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“Lime, I understand that you have your personal beliefs, but I'm going to need you to do your scan,” Blue opened the metal lid to the vent, crouching down above the opening.
“You can't scan me—I know my rights!” Lime hissed, pulling themself back, farther into the vent.
“Like I said, I know you may not want to do this, but it's important for the crew’s physical well-being, to make sure everyone's healthy.” Blue held out a hand, waiting for them to grab on. “Will you just trust me on this one thing?”
Blue’s charm was somehow weirdly irresistible.
“Trust is a construct…” They muttered hesitantly.
“Please? I'll do it with you.”
“Fine. But you better not save any of my DNA or anything.” Lime reached their hand out to Blue’s, feeling Blue's other hand come to their waist as they allowed themselves to be lifted up, their cheeks flushed at the hand contact. Blue giggled a bit to themselves, watching the person below them blush at such a minor thing.
Lime let go of their hand as they scrambled to their feet, standing up a bit too quick after being in the vents for a while. They wobbled over to the scanner, standing completely still as if it wouldn't work properly if they even moved a centimeter.
“You don't have to be all tensed up, I promise you don't need to stand perfectly still.” Blue fiddled with some buttons on the scanner’s control panel, editing the settings to make sure the scan went smoothly before hitting start. A definitely safe, 100 percent not radioactive green beam flickered to life, before slowly moving down Lime’s body. Blue leaned against the countertop nearby, observing the scan, to make sure nothing would go wrong. Sometimes they wondered how anything hadn't gone wrong with how low quality the equipment that MIRA supplied was. I guess that was the benefit that came with the scans being potentially dangerous. Long term durability was good, although in Blue's eyes, that wasn't really worth the cost of patient safety.
Especially not Lime’s.
They were snapped out of thought as the machinery made a beeping sound and flashed text reading FINISHED on the overhead screen.
“See? You still have all of your DNA, and I have my scan report. Thank you, Lime.” They gave a polite, small bow before picking up the printed sheet of their scan, quickly looking over it.
“Would you like to do the honors?”
Lime nodded and took the sheet, their fingertips lightly brushing against each other's. They carried the paper over to the shredder in the corner of the office, pushing it into the slot before the machine made a buzzing sound and the paper could be seen broken into strips through the clear plastic container.
—
As they squeezed themselves through the tight, constricting vents, Lime's mind kept wandering back to their earlier encounter with Blue. They hadn't pushed, lied, or anything of the sort. They even let them shred their own documents to make sure that they believed them fully.
And the way they lured them in—
The hand on their waist, being lifted out of the vent by them. And they also couldn't forget the littlest, softest touch of their fingertips when Lime took the paper from them.
Lime's face bloomed into a crimson color being reminded.
They blamed it on the lack of airflow, making it “hot.”
—
Blue shuffled through their stack of paperwork, hand moving on autopilot to sign all of them as quickly as possible. Some were barely legible and they hadn't even read—or barely read—the documents, but the pile had gotten to a point where it was just too much to handle for one person. Too bad that there was no other medically trained person on this ship, besides basic first aid.
The rest of the hour was a blur of black, badly printed text and their unique signature on top of dotted lines.
Finally, they were finished.
Blue reached for their notebook sitting on the table, their favorite rose–colored pen that they used solely for their creative sorts clipped to the front cover. They pushed their half–dranken mug of tea to the corner of their desk, leaving room for their notebook to lay out completely flat. They clicked their pen and did a quick doodle in the margin of the page to get the ink going, before dropping the tip of the pen on the first line.
Romantic, flowery words spilled onto their page, a floral aroma enveloping them. They added extra loops and swirls to their letters, making everything look beautiful and fancy. Their passion flowed nicely into the lines as they dragged and twirled their pen on the paper. Page after page they wrote, each filled with dreamlike, visionary poems, their hazy thoughts and memories powering each individual word.
How much time had passed again?
—
“Gah.. those damn gremlins keep breaking stuff–” Lime muttered to themselves, fiddling with the wires under the broken Reactor keypad. Recently, it felt like they had at least something new, or multiple things to fix every single day.
Screw MIRA and their faulty, extremely budgeted equipment.
Lime swung the door on the side of the metal keypad shut, closing up the wires to make sure no one, y'know, accidentally got electrocuted for any reason.
They fumbled with the small combination lock to hold the compartment shut, their fingers running completely off of muscle memory since they could barely remember the numbers.
In their rush to get the code in and lock it, one of their fingers collided with the sharp edge of the metal, leaving a shallow–ish but long gash down the side of their index and part of their purlicue. They cursed under their breath before trying to put some pressure on the cut, although it was a bit too large to stop its bleeding completely.
Damn it.
They didn't want to go all the way to MedBay.
Although, with that size of a cut, which was oozing blood by the second, it was probably a bad idea not to.
With a sigh, Lime started walking anyway, the unwelcome sound of the aluminum plated floor creaking with every step they took, since they had decided to skip the vents due to their injury. It wasn't long before they reached the familiar doors, since they really weren't all that far.
The doors slid open and the doctor spun around in their swivel chair, seeming a bit surprised that Lime had just come in willingly.
“It's a pleasure to see you, Lime. Why'd you stop by?”
“Sharp edge cut me while I was fixin’ up the reactor,” They grumbled, showing the bleeding would down the side of their hand.
“Well I'm glad you came to me, that doesn't look too good,” Blue pushed themselves out of their chair, stepping up to get a closer look at the lesion. “I’ll try my best to bandage it up for you, although since it did reach the dermis there's a possibility that it won't close, or at least not without a scar, and it could possibly need stitches.”
Blue gestured them over to one of the cots, having them sit on the edge while they slicked on a pair of latex gloves and grabbed a roll each of gauze, bandages, and medical tape from a cabinet and setting them on the small side table before also fetching a bottle of rubbing alcohol and cotton swab.
Lime hissed in pain as the doctor cleaned up their wound, stinging with every touch.
“I know it hurts, I'm sorry, I'll make it as quick as I can.” Blue continued to dab at the cut, making sure it was completely disinfected before they put a piece of gauze over the cut, absorbing some of the blood and wrapping it up, topped off with a small piece of tape to hold it in place.
“There, you're done.” Blue peeled the gloves off of their hands before dusting them off on the side of their lab coat.
“Thanks, big dawg.”
“You're welcome. Oh, and stupid question, but, before you go, would you like a lollipop?” Blue pulled a bowl of individually wrapped candy off of their counter and pushed it toward Lime.
“No– these are one of your tricks to steal my organs or sell my DNA to the government—they’re probably drugged!”
“I assure you that's not the case. Here, I'll show you.” Blue took a cherry lollipop between their fingers and popped it in their mouth right after taking off the wrapping. “See? No poison.”
Lime gave them a skeptical look but grabbed a piece of candy themselves, a cotton candy flavored one, before darting back into the vents with it.
Blue watched them quickly exit, somewhat disappointed that they had left so fast.
Although, they did come in by themselves.
Progress was progress.
—
“Hey Purple, have you seen Lime around by any chance?” Blue asked, leaning against the table in the security room. It took Purple a second to realize that someone was talking to them, as they were likely extremely tired from staying up late watching the cams.
“Oh– uh– yes, I saw them a little– a little while ago in the cafeteria…” They mumbled, practically about to fall asleep on the desk.
“Okay, thank you very much.” Blue waved before stepping back out into the hallway.
Blue stepped into the cafeteria, seeing a few people gathered around and chatting. White was bragging to Green about how they got a vacation on the ship for free, meanwhile trying to make it sound like they weren't bragging. As per usual, Yellow and Brown were in the kitchen, cooking up something that would soon be the crew’s dinner. Cyan was sitting with a few other people, rambling on about crystals and healing and astral signs and all of the sorts, all of which they were sitting with looked extremely out of it.
No Lime though.
Well, the other place they'd be would be the reactor. They probably should have checked that while they were still down in Security, but oh well. It's not like the walk was that far.
They headed down the hall, past MedBay and one of the engine rooms, reaching the small area that lead into security and the reactor. Stepping into the blue tinted room, Blue realized it was completely empty. The machine was running completely fine and Lime wasn't in either of the vents.
Weird.
They continued wandering around the ship, just making a loop back to the cafeteria. It was rather empty because it was almost everyone's dinner break. Everyone but Red, who as the captain, had to make sure that the ship didn't y'know, crash and kill everyone, and Purple, who was technically on break, although chose to not take it. Cyan had left their dream journal and kit of gemstones, salt and everything else down in storage, which had been placed adjacent to the wall, next to a ring of salt surrounding a broken ore.