Fic: We Were Soldiers Once: And When Those Blue Snowflakes Start Fallin’ (HALO: Spartan Ops)
Title: And When Those Blue Snowflakes Start Fallin’ (That’s When Those Blue Memories Start Callin’)
Fandom: HALO: Spartan Ops
Rating: T
Genres: het
Recipient: apinkpanthress
Prompt: HALO, Sarah Palmer, Christmas on the Infinity
Summary: Okay, this is getting him nowhere. Standing in front of her door yet again and hoping for a Christmas miracle is dumb and not what any of his mentors would ever let him get away with.
A/N: Holiday Fic Request Meme, attempt #4. Technically, this should have been from Sarah's POV but since I like order in my series and since I alternate between Tom and Sarah and Sarah had her POV in the last story, this had to be from Tom's (it also made more sense, to be honest), so I hope apinkpanthress forgives me for bending her prompt a little. I also hope she forgives me for taking so fucking long to actually write it in the first place but well, it's here now, and I hope you like it :)
( In Now For The Kill )
( Down Upon My Knees (And You Have Broken Me) )
( Foolishness and Self-Deception )
( People Spend a Lifetime This Way (And That's How They Stay) )
( A Hundred Tanks Along the Square )
( Never to Touch (And Never to Keep) )
( But The River Is So Wide )
And When Those Blue Snowflakes Start Fallin’ (That’s When Those Blue Memories Start Callin’)
“I'll have a Blue Christmas without you
I'll be so blue thinking about you
Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree
Won't be the same dear, if you're not here with me
And the when those blue snowflakes start fallin'
That's when those blue memories start callin'
You'll be doin' all right, with your Christmas of white
But I'll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas.”
Elvis Presley, “Blue Christmas”
You know what’s curious? That even in space, on a battle ship, people still celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Midwinter Solstice and a number of other end of the year/midwinter festivals that have developed over time. Even on a mission, even on high alert, people still decorate their quarters and workspaces, give presents to each other, even write cards, on actual paper to their loved ones on Earth and in the colonies. And usually, he’s one of them.
Of course he doesn’t write a four inches high stack of holiday cards, like Deviera, his logistics officer or decorates his console with a miniature tree including ornaments and a ridiculously blinking row of Christmas lights like Hallsen, one of the helmsmen. But usually, the holiday spirit onboard whichever ship he’s serving on at the time is strong enough to wake a bit of nostalgia and for its sake, there’s usually a small menorah on the desk in his ready room to honor the Jewish part of his ancestry and a bit of fir green above the alcove of his bed, decorated with ornaments he made out of ammunition shells and leftover hand grenade splints back in his first year at CAMS, together with Chyler and Sully, during a particularly silly and overtired study break.
This year… not so much. There’s still the menorah on his desk but even though it’s the third night of Hanukkah, he didn’t even light one candle yet and he never got around to weasel some fir green out of the botanists taking care of the atrium, let alone dig out the thirty years old ornaments. His quarters are a mess, anyway, mostly due to the fact that he doesn’t use them for more than sleeping. Somehow, in the last few weeks, quarters wise, he managed to digress back to his teenage midterms at CAMS self, and if he had the time and leisure for it, he’d be worried about it.
As it is, he doesn’t even know what to be worried about first, with so many things vying for his attention. There’s another lead on ‘Mdama and Halsey, one that’s actually credible but also has the potential to be an even bigger massacre than the mission he sent Sarah and the Master Chief on before… well, before. There are letters to write to next of kin, always letters to next of kin but somehow, around the holiday season it becomes even harder than usual. There’s the day to day drivel of managing a war ship the size of a small city.
There also was Sarah, breaking up a relationship they didn’t even have in the first place. And, ridiculously, that’s the thing keeping him distracted on the bridge and keeping him awake at night. The only reason it doesn’t also lead to an overall piss poor performance on his part is that in over thirty years in service, giving everything on the job was practically wired into his DNA. He can do it in his sleep now, and that’s the only thing saving him right now.
It hasn’t managed to save him from doing other stupid things, though. Specifically walking down the corridor towards Sarah’s door. Even more specifically walking down the corridor towards Sarah’s door, stopping in front of it and raising his hand, poised to knock, only to chicken out and retreat as fast as he can, hoping that no one but maybe Roland saw him do it. Even more specifically doing it multiple times… only to end up here again, just like now.
He’s pretty sure that coming back here again and again, despite Sarah having been polite but very firm about wanting to stop whatever was going on between them before it could go further - he’d nearly asked her how much further than repeatedly, even practically regularly sleeping with each other it could go - rates in the top three of the most stupid things he has ever done. He should just let it go, honestly.
Most of all because Sarah was right, in a way. Captain of the ship and commander of the Spartan contingent sleeping with each other, that honestly can’t last long before it blows up into everyone’s face, let’s be honest. It causes all kinds of complications - see: the captain of the UNSC’s biggest battle ship ever built sneaking back into this particular part of the ship again and again and making a complete idiot out of himself - and it helps no one. She was right, she goddamn was.
Only he misses her. Has been missing her ever since she walked into his quarters four weeks ago to end it and walked out leaving him behind dazed and confused. He didn’t even realize it at first, just wondered about the weird aching hollowness inside his chest while he was overseeing drills and requesting replacement personnel and having his annual physical. Wondered why it grew bigger and bigger with the weeks of being sirred and “Aye, Captain”ed and being treated just like any random superior officer by his best friend. Realized he was missing her with painful intensity while he was in the middle of his daily treadmill run.
Ever since then… life onboard Infinity seemed even more miserable for him than it did before he started sleeping with Sarah, despite facing continuous threats from all sides, despite tensions between Sarah and him, despite… despite everything.
Okay, this is getting him nowhere. Standing in front of her door yet again and hoping for a Christmas miracle is dumb and not what any of his mentors would ever let him get away with. Way he sees it, he either knocks now or never thinks of it again… and before he could reconsider, his fist moved against the door, as if by its own, and he’s even kind of glad about it. Saved him another ten minutes of agonizing over pining for her for the rest of his life or finally getting it over with.
For a moment, though, it looks as if all his theorizing and strategizing and agonizing just came to a really anticlimactic close because precisely nothing happens, and honestly, he should have checked whether she’s off her shift in the first place or not, even though that felt like stalk… “What… Tom?”
At least she didn’t forget his first name. That’s a good start, right? “I uh… I was in the neighborhood and I…” am an idiot who can’t even seem to find the right words to tell you how much he misses you, he nearly says but she stops him with shaking her head.
“You shouldn’t be here.” No, he probably shouldn’t.
He didn’t get into his position by always doing what he should and letting be what he shouldn’t do. “I know.” She just looks at him, eyebrows raised. He swallows. “Would you mind… letting me in, Sarah?” Standing in front of his best friend’s… lover’s… door like a beggar. At Christmas. Feels great.
The only thing that feels even greater - and by that he means even more miserable - is that second she takes, looking at him with an inscrutable face, something that usually isn’t her style. Usually, her face is expressive, and for someone like him as open as a tactics text book. He can’t remember ever not having been able to read her. Shit, it’s worse than he… “Just a couple minutes, Tom.”
Well, maybe a little less worse than he thought. At least she’s still talking to him. He nods and follows her invitation inside her quarters, stepping past her. He tries not to be too jealous of how spotless her quarters look and tries to concentrate on the lack of Christmas tinsel instead. Sarah’s not a sentimental person but he knows her well enough to be aware of the absence of the little Christmas tree build from slightly discolored isolated wired she used to hang up in a corner of her bunk or quarters that fellow soldiers and subordinates couldn’t see into. She never told him where it came from in the first place but it’s always been there, on every ship or installation they served together, like a clockwork.
Maybe she put it where he can’t see it, either. Ridiculous how that thought breaks his heart.
Alright, so… he’s pretty sure he had some sort of speech prepared in his head, had been working on it ever since she came into his quarters, gave him her “I can’t do this anymore” piece and then promptly left, without giving him even the slightest chance to say his bit. And yet all he can come up with in this very moment is, “We have to stop doing this, Sarah.”
She folds her arms in fronts of her chest and gives him frown. With that, at least, he can deal. “Stop doing what, Tom?”
Oh right, as if she doesn’t know exactly what he means. Feeling weeks of frustration bubbling to the surface, he gestures around him. “This. All that… all those misunderstandings and fights and then standing in front of each others’ quarters. That’s bullshit, and we need to stop doing that.”
That’s pretty much not what he wanted to tell her. He’s not quite sure what it was that he wanted to say but it sure as hell wasn’t that. Sarah, on top of it all, now very much looks like she’s having none of it. “Then why did you just do exactly that?”
Damn. That’s a pretty good question. He hates it when she hits the mark dead center like that. “Because I… because you never even gave me a chance.”
She looks at him with a frown, clearly not understanding what he wants to tell her. Really? She has no clue? Seriously? “A chance for what, Tom?” And then, something in her eyes and her posture changes and she very much looks like she does understand. Before he can wonder what it was that made her see, before he can wonder if it was something he did, something he telegraphed without being aware of it, she beats him to it. “This… this is about what happened four weeks ago, isn’t it?”
Superhumanly strong and smart. That’s his girl. Or, actually, not. Which is kind of the entire problem. He nods. “Yes. Don’t you think I deserve to…”
“I did it for you, Tom.” For him? She was breaking up with him for him? Now that’s just ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that she has no right to show so many signs of vulnerability beneath her usual hard Spartan veneer. She has no right to that flicker of pain in her eyes and that slight shaking of her hands. No right.
He knows, from hard won experience, that just for once he shouldn’t let his disappointment and frustration rule his interactions with her but goddammit, that break-up fucking hurt, and the shock of discovering that just now takes away the last of his carefully upheld commander’s façade. “For me? You came into my quarters to tell me that you “couldn’t do that anymore” for me?”
“Tom…” No, no more “Tom.” No more excuses.
Time for some hard truths. “I’ll tell you what you did that for. You did that for yourself, because for whatever reason you couldn’t bear to be even in the same room with me, and you have the audacity to tell me that you did that for me?”
“Yes, I did! For you, and for us!” Oh, right, for them. And now she’s getting agitated, too. Just another thing she has no right to. Not she, not after everything. “Do you have any idea what would happen if the wrong upper echelon clowns found out that we were sleeping with each other? Do you?”
Aw, not that fraternization nonsense again. Technically, they’re not in the same branch and not even in the same chain of command and honestly, they could have found some other way around that than breaking up? Besides, “You broke my fucking heart, Sarah!”
No.
Wait.
That wasn’t on the agenda for today. It wasn’t even… it wasn’t even something that he’d been aware of, right until the moment it slipped out. But it did, and now it’s as if it’s physically there, hanging in the room between them like an ominous cloud, making them stare at each other, chests heaving, neither of them understanding just what just happened.
It’s Sarah who regains the ability to speak first, even if “Tom, I…” is the only thing she’s able to utter before shaking her head, as if she has to clear it.
Too shocked to even consider making an attempt at glossing it over, at reeling it back in before it can do some real damage, he can’t help spitting out, “My heart, Sarah. That thing right here.” He even goes as far as jabbing his index finger into the left side of his chest, hard, too far gone to care about avoiding theatrics. “You fucking broke it, and you didn’t even give me a chance to say something!”
“I didn’t mean to, goddammit!” Well that didn’t keep it from happening now, did it? “We weren’t even together, for God’s sake! I didn’t know it went deeper than just sex, and I didn’t want to lose you just because I couldn’t keep my hands off you. I didn’t… I didn’t…”
And now it hits him. This wasn’t about non-frat regs. It was never about non-frat regs. It was about a whole lot of issues, but non-frat regs had no part in this. It was about things they never talked about, things they never mentioned in any conversation… things they’d only been thinking. Things Sarah, who walks into battle in nothing but scout armor when everyone else is wearing half a battle tank, who guards her heart with armor stronger than Infinity’s hull plating, would never even allow herself to think.
Things Sarah is deathly afraid of. And he is, too, if he allowed himself just a tiny second of real, brutal honesty.
He can’t help himself, even though he should know that closing in on a besieged Spartan only invites disaster. He still can’t help himself and takes a step towards her, because some things are worse than a Spartan feeling themselves under threat lashing out. Seeing Sarah Palmer slowly losing the desperate fight to keep all that armor around her heart intact, for example.
He steps closer, knowing full well that every step is a greater testament to stupidity, but then he’s suddenly standing right in front of her, still alive, panting as if he just tried to keep up with her from here to the atrium and reaches out for her, to pull her down, her forehead against his, his hands cradling her head. He wants to kiss her so badly but there’s something else he needs to do first.
“I care for you, Sarah.” What he means is, of course, I love you, Sarah but he can’t say that right now, maybe won’t ever be able to say that. “I goddamn care for you. I’ve cared for you for a very long time. Do you really think I’d just give up that easily?”
He’s not sure if he can feel her laugh or if that slight hitch he felt is the first and only sob he’ll ever get from her. That doesn’t matter, anyway, because what matters is that her forehead is still touching his and that he can feel her arms encircling his waist. “I wish you would, Tom,” she says and he’s pretty sure now that that hitch was a sob, “I wish you would.”
No way, not now, not after everything, not after all those years. He wants to tell her so but as always, she beats him to it, moving to capture his mouth with hers and it’s that kiss that makes him realize that she’d really broken up with him for herself. Just out of completely different reasons than he’d originally thought.
That kiss tells him very clearly that she’d broken up with him to protect herself from giving more than she was ready and able to give, giving more than was safe to give. Because right now, he can feel that she’s giving all that she has, and that’s something he hasn’t ever felt before, in any of their past kisses.
It humbles him and it nearly overwhelms him; all the trust she’s putting in him right now, giving him every possible way to sneak under her armor and crushing that heart she’s so carefully been guarding until now and he nearly breaks the kiss to leave her quarters and never come back but all he does is break it and cradle her head in the crook of his neck, whispering to her, “I’m here, Sarah. Whatever happens, I’m here.”
“I know,” she tells him, engulfing him in the tightest, most careful hug he ever felt, “that’s what I’m so afraid of.”
The amazing thing is that to anyone else from her, from anyone else to him, it wouldn’t make any sense, and he’d probably feel deeply insulted if it had been anyone else than Sarah who told him that. But it’s coming from her and it makes all the sense in the universe. Strangely that, more than anything, tells him that coming here was the right thing after all. Even with all the hassle that’s bound to follow up, all the ammunition they just gave Osman, all that extra time they’ll now have to invest in watching their backs, it was right and it was worth it.
It’s that thought that makes him tighten his hold on her, trying to tell her that he’ll never let her go again and kiss her hair and smile and whisper, “Merry Christmas, Commander” into her hair, and he’s pretty sure he just heard her reply with a husky, “Happy Hanukkah, Captain,” before she kisses his shoulder and lets her forehead rest there, as if she never wants to be anywhere else and it occurs to him that apparently even on a battle ships millions of lightyears away from home, once in a while, even a woodentop Navy captain and a Spartan commander are allowed a Christmas miracle, after all. And they goddamn deserve one so badly, don’t they?
Fandom: HALO: Spartan Ops
Rating: T
Genres: het
Recipient: apinkpanthress
Prompt: HALO, Sarah Palmer, Christmas on the Infinity
Summary: Okay, this is getting him nowhere. Standing in front of her door yet again and hoping for a Christmas miracle is dumb and not what any of his mentors would ever let him get away with.
A/N: Holiday Fic Request Meme, attempt #4. Technically, this should have been from Sarah's POV but since I like order in my series and since I alternate between Tom and Sarah and Sarah had her POV in the last story, this had to be from Tom's (it also made more sense, to be honest), so I hope apinkpanthress forgives me for bending her prompt a little. I also hope she forgives me for taking so fucking long to actually write it in the first place but well, it's here now, and I hope you like it :)
( In Now For The Kill )
( Down Upon My Knees (And You Have Broken Me) )
( Foolishness and Self-Deception )
( People Spend a Lifetime This Way (And That's How They Stay) )
( A Hundred Tanks Along the Square )
( Never to Touch (And Never to Keep) )
( But The River Is So Wide )
And When Those Blue Snowflakes Start Fallin’ (That’s When Those Blue Memories Start Callin’)
“I'll have a Blue Christmas without you
I'll be so blue thinking about you
Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree
Won't be the same dear, if you're not here with me
And the when those blue snowflakes start fallin'
That's when those blue memories start callin'
You'll be doin' all right, with your Christmas of white
But I'll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas.”
Elvis Presley, “Blue Christmas”
You know what’s curious? That even in space, on a battle ship, people still celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Midwinter Solstice and a number of other end of the year/midwinter festivals that have developed over time. Even on a mission, even on high alert, people still decorate their quarters and workspaces, give presents to each other, even write cards, on actual paper to their loved ones on Earth and in the colonies. And usually, he’s one of them.
Of course he doesn’t write a four inches high stack of holiday cards, like Deviera, his logistics officer or decorates his console with a miniature tree including ornaments and a ridiculously blinking row of Christmas lights like Hallsen, one of the helmsmen. But usually, the holiday spirit onboard whichever ship he’s serving on at the time is strong enough to wake a bit of nostalgia and for its sake, there’s usually a small menorah on the desk in his ready room to honor the Jewish part of his ancestry and a bit of fir green above the alcove of his bed, decorated with ornaments he made out of ammunition shells and leftover hand grenade splints back in his first year at CAMS, together with Chyler and Sully, during a particularly silly and overtired study break.
This year… not so much. There’s still the menorah on his desk but even though it’s the third night of Hanukkah, he didn’t even light one candle yet and he never got around to weasel some fir green out of the botanists taking care of the atrium, let alone dig out the thirty years old ornaments. His quarters are a mess, anyway, mostly due to the fact that he doesn’t use them for more than sleeping. Somehow, in the last few weeks, quarters wise, he managed to digress back to his teenage midterms at CAMS self, and if he had the time and leisure for it, he’d be worried about it.
As it is, he doesn’t even know what to be worried about first, with so many things vying for his attention. There’s another lead on ‘Mdama and Halsey, one that’s actually credible but also has the potential to be an even bigger massacre than the mission he sent Sarah and the Master Chief on before… well, before. There are letters to write to next of kin, always letters to next of kin but somehow, around the holiday season it becomes even harder than usual. There’s the day to day drivel of managing a war ship the size of a small city.
There also was Sarah, breaking up a relationship they didn’t even have in the first place. And, ridiculously, that’s the thing keeping him distracted on the bridge and keeping him awake at night. The only reason it doesn’t also lead to an overall piss poor performance on his part is that in over thirty years in service, giving everything on the job was practically wired into his DNA. He can do it in his sleep now, and that’s the only thing saving him right now.
It hasn’t managed to save him from doing other stupid things, though. Specifically walking down the corridor towards Sarah’s door. Even more specifically walking down the corridor towards Sarah’s door, stopping in front of it and raising his hand, poised to knock, only to chicken out and retreat as fast as he can, hoping that no one but maybe Roland saw him do it. Even more specifically doing it multiple times… only to end up here again, just like now.
He’s pretty sure that coming back here again and again, despite Sarah having been polite but very firm about wanting to stop whatever was going on between them before it could go further - he’d nearly asked her how much further than repeatedly, even practically regularly sleeping with each other it could go - rates in the top three of the most stupid things he has ever done. He should just let it go, honestly.
Most of all because Sarah was right, in a way. Captain of the ship and commander of the Spartan contingent sleeping with each other, that honestly can’t last long before it blows up into everyone’s face, let’s be honest. It causes all kinds of complications - see: the captain of the UNSC’s biggest battle ship ever built sneaking back into this particular part of the ship again and again and making a complete idiot out of himself - and it helps no one. She was right, she goddamn was.
Only he misses her. Has been missing her ever since she walked into his quarters four weeks ago to end it and walked out leaving him behind dazed and confused. He didn’t even realize it at first, just wondered about the weird aching hollowness inside his chest while he was overseeing drills and requesting replacement personnel and having his annual physical. Wondered why it grew bigger and bigger with the weeks of being sirred and “Aye, Captain”ed and being treated just like any random superior officer by his best friend. Realized he was missing her with painful intensity while he was in the middle of his daily treadmill run.
Ever since then… life onboard Infinity seemed even more miserable for him than it did before he started sleeping with Sarah, despite facing continuous threats from all sides, despite tensions between Sarah and him, despite… despite everything.
Okay, this is getting him nowhere. Standing in front of her door yet again and hoping for a Christmas miracle is dumb and not what any of his mentors would ever let him get away with. Way he sees it, he either knocks now or never thinks of it again… and before he could reconsider, his fist moved against the door, as if by its own, and he’s even kind of glad about it. Saved him another ten minutes of agonizing over pining for her for the rest of his life or finally getting it over with.
For a moment, though, it looks as if all his theorizing and strategizing and agonizing just came to a really anticlimactic close because precisely nothing happens, and honestly, he should have checked whether she’s off her shift in the first place or not, even though that felt like stalk… “What… Tom?”
At least she didn’t forget his first name. That’s a good start, right? “I uh… I was in the neighborhood and I…” am an idiot who can’t even seem to find the right words to tell you how much he misses you, he nearly says but she stops him with shaking her head.
“You shouldn’t be here.” No, he probably shouldn’t.
He didn’t get into his position by always doing what he should and letting be what he shouldn’t do. “I know.” She just looks at him, eyebrows raised. He swallows. “Would you mind… letting me in, Sarah?” Standing in front of his best friend’s… lover’s… door like a beggar. At Christmas. Feels great.
The only thing that feels even greater - and by that he means even more miserable - is that second she takes, looking at him with an inscrutable face, something that usually isn’t her style. Usually, her face is expressive, and for someone like him as open as a tactics text book. He can’t remember ever not having been able to read her. Shit, it’s worse than he… “Just a couple minutes, Tom.”
Well, maybe a little less worse than he thought. At least she’s still talking to him. He nods and follows her invitation inside her quarters, stepping past her. He tries not to be too jealous of how spotless her quarters look and tries to concentrate on the lack of Christmas tinsel instead. Sarah’s not a sentimental person but he knows her well enough to be aware of the absence of the little Christmas tree build from slightly discolored isolated wired she used to hang up in a corner of her bunk or quarters that fellow soldiers and subordinates couldn’t see into. She never told him where it came from in the first place but it’s always been there, on every ship or installation they served together, like a clockwork.
Maybe she put it where he can’t see it, either. Ridiculous how that thought breaks his heart.
Alright, so… he’s pretty sure he had some sort of speech prepared in his head, had been working on it ever since she came into his quarters, gave him her “I can’t do this anymore” piece and then promptly left, without giving him even the slightest chance to say his bit. And yet all he can come up with in this very moment is, “We have to stop doing this, Sarah.”
She folds her arms in fronts of her chest and gives him frown. With that, at least, he can deal. “Stop doing what, Tom?”
Oh right, as if she doesn’t know exactly what he means. Feeling weeks of frustration bubbling to the surface, he gestures around him. “This. All that… all those misunderstandings and fights and then standing in front of each others’ quarters. That’s bullshit, and we need to stop doing that.”
That’s pretty much not what he wanted to tell her. He’s not quite sure what it was that he wanted to say but it sure as hell wasn’t that. Sarah, on top of it all, now very much looks like she’s having none of it. “Then why did you just do exactly that?”
Damn. That’s a pretty good question. He hates it when she hits the mark dead center like that. “Because I… because you never even gave me a chance.”
She looks at him with a frown, clearly not understanding what he wants to tell her. Really? She has no clue? Seriously? “A chance for what, Tom?” And then, something in her eyes and her posture changes and she very much looks like she does understand. Before he can wonder what it was that made her see, before he can wonder if it was something he did, something he telegraphed without being aware of it, she beats him to it. “This… this is about what happened four weeks ago, isn’t it?”
Superhumanly strong and smart. That’s his girl. Or, actually, not. Which is kind of the entire problem. He nods. “Yes. Don’t you think I deserve to…”
“I did it for you, Tom.” For him? She was breaking up with him for him? Now that’s just ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that she has no right to show so many signs of vulnerability beneath her usual hard Spartan veneer. She has no right to that flicker of pain in her eyes and that slight shaking of her hands. No right.
He knows, from hard won experience, that just for once he shouldn’t let his disappointment and frustration rule his interactions with her but goddammit, that break-up fucking hurt, and the shock of discovering that just now takes away the last of his carefully upheld commander’s façade. “For me? You came into my quarters to tell me that you “couldn’t do that anymore” for me?”
“Tom…” No, no more “Tom.” No more excuses.
Time for some hard truths. “I’ll tell you what you did that for. You did that for yourself, because for whatever reason you couldn’t bear to be even in the same room with me, and you have the audacity to tell me that you did that for me?”
“Yes, I did! For you, and for us!” Oh, right, for them. And now she’s getting agitated, too. Just another thing she has no right to. Not she, not after everything. “Do you have any idea what would happen if the wrong upper echelon clowns found out that we were sleeping with each other? Do you?”
Aw, not that fraternization nonsense again. Technically, they’re not in the same branch and not even in the same chain of command and honestly, they could have found some other way around that than breaking up? Besides, “You broke my fucking heart, Sarah!”
No.
Wait.
That wasn’t on the agenda for today. It wasn’t even… it wasn’t even something that he’d been aware of, right until the moment it slipped out. But it did, and now it’s as if it’s physically there, hanging in the room between them like an ominous cloud, making them stare at each other, chests heaving, neither of them understanding just what just happened.
It’s Sarah who regains the ability to speak first, even if “Tom, I…” is the only thing she’s able to utter before shaking her head, as if she has to clear it.
Too shocked to even consider making an attempt at glossing it over, at reeling it back in before it can do some real damage, he can’t help spitting out, “My heart, Sarah. That thing right here.” He even goes as far as jabbing his index finger into the left side of his chest, hard, too far gone to care about avoiding theatrics. “You fucking broke it, and you didn’t even give me a chance to say something!”
“I didn’t mean to, goddammit!” Well that didn’t keep it from happening now, did it? “We weren’t even together, for God’s sake! I didn’t know it went deeper than just sex, and I didn’t want to lose you just because I couldn’t keep my hands off you. I didn’t… I didn’t…”
And now it hits him. This wasn’t about non-frat regs. It was never about non-frat regs. It was about a whole lot of issues, but non-frat regs had no part in this. It was about things they never talked about, things they never mentioned in any conversation… things they’d only been thinking. Things Sarah, who walks into battle in nothing but scout armor when everyone else is wearing half a battle tank, who guards her heart with armor stronger than Infinity’s hull plating, would never even allow herself to think.
Things Sarah is deathly afraid of. And he is, too, if he allowed himself just a tiny second of real, brutal honesty.
He can’t help himself, even though he should know that closing in on a besieged Spartan only invites disaster. He still can’t help himself and takes a step towards her, because some things are worse than a Spartan feeling themselves under threat lashing out. Seeing Sarah Palmer slowly losing the desperate fight to keep all that armor around her heart intact, for example.
He steps closer, knowing full well that every step is a greater testament to stupidity, but then he’s suddenly standing right in front of her, still alive, panting as if he just tried to keep up with her from here to the atrium and reaches out for her, to pull her down, her forehead against his, his hands cradling her head. He wants to kiss her so badly but there’s something else he needs to do first.
“I care for you, Sarah.” What he means is, of course, I love you, Sarah but he can’t say that right now, maybe won’t ever be able to say that. “I goddamn care for you. I’ve cared for you for a very long time. Do you really think I’d just give up that easily?”
He’s not sure if he can feel her laugh or if that slight hitch he felt is the first and only sob he’ll ever get from her. That doesn’t matter, anyway, because what matters is that her forehead is still touching his and that he can feel her arms encircling his waist. “I wish you would, Tom,” she says and he’s pretty sure now that that hitch was a sob, “I wish you would.”
No way, not now, not after everything, not after all those years. He wants to tell her so but as always, she beats him to it, moving to capture his mouth with hers and it’s that kiss that makes him realize that she’d really broken up with him for herself. Just out of completely different reasons than he’d originally thought.
That kiss tells him very clearly that she’d broken up with him to protect herself from giving more than she was ready and able to give, giving more than was safe to give. Because right now, he can feel that she’s giving all that she has, and that’s something he hasn’t ever felt before, in any of their past kisses.
It humbles him and it nearly overwhelms him; all the trust she’s putting in him right now, giving him every possible way to sneak under her armor and crushing that heart she’s so carefully been guarding until now and he nearly breaks the kiss to leave her quarters and never come back but all he does is break it and cradle her head in the crook of his neck, whispering to her, “I’m here, Sarah. Whatever happens, I’m here.”
“I know,” she tells him, engulfing him in the tightest, most careful hug he ever felt, “that’s what I’m so afraid of.”
The amazing thing is that to anyone else from her, from anyone else to him, it wouldn’t make any sense, and he’d probably feel deeply insulted if it had been anyone else than Sarah who told him that. But it’s coming from her and it makes all the sense in the universe. Strangely that, more than anything, tells him that coming here was the right thing after all. Even with all the hassle that’s bound to follow up, all the ammunition they just gave Osman, all that extra time they’ll now have to invest in watching their backs, it was right and it was worth it.
It’s that thought that makes him tighten his hold on her, trying to tell her that he’ll never let her go again and kiss her hair and smile and whisper, “Merry Christmas, Commander” into her hair, and he’s pretty sure he just heard her reply with a husky, “Happy Hanukkah, Captain,” before she kisses his shoulder and lets her forehead rest there, as if she never wants to be anywhere else and it occurs to him that apparently even on a battle ships millions of lightyears away from home, once in a while, even a woodentop Navy captain and a Spartan commander are allowed a Christmas miracle, after all. And they goddamn deserve one so badly, don’t they?