You Are Lieutenant Sam Puckett

You like him. You come to that conclusion unwillingly as you sleep. The little voice in your head states it as a perfect fact without your consent and you know it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Along with admission of this comes resentment. You liked him before, and looked how that turned out.

You know somewhere deep inside of you, in the same place your desire to travel among the stars comes from, that you're really just scared, scared of letting yourself become as vulnerable as you feel when you think about how you wish he would touch you more often. You are not your mother, you tell yourself, firmly. You do not need a man to hold you together.

The rest of the time in the lab passes in the same routine that had developed. The only difference is that you let yourself say a mean thing to him here and there. Maybe once in a fit of immaturity, you squirt tang all over the back of his shirt. Another time, you seriously consider licking his food before giving it to him, but in the end just decide to hurl it at him. He laughs every time you do these things. That infuriates you. Does he think you're flirting?

Think again, Benson.

The last day in space arrives along with a fantastic hurricane over the Bahamas. You and the crew get a kick out of watching it for a few moments. Your partner listens to something from mission control and smirks, then calls over his shoulder, "Get this, fellas, they're calling that one Hurricane Sam."

Beside you, with his face so close to the window that his breath is forming fog on the glassas he looks down at the storm, a small smile lifts one side of his mouth. "I never realized how beautiful a storm could be."

You don't miss the way one of the nerdier nerds raises his eye-brows at the other. Your teeth clench, your nostrils flare and you lose interest in the swirling vortex of clouds so far below. That night, your night watch shifts are not spent alone. Once again, a lone scientist is hard at work long after his friends have fallen asleep.

You are strapped to an exercise machine, everyone is required a few hours on it. You have reached your requirement a while ago, but you don't want to float around in close proximity to—Petri dishes of bacteria. Suddenly, a shout startles you.

"Matt!"

You look back in time to see one of the scientist snort awake. "What?"

"I DID IT!"

After that, the celebrations wake the entire crew and all chances of sleep are gone. What are they going to do? Well, they are going to do it again of course! Scientists. They get on your nerves.

When the time comes to leave the lab and re-enter the earth's atmosphere, you are glad; the station has been feeling too crowded, and if you have to look at broad shoulders as he dips his head way down like he does when looking through microscopes again, you think you'll scream.

Landing is scary, but in that good, thrilling way that just makes your heart pound and your hands shake and you want to do it again. The feel of gravity makes you sick, disoriented. Teams meet you on the landing strip and take you all to the recovery station. This is your least favorite part, you decide. Most of it is how weak space has made you feel. A small part of it is that your time with him is drawing to a close.

As tradition, the crew goes for drinks to celebrate. It is a long night, full of conversations about what's next. The scientists can't seem to talk fast enough about what they can do with the few ounces of knowledge they collected. As for you, you already can't wait for your next flight.

He says goodbye to you outside the bar. He is steadier on his feet than you are, because at one point you decided that you weren't going to set a limit on your intake tonight. That was about the time a sexy brunette began hanging all over him, but that is neither here nor there.

His smile is lopsided and there is a cowlick in his ruffled brown hair. You fight the urge to smooth it down as he says, "This whole flight has been the most fun I've had since high school. We should keep in touch."

You bob your head. "Sure." Why are you smiling so big like a freggin idiot?

He chuckles at something and dips his head to land a quick little kiss on your cheek. "See you around, Sam." He says and, after one last smile, he slips away. Suddenly his words begin sounding more like a casual permanent goodbye than a real promise.

Maybe it's because you're feet are on the ground again, but it feels like all the possibility that bloomed to life between the two of you is fading away. The two of you may have shared the stars for a few days, but that doesn't mean that you don't have two very different lives to live on Earth; lives that neither of you can throw away on a maybe.