Chapter Text
His nerve endings are so much more sensitive than they used to be.
Everything is...not at all different as in unfamiliar, but also completely different at the same time. Sight, sound, smell, touch, taste - sensations are what they should be, but his reaction to them is extreme.
Things like the solid deck plates under his body when he’s back on Discovery, the vibration of a living ship buzzing in his head. Smells suddenly reasserting themselves when the only scents in the network were the metallic tang of ozone and the resin he used as armor. Or the rub of fabric against his skin when Paul throws aside his tactical vest and strips off his undershirt to cover Hugh’s nudity against Tilly’s blush.
Paul.
Looking up at that face he never thought to see again outside of his own increasingly fractured hallucinations, he sees fierce joy that ought to wrap his heart in warmth.
Dimly, he hears Michael calling for medical support, hears her speaking on the comm to Saru and others.
How many times had he comforted himself in that shadowy otherworld, desperately clinging to the memories of Paul’s smile, his laugh, the way his eyelashes cast shadows on his skin while he slept? Tried to recall the sound of his voice whispering Hugh’s name while he fell asleep with his head in Paul’s lap on the couch? He feels Paul’s arms around him, rocking him back and forth while tears splash onto his shoulders, knows that this one thing he’d yearned for in the - months? years? - he spent exiled in the mycelial plane should put his world back together.
Large, warm hands cup his jaw, fingertips tracing his cheeks in a way that he knows shouldn’t feel like sandpaper. Paul’s smile is blinding as he leans down and presses their mouths together, and Hugh-
Hugh barely manages to suppress the scream that tries to claw its way up and out of his throat. The caress of hands transmuted into the sensation of being scraped raw has nothing on the nerve endings in his lips responding with an electric shock that his brain doesn’t know how to process. Salt bursts across his tongue, burns across his tongue, trying and failing to catalogue the nuances of taste that he remembers associating with Paul but now seem completely foreign.
As Paul kisses his lips, his cheeks, his nose, each touch is so intense it hurts. He knows he’s going unresponsive, but none of it feels right.
Beyond Tilly’s continued sobs and Michael’s soothing noises, he hears an unknown voice. Male, deep, with the unselfconscious authority he’s always associated with command types, but also an undertone of good humor. Whoever this person is, Tilly’s tears trail off into the occasional hiccup when he arrives.
”Doctor Culber?”
That’s him, right? He knows it is, but it sounds wrong. Hugh blinks a few times, refocusing on a handsome man with grey-streaked dark hair and kind eyes.
”Doctor, I’m Captain-“
”Out of the way, sir.”
Tracy Pollard blows right past the stranger, professional mask shattering the moment she lays eyes on him.
”What’s going on, who is-” her jaw works but only a strangled noise comes out.
She scrubs a hand over her eyes, then drops to her knees at his side, takes his unresisting hand In both of hers.
”...saints and angels, Hugh...oh, Hugh.”
Paul nods, tightens his arms around him. He should feel safe, has always felt safe and loved in his embrace.
So why does he feel trapped?