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CHARACTERS: Josette Bennet-Jung & Simon Jung
WHAT: Jo and Simon fitfully reunite.
WHEN: Friday night, Jan 16, 20 AI
WHERE: Mnemosyne mess hall
WARNINGS: Very brief reference to past NPC death
It's nearly half 9, and Simon is on the verge of looking ridiculous, crammed into a corner of the mess hall the way he is, reading and re-reading the same aged stack of print-outs. The papers bear oil marks from other people thumbing through repeatedly, perhaps to memorize, same as Simon. Of course, there’s no reason for him to memorize years' worth of Neuroclast test results—certainly, he will gain nothing in efficiency, but he likes to think memorization will provide him a positive distinction among his peers. As in, he can defend himself from the ignominy of his Veiled life by knowing the data inside out. At the very least, his self-appointed task of memorization gives him a reason to be sitting here, unassailably alone.
He feels her before he sees her, a sense of warmth on the back of his neck. To conserve power, the mess hall lights have been dimmed; faintly he perceives the outline of Jo, dark blue-grey, hair bound up, soft, solid lines, expression obscured to him in the half-dark. Doesn’t even know how he can recognize it’s her, but he does. He feels himself tighten internally, with something like trepidation, or bracing himself for impact. Objectively, he knows there’s a way to make all of this easy: tell her, in simple and clear terms, that when she left him, she hurt him. But the last time he ever had to confront things like sadness or fear, he was 14. When he was 14, all he knew was that if someone made him feel small, he had to make himself smaller.
Maybe, Simon thinks, I can ask her: What did I do wrong, to make you leave me? What can I do to fix myself? Because objectively, the only reason a person would leave their nice husband and nice life was if their husband was not actually very nice. But Jo begins to walk closer to him, and the tightness in his chest only grows tighter, diminishing all possibility of objective reason with each passing second. So instead, he says:
"Dinner service ended thirty minutes ago." As cool as you like. A little insolent, even. Doesn’t know why the words come out like that, doesn’t know why his face adopts a kind of louche, vaguely displeased expression, but once released into the world, he cannot retract the sense—no matter how false—that he doesn’t want to see her. "There’s cold pasta."
The mess hall hums quietly, systems breathing in the walls and between the shadows of the dim lighting. She isn’t expecting the hall to be bustling and lively, and she’s half-relieved to see it’s quiet and winding down. With laser-like focus, however, Jo spots Simon’s silhouette against the painted shadows and without thinking twice, starts her way towards him. A shuffle despite how her pulse jumps against her veins, she doesn’t slow her pace but doesn’t falter either. Truth be told, it’s been decidedly quieter between them both, and Jo somewhat prefers it this way for now. She remembers her adjustment even after her stationary period– Simon must have it worse, she thinks to herself. Much worse. Guilt feels as normal and mundane as breathing these days, but when she thinks of Simon and their children, it welcomes an acrid wash over her tongue too. She knows this is within reason, all while struggling to put it into her own words. Still, she keeps her posture and her position the same; distanced, nuanced, methodological.
She takes him in the way she always does now, clinically at first: posture folded inward, eyes moving too fast over the same lines, mouth set as if braced against an expected blow. Neuroclast printouts. Old ones. Overhandled. She catalogs it without effort, without judgment, and then shelves it, because shelving is easier than touching against it.
"Thirty minutes ago," she repeats, mildly, as if it’s as easy as confirming a data point. "Smells a bit like starch and regret to me," she continues, an attempt at a joke. It’s easy off her tongue as she slides into the seat adjacent to his with rehearsed and fluid movements. Still, she watches him with a quiet analysis; he looks… Small. There’s the flinch of guilt again, the bitterness against her tongue.
"I wasn’t looking for food. I’m not hungry," she swallows it back, tilting her head in honesty. Her shoulders still from her adjustment, hands settled against her lap, and she looks unnaturally still with intention. "How many times have you read that over?" Her gaze flicks to the pages, stacked neatly and yet she can smell the age of the parchment. It’s outdated. Another glance back up at him without so much as moving an inch, "We won’t retain anything if we don’t let our brains rest." A hypocritical statement that she should credit to her superiors.
She leans forward now, peering back at the pages with feigned interest; pursing her lips with a furrow of her brow, she notes the contents. She isn’t sure why she’s pretending to be interested in outdated documents, but she doesn’t look back up as she quietly states: "If you want to be alone, you can say that." The pages are dated three years ago. Three years ago, Jo and Simon were likely taking their children to the park for physical exercise, and then cooking dinner together, and then settling in together in perfect joy. Impalpable, ecstatic, simple joy. Her stare lifts to meet his again, "If you want me to sit with you in perfect silence, that’s fine too. But don’t use cold pasta as a boundary. It’s inefficient, Simon."
Her expression softens despite herself, leaning back into the seat with a scrunch of her mouth to the side. It’s obvious she doesn’t want to leave him to his own devices; what does it mean, to love someone so desperately without being able to name it? Her gaze searches his in that softness, the curve of his mouth and the distance that feels more palpable than that fake sense of joy they once knew. "What problem are you trying to solve?" More gentle now, softened with a lilt of her voice. "Can I help with it?"
I'm trying to solve us, he thinks. This, you, me, why. The softness in her expression makes him ache in conflicting ways; he feels a little sick, in all honesty, trying to rectify the different parts of him. Half of him wants to be close to her and give in, be something for her to fix in the hope she never puts him down again. Half of him bristles at her gentleness, wants to tell her she's about a year and a half too late to offer him any help. He tries to think: giving in to her now feels like weakness. He must have been weak, somehow, when she left him. Therefore, he cannot be weak again.
"I don't have any problems," he replies. Cheerfully, if a little strained. He flourishes the papers in front of her, flipping through them like oversized cards, stopping at one chart containing the results of a particularly disastrous test. "Just got a new job. Trying to be good at it." Looking at her feels irritating, or painful, so he makes himself stare at the print-outs once more. "Thank you, by the way. For the job." Around here would be a good place to be quiet, but the bristling part of him can't resist a jab: "I wouldn't have known about the opportunity otherwise."
Jo swallows hard again, her brows lifting subtly just enough to catch the jab with a pause of acknowledgement. "You’re staring at the failure curve," she points out after a beat, a huff of a smile that doesn’t quite crinkle the corners of her eyes. She points with a steady finger, "Not the control groups, not the recovery data. That’s a choice. Staring at it secluded won’t give you any more explanations than you’re trying to retain now, it’ll only be more confusing when you try to recount it later." Not to mention it’s outdated– but he knows that.
She leans back more now, squaring her shoulders with a quick nod to his stab of a retort; she refuses to bleed from it, be it her stubborn streak or lack of emotional maturity, given the state of things. "You were qualified. The position was open. We needed help, and I couldn’t name a person better suited for the position." Tight, curt. Despite herself, this is softer: "I’m fed intel on the kids. They’re doing well, all things given. I’ve kept my eye on you three for the last year and a half from here, with what I can." She won’t forget about them, she hasn’t– she has a polaroid of all four of them taped against her mirror. Seated carefully at a park, dappled sunshine against their smiling cheeks– if anything, Jo can’t not recognize them as a family unit.
She clicks her tongue, pressing her palms hard into her knees. "If you want this to be about work, it can be. I’m quite good at that." Pointed, though there’s a threat of gentleness that soon stabilizes against the crease of her brow. ”But, there’s a particular degree to all of this," her voice drops, "That you have to understand." She pauses, her tongue heavy with truth. Her hand settles back into her lap, nervous and fidgety just out of view. "I didn’t leave because I thought the beyond sounded better." She just can’t name precisely why without it sounding too logical, too rehearsed and diagnostic.
His gaze follows her hand as it drops beneath the edge of the table. If he shifts, he’ll be able to see it, but he doesn’t need to see her hand to know it’s fidgeting. So little went wrong in their previous, perfect life, but when calamity did occur—late transports, their first pregnancy scare when Jo was still in university, their eldest daughter coming down with a bad flu—Jo would worry her hands. Neither of them could scream or cry much, but there had been times Jo accidentally made herself bleed.
Against his better judgment, Simon shifts, confirms her restlessness with a frown, and places his hand atop hers. Just to make her stop, he tells himself. The warmth of her body again produces contrary feelings: of being welcomed home and of being turned inside out.
"And there’s a particular degree to all of this that I hope you understand," he retorts dryly. "For an entire year, I thought you were dead. But thanks, honestly, thanks." He doesn’t like how he sounds—like his parents, griping at each other about expenses or the mortgage. He used to think they were so stupid, trying to convince themselves that they remained unperturbed and disaffected while trying to knock the other down a peg. Unfortunately, he sees now that it feels good to be so stupid. Or, not ‘good’ but just satisfying enough, when ‘good’ feels unattainable. "It really helps to know disappearing wasn’t an easy choice. Still did it, but it wasn't easy. Great."
Jo is thankful, in a sense, that Simon cannot read her mind. What he’d find is a mirage of nonsensical images and flashes of data to reinforce her lack of regret for leaving— what sticks out, however, is the guttural, eviscerating feeling that she should’ve done it differently.
Plenty of people on the Mnemosyne left families behind, nothing at all made Jo and Simon that much more different or jarring. "I’m sorry." Simple. "I hope the funeral was beautiful, though." Ouch.
His hand is steadying, but what follows feels like a double edged knife. It hollows her, so much so that the heat from his hand feels like fire. So she does the next thing that makes sense— slowly pulling her hand back from his, schooling her expression into a blank slate although it feels like the teeth of the knife are slicing directly against flesh and bone.
"There are a few extra smaller beds in our room, I think they gave us a family unit." A shift in the weight, she glances to the side with a tilt of her head. "A precautious albeit optimistic decision, I’m sure." Speaking like it’s facts just to fill the gaps. She adjusts her hair, fumbling with the bun like another silent excuse of retractive behavior.
"I’ll take up one of the other smaller beds." It’s an easy out. Further neutralization, her expression remains unchanged— bright, aware, cautiously analytic. "Just to make sure you’re comfortable." She nearly flinches at the thought of it all— it’d be like sleeping with a ghost, wouldn’t it? He hardly recognizes her, she can see it in the quiet statements and what sits between the lines.
'Family unit,' she says, 'optimistic decision.'
Unbidden, memories of falling, burning metal rush to the forefront of Simon's mind, along with the sensation of being crushed beneath concrete. He and his sisters were freak survivors of the unsurvivable, bearers of unreplicable, awful luck. Meanwhile, his own children, Emily and Joseph, lost both parents in the span of a year; Emily and Joseph have no luck to speak of. If the unthinkable were to happen to them, they're better off in a pres city, where no building is taller than 10 meters. No one needs luck to survive 10 meters worth of a building falling on them—and pres city buildings don't even fall. Separation is painful but not a death sentence—Simon has thought about this often, each and every excruciating but necessary detail. But surviving the fall of the Mnemosyne, 12 thousand meters above the earth? "No."
Simon is surprised to find himself standing, sweating lightly now. There's an ache in his chest that he registers as muscular tightness. He tells himself his adrenaline merely spiked, tries to calm himself with simple recitations of physiological cause and effect.
"No," he repeats. More calmly now, tries and fails to tuck his stack of print-outs under his arm without his hand shaking. "We won't need the extra beds. They're staying where they are—Eunice, or Lucille, they've got them, they're safe, they're happy, they don't—they won't." Strained, he clears his throat. "No."
And belatedly, he registers all the other observable data Jo has so kindly provided: she stated that she tapped him because she determined he was qualified, not because she missed him. She moved her hand away from him when he touched her. There'd been a time when she needed that, for him to touch her. His mouth feels very dry. All data is good data.
"And no, you don't need to take one of the smaller beds. Don't get uncomfortable on my account." He starts to offer her his hand, to demonstrate his professionalism, until he remembers she just indicated, twice now, that he's not to touch her. His proffered handshake turns into an awkward flex of his fingers, mid-air. "We're coworkers. I'll make another arrangement."
Jo’s brows knit as Simon stands, the crack of alarm spilling across her parted mouth like she could say something, and yet it fails on her lips all the same. She can’t reason with why she’s taken aback, but she can identify that it feels like free-falling. Hands spread for something to catch onto to break the fall, but it’s falling nonetheless.
"I’m sorry– No?" She’s taller now too, matching his stance in defiance as her chin tilts upwards to meet his. She thinks of them, their children, and feels defense burning against her throat. She tries to swallow it back, and fails at that too. "You can’t make a sudden decision like that on your own, I’m their mother too. It’s just as dangerous down there for them, consider the fact that they–" Haven’t cried, haven’t expressed the growing pains of frustration, have hardly ever been actual children. All things she can’t bring herself to say, though, not right now. She can feel her voice strain underneath the attempt at keeping it leveled. Instead, she abruptly stops herself, opting to glance to the side in a grimace, or a frown, or any expression at all that conveys her frustration and frantic attempt at wrangling control.
It’s absolved. She pinches her eyes shut, waving her hand in dismissal though she doesn’t know he’s held his hand out– she accidentally knocks his peace offering in the same motion, and pauses. Her mouth twists to the side, an apology or a simple explanation for such a passive motion dangling from the slit of her mouth as she glances back to him. Instead, "Coworkers, then." Like settled ash, she nods. "Don’t bother." She begins past him, side-stepping as she adds, "Take the damn room, Simon." She’ll sleep in the lab, for all it’s worth she’ll maybe get more work done before the next mission. "You’re newer. Get good rest in a bed while you can."
Just as easily, she starts to return the way she came from– the pinch of sorrow and wobble of her chin hidden underneath the dimmed lights and from his vantage point. Over her shoulder, just for good show, she adds before she’s too far– "See you tomorrow. Sleep well."
___________________
Authors' Note: In fact, neither of them took the room that night.
WHAT: Jo and Simon fitfully reunite.
WHEN: Friday night, Jan 16, 20 AI
WHERE: Mnemosyne mess hall
WARNINGS: Very brief reference to past NPC death
It's nearly half 9, and Simon is on the verge of looking ridiculous, crammed into a corner of the mess hall the way he is, reading and re-reading the same aged stack of print-outs. The papers bear oil marks from other people thumbing through repeatedly, perhaps to memorize, same as Simon. Of course, there’s no reason for him to memorize years' worth of Neuroclast test results—certainly, he will gain nothing in efficiency, but he likes to think memorization will provide him a positive distinction among his peers. As in, he can defend himself from the ignominy of his Veiled life by knowing the data inside out. At the very least, his self-appointed task of memorization gives him a reason to be sitting here, unassailably alone.
He feels her before he sees her, a sense of warmth on the back of his neck. To conserve power, the mess hall lights have been dimmed; faintly he perceives the outline of Jo, dark blue-grey, hair bound up, soft, solid lines, expression obscured to him in the half-dark. Doesn’t even know how he can recognize it’s her, but he does. He feels himself tighten internally, with something like trepidation, or bracing himself for impact. Objectively, he knows there’s a way to make all of this easy: tell her, in simple and clear terms, that when she left him, she hurt him. But the last time he ever had to confront things like sadness or fear, he was 14. When he was 14, all he knew was that if someone made him feel small, he had to make himself smaller.
Maybe, Simon thinks, I can ask her: What did I do wrong, to make you leave me? What can I do to fix myself? Because objectively, the only reason a person would leave their nice husband and nice life was if their husband was not actually very nice. But Jo begins to walk closer to him, and the tightness in his chest only grows tighter, diminishing all possibility of objective reason with each passing second. So instead, he says:
"Dinner service ended thirty minutes ago." As cool as you like. A little insolent, even. Doesn’t know why the words come out like that, doesn’t know why his face adopts a kind of louche, vaguely displeased expression, but once released into the world, he cannot retract the sense—no matter how false—that he doesn’t want to see her. "There’s cold pasta."
The mess hall hums quietly, systems breathing in the walls and between the shadows of the dim lighting. She isn’t expecting the hall to be bustling and lively, and she’s half-relieved to see it’s quiet and winding down. With laser-like focus, however, Jo spots Simon’s silhouette against the painted shadows and without thinking twice, starts her way towards him. A shuffle despite how her pulse jumps against her veins, she doesn’t slow her pace but doesn’t falter either. Truth be told, it’s been decidedly quieter between them both, and Jo somewhat prefers it this way for now. She remembers her adjustment even after her stationary period– Simon must have it worse, she thinks to herself. Much worse. Guilt feels as normal and mundane as breathing these days, but when she thinks of Simon and their children, it welcomes an acrid wash over her tongue too. She knows this is within reason, all while struggling to put it into her own words. Still, she keeps her posture and her position the same; distanced, nuanced, methodological.
She takes him in the way she always does now, clinically at first: posture folded inward, eyes moving too fast over the same lines, mouth set as if braced against an expected blow. Neuroclast printouts. Old ones. Overhandled. She catalogs it without effort, without judgment, and then shelves it, because shelving is easier than touching against it.
"Thirty minutes ago," she repeats, mildly, as if it’s as easy as confirming a data point. "Smells a bit like starch and regret to me," she continues, an attempt at a joke. It’s easy off her tongue as she slides into the seat adjacent to his with rehearsed and fluid movements. Still, she watches him with a quiet analysis; he looks… Small. There’s the flinch of guilt again, the bitterness against her tongue.
"I wasn’t looking for food. I’m not hungry," she swallows it back, tilting her head in honesty. Her shoulders still from her adjustment, hands settled against her lap, and she looks unnaturally still with intention. "How many times have you read that over?" Her gaze flicks to the pages, stacked neatly and yet she can smell the age of the parchment. It’s outdated. Another glance back up at him without so much as moving an inch, "We won’t retain anything if we don’t let our brains rest." A hypocritical statement that she should credit to her superiors.
She leans forward now, peering back at the pages with feigned interest; pursing her lips with a furrow of her brow, she notes the contents. She isn’t sure why she’s pretending to be interested in outdated documents, but she doesn’t look back up as she quietly states: "If you want to be alone, you can say that." The pages are dated three years ago. Three years ago, Jo and Simon were likely taking their children to the park for physical exercise, and then cooking dinner together, and then settling in together in perfect joy. Impalpable, ecstatic, simple joy. Her stare lifts to meet his again, "If you want me to sit with you in perfect silence, that’s fine too. But don’t use cold pasta as a boundary. It’s inefficient, Simon."
Her expression softens despite herself, leaning back into the seat with a scrunch of her mouth to the side. It’s obvious she doesn’t want to leave him to his own devices; what does it mean, to love someone so desperately without being able to name it? Her gaze searches his in that softness, the curve of his mouth and the distance that feels more palpable than that fake sense of joy they once knew. "What problem are you trying to solve?" More gentle now, softened with a lilt of her voice. "Can I help with it?"
I'm trying to solve us, he thinks. This, you, me, why. The softness in her expression makes him ache in conflicting ways; he feels a little sick, in all honesty, trying to rectify the different parts of him. Half of him wants to be close to her and give in, be something for her to fix in the hope she never puts him down again. Half of him bristles at her gentleness, wants to tell her she's about a year and a half too late to offer him any help. He tries to think: giving in to her now feels like weakness. He must have been weak, somehow, when she left him. Therefore, he cannot be weak again.
"I don't have any problems," he replies. Cheerfully, if a little strained. He flourishes the papers in front of her, flipping through them like oversized cards, stopping at one chart containing the results of a particularly disastrous test. "Just got a new job. Trying to be good at it." Looking at her feels irritating, or painful, so he makes himself stare at the print-outs once more. "Thank you, by the way. For the job." Around here would be a good place to be quiet, but the bristling part of him can't resist a jab: "I wouldn't have known about the opportunity otherwise."
Jo swallows hard again, her brows lifting subtly just enough to catch the jab with a pause of acknowledgement. "You’re staring at the failure curve," she points out after a beat, a huff of a smile that doesn’t quite crinkle the corners of her eyes. She points with a steady finger, "Not the control groups, not the recovery data. That’s a choice. Staring at it secluded won’t give you any more explanations than you’re trying to retain now, it’ll only be more confusing when you try to recount it later." Not to mention it’s outdated– but he knows that.
She leans back more now, squaring her shoulders with a quick nod to his stab of a retort; she refuses to bleed from it, be it her stubborn streak or lack of emotional maturity, given the state of things. "You were qualified. The position was open. We needed help, and I couldn’t name a person better suited for the position." Tight, curt. Despite herself, this is softer: "I’m fed intel on the kids. They’re doing well, all things given. I’ve kept my eye on you three for the last year and a half from here, with what I can." She won’t forget about them, she hasn’t– she has a polaroid of all four of them taped against her mirror. Seated carefully at a park, dappled sunshine against their smiling cheeks– if anything, Jo can’t not recognize them as a family unit.
She clicks her tongue, pressing her palms hard into her knees. "If you want this to be about work, it can be. I’m quite good at that." Pointed, though there’s a threat of gentleness that soon stabilizes against the crease of her brow. ”But, there’s a particular degree to all of this," her voice drops, "That you have to understand." She pauses, her tongue heavy with truth. Her hand settles back into her lap, nervous and fidgety just out of view. "I didn’t leave because I thought the beyond sounded better." She just can’t name precisely why without it sounding too logical, too rehearsed and diagnostic.
His gaze follows her hand as it drops beneath the edge of the table. If he shifts, he’ll be able to see it, but he doesn’t need to see her hand to know it’s fidgeting. So little went wrong in their previous, perfect life, but when calamity did occur—late transports, their first pregnancy scare when Jo was still in university, their eldest daughter coming down with a bad flu—Jo would worry her hands. Neither of them could scream or cry much, but there had been times Jo accidentally made herself bleed.
Against his better judgment, Simon shifts, confirms her restlessness with a frown, and places his hand atop hers. Just to make her stop, he tells himself. The warmth of her body again produces contrary feelings: of being welcomed home and of being turned inside out.
"And there’s a particular degree to all of this that I hope you understand," he retorts dryly. "For an entire year, I thought you were dead. But thanks, honestly, thanks." He doesn’t like how he sounds—like his parents, griping at each other about expenses or the mortgage. He used to think they were so stupid, trying to convince themselves that they remained unperturbed and disaffected while trying to knock the other down a peg. Unfortunately, he sees now that it feels good to be so stupid. Or, not ‘good’ but just satisfying enough, when ‘good’ feels unattainable. "It really helps to know disappearing wasn’t an easy choice. Still did it, but it wasn't easy. Great."
Jo is thankful, in a sense, that Simon cannot read her mind. What he’d find is a mirage of nonsensical images and flashes of data to reinforce her lack of regret for leaving— what sticks out, however, is the guttural, eviscerating feeling that she should’ve done it differently.
Plenty of people on the Mnemosyne left families behind, nothing at all made Jo and Simon that much more different or jarring. "I’m sorry." Simple. "I hope the funeral was beautiful, though." Ouch.
His hand is steadying, but what follows feels like a double edged knife. It hollows her, so much so that the heat from his hand feels like fire. So she does the next thing that makes sense— slowly pulling her hand back from his, schooling her expression into a blank slate although it feels like the teeth of the knife are slicing directly against flesh and bone.
"There are a few extra smaller beds in our room, I think they gave us a family unit." A shift in the weight, she glances to the side with a tilt of her head. "A precautious albeit optimistic decision, I’m sure." Speaking like it’s facts just to fill the gaps. She adjusts her hair, fumbling with the bun like another silent excuse of retractive behavior.
"I’ll take up one of the other smaller beds." It’s an easy out. Further neutralization, her expression remains unchanged— bright, aware, cautiously analytic. "Just to make sure you’re comfortable." She nearly flinches at the thought of it all— it’d be like sleeping with a ghost, wouldn’t it? He hardly recognizes her, she can see it in the quiet statements and what sits between the lines.
'Family unit,' she says, 'optimistic decision.'
Unbidden, memories of falling, burning metal rush to the forefront of Simon's mind, along with the sensation of being crushed beneath concrete. He and his sisters were freak survivors of the unsurvivable, bearers of unreplicable, awful luck. Meanwhile, his own children, Emily and Joseph, lost both parents in the span of a year; Emily and Joseph have no luck to speak of. If the unthinkable were to happen to them, they're better off in a pres city, where no building is taller than 10 meters. No one needs luck to survive 10 meters worth of a building falling on them—and pres city buildings don't even fall. Separation is painful but not a death sentence—Simon has thought about this often, each and every excruciating but necessary detail. But surviving the fall of the Mnemosyne, 12 thousand meters above the earth? "No."
Simon is surprised to find himself standing, sweating lightly now. There's an ache in his chest that he registers as muscular tightness. He tells himself his adrenaline merely spiked, tries to calm himself with simple recitations of physiological cause and effect.
"No," he repeats. More calmly now, tries and fails to tuck his stack of print-outs under his arm without his hand shaking. "We won't need the extra beds. They're staying where they are—Eunice, or Lucille, they've got them, they're safe, they're happy, they don't—they won't." Strained, he clears his throat. "No."
And belatedly, he registers all the other observable data Jo has so kindly provided: she stated that she tapped him because she determined he was qualified, not because she missed him. She moved her hand away from him when he touched her. There'd been a time when she needed that, for him to touch her. His mouth feels very dry. All data is good data.
"And no, you don't need to take one of the smaller beds. Don't get uncomfortable on my account." He starts to offer her his hand, to demonstrate his professionalism, until he remembers she just indicated, twice now, that he's not to touch her. His proffered handshake turns into an awkward flex of his fingers, mid-air. "We're coworkers. I'll make another arrangement."
Jo’s brows knit as Simon stands, the crack of alarm spilling across her parted mouth like she could say something, and yet it fails on her lips all the same. She can’t reason with why she’s taken aback, but she can identify that it feels like free-falling. Hands spread for something to catch onto to break the fall, but it’s falling nonetheless.
"I’m sorry– No?" She’s taller now too, matching his stance in defiance as her chin tilts upwards to meet his. She thinks of them, their children, and feels defense burning against her throat. She tries to swallow it back, and fails at that too. "You can’t make a sudden decision like that on your own, I’m their mother too. It’s just as dangerous down there for them, consider the fact that they–" Haven’t cried, haven’t expressed the growing pains of frustration, have hardly ever been actual children. All things she can’t bring herself to say, though, not right now. She can feel her voice strain underneath the attempt at keeping it leveled. Instead, she abruptly stops herself, opting to glance to the side in a grimace, or a frown, or any expression at all that conveys her frustration and frantic attempt at wrangling control.
It’s absolved. She pinches her eyes shut, waving her hand in dismissal though she doesn’t know he’s held his hand out– she accidentally knocks his peace offering in the same motion, and pauses. Her mouth twists to the side, an apology or a simple explanation for such a passive motion dangling from the slit of her mouth as she glances back to him. Instead, "Coworkers, then." Like settled ash, she nods. "Don’t bother." She begins past him, side-stepping as she adds, "Take the damn room, Simon." She’ll sleep in the lab, for all it’s worth she’ll maybe get more work done before the next mission. "You’re newer. Get good rest in a bed while you can."
Just as easily, she starts to return the way she came from– the pinch of sorrow and wobble of her chin hidden underneath the dimmed lights and from his vantage point. Over her shoulder, just for good show, she adds before she’s too far– "See you tomorrow. Sleep well."
___________________
Authors' Note: In fact, neither of them took the room that night.