, but with nearly-identical smug looks on their faces. He greeted them, and pretended to be looking through reports on his padd as he sent a message to Number One. >Ten credits says they finally got it on last night.<
One took one look at Cait and tapped out a reply. >No bet.<
Summary: Phil and Cait think Pike and One are doin' it.
Pairing: Cait/Phil; implications of Pike/One
Rating: PG-13
Content Advisory: Somewhat cracky.
Word Count: 1900
Notes: This fills the "everyone thinks they're doing it" square on my PikeOne bingo card. Also, I sliced a giant hole in my right thumb, so I'll fix typos later.
Apparently the sap of the native trees on Cyleon Beta IV, when mixed with human sweat, turned into something not entirely unlike old-school cyanoacrylate glue. So when Captain Pike and Commander One returned from the away mission with their hands stuck together, it certainly looked like they were holding hands.
Lt. Commander Caitlin Barry, Chief Engineer, happened to see them walking through the hallway, possibly hand-in-hand, and twenty or so minutes later, when she got off shift, sent a comm burst to Dr. Philip J. Boyce, CMO. >Were Pike and One holding hands?< Because if so, it was 2251.36 and that meant that . . . She checked her padd. Damn. It meant that Waldorf would win the pool.
Fortunately, ten or fifteen minutes later she got back a, >No. Glued together.<
Cait frowned at her comm unit. On one hand, Ginny Waldorf winning the pool would mean that she would be out some large number of credits. On the other hand, she really did rather think that One and Pike would be significantly happier if they’d stop pretending they didn’t want each other and just fall into bed.
Of course, if they were going to fall into bed-and there were days when she was pretty sure it was inevitable-she’d prefer that they did it between 2251.47 and 2251.59, or between 2251.103 and 2251.115, or any of the other dates she had claimed. Ensign Waldorf would be insufferable if she won.
* * *
Phil Boyce had been friends with Chris Pike for years; he’d been second in command of Sickbay when Pike was April’s XO, more years ago than he wanted to think about. When Pike had gotten his captaincy, he’d asked Phil to be his CMO, and they’d been on the Yorktown together for years. Phil rarely had trouble telling Chris when he was being an idiot-Chris usually returned the favor-but this . . . this was different.
It really wasn’t every day that one walked into the mess hall and saw the captain of one’s ship kissing the XO while she lay on her back on a table.
Phil, prior to that point, had been almost a hundred percent certain that Chris and Number One were attracted to each other; he had claimed a few sets of days in the shipwide betting pool that, of course, neither he nor Cait knew anything about. He and Cait regularly got together over martinis to discuss the situation and lament the fact that by putting money in the betting pool, they’d lost the right to tamper with the process. But he really hadn’t expected to see . . . this.
A moment or two later, Chris looked up, his face red. “Phil!” he said, as their eyes met. “Help!”
Just then Phil registered that One’s lips were blue and she wasn’t breathing. He grabbed his hypospray-no, he really didn’t ever leave home without it-and sprang into action.
Some distant part of his brain, however, reminded him that he definitely had to tell Cait about this.
* * *
Cait had her loyalties. First and foremost, the ship. Second, Starfleet. Third, her friends. Unfortunately, it was those in the category of the third section that were causing her current difficulty. Was her loyalty to protecting her best friend’s privacy greater than her loyalty to the rest of her friends?
Because in one of the null-G ball courts, it really, seriously looked like Pike and One were . . . well, having sex, pressed up against the wall. They were still dressed, Cait was pretty sure, but since it was skimpy Starfleet-issued athletic gear (and no, she wasn’t looking at Pike’s butt in those shorts-or One’s butt, for that matter), it was hard to tell. Arms and legs were definitely entwined, and it looked like Pike’s face was buried in One’s neck.
Well. It couldn’t hurt to keep some proof . . . She hacked quickly into the security cameras and grabbed a few still shots, saving them to her padd, before . . .
Oh.
Pike had pulled just far enough away for Cait to be able to see what they were actually doing, which was, of course, practicing close-quarters hand-to-hand combat in zero-G situations. Of course. He was rather clearly demonstrating a pin on One, one hand holding her hands above her head and his knees across hers. His gestures and facial expressions were clearly consistent with what Cait recognized as Captainly Lecture Mode.
Damnit.
Nonetheless, she sent the shots off to Phil, captioned: And, as it turns out, they actually were practicing wrestling moves.
Even though he didn’t reply, she thought she could hear his snort, even from several decks away.
* * *
Phil rounded the corner on Deck 5, intent on getting back to his nice warm bunk where he had been until Donhowe decided he couldn’t deal with Andorian physiology that night, and stopped short in his tracks as he caught sight of the XO apparently just having walked out of the captain’s quarters. The doors were still closing with a soft shick behind her.
He nodded at her as she walked by, and went to his own quarters, several doors down. She’d looked composed, had been wearing her uniform, but . . . it was almost 0300. What was she doing visiting Chris at this hour?
Cait was probably asleep, but he sent her a comm burst anyway. Five minutes later, he got a whistle at the console, and accepted the vidcomm message. “Tell me everything,” she demanded before the picture had fully appeared.
When it did, though, Phil almost choked. Cait had apparently been asleep, because her hair was a wild mass of waves around her head, and although he could only see her shoulders and down to just below her collarbone, she appeared to be wearing a tank top or camisole, revealing an awful lot of bare skin. Damn. He’d been fighting the fact that she was distractingly attractive for, oh, close to three years now, and the image of her on the screen right now wouldn’t disappear from his mind any time soon. Anyway. She’d asked him something. “I just got back from Sickbay,” he said, and described the scene for her.
Cait tapped at something off screen-probably a padd-and said, “Oh, my God, Phil, are you certain? Because if so, you’d win.”
“Really?” Huh.
“Yeah, really. You’d better buy me a drink with your winnings,” she said, and smiled. The smile disappeared a moment later, though. “Wait,” she said, and shifted in her chair, obviously reaching for something. He caught a brief glimpse of her chest-no, she wasn’t wearing a bra-and then her face reappeared. “Damn. She’s on gamma shift this week.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Also, now that I think about it, don’t the captain’s quarters and the XO’s quarters share a bathroom?”
“Right,” Phil said, starting to feel sheepish. “It’s three in the morning. Cut me some slack.”
“Hey, no problem,” she said. “I’d probably have done exactly the same.” She smiled at him, blindingly bright. “You can by me a drink anyway.”
He found himself returning the smile. “Sure, Cait.”
Damn, damn, damn.
* * *
“Computer, where’s Dr. Boyce?” Cait asked, as she didn’t quite run to the turbolift.
“Dr. Boyce is in his quarters,” the computer replied.
“Deck 5, then,” she said, and the turbolift moved. It was the end of beta shift, after all; she should have expected that he’d be there.
The ‘lift stopped, and once the doors opened, she checked for people in the hallway, and seeing none, decided to run. There was no point in pounding on his sound-absorbing doors, so she touched her fingers to the annunciator and jogged in place instead.
The doors opened, revealing Phil there, a moment or two later. His hair was sticking up, but more interestingly, he hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt before answering the door. “Whoa,” she said, eyes widening. “Did I know you look like that shirtless?”
He shrugged. “What’s up, Cait?”
“Can I come in? You have to see the footage from the away mission.” Although she was debating whether she should bother showing him first, or perhaps see if she could push the pajama pants just a little lower on his hips . . . Snap out of it, Cait, she thought. Business first. Then, if you’re lucky, pleasure.
“Okay,” he said, and stood aside, gesturing her inside. “Lights, fifty percent.”
His quarters, lucky dog, were large enough to afford him a couch, so she perched on the end of it and patted the seat next to her. Phil sat, gingerly, carefully keeping a good six inches between them. She tapped ‘play’ on her padd and held it out in front of them, and they watched a clip from a ceremony on the planet where Pike and One were requested to kiss by the aliens, and both shrugged, smiled warmly at each other and kissed. Not a brief peck, no; a full-length, open-mouthed, tongue-entwining kiss, complete with arms around each other and an obvious reluctance when it ended.
“If I had to guess,” he said when the clip ended, “I’d say that’s not the first time they’ve kissed.”
“You think?” she said, and grinned. “Do you think I can submit this to the pool and claim the prize?”
“Is it your day?” he asked.
“Yep! Time-stamped and everything.” Her grin grew wider.
“Well, then, you’ll have to buy me a drink with your winnings,” he said, leaning back on the couch, a half-smile on his face.
“You keep sitting around half-naked and I’ll buy you a hell of a lot more than that,” she said. Out loud. Without meaning to. Shit. Well, there was no taking it back now. It wasn’t like it wasn’t true.
“Cait,” he said, his tone half exasperated, half a warning. But the expression on his face-
She stopped thinking, just reacted, swinging her body over, straddling his lap and pressing her lips to his. After a moment, he kissed her back, angling his head, and bringing his hands up to her waist.
“Cait,” he said again, when the kiss ended. Now he sounded more as if he were pleading with her, but she couldn’t tell what he actually wanted.
Well. Not by his voice, at least. His hands were still at her waist, fingers pressing just slightly into her skin; his gaze, almost black in the darkened room, darted from her eyes to her lips and back again. And that wasn’t even mentioning . . .
Yeah, he wanted her. And she wanted him. “Phil,” she said, “shut up and kiss me.”
He shook his head and leaned in; just before he reached her lips, he said, “You only want me for my body.”
She snorted. “Yeah, and before this, I only hung around with you for your booze collection. Seriously-shut up and kiss me.”
He did.
* * *
The next morning, Chris Pike looked up as the CMO and the Chief Engineer came in together to the senior staff meeting, carefully not touching, but with nearly-identical smug looks on their faces. He greeted them, and pretended to be looking through reports on his padd as he sent a message to Number One. >Ten credits says they finally got it on last night.<
One took one look at Cait and tapped out a reply. >No bet.<