Posted by Arion Neos on January 06, 19100 at 00:24:56:
This is a later event in the same cycle.
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VII. Pressure-tent
Shaine lay supine in darkness, scrubber hissing to the left, Jerry breathing to the right; thinking of what his father (now in his own darkened tent, next to his equipment) had found: Inconclusive still but early telemetry indicated kilometers of intricate, complex caverns underneath where he lay. Sleep, he knew, would be long in coming this night; the day had been too full. Reaching to scratch an ear, crinkle of pressure-suit. "Shaine?"
He was still awake too? "Yeah." Rustling as Jer propped himself on his elbow next to him, silhouette barely visible in gloom of night lit by stars (moons far too small to provide reflected illumination and atmosphere too thin to diffract surface light, Mars had a richer, darker night than the ancestral home of the creatures who walked his face now).
"Thanks again. For everything." It had been a momentous day; Shaine had selected a companion wisely: Jeremy was as delighted as his friend at the findings the holos had displayed to them that afternoon; he suspected few would get much sleep that night, and was right. The silence spun a moment, hiss of scrubber still. "Why'd you really ask me along?"
Shaine silent: Frozen. What to say now? Jerry continuing in a moment:
"Because I had two reasons for saying yes to you. One was what we found out today."
Numb lips, dry tongue: "The other?"
"This." Leaning close, closer, time stretching moments to eternity, sensing nearness, unbearable in tension, small puff of air and warmth from the shape hovering above his face, anticipating; then contact: mouth pressing his. Response, overwhelming response, flooding him, his synapses, all feeling, sound, smell burning into him, immediate arousal sweeping through his frame. Darkness, sounds: Seals parting, suits crackling off and aside, velvet skin-on-skin, reading bodies like Braille, breath sharp and short, wet caresses, sighs, fingers curling through thick, warm hair, whispered endearments; intensity of passion building between; gasps; then silence again, glow radiant in them, Shaine cradling Jer, lying like spoons together, flesh on flesh. Long passage of speechless time, then: "I love you, Shaine." Tightening arms, warmth closer still, chest surging as heart pulsed, rising rhythmically with breath:
"I love you too, Jeremy."
All warmth, everywhere: Life, in them, shared and intimate.
Sun blazing through translucent tent walls, moving awake against each other; replaying their passion of the night before; then slipping into doze again until hiss of airlock roused them. Elijah stood before, taking in bodies huddled together in bedroll and discarded pressure-suits. "Sorry," he told them. "I was wondering what happened to you two." Shaine sheepish:
"Hi, Dad."
"Guys, you really should stay in your suits; your mom would kill me" -- looking directly at his son now -- "if I brought you home blue and freeze-dried from a tent breach. If it didn't kill me to find you that way first."
"Yeah, I know . . . " Small touch of anger in embarrassment.
Elijah hunkered down next to the couple still curled, nude, together under the thick insulating bedroll, understanding: He thought of Shaine and Jeremy as essential adults, capable of making their own intelligent, mature decisions (they'd proved this repeatedly; he approved of this new choice of theirs; loved Jeremy as his own, wanted him happy, his son happy; and it had happened for them: he was thrilled; they had become men together in the night with their decision); they knew he respected them and their autonomy; still being caught in the act (sort of) is unnerving when the catcher is a parent. "Look, Shaine, Jeremy; it's all right; I fooled around a lot when I was your age too. Even got caught once by my old man. Don't think I worry about you two as a couple; I don't. I was wondering when it would happen, to tell you the absolute truth."
They looked at him, silent.
"But there really is the issue of tent integrity. You two wouldn't have a chance if a seal broke right now . . . and I'd hate to lose the son I just gained along with my own." He clapped Jeremy on the shoulder, squeezed, running a hand through Shaine's hair as well. They smiled. Tension leached. "There are reasons for field precautions, reasons that have been proved through some pretty grim experience. So: End of lecture. Breakfast in twenty minutes, guys. Be there or be hungry." Standing, turning once more to airlock, pausing, turning back: "Congratulations, both of you. You look really happy together. You look . . . " feeling for a word, tasting it carefully, speaking it: " . . . right together." Small, contemplative nod at the adjective, his eyes looking inward, then focused on them again, twinkle somewhere in their depths. Turning once more, out the lock, hiss marking his egress.
Another hug, kiss. "I really like your dad." Shaine, wry smile:
"Yours too now, like he said." Laughter as they suited, sealed, checked and departed for the mess-tent, skin's memory of their intimacy staying with them under the Ectomite film (tactile echo of cerebral memory of first experience recorded in them so deeply it would never fade), facing coppery sun rays on the walls of the canyons, overwhelmed to silence at the increase of beauty all around through the eyes of newly-forged love, hand-in-hand, gloved fingers lacing firmly; knowing, amused looks passing among the members of the team, noting the contact, the unspoken that passed between the young, new couple: Their lovemaking had not been silent the previous night or that morning in its intensity; and though the air was thin, it still carried sound tolerably well.
At their find that afternoon, the team would radio an urgent call for full dome support: Within a day [martian] a permanent station would rise here, grown from teeming Ectomite froth; walls, locks, ports, quarters, laboratories hardened in hours to solidity stronger than carbon-steel alloy, lighter than plastic. The new station would be fully-staffed before the third day was out, known to all of Mars soon after that, to all human space sooner still; an important find, indeed, a shattering, riveting find that would forever alter human conception of life, its very definition of existence in this, the closing decade of the twenty-second century, the '49'ers living up to their flip designation too well; but this future lay yet before them as they all shared breakfast now, talking, laughing, planning the day's probing into the tantalizing secret the Red Planet held for them immediately beneath their tents, beneath the flickering lights of their equipment.
To Shaine and Jeremy at least, field rations had never tasted so good.