02-13-2026, 08:33 PM
To answer the question that fell out of Ian’s mouth, the doctor looked somber. It stupidly occurred to Ian that it hadn’t just been the ship that was damaged; people had been hurt as well. Then he looked down, down to the table where Pax’s hands were, and saw that the man had experienced it first hand.
It took a concentrated effort for Ian to not focus on the burns, and dive down a rabbit hole of thoughts about what exactly happens to the skin when it’s burned by any number of specifically-burning things. His parents had wanted him to be a doctor. He was pre-med for a good minute before he realized that Engineering was his true passion. Medicine had been his formitive years, after all.
“It was a tough one,” came the reply, “but I’m proud of my crew. They stepped up today, even though none of us knew what we were in for.”
Ian nodded automatically in a show of understanding. Engineering was thrown one curveball after another, to the point where fastballs didn’t even exist any more. And then suddenly, without any warning (who needed warning?) the whole thing was done. But he didn’t know how or what to reply to Pax, and so he had nothing to say. He just sat in the moment, thinking about curveballs, and thinking about how baseball wasn’t really his sport (moved too slow) and how he really liked ice hockey instead. Everyone was always moving; the puck was always moving; it was chaos until you locked into the scene. Like how today had been.
“Did Nurse Manx send you to take a look at my gear?”
“Huh? What? Who?” Ian had been thinking about hockey. And he had no idea who Nurse Manx was. A manx was a cat, right? A breed of feline? Not domesticated feline, but big, right? And orange? Was there a feline-like nurse working in Sickbay? Who had Ian just talked to that told him to come here?
And then Pax’s arm was up, and out on display, and he was looking at it. Pax was looking at it. And now Ian was looking at it. Looking at where it connected to Pax’s skin, and immediately (again) drawn in to where it connected underneath the layers of skin.
“You can take a look if you want. It’s a little tricky for me to mess with it myself.”
The breath came out of Ian in a whoosh, as a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and an admission of admiration. “I can look?” He asked, before he could stop himself, already reaching across the table to meet Pax’s outstretched limb. “I can touch?!” And suddenly his hands were on it, and his heart rate shot through the roof. Clumsily, both his hands were around the mechanical part of the arm for an instant before he drew back, touching the delicate piece of machinery with the tips of his long fingers.
It was beautiful. Ian didn’t know where to start first. It had obviously been damaged, but Ian didn’t know how Pax had been injured, or by what, and the fact that this was still holding up was astonishing by itself. Had it been regular combustion fire? Had it been the more-deadly plasma fire? Ian’s deft fingers went to softly touch where the skin met the apparatus, to…
His breath stopped. This is exactly what he had wanted since he first saw Pax Cassidy. To explore every inch of him, see where things connected, and how. And… suddenly his throat was tight. And his face was hot. Ian stilled, both mortified and not, and forced his eyes, slowly, so slowly, to rise to look up at Pax. He was only aware he was breathing again because his lower lip began to shake ever so slightly, and now he couldn’t break his eye contact with the doctor.
“Sorry” he breathed, unsure if the word had been audible beyond his quiet sigh.
==Woof!==
It took a concentrated effort for Ian to not focus on the burns, and dive down a rabbit hole of thoughts about what exactly happens to the skin when it’s burned by any number of specifically-burning things. His parents had wanted him to be a doctor. He was pre-med for a good minute before he realized that Engineering was his true passion. Medicine had been his formitive years, after all.
“It was a tough one,” came the reply, “but I’m proud of my crew. They stepped up today, even though none of us knew what we were in for.”
Ian nodded automatically in a show of understanding. Engineering was thrown one curveball after another, to the point where fastballs didn’t even exist any more. And then suddenly, without any warning (who needed warning?) the whole thing was done. But he didn’t know how or what to reply to Pax, and so he had nothing to say. He just sat in the moment, thinking about curveballs, and thinking about how baseball wasn’t really his sport (moved too slow) and how he really liked ice hockey instead. Everyone was always moving; the puck was always moving; it was chaos until you locked into the scene. Like how today had been.
“Did Nurse Manx send you to take a look at my gear?”
“Huh? What? Who?” Ian had been thinking about hockey. And he had no idea who Nurse Manx was. A manx was a cat, right? A breed of feline? Not domesticated feline, but big, right? And orange? Was there a feline-like nurse working in Sickbay? Who had Ian just talked to that told him to come here?
And then Pax’s arm was up, and out on display, and he was looking at it. Pax was looking at it. And now Ian was looking at it. Looking at where it connected to Pax’s skin, and immediately (again) drawn in to where it connected underneath the layers of skin.
“You can take a look if you want. It’s a little tricky for me to mess with it myself.”
The breath came out of Ian in a whoosh, as a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and an admission of admiration. “I can look?” He asked, before he could stop himself, already reaching across the table to meet Pax’s outstretched limb. “I can touch?!” And suddenly his hands were on it, and his heart rate shot through the roof. Clumsily, both his hands were around the mechanical part of the arm for an instant before he drew back, touching the delicate piece of machinery with the tips of his long fingers.
It was beautiful. Ian didn’t know where to start first. It had obviously been damaged, but Ian didn’t know how Pax had been injured, or by what, and the fact that this was still holding up was astonishing by itself. Had it been regular combustion fire? Had it been the more-deadly plasma fire? Ian’s deft fingers went to softly touch where the skin met the apparatus, to…
His breath stopped. This is exactly what he had wanted since he first saw Pax Cassidy. To explore every inch of him, see where things connected, and how. And… suddenly his throat was tight. And his face was hot. Ian stilled, both mortified and not, and forced his eyes, slowly, so slowly, to rise to look up at Pax. He was only aware he was breathing again because his lower lip began to shake ever so slightly, and now he couldn’t break his eye contact with the doctor.
“Sorry” he breathed, unsure if the word had been audible beyond his quiet sigh.
==Woof!==