A/N: I really wanted to write Fake Married and I couldn't make it work in canon/on Earth sooo Space AU was born. The basic concept of the ships comes from my vague memories of reading Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan and A Million Suns by Beth Revis a few years ago. They all have their canon accents and emotionally we're somewhere near the end of S1, but the timeline gets a little muddy. Title and lyrics are from Travelling by Folly & the Hunter. I hope someone reads this!


Sometimes life can feel like it's just dragging on.
That is just your fear, though; there is nothing wrong.
Deep within the colour, I have found a friend.
I catch myself praying I don't lose her in the end.

Of course, she refused at first.

"No. Absolutely not." Rachel was banging around in her cupboard with her back to him, before turning around and brushing past him in the miniscule space between the bed and the wall. She did something-or-other behind him, then pushed by again back to her cupboard. She was stalling.

Chandler knew she'd say yes eventually. This was too important. "It's the only way to get the information we need. The IIs don't trust anyone without a mate. I've already told them you'll be coming with me."

It was strange, the way each Earthship had developed its own very specific social systems. Their own Earthship V had a casual attitude toward relationships and marriage, preferring the proliferation of the species to a focus on the morality of non-marital relations, but Earthship II was almost militant in enforcing monogamy. When Chandler and Jeter had done the vidcall to let Earthship II know they wanted to come onboard to talk about the virus, their communications manager—his female mate by his side—had asked if the two of them were mated.

After a moment of awkward confusion, Chandler had told a white lie. His mate was the doctor investigating the virus, and of course she would be coming aboard with him. The communications manager had shared a relieved smile with his wife, explaining that it was odd for them to see a man without his mate. It felt, to them, like an incomplete picture, like something was missing.

There was no way Rachel would sacrifice the information they could potentially acquire from the other ship over something as silly as this.

She turned away from her cupboard and planted her hands on her hips, staring at him. "You believe in marriage," she said flatly. "Doesn't this bother you?"

Bringing a hand up to his forehead, he rubbed his fingers over his brow, trying to stave off the frustrated headache that was building. His wife had been gone for years, and he'd been spending more and more time serving on the Nathan James ever since. He barely remembered what marriage even meant. "It's a necessary evil."

"You flatter me, Captain."

Closing his eyes, he drew in and exhaled a slow breath, before looking at her blankly. "If you insist on refusing, I will find someone else."

"No!" She glared at him, her jaw tightly set. "Don't you dare. I will do it. I won't like it, but I'll do it."

Honestly, that wasn't much better. "Rachel," he said gently. "You have to at least act like you're happy about it. If you can't do that, it's not even worth trying."

She turned her eyes to the wall, her lips pressed together, and he could see her mind working, see her slowly coming around as she worked through her issues with the plan. Finally, she sighed, and met his eyes again. "I understand. It was… a knee-jerk reaction. I apologize."

"Come here," he said, holding his arms out to her, and her eyes widened, all that tension returning to her body. "You're going to have to let me touch you. Consider this practice."

She looked away again, down and to the side, then closed her eyes and took a slow breath. With halting steps, she walked forward until she was close enough for him to wrap his arms around her shoulders, drawing her gently into his chest and holding her there. Her whole body was stiff, just standing there in his arms, and he kept one arm around her shoulders, their chests close together, and ran the other hand down her back, stroking down her spine until she started, just barely, to soften.

When she raised her arms, reaching tentatively around him, she shifted forward slightly, bringing the rest of their bodies in line as she turned her face against his shoulder, and suddenly there was a weight on his chest, a pit in his stomach, his mouth dry as the desert. He closed his eyes, his hand stopping at the small of her back, and cradled her body as she returned the embrace.

Then he inhaled sharply, setting her gently back, and with one hand on her waist and the other on her upper arm he met her eyes and said, "That wasn't so horrible, was it?"

She looked back at him, or at least the general vicinity of his face, and he could see the muscle in her jaw flex before she said, carefully measured, "No. I'm sure it will be fine."

They packed a small bag each and loaded into the two-man pod, Chandler piloting and Rachel sitting stiffly upright in the passenger seat. It was a two-hour pod trip from the Nathan James's mooring to the Earthship II, and Rachel spent the entirety of it with her gloves in her lap, rubbing at the unfamiliar weight of a wedding band on her left hand.

Chandler deftly maneuvered the pod into the open loading dock that was waiting for them, and when the door had closed behind them they climbed down to the deck. He circled the pod as quickly as he could, but still Rachel already had her feet on the deck by the time he got there. He gave her a look, taking her hand, and murmured, "Try to be less independent," just before the door to the ship opened and their welcoming party came through.

The communications manager and his wife were first to walk into the loading bay, followed by two more couples, an older man and woman and two middle-aged gentlemen.

"Welcome, welcome," the communications manager said. He'd introduced himself as Jacob earlier, and his wife as Elizabeth. Now he introduced them to Sarah and Jeffrey, the heads of the visitor welcoming committee, and Matthew and Christopher, who managed living unit assignments.

Sarah and Jeffrey stepped forward, and Sarah said brightly, "We haven't had visitors in—" She looked to her husband, then back to them. "Well, not since before we took these positions, which must be forty years now. You're most welcome." She held up her left hand, in which she held a long strip of cloth, and then lifted her right hand slightly, to demonstrate how a similar piece of cloth was tying her right hand to Jeffrey's left. "We would very much appreciate it if you would participate in a traditional binding of the hands. All married couples are bound this way, and it would help the others to find you less—well, strange."

Chandler looked nervously over at Rachel, who was staring at the binding with her face completely blank. He could only hope that a person who didn't know her wouldn't realize exactly how many emotions she was suppressing behind that mask.

Then she smiled, a superficial curving of her lips, and said, "Of course. We would be happy to."

It was a nice effort. Okay, it was… an effort. He held himself still, freezing his own facial expressions, and breathed slowly. Neither of them were born actors.

Tugging almost imperceptibly on her hand, he sought out her eyes, holding them for a moment before releasing her hand and shrugging out of his flight jacket, removing his gloves and stuffing them in the pocket. She did the same, handing him her jacket, and then they held out their hands, side-by-side, and Sarah bound them together.

It was a simple device, a knot at either end and holes along the length of the cloth, adjustable and easily removed, with a length of four or five inches between their wrists. "Of course," Sarah said, "you can remove the binding for hygiene routines, but most couples wear it the rest of the time. It is optional."

It didn't feel optional, but they dropped their arms back to their sides and Chandler took her hand in his again. Rachel side-stepped a little closer to him and squeezed his hand, and then Jacob took the jackets from Chandler and moved to put them back in the pod as Sarah motioned for them to follow. She and Jeffrey, hands clasped, led them back through the inner door and into one of the main hallways, while Matthew and Christopher walked behind.

"These are the control rooms," Jeffrey said, gesturing to the doors on either side. "Down that hall are more loading bays of various size. I'm sure it's all very similar to home." He glanced over his shoulder, and Chandler nodded.

"All the Earthships were built from the same blueprint, of course," he said absently, waiting for Jeffrey to look away before he flexed his hand in Rachel's grip. She'd clamped down, even as she watched the doors pass by with a neutral expression, and she glanced back at him, chagrined.

"Sorry," she mouthed, and he smiled, shaking his head and adjusting to a more comfortable grip.

They were approaching a busier intersection, and Matthew spoke from behind them, saying, "The visitor's units are here, just south of the compass." South and compass were technically meaningless on the Earthships, but the maps used the words anyway as points of reference. He motioned to the first unit they passed. "You'll have VU1, and most everything's brand new. Like Sarah said—"

"Not too many visitors in space, right." Chandler was tempted to ask when they could talk about the virus, but he knew it would come across rude, and this whole thing would be a waste if they screwed it up before they got what they needed.

They'd estimated three days—both a best and worst case scenario, with what little knowledge they had of the other ship to work with. The Earthships shared data, of course, mostly children born, success of agriculture and so on, but for the most part they approached this mission as an introduction to an alien species. Be polite, but acknowledge that what is polite to you may be rude to them. Be especially polite, in as neutral and kind a way as possible. Do not take risks. Accept all suggestions. Say yes. Make few declarative statements. It was exhausting.

The group of them paused at the corner just past the visitor's units, what was the south-west corner of the compass and the last quiet spot out of traffic. There was a large open square at the centre of the compass with numerous smaller hallways branching off of it. The square was a gathering place as well as a hub of activity, with couches (loveseats, really, as each seated two—for obvious reasons) arranged around coffee tables, and on the far side, a vendor of some sort for snacks and drinks. In the very centre of the square was a large signpost with arrows pointing toward each respective wing, with a more detailed map set into the floor. People were filling up the couches, heading up and down hallways, and generally bustling around making noise.

After giving them a moment to take it all in, Sarah said, "Why don't we show you one of our family units, and then perhaps Rachel would be interested in seeing the labs? That isn't on the standard tour, but again…"

"I would like that very much," Rachel said genuinely. "That is thoughtful, thank you."

Their little tour continued around the corner and down one of the residential hallways. "It's just luck," Matthew said, "that we have an empty unit today. A family with one child is adding another, so they've moved out of this unit and the next family hasn't moved in yet." They all stopped in front of a door marked 17E, and Matthew (and Christopher) stepped up to the scanner, only using his thumbprint. The doors, like their doors at home, were equipped with full biometric scanners, but that security could wait for the residents' arrival, if they decided to use it at all. The sort of crime that was deterred by a locked door was hard to commit on a ship like this.

Matthew and Christopher pushed the door open and followed it into the apartment, ushering the rest of them in as Christopher plucked a thin disc from its cradle on the wall and used it to manipulate the lighting in the unit. To the right was a small living area, which they walked through to access the bedrooms. Each room was only large enough for the necessities, and one wall of the living area formed the kitchenette. Meals would be taken in the dining hall, on schedule, although of course residents were welcome to keep snacks and drinks in their own family unit.

It wasn't so different from home—almost identical, really, except that Earthship V didn't call them family units so much as plural units, as in more than one person whether they were in a relationship or relatives or simply roommates. It wasn't hard to find a new arrangement if you'd tired of your current one, and that was the main difference between the ships, Chandler thought. One focused on longevity of relationships and the other focused on maximizing current contentment.

He didn't hold any illusions of his own morality, as if he were somehow superior for believing in marriage and monogamy when most of his peers didn't, but he did wonder, momentarily, what it would be like to live on a ship like this.

Back out in the hall Matthew and Christopher bade them farewell, asking Rachel and Tom to come find them in the living units management office when they were ready to have their biometrics scanned for their unit door. Sarah and Jeffrey led them further into the residential wing, glancing in on the hall lounge and then continuing past the housekeeping rooms to a service elevator that they rode down to the lowest floor.

As soon as they stepped off the elevator, Chandler could see a brightness return to Rachel that had been lacking since they'd arrived. Wide windows lined the halls, looking into different types of labs—Chandler had no idea what he was looking at, but he followed obediently along as Rachel stopped at each window and ooh-ed and ahh-ed at their equipment.

Sarah came up to Chandler's side, a step and a half behind Rachel as she'd dropped his hand and was using all of the extra length of their binding, and said quietly, "If you don't mind me asking, how did you two become mates? I mean, being in such different fields of work."

Right. He'd figured they wouldn't need a meet cute story, considering the lack of options on an Earthship, but it seemed that on Earthship II marriages were formed at least in part based on how compatible your work placements were. Considering you were almost never apart from your mate, it seemed you'd either have to work together or be extremely bored most of the time.

"Things are a little different on ship V," he said slowly, watching Rachel and knowing that she would be half-listening to whatever he said next. "We aren't bound together, and we do work in different fields. We met…" He paused, pretending fascination in whatever microscope they were just passing to give him a moment to think. "Yes, well, I had been married before, and my wife sadly passed several years ago. Our ship's doctor met Rachel at a sort of lecture series for medical doctors on the Earthship and he introduced us. He must have… ah… seen something… somehow known that we would fall in love. Which we did, almost instantly."

Rachel looked back, smiling at his poor concoction of a story, and shook her head, and he smiled back at her before turning to Sarah.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Is it customary on this ship to remarry after the death of a spouse? I hope I didn't offend."

She was looking somber, and Jeffrey held her bound hand in both of his, stroking one hand over the other. "I'm very sorry for your loss, Thomas," she said. "It is customary to remarry when one is of reproducing age. As you both know, proliferation of the species remains our number one priority. I myself, in fact, was married once before, when I was very young. He passed as well."

"I'm so sorry," Chandler replied. "You have children…?"

"With Jeffrey, yes. They're grown now, with families of their own. We're very proud."

"And you, Thomas?" Jeffrey asked, and Rachel turned around altogether, coming back to clasp his hand and field that one.

"We're working on it," she said with a smile. "On our ship, my work was considered important enough to be my sole focus for longer than in most other cases. This is my first marriage, and quite late it may seem to you, with good reason. Now, we have the virus to contend with. But we're very much looking forward to starting our family, aren't we, dear?" Rachel looked up at him with a beatific smile, and he had to return her earlier head shake. What a story.

There was a little truth to what she'd said. Though monogamy wasn't a focus on their ship, reproduction was, and she'd been given a pass for many years, her research and medical work taking precedence. Even if medical school wasn't the same grind as it had once been on their home planet, it required quite a bit of attention, and doctors were essential. She had even been allowed to use birth control. Don't ask how Chandler knew that.

Once the virus was dealt with, well, she might be out of delays. Her biological clock was ticking—wow, Chandler really did know way too much about this woman. People talked, even on a regimented ship like the Nathan James, and he'd heard far more than he'd ever wanted to know.

Not that he'd thought about it. Certainly, he had no reason to think about Rachel's reproductive choices, or her feelings on marriage, or any of that. There was no fraternization on the ship—but he hadn't thought about it, so that was irrelevant. She was focused on her work, and he was focused on running his ship, and now they were pretending to be married to further both their causes, and that was all.

This thought process was getting him nowhere. "Have you seen enough, Rachel?"

"Umm," she hummed, staring through one window. "I don't suppose—you wouldn't be able to let me into one of the labs, would you?"

Sarah looked to Jeffrey, who said, "Not today, unfortunately. You have a meeting with some of our scientists scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, so you can ask them about it then."

"Wonderful," Rachel replied, turning back to the group. "Then I'm done. Thank you so much for allowing me a glimpse."

They walked to a different elevator and rode it back up to the main floor, where Sarah and Jeffrey led them to the dining hall. It took half the meal for Rachel and Tom to stop trying to use their bound hands and getting stymied, and even then they could only figure to leave those hands under the table and eat one-handed. Sarah and Jeffrey, and to look around, everyone else as well, seemed to be so finely tuned to their partner that they would have won any three-legged race held on their home planet.

Every time Rachel and Tom messed it up they shared a look, though they maintained their perfectly neutral expressions. It was a relief when at the end of the meal, Sarah told them that although she and Jeffrey would be enjoying a film in the Hall E lounge, Rachel and Tom were welcome to retreat to their unit and relax for the evening.

"Thank you," Rachel said, trading another look with Chandler. "It's been quite a long day."

Sarah and Jeffrey walked them back to the living units office and left them with Matthew and Christopher, who set up their biometric scanners and then watched as they used them for the first time, before letting the door fall shut behind them.

As soon as the latch clicked into place, Rachel fumbled for the binding, her fingers scrabbling over the fabric, too eager to focus long enough to actually make it work. Chandler laid his hand over hers and gently pulled it away, popping the knot through its hole with ease and freeing her. She walked into the living area as he released his own and hung the strip of fabric over the cradle for the light controls. When he followed her, she was pacing in circles in the small room, flexing and stretching her wrists and arms, shaking her hands out at her sides.

"Why would you want that?" she hissed when she saw him, flinging her hand in the direction of the hallway. "Why would anyone ever want that? How is their murder rate not sky high?"

He leaned against one side of the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest. "Are you saying you wanted to murder me?"

She stopped and looked at him for a second before rolling her eyes. "I mean, forty years? Forty years! No. It's absurd. It's incredible. Someone is playing a joke on us."

"I guess they really love each other," he said mildly, and she waved her hand dismissively.

"Love doesn't make you superhuman."

"Sometimes it does."

She stared at him again, one of those looks she had that seemed to hold a hundred unspoken words, and when her lips parted, just slightly, he had to reach down and grip the door jamb in one hand, reminding himself not to—just not to. He knocked his head back against it, for good measure, and she sighed and walked over to the couch, flopping down on it.

"Would you do it? Forty years?"

"I don't know," he said gruffly, picking their bags up from the floor by the door and carrying them over to the couch. Handing her hers, he sat down at the other end of the couch—loveseat, only inches between them—and pulled his tablet out of the front pocket of his bag. "It's hard to say I wouldn't, considering." When you commit your life to someone and you're just getting started on that life when you lose them… all you want is more time. Bound together? Sure. Forty years? Love to. (He couldn't say that out loud.)

She had her own tablet on her lap, but was watching him instead. He glanced back at her, and she looked down, powering up her tablet, so he did the same. After sending an update to the officers on his ship, Chandler opened the book he was in the middle of and read while Rachel sat hunched over the same files she must have gone over a hundred times.

When the clock on his tablet ticked over to 2200, he stood up from the couch and took his bag into the bathroom, changing into his sleep clothes and going into the bedroom to do crunches on the floor beside the bed. Rachel wandered in a little while later, dressed in a tank top and sleep shorts, and Chandler looked away the second he'd processed what he was seeing. He couldn't expect her to sleep in full coverage, but… that was a lot.

He stayed flat on the floor, eyes closed, until she'd climbed into bed, and then he went to the closet to grab an extra pillow and blanket, dropping them on the floor.

"Oh, please don't."

Jaw tight, he turned to face her, one hand clenched into a fist behind his back. She was sitting up with the blanket over her lap, giving him a look, and he raised his eyebrows at her.

"I won't have you sleeping on the floor. We're married, aren't we?"

He shook his head, and she dropped her hands onto the covers, palms up.

"We are adults."

Okay, and the bed was barely a double, made for extremely monogamous married couples who walked around all day with their hands bound together. Even if he was technically single, sleeping in a tiny bed with… well, to be specific, with her, felt a little too intimate.

She was watching him stare down the bed, her face growing increasingly incredulous. "Really?" she said, and he shut his eyes again, taking a slow breath before sitting down on the edge of the bed.

"If you insist," he said, and he heard the wry smile in her voice when she replied, "I insist." By the time he dared to glance over his shoulder, she was lying on her side with her back to him and the blanket drawn up to her shoulder. He turned to sit at the head of the bed, pulling the blanket up over his legs, and stared at the space between the lump that was his legs and the lump that was Rachel's body. A matter of inches. Not enough.

"Would you relax?" she said, and he jumped a little, shaking the bed. She pushed up on her elbow, looking over her shoulder at him, and he said, "Yeah. Sure." She sat up the rest of the way and then turned, kneeling beside him and putting one hand on his shoulder. She was staring at his face as he was staring straight ahead at the opposite wall, and then she raised her other hand to his cheek, turning his face toward her.

He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that if he didn't move nothing would happen, but she whispered, "This was your idea," and kissed him.

His arm snaked around her waist, tugging her in tight to his side, while his other hand went up to her face and cupped her jaw as he kissed her fiercely, starving for her touch. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself onto his lap, kneeling over him and locking her elbows behind his head.

He kept telling himself he would stop it after one more second, one more touch, and then she settled herself in his lap and reached for the hem of his shirt and he said, "Wait."

She stopped there, tilting her head with a quizzical expression, and his heart pounding in his throat threatened to choke him.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Rachel, I can't."

She froze, blinking at him, her expression falling in increments, and then she scrambled off his lap and back to the other side of the bed. "Oh my god," she said, her hands covering her face, and she sat at the edge of the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her head and pressing her face to her knees. "Oh my god."

"Rachel—"

"Please don't," she said. "Please go away."

"Rachel, you don't understand."

"I don't want to understand," she said, getting off the bed and walking out of the room. She did a lap of the living area, one hand covering her face, and then walked into the bathroom and shut the door.

Getting up from the bed feeling like Atlas with a planet to uphold, Chandler walked over to the bathroom door and sat at its base, leaning his head back against the surface. "Rachel, I'm sorry."

"I don't want an apology!"

"Would you listen to me for one second?" Silence. "It's my responsibility to… be the strong one, to maintain distance. To lead this goddamn mission. To not get distracted. It's what I signed up for when I agreed to captain the Nathan James. And it's what I've been fighting to do ever since you came on board. Please don't think it's been easy just because I don't show you how hard it is."

When her voice sounded again, it was just on the other side of the door. "I'm humiliated."

"Please, please don't be. If I could… if I didn't have the responsibility… Rachel, if I was free to say yes to you, I would never say no. You have to know that."

"I don't care," she said weakly. "I couldn't care less."

"Okay," he said reassuringly. "Of course. But if you did care, I would want you to know that once this is all over, once we're back home… well, I won't have any more reason to say no."

There was a moment of silence, longer than he'd have liked, and then the door clicked open behind him. He looked up and back, seeing Rachel half-hidden by the door and looking very small.

"We should sleep," she said, and he pushed himself to his feet, reaching a hand out to her. She stepped forward, past his hand, and crossed to the bed, sitting down on its edge again. He walked back over to the pillow and blanket he'd left on the floor, and she said softly, "Please don't."

He looked over and she looked away, to the wall across from the bed. "I—" he started. "Are you—"

"I mean," she said, leaning on her hands and looking down at the floor, "do what you like. If it's too hard, of course. Or we could… just sleep."

"Okay," he said softly, stepping over to the bed. "We can sleep." She curled up on her side again, and he lay down beside her, and she shifted back into him. He closed his eyes, curving his body around her, his knuckles pressed to her belly as her spine pressed to his chest, and he would be lying if he said it was easy. He would be lying if he said he wasn't doubting himself already, because he wasn't at all sure that this was less intimate than sex.

He wasn't at all sure that hadn't just avoided making one mistake by making one that could be much worse. Not that it felt wrong. It felt—like something he shouldn't think too much about. He could just sleep, right? He was capable of that?

With her body pressed to his, his face pressed to her hair, her belly rising and falling under his hand, he could sleep. But he was afraid the line he'd been toeing was now far in the rear distance.