That's The Beat Of A Heart
That's The Beat Of A Heart
By Erin_Cale
Disclaimer: As all of you readers of fanfiction surely know, neither Andromeda nor any of its characters are mine. However, the story is and you'll have to fight me for it. The title is the title of a song from "Where The Heart Is". Whoever owns that movie owns the title, technically, but again, the story is mine.
Author's Notes: Thank you to Cassie. Without you asking me for `random s**t', I would never have come up with this idea. Anyway, I'm just glad that my former MIA muse has returned (however briefly). And no matter what you might think while you're reading, this story doesn't go NC-17 at all.
"You see?" Beka grumbled, walking stiffly towards Dylan. "This is why I hate planets. You can't get a sunburn in space." She collapsed on Dylan's bed without waiting for him to ask her to sit down.
Dylan chuckled softly, looking at the cherry-red expanse of skin that had once been Beka's pale, slightly-freckled back. He caught his train of thought and wondered when exactly he had noticed that her back had been slight-freckled. Finally, he decided it must have been when she was in her bathing suit, before she had left for the beach. "Well, you should have come back with me when I came to get you. I warned you that this would happen if you tried to tan too long."
From within the blankets, he heard a muffled voice answer him. "I just wanted a little bit of color and artificial tans never look as good as natural ones."
The sound of Dylan's gentle chuckle once again caressed her ears. "Well, you got your color, all right, but I don't think this was exactly the color you wanted."
Beka turned her head to the right so that Dylan could hear her better and so that she wouldn't suffocate. "Seriously, how bad is it?"
"Well, you're lucky that I happened to tell Trance you had agreed to take some shore leave with me."
"Huh?" She felt more than heard him get up from his seat beside the bed. Then the sounds of him rummaging through his bag, trying to find something. Finally, she felt his presence beside her on the bed.
"Trance gave me some medicine for your sunburn the moment that she heard that you were coming with me."
"She foresaw something as insignificant as that in the future?" Beka asked.
"No, more like she knows you well enough to know when you're going to overdo something I think," Dylan responded. He placed the tube of medicine on the bed well within her range. He was willing to let her decide what would come next and he didn't have to wait long.
"Dylan, I'm not going to be able to reach my back by myself. Would you…" her voice trailed off awkwardly. She took a deep breath and began again, "Would you help me?"
Dylan smiled even though she couldn't see it. "Of course. Here, why don't we get all of you on the bed first," he said, lifting her legs onto the bed. He climbed onto the bed next to her and carefully maneuvered her hair off of her back. "Now this might be a little cold."
There was a pause and Beka knew that her fellow captain was trying to warm up some of the medicinal lotion with his hands. Even so, when the first drops hit her back, she sucked in air sharply through her clenched front teeth. "You're right. That is cold," she muttered.
"Well, the options are stop, still have that extra crispy feeling but not be cold anymore- at least, from the lotion, anyway- or keep going, get used to the cold, have the pain from the sunburn go away and eventually have it get better." He paused the motion of his hands, not even bothering to rub what little there was of the lotion into her skin.
"I'd much rather be cold for a little while," she answered.
"Good. That's what Trance said you were going to say." His patient smiled with his sorry attempt at humor, but seemed to relax a bit more. He continued with the lotion, making sure to rub it into the affected areas very carefully. Thinking a new subject might distract her from the cold/fried feeling, he asked, "So did you see the others on the beach?"
"Yes I did." Beka chuckled a bit. "You know, it seems that only the two of us haven't paired off yet. There's Harper and Trance, Rommie and Tyr..."
"Hold on! Rommie and Tyr?!" Dylan exclaimed.
"Yes. Haven't you noticed that he hasn't been calling her `ship' lately? He's been using her actual name."
Dylan thought back to all of the recent encounters he had witnessed between Tyr and Rommie. Now that Beka mentioned, he did see something in the way they interacted. "Hmm. I wonder why I never saw that before?"
"You probably didn't want to believe that she'd actually fall in love with someone else." Was his hearing right? Did he actually hear jealousy in her voice?
"Beka, what was that?"
"What?" she asked innocently.
"You sounded… jealous."
She laughed, but the sound was hollow and didn't fool anyone. "You wish."
When he finally spoke, his voice was so low that she almost missed his remark. "Actually, I do." He rubbed a little more lotion onto a spot of her back that he had missed before then continued in his normal voice, "All done. That wasn't so painful, now was it?"
Beka forced herself to stay calm and act normal, as though she hadn't just heard a life-changing remark uttered from her best friend's lips. "No, it wasn't. Thanks Dylan. I owe you one."
"Nonsense. It was my pleasure."
Beka just smiled, rearranged the straps on her bathing suit, and walked out the door. Once she had it closed behind her, she whispered, "Mine too." Then she left, her plan becoming clearer to her with every step.
***
Dylan sighed as he entered his quarters aboard the Andromeda Ascendant. Shore leave had been fun up until Beka got her sunburn. Then, seeming angry with weather in general, she had returned to the Andromeda, vowing not to come down again. He had only just barely managed to get her to come to the farewell dinner that had been held in their honor and even then she had left early.
He didn't know what he would do. Although he loved space as much, if not more, than most starship captains, it wasn't good for her to spend absolutely all of her time onboard one starship or another. If he were honest with himself, it was more the fact that she wouldn't be spending as much time with him that was really drawing his attention to this particular problem which, in any other case, he would have deemed as the person's own choice. Knowing this for a fact and hating himself for being partial to one of his crew, he collapsed into a chair, not even bothering to turn the lights on.
If he had, he would have found that the lights were no longer under his control.
As it was, he didn't notice Beka slip out of the shadows of his bedroom, where she had been hiding, with a lit candle. Moving silently around the room, she located the other candles only by having memorized where they were earlier. The candles she lit were all behind Dylan and when he finally noticed it was getting lighter without his having told Andromeda to do anything, he spun out of his chair and around to face her.
"Beka, what are you doing?" She was dressed like Beka, she walked like Beka, but the Beka he knew wouldn't be lighting a bunch of candles that she had placed around his room... would she?
She continued walking in a slow circle lighting candles until every one had been lit and the walls flickered in unison with the tiny flames. "I said I owed you one. Consider this as repayment for my debt to you."
"Beka, I don't want to repaid like this. I mean, I don't want you to do something like this unless you want to, unless…" He stopped speaking as she stepped closer to him, invading his personal space.
"Consider this as a favor to myself as well. Now let's see, if you did me a favor, and I'm doing you a favor right now as well as doing myself a favor, that means that now you must do yourself a favor right?" Dylan nodded, unable to say anything. "Might I make a suggestion?" Another nod. She leaned forward until Dylan could feel her breath on his ear. "Kiss me."
Dylan didn't need to be told twice. Their first kiss was gentle, tentative. When they pulled apart, they touched their foreheads together and began slowly to dance to a rhythm all their own, a rhythm set by the beating of their hearts.
Elsewhere, Rommie informed Harper that he had won the betting pool and shouts of "I AM THE LOVE GOD, BABY!" would have been heard two decks up or down, if there had been anybody there to hear them.
Afterwards, Rommie asked Trance, "You knew, didn't you?"
Trance smiled. There was no reason to ask what Rommie was talking about. "Yes, I did."
"Then why didn't you enter the betting pool?"
"Because Harper deserves all the little self-esteem boosters he can get."
Rommie was silent for a moment, then, "You know, you two are perfect for each other. You have a lot of differences, yet you have a great deal of similarities."
Trance gave her an enigmatic smile. "Why do you think I joined the crew of the Maru in the first place?"
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