In principio: Alive With You Part 3

Posted on Fri Jul 10th, 2026 @ 3:18pm by Master Chief Petty Officer Julian Trent

2,264 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Location: USS Murmansk, Federation staging area around Tagra IV
Timeline: 2374

Continued from part 2

Julian remained silent, allowing Nico the space to continue without filling it for him. He shifted closer until their sleeves brushed, a small point of warmth which Nico neither acknowledged nor moved away from.

“He died twenty minutes after we arrived,” Nico said, swallowing before his eyes lifted briefly towards Julian. “As though he had been holding on because he thought someone here could do something we couldn’t.”

“You did what you could,” Julian said quietly, and Nico’s head turned sharply towards him.

“Don’t.” Nico turned away, the PADD still gripped in one hand, and crossed towards the counter. Julian remained beside the sofa while Nico set the PADD down too hard beside the sink and braced both hands against the counter. The movement pulled his shirt taut over his shoulders, and Julian could see how much thinner he had become there, the strong frame narrowed by missed meals and shifts which ended only when someone else forced him out of Sickbay.

“I know what the scans showed,” Nico continued. “I know every intervention we attempted and exactly when his organs began to fail. I know there was nothing else we could have done because I have reviewed it six times.” His head bowed between his arms, damp curls falling forward as his fingers pressed white against the edge of the counter.

Julian watched his bowed shoulders. He wanted to touch him, but the distance felt important for the moment, a choice rather than abandonment. “It doesn’t make him less dead,” he said quietly.

“No,” Nico said, his head lowering further between his arms. “It doesn’t.”

Julian let out a breath before walking over to him. He stopped close enough to feel the heat from Nico’s back but did not touch him immediately, remembering all the times Nico had reached for him without hesitation and knowing that grief sometimes changed the rules of even the most familiar body. “Do you want me to tell you it wasn’t your fault?”

“No,” Nico said after a breath, his fingers spreading against the counter.

Julian watched Nico’s reflection in the dark viewport above the sink. The sharpness had gone from his face, leaving him looking older and more tired than he had when Julian first met him, but still unmistakably the man Julian had loved for years: the same dark eyes, the same full mouth and the same stubbornness which had once kept an argument going through an entire night shift. “Do you want me to leave?”

The answer came more slowly. “No.”

Julian moved half a step closer, though he still kept his hands to himself. His chest nearly touched Nico’s back, and the space between them felt less like distance now than permission waiting to be given. “Do you want me to tell you it mattered that you were there?”

Nico’s eyes closed in the reflection, and his mouth tightened as he tried to control the answer. “Yes,” he said, the word breaking halfway through.

Julian placed one hand against the centre of his back. Beneath his palm he felt Nico draw breath, the movement unsteady through his ribs. Nico bowed his head further, palms still pressed to the counter. The first breath which left him trembled, and the second caught in his throat before he turned suddenly, almost angrily, and pressed against Julian.

Julian wrapped both arms around him without hesitation as Nico’s hands caught in the back of his shirt, fingers gripping the fabric hard enough to pull it tight across his shoulders. Nico’s face disappeared against his neck, his breath hot and uneven against the skin there. Julian knew the weight and shape of him intimately, knew how Nico fitted against him when asleep, laughing or wanting him, but there was something different in the way he surrendered now, not collapsing so much as finally allowing Julian to carry what he could. Julian widened his stance and held him more firmly, one hand spreading between his shoulder blades while the other settled at the back of his neck.

“It mattered,” Julian said, his mouth close to Nico’s damp hair as one hand moved slowly along his back. “He knew someone was there. He knew you were trying. He wasn’t alone.”

Nico’s grip tightened, and Julian felt the shudder move through him before his body became heavier in Julian’s arms. He pressed his cheek against Nico’s hair and kept moving his hand in the same slow path, from shoulder to spine and back again, giving him something steady to return to. The ship continued around them, systems humming behind the walls and distant footsteps passing in the corridor, but for a little while their quarters held only breath, warmth and the quiet fact that neither man had to be alone inside it.

They remained like that until Nico’s breathing steadied enough for him to lift his head. His eyes were red, his lashes wet and his expression caught somewhere between embarrassment and exhaustion. Julian looked at him properly, taking in the damp hair pushed untidily from his forehead, the stubble shadowing his jaw and the familiar mouth drawn tight as though Nico could still force himself back into composure if given enough time. Julian brushed his thumb beneath one eye. “Better?”

“No,” Nico said, leaning into Julian’s palm despite the answer, his eyelids lowering briefly as the touch moved across his skin.

“Good.” Julian allowed his thumb to trace the curve beneath Nico’s eye once more, keeping the other arm firm around his waist. “I’d have been concerned if I’d cured you. Might have had to declare myself some space Messiah.”

Nico released a breath which might have become a laugh under kinder circumstances, though he did not step away. His hand remained twisted lightly in Julian’s shirt, and the faint movement of his mouth eased something tight behind Julian’s ribs. “You are very bad at this. And blasphemous...”

“I’m excellent at this, and you know perfectly well I mean no offence,” Julian assured him, tightening his arm when Nico’s weight shifted. “You’re standing.”

“Only because you’re holding me up,” Nico pointed out, one hand flattening against Julian’s shoulder. His thumb moved once over the fabric there, the gesture almost absent, as though even now some part of him needed to reassure itself that Julian was solid beneath his hand.

“Still counts,” Julian said, and Nico studied him for several seconds before his hand moved to Julian’s chest, his palm resting flat over his heart.

The touch was familiar. Nico had done it hundreds of times, in bed, in passing, while listening to Julian talk or simply because he wanted contact. Sometimes he slept with his hand there, warm and heavy over Julian’s heartbeat, and Julian had woken more than once to find Nico’s fingers curled into his shirt. This time Julian flinched. Barely, only a tightening beneath the palm and the smallest interruption in his breathing, but Nico knew him too well not to notice.

Nico’s exhaustion sharpened into concern. “What?”

“Nothing,” Julian replied, but Nico’s hand remained exactly where it was, his eyes moving over Julian’s face with the same close attention he had given the bruise at his throat.

“Do not say nothing,” Nico warned, his fingers spreading over the thin fabric of Julian’s shirt.

Julian looked down at the hand against his chest. The warmth passed easily through the material, anchoring him to their quarters and the man standing in front of him. He could have made a joke. One had already formed at the edge of thought, polished and ready to move the conversation away from him, but he let it go. Nico’s palm remained over his heart, feeling every beat Julian could not hide from him.

“I kept waiting for your name,” Nico said before Julian could speak, his voice catching a little. “In Sickbay,” he continued, his palm still pressed against Julian’s chest. “Every time they brought casualties through the doors, every time transport called ahead with another group, I kept waiting for someone to say your name.” His voice remained controlled, but Julian could feel the faint tremor in his fingers. “I knew you were alive most of the time,” Nico said, watching Julian’s face. “I could see the tactical systems were still responding, and once I heard your voice over the shipwide channel. But then there would be another impact, or another section would lose power, and I would think…this time.”

Julian covered Nico’s hand with his own, trapping it gently against the beat beneath his ribs. His thumb moved over the side of Nico’s hand, feeling the familiar shape of the knuckles and the roughened skin near his fingers. There had been nights when they had lain tangled together speaking about places they might go after the war, not making plans exactly, because plans had begun to feel dangerous, but allowing themselves small pieces of a future. A meal somewhere without alarms. A room with a real window. Nico asleep beside him without either of them waking at the first change in the ship’s engines. Julian had held those images lightly, but he had held them. “I checked the medical reports.”

Nico frowned slightly. “What?”

“Every casualty report from Sickbay reaches Tactical,” Julian explained, though he kept his eyes on their joined hands.

“I know,” Nico said, his brows drawing closer as he waited for the rest.

“I checked the authorisation records.” Julian’s thumb moved across Nico’s knuckles. “You signed the triage updates. Medication requests. Surgical transfers. Whenever your name appeared, I knew you were still working. Still alive.”

Nico stared at him, understanding arriving slowly. Julian saw it in the faint parting of his lips and the way his shoulders eased, not because the admission made anything safer, but because for once the fear had not belonged to him alone.

“If the interval went too long, I checked the internal sensor logs,” Julian added, attempting to make the admission sound like a perfectly ordinary use of shipboard systems.

“You tracked my commbadge,” Nico said, disbelief softening the edges of the words.

“Only during active combat, and only if I was at a console in Tactical, not on the bridge,” Julian replied, his mouth shifting as though that distinction improved matters.

“Jules,” Nico said as he shook his head, but he did not remove his hand. Instead his fingers flexed against Julian’s chest, feeling the heartbeat beneath them as though it were an answer in itself.

“I was busy,” Julian replied, meeting his eyes at last.

“You tracked me through the ship,” Nico repeated, something fragile moving across his face. It was not quite amusement and not quite grief, but it softened him enough that Julian could see the man from before the war still there beneath everything it had done to them.

“The computer tracked you. I reviewed the information,” Julian corrected automatically.

Nico’s mouth opened, then closed. The expression which remained was too close to tenderness for Julian to tolerate comfortably, and yet he did not look away. “I kept expecting you to arrive.”

“I kept making certain I didn’t,” Julian said, hoping the familiar dryness might make the admission smaller. His hand remained over Nico’s, holding it against him.

“That was not what I meant,” Nico replied, his thumb moving against Julian’s chest.

“I know.” Julian let out a soft breath and nodded once.

Nico’s hand remained over Julian’s heart, each beat pressing into the centre of his palm as though he were counting them. Julian let him. There was nothing clinical in the touch now, only the quiet need to feel something continuing beneath his hand, and Julian found that he needed the same reassurance from the warmth of Nico standing in front of him. The war had reduced so much to casualty lists, damaged sections and names passing across screens, but here Nico was still solid, tired and alive, his body within reach.

“There were moments when I thought loving you had been a spectacular error in judgement,” Julian said slowly, watching Nico absorb the words.

Nico’s eyebrows lifted, and the corner of his mouth moved despite everything. “Only moments?”

“Very long ones,” Julian clarified as he drew Nico’s hand away from his chest but kept hold of it. Their fingers slid together naturally, Nico’s fitting between his as though neither of them had to think about the movement anymore.

“That is almost romantic,” Nico said, allowing Julian to lace their fingers together. The tired smile remained, small but real, and Julian held onto the sight of it with the same quiet stubbornness he brought to everything he intended to keep.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Julian whispered before leaning in to kiss him, closing his eyes as Nico’s breath warmed his mouth, alive between them. Nico met him without hesitation, one hand still linked with Julian’s while the other returned to the back of his neck, drawing him closer. The kiss was soft and tired, carrying salt, warmth and the familiar shape of years together, but there was hope in it too, not the grand certainty that they would survive the war untouched, only the smaller, more stubborn belief that there would be another morning, another argument and another chance to find each other again.

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