#i'm gonna fuckin be meeting those eggs again so aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[flatstarcarcosa]

Thinking about nights like this where I don't sleep, and zaeed keeping me company. He dozes, here and there, but never really falls out entirely.

I finally decide maybe its time for breakfast and another round of meds, maybe I can will my body into comfort.

******

"Do you want some eggs?" I ask. He mumbles, sleepily, and blinks a few times. I caught him dozing. "Do you want eggs?"

"I'll eat whenever you're cooking," he says, voice thick with the sleep he's been at once chasing and fighting. His words tend to jumble together, a gravel driveway of mixed up consonants that surfaces from deep in his chest.

I frown.

"Thats not what I asked," I say, pushing the laptop off my thighs and sliding over to plop myself across his lap. "I asked if you want eggs for breakfast."

"I know what you asked," he says. He reaches down, fingers trailing over my side and across my shoulder until his hand settles in my hair. "I said I'll eat whenever you're cooking."

I frown, more.

He hasn't said if he wants the goddamn eggs, and I just want to know how many to make.

And then it hits me; all those little moments you never consider as they're happening, you just file them away in your memory banks as they pass.

A contented groan as he picks the empty plates off the table, pauses to lean down and kiss my cheek.

"You do make a fantastic goddamn roast."

A metal spoon sliding against the inside of a metal bowl, an attempt to scrape up the very last dregs of stew.

"Thought you were wasting credits on that goddamn crock pot, but at least being cooped up in this ship is bearable with something better than field rations."

A pause in chewing. A raised eyebrow when he swallows.

"This goddamn cake is one of those gluten fucking free monstrosities? I honestly wouldn't have known if you hadn't told on yourself."

I return to the present, dragged forth by the feeling of him bumping his knee against me.

"Feed me or don't, but I gotta take a goddamn piss," he grumbles. I hum and sit up, disentangling myself from him and staring off into the dark of the bedroom. The bed shifts as he rises, and the bathroom door shuts most of the way before he hits the light.

"I'll eat whenever you're cooking."

The toilet flushes, the sink runs, and the light is turned out before he opens the bathroom door and pads back across the room. I am still staring into the dark, and stubbornly ignoring the tears in the corner of my eyes.

His fingers trail up my side again, searching for my hair and settling to brush through it at the base of my skull. He leans down, plants a sloppy kiss on the top of my head. I blink away the wetness, dare to sniff up the lump in the back of my throat and reach up to wipe at my eyes.

He catches my hand on the way back down, pulls me to my feet.

"You ever clean the frying pan after those burgers the other night?" he asks. He leads me to the kitchen, where turning on the light answers the question.

"God damn it." I glare at the frying pan, still sitting on the stove and packed now with congealed grease from the pound and a half of beef I turned into "burger crimes" the last time I cooked dinner.

He chuckles and moves it to the sink, hitting the tap for hot water and nudging me towards the fridge with his hip. I stumble, just slightly and catch myself on the door handle. I pause as I pull open the door and he turns to the sink, back towards me and the faintest slivers of sunrise beginning to creep over the skies of Bekenstein.

So this is where I have landed, after so much time falling aimlessly and wanting only for the crash to meet me faster; with a man who will not freely and recklessly say I love you, but who instead looked up and planted his feet and said I bet I can catch that.

A stranger, for all purposes, who caught the briefest glimpse of the darkest part of my existence and the bloody, gaping wound behind the words fuck I'm ODing again and discovered there was still something in him that could break apart at the sight of it.

An implacable, stubborn, goddamn jackass that said if no one else is going to dive into your incurable insanity and save you from drowning I guess I'll fucking do it and then proceeded to simply build a dock in the middle of it.

Perhaps, I think, as I watch steam from the sink puff into the air, it makes perfect sense in a way that is almost laughably stupid that it would take a man permanently on fire to boil away enough water that I am able to stand once again.

I pull the carton of eggs from the fridge, abandon them on the counter and refuse to acknowledge the trembling of my jaw as wrap my arms around his waist and press my face into his spine. He shifts, hands caked in soap and grease and pausing over the frying pan as he tries and fails to look at me over his shoulder.

"Christ," he says, softly, "it's just goddamn eggs."

"I know," I say. It comes out as a hiccup, and I cannot bring myself to hate myself for it. "But it's not. I'm..."

Stuck, again. Even after all this time-- so much time-- it catches in my throat like some rabid beast that sinks its teeth into the words and tears them to bloody bits before they have a chance to get free.

The frying pan clangs against the sink and the water steams more as he runs the water hot and washes the grease from his hands. He leans forward, pulling the towel from the rack in the window and making use of it before nudging me with his elbow. I loosen my hold on his waist and he turns in my arms.

Wordlessly, still-warm hands cup either side of my face, pulling it up and forward and forcing me to meet his gaze and reminding me that he used to stake his life on picking up bloody bits of mess and turning it into a finished production that resulted in a job well goddamn done.

His thumbs brush over my damp cheeks and I wonder, not if that dark part of my existence is still there, but if it is visible once more because I have slipped up, or if because sometimes he drags it kicking and screaming into the light just to remind it that it does not get to run roughshod over the rest of me.

He pulls me closer, enveloping me in flame and pressing his forehead to mine before following with his mouth. He tastes like mint from toothpaste and menthol from cigarettes and smells freshly like the citrus in the dish soap and stagnantly like the lake water from our swim the night before.

It is just eggs.

But it is also everything else and he does not let anything else escape his grasp. He kisses me until it begins to hurt and his fingertips press into my skin.

He pulls the rabid beast from its perch, and executes it in the only way that matters: he disregards it completely.

When he releases me but keeps me close enough that I still feel his breath on my face, I let out the faintest of sobs and his thumbs brushes the tears away once more.

"I'm sorry," I breathe. He sighs, and then forces a chuckle.

"It's just goddamn eggs, love."

And it is, also, everything else, and for the first time in my life I begin to think that maybe,

maybe there is room for it all.