Chapter Text
The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 9: Long Distance Runaround
Scene 1: Bond Mate
9.1
Bond Mate
Because of their diverse schedules, Captain Skip Howard only had the luxury of sleeping with his bond mate once or twice a week. Several members of the U.S.S. Beagle’s crew, particularly the civilians, had their spouses on board. And there were a few informal relationships. Outside of those romances, there was a fair amount of sexual activity. Given the variety and larger than usual populations of non-humans within the Beagle’s crew, there was an enormous diversity of sexual and romantic mores and cultural norms that required adjustment from all persons on board.
Those who lived by strict moral standards regarding sexuality had to learn not to judge members of other cultures and other species by the moral standards they maintained for themselves, while the more libertine individuals were well advised to tone it down in public.
It was a delicate balance. For that and many other reasons, Skip Howard was very careful to avoid expressing his feelings toward his own bond mate and the nature of their relationship was unknown to much of the crew. Which was quite an accomplishment in a gossipy population of less than 150. Or the more than 200 crew, predominantly human, of the U.S.S. Mako and the U.S.S. Escort.
As he felt his lover’s fingers lacing in his hair, the familiar downward pressure, Howard thought, not for the first time, that he was the luckiest of men. He loved being in command. And in this room, he loved yielding that burden.
But only in this room.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was a relationship that had been, in some ways, forced on both of them by circumstance. It was a story they seldom told and that only one other person on the ship deeply understood. There was passion, but that had come later. Their relationship was a relationship rooted first in compassion. It was compassion that had bonded them.
And this was their fourth anniversary.
9.1