Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets (onemorejump) wrote in incompletedata, @ 2018-02-09 23:03:00 |
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Paul was beginning to lose track of the sheer number of ways in which he was entirely out of his element. He missed Discovery. He missed his mushrooms. He was spending his days teaching teenagers, for Christ’s sake. He had two teenagers living with him under the same roof. He probably would have been pleased to see his warmonger of a captain at this point. That’s how damn desperate he was for a bit of familiarity. So really, Hugh’s arrival should have been a welcome respite from this foreign existence he was suddenly living. And it was, to a point. Where he would have welcomed anyone he knew with open arms, the universe had seen fit to give him the one person that he not only completely tolerated, but loved. Apart from the fact that it meant Hugh was now stuck in this mess too, it should have been a good thing. Yet there he was, making his way down the blocks of perfectly manicured homes, with a horrible pit in his stomach. Hugh really wouldn’t lie to him. Paul knew that. Which meant that everything he had told him about what had happened back on Discovery had to be true. Try as he might to convince himself that Hugh was somehow mistaken, he didn’t truly believe that. He had wanted nothing more than to go home. Now he really did not. Knowing what would await him if he did get out of this experiment was more than enough to completely kill that desire. That all encompassing feeling of dread only seemed to grow more intense when he reached his destination- the home that Hugh had been forcibly assigned to. He hadn’t spoken to his partner’s ‘husband’, but he had observed the neighborhood enough to know which house was his, even without having a full street address. It still felt completely surreal to actually knock on the door. Waiting at said door for an answer was even worse. He couldn’t be completely confident as to what awaited him on the other side. Honestly, the only thing he was sure of was that he needed something steady in his life right then. Something he could depend on, and dependability was one thing that his doctor could most definitely provide. Quite frankly, Hugh was confused. Confused didn’t really seem like a strong enough term for everything he was feeling right now but it was the only one his addled mind could come up with, so he just went with it as his general Emotion Of The Day and tried to ignore everything else that was going on. He was tired, he almost certainly had a crick in his neck he couldn’t quite get out and - oh, yeah. He had a husband - a husband who wasn’t his partner. Small blessings that his “husband” actually seemed to be a genuinely decent man who had offered him pancakes so he supposed it could be worse, but on his list of ‘weird days’ this was slowly creeping its way up to the very top. Seeing Paul here was...the biggest blessing he could have had, really. He had no idea what in his life (and...after...life?) had actually happened and what had been some kind of weird, kidnap-induced fever dream and Paul seemed to be from at least a few days before him, hence Hugh’s continuing lack of knowing what the hell was actually going on. Small blessings that Paul knew him and knew about their relationship at this point. With all of the confusion and fear, Hugh had decided it was probably prudent to make a list. He didn’t know where he was. Paul was here. Paul was okay, despite being from the jump. He still had to double check to make sure Paul was actually okay and not just lying to him. That could come. And, final part of the list, there was a knock on the door. Hugh got up from the sofa he’d been sitting on in the room he’d just half-heartedly organised, heading over to the front door and pulling it open. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that Paul was actually stood there in one piece, looking concerned but otherwise awake and not...catatonic or mushroom-addled. A steady smile settled on his face and he took a step forward, not bothering to waste time in pulling Paul into a tight hug. “Hi.” A hug was, apparently, exactly what Paul had been needing. Oh, he was still something of a mess of emotions under that relatively composed surface, but the moment Hugh’s arms went around him, the haze of dread at least began to dissipate. He hugged him back, maybe a little more tightly than was entirely necessary, and let out a laugh that may have been bordering on slightly hysterical. After a moment or so he pulled back enough to press a firm kiss against his partner’s lips, not particularly caring that they were still in the doorway and therefore very much in public. That order of business accomplished, he pulled back again to simply look at Hugh. “Hi.” He finally responded verbally, smiling slightly despite his lingering concerns. He ran a hand up Hugh’s arm before letting it settle against his neck. Mostly a gesture of affection, although admittedly this was also an excuse to feel his pulse. A part of Paul may have been slightly worried that it wouldn’t be there. After a moment, the realization of how public they were still being hit him. He didn’t really care, but he was still a relatively private person, and he frankly preferred the idea of staying out of the public eye. “It might be a good idea to go inside.” He spoke quietly, still not extracting himself from the embrace. “Some of the people here have taken the role of gawking suburbanite to heart.” The kiss made Hugh feel like for just a moment, everything might have been okay. They weren’t in some...weird simulation of the 50s, he wasn’t dead - or undead, as it may be, and Paul was fine. He was awake and not stuck in a mycelium-induced coma and nothing had gone wrong. He let himself dream for just a moment against Paul’s lips before he pulled back with a sigh, opening his eyes again. “Hi,” he smiled in response, reaching up to cup his cheek when Paul started to talk. He wasted little time in pulling him inside - his ‘husband’ and his ‘son’ both seemed to be out at their respective jobs/schooling (or elsewhere) so he didn’t need to worry about disturbing them, leading Paul up to the bedroom he’d awoken in just for good measure. They had a lot to discuss but mostly, he just wanted to feel safe and secure. Four walls and a bed lended to a somewhat false but pleasant sense of security. “I still can’t really see the point of this...experiment. Why would we care about who’s on what side? What happens to the ‘losers’ of the race?” he frowned slightly. The privacy of the bedroom was welcome, but it was still hard to feel comfortable in someplace so foreign. What he truly wanted was their quarters aboard the Discovery. Simple and perhaps even a bit spartan, as official quarters tended to be, but definitely not lacking the few little touches that made it home. Like the astonishingly ugly throw blanket that Paul had procured one day. It had earned itself a permanent spot on their bed, despite the agreement that it looked as though someone had skinned the captain’s tribble to make it. (Okay, so that might have been the entire reason they opted to keep it). So sure, it was far from being, home, what with the colorful furniture that was a bit tacky even to the man who had willingly purchased a ‘tribble blanket’, but it was better than nothing. The moment the door was shut, he made a beeline for the chest of drawers, thanking the scientists for being so uniform in the layouts of these houses. A moment of fiddling later, the radio was on and tuned into a classical station. It wasn’t opera and it wasn’t his particular cup of tea either, but it wasn’t as if he was trying to set a mood. He just wanted the added privacy that the noise would give them. He didn’t know where his partner’s ‘family’ was, but he wasn’t keen on eavesdroppers if they were to show up. That business attended to, he turned back to Hugh and simply stared at him for a moment, as if confirming to himself that yes, he was indeed still here and this wasn’t just a product of his admittedly somewhat spore addled brain. The side effects hadn’t seemed to hit him since arriving in this experiment, but he wasn’t going to assume that they weren’t there anymore. Once he felt satisfied that it was real, he just let out a sigh and then moved to sit at the foot of the bed, directing his gaze up to the ceiling and frowning. “I haven’t been able to figure out the point either. Ostensibly it’s to see how easily they can pit us against one another, but when they haven’t indicated any kind of reward or punishment, how are they going to achieve any results? We have no reason to cooperate.” He was fidgeting slightly, and he knew it, but he couldn’t seem to just relax. There was too much going through his head. “I have to wonder if it’s about that at all. It could be that they’re just trying to root out the ‘rebels’ of the group by seeing who chooses to side with the Russians despite the obvious encouragement to side with the USA. They may just intend to punish the communists regardless of who wins.” He paused, frowning, before looking at Hugh. “I hope I’m wrong about that, though, it would be inconvenient. I sided with the Russians.” “Pitting people against each other hardly seems like a good plan when as you said, there’s...no known reward or punishment, but also no real reason to switch sides other than curiosity. Maybe that is the reason, though,” he rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he sat down on the bed beside Paul, not taking long to notice his nervous fidgeting. “Hey. The family I’m living with seem- fine. Normal, really,” he reached out to take his hands, forcing them to still. “We’re going to get through this.” At the news that Paul had sided with the russians, he couldn’t quite hold back his eye roll. “Of course you did,” he smiled. “Well- if you did, I suppose I should join you. At least any punishment we get would be together rather than apart,” he didn’t quite think he could bear being separated from Paul like that again. Watching him in the catatonic state had been painful enough - and then watching him through the lens of somebody who was dead was practically torture. They had gone through practically torture, too. Hugh was calm enough because this place seemed nearly idyllic, minus the sinister undertones of a Russian vs American space race. He didn’t like it, but he realised how little control any of them had over the situation. The ideal thing to do would be to lay low, he supposed, but that was much easier said than done. In any case, he had no reason to out his boyfriend to the ‘sheriff’. He also had no reason to pry into anybody else’s personal details - he didn’t want a fight, nor did he want his name broadcast on the main communications area as somebody who was willing to throw others under the bus for his own sake. No, Hugh was just going to lay low and consider switching, perhaps. If only to stay with Paul in case for some reason they separated the two groups in the next...scenario, as he’d seen others mentioning. That concerned him. “How long have you been here?” he suddenly realised he hadn’t really asked. |