Work Text:
friend
Tilly's come to the very peculiar conclusion that Captain Pike is trying to make friends with her.
It's not that she minds in the least, and given the whole almost freezing to death/almost-naked cuddling thing (and kissing him - what was she thinking?), she sort of thought he might never be able to look her in the eye again, so it's fine, it's great, she's very happy he seems to enjoy being around her, it's just... weird.
(... okay, so she doesn't regret kissing him, even if it was inappropriate and possibly foolhardy. She shouldn't have, and he was clearly taken aback, but life's too short and she nearly died, so she's earned some grace, right? Also, his lips were so damn soft.)
He keeps asking her about aspects of her work, and doing his best to understand them even though he clearly doesn't have the necessary background knowledge for most of it. It's always been easy to forget herself with him, to end up rambling, but lately it's as if he's going out of his way to give her opportunities to do so. People usually try and avoid her monologues, so it stands out when he gently pokes her into explaining whatever she's doing, then stays and listens as she spirals off into five related subjects trying to demonstrate the relevance of this one particular thing. Sometimes she even manages to run out of words, to exhaust her capacity to explain, before he inevitably gets called away to do something captainly, which pretty much never happens to her.
It's honestly kind of nice. She's used to being indulged or tolerated or shushed; she's not used to simply being listened to. Sometimes, somehow, she ends up talking about her childhood or her ambitions or some other entirely irrelevant subject, and she'll realise and look up, embarrassed, only to find him still listening with sincere interest, and she feels so... seen.
The first time he calls her to his ready room, she's both nervous and excited. She can't imagine why he wants her there, and okay, in the turbolift she indulges herself for a few minutes in a wildly unlikely fantasy that involves being kissed to within a millimetre of her life, but she's not stupid. Christopher Pike is not the kind of man who'd misuse his authority that way, and she wouldn't like him nearly so much if he were.
He ushers her to the comfy seats at the end of the room; the whole place is so warm and welcoming, so like Pike himself. A little knot of tension she's been trying to ignore unravels in her belly, and she smiles at him as he settles at the opposite end of the table.
He smiles back, and for a moment they're just smiling warmly at each other, and Tilly has to look away before she actively squirms.
It feels out of line to demand the captain explain why she's here, but it's also confusing. Suddenly, not knowing why has become almost unbearable, her nerves returning. She fiddles with the edge of her uniform jacket; his eyes flick down, so he definitely saw it.
She takes a deep breath, sitting up straighter, doing her very best to look more like a candidate in the Command Training Programme and less like someone who was a cadet this time last year.
"So," he says.
"Yes, sir."
"The mycelial network and the spore drive."
"Yes?" She relaxes a bit. This is her métier. This, she can deal with.
"I want you to explain as much of it as you can to me."
"Again?" she asks, falling into a teasing tone by accident.
He grins and holds up a finger. "This time, the priority isn't you staying awake," he points out, "it's me actually understanding you." He chuckles. "I realise that's a tall order, but I think you have more of a chance of success than Mr Stamets, and I don't like having to rely on a technology I understand so little."
"Oh. Okay."
"Ground rules: no words of more than three syllables, and I reserve the right to stop you at any time to request clarification."
She can instantly see an issue here; she's not sure whether it's okay to object, but apparently it's evident from her face, because he laughs.
"All right, Ensign, what's the problem? I know I might struggle with the science of it, but I assure you, I'm ready and willing to learn."
She giggles nervously. "It's just that... sir, mycelial has four syllables, then there's prototaxites stellaviatori, and that's just the beginning of the multisyllabic words. I'm not sure how I'm going to stay within the parameters you've set- oh, there I go again, I use too many words, Stamets is always saying it, and too many of them have far too many syllables-" It suddenly occurs to her that maybe he wasn't being quite that literal, and that she might have insulted his intelligence. "Not that I think you don't know what parameters are, sir, or what multisyllabic means, I'm sure you do! I'm sorry, I just-" She slaps her hand over her mouth before she can dig any deeper, mumbles another 'sorry' through her fingers, and cringes down into her chair.
He chuckles. "Ah." He looks almost... fond? "Let me rephrase; avoid technical jargon where you can, and be ready to explain in plain language wherever it might be necessary. Is that better?"
She blinks as she runs the sentence back and forth in her head. "I... think I can do that, sir. Sorry I didn't understand before. I didn't mean to imply anything by it."
"My fault, Tilly." He smiles that soft, off-centre grin that always makes her feel so warm, so included. "I explained myself poorly."
She's not entirely convinced it wasn't somehow her fault, but she's so relieved to have navigated past it, she's not about to argue.
He sits back in his chair and gestures expansively. "The floor is yours, Ensign."
She takes a deep breath, and dives in. This, at least, she can do, she's good at. Talking about the things she cares about, the science she's passionate about, finding ways to explain it to someone else? She loves it. Pike isn't a genius, but he's smart, he asks intelligent questions, and when one of her analogies goes a little astray, he smiles at her and his eyes twinkle; it makes her feel like she's in on the joke, rather than being the joke.
It's a lot of fun, and she loses track of time completely. She loves science so fucking much.
It's going great until, partway through explaining their attempts to find new ways to navigate the network, she's suddenly hit with the sense memory of the last time she tried to explain this; being in his lap, skin to skin, sharing warmth, and then he...
Oh, fuckety fuck. Her train of thought goes kablooey.
"Ensign? Tilly?"
She closes her eyes and bows her head and takes a deep breath in through her nose. She's been trying so, so hard to not think about any of that when she's around him, but especially not about him hard against her thigh, the desperately needy, absolutely gorgeous noise he made that's haunted her ever since. (At least she knows he doesn't find her boring...)
Her face is so hot, and she doesn't want him to realise why. Not even for her own embarrassment, but because sitting here talking to him is- she doesn't want to ruin it. She doesn't want to embarrass him.
She doesn't want this to be a one-off.
"Ensign?" His voice is softer but nearer, and when she opens her eyes, he's sitting so close their knees almost touch (she can't look away) and handing her a glass of water. "Are you okay?"
She swallows hard a couple of times. "I'm fine," she says, "I just-" She shakes her head and gulps the water and keeps breathing; eventually she stops feeling like she's going to lose her mind or pass out. Very tentatively, she finally peers up at him.
He's frowning. "Do we need to get you to sickbay?"
She laughs, then tries to muffle it with her hand. She can see it in her mind's eye, Doctor Pollard drily explaining that Ensign Tilly is suffering from an acute case of being extremely horny, and Tilly promptly dying. "I'm fine," she insists. Oh, he has pretty eyes. At this range, she could very easily get lost in them.
He squeezes her shoulder, and there's really no safe way to explain that him being all soft and kind is just going to make her more flustered. "If you're sure," he says, then he's getting up to refill the glass; she can breathe easier.
He gives her the glass again, but doesn't come back to sit next to her, and she's both sad and relieved about it. He's sitting closer than he was at first, as if he's worried she's going to suddenly need his help, and that's sweet, but she needs a little time before she can cope with being all the way in his space without... well, thinking too much about things that should be left well alone.
"Thank you," she manages when she's drunk another half-glass of water.
"Welcome." He studies her for a second. "Are you sure you're all right, Ensign? I don't hold with my people trying to push through illness."
She likes being his people, loves how much he cares about his crew. "I really am fine," she promises. "And if I start feeling... unfine, I'll go to sickbay immediately."
He chuckles. "Okay; I'll trust you."
She grins. She really likes him trusting her, too.
His gaze drops to her mouth, and when she bites her lip, he mirrors it, but it doesn't mean anything, it can't; it's unconscious, she's going to not think about it at all, ever, except maybe when she's alone in her quarters, and- no. Not thinking about it.
She swallows, clears her throat, and takes a deep breath. "So, do you want to continue?" she manages.
He blinks a couple of times, then he's back with her from wherever or whoever he was thinking about, and leaning forward in his seat to ask another question.
It's a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon, but she still doesn't entirely understand why she's here. Her brain keeps returning to the problem even as she's doing her best to find analogies for cavitation and to explain the probabilistic nature of the spore drive, and she still can't quite figure out why Pike would choose her as his guide for this subject.
Better than Stamets? Stamets has far more experience explaining all of this to non-astromycologists. Stamets explained it to her! He knows more than anyone, and half his career has been spent explaining it to people without the scientific background to make sense of it for themselves. He's the one who can actually navigate the network, who literally has tardigrade DNA in his genome, who invented half the technology she's now explaining.
It's only much later, on the turbo-lift back to her quarters, that she puts the pieces together. She still can't get her head around it, but it's the only way to explain everything, the only way this makes sense; it's an innocent, credible excuse for the captain to spend several uninterrupted hours in Ensign Sylvia Tilly's company.
~ fin ~