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Fic: Learn Something New Everyday
Learn Something New Everyday - Stargate: Atlantis - Evan Lorne/David Parrish - Words: 3,560
Written for the Parrish/Lorne Thing a Thon; Prompt: After a mission, Parrish is stripping for the showers. Lorne notices a long, jagged, angry looking scar marring the milky, freckled skin of his thigh.
Summary: Sometimes Evan forgets they haven't actually been together long enough to know every detail of each other's bodies and the history that is written there.
Content Notes: descriptions of scars. R.
On AO3: Learn Something New Everyday
The planet they'd just been on could have been most accurately described as a ball of mud floating in space. Or, at least that's how Evan Lorne had described it to Colonel Sheppard as he stood in the 'gate room and listened to the sounds of the rest of his team stumbling through the 'gate. Sheppard hadn't been particularly pleased with the preliminary report, but then Sheppard wasn't standing there filthy, soaked, freezing and wiggling his toes in his mud-filled boots either. That wasn't even mentioning the mud he could feel in his pants, and under his shirt, and if he had to guess by the feel of things, under the waistband of his boxers as well. Evan figured that Sheppard could deal with that as a preliminary report until such a time as he wasn't leaving a trail behind that wasn't unlike what a slug would leave. A really big and muddy slug.
His team followed behind, Reed and Coughlin still flicking mud that had gathered on their uniforms, apparently unfazed by their very slippery and messy trek. When he looked to his side, Evan found David Parrish with his hands in his hair, a streak of mud darkening a side section, the rest of it just dripping wet. "Relax, we'll be in the shower in like five minutes," Evan said, reaching up to bat David's hands away to prevent him from actually pulling any of the strands out.
"Too bad it isn't your shower," David said quietly, the sounds of Reed and Coughlin roughhousing covering their conversation.
Evan found himself grinning despite the mud and his exhaustion. His relationship, though he only called it that in his mind, with David was new enough that they still had lots of things they hadn't done yet together. Showering together was suddenly moved to the top of that list. Evan spared a glance back at Reed and Coughlin and revised his mental statement; showering together without the rest of their teammates was at the top of his list. "Another time. We'd track mud halfway across Atlantis if we tried to make it there now."
David grinned back. "Not to mention we'd leave two distinct sets of boot prints. I'm sure that the brilliant minds on Atlantis might be able to deduce two sets of prints walking back to your quarters instead of just one."
Evan pretended to think about it for a moment, schooling his expression into something approaching serious. "Maybe. I don't know, one or two of the scientists might be able to figure it out."
They both laughed as the team walked into the small shower area off the small locker rooms. It was a small set of rooms situated near the 'gate room, and unlike the SGC, teams did most of their basic preparation in their quarters before coming down to the locker area to finish gearing up.
Evan thought for a moment about trying to peel off his filthy clothes before walking under the shower heads but settled for getting rid of his belt and thigh holster. The rest he might as well wash off under the water anyway. He stepped under one of the shower heads that was built into the ceiling, years of military service inuring him to showering around other people in general and his team in specific. He pressed his hand against the wall and sighed in relief as Atlantis responded to his strong desire for a lot of hot and clean water.
He stood there for several minutes, just soaking up the warmth and feeling some of the mud run clean from his clothes, the sound of rushing water helping to block out the rest of the room and the world. When he started to feel a little bit more himself, he opened his eyes and felt the flow of water ease back a bit. Sometimes it was really nice living on a city that could respond to thought. He shrugged out of his jacket, gave the inside a quick rinse before tossing it to the edge of the shower area, and noticed that the rest of his team had followed his example and were only now starting to remove their own clothing. Coughlin and Reed's antics had fallen aside and Reed appeared to be entirely occupied with vigorously scrubbing his hair and scalp. Considering the man had taken a head first slide down a hill, Evan wasn't sure he could blame him.
Evan pulled his shirt over his head, grimacing at the layers of dirt that it left behind. He decided to get completely undressed before he brought soap into the equation and bent down to rid himself of his boots and socks, his toes grateful to be standing on a smooth surface that didn't involve being rubbed against the grit that had built up in his boots. He rinsed his boots out several times before he was satisfied that they were clean enough that he'd be able to wear them again when they dried out and walked them the few steps to the doorway of the shower area so they'd be out of the water. He turned back and found his gaze landing on David, who was already completely undressed and was in the process of rinsing soap from his hair with his head tipped back.
He never really understood how David, who spent so much time outside working with plants, was so consistently pale, and it was only when he'd seen him shirtless for the first time that he realized that David's face and arms were tanned compared to the rest of his body. Evan let his eyes linger, David too caught up with his hair to notice the attention. David was tall and spindly, though there was a surprising amount of muscle hidden underneath his sleek figure. Evan dropped his gaze lower, his fingers twitching as he remembered running them through David's sparse chest hair only a few nights previously.
He smiled and kept going, David turning slightly under the water, Evan blinking hard as he was jolted out of the combination of memory and fantasy as his eyes fell on a thick scar that ran from a few inches below David's hip and ended halfway down his the side of his thigh. Evan found his heart beating harder as he stared, fixated on the raised edges that hadn't healed evenly and the way the scar tissue was somehow even paler than the rest of of David's milky and freckled skin.
David turned again, the scar disappearing from sight and David's raising his eyebrows questioningly when he opened his eyes to find Evan staring at him. Evan just shook his head, still feeling a little off kilter and stumbled back under the shower spray. He shivered under the water, the temperature creeping up as he realized how chilled he'd gotten in the few minutes that he'd been out of the water, though he thought that it wasn't just the air that had left him shivering.
He managed to finish undressing and washed himself by rote memory, not even paying attention as he rinsed the last of the mud from his waist and let the water turn itself off, leaving him standing blankly in the shower room. He hadn't noticed the rest of the team leaving, but he was the only one left in the room, still holding his soaking wet pants. Evan tried to push the memory of David's scar, his mind already working overtime to provide scenarios as to how it might have happened, and focused on wringing the excess water out of his uniform before gathering everything up.
Out in the locker room Coughlin and Reed had already taken off, probably to the mess hall if he knew his team half as well as he thought he did, and David was standing by his locker already halfway dressed. Evan deposited his clothes in one of the laundry tubs, he'd come pick them back up when they'd dried off some. He grabbed a towel from the stack by the shower doorway and wrapped it around his waist, walking over to his locker where he kept a spare uniform for incidents just like these.
"I never thought I'd be this clean again," David said, giving Evan a cautious smile as he combed his hair. "Though I think I can still taste and smell the mud."
Evan paused his shirt halfway over his head. "You didn't actually eat any of it, did you?"
"No, but I seem to have some of it in my ears too. Maybe I need another shower?" David suggested with a sly smile.
Evan finished pulling his shirt over his head and stared at where David was sitting on a bench and tugging on a clean pair of shoes.
"Everything alright?" David asked uncertainly.
Evan nodded, because the locker room wasn't really the time or place for the question he wanted to ask.
"Dinner tonight?" David asked. The way David's eyes combed over Evan, lingering on where Evan's pants slipped low without his belt, indicated that David was interested in a lot more than having dinner, something they did on a regular basis anyway without having to ask each other.
"Sure," Evan said, trying to appear as cheerful and normal as possible. From David's concerned and confused expression, he wasn't pulling it off.
"See you then," David said. He shrugged into his spare jacket and shut his locker, leaving Evan alone with his thoughts.
*****
The rest of the day seemed to drag on, Evan distracted even though his debriefing where he insisted to Sheppard that the planet was really just mud and that if he wanted to check it out for himself, he could send his own team. That was one of the other nice things about Atlantis; he and Sheppard could joke and were essentially equals when it came to the care and running of Atlantis. He'd never had a CO that was quite like Sheppard and it was really nice, except for the part where Sheppard had vowed that any planets that showed up as mud oriented were now on Evan's schedule. They'd both laughed and Sheppard had crossed the planet off the viable planets list.
Evan had spent the rest of his day in his office, revising schedules and sending emails to teams that still had overdue mission reports. Or at least, that's what his body did, his mind was still preoccupied with David's scar. He could very well figure out how he hadn't seen it before, most of the times Evan had seen David naked had been when they were pulling off each others clothes in a distracted rush or in a dire situation off-world when it wasn't exactly appropriate to be taking a good look at his teammates. Part of him, though, was still convinced that he should have felt it at some point when he was with David, even if he'd been occupied with other things at the time. And, some other small part of him, was still caught up in how he didn't know something about David that had obviously been a source of pain for him. It wasn't like they knew everything about each other, not even close, but this struck Evan as something that was important.
Dinner had come and gone, Evan and David no sooner sitting down than the rest of their team joining them, and bits and pieces of Sheppard's team following shortly after that. Evan wasn't sure if Reed and Coughlin were just utterly clueless about the fact that their team leader was dating their botanist, or if they knew and had some kind of perverse plan to protect them from speculation by joining them whenever they were near each other in public, or if they knew and found it hilarious to systematically interrupt them at each and every opportunity. He would suspect the third and suggest that his CO was in on it, considering the way that Sheppard called for him on what seemed like half the nights that Evan managed to stay with David, but none of them had ever given him and David any type of look or nod to indicate they had the slightest idea.
By the time they made it back to Evan's quarters, David had been intent on getting both of them in bed and wearing as few articles of clothing as possible. Evan had eagerly gone along with that, pretty much never someone to object when his boyfriend had his hands down Evan's pants and his tongue lapping at his mouth. It was almost completely dark in Evan's quarters when they finished, the sun outside his window finished dipping down beyond the horizon and Evan left too tired to even think at Atlantis in order to get the lights to rise a little. His sheet and blanket had been kicked somewhere down around Evan's feet but it was warm enough that he would just wake later in the night to pull them up.
David rested his head on the side of Evan's chest, his shoulder tucked under Evan's arm and his knees bumping against Evan's thighs as he made himself entirely comfortable. Evan shifted a little under David, letting David drape his legs over him as they'd wind up that way in the night anyway. He'd slept in the same bed as other people before, but he'd never had another person who he woke up with their limbs and bodies tangled together instead of drifting apart in the night. He liked to think that it meant something about him and David, about how they fit together without even trying, but he wasn't quite that optimistic.
He moved again, his eyes still open and able to make out shapes in his room even in the dark, and absently ran his hand down David's side. Evan's fingers found the top of David's scar, the skin smooth and slightly raised. He rested his hand gently just below David's prominent hip bone, knowing how old scars could still be painful even years later, and slowly traced the scar down to the end. It was uneven in places, not just one straight line but slightly jagged where the skin had been torn unevenly. His mind had already been through everything he could think of that could make scars like this, ruling out smooth sharp blades, animal attacks, and various other things that would leave different marks entirely. He rolled his head to the side and found David looking up at him, his eyes wide open. "Does it still hurt?" Evan asked quietly.
David shook his head, his hair lightly rubbing against Evan's chest. "No, it hasn't for a long time. Pulls a little on hikes sometimes, doesn't move the same way as the rest of the skin, but doesn't hurt."
Evan took a slowly breath, very aware of David's head rising and falling with his chest. "Does it bother you if I touch it?"
David shook his head again, nestling closer to Evan and moving his leg up higher so that Evan had easier access.
The moons were slowly rising and stars lit the sky outside, giving off just enough light that Evan could make out the area of raised skin on David's leg. He ran his fingers over it again, the sensitive skin of his fingertips taking in each place where the scar widened or left a sudden edge. "What happened?" he asked, leaning down slightly to press his lips into David's hair.
"When I was younger, my parents liked to send me to summer camp. My dad said that I should try to be around normal people at least some of the time. That it would be good for me. One summer, I was on a nature hike with some of the other campers and I got, well, distracted by a very beautiful growth of Hosta lancifolia. By the time I looked up the rest of the group had moved on, but I could still hear them in the distance. I'd been in trouble before for wandering in the wilderness without one of the group leaders, and I really didn't want to be banned from the woods for the rest of the summer again, so I figured I'd take a short cut and met up with everyone at the top of the ridge where the group was supposed to picnic," David said, his voice pitched so quiet that it was barely audible. He rolled his head back so that he was looking up at the ceiling but didn't pull away from Evan's arms.
Evan could feel his heart speed up; he already didn't like the way David's story was heading. "I'm guessing that didn't work out as you planned?"
David's body jerked a little bit as he gave a short huff of laughter. "Not at all. I knew the woods around the camp really well, I'd been going there for years and spent as much time in them as I could get away with. However, I failed to factor in how growing two inches in the space of a few months effected my coordination and how I moved. Misjudged a short leap towards the top of a set of rocks, took a very long fall for most of which I wasn't conscious, thankfully. When I woke, it was already late in the afternoon and I was laying at the bottom of the woods and trapped looking up at the trees. I'd lost a lot of blood already, was tangled in some branches that I didn't have the right leverage to pull myself out of, and had hit my head on something on the way down." David reached up and grasped one of Evan's hands using it to trace a scar hidden in his hair.
Evan smoothed David's hair. In all the missions they'd been on, he'd seen David nearly die more times than he thought he could stand, and he knew that it was likely they both would nearly die, or possibly actually die, just by virtue of being in the Pegasus galaxy. But knowing that and hearing about David, alone and severely hurt without a team looking for him, were somehow two completely different things. "They came looking for you? Found you?" he asked, even though David here in his bed was proof that they had.
"Yeah, they did. Not until after it was dark, and later my dad told me they hadn't even realized I was missing until the camp assembled for dinner. But they searched the woods, found me and called for a medical evacuation. I don't actually remember any of that part, I just remember being there, surrounded by all these trees and flowers and moss growing on the branches that I had crashed through. I could see the sky through the leaves and the concussion was starting to make things looks so bright and full of shapes and colors. I'd never seen anything like it before." David turned in Evan's arms, rearranging both of them until they were on their sides and wrapped around each other with the blanket pulled up around their waists. "My dad sent me to a university summer program for botany studies the next summer."
"Whoever knew that botany was such a dangerous profession?" Evan joked lamely.
"Well, you did when you invited me to be on your team," David said, smiling even though it wasn't remotely funny.
"You sure I didn't just want you on my team so I could try to woo you?" Evan asked, hoping that his suggestively raised eyebrows were visible in the near dark of the room.
"I'm sure," David said confidently.
Evan leaned forward, pressing his forehead to David's and whispering, "how do you know?"
"Because I'm the one who wooed you, or weren't you paying attention?" David moved the bare inch necessary to kiss Evan, muffling his response. When he released Evan, he leaned back against the pillows. "So, military man, now you know about my scars, what about yours? You've got to have some stories in there somewhere."
Evan smiled, still tired after their long day but feeling more at ease now that he and David had talked. He took David's hand and guided it until it was resting against a lump of scar tissue that started just under below his armpit and crept toward the back of his shoulder. "This is the tale of a little planet called P4X-176, a group of villagers with remarkable aim and what might be called very short javelins, a princess in danger, and a reptile that looked remarkably like a dragon, though it may have been a dinosaur."
"Brave Sir Evan rescued the princess and the kingdom rejoiced?" David asked, exploring the scar with the same reverence and curiosity that Evan has shown with his.
Evan grinned. "Not so much as 'Brave Sir Evan' and much more, 'Lorne: Dragon Bait', but that's much later on in the story. Don't try to skip ahead." When David laughed and both of them moved closer together as Evan started his tale, which may or may not have been as dramatic as he made it sound, a sense of calm fell over him. There were a lot of things they didn't know about each other, a lot of things left to tell and to learn, but they had time.
Written for the Parrish/Lorne Thing a Thon; Prompt: After a mission, Parrish is stripping for the showers. Lorne notices a long, jagged, angry looking scar marring the milky, freckled skin of his thigh.
Summary: Sometimes Evan forgets they haven't actually been together long enough to know every detail of each other's bodies and the history that is written there.
Content Notes: descriptions of scars. R.
On AO3: Learn Something New Everyday
The planet they'd just been on could have been most accurately described as a ball of mud floating in space. Or, at least that's how Evan Lorne had described it to Colonel Sheppard as he stood in the 'gate room and listened to the sounds of the rest of his team stumbling through the 'gate. Sheppard hadn't been particularly pleased with the preliminary report, but then Sheppard wasn't standing there filthy, soaked, freezing and wiggling his toes in his mud-filled boots either. That wasn't even mentioning the mud he could feel in his pants, and under his shirt, and if he had to guess by the feel of things, under the waistband of his boxers as well. Evan figured that Sheppard could deal with that as a preliminary report until such a time as he wasn't leaving a trail behind that wasn't unlike what a slug would leave. A really big and muddy slug.
His team followed behind, Reed and Coughlin still flicking mud that had gathered on their uniforms, apparently unfazed by their very slippery and messy trek. When he looked to his side, Evan found David Parrish with his hands in his hair, a streak of mud darkening a side section, the rest of it just dripping wet. "Relax, we'll be in the shower in like five minutes," Evan said, reaching up to bat David's hands away to prevent him from actually pulling any of the strands out.
"Too bad it isn't your shower," David said quietly, the sounds of Reed and Coughlin roughhousing covering their conversation.
Evan found himself grinning despite the mud and his exhaustion. His relationship, though he only called it that in his mind, with David was new enough that they still had lots of things they hadn't done yet together. Showering together was suddenly moved to the top of that list. Evan spared a glance back at Reed and Coughlin and revised his mental statement; showering together without the rest of their teammates was at the top of his list. "Another time. We'd track mud halfway across Atlantis if we tried to make it there now."
David grinned back. "Not to mention we'd leave two distinct sets of boot prints. I'm sure that the brilliant minds on Atlantis might be able to deduce two sets of prints walking back to your quarters instead of just one."
Evan pretended to think about it for a moment, schooling his expression into something approaching serious. "Maybe. I don't know, one or two of the scientists might be able to figure it out."
They both laughed as the team walked into the small shower area off the small locker rooms. It was a small set of rooms situated near the 'gate room, and unlike the SGC, teams did most of their basic preparation in their quarters before coming down to the locker area to finish gearing up.
Evan thought for a moment about trying to peel off his filthy clothes before walking under the shower heads but settled for getting rid of his belt and thigh holster. The rest he might as well wash off under the water anyway. He stepped under one of the shower heads that was built into the ceiling, years of military service inuring him to showering around other people in general and his team in specific. He pressed his hand against the wall and sighed in relief as Atlantis responded to his strong desire for a lot of hot and clean water.
He stood there for several minutes, just soaking up the warmth and feeling some of the mud run clean from his clothes, the sound of rushing water helping to block out the rest of the room and the world. When he started to feel a little bit more himself, he opened his eyes and felt the flow of water ease back a bit. Sometimes it was really nice living on a city that could respond to thought. He shrugged out of his jacket, gave the inside a quick rinse before tossing it to the edge of the shower area, and noticed that the rest of his team had followed his example and were only now starting to remove their own clothing. Coughlin and Reed's antics had fallen aside and Reed appeared to be entirely occupied with vigorously scrubbing his hair and scalp. Considering the man had taken a head first slide down a hill, Evan wasn't sure he could blame him.
Evan pulled his shirt over his head, grimacing at the layers of dirt that it left behind. He decided to get completely undressed before he brought soap into the equation and bent down to rid himself of his boots and socks, his toes grateful to be standing on a smooth surface that didn't involve being rubbed against the grit that had built up in his boots. He rinsed his boots out several times before he was satisfied that they were clean enough that he'd be able to wear them again when they dried out and walked them the few steps to the doorway of the shower area so they'd be out of the water. He turned back and found his gaze landing on David, who was already completely undressed and was in the process of rinsing soap from his hair with his head tipped back.
He never really understood how David, who spent so much time outside working with plants, was so consistently pale, and it was only when he'd seen him shirtless for the first time that he realized that David's face and arms were tanned compared to the rest of his body. Evan let his eyes linger, David too caught up with his hair to notice the attention. David was tall and spindly, though there was a surprising amount of muscle hidden underneath his sleek figure. Evan dropped his gaze lower, his fingers twitching as he remembered running them through David's sparse chest hair only a few nights previously.
He smiled and kept going, David turning slightly under the water, Evan blinking hard as he was jolted out of the combination of memory and fantasy as his eyes fell on a thick scar that ran from a few inches below David's hip and ended halfway down his the side of his thigh. Evan found his heart beating harder as he stared, fixated on the raised edges that hadn't healed evenly and the way the scar tissue was somehow even paler than the rest of of David's milky and freckled skin.
David turned again, the scar disappearing from sight and David's raising his eyebrows questioningly when he opened his eyes to find Evan staring at him. Evan just shook his head, still feeling a little off kilter and stumbled back under the shower spray. He shivered under the water, the temperature creeping up as he realized how chilled he'd gotten in the few minutes that he'd been out of the water, though he thought that it wasn't just the air that had left him shivering.
He managed to finish undressing and washed himself by rote memory, not even paying attention as he rinsed the last of the mud from his waist and let the water turn itself off, leaving him standing blankly in the shower room. He hadn't noticed the rest of the team leaving, but he was the only one left in the room, still holding his soaking wet pants. Evan tried to push the memory of David's scar, his mind already working overtime to provide scenarios as to how it might have happened, and focused on wringing the excess water out of his uniform before gathering everything up.
Out in the locker room Coughlin and Reed had already taken off, probably to the mess hall if he knew his team half as well as he thought he did, and David was standing by his locker already halfway dressed. Evan deposited his clothes in one of the laundry tubs, he'd come pick them back up when they'd dried off some. He grabbed a towel from the stack by the shower doorway and wrapped it around his waist, walking over to his locker where he kept a spare uniform for incidents just like these.
"I never thought I'd be this clean again," David said, giving Evan a cautious smile as he combed his hair. "Though I think I can still taste and smell the mud."
Evan paused his shirt halfway over his head. "You didn't actually eat any of it, did you?"
"No, but I seem to have some of it in my ears too. Maybe I need another shower?" David suggested with a sly smile.
Evan finished pulling his shirt over his head and stared at where David was sitting on a bench and tugging on a clean pair of shoes.
"Everything alright?" David asked uncertainly.
Evan nodded, because the locker room wasn't really the time or place for the question he wanted to ask.
"Dinner tonight?" David asked. The way David's eyes combed over Evan, lingering on where Evan's pants slipped low without his belt, indicated that David was interested in a lot more than having dinner, something they did on a regular basis anyway without having to ask each other.
"Sure," Evan said, trying to appear as cheerful and normal as possible. From David's concerned and confused expression, he wasn't pulling it off.
"See you then," David said. He shrugged into his spare jacket and shut his locker, leaving Evan alone with his thoughts.
The rest of the day seemed to drag on, Evan distracted even though his debriefing where he insisted to Sheppard that the planet was really just mud and that if he wanted to check it out for himself, he could send his own team. That was one of the other nice things about Atlantis; he and Sheppard could joke and were essentially equals when it came to the care and running of Atlantis. He'd never had a CO that was quite like Sheppard and it was really nice, except for the part where Sheppard had vowed that any planets that showed up as mud oriented were now on Evan's schedule. They'd both laughed and Sheppard had crossed the planet off the viable planets list.
Evan had spent the rest of his day in his office, revising schedules and sending emails to teams that still had overdue mission reports. Or at least, that's what his body did, his mind was still preoccupied with David's scar. He could very well figure out how he hadn't seen it before, most of the times Evan had seen David naked had been when they were pulling off each others clothes in a distracted rush or in a dire situation off-world when it wasn't exactly appropriate to be taking a good look at his teammates. Part of him, though, was still convinced that he should have felt it at some point when he was with David, even if he'd been occupied with other things at the time. And, some other small part of him, was still caught up in how he didn't know something about David that had obviously been a source of pain for him. It wasn't like they knew everything about each other, not even close, but this struck Evan as something that was important.
Dinner had come and gone, Evan and David no sooner sitting down than the rest of their team joining them, and bits and pieces of Sheppard's team following shortly after that. Evan wasn't sure if Reed and Coughlin were just utterly clueless about the fact that their team leader was dating their botanist, or if they knew and had some kind of perverse plan to protect them from speculation by joining them whenever they were near each other in public, or if they knew and found it hilarious to systematically interrupt them at each and every opportunity. He would suspect the third and suggest that his CO was in on it, considering the way that Sheppard called for him on what seemed like half the nights that Evan managed to stay with David, but none of them had ever given him and David any type of look or nod to indicate they had the slightest idea.
By the time they made it back to Evan's quarters, David had been intent on getting both of them in bed and wearing as few articles of clothing as possible. Evan had eagerly gone along with that, pretty much never someone to object when his boyfriend had his hands down Evan's pants and his tongue lapping at his mouth. It was almost completely dark in Evan's quarters when they finished, the sun outside his window finished dipping down beyond the horizon and Evan left too tired to even think at Atlantis in order to get the lights to rise a little. His sheet and blanket had been kicked somewhere down around Evan's feet but it was warm enough that he would just wake later in the night to pull them up.
David rested his head on the side of Evan's chest, his shoulder tucked under Evan's arm and his knees bumping against Evan's thighs as he made himself entirely comfortable. Evan shifted a little under David, letting David drape his legs over him as they'd wind up that way in the night anyway. He'd slept in the same bed as other people before, but he'd never had another person who he woke up with their limbs and bodies tangled together instead of drifting apart in the night. He liked to think that it meant something about him and David, about how they fit together without even trying, but he wasn't quite that optimistic.
He moved again, his eyes still open and able to make out shapes in his room even in the dark, and absently ran his hand down David's side. Evan's fingers found the top of David's scar, the skin smooth and slightly raised. He rested his hand gently just below David's prominent hip bone, knowing how old scars could still be painful even years later, and slowly traced the scar down to the end. It was uneven in places, not just one straight line but slightly jagged where the skin had been torn unevenly. His mind had already been through everything he could think of that could make scars like this, ruling out smooth sharp blades, animal attacks, and various other things that would leave different marks entirely. He rolled his head to the side and found David looking up at him, his eyes wide open. "Does it still hurt?" Evan asked quietly.
David shook his head, his hair lightly rubbing against Evan's chest. "No, it hasn't for a long time. Pulls a little on hikes sometimes, doesn't move the same way as the rest of the skin, but doesn't hurt."
Evan took a slowly breath, very aware of David's head rising and falling with his chest. "Does it bother you if I touch it?"
David shook his head again, nestling closer to Evan and moving his leg up higher so that Evan had easier access.
The moons were slowly rising and stars lit the sky outside, giving off just enough light that Evan could make out the area of raised skin on David's leg. He ran his fingers over it again, the sensitive skin of his fingertips taking in each place where the scar widened or left a sudden edge. "What happened?" he asked, leaning down slightly to press his lips into David's hair.
"When I was younger, my parents liked to send me to summer camp. My dad said that I should try to be around normal people at least some of the time. That it would be good for me. One summer, I was on a nature hike with some of the other campers and I got, well, distracted by a very beautiful growth of Hosta lancifolia. By the time I looked up the rest of the group had moved on, but I could still hear them in the distance. I'd been in trouble before for wandering in the wilderness without one of the group leaders, and I really didn't want to be banned from the woods for the rest of the summer again, so I figured I'd take a short cut and met up with everyone at the top of the ridge where the group was supposed to picnic," David said, his voice pitched so quiet that it was barely audible. He rolled his head back so that he was looking up at the ceiling but didn't pull away from Evan's arms.
Evan could feel his heart speed up; he already didn't like the way David's story was heading. "I'm guessing that didn't work out as you planned?"
David's body jerked a little bit as he gave a short huff of laughter. "Not at all. I knew the woods around the camp really well, I'd been going there for years and spent as much time in them as I could get away with. However, I failed to factor in how growing two inches in the space of a few months effected my coordination and how I moved. Misjudged a short leap towards the top of a set of rocks, took a very long fall for most of which I wasn't conscious, thankfully. When I woke, it was already late in the afternoon and I was laying at the bottom of the woods and trapped looking up at the trees. I'd lost a lot of blood already, was tangled in some branches that I didn't have the right leverage to pull myself out of, and had hit my head on something on the way down." David reached up and grasped one of Evan's hands using it to trace a scar hidden in his hair.
Evan smoothed David's hair. In all the missions they'd been on, he'd seen David nearly die more times than he thought he could stand, and he knew that it was likely they both would nearly die, or possibly actually die, just by virtue of being in the Pegasus galaxy. But knowing that and hearing about David, alone and severely hurt without a team looking for him, were somehow two completely different things. "They came looking for you? Found you?" he asked, even though David here in his bed was proof that they had.
"Yeah, they did. Not until after it was dark, and later my dad told me they hadn't even realized I was missing until the camp assembled for dinner. But they searched the woods, found me and called for a medical evacuation. I don't actually remember any of that part, I just remember being there, surrounded by all these trees and flowers and moss growing on the branches that I had crashed through. I could see the sky through the leaves and the concussion was starting to make things looks so bright and full of shapes and colors. I'd never seen anything like it before." David turned in Evan's arms, rearranging both of them until they were on their sides and wrapped around each other with the blanket pulled up around their waists. "My dad sent me to a university summer program for botany studies the next summer."
"Whoever knew that botany was such a dangerous profession?" Evan joked lamely.
"Well, you did when you invited me to be on your team," David said, smiling even though it wasn't remotely funny.
"You sure I didn't just want you on my team so I could try to woo you?" Evan asked, hoping that his suggestively raised eyebrows were visible in the near dark of the room.
"I'm sure," David said confidently.
Evan leaned forward, pressing his forehead to David's and whispering, "how do you know?"
"Because I'm the one who wooed you, or weren't you paying attention?" David moved the bare inch necessary to kiss Evan, muffling his response. When he released Evan, he leaned back against the pillows. "So, military man, now you know about my scars, what about yours? You've got to have some stories in there somewhere."
Evan smiled, still tired after their long day but feeling more at ease now that he and David had talked. He took David's hand and guided it until it was resting against a lump of scar tissue that started just under below his armpit and crept toward the back of his shoulder. "This is the tale of a little planet called P4X-176, a group of villagers with remarkable aim and what might be called very short javelins, a princess in danger, and a reptile that looked remarkably like a dragon, though it may have been a dinosaur."
"Brave Sir Evan rescued the princess and the kingdom rejoiced?" David asked, exploring the scar with the same reverence and curiosity that Evan has shown with his.
Evan grinned. "Not so much as 'Brave Sir Evan' and much more, 'Lorne: Dragon Bait', but that's much later on in the story. Don't try to skip ahead." When David laughed and both of them moved closer together as Evan started his tale, which may or may not have been as dramatic as he made it sound, a sense of calm fell over him. There were a lot of things they didn't know about each other, a lot of things left to tell and to learn, but they had time.
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I love your writing style, it flows so well and is beautiful to read.
Thankyou for sharing
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I'm very glad you enjoyed reading.