Chapter Text
shiny
"Oh, it's Captain Shiny Tightpants!"
Chris looks over his shoulder to find Ensign Tilly in a biobed, smiling widely and a little goofily at him. "Beg your pardon, Ensign?"
"Well, sir, I'm sorry, your suit, it's so shiny and very tight, and I said that out loud, didn't I? It's just so... shiny."
Chris looks down at himself; okay the EV suit is actually very shiny and... close-fitting. But Tilly's mostly stopped babbling around him by now, so- "Ensign Tilly, are you on painkillers?"
She giggles. "Doctor Pollard gave me a hypospray and now I can see butterfly colours."
"Butterfly colours?" He's both entertained and intrigued despite himself.
"Oh, yes, sir. Butterflies have up to fifteen kinds of photo-receptors, so they see-" she spreads her hands in twin starbursts "-so many colours!"
"Yeah?"
"Right now, your face is so bright," she says, "and not to be disrespectful, sir, but your ass-"
"I'm gonna stop you right there, Ensign."
She pouts. "I was gonna be nice."
He bites his tongue.
"I mean," she confides, "obviously I'm not seeing all those colours, I can't really see into the ultraviolet spectrum, I just feel like I can. I wish I could. Wouldn't that be cool? To see ultraviolet and polarised light? I mean, then I couldn't be in Starfleet, if I was genetically engineered, and I'd hate that, but maybe..."
She doesn't stop talking - her lips are still moving, she's having an entire conversation with herself - it just stops being audible. She's staring off into the corner of the room, though Chris suspects whatever she's seeing isn't a sterile sickbay in shades of grey and blue.
Then suddenly she's speaking aloud again, mildly irate, as if she's continuing an argument he missed, "-but if there's ever a reason to get injected with butterfly DNA, I'm hoping you'd consider me as a candidate, is all!"
She's looking at him as if she expects an answer, as if he followed the argument she had in her head; he doesn't know what else to do except say, "Noted."
"You have really pretty eyes, sir."
He should've left when he had the chance. "... noted."
She smiles at him for a second, then gasps and covers her mouth with her hand. "Oh, I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. It was the suit, I swear, it refracted light directly into my brain... you're just so shiny."
"Thank you?"
"And so nicely shaped."
Oh, God.
"I don't know if you realise," she adds, "but from the back, the suit really frames your-"
"Stop!" He barks it, which he didn't mean, but there's no way her finishing that sentence is good for anybody.
She blinks up at him. "I'm... sorry?" she says, in the smallest voice he's ever heard her use.
Damn. She's so unapologetically herself, all the time, arguably to a fault; while she definitely shouldn't be commenting on her superior officers'... assets, he doesn't want to stifle the spark that makes her Tilly.
"We've all said things we didn't mean when the hypo is really good," he reassures her gently.
"It's not that I didn't mean it," she says, "it's just that the curvature is so-" then (thank God) she stops herself. "I'm going to be quiet now." Her eyes are huge and bright.
He does his absolute damnedest not to laugh. "I think that would be for the best."
"I'm sorry."
"Forgiven."
"It's just that you're always so kind, I didn't mean-"
"Don't worry about it. Just have a nap, I'm sure you'll feel much better afterward."
She sighs. It looks like relief. "Thank you, sir." She closes her eyes obediently; she's softly snoring within moments.
At least now Chris doesn't have to stop himself from smiling. Unable to resist, he leans down and kisses the top of her head, then calls out, "Doctor Pollard?"
Doc comes out looking harried. "Captain?"
"We'll need a medical tricorder for the away mission, and, uh... whenever Ensign Tilly comes down off her high, can you please tell her she's not in any trouble?"
She looks at him for a second, then shakes her head. "Not even gonna ask."
Chris laughs, then skedaddles before anyone else can notice his shiny, shiny ass.
