oh flowery drabbles. ilu.
Title: Like Pebbles In A Pond
Author:
possibly_thrice
Rating: G (iknorite)
Pairing: Pike/Number One. Natch.
Summary: Prompt from pike_numberone 's gorgeous table: "29. Mojave." The desert is picturesque. Number One is less than impressed.
A/N: taraljc = <3.
Occasionally, while they were still serving together, he talked about his childhood home, neither genuinely nostalgic nor deceptively bitter, but in such a way that (for reasons she has trouble articulating) she is embarrassed to find herself unmoved by the desert when he invites her to come back there with him. After everything.
She has a vivid appreciation for forms of beauty that run quite contrary to her temperament, as a rule. The overstated, the ruined, the gloriously strange. It's not what brought her to Starfleet -- probably Starfleet is what brought it to her, although she observes, with mild interest, that she does not care enough to analyze the memories and ascertain that. But it is... useful. A taste for excess, he's called it. Nothing refined about it, but it made -- makes -- exploration surprisingly pleasurable, since the galaxy was not crafted with subtlety in mind.
And she's well aware, from extensive experimentation, that Earth rarely satisfies her inexplicable urge for such loud loveliness, except from outside the atmosphere, that old blue fire. So it really shouldn't embarrass her, throw her, that the hard-cut lines of dirt and sky don't reach somewhere deep in the way that the hard-cut lines of skin around Christopher's mouth do, now, when he stands on unsteady legs next to her at the gate. Their hands are flush, palm to palm, fingers flat against each other, not intertwined.
It occurs to her that she expected a place that owns any part of him to be extraordinary. It occurs to her that she is being ridiculously sentimental. A bad habit. She suspects he approves of it, and half-turns to measure his silent, intent profile, bracing herself for the sight of him drinking in the lay of the land like a drowning man.
But he is staring up.
Ah, she thinks, and: thank God. The slight niggling shame eases like a sour aftertaste under her tongue, and she curls her thumb around his wrist. They are what they are. Ungrateful and hungry for other worlds and together, alone, hardened into something that doesn't belong in this gravitational field. Like pebbles in a pond, wet yet displaced, distinct, and whole.
"I'll show you around Mojave," he says, haltingly. "You'll like it."
"Tomorrow," she replies.
Author:
possibly_thrice
Rating: G (iknorite)
Pairing: Pike/Number One. Natch.
Summary: Prompt from pike_numberone 's gorgeous table: "29. Mojave." The desert is picturesque. Number One is less than impressed.
A/N: taraljc = <3.
Occasionally, while they were still serving together, he talked about his childhood home, neither genuinely nostalgic nor deceptively bitter, but in such a way that (for reasons she has trouble articulating) she is embarrassed to find herself unmoved by the desert when he invites her to come back there with him. After everything.
She has a vivid appreciation for forms of beauty that run quite contrary to her temperament, as a rule. The overstated, the ruined, the gloriously strange. It's not what brought her to Starfleet -- probably Starfleet is what brought it to her, although she observes, with mild interest, that she does not care enough to analyze the memories and ascertain that. But it is... useful. A taste for excess, he's called it. Nothing refined about it, but it made -- makes -- exploration surprisingly pleasurable, since the galaxy was not crafted with subtlety in mind.
And she's well aware, from extensive experimentation, that Earth rarely satisfies her inexplicable urge for such loud loveliness, except from outside the atmosphere, that old blue fire. So it really shouldn't embarrass her, throw her, that the hard-cut lines of dirt and sky don't reach somewhere deep in the way that the hard-cut lines of skin around Christopher's mouth do, now, when he stands on unsteady legs next to her at the gate. Their hands are flush, palm to palm, fingers flat against each other, not intertwined.
It occurs to her that she expected a place that owns any part of him to be extraordinary. It occurs to her that she is being ridiculously sentimental. A bad habit. She suspects he approves of it, and half-turns to measure his silent, intent profile, bracing herself for the sight of him drinking in the lay of the land like a drowning man.
But he is staring up.
Ah, she thinks, and: thank God. The slight niggling shame eases like a sour aftertaste under her tongue, and she curls her thumb around his wrist. They are what they are. Ungrateful and hungry for other worlds and together, alone, hardened into something that doesn't belong in this gravitational field. Like pebbles in a pond, wet yet displaced, distinct, and whole.
"I'll show you around Mojave," he says, haltingly. "You'll like it."
"Tomorrow," she replies.