Residual: Part V - Held, Not Used

Posted on Wed Nov 26th, 2025 @ 12:41pm by Sergeant Jace Morven

2,102 words; about a 11 minute read

Starbase 371 – January 2375

I go back to the bar. It is mostly empty now. The bartender cleans glasses, and Klingon laughter drifts faint from somewhere down the concourse. I order another drink I will not finish and sit in silence, staring at the green liquid.

My shoulders ease, not relaxed, but the knot between my shoulder blades loosens just enough to notice. I think about the kiss. The way it was soft, slow, careful. My body marks it as danger and I do not know why. It lingers sharper than the heat or the pressure, like something I was not built to carry. My jaw unclenches. The line in my brow eases, just a fraction.

Martinez sees it before I do. They slide into the seat beside me without a word. No sound. Just presence. A breath in a quiet place. I do not turn my head.

“You gonna drink that or just glare it to death?” Martinez nudges the glass toward me, voice low, teasing, warm, the Spanish lilt back into how they speak. It’s purposeful, I know that they can let it slip in on demand.

I glance at them, sharp and quick, but I do not answer. They are not asking for words. So I watch them instead. Some of the tightness I saw in the bunker is gone, like part of the weight has slipped out somewhere I cannot see. Their mouth eases into the shape of the tease, their eyes softer. For a moment they look lighter. Younger. Being clean helps too and they’ve styled their hair a little. It suits them and I look back at my glass, the prickling of heat still across my skin.

“I got the tattoo finished,” Martinez says and their voice stays soft. There is a small smile on their lips as they lean on the table, elbows settling. “Shaded in the edges.”

I nod once. Martinez had found somewhere to get the tattoo done. I suspect they got it done the old way, with a needle and ink. I know Martinez. It would be as much about the pain as anything else. “Good.”

Their eyes drop to the table and their shoulders shift. Not much, but enough to show their frame off better. “He would’ve liked it. Always wanted stars down his arm. Didn’t get the chance. Joined instead, and then… well. Now I got it for him.”

I listen. Martinez hasn’t talked about Diego since he died. Now that they do, every word means something. Their voice is steady but softer than usual, like they are setting something down between us that they do not give to anyone else. I cannot see the tattoo; the sleeve of their jacket covers it. But I picture it anyway. Stars inked where he once wanted them, lines cut into skin as a way of keeping him close.

I do not offer sympathy or say anything. I wouldn’t know what to say. But I do not look away. I stay with them, silent, present, because I know it matters. The quiet stretches. It’s never harsh, just…there. With Martinez, silence can just be silence. There’s no games or judgment, no unspoken things I can’t see or hear.

Martinez shifts toward me, elbow on the table, jaw resting in their hand and those dark eyes resting on my face. “You went somewhere.”

My eyes go to them and I feel a moment of wariness. I do not like being read so cleanly, but Martinez has always been able to do it without effort, like the surface of me never really hides what’s underneath. I don’t know when I really noticed it as a fact, but it remains one.

“I mean,” they continue, voice easing, “you disappeared. Came back looking…less razor wire, more like a person.” The pause stretches before they add, quieter but still sharp, with a raise of an eyebrow and a small smile that shows off teeth. “So, you fuck it out of your system? Or just needed to be seen?”

I sit with the words. They hit closer than I want them to, not wrapped in pity or judgement, just offered plain, steady, the way Martinez always deals with me. That steadiness is why it carries weight. Most people would demand answers, justification, some proof that I am not what they fear. Martinez only lays it down and leaves the choice with me.

I let the air out slow, feel my jaw ease without meaning it to. My lips twitch at the corner, not a smile, not really, but the closest I ever get. “Does it change anything?” The words are even, but inside I am already bracing, waiting for the shift, for the judgement that usually comes when someone sees too much.

Martinez only shrugs, shoulders loose, eyes calm. “Only if you think it does,” they said and shift, one leg crossing over the other. They take up space like they own it, almost a perimeter against anyone who’d think of joining our table.

I look down at the drink, still untouched, and after a long moment I hear myself say, “It was quiet. Not violent.” The truth offered makes something twist inside of me. I know that saying this sounds strange, not fitting the sort of life that most here have had. I also know that Martinez isn’t naïve…they survived Sergeant Tho longer than me, more exposed as different because they never let themselves be put in a classification.

Martinez tilts their head, warmth edging into their voice. “That surprised you?” they study me, hand resting on the table.

I hesitate before I nod. The kiss comes back to me, the weight of the Trill’s hand on my arm, the way it stayed careful instead of cruel. My body read it as danger even when it wasn’t. Most of what I learned to call sex, because another word would be too shameful, had nothing to do with choice or softness. On Turkana it was another form of power, another weapon to cut you to the core, and I swore I would never be put there again. Tonight was not that. It did not bruise or cut or force. It asked. It gave me space to answer. And that difference is what unsettles me most. “Yeah,” I finally say and my eyes go to Martinez. I don’t know what I expect. Pity? Disgust?

Martinez gives me neither. They just lean in a little, their eyes locking onto mine in a way that I can’t look away from. “We all need something soft now and then. Doesn’t mean it breaks us. Means we’re still alive. Still people. Not animals.” They say it with conviction and warmth, voice so soft that for a moment they could have been speaking Spanish.

I do not answer them. I don’t know how to express what I feel. I don’t even know how to name it, but it sits at the base of my throat and doesn’t feel like something fragile. They do not ask who it was and I don’t volunteer the information. This is…better. The silence between us just settles, eases the buzzing under my skin. Now and then they look at me and I look back.

After a time Martinez pushes back from the table. “You staying?” they ask, but what they’re really asking is if I want them to stay.

“Yeah,” I say with a nod and I don’t look at them. Instead my hands go to the glass, just holding it. I am not ready to go, and I know Martinez is tired. I don’t need them to stay.

They nod once and set a hand on my shoulder. Not light, not playful. Solid, grounding, a quiet confirmation. A touch I am familiar with from them, a check in that we are both alive, both still here. I know what it means from them. They’ve never said, I’ve never asked, but it has never felt anything except the form of something I find familiar.

They turn and leave and my eyes follow them to the exit. I let out a breath and lift the glass, smelling it. I don’t like the smell. I sip it. The taste is worse. I put it down again and decide not to bother again. I prefer a clear head anyway…this…charade? I don’t need it.

FGF Barracks, USS Guinevere, 2388

I lie awake in the bunk, eyes open to the dark, and sleep still does not come. What comes instead are the same memories, drifting through the silence, pulling me back whether I want them or not. I breathe out slow, already knowing rest will not take me. Not yet.

I slide down with the same practiced quiet I have always used when others are close. My feet touch the deck, cool against the skin, but I let the sensation pass. I am conscious that I don’t want to wake them up, so I move as silently as I can through the room to the replicator. It pulses with faint light, ready for input but otherwise blending into the wall.

“Mint tea. Hot. Sweet.” My voice is low, no louder than it has to be, words given to the machine and no one else.

The cup appears with its soft hiss, steam rising in the still air. I do not reach for it straight away. I stand there, letting the sharp clean scent cut through the weight of recycled air and sweat. When I take it in my hands, the warmth sinks in, steady and grounding in a way that has nothing to do with the taste.

I lean back against the bulkhead beside the replicator. I’m not hiding, just talking a moment to survey the barracks. It is as close to a home as I am ever likely to get, I might as well take some small part of ownership in it.

My mind drifts, but not to the corridor, not to the press of the Trill’s hand on my arm, not even to the kiss itself. What stays is what came after. The quiet as I sat there, the rare sense of not being shaped into a weapon, if only for a moment. No orders. No demands. No words forced out of me. Just stillness that did not need defending and the feeling of my body being lighter.

I sip the tea and ignore the differences between the tin by my bunk and what is in my mug. It’s hot and sweet, warm and familiar and I let myself exhale into the steam.

It is not perfect. Not the dried leaves Martinez once gave me. But it is enough.

Thinking back, I had not flinched, and that mattered more than I want to admit. I had not turned away from the softness. Not at first. What stays with me is not the man, not even the corridor itself, but the fact that for a short stretch of time I was close to someone without being measured or judged. It was equal, a balance of need and breath, not a weapon turned on me and not me turning into one. For once my hands were not made for killing. They held, they steadied, they gave something back, and that felt almost as strange as it did right.

How long as it been since I did that, felt that? I try and grasp at the memory but grimace when I realise that was the last time. I’ve not been in a situation since where everything lined up enough for me to accept touch like that. I know it’s not normal. I just don’t know how to change it, and even if I did I’m not sure I need to.

I carry the cup back to my bunk and sit with it, warmth pressed into my palms. I keep still and let my mind run its course, because there is no sense in forcing it down when it will only force its way back later. The memories come sudden, the way a grenade does when it’s already left the hand. The line is set, the arc unchangeable. All you can do is track it and wait for where it lands.

So I sit, and I hold on.

---

Sergeant Jace Morven
Platoon Sergeant, Alpha Squad
Federation Ground Forces
USS Guinevere

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