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By the time all relevant parties had been debriefed and all reports tendered, the only crew members left in the medical bay of the USS Providence were its usual staff—Dr. Oluransi and his nurse, who’d ceded his given name to the moniker ‘Poots’ during his first expedition some years back despite his many futile efforts to the contrary—and an Ensign whose name Jack couldn’t remember. The former were tidying up where they’d treated all the personnel injured during this most recent planetside excursion gone awry, while the latter lounged lazily on one of the beds, several of their limbs hooked into an unfamiliar machine that appeared to be performing some kind of routine treatment.
Poots caught Jack’s eye over the doctor’s head and nodded, “Lieutenant Commander Zimmerman.”
“Wondered when we’d be seeing you down here,” Oluransi said without looking up. He was crouched down on the floor, wrestling an off-white monstrosity of a machine into its proper place amongst a neat row of the same and taking care not to jostle the spindly, jointed arms sticking off of all five sides. When he was finished, he blew out a satisfied breath, clapped his hands to his knees, and tilted his head up to narrow his eyes at Jack.
“How’d you make out?”
“Very well, all things considered,” Jack reported. “Minor contusions from the fourth vertebrosternal rib to the vicinity of the transverse process and a handful of lacerations on either forearm.”
“Defensive wounds?”
Jack confirmed this with a nod, and Oluransi sucked his teeth, shaking his head while a slow, smug smile sprawled across his face.
“Yeah,” he drawled, as he pushed to his feet, “I figured as much. Bitty told me all about how you lured the fifteen foot death lizard into a game of cat and mouse so the Bridge would have time to lock onto his coordinates.”
“Mature aelfir rarely grow to lengths greater than twelve feet,” Jack pointed out, ignoring the rest of the sentence and the inconvenient hitch it inspired in his own pulse.
“Semantics.” Oluransi waved a hand at him and pointed to the nearest mattress. “You, sit down. Poots,” he looked to the other man and gestured at the rolling cart of equipment at the head of the bed, “hand me the dermal regenerator.”
Jack sat down and obligingly rolled up the sleeves of the clean uniform shirt he’d put on once he was finished conferring with Admiral Hall. When the cuts all over his arms were healed, skin shiny and new in scattered patches from Jack’s wrists to his shoulders, he leaned stiffly to one side so they could deal with the bruising. He did his best to remain silent throughout the process, barring the occasional discomfited grunt when Oluransi prodded a particularly tender spot, but as he rose to his feet his curiosity got the better of him and he found himself blurting, “He was alright?”
“Hm?” Oluransi glanced up at Jack from the PADD in his hand, brow furrowed. He blinked twice, confused, and then his face cleared. “Who, Bitty?”
Jack dipped his chin.
“Yeah, he’s fine,” Oluransi shrugged. “Gave him thirty minutes in the osteogenic stimulator, shot him up with a mild analgesic, and sent him on his way.”
“There was no permanent damage?”
Oluransi shook his head. “It was a nice, clean break,” he promised. “Healed up beautifully. He just needs to take it easy for a few days and he’ll be right as rain. Limped his way out of here on his own steam an hour ago, muttering something about replicated flour and the integrity of the traditional baking process.”
Jack didn’t smile, but he felt the line of his mouth soften, which was as good as, for a man who owed half his genetic material to the Vulcan race. From the glint in his eye, Oluransi knew it, too.
“Bet he wouldn’t mind a little company,” he hedged.
Jack arched an eyebrow.
“I’m just sayin’!” Oluransi put his hands up. He moved to step past Jack and clapped a companionable hand to his shoulder as he did so. “Oh, and a quick recommendation as your medical care provider before you leave? In the future, please refrain from using yourself as bait for venomous reptiles. Especially when they’re four times your size.”
Jack very nearly smirked. “I’ll take it under advisement,” he promised, and turned to go.
He couldn’t be sure that Bitty would be up to entertaining even a guest as—relatively—low maintenance as Jack, but he knew how he could stack the deck in his favor. He would just need to take a little detour by his quarters, first.
Nine minutes and one single-sided, highly interrogative exchange with Ensign Tangredi on the turbolift later, Jack was standing in front of Bitty’s door. He had a carefully packaged bundle in the crook of either elbow. He shifted them both to one arm so he could rap the knuckles of the other against the aluminum.
He could just make out the muted sounds of voices within—the computer announcing Jack’s identity and Bitty responding—and then the door slid open with a whoosh.
“C’mon in!” Bitty hollered, accent thick like it always got when he was tired. Jack obeyed, the door slipping shut behind him.
Bitty was lounging on the small sofa he kept pushed up against the far wall with his left leg stretched out along the cushions in front of him and his right tucked halfway beneath him. He’d swapped his tattered and blood-stained uniform for a pair of the soft, brightly colored shorts he favored in his downtime and a simple white tee shirt that had ridden up a few inches over his waistband. His hair was loose and soft and gleamed like spun gold in the buttery glow coming off the little lamp in the corner.
For just an instant, Jack was consumed with an immolating wave of desire to stretch his body out over top of Bitty’s and bear him down into the sofa’s plush depths. His face was warm and probably flaring green when he greeted, “Good evening, Ensign Bittle. How are you feeling?”
Bitty shot him an amused look.
“Honey, how many times do I have to tell you that you can put a pin in all that ‘Ensign Bittle’ business when it’s just the two of us?”
Jack let his mouth curl at the corners, just a little, and crossed the room to take a ginger seat on the far end of the sofa. Bitty shifted his leg over to make room while Jack set his parcels on the ground. He sat back up a second later and wrapped his fingers gently around Bitty’s ankle, sweeping his thumb over the delicate knob of bone on the inside.
“Doc says you’re all healed up.”
“It’s a miracle of modern medicine,” Bitty agreed wryly. He reached down and patted his shin, swift and affectionate. “Besides, you know it’d take more than a measly little tibia fracture to keep me down.”
Jack huffed a quiet, amused breath through his nose and squeezed Bitty’s ankle. “Of course,” he agreed, both his hearts jumping when Bitty smiled at him, dark eyes hooded with satisfaction.
“What’d you bring me?” Bitty asked, jerking his chin toward the packages on the floor.
“Ah.” Jack leaned over and picked one up. “The good doctor might also have mentioned that you need a few days to recover,” he explained, hefting the soft-edged rectangle a few times, like he was testing its weight. He held it out to Bitty. “I thought this might help.”
Bitty leaned forward to accept the gift, a tiny, curious furrow pulling between his brows. He sank back against the cushions and tapped at the slick, plasticky covering.
“Must be something special, if you’ve got it all sealed up tight like this.”
Jack lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Special enough. Go on,” he nodded. “Open it.”
Bitty used those long, elegant fingers to find the seam in the casing and slowly peeled it away. His eyes went wide and damp with shock, face flooding pink with pleasure.
“Oh my - Jack Laurent Zimmerman, did you find real, honest to goodness flour somewhere on this interstellar rust bucket?” he gasped, clutching the bag to his chest like he was worried it might float away.
Jack ducked his head against a smile and reached up to pat the wall, admonishing, “Don’t talk about our girl that way.”
Bitty either didn’t hear him, or, more likely, elected to ignore him, too busy cooing to the bag of flour he had cradled in his arms like a newborn baby.
“There’s another one,” Jack said, and bent over to retrieve the other parcel.
Bitty took just enough care to set the bag of flour aside without ripping it and then reached out and made grabbing motions toward this next gift.
“You’re fixin’ to spoil me, darlin’,” he muttered absently, seeking out that same seam and wiggling his thumb inside. Half a heartbeat later he squeaked, “Sugar!”
He scooped the flour back up and clutched both bags tight to his chest. His eyes were glistening in the low, golden light off his table lamp when he blinked over at Jack, lashes casting feathered grey shadows down his faintly freckled cheeks.
“Where in all the stars did you get these?” he asked, sounding stricken.
Jack shrugged again. “On expeditions exceeding two years, Earth time, every crewman is afforded the option of bringing up to five personal effects in addition to their Starfleet issued gear and equipment.”
Bitty’s face crumpled, and Jack’s stomach leapt into his throat.
“I just - ” he said, “I thought they might come in handy. I know how you hate to bake with replicated ingredients.” He was silent for a moment, while Bitty processed this information, but when it seemed like he may never speak again, Jack ventured, “Bittle? Are you - ”
He grunted as Bitty practically launched himself across the sofa and into Jack’s lap, reeling him in by the collar of his uniform shirt so he could claim his mouth in a desperate and slightly watery kiss.
Jack wrapped one arm around Bitty’s waist and cupped the other around the back of his head, petting idly at the downy hairs along his nape while Bitty made quick work of licking his way into Jack’s mouth.
“I can’t - believe - you brought me - sugar,” he murmured, choppy and muffled between kisses.
Jack slowed the frantic pace to something sweeter and shifted his hand to curl over Bitty’s cheek, dragging his thumb in a lazy line from the corner of Bitty’s mouth toward his jaw and back again.
“There’s butter, too,” he confessed, pulling back just far enough to speak. “And brown sugar. I was going to give them to you tomorrow.”
“Jack,” Bitty breathed. “You - ” He stared at Jack for a second and then sighed this helpless little laugh, shook his head, and dove in for another kiss. He sat back up a second later and said sternly, “I accept your gifts on one condition.”
Jack blinked. “What’s that?”
Bitty smoothed the line of Jack’s collar with one hand, the fingers of the other twitching where they were curled against Jack’s shoulder. He looked at Jack from underneath his long lashes and said, almost shyly, “You think you can find the time to come and help me put ‘em to use?”
Jack leaned in, his nose brushing Bitty’s as he hummed against his mouth. “Yeah,” he said, breath gusting hot over Bitty’s lips. “I could be persuaded.”