Nightmare

Three weeks. It had been three weeks since their first date, Mindy thought as she snuggled into Mark's side. The intense hazing she had received on her return to work had turned to knowing smiles, chuckles, and requests for wedding invitations. She was working on a list in her head.

They were at his place tonight. The yearly congressional reception dinner had gone well, and Mark had delivered a variant of his well-honed and always heartfelt 'thank you' speech to a very receptive audience. They had, of course, sought him out to shake his hand and get a picture with him. But Mindy had found, to her great surprise, that she was the one many of them wanted to talk to. Their story was still in the proper news, and not just the tabloid media and celebrity sections.

Much to her amazement, Mindy Park was now a name most of the planet knew. She had gained a minor amount of fame from her name and picture being listed among the principals involved in Mark's rescue, but that was nothing compared to what happened when she went out in public now, and if the two of them were together, as was usually the case these days she thought with a grin, it was a circus.

She pulled him tight as sleep claimed her, and Mindy wondered once again at how totally, completely, achingly in love with Mark she was.

(*)

"Next set of images in process, Satcon," Art said.

"Copy, send them over when they're ready," Mindy told Arthur Mendel, Data Traffic manager for the Deep Space Com system.

Her computer chimed and she smiled. As she viewed the image of Schiaparelli Crater's east end her smile fell. The whole world shrank to a small dot in the middle of a black tunnel. The rover was on its side and the trailer was upside down.

Her hands were shaking so hard she couldn't operate her mouse as she attempted to zoom in on the rover crash site. Tears poured out of her eyes as she thought the words, please, please, please, and she clenched them shut. He survived everything else, he'll survive this, get it together, Min. He's okay, he'll be okay. She opened her eyes.Her hands shook a little less as she scroll-zoomed in on the crash site with her right hand and dialed Mitch's number with her left.

(*)

Mark woke to Mindy grabbing him hard and crushing herself to his side.

"Just a dream, just a dream, this is real, you're here, this is real, this is real …"

"Min? Min?" he said as he turned her face to his. "You okay?" she just sobbed against his chest for a few moments as he held her.

Finally she calmed, pulled back, and looked at him through her tears. "Nightmare. I've had it before."

Mark nodded. She'd told him about it in her Emails during his return from Mars. He took up the edge of the sheet and dried her face. "Rolled rover?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said and nodded. "Haven't had it for," she chuckled wetly and smiled, "about a month."

"Sorry I scared you," He said and kissed her.

She hugged him hard again. "So badly, Mark. I thought I was gonna pass out when the first image came through."

"Hey," He said softly and turned her face to his again. "I'm here, you're here, and I'm not going back to Mars, so you don't have to worry about that ever again." He kissed her deeply. "I love you, Mindy Park, and as you may have noticed, I'm tenacious."

She peeled off the vest of her NASA logoed sleep set, threw it behind her, and attacked him. In three weeks she had learned how to get him aroused. Mostly being present and willing did it, but at this moment she wanted to show him just how much she loved him, just how much she wanted him. She threw the covers off the foot of the bed, they were just going to be in the way.

Mark smiled and kissed her. "Okay, okay, slow down a little and let me wake up… I… ohhoho,"

(*)

Mindy woke to the sun in her eyes. She was laying naked next to an equally naked astronaut, a hastily grabbed sheet thrown over them. As her word came into a dull focus she reached for her glasses and found that she and Mark were one hundred eighty degrees out from where they should have been. Her feet were tangled in Marks pillows. Her head was on one of hers and Mark was using her right breast for his pillow. Her chuckling roused him.

"You know," he said. "I've heard about welcome home sex, make up sex, birthday sex, Martinez had a story for all of them, but I've never heard about post nightmare sex."

"I owe you one," she said. "Thanks, Mark. Hope you don't think your girlfriend's a psycho."

He laughed. "My girlfriend is a psycho," he said kissed her slowly and gently. "A brilliant, compassionate, crazy, guardian angel, and she's nuts enough to love me. How'd I get so lucky?"

They were late for work… again.