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On the Hephaestus station, technically there wasn’t ‘day’ and ‘night’ as we know it. Sure, Hera keeps track of the date, and the approximate time in Florida, but out a few light years away, time was easy to lose track of.
Commander Minkowski kept the station lights on a timer at the beginning of the mission, mainly to ensure no one over worked themselves while adjusting to space life. This fell through when someone worked late, finishing up a report, or experiment, or chess game.
After the whole Christmas fiasco, the commander decided that perhaps it would be best to go back to this system, to prevent the two of them from overworking, and to save their limited power.
The new day/night cycle had been successfully in place for almost two weeks, and Renée was puttering around, cleaning dirty tabletops and other surfaces, doing a general tidy up. When the five minute warning chime went off, she stretched her arms behind her, and enjoyed the pull in her biceps. She rolled her head, stretching her neck as she made her way to her quarters. Neither her body nor mind was tired. She briefly considered staying up to putter some more, but decided against it as she remembered how that went for her last system.
The woman sighed audibly, shutting the door before beginning to change out of her uniform. She climbed into bed, her mind wandering from topic to topic. However, when her mind began to wander to the dark, forbidden topic of home, she decided enough was enough. The commander kicked her feet over the side of the bed, the covers drifting off as she did so.
“Would you like me to turn of the lights, Commander Minkowski?” Hera asked, her voice drifting in through the speaker in the room.
“No, it’s fine,” Minkowski replied, looking at were the sound originated. “Hera, what’s the time?”
“It is 2243 hours, Commander,”
“Thank you,”
The commander made her way to the doorway, arms out in front so that she didn’t collide with anything. Heading through the hall went quite similarly, before stepping in front of the door marked “03”. Her knuckles rapped on it lightly, before quietly asking,
“You awake?”
“C’mon in,” the voice behind the door replied. She opened it and fumbled inside, closing the door behind her. “Can’t sleep, Commander?”
“Just one of those nights, I guess,” The shadowed silhouette patted the space on the bed next to him, inviting Renee to lay next to him. She accepted, his arms curled around her, and their legs intertwined.
This wasn’t the first time she came to him in the middle of the night, and probably wouldn’t be the last. They agreed the first night amidst the awkwardness and blushing that they would act as if nothing happened, and neither complained. It was lonely in space, the both of them were homesick and yearning for physical touch less than a month from the beginning of the mission.
Since then, every few weeks, one of them would be restless, or homesick, and would fumble their way to the other’s room.
As the commander’s eyes drifted closed, she muttered “Thanks Eiffel,”
“Anytime,”