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healed again (i fall into you wholly)

Alara will never tire of this—the metallic shine of Claire’s medical instruments during each examination, the way Claire’s hands explore Alara’s soft body, searching for any issue, any distress, any discomfort, innocent and gentle and kind. She’d been shot on the bioship; Claire had healed her on the field, but still insisted on examining Alara for any hidden damage from the wound, her voice wet and strained as her fingers ran over the skin the bullet had pierced. Alara, reclined in only her bra and uniform pants on Claire’s examination table, almost forgets about the medical setting—her essence evaporates underneath Claire’s touch, her soul melting and her legs trembling beneath her. When Claire breaks away to retrieve a different instrument, Alara gives a sharp, pained exhale.

“Alara?” Claire asks, hand gripping the internal tissue scanner tight and anxious. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Alara looks up, gives a smile that is as awkward as it is genuine. “Oh, I’m—I’m good,” she replies.

“Well, you sound like you’ve been shot again,” Claire says—she’s running the scanner over Alara’s stomach, slow up to her chest like dragging a knife to gut, and her hand is so close once more, her touch burning warm in such a chilled room. Could she really be this oblivious? Actually, that might be a good thing.

“I just do that when I—”

Her breath halts when Claire’s fingers touch down over the ghost of the wound again. She gives calming strokes over Alara’s flesh, and Alara thinks that she must be ash now, embers on a table, decimated unintentionally by the beauty of Claire Finn. It is wrong, she thinks, unprofessional, to feel this way, but she cannot seem to extract it from her like Claire had sucked the bullet right out of her muscle, and she finds it difficult to feel guilt for being attracted to someone like Claire, someone so pure and intelligent and wondrous. The guilt is there—the guilt revolves around their positions, and the fact that Claire would never touch an officer who is twenty-something years her junior, and the fact that Claire is so holy she can barely parse it.

“Hm,” Claire says. “I always think about how difficult it must have been to live on Earth before we had these. It’s done a great job for you here.”

“So, I’m…”

“Physically, you’re fine, just take it easy for a few days,” Claire says. “And hope we don’t end up in another situation like that again. But if we do, I am confident you can handle it. You’re very good at your job. I don’t think you’re aware of that.”

Alara shrugs. “So good I got myself shot?”

“It happens to almost every security chief, Alara.”

“I know,” Alara replies, trying to shed the thoughts from her mind, to thrust them out of an airlock and watch them float frozen far away. “I have a lot on my mind.”

“Anything you need to talk about?” Claire asks. Her voice shifts when she asks Alara the next question, her tone only suggestive to someone who is looking for an invitation, the lull of her words pulling Alara in by the curiosity. “Anything you can talk about?”

Definitely not oblivious, then.

“Maybe some other time, if that’s okay.”