Too Much

Posted on 22 Sep 2013 @ 12:05pm by Commander Andreus Kohl & Petty Officer 1st Class Gabriel Stark

3,228 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 04 - Exodus
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 2, LT Kohl's Quarters
Timeline: MD -01 - 0702 hours

[ON]

Having crossed the length of his quarters and back again, one could only describe Andreus Kohl's activity as puttering. A casual observer wouldn't have known he'd been preparing for breakfast for almost an hour. There was a jug of fruit juice sitting on the table, but that was about it. No dishes, nor napkins, nor cutlery. Andreus, himself, was dressed in black trousers and a half-open teal tunic, while his jacket and boots were laid neatly by his desk. Most of the preparation time had been eaten up by gathering old uniforms, dishes, and candles, and destroying the evidence of his slovenly ways in the replicator.

The chime rudely interrupted him, at least five minutes before it was supposed to.

Gabriel stood on the other side of the door, waiting to be let in. His foot moved against the floor to the tune he was half humming and his fingers 'drummed' against his thighs, tapping out the beat. The decadent night out on Venture seemed ages ago now, but that was just because things had been busy at work for the young petty officer. "Open up, Andreus! Or I won't just search your quarters, I'll strip search you too!"

A heartbeat later, the doors parted and Andreus was standing right on the other side of them. The blonde in his honey-brown hair was mostly faded and his jawline was coated in artfully-trimmed stubble. Between a couple of fingers, Andreus pulled at the open front of his tunic, and he folded it over like a lapel. Softly, Andreus replied, "I'm not sure that would take you very long at all. Searching my quarters would be far more strenuous..."

"Oh I don't know, you can put up a good struggle," Gabriel teased, watching him with a grin and a fondness in his eyes. It had been, after all, one hell of a good night he'd spent with the strapping Medical Officer after the clubbing escapade. He sighed, shaking his head. "I still say that physique is wasted in Sickbay."

Andreus dragged a hand down the side of Gabriel's arm until he came to gently grip Gabriel at the wrist. Striding backwards, Andreus dragged Gabriel in from the passageway. "And remind me, what career would you recommend instead?"

"Security of course," Gabriel grinned, his dark eyes sparkling as he let him drag him about with no resistance. "Hard, demanding training, working out that body, wrestling the bad guys."

With a playful sneer and a cocked eyebrow, Andreus could only scoff at first. He raised his hands to make a show of releasing his grip on the lithe man. "Gabriel, I work as a field medic and a nurse practitioner," Andreus said, using careful enunciation, as if Gabriel were a bit thick. "Don't you think it takes demanding training to be able to calculate medication dosages while the roof is caving in or I'm getting shot at?" --Kohl shrugged his tunic off his shoulders and biceps-- "Do you think I got these arms just from a morning work-out? They're from deadlifting security officers off the floor."

Gabriel laughed warmly, reaching out to grip and feel the muscles being shown off to him, as if to test them out for himself. Of course, in reality, he remembered them well. "Who are you kidding, you spend all day waving regenerators and pressing hypos to necks. Ooo, so strenuous," he teased, pursing his lips.

Andreus pulled his tunic back up and leaned in even closer to Gabriel's lips. Shaking his head, Andreus whispered, "I don't think you believe that." Having said his piece, Andreus stepped away to move towards the replicator alcove.

Gabriel smiled, a note of mischief to it as he watched Andreus move. He was right, of course. Still, it was just too fun, teasing the Argellian. "You gonna treat me?"

"Breakfast," was the immediate reply that came from Andreus. He spun around to face Gabriel, and his body language changed as if going from Klingonese to Old High Vulcan. Andreus' shoulders were loose, his hands on his hips, and he was smirking. There was confidence in his timbre when he said, "I invited you here for breakfast." And then that confidence squeaked away, when he added, "Didn't I say?"

"Breakfast to me is usually a cold piece of toast and a jug of coffee, nothing special," Gabriel laughed as he moved over to hop up onto a high stool. "I don't think I've ever taken the time to just - enjoy and share breakfast with someone. Oh! Are you going to get us things from where you're from?"

Shrugging mildly, Andreus replied with, "If that's what you'd like..." He closed the distance between himself at the replicator. "I should warn you. You may find Argelian food to be rich, perhaps heavy, if you're accustomed to eating cold toast to start your day."

Gabriel couldn't help but smile at the words, tipping his head to the side as he watched him with playful eyes. "Rich and heavy, huh? You Argelians know how to spoil a man. That'll do me just fine."

Walking to-and-fro between the replicator and the dining table, Andreus carried over another bowl every time the replicator hummed. There was a bowl overflowing with puffy, savoury pastries; a bowl of a thick cheese, which was drizzled with sweet preserve; a bowl of dense pickled fruit; a bowl of olives; and large bowl of aromatic lentils that smelled of something like sweet garlic. Of course, the meal couldn't be considered complete until he set down a transparent coffee press for Gabriel.

Gabriel watched each addition with growing awe, enjoying the site and smell of it as much as anything else. It seemed a feast. "Do you ever cook? Some people enjoy it, you know. I almost burnt a kitchen down once. I've sorted avoided it ever since. Besides, I much prefer to be waited on. Fine restaurants, that kind of thing."

Andreus answered the question with a shake of his head, and a sardonic, "My parents didn't raise me that way." He finally came to rest and sat himself down in the chair right beside Gabriel. As Andreus poured coffee for them both, he said, "I grew up in a Federation family. We sat down to eat every night, together around the toasty replicator. I actually, I literally thought cooking was a fad? From the '70s? But it seems pretty popular on this ship."

"Maybe there is a revival going on," Gabriel chuckled softly, reaching to take one of the cups with a gentle sigh of appreciation at the smell. "It won't be led by me. It sounds cosy. Your evening meals I mean. Round a table with your family."

While Andreus poured himself a coffee, he focused his gaze on the mug as if it were the most serious of surgery. He didn't even look up when he spoke. "You weren't close?" Andreus said, and he didn't presume to clarify that he was talking about family too.

Gabriel watched him as he shook his head slowly. "No," he said quietly, taking a breath. "I suppose that's why I - understood when you spoke about how your family pushed at you, a while back? When we had a drink," he wasn't sure if he'd remember. Kohl had seemed distant then too when talking about it, like he did now. "Do you miss them?"

Lifting the cup of coffee to his lips, Andreus didn't reply at first. He studied the gaze Gabriel had leveled on him. He sipped at the bitter, cinnamon-scented liquid, and he held the coffee in his mouth. His eyes remained on Gabriel but his thoughts were elsewhere. And then he swallowed the coffee. "My father is dead," Andreus said quickly. He blinked a few times and he chuckled, but it wasn't a happy sound. "I feel like I missed him more when he was across the quadrant and I was choosing not to talk to him. Now... As for now, I know I can't talk to him. There's nothing I can do about that."

"I'm sorry," Gabriel said quietly with a frown, reaching to squeeze his arm. "You know you can still talk to him though, right?" he almost whispered, half afraid he'd laugh at him or call him stupid for the belief. His religious inclination hardly fitted with the rest of his bar boy, quick tempered reputation. "If you talk, wherever he is now, he'll know. He'll feel. You're his boy."

"He didn't believe in that manner of thing," Andreus said, after pausing to give Gabriel's words thought. "His people, their spirituality is grounded on the notion that death is a relief from the suffering of the living world." Andreus' forearm felt warm beneath Gabriel's grip; he was struck with intensive sense memory of Gabriel's touch.

"But what do you believe," Gabriel said softly, watching his features with a serious expression on his own, rubbing his arm gently.

As much as Andreus enjoyed losing himself in Gabriel's chocolatey brown eyes, he couldn't seem to maintain eye contact. Andreus looked at his coffee and looked at his empty plate. He didn't want to see what was behind Gabriel's eyes, or rather, he didn't want Gabriel to see what was behind his own. "I don't," was the only way Andreus knew how to reply at first. He lifted a serving spoon and began piling scoops of different foods onto his plate. "There are things I believe when I was a child... There are things I would like to believe. But, I don't. There's nothing there in my gut feelings."

"Then it won't do you any harm to talk to him anyway," Gabriel whispered, but with a small smile. "I mean, if you don't believe in anything, you don't have to worry about pissing anything off by getting your faith mixed up," he chuckled softly, stroking his hand. "Besides, if it gets whatever you want to say out, it's gotta be good for you."

"Yeah," Andreus said genuinely, if guardedly. He nodded and he chewed on his lower lip. Reaching over, he began serving food onto Gabriel's plate. He filled it right up. "Yes, I suppose I could do that."

"Just a suggestion," Gabriel saw the slight guardedness but ended up just giving a smile at it. "Listen, ignore me, mate. Just do whatever feels right. Whatever feels good. You hear? That's all that matters at the end of the day. Forget everything else, just do what you want and need and what makes you happy. No one goes through stuff like that the same way."

"No, I, uh, I appreciate it," Andreus said, and then the hesitancy went away, and he met Gabriel's eyes again. "It's been a few months now, but I still hardly know how to put what I'm feeling into words."

"Slowly, mate," Gabriel whispered with a smile, leaning to nudge him gently with the whole length of his arm. "You knew him a life time, a few months is nothing compared."

"You should eat. While the food is warm, like it's meant to be," Andreus said and he rubbed his arm against Gabriel's. "...That's what my father would have said to you right now."

Gabriel smiled at that, nodding. He took some to try, moaning gently. "Wow, this is good stuff. If this is what breakfast's like, what's dinner?" he laughed softly, shaking his head. "Let me guess, your food is as decadent as its people?"

"Actually, no," Andreus said. He gave a gentle shake to his head and his mood started to lighten. "The people are decadent, but the meal is always light at suppertime." Andreus explained, "You wouldn't want to feel bloated while you're making love through the night."

Gabriel smiled warmly at that as he looked down, and there was even some colour that managed to reach his cheeks. "Of course, silly me," he looked to him with shining eyes. "I was born into the wrong culture, I'm convinced of it between you and Victarion," he winked, because of course he was just too aggressive to fit in there.

"I don't know about that," Andreus said. He sounded half-convinced and half-mocking. He spoke between mouthfuls of lentils, and he mostly finished chewing before speaking again. "If you were just another average Argelian," Kohl said, matter-of-factly, "I wouldn't be able to explore human eroticism."

"Oh, so is that what turns you on, hm?" Gabriel smiled with a wicked grin, but also genuine curiosity as he watched him with interest. "Like the exotic boys?"

"For Argelians, sexuality is a wide, wide spectrum," was the closest to an answer Andreus could offer. He took a bite out of his pastry, and a thread of syrupy filling dripped down his lower lip and landed on his bearded chin. "Human notions of personality and body categories is challenging to understand."

Gabriel laughed softly, his eyes shining warmly and with fondness as he reached out, his finger carefully caressing the syrup away. "Centuries of conditioning," he said softly. "With a dash of embarrassment and splash of shame."

Before Gabriel could pull his finger away, Andreus captured it between gentle teeth. He closed his lips around the finger, tasting the syrup again, and then the let go. Matter of factly, Andreus remarked, "I haven't seen anything you have to be a shameful for."

Gabriel's breath caught at the feeling and he laughed softly, reaching to caress the now darker hair of the other man. "Doesn't matter, Blondie," he still called him it anyway. "Thing with humans with, we always manage to find something to feel guilty or ashamed about. It's in our long and rough culture," he smiled softly. "Maybe that's the biggest difference between our people? We were one taught that if something felt good it was probably bad, and some part of that has stayed in our instinct. Probably always will. Your people - you seem to see beauty and pleasure for what it is. I'm jealous," he laughed at that, shaking his head warmly.

Holding still, Kohl could only smile gently at first. "Ah," Kohl said, "Well." He chuckled wickedly in advance of his words, and he shrugged helplessly. "There was a time my people saw beauty in nothing but inflicting paid and bloodshed. Argelians aren't entirely enviable."

Gabriel suddenly grinned, watching him with awe. "Wow, you're like, the mirror world version of Vulcans, you know that right? They were all violent and bad so they went down a path of suppressing emotion. And you guys were all violent and bad so you went down a path of indulging in pleasure and peace. You definitely got the better deal...."

"At the Academy," Kohl said, "I wrote a paper about Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development, and it's application to Vulcan's Time of Awakening and Argelius' Great Awakening." --Kohl cleared his throat awkwardly, and took another bite out of his pastry-- "My professor delighted in telling me I wasn't nearly the first cadet to do so."

"Well then he was an arsehole," Gabriel said lightly, shaking his head with a frown, clearly a spark of anger having ignited with it. "He should have been praising you for thinking things out. I hate people like that, just can't wait to rain on other people's parade for a sick kick."

"It's all right," Andreus said. There was something soothing about his timbre. It came out of him automatically, in response to Gabriel's anger. Andreus took a quick sip of his coffee. "It helped prepared me for the real galaxy. Turns out," he said, "There's a lot of aresholes in the fleet."

Gabriel couldn't help but laugh at that, shaking his head as he squeezed his arm. "Right, that's it then. We'll form an alliance against arseholes..." he winked to him. "You're doing good, Andreus, even with everything you've had to go through and contend with recently, you're doing so good."

Smiling shyly, Andreus tucked into his breakfast. The textures and flavours of food from home were only making him all the more hungry. Nodding in begrudging agreement, Andreus said, "I had long given up on ever becoming a Lieutenant, or a department head." Keenly aware that they never managed to talk for very long about Gabriel's career, Kohl swallowed what he was chewing, and he asked, "How do you feel you're doing?"

Gabriel glanced down, smiling weakly. "Well I'm here. I've not been chucked out, so that's good, right?" he shook his head, resting his chin in his hand with a small smile, sipping his drink. "Trying to get my head into being enlisted. It's more difficult than I thought it would be. Still, at least with a change over of power in my department I might be able to get some kind of trust going, if you know what I mean," he shook his head with a soft sigh, aware he had to sound mercenary after what happened to his old department chief, and yet not being able to bring himself to care too much with how he'd treated him.

"Yes," Kohl agreed, and he sounded whole-hearted about it. "I don't think trust will be a concern anymore," Andreus said, "It will be all about you and what you want."

A warm, genuine smile came to Gabriel as he let out a long breath, leaning close to him with dark eyes. "Too much of a good thing can be very, very dangerous..."

Gabriel had edged close enough, Andreus could nearly feel his body heat. That look in Gabriel's eyes elicited a smile from Andreus. Instinctively, he glanced over at the chronometer and did the mental math to ponder how much time he had before his shift began. "If you're going to live like an Argelian, you're going to have to forget that aphorism," Andreus said. "No such thing as too much of a good thing."

"Hm, maybe I haven't had enough of you then," Gabriel grinned, watching him with shining eyes before leaning in closer to steal a kiss, wrapping his hand tightly around the back of his neck.

Andreus thrilled at Gabriel's firm grip and kissed him back hard. He reached out to loosen Gabriel's uniform collar, pawing at the smooth skin of his neck and across his collar bone.

Gabriel sighed warmly against his lips and he shivered with the touches across his skin. He teased his hand up under Andreus' tunic, to get a feel of the firm, warm torso under it. "No strings," he whispered, shaking his head as his fingertips walked up over his skin. "I don't come with strings attached."

Studying Gabriel's eyes as if they were a particularly confusing nebula, Andreus wondered if Gabriel had heard anything he had been telling him about Argelian freedom and hedonism. "But we are friends," Andreus asked, "aren't we?"

Gabriel grinned, unable to help it as he nodded, brushing the pad of his thumb over Andreus' lips. "Definitely, yes."

"Then don't worry about anything else," Andreus said. He stood from his chair and stepped closer to Gabriel. Andreus put a firm hand on Gabriel's jawline and tilted his head back to kiss him properly.

--

[OFF]

Lieutenant Andreus Kohl
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

PO2 Gabriel Stark
Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo
PNPC'd by Scarlet Blake

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