751: Safe and Warm

by Keiran O'Sullivan
90115.19
Following Up and At 'Em

-=/\=-

-=Deck Four USS Serendipity=-


With direct orders from the ship's Acting CMO that his only duty for the next few days was to make sure that his wife didn't exert herself physically, Keiran O'Sullivan counted his blessings and made the promise that he would do his very best at it.

As he looked at her now, so alive and on her way to recovery, he couldn't help but start counting those blessings again. All over, and from the very beginning.

"What?" Liis asked plaintively, still unnerved at times by the way that her husband would look at her. She couldn't understand, even now, what it was about her that held such fascination for him.

"Whaddya mean, what?" Keiran laughed softly. "A man's not allowed ta look at his wife?"

"Look, yes. Stare like a leopard? Not so much." She shrugged as he laughed again.

"Sorry, darlin’," he smiled at her gently. "Can't be helped."

Liis' cheeks turned crimson, a reaction that only Keiran could get.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, O'Sullivan," she raised her healthy right hand, index finger held high in question. "But I thought I said come to Sickbay so you could 'take your wife home', not carry your wife home."

"LMH didn't wan'cha to walk and you refused the chair. Transporters are undergoin’ maintenance at the moment." Keiran reminded her, as he effortlessly carried her out of the turbolift and toward a room of empty crew quarters. "This seemed the best solution to the problem. McKay agreed with my assessment."

"At least you're not carrying me over your shoulders like a sack of potatoes this time." Her voice and eyes grew distant a moment at the memory, and Keiran tilted his head toward hers.

His whiskers brushed against her cheek as he exhaled softly before whispering in her ear. It was a sensation that, once remembered, was one she didn't know how she had ever existed without.

He rumbled with a much more knowing sort of laugh, indicating he recalled exactly the event early in their partnership that she was citing.

"Ya aren't singin' like Roman cavalry choirs, this time." He felt a sudden rush of sentimentality. He also remembered the sound of her voice as she'd mumbled the words to another, much more heartrending song that night. Before she'd fallen asleep in his bed and he'd gone to sleep on the living room couch.

A night that had happened lifetimes ago.

He gave voice now to the feelings he had tried to deny way back then. "God, I love ya, Liis."

Liis buried her face into his shoulder, feeling another unaccustomed emotional reaction; bashfulness.

"Why can't we go back into our quarters again?" Her muffled voice asked a moment later. She was tired, she was in pain, and her head felt too heavy to hold up for long. She just wanted to go to the closest thing to 'home' that she felt she had aboard ship now- his quarters.

"Our quarters," Keiran sighed contentedly. As exhausted and beaten up as he was today as well, her words made him feel as though he could carry her to the very ends of the Earth if that was what it took to take her home. "I do love the way tha'cha call 'em that."

"You didn't answer the question." She insisted, as Keiran recited an access code to her and she used her good hand to tap it into the keypad, releasing the doors that led to their temporary accommodations.

"No." He replied in a low rumble as his eyes moved back to her at last. "Didn't."

"I've seen the damage reports, I know that the Romulans didn't hit that section with a stray shot."

His gaze simply shifted side to side once again.

"Well, then. I know that look. I suppose I'd best let it go." She knew when he was up to something, and it seemed very important to him that she not press the matter and spoil the surprise, whatever it was.

"Much obliged." He carried her into the room and called for the lights, at twenty percent.

Slowly and taking great care, he lowered her onto the bed and commanded the computer to increase the temperature in the room.

He fussed with the pillows and blankets, knowing she had orders to rest between now and the Admiral's impending arrival. When he was at last satisfied with the configuration surrounding her, he nodded.

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

Liis closed her eyes, waiting for a kiss on the lips that never came.

Finally she looked at him again, quickly realizing that his hands were shaking. "Keiran?"

" 's cold in here. So cold," he whispered, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against hers.

His shoulders began to shudder, and Liis began to wonder if he was really chilled through to the point of trembling, or if he was beginning to process all that had taken place on the Romulan ship...and how much danger they'd actually been in.

How much danger she had been in.

"C'mon, O'Sullivan," Liis folded back the edge of the blankets, urging him to crawl into bed beside her. "Let's get you warm."

Those four words triggered a memory in Keiran so vivid, not only from his own perspective but from hers as well thanks to the Sylph, that he reeled.


-=Flashback: Alternate timeline: Early 2379=-


Their small Jump ship was faltering.

Her engines silent, Sine Qua Non was lifeless and in hiding on a stillborn moon as they waited for help to arrive.

Their distress call continued; it was only a matter of time until TI sent another ship to retrieve them.

Liis hoped that it wouldn't be a matter of a long time, because it was bloody freezing in here and only getting colder.

She was trying to find anything more she could pile onto her partner in the way of blankets and clothing, but there was nothing more to use and the replicator had long since failed along with the rest of the ship's fading systems.

He was weak, still recovering from recent injuries. He was shivering, and she was running out of options.

"O'Sullivan, listen," she folded her arms and glanced at him sideways. "This might not be the most appealing idea to you, but I just don't see any alternative." She moved toward him on the bunk, and tried to tug the pile of thermal blankets back.

"Woman, what the hell’re ya doin?" Keiran tried to hold the blankets tight around him, knowing already exactly what she planned to do.

"What does it look like?" She quickly won the tug of war over the covers and shimmied beneath them, pressing up against him without another word.

"No." He objected sharply. "Zanh Liis-"

"Body heat is the only source of heat we have left."

"Zanh Liis-" Keiran groaned, miserably. He was cold clear through and knew that it wasn’t a good thing; he just didn't know if he could stand having her so close to him. He'd been fighting with himself for so long, a losing battle that grew increasingly more difficult by the day.

Especially since that night, weeks before at Christmastime when he'd so very nearly kissed her beneath the mistletoe outside his family's rented holiday home. Ever after that moment, he had thought of little else but kissing her.

Kissing her.

Holding her close...


"Look, I’m sorry. I know I'm no Risian beauty. But this is where we're at, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let my best friend freeze to death because the way to keep him from doing it is a little...awkward."

She lifted his arms, settled in with her head against his chest, and then allowed them to enclose her as she wrapped her own arms around his back and held on tight.

*Best friend...* Keiran thought dejectedly. *Maybe freezing to death is better than living on only to be her 'best friend'.*

His last coherent thought screeched to a stop as her legs wrapped around him as well, as she tried to transfer every bit of heat from her body that she could to his.

"They should be here soon, don't worry. Just...think warm thoughts."

Her chin and voice both quivered, as she had begun trembling as well. From cold, certainly; but as hard as she was beginning to shake as she felt his body pressed against hers, she had to wonder for a split second if there wasn't more to it than that.

"Zanh Liis, this is no’ a good idea..."

"And letting you die from hypothermia is? I think not. Stop your bitching, O'Sullivan. Let's get you warm."

She took hold of his hands, which felt like blocks of ice. She pulled them closer; tucking them between her jacket and her shirt, against her stomach. Keiran felt the heat of a new fire coursing through him- one that had nothing to do with the current temperature of his location.

*Oh. My. God.*

"This better?" Liis asked, finding that her own body was quickly warming up and that it was a welcome sensation.

"Yeah." was all he could manage to say. "Better."

"Good. Don't let go, just hang on and someone should be here to get us soon." She found that it seemed difficult to hold still for some unknown reason, and began gently rocking in his arms.

Keiran fought with all his might the overwhelming desire to hold her even tighter. The aching need to roll over, pin her safely beneath his weight and whisper her name. To tell her that he loved her.

*Hail Mary, Full of grace,* he prayed. Fervently.

That prayer didn't seem to help divert his thoughts, so he tried another.

*Our Father who art...who art...*

For a second, he actually managed to forget the rest of the words.

*No help there, either. Glory be to the...*

He kept trying, but nothing could distract him from the fact that she was warm, she was beside him, and he wanted her so badly that he could barely control himself.

He struggled on; summoning the last of his remaining strength to keep from making, at last, the overture he'd been dreaming of for so long.

"Is there anything else I can do to help?" she asked sincerely, "Are you getting warmer?"

"Nothin' else," he whispered, adding a defeated sounding, "thank you. I,"

He sighed, accepting that she wasn't going to let him die here if she could prevent it. He'd have to face the idea of waking up tomorrow morning and still being her best friend.

"You've done far more for me." Liis insisted, cutting him off. "Don't mention it."

As she continued to gently rock him back and forth in her arms, Keiran closed his eyes, praying for the self-control to keep from her just how much he needed her to hold him, and for just how long he had needed it.

-=End Flashback=-


"Hey," Liis grew concerned by his stillness, and his silence. "Where are you?"

"Do ya remember," he murmured, his voice warm and passionate as he pressed his lips to her ear, "The time that we had to wait for them to come and fetch us from the Sine Qua Non? When we were holdin' out on that lifeless moon?"

Liis expression changed entirely.

She remembered. Vividly.

She closed her eyes a moment, and then carefully slid over, making more room for him beside her on the bed.

She waited for him to take off his boots and get beneath the covers, before settling carefully back into his arms.

He took great pains not to jostle her injured arm as he stared at the ceiling, trying to hide the tears that had filled his eyes.

He'd come so close to losing her, all over again, on that damned Romulan ship.

According to Will, she could've lost him, too.

How lucky they were, he thought, that they were still together at the end of it all.

Liis was entirely certain, judging by the look on his face, that she knew exactly what he needed to hear her say in this moment.

So she said it.

“Keiran, I love you.”

He kissed the top of her head in reply, simply unable to speak.

"Come on, O'Sullivan, Pull that blanket up tighter around you." She breathed softly in and out before repeating the words they both remembered so well. "Let's get you warm."

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Commander Keiran O'Sullivan
Security Liaison to
The Alchemy ProjectUSS Serendipity NCC-2012