[Backlog] JDL | Lt Cmdr Rinehart, Lt Kerenal - "Touch My World With Your Fingertips"

Posted on 241504.03 @ 11:44pm by Commander Tierney Rinehart & Lieutenant Kerenal

Mission: Holy Cow

A particularly nasty explosion had thrown Tierney from her bed. It was more of a roll from the edge she'd been precariously laying on, her arm already hanging as she slumbered deep and dead to the world around her, but she'd been thrown to the floor nevertheless. It had taken her a couple minutes of rapid blinking and a few choice swears, to get to her feet and call to the bridge for the status of the ship. Minor injuries had been reported. No structural damage. Just a wayward terrorist not liking the fact that his game was closing to an end at the hand of the Federation. Fair enough.

It didn't stop her worries.

Less than five minutes after such a rude awakening, Tierney found herself exploiting the tricks that came with her job, worried that a worse fate had befallen Kerenal. What if he'd re-injured his head? What if there were a countless thousands of other things wrong with him and no one was there to save him? Dramatics had never been the young Starling's strong point, but neither had emotional response been either. A quick site to site was all it took, the very same method she'd used to sneak into and out of Mark's quarters, and she was there, swallowing hard, in the dark of the man's temporary home.

Maybe it had been a bad idea...

"Kerenal?" She called gingerly, tripping over a fallen chair.

Having been rocked out of his own bed by the explosion, Kerenal had found the time to shift himself away from anything that might brain him and was sheltering against one of the bulkheads, a pillow behind his head and a padd in hand. He'd heard the transporter whine and the subsequent sound of someone tripping in his living area. The voice bought him a smile as he looked around the door frame, "Tierney, I'm in here."

"You ok?" The Starling asked, wincing as she crawled the rest of the way to where he'd hunkered down. "Bridge says everything is under control. No real damage. Minor injuries." She reported, leaning her back against the wall next to his and began gingerly rubbing her shin and knee. How she of all people had managed to stumble over a piece of furniture in the dark was a new mystery all of its own, and one she wasn't going to try to explain or study.

"I've managed to avoid hitting my head on anything, so I guess I'm all good." Kerenal replied with a slight smile as he laid his hand on hers and helped to rub her shin, "Whatever is going on caused quite a rumble."

"At least that's one good thing." Tierney chuckled lightly, abandoning her shin in lieu of double checking him for any quickly visible sign of injury. "Bridge is saying something about the terror cell coming to pay us a small visit. Nothing the ship couldn't handle." She answered, lifting the sleeve of his t-shirt to check the shoulder nearest to her for any sign of trauma. "I'm sure lighting will be back on soon enough and we can all go back to our regularly scheduled programs."

"I'm fine, Tierney," Kerenal replied with a chuckle as he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and held her close to him. In the darkness of his quarters, the light glow from her began to illuminate his features. Appearing grizzled and weary, the low light seemed to age the El-Aurian beyond his natural appearance.

Forced to abandon her appraisal, the Starling huffed as she allowed him to tug her against his chest. From her vantage point she could see very little, but there was no ignoring the soft, gauzy hint of turquoise light that washed across his usually majestic countenance. He seemed gaunt, faded -- hardly the resilient man she'd come to know. "Are you?" She asked, adjusting the way her head lay against his collarbone, affording herself a better look at his face as she reached to tap his stubble roughed chin with just the tip of her fingers.

"I'm beginning to age... I know saying that when I'm close to 800 is kind of redundant but I can actually feel it this time," Kerenal replied with a slight sigh as he held on to her, "I feel old, older than I've ever felt before, older than I should feel. I think it has something to do with what happened to me on Tala Czar, their experiments must have triggered something because I feel like death is creeping up on me ever faster. I can still get flashes of the future too, confusion that spans the future, the past and the present. What will be, what might be, what has been, what could have been..." he trailed off as he noticed his hand tracing patterns on her leg.

"Age is just a number..." Tierney whispered in response, wetting her lower lip with her tongue as her attention drifted between the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand. "The future is what you make it, the past is just that." Her own fingers found his lips and once pressed against the velvet of his mouth, they effectively killed the sound of his voice, banished the terrible images his words conjured, and cemented her views. What they didn't do was erase the effect his words imparted or kill her need to do so, and they certainly did nothing to squelch the desire that pooled hot in her belly as his fingertips continued to draw runes along the length of her leg. Her brows lifted as she watched the reflection of her 'stars' dance along his throat and face with every quickened breath she drew and released while his ministrations began to span the expanse of the top of her thigh. They were strange… Beautiful… Shining in a way she’d only ever seen once before. It had been years ago and for him; a nervous, yet intrepid, light conjured by the awe and admiration he'd crooned to her.

“Death won’t find you here, Kerenal. Not now, not another eight-hundred years from now. Not unless you beckon it to you by dwelling on it and your doubts instead of being determined and content to live.” She practically hummed as she released his lips from her touch and claimed his chin once more, gently stroking the soft cleft of it and taking further liberties by tenderly conquering the territory of his jaw centimeter by centimeter, “It takes life to create life and to realize that so many ‘could have been’s are ‘can be’s and that those ‘can be’s are tomorrow’s ‘is’.” In truth, the Starling wasn't sure when she’d become a philosopher when she herself had spent so many nights dreaming of those ‘could have been’s and believing they were always to be left as just that; wishes and long abandoned hopes. There, cradling his face in one of her tiny hands, she could hear reality knocking with every flutter of her heart, demanding she heed her own advice while she still could. She wouldn't be granted a third chance. No one was.

Her touch sent shivers through the El-Aurian as it had done the first time they had been together, on the holodeck where they had discovered her subtle glow beneath the canopy of his forested homeworld. He'd been enchanted by her and when she had disappeared, a part of him had gone too, especially after the events on the 'Pleasure' Station. The experiments had driven him to the edge of sanity and bought him a clarity that he wished he could turn away from, "So many times I've seen the timeline shift and change, I can feel it with every decision I make and I use it, it drives me towards a future where I continue, but like I said, I feel old..." he replied, his voice lowering and softening to barely above a whisper as it tugged at his heart.

"Take the good with the bad and decide to make it better." She breathed in response. His voice was like raw silk, decadent and smooth as it dropped in pitch, deepened, and nearly disappeared. In the perfect darkness, she watched his lips wrapped around each and every word, revealing to her exactly what it was that he had said. "It's mind over matter," Tierney added, trying to ignore the sound of her heart beating in her ears, "defy it. Deny it. Carpe diem." She beckoned as if it were so easy for a nearly eight centuries old being to accomplish. Her fingers were working again, gently coaxing warmth along the contours of his stubble clad face. The normal satin softness of his skin had been replaced with an exquisite roughness that grated along the pads of her digits. It was a sharp reminder that he was there and that they were so very much alive.

Time… Tala Czar… Stolen chances… Borg… Destroyed worlds… Enraged sentient speaking bovines… Nothing had stopped them, and nothing would. Fate, though she seemed cruel to have subjected each through their own brands of respective torture, had decided to create a path in which they had intersected once again. It had been a long road, one filled with growth and learning. In the years since she had seen him last, Tierney had blossomed. She was no longer the awkward, shivering mess of a girl he had gently coaxed from her shell – she’d found herself, her pride, her power. She was unabashedly unashamed of who and what she was. In part she owed him thanks for setting her out to find her way, teaching her to take chances and not to second guess. Certainly, she’d made mistakes and paid for them with a small piece of her heart each and every time. Even now when she languished over the stupidity of Mark and the end of his fleeting memory, she couldn’t help but believe that she’d managed to find her stride.

The Starling had known for a long time that she loved this man, was in-love with him. The how and the why didn’t need to add up, nor did the time and the barely there moments they’d spent enchanting one another with Shakespeare’s pretty sonnets. It didn’t matter. All that circulated and undulated with the ever growing need to somehow express that which she knew and held to be true. Telling him… It couldn’t be. Words would have long ago lost their meaning to someone as hardened by time and age as he. Showing him… There were so many ways it could be done, but one way in particular stood out like a beacon in the night. Swallowing hard, Tierney allowed her eyes to close.

Without sight, she was subjected to the onslaught of little things she would normally have taken for granted. The scent of him, for instance, she would have missed. It was musk and something not unlike cedar and pine, a spice note from some far away land, and the softness of his soap. Whatever it was, it was uniquely him and it was warm, clean, inviting… Delicious. It made her heart beat a little faster and her fingers feel weak, filled her belly with iron butterflies that begged for some form of release only he could grant. The sound of fabric rustling was her only herald as she piloted herself up on one knee and swung the other over his legs, pressing herself firmly to his hips. Her breath shuddered for a second, rife with a thick mixture of anxiety and desire, her heart, she was sure, was going to spring free of her chest at any second – but as her fingers left his face to rest against his chest she knew the choice she’d made was right. They were right. She knew it. He knew it. Fate knew it. “Carpe diem.” She whispered again as the delicate glowing of her cheek grazed the stubble of his. Her lips barely touched the lobe of the El-Aurian’s ear as she spoke, but even the barest touch and contact threatened to set her nerve endings on fire.

Her touch burnt inside him and bought him some semblance of peace as he turned his head towards the feel of her lips on his ear. His nose found hers and brushed gently up the side as their lips met and the sparks flew again. One of his hands found her hip and held her close, the heat of her body against him forced him to pull her closer as their kiss began in earnest.

Wingless, she was flying. The reciprocation of her intent, her affections, by him had granted her the chance to soar regardless of the anxiety or the apprehension that had come with being so direction and forward. "Tell me..." Tierney whispered as they lips parted, her eyes still closed and lips close enough to brush his with every syllable, "Tell me this is right... Tell me this is ok." Of course it was, her soul chastised her. It was more than right. How anything that felt so good, so perfect be wrong was an alien concept at that very moment. Her body shifted against him, acquiescing to his demand that she be nearer to him, pressing as close as she possibly could as her lips briefly claimed his.

No amount of Shakespeare or any other classical literature from any corner of the galaxy could describe the feelings that the El-Aurian felt as he bought her into his heart. Breathless as they kissed he replied softly, "It's always been right, from the first time we connected," his voice trailed back into the kiss as his second hand ran it's way through her hair.

"Good, because I've needed you since then..." The Starling barely had a chance to respond, however paltry a response it was, before the sound of her voice was swept away and replaced by the taste of his kiss. It was an insistent feeling, demanding more of her than she thought possible to give. It left straight need burning fever hot and lancing through her core and slowly unraveling her. Tangling her fingers in the fabric of his t-shirt, Tierney gathered, pulled, and tugged it up from between them until it became cruelly apparent there was no chance of freeing him from the offending item of clothing without breaking contact. She whimpered the moment her lips left his, the softest, faintest sound ever imaginable -- though filled with longing -- and gently coaxed him through the tangle of cotton that ensnared him. Opening her eyes, she was granted her first good look at him that night. His eyes had darkened, deep and stormy, like she'd never seen them before -- they made her catch her breath, hold it, and allow her gaze to linger longer than it should have. Kerenal was an addiction, an intoxication, and she couldn't help but silently beg for more... For him.

Now shirtless, Kerenal fixed his eyes on hers and lost himself in them again. His lips sought out hers again and tasted her, felt a hunger for her - a hunger that he had felt a couple of times before. It burnt brilliantly inside him, driving him to carefully flip them, guiding her down beneath him in the dark.

---

Power had long since been restored by the time Tierney felt the glow-like haze of euphoria begin to settle and clear from her mind while her eyes adjusted to the barely there evening lighting. Things became clearer, sensations and memories began to filter in and she smiled with the realization that it wasn't all just another dream. Her cheek being pressed to the warmth of one of the El-Aurian's taught pecs spoke volumes of reality, and her legs were still entwined with his, hopelessly captured and not caring at all to free herself. With a tranquil half-sigh, she allowed her fingers tips to touch him again, drawing letters across the landscape of his abdomen in a languid trail that head for his chest, though words refused to come to her lips.

Time had tempered Kerenal but still he felt the smile tug at the corners of his mouth as she began tracing patterns. His matched hers and began mimicking her patterns and replicating them on her back with one of his weathered fingers, the passion that they had shared was built up over years of repressed memories and submerged feelings, it burnt as brightly within them as it had since their first contact.

Words had to happen, though words had a tendency to destroy and nullify the cosmic bliss such moments brought in their wake. The Starling nosed closer, happy and serene and smiling softly with the knowledge that the El-Aurian reciprocated those particular sentiments, but knew that words simply had to happen. "Where now?" She asked softly, gently trying to pry open the clam shell of whatever had enveloped them and left the contents to be weighed on the scales of 'casual' and 'serious'. Mentally, however, she kicked herself for bringing up something like that in what should have been left as idle afterglow -- but years of wanting had left her bare and far from coy.

It was a question that Kerenal had contemplated multiple times in his eight centuries of existence, he kissed the soft skin of her forehead and entwined his free hand with the one that she had been trailing across his chest, "It's not like it's frowned upon, two consenting adults. I'd like something more... life is ever so much better with someone in your life."

"No... It's not." Tierney mused and tangled her fingers with his, letting their laced hands rest against his belly. Kerenal had always been the one she'd weighed all others against, and they'd all been found so incredibly wanting. Even Mark had been a poor substitute for the deep souled El-Aurian she'd quite simply fallen in love with all those years ago over dusty Shakespeare and holoprograms. There were worse things to be courted by, she'd decided, but taking the plunge into the ice water of Intelligence had conditioned her to believe that she'd never know the definition of that four letter word in it's realistic application. Everything she'd been taught and experienced had told her to forget him, shake him -- but she couldn't She was caught. Try to deny it as she may, she knew he was her favorite hello and hardest goodbye. "I could be happy with more." She replied, stretching languidly against him in her attempt to maintain some form of controlled indifference, but her heart beat a rapid, wild staccato tune of excitement and girlish glee. "I think I'd like that very much, actually."

"I can tell," Kerenal replied with a chuckle as he cradled her against him and held her close, "It's been such a long time since we met, at least in normal terms of time, but I've always known you were out there somewhere and always hoped that you would find your way back into my life,"

"I'm that transparent?" She asked, nosing against his collarbone. Beneath her ear she could make out the sound of his heart deeply and calmly keeping time. He'd always been so steadfast and even keel, a strength she'd attributed more to the essence of the man and not his age. "I'd hoped and dreamed, but never thought it possible. I tried to keep track, but after you left Crazy Horse I lost the trail and settled for hoping you'd found a life worth living out there." Tierney released on the breath of a sigh rife with trepidation, "I wished on stars for you. A lot of stars."

"This gives you away,"Kerenal replied as he drew his hand up to lay across her heart, "When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of a drum, there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes."

The Starling couldn't help the huff of a chuckle that shook her delicate frame. Part of her cursed and damned herself, the other part, the greater part, rejoiced. "You leave me no choice but to take up arms for your cause." She murmured, pressing a quick kiss to his chest, her head distinctly filled with the privileged of the music he references so perfectly. Les Miserables; French for 'the miserable ones' seemed hardly a fitting title for the two of them as they lazed together in their own little world, but looking back on the time they'd spent apart, the longing, the need, the pain... It worked. All of it. Victor Hugo would have approved.

And there it was... As if things had never changed, as if they had never been apart. The mysterious young woman and the grizzled time-worn traveler, star-crossed lovers with a mutual appreciation of literature binding and entwining them with threads more precious than gold.

---

Lt Commander Tierney Rinehart
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS ENTERPRISE, NCC 1701-F

&

Kerenal
Lieutenant, Retired