Aura Thundera
deonii@yahoo.com
Disclaimer:
The characters of seaQuest are not mine.
Katie wandered aimlessly down the halls of the seaQuest. She hadn't been able to sleep. Here and there, she saw the young seamen and petty officers of the third shift attending to their duties. They snapped to attention when Katie walked by, evidently not used to seeing an officer out and about this late at night.
Katie sighed and turned into the officer's mess, fully expecting to find the room empty. Instead, Katie found one of her best friends aboard seaQuest, standing with her back to the wall and eating an apple.
"Hi, Kristin," Katie said, surprised to find the doctor up so late.
"Hello, Katie," Kristin said with a nod. "I wasn't expecting to see you-or anyone else for that matter."
"I couldn't sleep and I wound up wandering the halls and scaring the daylights out of all those young seamen who've probably never been within ten feet of an officer before," Katie responded with a laugh. "They all look like they expect me to eat them alive. I wonder how they'd react if the Captain started doing late-night hall wandering."
"Don't give Nathan any ideas," Kristin said. "If he does, Levin and I are going to spend the next day fixing up all the seamen who've had heart attacks."
"You're calling the Captain Nathan, now?" Katie asked. "The two of you must be getting pretty friendly."
Kristin bowed her head, completely unaware of the fact that she was blushing brilliant red.
"Oooh!" Katie grinned. "Kristin, you're blushing!"
"No, I'm not," Kristin vehemently denied.
"Oh, yes you are!" Katie crowed. "So, how far have you gone?"
"We're just two fellow scientists, and good friends. That's it," Kristin said.
"A girl does not blush like that over a mere friend," Katie said. "What's he like, Kristin? Come on, spill it!"
"That's none of your buisness, Katherine!" Kristin retorted.
"He's that good?" Katie said in an awed whisper. "I believe it! He's the sexiest older man I've ever seen."
"You think he's sexy?" Kristin asked incredulously.
"Oh yeah," Katie said. "What I want to know is whether he is as good as he looks."
"He's even better," Kristin confided, in a whisper.
"Spill it, Kris!" Katie whispered back. "What's he look like under that jumpsuit?"
"He's solid muscle," Kristin whispered, punctuating the statement with a soft sigh. "He also has a little patch of silky, curly gray hair in the dead center of his chest."
"Well, that's the physical part," Katie said, "But I wanna know more!"
"Oh, no, Katherine!" Kristin defended herself. "That I'm not telling!"
"All I want to know is, is he romantic?" Katie queried.
"Of course," Kristin said, breaking down. "He kisses and nuzzles me all the time, as long as he thinks no one is looking."
"Then why on earth aren't you with him right now?" Katie asked.
"We had a fight," Kristin said, looking at the plastic floor tiles.
"What happened?" Katie asked, almost unbelieving that Kristin could have had a fight with such a dreamy man.
"Nathan had a disagreement over a chemical imbalance found in the Artic Ocean. I believed that it came from covert underwater mining installations. Nathan insisted that it came from the melting of the polar caps," Kristin said. "At times, we're both too stubborn for our own good."
"Then why don't you go and apologize to him?" Katie asked. "It sounds to me like a simple apology would be a reasonable thing to give in trade for an night in his arms. Especially since you and I both know that there are similar imbalances near Antartica and he's probably right."
"Oh, but Katie, it's not just that," Kristin said. "I want him to come to me. I need to know that he loves me. The last time that I became committed to a man, he ran off and left me. All of my husbands left me for other women. I just couldn't bear it if Nathan turned out the same."
"What kind of men did you marry before?" Katie asked.
"Two of them, including Cynthia's father, were politicians. The third was a director of an oceanographic institute, who really just turned out to be another politician who wanted an ornament for his arm," Kristin said.
"Then none of them were men like Nathan, military men for whom honor and loyalty are impressed into their very souls. If Nathan isn't honorable, then why does he still grieve for his wife, rather than pursuing me and every other woman on this boat?" Katie said. "It speaks well of you that he chose to give his heart to you."
"So what you're saying is that I should trust Nathan to be true to me because he is a military man?" Kristin asked.
"Precisely," Katie said. "I know that you don't like the military, but one thing about military men is that they don't cheat. They have too much honor for that. Even Ben never cheated on me when we were married."
"Ben never cheated?" Kristin said wonderingly. "But I would have thought..."
"That's what everyone thinks, and it's not true. Ben and I split simply because we couldn't get along," Katie said.
"Then you think that I should go to Nathan right now and apologize for arguing with him?" Kristin asked.
"Of course," Katie said. "Nathan's too much of a jewel to lose over a little fight."
Kristin tossed her applecore into a nearby trashcan. "Thanks, Katie," she said over her shoulder as she left the room, headed toward Nathan's quarters.
Katie grinned, thought for a moment, and headed out the other door, toward the quarters of one Lieutenant Benjamin Krieg.