You Are Dr. Fred Benson D. Sc.
It's true, you have always thought you would see her again. Maybe it wasn't a sure-fire belief, no you wouldn't have bet any money on it. It was more like a feeling, one that came from trips down memory lane and then stuck to you like a piece of static-clinging lint. You knew she had joined the air force; you didn't know that she was doing so well in it. The irony also strikes you--how many months have you been thinking of this flight, piloted by two men referred to as "Jack and Sam"?
Flight prep, while already something that would have been the most interesting thing to happen in your life so far, is made twice that by the presence of an old friend. Your reaction to finding her here has intrigued all of her colleagues. They seem to find it hard to believe she was the kind of person you describe from the past. The slacker, the lazy bum, the blonde-headed demon who enjoyed other people's pain—this, to them, is exaggeration of the greatest kind.
Through the curtain dividing you while flight surgeons tape monitors to your skin, you and she play catch-up. Every ear in the room is hanging on your every word—you can feel the intrigue from your colleagues and from hers.
"How have you been?" She asks and you hear her sharp intake of breath as the doctors rub cold alcohol swabs on her skin before applying the tape.
"Good." You answer. You've never felt better.
"How's your mom?" She asks. You smirk. She's over thinking this, being too polite.
"Crazy as ever." You reply. "Yours?"
"Getting by, I guess."
Silence falls between the two of you. Suddenly the only things you can think to say or ask are things just like her too-polite questions. It feels as if the politeness can't go away until you pay her back for the fall she took for you, but that can't be brought up here, with so many ears straining to eavesdrop.
Out of the corner of your eye, you can see her silhouette through the curtain. Same as you, she has her jumpsuit un-done down to the waist, and hanging to her knees so that the doctors have easy access to her chest, back, and rib cage, where they tape the monitors; you can't help but notice her curves, though you try to keep your eyes adverted like the gentlemen you were raised to be.
"So . . ." She says and you hear the smile on her face, "What is it you guys will be doing up there, again? I wasn't really listening."
This makes you laugh out loud. For some reason you are convinced she must have been thinking about pork chops while she was briefed. "I'll be participating in the experiments to determine if sexual interaction is possible in zero gravity and if egg fertilization will be a success."
She yelps in surprise and swallows her gum, starts choking. You and several other people crack up, laughing hysterically. "I'm only joking, Puckett!" You admit through your laughter. "It's tests on bacteria and things you don't care about it."
The curtain glides sideways and she is revealed—her jumpsuit up and zipped, you're sorry to see. She is glaring at you in that familiar way that makes your skin prickle with fear. You never realized how much you missed that until now. The others in the room as still laughing at her. You meet her eye and hold the gaze confidently. You're not scared of her any more; the training for this flight has bulked you up. You could take her . . . You could probably take her . . . You swallow and hope you could take her.
You had thought she would break first, but you find that you had let time allow you to underestimate her; you end up breaking eye contact first. The doctor is finished with you now, he allows you to put your arms back into your jumpsuit sleeves and zip it up. When you look back at her, she is smiling at you.
"So how did you go from a techno dork to caring about germs?" She asks. You chuckle and explain that you have already gotten your doctorate in technology and have since decided to move on to other things, more specifically, the study of life science. The complexities of living organisms astound you; you perceive life as the ultimate machine and are eager to understand it.
"I'm going on this mission," you explain, "in order to conduct some experiments that I plan to write about in my Doctorate in Biology dissertation." She listens to your passionate babbling about this stuff and shakes her head, but you see that you have impressed her. You like that you have.
…
It is a chilly morning at the Cape. The shuttle sits upright and colossal on the launch pad. You can hardly believe you will be strapped to the front of this rocket and shot off the face of the planet; it feels so Coyote and Road Runner that you can't help but smile as you and the rest of the crew walk as a group toward the lift that will take you up to the head of the shuttle.
You look to your left, at the Coyote to your Road Runner, and see that she is giddy with excitement. She's glowing and biting her bottom lip. You can't recall if she ever did that when you were kids, but you like it. She looks at you, out of the corner of her eye at first, then with all of her attention. She narrows her eyes, but playfully, with no hint of real loathing, "Make sure you don't wet those anti bacterial underpants of yours, Fredward, I don't want your piss all over the upholstery of my new ride."
You laugh, letting the old anti-bacterial underpants jibe go. She can't be blamed for having only the old, childish things to tease you about; you haven't seen each other in . . . too long. Then a high-pitched shout draws your attention to the watching crowd. You see your mom waving madly at you, half-hysterical with pride and anxiety. You give her a wave and a big smile as she snaps a hundred and one photos. You're thankful she can't get too close because of flight health safety.
You and the rest of the crew step into the lift. It's a small cage, frightfully small with eight people in it. You suddenly realize, as it gives a jolt and begins to rise, that you would have really liked a hug from your mom after all. Your heart starts pounding and you begin wondering if it's too late to back out.
Something nudges you gently in the side. You look over to see a bottom lip being held between perfect white teeth, and blue eyes locked on yours. "No going back, Benson. The stars are ours." She says. There is a beautiful glint in her eyes—something wild and bigger than her skin. You realize that this thing you're seeing, this flash of life in her, was what you used to call the demon; all it needed was a path and plan, and absolutely no boundaries.
Some one else gives his two cents about the mission, and a few others agree, admitting nerves and excitement. The senior polite jibes his partner about being a rookie. In turn, she rips him a good one—but holds off on the particular brand of viciousness that you realize she must reserve only for you.
The lift comes to a gentle stop and the door rattles open. The ground is some hundred feet down. You swear you can hear your mother's praises, prayers, and cries on the wind. You straighten your backbone and let the others file out first. A warm hand rests on your shoulder and you realize you zoned out while watching them go, the two of you are the last ones left in the cage. She leans in, "You'll look like an ass if you back out now." She was always logical like this. "Go ahead and cry if you want. I'll kick anyone's ass who thinks it's funny."
"I don't want to cry!" You scoff as you begin the trek across the bridge that brings you to the shuttle door. You walk right up to it and crawl in as if you do this every Thursday. You hear her laugh as she follows you.
It's a long process strapping in, and even longer process booting up the computers and doing a systems check. She is amazing up there in the second seat. It is surreal. You tell yourself that just because you don't fully understand the things she is checking off, doesn't mean she's smarter than you. You learned years ago that in the world of specializations there are no Smart and Smarter awards….if there were, you reassure yourself, then you would still be smarter; you hold three college degrees already, after all.
You can't help these thoughts going through your head, you have been competitive academically since you were first aware of grades, worsened in your teenage years when you showed no aptitude for sports. She, on the other hand…
You blink, because it took this moment of space-flight prep for you to realize that you and her—you aren't different at all.
You recognize the same edge of competitiveness in your estranged friend as you have cherished in yourself your entire life. It had always been there—it was the field of applications that made you and she so different. She needed to be the toughest; you were the nerd on which she practiced the punches.
Smiling now because your entire friendship is a different color in your memory, you make whispered comments and silent exchanges with your crew members to convey your mounting excitement. When finally things are ready to go, you close your fists tight, resolved not to close your eyes, and try to calm your nerves.
"Ten . . . Nine . . . eight . . .seven . . . six . . ." You feel like you can pass out. Then you remember to breathe. The shuttle suddenly roars to life under you as ignitions come to life. The rumbling is unbelievable. "Five . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .lift off."
You close your eyes. You are pressed back into your seat as you and several thousand tons of steel, fuel, and computer parts climb higher and higher into the sky.
Her scream makes you open your eyes again. She is in the pilot seat; her scream was of sheer triumph and joy. You're glad you can't really see anything but a static blue in the surprisingly small windshield; you don't think your heart would be able to handle the sight of the world actually falling away. Some where in the back of your mind, you think at least she's with you.
That last thought crossing your mind before you are literally off the planet is something that you don't know what to do with. Was it filling you with a sense of dread or was that something else? Whatever it is crashes down around you as gravity slips away and your arms rise without your consent. You don't even notice. That thought is still zipping through your mind and it doesn't matter what your initial feeling about it was, because one feeling is beginning to overpower everything else; it is a feeling of impending doom because you are realizing you will be stuck in the space station with Sam Puckett for seven days.
Docking with the space station is unnerving and when all the clicking and suction starts, your heart hammers. Of course, you know that it is standard, but it sounds like things are banging around. You are relieved when it's over and a new excitement fills you: you'll get to unbuckle and float around in the space station!
First you have to meet a handful of other people from Russia and Japan, go on a tour of the station, and unload your supplies from the shuttle before you can play.
Zero-gravity is the most fun thing in the universe. This is your conclusion after only twenty-five minutes as you bop around the lab watching her antics. With the lab's camera in your hand and her tap dancing on the ceiling, you feel like this is just another bit for the web show—as if she had had a zero-gravity button on her remote, and your third party was just downstairs getting soda.
Your crew members are laughing hysterically, and they beg you to tell another story about her old pranks. It is the first time since they were regularly occurring nightmares in your life that you can speak of them without shame. It's the arguments each story sparks between you and her that make this so; she refuses to be painted off as the bad guy, you will tell only how it really was, and it is mostly this banter that makes the others laugh. You never knew you missed the debates until know.
The first day of floating is devoted entirely to the rookies playing with stuff. You untie everything so that it is floating around, promising the senior pilot as if he was your father that you will clean the mess up when you are done playing.
With everything from your space helmet to the school supplies brought for your research floating around you like a dream, you laugh and joke with her and your friends. She looks like she has been electrocuted. With her multitude of wavy hair tied up in a knot on the back of her head, the small hairs that have escaped from the rubber-band stand straight up. You point this out with a snort and she tries a couple of times to make the hair obey with no avail. Then she gives up and takes it all down.
The effect now is that all her hair is loose and drifting around her head like the mane of a mermaid. You tell her to smile at the lens of the camera as you pan around to get her in a shot with the sun burning naked in the viewport window. The effect of the light on her hair turns it from a mane into a golden halo and her smile makes you breathe differently.
One of your friends interrupts with an observation about the very sun you have forgotten in your comparison between it and her. You are pulled out of that train of thought—barely aware even of its existence—to reply, and before you can return to the moment, whatever it was, the senior pilot has zipped over and is now showing her a neat trick.
As you watch her snort and giggle while she tries to drink the water blobs her partner squirts out of the bottle, you finally register that sub-train of thought and quickly derail it. The sense of doom comes crashing back, now with a face. You were sort of expecting something like this, because you know what happens to people trapped in close space for long periods of time. But you aren't ready for it to happen in your life right now, and you weren't calculating the other variables in the situation.
The senior pilot guffaws like an idiot and helps her win control of her hair so that she can dry her mouth and face. You roll your eyes and determinedly turn the camera on your other friends, who you know you can trust. Not that you have any matter in which you need wing-men. You just don't like Mr. Rocket Ship over there, who laughs like a horse. Both your trustworthy friends are coincidentally married, but you decide to ignore that reasoning in your regard for them.
Soon, playtime is over and you have to get down to business. For several hours your mind is actually completely focused on your tasks and through sheer determination, you think of the fairer pilot as nothing but a fellow collogue; you are thankful that she is behaving so professionally, otherwise it would have been hard to do so.
A/N: as in all of the twowritehands stories, this fan fiction was written by two people. This chapter is when the second sister (that's me: Hill) began joining in on the fun! I just want to say that this fan fiction had a life of it's own and all we could do was try to keep up with it! It just SPIRALED OUT OF CONTROL! that's why there are, like, fifteen chapters . . . any way, hope you read it all and enjoy :)
