Chapter Text
Pollard comms him later and tells him, “Captain, it’s time.”
Lorca turns the conn over to Detmer and leaves the bridge. In his quarters, he gives himself the hypo and then…lies there. Waits for it to work. Stares at the ceiling, rolls onto one side, finds his leg twitching with impatience. It would be one thing if he was on the tail end of a good adrenaline rush. He fell asleep next to Burnham just fine down on the planet. He could comm Pheen, but he’s pretty sure that she’s gotten bored with him, and that isn’t how things usually go anyway.
When he checks the time, it’s been an hour already. The hypo should have kicked in by now. It should’ve kicked in within five minutes. Lorca gets out of bed and dresses again, then walks down to sickbay in a tearing bad mood. Pollard isn’t there. Culber is.
“Captain,” he says. “Is something wrong?”
Lorca holds out the empty hypo. “Dr. Pollard gave me something for sleep. It isn’t working. I need something else.”
Culber takes it and frowns. “Have you taken many sedatives before? This was a substantial dose.”
“Yes.” He doesn’t elaborate. He’s surprised that much of anything works on him. Agonizers have a way of fracturing the nervous system and altering neurochemistry, if a person spends long enough in one. “Can you give me something else?”
“Yes,” Culber says, “but it’ll be a one-time deal.” He sighs and reaches for a PADD. “These aren’t a long-term solution. I’ve done some research into alternative sleep aids—”
“I’m not seeing a therapist.” Not since he sent the last one into the hands of the Klingons, anyway. He doesn’t need anyone else prying into his head, especially not right now. But maybe it was revealing too much to jump to the idea of therapy.
“No, I didn’t think that would be effective.” Culber holds up the PADD. “I have a list of various traditional herbal remedies used on some of the newer Federation worlds…” At Lorca’s face, he says, “Or you might ask Burnham about Vulcan neuro-pressure.”
Lorca doesn’t take that bait. “Give me whatever you’ve got. I’ll deal with the rest of it when I wake up.” His head is pounding.
Culver gives him the hypo and says, “You should probably transport directly to your quarters, it’s heavy stuff.” He obeys. It still takes what feels like hours to fall asleep.
Lorca goes to sickbay again after his allotted six hours. He hates this place. Dr. Pollard sees him and says, “I hear it didn’t go well.”
“No.” He closes his eyes as Pollard scans him with a tricorder. “Whatever Culber gave me afterward took a long time to work.” And his head is pounding now.
“Yes,” she says absently as she looks at the results of her scan. “Barring using the kind of tranquilizers we would use on extremely large life-forms, which I will not prescribe for use on a human, you may need to consider alternatives.”
“Staying awake for long periods of time was an effective alternative.”
“And how is your head feeling?”
He grimaces. “Culber said some things about traditional herbal remedies and then said something else about Vulcan neuro-pressure.” Pollard stops swiping through the scans. “I don’t think he was serious about the herbal remedies.”
“No,” she says. “…If Specialist Burnham is willing to assist you with neuro-pressure, that would certainly be the best option.” The way she says it sounds ominous.
* * *
Near the end of their duty shift, Lorca says, “Burnham, my ready room. I want to know how the anomaly research is progressing,” and she follows, though she looks slightly mystified.
“Captain, I believe that Lieutenant Stamets and Lieutenant Tilly are the best people to update you,” she says. “I’m happy to offer—”
“No. This is a separate issue.” He suspects this conversation is going to be unpleasant. “Dr. Culber and Dr. Pollard both told me that you might know something about Vulcan neuro-pressure as a sleep aid.”
She raises an eyebrow and waits. She looks her most Vulcan when she does it, which is appropriate.
“Burnham?” He’s not inclined to admit to needing it.
She seems almost…uneasy? “Yes, Vulcan neuro-pressure is…a technique for relaxation. A treatment. The person administering the treatment stimulates neural nodes and pressure points in the recipient, which improves sleep.” She’s reciting it like a data entry, which means she must be uncomfortable.
“For Vulcans.” He’s not sure what the doctors are trying to do here.
She stares fixedly past him. “Not exactly. Vulcans have treated humans successfully. The first recorded case was over a century ago and involved two Starfleet officers. But there are certain risks of side effects.”
One of them is going to have to stop talking around it. “Burnham. Do you know how to do this or not?” He doesn’t know what this entails, but he has a suspicion. He hasn’t touched Burnham—Burnham hasn’t touched him—since that night on the couch.
Her eyes snap to meet his. “I do, sir. I apologize—Vulcans are very private about their customs and practices. I was surprised that you’ve heard of it.”
“Culber and Pollard both recommended it. For me.”
“Oh.” He’s never seen her look so uncomfortable. “You should know, it’s not without danger. Done wrong, it can result in paralysis.”
“Hell of a side effect. I’ll assume you’ll do it right. Anything else?”
“There have been cases of…psychic transference. Bonding. When practiced by a Vulcan on a human.”
“Like your Vulcan soul?” He doesn’t want part of Sarek’s soul attached to his own.
“No, different than a katra, but still powerful. I believe that in the first recorded instance of the performance of neuro-pressure on a human, a Vulcan Starfleet officer, Subcommander T’Pol, was able to protect the human, Commander Tucker, from the effects of Orion pheromones through their bond.”
The names don’t mean anything to him, though the way she says them, maybe they should. He’ll look them up later. “Is that going to happen if you do it?”
She stands straighter. “No, it wouldn’t. I don’t have the psychic abilities of a Vulcan. I couldn’t initiate a bond even if I wanted to.”
He wonders if he should be insulted by that. “Burnham, I’d like to get rid of my headaches, and Pollard insists that sleeping is the only way. The doctors won’t give me more drugs.” Maybe too blunt. “If you can perform this neuro-pressure, I want you to do it.”
“Yes, sir,” she tells him. “It would typically be done shortly before you want to sleep.”
“I’d rather not spend more time in sickbay than I have to.”
“No, it wouldn’t be done in sickbay. Let me know me when you need it and I’ll come to your quarters.” Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that something done shortly before sleeping would happen in his quarters. This feels like a worse and worse idea by the minute.
When he goes to his quarters, he pulls up the files on T’Pol and Tucker, skims through the confidential information and then past it into what his above-top-secret clearance will allow. She’s understated the impact of the bond, if their children are any indication. He wonders if she knew them on Vulcan, if that’s how she knows about this bond. The idea seems even worse now.
The door hisses open. “Captain,” Burnham says. She’s carrying a mat and a candle. He deeply hopes that no one saw her come into his quarters with that.
“You can call me Lorca while you do this,” he tells her. He’s not going to suggest Gabriel. He remembers correcting her while she stood just there, reprimanding her for not calling him captain. “So what do I do to get this Vulcan miracle cure?”
Burnham hands him the mat. “Spread this out and sit down. And take your shirt off.” She sets the candle down on the table and lights it.
He spreads the mat out and stands for just a moment, steeling himself. “Is the candle necessary?”
“It’s how I learned to do it,” she tells him. “I don’t think we should deviate.”
An unfortunate choice of words. “What is this going to involve?” Lorca shrugs out of his uniform and pulls his shirt off over his head, then settles cross-legged on the mat. It’s not the most comfortable position. The air is cold on his skin, but he doesn’t think that’s going to be his primary problem.
“The neuro-pressure?” Burnham pauses. “It involves physical contact. Pressure points. I need to start with your spine before we proceed to anything more complicated—your chest, your feet.”
“Right. I don’t know if it matters, but some of my nerves are—fried. Damaged,” he clarifies.
“I’ll be careful.” She sits cross-legged behind him, warmth radiating. “I’m going to touch you now,” she warns, and she must see the flinch when her fingers first land on his skin, but she doesn’t comment. He remembers what this feels like, when she touches him with intent. Burnham runs two fingers along either side of his spinal column, from the base of his spine all the way up to his hairline, and he can’t suppress the shiver. She traces out his shoulder blades, sometimes gentle, sometimes firm, and then begins walking her fingers down his vertebrae.
“No Vulcan chant?” he asks, because the silence gives him too much time to think about what exactly is happening.
“You’re welcome to chant if you’d like,” and it almost sounds like a joke. “I’m counting vertebrae to find the right spot—there.”
She presses firmly then, just below his left shoulder, and he can’t help the grunt of pain, has to fight the urge to jerk away. “Don’t paralyze me, Burnham. I can have you court-martialed.”
“I should have warned you about the pain,” she says. “Take deep breaths. It’ll decrease as we go.” She never finds his jokes funny.
Her hands are hot on his back, even more when she pushes her forearms hard against his back and tells him, “Move a little, see if you can find the right spot.” He twists, rolls his spine, keeps his own hands wrapped safely around his knees. Burnham’s hands roam forward, over his shoulders, to the hollow at the base of his throat, up his neck, card through his hair and down to where his skull meets his spine. She’s leaned into him, the soft fabric of her shirt rubbing against the bare skin of his back, and he can picture it so clearly—
“Burnham,” he croaks, “are you telling me this is standard Vulcan medical treatment?”
He doesn’t hear her laugh but he can feel it where she’s pressed against him. “It’s well-recognized as effective. I don’t know that I would say it’s standard.” Her voice vibrates in his ear and it’s all he can do to keep from turning—
Her hands are working again and she finds a knot of scar tissue, draws her fingers over it lightly, then press harder around it and it flares with pain. He can’t help a small noise of protest. “How did you learn it?”
“A friend taught me. On Vulcan.” He can imagine that too well, one of those Vulcans who wouldn’t bond with a human but was happy to tell her to take her clothes off, pressed against her back like she’s pressed against his, reaching down to cup her breast, draw a thumb over her nipple and claim it was all part of the neuro-pressure even though they both knew it wasn’t, as she could feel him hard against her— “And then, because he’d done it poorly, I was sent to someone who taught me to do it properly.”
This is catastrophic. He’s been so careful, these past weeks. She’s destroying him in this moment and he’s asked her to do it, urged her, told her how important it was to help him sleep. “Good,” he says, because it’s the only word his mind can come up with.
“Focus on the candle if it hurts,” Burnham tells him. “Breathe in a steady pattern.” He stares at the candle and tries to distract himself by remembering the terrible pain of a burn, but her hands are blistering, the heel of one hand pressed hard under his shoulder blade, the other one so gently stroking the line of his throat.
“This should qualify as a form of torture,” he says.
Burnham, to her credit, doesn’t pretend that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “It’s very…intimate. That’s one reason Vulcans wouldn’t talk about it to a human. If you’d asked Ensign T’Lac, she would have refused to say anything.”
“In no universe would I have asked her instead of you.” He feels drunk on the sensation of her hands. He lets his head fall forward and finds himself suddenly frozen and gasping for breath.
Burnham pulls his shoulders back and lifts his chin up and he can breathe again. “I’m sorry, I should have told you. It’s important to keep your head up and continue breathing.”
“How much longer will it take?” There’s a limit to how long he can maintain his own distance while she’s stroking his body.
“Take a deep breath,” she says, and he feels sharp pressure where his neck meets his shoulder. His vision grays out for a moment. When his brain can process information again, the first thing it registers is the sudden cold—she’s not touching him anymore. “I think that’s enough for tonight,” she says, and stands up.
Lorca stands too. When he faces her, she’s flushed and breathing just a little faster than usual. He almost thinks she’s sweating. “How quickly am I supposed to fall asleep after this?” He’s just a little lightheaded and can’t stop himself from putting a hand on Burnham’s shoulder to steady himself. She shivers—he can feel tiny goosebumps forming under his fingertips.
“It shouldn’t take more than thirty minutes,” Burnham tells him. “The neuro-pressure will have released the tension and prompted your body to resume its natural patterns.” She frowns a little. “Where’s your food synthesizer?”
He doesn’t take his hand off her shoulder. “Gave it to Elan to reprogram for Andorian food.”
“Oh.” Burnham looks startled. “Usually you would drink tea afterward, but water will do. I can bring tea next time.” She slides out from under his hand, but catches it in her own and then leads him to the sink. He releases her hand, but instead of finding a glass, he turns the water on and splashes it on his face, then drinks from his cupped hands.
“Thank you.” He wipes his dripping mouth. He does feel a strange kind of weight running through his body, as though all his blood has become very heavy, the way he usually feels only after staying awake long enough that Culber or some other doctor orders him to sleep. It’s hard to think.
Burnham says, “I’m going to touch you now” again and puts her hand at the small of his back to steer him toward his bed. He has a vivid flash of the last time she was in here with him, when she’d called him Gabriel for the first time and then everything had fallen apart. At his bed, she lifts her hand away from his back and he turns to face her; she’s very close, a few inches away, and he knows he’s breathing too fast but everything in him wants to kiss her. She would go along with it, he thinks, from the way she looks back at him—not just go along with it, but run it. She would kiss him, push him down onto the bed and follow him down, and for an hour, maybe two, maybe the whole night, everything would be glorious.
And then. When they were done, he’d still want her to stay forever, and she still wouldn’t want that. So he just says, “I’m grateful, Burnham,” and sits down on the bed. She gives him one last look, nods, and leaves.
* * *
He sleeps eight hours. His head doesn’t hurt when he wakes up. Nevertheless, he goes to sickbay and sees Culber and then realizes he doesn’t have anything to say except “What the fuck was that.” Instead, he says, “Doctor, I’m curious about the remedy that you recommended.”
Culber looks at him with the most innocent expression imaginable and says, “Considering your history, neuro-pressure seemed like the likeliest option to succeed.” Lorca doesn’t know how to say what he’s really thinking, which is ‘Why did you put me in a situation to be minimally clothed with Burnham?’ “Was it helpful?” Culber asks.
“Yes.” Lorca has to admit it. “But I’d appreciate you investigating other options too. I don’t want to get dependent on one particular thing.”
At breakfast, Elan doesn’t laugh at him, but she does say “Gabe,” in the most affectionate and warning tone possible. “Let me get this straight. The only way for you to sleep is for your Vulcan to come put her hands all over you but not anywhere you really want.”
“That’s right,” Lorca says. He’s been trying not to think about it that way. “Both Culber and Pollard recommended it.”
“They’re fucking with you,” Elan says confidently. “That’s just cruel.”
Lorca doesn’t know how to say “I’m trying to be careful” or “I’m trying not to get hurt” any way that doesn’t sound pathetic. “It’s fine,” he says instead. “It’s not a problem.”
That’s a lie. It’s a problem. It’s an even bigger problem when Burnham come to his quarters that sleep cycle and says, “Traditionally, Vulcan neuro-pressure involves reciprocal treatment,” and he thinks that she should just kill him now.
“What d’you mean?” he asks. He’s taken off his shirt before she arrives, and his skin feels tight all over, anticipatory. “I’m supposed to give it to you too?” He doesn’t think about how that sounds.
“Yes.” At least Burnham looks a little uncomfortable. “That’s the way I was taught. The act of performing neuro-pressure also stimulates the pressure points that help with sleep. I can talk you through it." She sits cross-legged on the mat and says, “Sit behind me.” Once he’s kneeling behind her, she pulls her shirt over her head and he’s confronted with the naked expanse of her back. He can see the knobs of her spine and he wants to lick each one. “Find the fifth vertebrae,” she tells him, and he strokes his hands down her back, counting down. “Move your fingers along gently when you do,” and he obeys, until she makes a noise somewhere between pain and relief. He runs his fingers up, over her shoulder blades, to her clavicle, and doesn’t let his hands wander lower the way he’d like. He knows what it would feel like if he did, the soft skin, the way she would shift, pulls his mouth down, grip her fingers in his hair and hold him in place while she moved.
But no. “Is this right?” he asks, and he moves his hands the way that she did, barest pressure on her throat, then back around to her back, and he doesn’t press against her, doesn’t let her feel that he’s hard and wanting.
“Yes,” Burnham says, and her own voice is rough. “Under the shoulder blade—ahh! there.” Her spine stiffens when he touches it.
He’s human. He’s human and he lets his forehead fall against her hair, breathes hot against her neck, for just a second before he pulls away. “This is going to help me sleep?”
She shifts, turns around to face him, ignores the obvious. “The reciprocal nature of the neuro-pressure increases its effectiveness for you. That’s what I was taught.” He wonders if it was her own Vulcan who taught her that, the one who took the liberties that Lorca wishes he would let himself take, or if it was the teacher later who fixed it all for her.
“All right,” he says. “What now?”
“Sit back and extend your foot,” Burnham says.
He obeys. They’re both sitting now, facing each other, his leg awkwardly extended to her. The great irony of the neuro-pressure is that the pressure itself is often unpleasant, however overwhelming the physical contact that precedes it. Burnham takes his bare foot—what a strange thought—and digs her thumbs into the vulnerable tendon, and it feels like he’s been electrocuted, all up his spine. Not in a good way. “Fuck,” he says, almost involuntarily, and tries to pull his foot away, but Burnham holds on.
She says something in Vulcan, which of course he can’t understand, and presses again, and this time he lights up everywhere, ears roaring.