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Owosekun remembered the night she had pushed their beds together. It was innocent - a phrase she repeated so often that it felt like it had become her personal mantra.
Detmer had nightmares. She would wake them both up in the middle of the night with the sound of her blabbering about trajectories and vectors, her hands reaching for the helm. Owosekun had pretended not to notice the first few times. It felt too personal to ask her new roommate about it, to breach that space between them. So she would keep her eyes closed and listen to the tiny taps of Detmer scrolling through data on her PADD until she fell back asleep.
It took a few weeks for Owoseun to peek. She was startled by how hollow Detmer looked in the pale glow of her PADD's screen. She was probably searching for a distraction, but her eyes never seemed to focus on the screen, and more than once Owosekun saw Detmer's fingers keep scrolling as she clenched her eyes shut.
One night, Owosekun sat up when Detmer did. The two of them stared at each other from across their small, shared room. Their beds were separated by the regulation 2.3 meters. She'd learn later, through some offhand comment by a mechanic, that it was the same distance that separated their seats on the bridge. They were always separated like this, orbiting each other, the distance feeling impassable.
A flicker of emotion passed over Detmer's face, her mouth drawing into a thin line, and Owosekun saw that her eyes were glassy with tears. A cacophony of silent communication passed between them in the dark, honed from years of working of as two halves of a whole. A language of tiny facial expressions that was entirely theirs.
Owosekun swung her legs from the bed, and walked to the back of their room. She had the computer print a hand-drill, not wanting to make the trip to mechanical in the middle of the night, not wanting the questions that would come along with her excursion. She ducked under her own bed, and loosened the four bolts holding it in place, then winced at the noise it made as she pushed it across the pristine metal floors.
When the beds were flush, Owosekun hesitated. Would it be too presumptuous to bolt it down here? She weighed the interpersonal risk against the physical. Free moving furniture on a ship like this was a disaster waiting to happen.
Owosekun looked at Detmer, the way her eyes were ringed with dark circles from lack of sleep, the way her thin fingers clutched at the blankets, the way she had followed Owosekun's every movement.
She bolted the bed to the floor.
They laid together that night, on their sides, turned toward the center of the bed. Their eyes stayed locked in a conversation they'd been spiraling around for years. Finally, cautiously, Detmer reached her hand across the seam of their beds. Owosekun took her hand, warm and soft in hers. Their fingers finally intertwined, and they closed the gap that had separated them for far too long.