The Warden of Cryosleep

"Hardly."

"Really?" His lips fell against the skin just behind her ear.

"Yeah. You like having sex. It's fun. Life is about having good experiences."

"Who told you that?"

"My mom."

"And what about you? You've been with a lot of guys, haven't you?" he threw her words back at her.

"Some would say that."

"I'm pretty sure no one would accuse you of being a first timer. Even experienced girls won't dare to touch a guy's ass."

"Well, I happen to like playing with your ass. I suggest you get used to it." She winked playfully before getting lost in another heated kiss.

"You're so much more than I ever expected." Weston's easy smile gave way to a more somber look as he kissed her forehead before pulling her in close to him.

Stunned into silence by his last statement, Alice lay lost in thought. The more time she spent with the engineer, the more she liked him. But she hoped that's all it was. It was only supposed to be casual sex, an inevitability of the human condition.

Alice woke in the darkness, a heavy weight holding her down. When she felt Weston's arm across her side, she remembered where she was.

Sound asleep as he was, it was easy to slip out of his bed and return to her own room. She pulled on a shirt and a pair of yoga pants, tucked her reader under her arm and headed for her new favorite room on board.

The door pulled shut behind her blocked out the loudness of the LSS equipment and let the quiet of the garden permeate. Alice walked the rows for several minutes, letting her feet sink into the soil and her hands grace the edges of leaves. Over and over again, she dipped to inhale the fresh scent of flowers. It was her personal paradise.

Alice plopped onto her stomach on one of the grassy sections and let the blades tickle her skin as she read. It felt like a dream to take in the smells of the plants as she absorbed the words from her mother's book, a truly magical experience after so many years in space outposts.

When her joints began to ache from stillness, she set down her book and began a few cycles of vinyasas to get her body moving. Again, the grassy platform for yoga was exquisite. Only the brief roar of LSS broke her concentration for a moment.

Weston found her with her hips and legs pressed into the ground and her chest and shoulders reaching upward in a delicious stretch.

"Thought I might find you up here."

Alice turned her toes under and pushed back so that she formed an arch. Her heels moved toward the grass as her back pulled up to stretch the muscles at the back of her legs.

"Fuck that's hot, babe."

The engineer sat in the grass a few feet away and watched as she completed several cycles. He didn't speak again until she finished, satisfied by the heat in her lungs.

"Where'd you learn that?"

"Delta Outpost. Most of the refugees are Indian descendants."

"Right. You went to school there."

Alice didn't know if Weston's research into her background made her uncomfortable or not. On one hand, he put together the garden based on her tastes. On the other, she knew far less about him than he did her.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No." She let a smile break before asking, "What do you envision happening between us?"

"I haven't envisioned anything." Weston pulled his knees up and rested his elbows on them as if bracing for the conversation.

"You think I believe that?" There was no way Weston's years of working to get to this mission to meet her didn't come with some sort of ideas as to what might happen.

"I hope you'll believe me when I tell you the truth. There was no way for me to anticipate we would get along like we do."

"But you went through all that to get here."

"You're upset because I worked hard to have the chance to get to know you?"

When he said it that way, it sounded petulant. She didn't know why she was attacking him, and certainly couldn't put it into words for him.

"If you want to stop, we can. Whatever you want. I got my chance and I blew it. I have to be satisfied with that, even if that's not what I want."

"What do you want?" Alice asked, glad to have the focus switched away from her.

"I want the chance to get to know you." He was so sweet, she felt the pull to be near him again. The fear of an inability to refuse him ignited her next statement.

"And what if I don't want to get to know you."

"Fuck, Alice. What happened to you? What makes you turn away from this?" Weston pulled himself to standing so that he towered over her even more than usual.

It hit her like a baseball bat to the guts. Never had anyone even guessed that her past might affect her adult relationships. She'd worked hard to hide her secrets. How could he have figured it out so soon? "Nothing happened to me. I'm not a victim of some trauma. I just don't want to date you."

"Keep telling yourself that." Without warning, he walked to the door and left her alone in the quiet. Lost as she was, she watched him go as she struggled to figure out what to say.

Alice flopped her back into the grass and wondered what happened. She didn't know if she'd intentionally pushed him away like all the others, or if it had been an unfortunate side-effect from actually liking him. Either way, she needed to cool it with Weston for a while if she was going to survive the next two years.

She fully expected him to disappear into his work for a while, and really couldn't blame him. He probably hated her and in truth, it might be for the best. Instead, he arrived at her office door in late afternoon as she crunched the day's numbers.

"How about pasta tonight?" His easy smile was gone, but he was warm with her all the same.

"What?"

"Or we could do salad. There's probably enough lettuce in the garden that should be ready."

"Uh, I guess either is fine. I just didn't think..."

"You thought you could push me away and I would just go?"

Alice didn't know how to feel about such a statement. Was she happy he wouldn't give up easily, or perturbed that he persisted?

"I came here to get to know you and that's what I'm going to do. I can't get to know you if you hide in your office."

"I'm not hiding."

"Then you'll join me for dinner."

Alice had to smile that she'd been caught so easily. "Fine. Salad then. With strawberries."

Weston replied, "Sure thing, boss," as he turned and walked away.

A half hour later, Alice sat at the hexagonal table and marveled at the crisp greens before her. A handful of almonds and some crumbled cheese mixed with the berries created the most enticing meal she'd had in years. Shamefully, she couldn't help but dive in before Weston had even taken his seat.

"Any good?" he inquired.

"Amazing," she mumbled through her stuffed mouth.

"What was your mom like?" As he asked, he started in on his own salad and began making the appropriate expressions. "It tastes a lot better than it looks. Lettuce, I mean."

"It's pretty boring on its own, hence the add-ons."

"So, what was she like?"

"My mom?"

"Yeah, seems like you were pretty close."

Alice didn't know if she could get through the conversation. "Um, she loved the old ways."

"That's it?" Weston seemed unimpressed with her one line answer.

A deep inhale offered a little strength before she began. "She was the best mom. She was an artist, she painted. We lived in a tiny apartment on the Tau Outpost. Most of it was a garden."

Weston smiled as he realized why his hard work meant so much to her.

"Every time she sold a piece, she'd buy a new plant, imported from Earth, the real thing. She bought as much authentic food as she could manage. When she couldn't, she ate the rations and give me the real thing."

"And she gave you books."

A single tear managed its way out of the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. Alice attempted to wipe away the humiliation at crying in front of him.

"Alice, I-" Weston began when he saw her reaction.

"It's fine. Sorry. Yeah, she gave me books. I spent my whole childhood reading in a garden. I didn't know it was different from everyone else."

"It's as opposite from everyone else as humanly possible." Once she had recovered from her momentary lapse in composure, Weston calmed as well.

"What about you? Where'd you grow up?" Alice was interested in changing the subject, but realized it would be nice if their knowledge of each other wasn't so lopsided.

"I guess it was pretty average. My parents worked at the satellite fields at Sigma Outpost. I grew up in a tiny apartment on IGEA headquarters. They gave me a grant to go to school."

With Weston's admission, she realized what that meant for his future. "And now you're required to have a career with IGEA."

"It was either that or work in the satellite fields. I don't regret it."

Alice cringed to think of the life he'd have to spend under the IGEA thumb. "Will you always have to be on long flights?"

"As long as I'm eligible." A wave of guilt crashed against her. By the time he was done, he would have given up years of his life just for the chance to get to know her, and she'd turned him away.

"I'm sorry," came her paltry response.

"Don't be. Like I said, I don't regret it." Finished with his meal, he stood to deposit his bowl in the sanitizer. When he returned to collect hers, he kissed the top of her head and said, "I'm glad we did this."

"I was pretty sure you'd never speak to me again," Alice replied honestly.

"I considered it." While Weston smiled at his own joke, it was different somehow, as if something had broken within him. Alice decided it was probably the realization that he'd wasted so many years for nothing.

"Do you like movies?" she asked.

"Depends on the kind. What do you have?"

"A few action ones. Most are romances..."

"Action."

"Okay. I'll meet you there in five."

The communal living space was complete with a relatively large screen, a crisp white couch, and an empty table. It was meant to be for meetings and discussions, but for the two of them, it would kill a little time during the flight.

Alice cued up the video file as Weston sank into the sofa cushions with a beer in hand. When she looked, his other hand held a bourbon for her.

"Ironic, don't you think?" he asked.

"What?"

"There's so little space for farming on Earth anymore, and the Outposts barely make up the difference. Even so, no one ever considered cutting back on the booze."

"You want the human race to live without their vices? After everything that's happened in the last few centuries? No way. We'll happily go extinct if it means we keep our alcohol and cigarettes." While she said it as a joke, it was true enough. Starvation was a real issue on at least three outposts, but the companies that manufactured alcohol were too powerful, even in space.

Once she had the video running and the lights off, Alice found a seat on the far end of the couch.

"Really?" Weston asked with a half-cocked smile.

"What?"

"Come here."

She wasn't really sure why, but she obliged all the same. Scooting a good six feet towards him, she only stopped when she was within an arm's reach. Still unsatisfied, Weston pulled her even closer until her shoulder pressed into his ribs and her head rested on the meat of his shoulder.

Even as the screen illuminated with fabricated explosions and old-school gun fights, Alice hardly noticed. She sipped her bourbon as she tried not to focus on the smell of Weston's shirt or the heat from his torso. It would have been so easy to get swept up by him again.

At some point, Weston rose off the couch and walked away wordlessly only to return with a fresh bourbon and a beer. When he sank next to her, she wrapped her free arm around his chest and swung her legs over his lap. His only response was to plant a sweet kiss on her forehead.

"I'm sorry this isn't what you thought it would be," she found herself saying through the bourbon.

"Alice, you don't need to apologize. You haven't done anything wrong." Weston kissed her forehead again, this time pulling her in closer to his chest so that only her feet touched the couch. "We can go fast or slow or we don't have to go at all, but I'll never say this isn't what I wanted."

The cryogenist cringed at how easily he'd managed to draw her back in. She was stuck between two years of celibacy and a man who wanted more than she had to give him. Tucked against his chest, she decided to let the decision wait until morning.