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Ligaments

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Sometimes, on days like today, that saw her brushing her teeth while Lore washed in the shower cubicle behind her, Ishara was struck by how strangely domestic they'd become.

Not that it was unpleasant or unwelcome, exactly—it was just weird. She wasn't sure what she'd expected upon leaving her home planet with a violent, temperamental android, but somehow, sharing a bathroom in the morning (or in what passed for morning on a starship) with that very same android wasn't it. She half-expected him to start singing, like the husband in an old black-and-white Earth vid she had once seen playing in a café.

He didn't, and about half a minute later, just as she was spitting out her toothpaste suds, the water shut off and the shower door opened. Lore reached for one of the towels hanging on the wall and started drying himself off. Ishara couldn't help but watch him a little appreciatively in the mirror. The metallic skin had taken some getting used to, and sometimes she had to wonder why his father hadn't chosen a more natural color for his sons' appearances, but the man had done a damn fine job sculpting their overall shapes; there was no denying that.

She turned on the tap, rinsing her mouth and washing her toothbrush. Her right wrist twinged for the second time that day with the movement, and after tucking the brush back in its place, she absently rubbed the joint with her other hand. Lore was in the middle of toweling his hair, but somehow he still caught the action. He paused, lowering the towel from his head as his eyebrows twitched towards each other.

"Something wrong?" he asked. His tone was unreadable, and while she was tempted to characterize his expression as one of concern, she knew better. Most likely it was one of his little traps, and all she'd earn for falling into it would be some disparaging remark about her organic nature. She wasn't about to give him the satisfaction, and besides, it was an extremely minor injury anyway. Nothing worth fussing over, that was for sure—even if she hadn't had a dickhead of an android as her partner/lover/whatever.

"Just twisted my wrist a little." She threw him a look over her shoulder and added, just a bit drolly, "From grabbing you too hard, I think."

She expected him to laugh or grin arrogantly then (for all that he hated being compared to human men, he certainly could act just as smug as them when it came to sex), but he didn't. Instead he raked his fingers through his dark hair, roughly combing it back from his face, before hanging his towel up and moving next to her. To her further bewilderment, he actually took her wrist in his hand, gently prodding her flesh with his thumb.

"Hm," was his only reply—a short, neutral hum in the back of his throat—and then he was dropping her arm and brushing past her, leaving her to finish her morning routine in the washroom alone.

-
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She didn't think much of the incident until later—until she was in front of the replicator, about to get lunch, and he barged in, clamped his fingers around her upper arm, and started dragging her out of the mess and down the hall.

"Hey, what the hell!" she complained. "I was just about to eat lunch if you don't mind!"

"Look," he said, still not letting go of her, "your hasperat or chicken salad or whatever other disgusting food you were about to consume can wait, all right? This is important."

'This' evidently had something to do with sick bay, as he pulled her into the rarely-used space and over to the room's single bio-bed.

"Sit," he ordered. She was about to demand exactly what this was all about, but it was at that moment that he put his hands on her waist and—apparently tired of waiting for her, even though literally only a couple seconds had passed—simply lifted her off her feet and deposited her unceremoniously onto the end of the examination table. Ishara blinked, a little taken aback by the sudden manhandling. Somehow she never ceased to be surprised by just how strong he truly was, and by just how easily he could toss her around.

Lore took hold of her right hand, pushed her sleeve up, then positioned it so that it rested along her thigh. After that, he turned around to lift a couple devices from a drawer. One of them was a medical tricorder, and he flipped it open and set about to scanning her from the elbow down. A moment later, he picked up the second device—some sort of gun-like contraption, that almost resembled a dermal regenerator but not quite—and aimed it at her wrist. A rather wide beam of barely visible energy shot out upon pulling the trigger, and he passed it carefully over the joint, his yellow eyes flicking back and forth between her and the tricorder readings.

Ishara blinked as the realization set in—the realization that he was fixing her injured wrist, of all things. She fairly blurted the words out: "I didn't know you had any medical training."

"I didn't, until about half an hour ago."

She blinked again, a little dumbly. "Oh."

Lore went on, brusquely, as he pulled the trigger a little harder and the beam increased in opacity. "I accessed a Federation database and read everything they had on soft tissue damage, including how to treat it."

"Oh!" she said again. Despite herself, Ishara couldn't help but be impressed. Then the significance of what he'd done sunk in. "So it was specifically for…?" She abruptly trailed off, and the last word hung in the air, unspoken: For me? Somehow, though, she just couldn't make herself say it. It would be too personal, too meaningful, and Lore seemed to sense it, too, for he brushed the silence off with a scoff.

"It's sheerly for practical reasons," he sneered. "You're right-handed, after all. And while I'm faster and my aim is far more accurate, you aren't completely useless in a phaser fight."

Ishara watched his face and lifted an eyebrow. "And you expect us to be getting in a phaser fight soon?"

"Let's hope not," he said, and one corner of his mouth quirked up a little wryly. He took his finger off the device's trigger and snapped the tricorder shut. "There. How does it feel?"

Experimentally, she flexed her wrist, still somewhat bemused by the whole situation. "Fine, I guess." Should she also say 'thanks'? That would be the proper thing to do, she knew, but the simple fact of the matter was that neither of them were big on formalities—to the extent that sometimes it seemed their entire relationship was based on actively avoiding them as much as possible. Part of her feared that if she suddenly started using them now, something between them would irrevocably change.

Thankfully, Lore saved her the trouble by simply saying, "Good." And with that, he turned to put the two tools back in their drawer.

Ishara flexed her wrist a bit more, testing the joint. "You know," she said, giving him a sidelong glance, "it was a very minor injury that would have healed just fine on its own. All we would have had to do is take a break for a couple of days."

Lore had turned back around, and upon hearing those words, he put his hands on her knees, pushed them apart, and stepped up to the bio-bed, in between her legs. "What complete and utter nonsense," he said, looking her straight in the eyes, and—oh. Oh, goodness, that was quite a look, wasn't it? For all that he was an android, constructed from cold metal and wires, sometimes he could still manage to gaze at her with such heat that her mouth would go a little dry and her heart rate would speed up. Sometimes she wondered what she was doing with (what was effectively) a man so brilliant and dangerous. Wondered what exactly he saw in her, that made him crave her so fervently.

"Well," she said, a little breathlessly, "alternatively I could have just given my arm a break. Not grabbed at you quite as hard as I usually do."

"Has anyone ever told you"—Lore punctuated the words by gripping her hips and yanking her flush against him; Ishara gasped involuntarily—"that you make the most insipid suggestions?"

Only you, she thought. Instead of saying that, though, she swallowed and lifted her chin. "Well. Maybe you need to shut me up, then."

His eyes seemed to glint, and he smirked slightly, accepting the implied challenge. He always did, and he always won, but she'd since discovered that she really didn't mind losing so much. Not when it came to this, not when the consolation prize was so damn good.

"Maybe I do," he agreed—and then he slowly leaned forward until she was forced onto her back, snaked a hand under her shirt and across her bare skin, took her earlobe in between his teeth, and proceeded to make her feel positively electric.

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A/N: LORE, LET THE POOR GIRL EAT HER LUNCH FOR CHRISSAKE. AND STOP HAVING SEX EVERYWHERE. (It didn't make it into the story proper, but headcanon that—up until the events of this fic—sick bay was one of few places on the ship where they hadn't had sex, pfft.)

Anyway, I don't know what's gotten into me with these two lately. But I seem to be on a roll, so I'm just going with it.