by D. Brumbley
“Clearly we both were dressing to impress.” She tugged on her hair nervously as she sat close to him, though the situation still felt strange to her. She was acutely aware of the beginning of some strange responses in her own body that were becoming mild distractions. Her nervousness had her cheeks flushed and her pulse racing more than she knew was typical for her. Was that nerves or arousal? She wasn’t sure. “I feel as though I know a lot about you, but also not very much at the same time. I’m not good at dating. I’ve never had the time. So I apologize in advance for not knowing what to say or do, since I’ve had such limited experience with the opposite sex.”
She couldn’t miss the fact that his eyes widened when she claimed not to have much experience. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for. It’s other people’s loss.” His arm along the back of the couch moved so that he could caress along her shoulder lazily as they talked, just to keep her close and because he really didn’t want to put any distance between them. His fingertips and the touch they brought with them was lighter than she had expected from someone with a military background, precise in their playfulness. “I think in that respect, I’m coming to this from the opposite end of the spectrum. So if we’re going to apologize for how we’re starting, I’ll apologize for that. I’ve dated…pretty extensively, but never for longer than a few months and never seriously enough to consider making things permanent. That’s my track record, but that’s not the way I want things in my life.”
“I wouldn’t possibly hold your past against you. But I do want a relationship with someone who can be a faithful partner. I am a busy woman and sometimes it can get in the way. I don’t want to come home to someone who is with someone else because of my job as a doctor. I take it seriously.” Everything in her life, she took seriously. “I can promise complete fidelity, I would only want the same thing.”
“I can promise fidelity. I’m more of a serial monogamist than I am actually promiscuous.” He had been called that in the past, but it wasn’t a completely fair label. He just had a long train of failed relationships or non-starter relationships. “And we’ll be a fine pair when it comes to being home or away. Pilots aren’t known for being the stay-at-home type, and if we’re going to Jannah, I doubt we’ll have a lot of free time on our hands, either of us.”
“If? I’m definitely going to Jannah. I received my letter of acceptance last night.” She raised a rust-colored eyebrow as she looked at him, their knees just centimeters apart as they faced each other. Sitting down made her dress hike up higher on her thighs, but she didn’t notice. “You haven’t heard? Maybe they haven’t sent everyone’s letters yet.”
“No, I got my acceptance last night, same as you. I figured they wouldn’t match us if we weren’t both accepted.” He continued his slow caress over her shoulder absent-mindedly as they spoke, still looking down slightly at her even when they were sitting down. “I just feel skeptical of the entire thing. There are too many secrets and contradictions in what I’ve read about the program for me to feel rock-solid about it. But it’s too good an opportunity not to take the bet and go to be a part of it.”
Mercury briefly thought about her father’s warning about authority, but she didn’t say anything to Orion about it. They were still strangers, and she had no reason to trust him yet. “There’s no way I’m going to miss out on going to Jannah. I feel like I’ve been working toward it my whole life.”
He smiled at the ambition he could see in her and nodded as he thought back over some of the things he’d read in her file. “I can see that.” His caress moved up over her shoulder to the back of her neck, running along her hair in slow strokes. She was so focused, he wasn’t sure if she was happy about the touch or not, but he was ready to pull away if she showed any sign of not being enthusiastic about it. “When I was fourteen, interest in Jannah was just starting to heat up again. They’d suddenly started getting all the probe data and whatnot, you remember how it was. The Alperts and the rest of the Board couldn’t shut up about it.”
He settled a little in the couch, but in spite of the slouch, he was still so tall that it did nothing to detract from the dignity of the uniform he was wearing. “Anyway, I was up to my eyebrows in gravitational propulsion around that time, so our instructor handed all forty-two of us full access to the Consortium cosmography database. Told us to get from Earth to Jannah as quickly as technologically possible. There were contests on Earth and over in Station Sixteen around the same time. So I went down and took a sleeping bag, stayed in the lab for the whole two weeks we were allowed access, and I managed to get our travel time shaved to seventy-four years, four months, twelve days, fourteen hours and twenty-seven minutes. Between take-off and landing at the chosen site on Jannah. Next runner-up behind me was at eighty-six years and change.” He smiled, since it was still something he was fairly proud of, though he was conflicted about it at the same time. “One of these days, I’m gonna find out who managed to beat my time and take first place, but they classified the winner and the plan proposal both. All they would tell me is that it left my plan completely in the dust. Fucked if I know how. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that silver prize is what got me on the list for inclusion.”
“Wow.” Obviously she had seen the award in his qualifications, but there hadn’t been a story along with it, and she was glad to hear the explanation from him. “I was surprised when I was matched with a pilot, not because I don’t think you are intelligent, but just because I feel like our intelligence is so vastly different. Listening to you tell the story, though, I find it fascinating, what you can do. We both have to be quick thinkers. I think it would be beneficial in a marriage.” There was no sense in taking time or talking about ‘dating’ without considering the end goal. The whole point of being matched was to find someone to be with permanently. Not to find someone to date casually.
“I think it would be.” He agreed, since that was part of what had impressed him about her in the first place. Being a doctor at her level had to involve a lot of quick decision-making, and he appreciated that about a person. “There’s a lot about you that I’m impressed by, even just on the descriptors I already know. Curing Farrier’s Syndrome when you were what, nineteen? I read about that at the time, but I hadn’t remembered your name from the headline.”
“There was a lot of research that was already in place before I made the key discovery, but honestly, it was more fun than altruistic. I liked working toward solving the biological puzzle. It just happened to cure a disease.” Sometimes she was honest to a fault, but she didn’t often make apologies for it. “I’d like to cure more diseases. Birth more babies. When they cry and complain, it’s cuter.”
“You and I have very different definitions of the word ‘cute,’ I think. I’m a fan of kids, but mostly I like them once they’re big enough I can throw them around a little without worrying about breaking them.” His touch on her shoulder jostled her a bit as if she was the one he was throwing around, setting her necklace swinging against her chest. “When they’re all factory-fresh and wobbly, I feel like they’re just way too fragile for me to get away with handling.”
“Imagine if you had to catch them covered in slime several times a day.” She teased as she smiled across at him. “I still think they’re cute.” Mercury laughed softly and moved just the tiniest bit closer to him. “Do you mind if I ask what prompted you to enter yourself to be matched?”
His smile dimmed, but it was the difference between mischief and seriousness, nothing more. “No, I don’t mind. Full disclosure is the best policy, I think. It was my last breakup. Which was six months ago, you should know.” The mischief in his smile came back for a brief moment. “It was just…sort of symptomatic of every other relationship I’ve had in the last few years. Quick start, good times, talk about getting serious, meet the family, start fighting, keep fighting, make up, start fighting again, make up again, keep spiraling until eventually it just doesn’t make sense anymore to try because we’ve gotten too far onto each other�
��s bad side and can’t take it seriously anymore.” He went through the recitation so easily that it was clear he’d been around that misery-go-round more than a few times. “I figured it was time to stop wasting time with things that weren’t going to go the distance. My parents were matched, my brother was matched, my sister is matched, all…well, I was gonna say all happily matched, but that’s not really true. My sister fights with her match all the time. But two out of three ain’t bad.”
“My parents were matched too, and they are sickeningly cute together. My mother worships my father, and my father adores her.” She searched Orion’s eyes before she reached out and tentatively ran her fingertips across his cheek. She could feel the smoothness of a recent clean shave, the quirk of his smile at the gesture in the muscles of his cheek beneath her fingertips. “The program must know more than I have ever given it credit for, I’ve never found anyone as attractive as I think you are.”
He searched her eyes after that just to see if she was being serious, but he was quickly learning that his match was close to being incapable of saying anything she didn’t absolutely mean. It was so unlike anyone else he’d ever dated that he wasn’t sure he would know how to deal with it if it really was just the way she was. “Well, right back at you.” He turned his face slightly to kiss her fingertips, then pulled her in closer by way of his caress along the back of her neck. “Most of the women I’ve dated have been connected to the runway industry on Three. They tend to be stick figures. If they do eat a cheeseburger from time to time, they’re incredibly short.” He reached out with one hand to run his fingertips over her knees, then pulled them over one of his legs to sit closer. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have come past that screen and seen you standing there, divine as you are.”
Divine? That was quite a compliment, and she wasn’t sure how to take it. “I don’t eat many cheeseburgers. I don’t believe I’ve had one since before I started my studies. The diet regimen on Seven is very strict for medical personnel. I feel like celebrating when I’m actually allowed a little chocolate every few months.” Mercury looked at his hand on her leg, and she found that his touch actually affected her.
Interesting.
Her heart rate had increased slightly, but she wasn’t sure if it was his appearance or simply because she was aware of their situation and that he might become her husband. It was amazing what the mind could do and how it could affect one’s physical state. When he ran his fingertips across her knee again, she spoke up. “I’ve only had two sexual partners. Neither experience was particularly interesting. The first time was just because I felt a gynecologist should not be a virgin, and the second was to see if the second experience would be similar to the first. When I say I am inexperienced, I do mean it. However, I learn quickly.”
That brought back the mischief in his smile, and his touch along her knee grew more scandalous, his long fingers tracing what could have been some kind of signature over her thighs. “Nothing interesting? That…that is a damn shame. And not what anyone should have to say about their sex life.”
“I didn’t feel as though I was missing out on much of anything.” Though now she wondered if maybe she was missing out on something. The man beside her was convincing her body that it wanted something as his fingers explored her leg. She knew what arousal was, certainly, but she had never experienced it herself in such a way. Apparently fellow doctors didn’t spark arousal in her. “I’m usually too busy to find much interest in sexual activity.”
“With that kind of experience, I can’t say I blame you.” His eyes dipped down to take in the sight of her slowly. As they moved up from her knee along her curves, his hand followed, walking up along the cut of her dress. He left a slow caress over the laces that covered her stomach and didn’t stop as he trailed over her breasts, moving up her neckline to her cheek, when he met her eyes again. “Well, you said that you started out with a mind to investigate, see what all the fuss was about. It’s possible that with a little more data, you may find the conclusions of your earlier experiments require some slight revisions.”
Mercury’s breathing quickened as he ran his hand over her body, frozen briefly to savor the sensation, since she couldn’t convince her mind to think of anything else other than his long fingers exploring her.
So interesting.
Mercury leaned closer, which only made her heart beat faster. “I was hoping to get to know you. I did not anticipate that you could have this kind of effect on me, and so quickly.”
“I’m glad not to have been anticipated. I can’t say I anticipated you either.” He pulled some of her hair forward over her shoulder and ran it between his fingers as the back of his knuckles caressed back down the way they’d come. “I thought I’d come in here, have an incredibly awkward conversation, and walk out of here feeling conflicted about the prospect of being matched up with a stranger.” He leaned in and kissed her cheek near the corner of her lips, but it was nothing like the other times she’d been kissed on the cheek in her life. It was a promise and a threat at the same time, both of which he seemed fully capable of making good on. “I hope to get to know you too. But there’s a lot of ways two people who are going to be matched together should know each other.”
She felt a chill run down her spine as he kissed her, but it was unsettling how much he could affect her. She barely knew the man. “Is it wrong to feel this intense attraction only moments after meeting you? Do many matches start out this way?” Mercury ran a hand down his arm. “There’s so much I already know about you, agree with, and appreciate. Your health and family history is clean and clear. You’re smart and successful. Is it a risk to just jump with two feet and hope that the program is what everyone says it is?”
“A risk? Absolutely.” His hand continued its caress down to her waist, at which point he pulled her roughly into him so that she was actually sitting in his lap instead of just halfway there. “Everything when it comes to being with another person is a risk. But you should know, you’ve been matched with a gambling kind of guy. Not to the point of addiction or self-destruction, but a gambler nonetheless.” He put his arms around her waist once he had her close, but kept his eyes on hers, finally level with him as she was. “From everything I know about you, I’d bet on us. I’d bet a lot on us.”
“Really? Why?” She wasn’t a gambling type when she didn’t have to be. Sometimes the odds were not in her favor for a patient here or there, but most of her decisions were calculated and backed by logic and research. It was difficult to think about anything other than the closeness of Orion’s body once he had pulled her into his lap, though. There wasn’t much logic or reason behind that. No man she had ever known would have done such a thing, but she wasn’t offended, just surprised and unsure how to behave.
“Because I can see why the program matched us.” He leaned back into the couch to look up at her, his hands working over her back in a constant caress that hadn’t stopped from the first moment he touched her. “I came in here, after looking over your profile, wondering what in heaven or Earth I would have that I could offer you. I’m a pilot, and I’m a good one, but you don’t need a pilot. So you don’t need that part of me. But I’m from Three. They call it the Edge for a reason, and most of that reason is that it’s about as far from Seven or Prime as it’s possible to get. We work hard, we play harder, and bending the rules isn’t just encouraged, it’s rewarded. I may be military, but that’s still the way I work, and it’s gotten me pretty far, in my sights.” His grin turned not just more mischievous, but outright wicked as his hand moved down over her thighs again in his constant exploration even as he continued.
“I respect everything about you and what you’ve made yourself. You’re the best at what you do, and you always will be. I’m getting the impression that’s just who you are. Being with you, belonging to you, would keep me focused, in the program’s eyes, on what’s important. I get that, and I can admit that I need somebody who’s going to help me do that from time to time. As
for what I can do for you…” This time, when his hand moved up over her dress, it was no light caress or subtle touch, but an easy, casual pass of what felt almost like ownership, smoothing the fabric of her dress all the way up to her neckline where he pushed her hair back over her shoulder again to keep her as exposed to him as possible. “I like to enjoy this life we’re living. And if you’re used to living life in rigid lines, if you’ve only had sex twice, with disappointments both times, then that’s something I can definitely be for you. Something I would like very much to be for you. Not just when it comes to sex, but just taking the time to enjoy the world. All of it.”
Mercury’s body was starting to ache in places that had never really ached, but she didn’t say anything immediately as his hands left his invisible mark all over her. It was intoxicating, his touch, his closeness, and she was beginning to wonder if she should put more study and research into the power of pheromones. She couldn’t stop her heart from racing, and she knew her pupils had to be clearly dilated, which would show him easily how much every touch made her even more aroused. “I’m often told that I’m too focused. I don’t feel as though I am missing out on life, but maybe I am.” She wiggled on his lap in response to a powerful chill that ran up and down her spine again. “I am often awkward and strange. I know everything there is to know about my field and my focus, my research, and I try to know everything I can about medicine more broadly. I might embarrass you. I’ve done that to my parents, even though I’m aware that they are proud of me regardless. I might make you angry and not know immediately, or hurt your feelings.” She thought briefly about Greg, but any experience with Greg paled in comparison to even sitting on Orion’s lap. “I just want you to know that I can be difficult.”
“I didn’t come in here expecting the rest of our life to be easy.” He moved to run his touch down her arm to her hand, where he laced their fingers in her lap. “While we’re on disclaimers, I’ll give mine a shot. I am not a shy person. It is very likely that I will overstep at some point, joke about the wrong thing, push something too far, ask more questions than I should and then be confused when there’s no answer until I figure out how exactly I’m fucking up. I’m almost certainly going to end up flirting with somebody else at some point without really thinking about what I’m doing, and I’m going to say I’m sorry in advance for that right now. That’s gonna be one habit that’ll be hard to break, but I get the impression you’re worth it. Also, my family should come with its own rider to my disclaimers. My parents and sister-in-law are very fundamental, and that’s off-putting for some people. My sister Khadi and I went more secular as we grew up, but we still own it as part of our heritage. Basically, I come with complications.” He admitted freely, since that was part of what he’d been concerned about in being matched at all. “But I’ll do my damnedest to make sure the majority of the ways I complicate your life are the kinds you like, whatever we discover those might be.”
