First date
"Okay, Terry, Pull over right here."
"Sure thing, Mr. Watney," The Limo driver said. "It says no parking."
"I called ahead, they'll be fine," Mark said with a smile.
"Guess you get what you want here at NASA," Terry chuckled.
"I suppose," Mark said. "I really try not to take advantage of it though. Ah, there's Venkat." He stepped out of the limo's back door and greeted his friend. "Thanks for arranging this, Ven, flying under the radar is a little challenging for me these days."
"No problem, Mark," Venkat said. "Nobody knows you're here, and I saw her earlier. She has no idea."
Mark smiled broadly. "Great. So, If I keep her out late you'll be okay with a little time off for her?"
Venkat's eyebrow raised. "Isn't that a bit optimistic on your part?"
Mark blushed and laughed. "No, that's not what I meant. The play is long and if we go for drinks it could be well past midnight."
Venkat laughed and shook his head. "You're too easy, come on."
Walking through the halls of mission control they passed displays from all of the previous missions, Mercury through Ares, they were all represented. The last display was a collage of photographs, news clippings, and vid clips of the Ares Three mission and his rescue. The backdrop was a life sized print of the now famous AAYYYY picture.
"Annie wanted to choke the life out of you for that pic," Venkat said and laughed. "Highest selling print NASA has ever had on the merch site."
"So I was wrong," A feminine voice said from behind them. "Kiss my ass."
They turned to the smiling face of Annie Montrose. "Good afternoon, Annie," Venkat said. "Good to see you're in your usual fine form."
Annie laughed. "Fuck you very much, Ven. Why's Mark here? I thought you had the next few days off?" she asked Mark.
"I do, I'm… um…"
"He's here to ask Mindy out," Venkat said.
"Thanks," Mark said sardonically.
"Really?" Annie said with a grin. "That's great, well I've got PR to do. See you, Mark," she said and turned to Venkat and winked. "See you later, asshole."
"How in the hell is she still employed?" Mark asked Venkat as Annie walked away laughing.
"Beats the fuck out of me," Venkat replied.
(*)
Mindy Park looked up at the mission control board that displayed a large cross-sectional diagram of the Hermes as she sat in spacedock. The Hermes was the largest, most expensive, and most advanced craft humanity had yet built, and the spacedock dwarfed it. With nearly twice the mass of the Hermes the half mile long, five hundred foot on a side rectangular box of titanium lattice and expando modules cruised along in geosync orbit at one hundred five degrees west. It was easily seen with the naked eye from anywhere in the western hemisphere. The video feed showed the ongoing replacement of VASMIR one's cooling fins as the earth rotated peacefully below.
The Hermes was slightly the worse for the wear, but she would be polished, ready, and waiting in three years for the Ares Five crew to take them to Mars. She would make the trip twice more before her well-earned retirement. Her replacement was already beginning to be assembled half a world away at the Malaysian spacedock. The Hermes was big, the Kore would be huge. Fifty colonists and ten crew would ply the interplanetary gulf in her seven hundred foot fuselage. Forty thousand cubic feet of water would be stored and reused in the ten feet between the inner and outer hull, providing all the shielding from the cosmic radiation humans required.
And ten fifty thousand newton VASMIR five engines would get her there in three months.
Mindy looked back at her console. The trajectories of the flotilla of spacecraft orbiting Mars represented by lines of various colors curving over the flattened map of the planet. She was currently collecting high res pictures of every stop Watney had made during his trek from the Ares Three hab to the Schiaparelli site. They had started to refer to the samples Mark had acquired on his journey as "The Watney Collection", and the Mars geology team was practically salivating to get at those rocks.
Mark Watney, she couldn't help the smile that came with thinking about him. They had become friends, very real friends, who had never met in person. During his recovery from the rather abusive launch he was put through Dr. Beck had relegated him to bed rest in the ring at one G most of the day. He had spent that time researching everyone responsible for his rescue, finding their Email addresses, and thanking them personally. She was the first person he wrote, and she kept a printed copy of the letter framed in her bedroom.
To: Mindy Park, Satcon (MPARK .ORG)
FR: Mark Watney, Fight (MWATNEY .ORG)
SUBJ: Thanks
Hi, Ms. Park, I'm Mark Watney
First off, THANK YOU! I understand that you were the first person to realize I wasn't dead. I can't begin to tell you what that means to me. YOU are my hero. They tell me that you watched me for the entire time, slept when I did, wore the same clothes for days on end (we were partners in that, though I think I have you beat), and generally took up being my guardian angel.
I wanted to write you before anyone else (Including mom, if you can believe that) because you are the reason I can write those other people.
I'd like to get to know you more. Everyone knows about me now (astronaut rolling his eyes on this end) but the real heroes, like you, remain anonymous. So let's talk. What do you like in music? (please, please don't say disco!) Favorite movie? Food? Fill me in.
Ah crap, Beck is back for more PT.
WRITE ME!
Mark Watney.
She had. They averaged an Email a day. By the time the Hermes was back in orbit she considered Mark one of her closest friends. Smiling, Mindy sat back, took off her glasses, and closed her eyes, rubbing them with the heels of her hands. She wondered where in the world he was at the moment. Montrose had him flying all over the planet on his "Welcome Back" tour, and his Emails had become less frequent. She knew why, but it still disappointed her a bit.
Guy Martin's voice interrupted her reverie. "Umm, Mindy?" he said, and she opened her eyes.
Mark Watney was standing right in front of her console. , "Hey, Mindy, I'm Mark Watney. I feel like we already know each other from the months email on the way back from Mars, but, dinner?"
Years later she still had trouble remembering the next five minutes.
Like you need to introduce yourself she had though through the shock.
"Yeah… um… I," she looked around in a daze for her bag. "Uh, okay." She handed Guy her headset and followed Mark from the room. They made it to the atrium before Annie came running from the elevator.
"Nope, Nope, Nope," Annie shouted as she ran. She slid to a stop beside them. "Mark, there's a tour group from Houston Advanced Middle School in the gift shop. Go sign some posters. Mindy, come with me." She grabbed Mindy's arm and drug her toward the elevator. "Ten minutes!" she shouted. And before Mindy knew what was happening she was in the elevator heading to the eighth floor.
She found her voice as the fog of confusion lifted. "What the hell, Annie?"
"You are NOT going out with Mark Watney dressed like a fucking engineer!"
"I am an engineer," Mindy said with a grin.
"Yeah well tonight you're representing NASA, in public, and there will be pictures in the media," Annie said. "So shut the fuck up and let me fix you."
Mindy was stuck dead in the middle of amusement and annoyance. "Okay," she said with a huff.
"Great." The door opened and Annie pulled her down the hall at a near run. Opening her office door she said, "In, we don't have a lot of time." She went to the closet in her combination office/dressing room and ripped it open. "We're the same size." She looked Mindy up and down. "Ish. Strip."
Mindy looked at her with wide eyes.
"Come on, you go to the gym. I've seen you there. Strip, now!" Annie said.
"You really know how to romance a girl," Mindy said with a smirk as she pulled off her pink top.
"And you're joining my 'fuck you' club. Hurry up."
Mindy was deciding that Annie Montrose was a very cool woman. She pulled her black and white tiger striped leggings and stood in front of Annie in just her bra and panties.
"Oh Christ!" Annie said. "Here." She pulled open a drawer in the closet and retrieved a black lace bra underwear set with matching stockings. "Sports bra? Plain undies? Good god, woman!"
"I'm an engineer," Mindy said with a smirk.
"Well tonight you're Mark Watney's date, so muscle up. Go, go, go," Annie said and hurried Mindy through her change of undergarments. "Light blue I think," she said as she appraised Mindy.
Mindy looked at herself in the mirror on the door of the closet and was slightly surprised. She wasn't a fashion conscious woman in any way, and she couldn't care less if her body conformed to what was thought of as ideal, she just kept herself healthy and within a few pounds of her chosen weight. That said, what she saw in the mirror was a pretty, shapely woman in lingerie. Annie chuckled at her expression.
"I knew there was something under the frump, didn't know it was that nice though," Annie said and waggled her eyes.
"You're married," Mindy said as she slipped into the knee length blue designer dress that Annie handed her.
"Roberta doesn't mind if I look." Annie turned Mindy back to the mirror and pulled the tie from her hair. "Okay, makeup and doo, and please tell me you can manage heels." Annie shoved her into the chair in front of the makeup station.
"No more than three inches," Mindy said.
"Fine," Annie huffed as she applied a light powder to Mindy's cheeks. A few passes with a delicate rose colored blush, some subtle pink lip gloss, and Annie began attempting to tame the mess that was Mindy's hair. "If there's a second date, you're going to my hair dresser." It wasn't a request.
True to her word, ten minutes after she had drug Mindy to the elevator Annie re-appeared with a refurbished engineer in tow. She giggled at the carp like look on Watney's face. "Close your mouth, you'll catch flies," She said, smirking. "Alright you two, out."
Holy shit! What he fuck happened to the plain Jane that went up the elevator Mark thought as he crossed the atrium. Jesus!
Mindy was very pleased at the look on her date's face. "Annie's a bit of a magician, eh?"
All he could manage was, "Uh huh."
(*)
The Tako Din Sum restaurant was a favorite of the astronaut corps, it wasn't unusual to find past and present spacefarers there. That didn't change the reception Mark got every time he stepped into a large public place, though. They stood and they clapped, every time. He leaned in to a man standing next to him. "Mind if I use your chair?" he asked. The man nodded. Mark let go of Mindy's hand and stood on the padded seat of the chair.
"Thank you," he said to the applauding crowd in the restaurant, and they quieted. "Thank you so much. So, what I want to tell you is that I'm just a guy. I'm just another human like you, and that's the real wonder of what happened to me. You all, everyone on the Earth, came to my rescue. If you think it was just NASA and CNSA you're wrong. It was the whole of the planet, and that means you specifically. You saved me. Thank you."
Tears ran down Mindy's face, and she wasn't alone. A huge cheer went up, and she noticed that almost everyone, the Maitre d' included, had wet eyes. Her heart wanted to explode.
"This way, Mr. Watney," The Maitre d said in an emotion roughed voice.
(*)
"That was without a doubt the best first date of my life," Mindy said in front of her door.
"Glad you liked the play, it's one of my favorites."
"I read most of Stephen King's works while I was in college," Mindy said. "I've heard some of the songs from 'Ghost Brothers' but I've never seen the whole play. Thanks."
She looked up into his eyes and got lost in the blue. He smiled. This was the moment, it would happen or not, it was up to him. He leaned in and kissed her, softly, gently, with just a hint of passion. She melted. Entwining her arms around him she deepened the kiss into a genuine snog. They broke apart a few moments later.
"So, I really want to see you again, often," He said with a stupid grin on his face.
Hers was just as just a silly. "I'd like that a lot, Mark," She said and kissed him again. The minutes passed. "Um, look, I'm really not that girl, but we've known each other for what, five months now?" He nodded. She screwed up her courage. "Wanna come in?"
(*)
Oh. My. Fucking. God! That was the best sex of my life. Jesus, Mindy! He lay back to catch his breath.
(*)
Oh. My. Fucking. God! That was the best sex of my life. Jesus, Mark! She flopped down on the bed next to him and wrapped herself around his side
(*)
"You okay?" he asked. "It's been a good while for me, but that was… Wow! You actually kind of scared me a little there."
She chuckled. "I think I scared myself a little. A good while? You've been back for two and half months. None of those Hollywood starlets drug you off?'
"They tried," He said with a smirk. "I was tempted, but it's just not me. I need to know a girl first."
She fell a little bit more in love with him.
"So yeah, you're the first in…three years?"
"Seriously? Okay, then I don't feel so bad at four."
He kissed her softly. "Four years? Really? Damn stupid of the guys in mission control.
She laughed. "You don't work in there. Nobody can maintain a relationship with another engineer in control, we're to competitive." She huffed. "Been that way my whole life. One fifty seven IQ, great at math, missed perfect on the SATs by three questions, I intimidate the shit out of men," she said and smiled at him. "Well, most men."
"I like smart women.
"I'm glad" she said.
(*)
(Watney,Ma)Mindy won't be in today (or probably tomorrow).
(Kapoor,Ve)(raises eyebrow) okay
(Watney,Ma)Hey, don't think that. (You're right, but don't think it)
(Kapoor,Ve) LOL, Okay, but Annie wants her before you guys go out in public again.
(Watney,Ma)Yeah, Min told me.
(Kapoor,Ve)Pet names already?
(Watney,Ma)We've been talking for months, Ven.
(Kapoor,Ve)Hey, I get my entertainment where I can.
(Watney,Ma)Tell Annie to say fuck you for me.
(Kapoor,Ve)Will do. Roll over and tell Mindy she's got the next three days.
(Watney,Ma)Fuck you ;)
(Kapoor,Ve)That's what…
(Watney,Ma)Fuck you.
(Kapoor,Ve)LOL