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English
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Part 31 of a place I love
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Published:
2022-04-12
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2,000
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1/1
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38
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perchance to dream

Summary:

"Her first night of sleep in fifty years would be with you."

They have three days to set the future right. They sleep where they can. After the first long day, they can. Thing is, Seven hasn't slept as a human in decades.

Notes:

Thank you to Tumblr for indulging this idea that's been driving me wild ever since I realized that this motley crew is stuck on Earth together and does eventually need to sleep after their long night. And to the No Man's Land audio novel, honestly, because it really provided a baseline for just how soft Raffi and Seven are for each other. <3

Work Text:

They’re arguing over who gets to remain by the Admiral when Rios yawns and they all remember that they’ve been up for nearly twenty-four Earth hours. Seven sets her jaw – she’s capable of staying up for days at a time; they all are. There’s a full suite of research on the way that working on a ship plays with the circadian rhythms of humans raised on Earth and those not raised on Earth. There’s a whole course on it, actually, running the gambit of alien species. It had never been Raffi’s strong suit, but she knows that the three of them have the combined life experience to adapt plenty in this situation.

Just because they can doesn’t mean they should . Even Seven has to admit that.

It’s Rios’ idea to take shifts – a few hours here and there. It won’t be a full night’s rest, but it’ll be enough. Raffi doesn’t have the visceral hate for time travel that some of her Starfleet counterparts do, but she also doesn’t love it. It’s kind of like a distant relative, one best seen at regular, very spaced out holidays; interacted with at the bare minimum to be respectful, then not thought about too much in the meantime. She does know, though, that it has a way of tiring out the body.

There’s also something about this whole situation – like the part where there’s one of their number missing – that pulls at the edges of Raffi’s mind. She’s learned the hard way, though, not to push herself when she’s at capacity in these kinds of situations. They’d find Agnes later.

It’s Raffi’s idea to take the first shift, mostly because she knows that Rios knows his way around this clinic marginally better than they do, and that might be useful when Tallinn’s about to do…whatever she’s about to do. And yeah, there’s a part of her that thinks Teresa’s likely to come back during the second sleep shift, and Raffi’s not upset about the possibility that Rios might be asleep when she does. Another thing that pulls at her mind that she needs to delegate to later .

It’s Seven’s idea to find something to wear that isn’t their hastily garnered together gala outfits.

Raffi opens the third closet she’s stumbled upon in the clinic and finds joy – bags and bags of what look like clean unisex kinds of uniforms. She touches the fabric, and it’s clean, breathable. Terrible idea for time on a ship but a great idea for the oddly fluctuating weather in 2024 pre-corrupted timeline Los Angeles. She picks up one of the first sets and holds it against her leg. Satisfied, she begins hunting for sets that would fit the others.

“Your sleeping clothes,” Seven’s asking. “What function do they serve?”

There are two different colors in here, Raffi realizes. “Green or blue?” she asks. And then, because she swears she can feel Seven raising her eyebrow before she even turns around, Raffi sighs. “Sorry. Comfort. My sleeping clothes are comfortable. That’s not what everyone will tell you is important, but that’s what’s important to me.” She turns around and holds out a pair of each set of clinic uniforms in each hand, blue and green. “You’ve borrowed mine before.”

Seven examines the two, then reaches out and takes the blue one. “I have. I don’t tend to spend much time wearing them.” Raffi looks down to hide her smile, just as Seven yawns. “But they aren’t necessary for sleep.”

It’s a statement, but it’s also a question. Raffi’s about to turn around so that Seven can unzip her, then stops.

Of course.

Of course Seven would have these questions.

Of course, Seven hasn’t slept completely without her Borg physiology since she was a child.

Raffi sets her clothes aside for a moment, as well as the part of her that’s just reeling constantly – over the Admiral, over Elnor , over how the whiskey bottle at the bar had looked a lot more friendly than Raffi would have liked it to look – and takes Seven’s hands.

“No,” says Raffi. She squeezes Seven’s hands, and Seven squeezes back, gaze discerning, nearly worried. “It’s just something that may or may not help. It’s not necessary.”

They hadn’t really worked out when Seven would sleep, just that Rios would sleep after Raffi. Raffi figures that the assumption when she and Seven left the room together would be that they’d sleep that way too. Seven yawns again. “I know fatigue,” she says. “I don’t know fatigue like this.” She frowns, Raffi assumes at the yawn.. “I never understood why when humans experienced it, they – we – would have lowered oxygen intake as part of it.”

Raffi doesn’t miss the change in pronoun, and it’s the gentlest of pulls she exerts on Seven’s hand. Seven leans in quickly, though, more intensely than usual, and then she’s in Raffi’s arms.

Tallinn had been a little too excited to help them get dressed (maybe she didn’t get out much?) and had insisted on additional scents to accent people’s gala outfits, which had confused Seven, amused JL and Raffi, and absolutely delighted Rios and Agnes. Raffi breathes in the sharp yet smooth lavender concoction Tallinn had offered Seven, something clean and bitter with something warm and sweet. Raffi slides her hands up, then down Seven’s back, and sits with yet another reminder that Seven is just so beautiful . 

“You okay?”

When Seven nods, Raffi can feel it next to her cheek.

“Let’s go to bed.”

Raffi had gotten used to that pretty quickly, actually, how she would go to sleep and Seven wouldn’t always need to sleep with her. Sometimes she’d sleep, and Seven would set up her portable regenerator in the room, sometimes lying down, sometimes sitting or standing (it all has something to do with spinal alignment, and it’s something Raffi needs to ask Seven about again). Sometimes Seven wouldn’t need to sleep at all, and Raffi would wake up in the middle of the night to find her body wrapped around Seven’s, who’d somehow propped herself up to read comfortably.

Now, they wedge themselves into one of the larger, clean-looking hospital beds. Raffi’s body sighs at the comfort, and that’s how Raffi knows suddenly that she’s exhausted . Seven must be too – she slips down the bed just a little, curls into Raffi’s chest.

“It’s not good that we don’t know where Jurati is,” mumbles Seven. When she flexes and unflexes her left hand over Raffi’s stomach, Raffi realizes she’s still wearing the large bracelet from earlier.

“Tomorrow,” Raffi replies, then slips two fingers over the bracelet and pinches where it meets Seven’s forearm. You want this to go?

Raffi doesn’t miss the shadow that passes over Seven’s face when she looks down and sees the metal. Seven slips it off with a flick of her wrist and conceals it within the folds of their blankets. Raffi’s hands return to Seven’s back, smooth over the only slightly stiff cotton. “Does it feel different?”

Raffi thinks of Elnor again and squeezes the thought down, thinking of the way Seven looked at the gala – radiant, dazzling with her intellect, with her perspective that Raffi could listen to for hours. (And hell, hadn’t she? During those nights on Coppelius that had started as mourning but turned into joy, talking softly in the dark much like they were now, watching the sun slowly saturate the world around them as they got to know each other gently, so gently.) They’ve spent enough time on Raffi and her issues today. “No,” she replies, quiet yet firm, hands splaying across Seven’s back. “You feel the same.”

Seven takes her now-bare forearm and hand and slides it along Raffi’s until they’ve laced their fingers together. “Really.”

“It’s all you, Seven. And I–”

Even in the dark, she swallows down the words, recalibrates.

“I like all of you, babe.”

She hears Seven’s sharp intake of breath in the dark, feels the squeeze around her hand. “ You do,” says Seven, then turns her face into Raffi’s chest like she’s trying to burrow in, and Raffi holds back tears once again (she’s stopped counting). “I like you too.”

For a moment, it’s almost overwhelming: Seven in Raffi’s arms like she hasn’t been for so long , how the last person Raffi had held to herself in this way had been dying and she’d been helpless, how Seven’s human hand in hers feels softer than it ever has not because of the lack of metal but because Raffi’s never seen Seven grant herself the same acceptance she seems to grant to everything and everyone else around her, the memory of the lullaby Raffi used to sing to Gabe as a child when he rested on her chest.

The tears in Raffi’s eyes are reaching critical mass. She shuts her eyes tight, tries to slow her breathing, and then Seven scoots up and presses her lips to Raffi’s.

Raffi lets out a sob, a single, sharp one, and Seven’s hand lands on her jaw, her forehand resting against Raffi’s. She’s offering herself as an anchor, and Raffi accepts, pulling her sobs back down deeply into herself until her breathing slows, until there’s nothing left but Seven’s mouth moving over hers, Raffi’s tongue sliding against Seven’s lower lip.

For a moment, Raffi wants to lose herself in her, in Seven’s weight, in her kindness, in the softness that Raffi is so privileged to be privy to.

Raffi pulls away and kind of hates that this has become about her again, but Seven’s hands slide back again, into Raffi’s hair, brow furrowed but face as open as Raffi has come to realize it is when she’s ready to give . Like Seven doesn’t know that her body, human or not, pressed into Raffi’s side isn’t already gift enough.

Raffi doesn’t want to take any more today. “I’ve got your back, you’ve got mine, right?” she murmurs, pressing her lips lightly to the corner of Seven’s mouth.

Seven nods, relaxes, smiles a little, curls back into Raffi’s side.

Raffi notices that she’s intertwined their hands again.

Around them, through the window coverings, she watches the first whispers of sunlight caress the room.

Raffi has to give Seven this physiological difference: fully human, she snores.

It’s not particularly loud and is particularly cute. It doesn’t bother Raffi, but there’s something restful about watching her snore next to her – like it’s something routine and comfortable, that Raffi could do every day if she needed. That Raffi would do gladly every day if it was a possibility.

Rios knows that the soft tap on the door would be completely ignorable had Raffi not had the training she’s had, as an intelligence operative and a mother. She looks up and sees him waving to her furtively in the window. With the slightest of nods from her, he quietly opens the door, glancing at Seven with a knowing smile.

“She’s out,” Raffi tells him. “If you keep your voice down, should be okay.”

“It gets cold at night here,” he says quietly. “Brought you an extra blanket in case she doesn’t sleep warm.”

Raffi smiles. “Thanks, sweetie.”

“The point of this is for you to sleep too.”

He’s so goddamn warm when he wants to be. Raffi's eyes sparkle. “You gonna make that an order?”

“No, I actually want you to do it.” They share a smile. “Does she dream?”

Raffi thinks. “She’s had dream-like experiences during and after her time with the collective.” She shrugs the shoulder that’s not touching Seven. “If you ask her when she wakes up, maybe she’ll tell you.”

With one more curiously soft look at Seven, Rios bends down and kisses Raffi on the forehead. “Her first night of sleep in fifty years would be with you,” he says quietly. “That’s the stuff of holonovels.”

He walks out, closing the door softly behind him, and Raffi lets herself fall asleep looking at the way the day’s first rays of light play across Seven’s curls.

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