It’s a sunny morning, and we’re sitting in my breakfast nook, each of us with a cobalt blue mug of coffee. His is black, mine liberally laced with milk and sugar. “Not cream?” he asked, as he was bringing the mugs to the table. “You loved cream as a kid.”
“Whipped cream, yes,” I corrected. “Blue whipped cream, the way my dads did it at their restaurant, remember?”
He grins, and I can tell he’s caught the same memory trail that I have, and that we’re both thinking of the first time I brought him home, introduced him to my father and his partner, showed him what it was like to step from the vault-sized cold-storage unit to the hot sun outside and watch the condensation steaming off your skin in the sunlight.
“You were nervous about me meeting your father,” he says, and I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “I was nervous about you meeting Ben. I mean, he and my father have been together for ever, but Mars Colony was pretty conservative, and some people get freaky. Besides, you were a fleet brat.”
“So were you,” he points out, waggling a spoon at me.
I stick out my tongue at him, because I’m oh-so-mature. He doesn’t expect it, and it makes him laugh. I love his laugh. I love the way it makes his face glow. I love the way his fingers flex when he’s happy. I love…. “My mother was on a science scout ship. It’s different. They’re way more relaxed than you big starship types.” I’m teasing him now, to deflect my own feelings. “Y’all are stuffy.”
“Stuffy?” he puts so much feeling into one word: amusement, irritation, disbelief. “Stuffy? I’ll give you stuffy.” And before I know it he’s found the canister of whipped cream I keep in the stasis unit for ice cream emergencies, and he’s aiming it at me.
“Don’t you dare!” I abandon my mug on the table and get up to try and grab the container before he can press the button that will spew blue cream everywhere.
But he’s hit the trigger, and because I grabbed his wrist we’re both covered in the stuff.
An hour later, we’re both dressed in fresh clothes, sitting on the sofa and watching the FNN headline news. Border skirmishes along the Neutral Zone, political races on four worlds on the outer rim, and a proposed ban on press presence at the next Congressional Assembly are the topics of the morning.
“Does it bother you?” he asks, referring to the broadcast. “You’re suspended - but you don’t seem upset.”
“I haven’t really had time to wrap my head around it,” I confess. “Been sort of absorbed by other matters. It’ll hit me about an hour after your ship breaks orbit and I’m forced to return to the real world. ”
He covers my hand with his, and I feel the tension in his grip. “This is the real world, Kat,” he says. “You and me…” he trails off, and I turn my hand beneath his, and twine our fingers together.
“I know,” I say, my voice low. “It’s real. We’re real. And I’m - can we not talk it to death just yet? Can we just enjoy it for a little longer.”
He gives me the sort of look that would be truly devastating without the visor masking his expression, but is still pretty pointed even with it, and even though he hasn’t moved, doesn’t move, I feel him withdraw a little.
I move closer. “I’m sorry,” I say. “You’ve been my best friend forever. My brain hasn’t caught up with my heart yet, is all.”
He leans forward, silently, and I can tell he’s about to kiss me, but I see a flash of white near his ear, and I move my head past his, dart out my tongue, capture the errant cream.
“Problem?” he asks, amusement and affection tied together in the word.
“Nope,” I say. “Just missed a spot, when you were cleaning up.” My voice sounds smug, even to me. It should. I’m the Kat who got the cream.
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