A Softer Meme (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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bakerstreet2024-01-18 03:03 pm
asoftermeme) wrote in bakerstreet2024-01-18 03:03 pm
Morning after
┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ a meme
→ COMMENT WITH YOUR CHARACTER'S NAME, FANDOM, AND PREFERENCE.
→ PICK A CHARACTER YOU WANT TO TAG AND HIT UP RNG (01-10), OR CHOOSE A SCENE OF YOUR OWN.
→ PLAY NICE; NO WANK, FLAMES, OR GENERAL HUMBUGGERY.
( keep in mind that sexual scenarios are the basis of this meme! please enter with caution )
┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ the scenarios
① BREAKFAST IN BED; your partner is up and about -- maybe dressed, maybe not -- and in the kitchen. what are they making you? could it be... grilled cheese?
② HIT ME BABY; they're such a peaceful sleeper. a peaceful, sexy sleeper. actually there's too much of that sleeping happening. why don't you wake the up, world's kindest alarm?
③ ESCAPE FROM AZKABED; you wake up to find they're rummaging about for their clothes, about to leave. why the rush, can't you convince them to stay?
④ THE AFTERNOON AFTER; and the evening, maybe even the morning after after... hours have passed but you just can't leave each other! or maybe one of you just won't...
⑤ HANGOVER FROM HELL; there's a tiger in the closet, a baby in the bathroom, and a total stranger curled up beside you. who is this person beside you, smelling of tequila and regret? do they know any more about what, or who, went down than you do?
⑥ WET AND WILD; don't feel too lonely waking up by yourself -- the shower's on and the sound of water falling is mighty inviting. why don't you get cleaned up -- or down and dirty all over again?
⑦ I'LL SLEEP WHEN I DIE; sleep? what is this sleep thing you speak of? dawn's breaking and neither of you have gotten a wink, or want one. who's ready for round xxx?
⑧ A BITTER PILL; turns out the reason you scored wasn't your sparkling wit and magnetic confidence. your partner had an ulterior motive -- they already knew it and you're about to. recon? revenge? rebound? tag and find out, if you can handle the truth!
⑨ THIS ISN'T MINE; that sleepy person in your living room had a great night -- with your roommate. well, might as well get to know each other while you're both there, right? ... right?
⑩ WILD CARD; roll more than once and combine scenarios, choose your favorite, or make up your own!
Sort of a wildcard, I guess?
After everything, the most important thing to Balayna, the only thing that matters is that he’s home. She doesn’t know what it was like, in that other universe, but judging by what the man who shared his face had been like, it wasn’t good. He must have been through hell.
All she wants to do is help him feel safe again. To be there for him.
Curled up against his back, her arm draped loosely around his waist, she slowly stirs towards waking. Even mostly asleep as she is, her embrace is gentle, and easy to slip from, although she does snuggle closer to him.
a little too wildcard
Maybe that's why it doesn't feel real, the several weeks he's been back. Home. Maybe he shouldn't have brought her into that nightmare with him. Maybe then she could be as soothing a presence as she deserves to be. He could be lulled to rest rather than strain towards vigilance, lest she be ripped away from some malevolence clinging to him, lingering inside him.
His eyes close for hours, but he doesn't sleep. At times, he is not altogether awake, but the slightest shift from her jostles him to near-painful alertness. Nonetheless, the night isn't unpleasant. The more time passes without incident, the less tension he holds in his chest, arms. She sleeps, and that's more than he can ask for. Gabriel opens his eyes as she stirs, glancing down at her hand. Slowly, he traces her slender wrist with his knuckles.
This is the most time they've spent together since he escaped. This is the longest he's held her, in body or mind, without his reality eviscerating her on a nearby scream, the sting of a fresh wound reopening, the taste of blood slipping free from between his teeth.
the wildest of cards
The brush of his knuckles against her wrist stirs her further, draws her far more quickly towards waking, and she presses a drowsy kiss to his shoulder blade before tucking her chin over his shoulder. “Gabe?” she murmurs. She doesn’t ask if he’s all right, because she knows he’s not, not after all that he’s been through. She just… holds him, thumb brushing reassuring little circles against his skin.
no subject
All he knows is that they met. His counterpart's personal logs were pertinent to Starfleet's investigation into the infiltration, locked with biometrics. He wasn't under order to read them himself. But he was still raw at the time and had the stomach.
Like Gabriel, the other Lorca wasn't much of a writer. Mostly kept notes on people of interest. A copious amount on Michael Burnham, after whom the most numerous were on Ellen Landry and Katrina Cornwell, along with the other admirals. Several single page files on various Starfleet members, serving on Discovery or elsewhere, presumably to mark the differences between them and the versions he left behind.
It took a while to get to Balayna. Just long enough for Gabriel to get a firm grip on the hope she wouldn't appear at all. Having it wrenched away felt like hurtling violently through the ion storm all over again.
He's ruminating. Has stopped feeling her warmth.
"I missed that," he says, because he should say something. Carefully, he turns onto his back. Looking at her might help him stay present. He raises his hand to run the backs of his fingers feather-light under her chin, along her jaw.
no subject
But she’d doubted herself, doubted her own suspicions. Even though she knew something was wrong, there had been a struggle to quantify what that something was. It was all theory. Hypothesis. Despite all that, not once had Balayna called the other Lorca Gabe. It’d hadn’t been on purpose, hadn’t been a conscious choice. Just another subtle, unquantifiable indication that something wasn’t quite right.
Until it had been confirmed. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, in her mind.
She can almost feel him turn inward, getting stuck in his head again. So far away from her despite the nearness of his presence. Oh, Gabe. Her heart breaks for him. He turns onto his back and she shifts with him, so she can stay tucked against his side, arm still draped over him.
He runs the backs of his fingers along her jaw and she can’t help the soft sigh that escapes her lips. She’s missed him so much.
no subject
Gabriel didn't meet the other her. Didn't look for her. She couldn't have been anything like this. Soft, natural, extraordinary. A willow tree in a quarry. Imperials are severe. In speech, manner and dress. They don't come this undone with each other without a knife tucked under the pillow.
"Tell me something I missed," he murmurs. "Something small." Something good. He gets command files, casualty lists, campaign summaries. Recommendations based his psych evals and last therapy session. News of anything not pertaining to the war or his recovery since his disappearance, he has to seek out. Balayna has been the only one to alleviate that burden (not that he recognized it as that until she did).
Anyone else who might have was on the Buran.
Quickly (well not so quickly) bullshits something small and good
She thinks for a moment, turning the possibilities over in her mind. She’ll start with something small, and personal to her. A little anecdote from the time they’d spent apart. With nothing to do with the war, or the mirror universe, or his recovery. Carrying no weight behind it.
Something good.
The smile she gives him is warm, her jade eyes bright. “I taught my first class. Well, part of one. An acquaintance needed someone with a geology background to guest lecture. And she thought of me.” It had been a nice change of pace for a bit, though she doesn’t think it’s something she’d want to pursue fully. A brief change of pace as a favour to a friend, though? Absolutely.
that's the secret cap it's all bullshit
"Did you like it?" Balayna as an educator. He can see it. He thinks she'd be good at it, and a perpetual minor headache for the administration. They'd still let her get away with anything. She's good with people in a way Lorca can't hold a candle to at his genuine friendliest. He's further from it these days than he's ever been, yet it doesn't make him feel lacking. It used to make him feel lucky.
Now, he's undeserving. And she doesn't deserve that, which is a greater incentive to work on healing than any barely extant intrinsic motivations.
XD
“I did,” she tells him. “Very much. I’d like to do it again, I think. Not permanently. But guest lecturing sometimes. That I’d like.” The not-quite-spontaneity of it suits hers. She doesn’t want to be tired down to employment long term. She hasn’t, not since Tarsus. Although that has lessened, in the intervening years. Or had. Now she doesn’t want to be tied down to employment long term because she has somewhere far more important she needs to be.
Somewhere far more important she WANTS to be.
no subject
It's hard to imagine anything tying her down. He used to think it was only a matter of time. She had too much to offer, too much life in her that, sooner or later, someone worthy would take notice, and make any sacrifice necessary to earn her devotion. Even back then, he recognized that he was rationalizing. That man should have been him. She was already devoted, and year after year he squandered it. Occasional visits, semi-frequent correspondence: it wasn't enough. Four thousand ghosts at his heels prevented him from recapturing that dream of a decade ago. A quiet, full life.
He wants to apologize for that. For a lot. For last night, how it wasn't the same as before. He'd been desperate to see her in the past, after especially long or trying absences, but that was a soft urgency. Hot. Last night was searing. Imbalanced. He accepted little pleasure from Balayna but her warm, willing presence, and gave selfishly, selflessly. The less of him he could feel, the better. Gabriel drowned his senses in her, then held her as tight as he dared until she fell asleep. Laid a last mournful kiss against her skin when he finally disentangled himself from her.
Once again, he can't think of a single good thing of his own to say.
His eyes flutter open, downcast. Despite his maudlin thoughts, his smile lingers at the very corners of his lips. Fixed by her power. His hand pillows against the roots of her hair and he bids her lean into him, forehead to forehead.
no subject
Tarsus IV had changed everyone, those that had survived it. For her, it had been a staunch refusal to be tied down to any job long-term. Any planet. No desire to set down roots permanently. Field research let her flit from planet to planet, staying just long enough to finish her work before flitting somewhere else. Her only tether, the only tether she allowed, the only tether she wanted, was to Gabriel. He held, and still holds, her heart. And he always will. For him, it had been a determination to do better, to protect others. Hounded by the four thousand ghosts of those who had been lost on Tarsus IV. So he’d gone into command.
She would never ask more of him than he wanted to give. She would never WANT more of him than he could give. The moments they shared together were precious, no matter how infrequent. He has nothing to apologise for. Not for the past. And not for last night. He’d been trying to drown himself in her, numb himself, only a fool could have missed it, and she knows him better than most. She’d done her best to give him what he wanted, what he needed, despite how little pleasure he’d accepted from her and how much he’d given her.
His hand in her hair urges her to lean into him, and she goes, hand slipping from his cheek to the nape of his neck as she presses her forehead to his.
I've got you.
no subject
Solitude is no longer a presence in itself. It's crowded. He purchased this house several years ago, a quaint cottage on an unremarkable colony world whose oceans and wind were cold and brisk. Balayna has visited before. Entering, unpacking, sleeping, waking here felt strange until last night. Alienating. The walls simultaneously pressing in and shattering out. This morning, it's still. A memory of a home.
He doesn't know the hour, but he likely should be eating. It has to be done, though he has no appetite, especially not for the local seafood of which he used to be so fond. He almost never lets himself just lie in bed, though every morning that's all he wants to do. Hover between brutal wakefulness and restless sleep. It's as close as he gets to silence. It would be a surrender.
Gabriel shifts, turning towards Balayna. His arm wraps around her, welcoming her softness and warmth along the length of his body. A brush of his nose against hers, reverent. He'll stay in bed a while, today. Like he always does when they spend the night together. Giving in to her hasn't hurt in nearly a decade. It aches a little, now, at the bottom-most chamber of his heart, but he can bear it. It feels enough like an old wound.
no subject
And quiet reminders of her. As though she can somehow make sure he can feel her, even when they’re not physically touching. (Not that that happens often, since she arrived.)
She’ll be making them breakfast, later. Or perhaps it’ll end up being lunch instead. She’s always been a bad influence on his ability to keep a routine while on his days off. And she thinks that keeping him in bed with her for a while is a very good idea.
He wraps his arm around her, and Balayna snuggles closer to him as his nose brushes against hers. No matter where his thoughts take him, she’s never very far away. To try and coax him back to her. A little at a time.
cw torture, execution, suicide ideation, you know mirrorverse stuff
The cruelest act they inflict upon themselves is the conviction that they have any idea what love is. A twisted, conditional mutilation of it; he observed nothing truer than that. How could he? Their world would stamp it out at its first glimpse of loathing sun. Not even the light could stand the life it sustained.
Still, the things they would do for what they call love, he would do for her. He'd commit any unforgivable sin to keep her this way, gentle and unbroken. Because he did. In him, the Empire had a highly useful piece for their games. While he escaped them, for too long he let himself be used in order to survive, when he could have taken himself off the board.
To get home. To get here.
(There were other incentives to comply. Other prisoners of lower value. He managed to free a scant three. Many others died in his name; most of whose names he had no chance to learn. He spent long enough trying to spare them to understand that their torture and execution at the hands of the Terrans was inevitable. Nothing that he did or didn't do truly mattered. The Federation counterparts of the ones he was forced to watch suffer, he nonetheless lives in dread of someday encountering.)
And when the price paid feels worth it, then it's only a matter of time before it costs him the most terribly. He couldn't let her near him if she didn't know that. Survivor's guilt is a companion to both of them. He can keep it at bay for as long as she's here. Focus on what's in front of him. It takes effort but there's nothing he'd rather be doing, and no one he'd rather be doing it for.
"Hate is never conquered by hate," he murmurs. Half a mantra that came through the massacre on Tarsus-IV alongside them. Sometimes one of them will recite it in its entirety, sometimes one will coax it out of the other with a playful prompt along the lines of "tell me my fortune." And sometimes they share it.
just mirrorverse stuff
(She’d stay forever, if given the chance.)
So she won’t press him. He’ll tell her when he can. If he can. Should he want to. Nothing he’ll tell her will ever change her opinion of him. Or her feelings. But if he needs to tell her, if he needs her to listen. She’s here. She’s always here.
“Hate is conquered by love,” she murmurs back, the other half of the fortune. The other half of the mantra.