What's Left Unsaid, Says it All

Posted on 04 Mar 2015 @ 1:08am by Lieutenant Oren Idris Ph.D. & Petty Officer 3rd Class Ellsworth Hudson

3,408 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Episode 08 - NIMBUS
Location: USS Galileo, Deck 4, 04-2523 EN
Timeline: MD -02, 0020hrs

[ ON ]

It was unimaginable how you could be so comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. Physically, it was bliss. Oren had been holding his hand beneath the blanket for the past fifteen minutes solid, completely engrossed in the program they were watching. They were leaned up against one another in a crumpled mass on the couch, their spot of choice for late-night entertainment viewing, like an old married couple. It was perfect, and it made his heart sink because...

Emotionally, it was torment. After his encounter with K'os in the mess hall the evening before things had only gotten worse. Much worse. After the drug Dr. Devin had given him wore off the telepathic link had roared back with a vengeance, reasserting itself with unusual aggression, as if it had resented being severed even momentarily. K'os and that thing, the plak tow, were everywhere in his mind and on his skin - kissing his neck, biting his shoulder, clawing at his thighs, whispering in his ear. So, too, was Dr. Devin's admonishment that he should - he must - talk to Oren.

Fidgeting in place, Ellsworth wrapped an arm behind Oren's torso and placed his head on the El Aurian's shoulder. It seemed criminal to bring everything crashing down but it was better to try to broach the subject himself and maintain some control over it as opposed to letting it someone works its way between them of its own accord. If it went on long enough, rumors would start, and they'd make their way back to Oren. Wasn't it better to talk to him now, lessen the heartbreak, than to let him hear it from someone else?

The young Betazoid tilted his head slightly, so his lips were pointed toward Oren's ear, and whispered, "I love you."

Oren turned, giving Ellsworth a warm smile. While he stared at the screen, he didn't really know what was happening between the characters. All of his focus kept shifting between the warmth of Ellsworth's body against him and the worrying thoughts inside his head. While Oren never considered himself someone prone to eavesdropping, despite having exceptionally good hearing, there were some things you simply couldn't ignore. So, earlier that day, when the name K'os Beaumont came out of the mouth of one of the crewmen right before 'transferred', he couldn't help but perk up and listen.

The news worried him, and it had been on his mind all day as he agonized over the right way to tell Ellsworth. All that came across his mind each time he tried to come up with the words was the day Ellsworth had cried against him on the couch. How does one bring out something like this gracefully, he wondered. Watching Ellsworth's profile for another few moments, Oren took a deep breath. It was best to just let it out.

"Hey," he began gently, shifting on the couch so that he could look at Ellsworth properly. "I need to tell you something."

Ellsworth let go of Oren's hand and scooted away until his back was resting against the arm of the couch. He pulled his knees up and rested his chin on his thighs so that only his dark black eyes were visible over the knee. There was something almost adversarial about the distance between them, but the sound of Oren's voice had filled him with so much foreboding that he'd felt the need to withdraw into himself. Had he heard already, figured out where he was last night? Could he somehow read his mind? Was this it?

"Okay."

"I overheard something today," Oren said, suddenly feeling incredibly nervous about the distance between them, the way Ellsworth pulled away. "Apparently, there are people transferring back to the Galileo. K'os...is one of them," he explained slowly, waiting for his reaction. Biting his lips, Oren stared at Ellsworth, trying to gauge his reaction to the news. But he couldn't get anything while Ellsworth remained silent.

"Are you okay?" he asked finally, impatient.

Ellsworth looked off to the side and refused to meet Oren's eyes. The warning was coming a few days too late. Momentarily losing himself in a hypothetical situation, he wondered if it would have even made a difference. If Oren had told him before he'd even seen K'os, could he have helped him to stay away? Could he have leaned on him in his moment of weakness? In the end, it didn't really matter. He'd gone to him, willingly. Put his arms around him, willingly. Reignited their bond, willingly. Pressed their lips together, willingly. As much as he might like to frame it otherwise, he had been the most willing of participants and for that he couldn't bring himself to look Oren in the eye.

"No."

As he watched Ellsworth carefully, Oren stayed silent, a strange feeling overcoming his senses. It wasn't often that Oren 'felt' his empathy. It was usually something working in the back of his head, some instinct giving him tiny hints of what people wanted to say when they said something. Staring at Ellsworth, though, hearing that small word coming out of his mouth, Oren suddenly felt overwhelmed with sensations - awareness. His eyes flickered from Ellsworth's defensive posture to the guilty look in his eyes, the same worried eyes he'd seen the night before. His mind working, Oren thought of the night they shared, Ellsworth's leaving, that lingering heaviness in his stomach that morning. It all seemed to hit him at once and in a split second, Oren's demeanor changed in front of Ellsworth's eyes, his mind closing off immediately.

"You knew..." His voice was soft, unbelieving. 'How could Ellsworth do this?'

Ellsworth imagined what must have been going through Oren's mind as he pieced everything together, feeling very much like he was being dragged along behind the cart as he did so. The final epiphany - 'you knew' - was like a slap in the face; it jarred him physically, making him shrink smaller and smaller until he looked like a child huddled in the corner of the couch. His eyes finally, reluctantly, moved to meet Oren's; his voice was small and weighed down with guilt, regret and remorse but stopped just short of being apologetic.

"Yes, I knew. And worse... He came to me, and I didn't turn him away."

Instinctively, Oren scooted back until he couldn't stand to be on the couch anymore, the feeling of their accumulated body heat under the blanket stifling. He stood up, running his hand through his hair. He didn't turn his back from Ellsworth, though Oren knew that maybe that would've made the moment easier. What was he supposed to think anyway? What was he supposed to feel? Angry? Oren wasn't an angry person, never had been. Humiliation seemed overly dramatic, even for him.

No, all Oren could say he felt at that moment was pain.

But not the kind of straightforward, heart-stabbing pain one would read about in novels or see in holofilms. The latter usually portrayed heartbreak as sudden, all consuming and dramatic, usually accompanied by the sound effect of shattering glass, as if the humanoid body was something that could be broken and then glued back together. In Oren's experience, heartbreak was a strange, twisted, hollow kind of pain, one that began in the pit of your stomach and then, before you know it, there were tears in your eyes and your entire body felt numb and aching at the same time.

Taking in a shallow, shaking breath in the hopes of keeping his tears in his eyes, Oren felt at a loss for words. There were so many feelings coursing through him that he didn't know how to air them out.

"You need to leave," he finally said, his voice shaky as he tried to control himself, to keep himself from breaking.

"Leave?" Ellsworth repeated, lifting an eyebrow in question.

Of course he should leave. But he didn't want to leave. He couldn't leave. How would that leave things between them? A broken, disastrous mess. He'd anticipated they would be for a long time, he'd prepared himself for this, but he'd expected something before hand. Some kind of conversation. Some kind of screaming match and thrown furniture. Something to vent the excess emotion so they could sit down like reasonable adults and talk things through. And he'd imagined all of that for no other reason except that it would be easiest on him and his selfish heart that couldn't handle the repercussions of the situation it had willingly walked into.

"Oren... Please. I didn't mean to hurt you. It just happened. I couldn't stop it."

Oren closed his eyes when Ellsworth spoke, feeling a tear escape and slide down his cheek. Why had he expected that the man would leave? It was stupid, just like believe that this would last between them was stupid.

"You couldn't stop it? Did you even try?" Oren asked, knowing the answer. There was no anger in his voice, just hurt and disappointment.

"No," Ellsworth said, leaving the rest unspoken: I wanted it. His head drooped so that he didn't have to look at Oren anymore. "I didn't... I mean, we didn't..."

He let the words trail off, realizing they didn't mean anything. Oren probably didn't care about that, whether or not they were physically intimate or not. The greater tragedy was likely that they were mentally intimate. The El Aurian was smart, intuitive, and a good listener - he'd probably already pieced everything together based on what Ellsworth had shared with him in the past and the guilt in his tone of voice. Their bodies may not have been one, but their minds were and in many ways that had to seem so much worse to a lover.

Or perhaps worse still was how quickly Ellsworth had given up. He hadn't even lasted two days without literally running into K'os' arms. And while K'os was the one that sought him out in the mess hall he was still struggling to determine whether or not he'd been the one to mentally summon him there; the fact that he couldn't even suss that out said volumes in and of itself.

Oren continued to stare, wondering how Ellsworth could do this to him. Had he really meant so little? Was Oren so delusional that he'd imagined everything between them? He liked to believe he wasn't, but he'd also believed that Ellsworth truly cared about him. Both were proving to be false beliefs.

Sure, he knew on some shallow level, Ellsworth did care. But how much could you possibly care and still jump at the first opportunity of something better? That was a humiliating thought in itself. The idea that someone who had left Ellsworth without a word the way K'os had, was better than Oren felt...beyond humiliating. Ridiculously, Oren found himself feeling guilty, like maybe he hadn't done enough. That he'd done the wrong things once again. Maybe he didn't deserve this and that Ellsworth was completely right in going to K'os.

Looking up to meet Ellsworth's eyes with his wet, green ones, Oren shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what to say," he admitted. "I feel so stupid." His voice hitched and he reached up, wiping what was now a steady stream of tears running down his face.

"I can't believe you did this to me. I thought you loved me, but..." Oren shrugged again, sniffing. "I guess that was my mistake."

Ellsworth whimpered, like someone had just struck him in the stomach. They were the worst possible words Oren could have said, the ones he'd dreaded to hear. Together with his own guilt, they were soul-crushing, but paled in comparison to what he guessed the El Aurian must be feeling. Seeing him cry was too much to take, so he stood up and walked toward Oren, feeling an empathic need to try to comfort him on such a fundamental level that he didn't even stop to recognize himself as the cause of the pain.

"But, I do love you. Please, don't say that... You didn't make a mistake."

"No," Oren said, shaking his head and taking a few steps away from Ellsworth. "Don't touch me," he said, hoping he sounded firm. The idea of Ellsworth, or anyone, touching him at that moment, felt unbearable. Inside, Oren felt like it would take just the smallest amount of physical contact to shatter him into a million pieces. Crossing his arms over his chest as if to protect himself, Oren couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"You don't love me. You used me, and manipulated me. You made me feel guilty and made me apologize about doing so many things that you did too. You made me feel like I was always doing the wrong thing, or saying the wrong thing." Oren explained, not looking away from Ellsworth. His own conscience, as irrationally guilty as it felt, had nothing to be ashamed of. Oren knew that he likely hadn't done anything wrong. He just was wrong.

"You just used me like some...security blanket to make yourself feel good until something better showed up. You don't do that to someone you love. So no, Ellsworth, you don't love me. Not like I love you."

That was a sad fact Oren believed he should start getting used to. He was always the one who cared more, who loved more. 'I'm such an idiot,' he thought, looking at Ellsworth. He was so young, why would he want anything to do with Oren? He was so vital and idealistic and Oren was damaged and, while he tried his best to not be, he was cynical. Clearly, he wasn't cynical enough, otherwise he never would have let himself get this far emotionally with Ellsworth.

Ellsworth had recoiled at the admonition not to touch him, which had been bad enough on its own, but now every word seemed to cut to the bone. It hurt because it was all true. He had used and manipulated Oren. He'd made him feel guilty and demanded he apologize for things that Ellsworth himself would later do, things he'd somehow managed to justify at the time as being completely different when in reality they were very much one in the same. He'd pushed Oren to conform to his desires and his needs. He used him...

"But, I..."

He had done all those things, and yet... What? Had he even apologized? He couldn't really remember as the words up to this point had been reactionary, not very well thought out. Was he even sorry for what he'd done to Oren? He couldn't be sure... Something about K'os made it seem so fated that he wasn't even compelled to say he was sorry. Being with the half-Vulcan, pressing their skin together until that familiar tingle began, felt electric and right, even as it felt wrong. There was even some sick part of him, the section of his mind that was intertwined with the plak tow, that was pleased everything was out in the open now. Things with Oren could be ended, and things with K'os could begin again. He wasn't sorry for the way things had happened; he was sorry only that Oren's feelings had been hurt, and he doubted the other man even wanted to hear those words come out of his mouth.

"I wish things had been different," Ellsworth said, sounding a little far distant. In his mind, he was already halfway to K'os' quarters, mentally already in his arms, drawn down the corridor like someone in a trance. He could seek comfort there, red hot comfort that was mysteriously safe to the touch. "I should go, Oren."

Oren swallowed hard at Ellsworth's words, more so the absence of any actual regret in them. Holding his tongue for fear of saying something he might live to regret, the El-Aurian simply nodded, wishing Ellsworth had left when first asked. Telling him a fraction of how he felt at that moment hadn't helped Oren in the least. In fact, he was sure it made him feel even worse because now he couldn't help but confront the rest of his feelings. The lack of any tangible remorse from Ellsworth spoke volumes to Oren, making it obvious just how stupid he'd been for even having feelings for him. He couldn't believe he'd been so blind, acting like a smitten teenager he thought he was. Now he knew that Ellsworth was the teenager Oren could no longer afford to be. His wish to actually let himself feel and act according to his real, El-Aurian age was a luxury he couldn't afford anymore.

"I wish I could believe you," Oren just replied, his voice strained with emotion when he saw that Ellsworth was still there. "Just go," he said, shaking his head and looking down.


Ellsworth stood in the doorway, half his body still in Oren's quarters and the other half out in the corridor. It seemed like a fitting allegory for how he felt inside. Part of him wanted to stay with Oren and try to take back everything he'd said, to settle down on the couch again, turn their show back on, and fall asleep in one another's arms. There was an almost undefinable comfort there. Oren was safety and security, the sure choice. Ellsworth had fallen in love with him in a wholesome sort of way, where he spent slow hours on duty daydreaming about what their home might look like one day.

The reintroduction of K'os didn't change any of that, it just turned everything upside down. He hadn't even been able to think straight since his one time half-Vulcan lover had reappeared. Even on the best of days he struggled with his sex drive but since K'os had come back it had raged out of control. It dominated his private thoughts, often taking him beyond the normal and into the sort of depraved things you couldn't even discuss with the counselor.

The need to be with K'os certainly defied all reason and explanation; it just was, an unrelenting constant that never shut up no matter how hard he tried to stop it. At first the temptation to slide back into an old pattern had led him to reevaluate his relationship with Oren and reconsider K'os. The whole thing had been left open-ended and messy when the half-Vulcan stopped taking his calls and began avoiding him, meaning it never healed properly by the time Oren came along. He never truly let go of him and the beginning of the wonderful thing he thought they had together; time made it easy to forget all the awkward moments and memories that made it clear they weren't always on the same page. It allowed him to romanticize their relationship and find an appeal in it that was above all the negative things, including K'os' disappearance.

And then there was the bond. He lifted his eyes from the floor to look at Oren and frowned, feeling it pull him out of the doorway even as he looked directly at a man he loved. The bond superseded everything - anything he could ever feel for Oren, all his worries and concerns about K'os, any need that didn't involve it. The bond was like quicksilver in his mind, spreading between synapses and taking over his every thought. It wanted to control him, and he wanted to let it control him. It was warm and sensual and pleasurable, but only when it could assert itself. Otherwise it was like dangling over the precipice of a dark jagged canyon. Separation was frightening and lonely enough to make you want nothing more than to let the bond reassert itself and dominate and control.

He didn't want to live without that, couldn't bear that existence, and so Ellsworth turned his back on Oren and stepped into the corridor. The doors closed behind him, and he hesitated for only half a second. Then he put the first foot forward and set off toward K'os - away from Oren - to the new-old life he planned to make for himself.

[ OFF ]

PO3 Ellsworth Hudson
Quartermaster
USS Galileo
[ PNPC - Mott ]

Oren Idris, Ph.D.
Archaeologist/Anthropologist
USS Galileo

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