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Two Body Problem

Ch 6

[Masterlist]

Hey folks, sorry for how long this took to get out--even though it's summertime, life stays busy :')

Let me know what you think of this chapter, and I'll try my best to get the next chapter out in a more timely fashion. This one is longer than what I usually post, so I hope it makes up for the timing <3

CW: mention of morning wood and surprise close proximity/almost cuddling

Let me know if there's anything else I should add to the above warning <3

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Cinnamon sugar… you think, eyes still closed while you take in another breath, starting to register the soft fluffy texture pressed against your face and the slight sting of painful discomfort in your neck. Definitely cinnamon sugar. You confirm mentally, the warm and sweet scent seemingly surrounding you. Slowly working your way back to consciousness, you register a warm weight wrapping around you and you try to remember if Hana’s weighted blanket was on the futon before you fell asleep. Thinking back to the previous evening, you remember sharing the small space with Mark while the lot of you celebrated you and Mark passing your quals; the hearty laughter that tore from him at the prompts from Hana’s card game, the grounding weight and warmth from his arm evident in how you felt the pillowy backrest of the futon yield to his presence and making butterflies erupt through your stomach again. As more light pours into the room from the rising sun, familiar notes of soil, citrus, and honey stir you back into the waking world and the sight you’re presented with makes your heart jump violently in your chest.

As the rest of your senses finally refocus and you discover that the warmth and weight you’re feeling on your body is from another person’s form being draped over yours, you find Mark’s mop of sandy blonde hair tucked under your chin. I guess that wasn’t Hana’s weighted blanket… you internally deduce as you muster the will to not gasp, a ripple of surprise propagating through you. You shift slightly, carefully inching the hand Mark’s got pinned between your back and the cushion beneath you into what you hope is a more comfortable spot at the small of your back. This, however, causes the back of your shirt to ride up slightly and you can feel the soft contact Mark’s hand makes with your now exposed skin, the temperature difference sending a pleasant sensory shiver down your spine.

His other hand is draped off the side of the futon you’re on, the fingers of which you can feel are loosely intertwined with your own. The steady rise and fall of this chest and the puffs of air that dance across your chest suggest that he’s still asleep despite the bright morning light flooding the living room. Moving your other hand, you find your arm draped loosely over Mark’s shoulders and back, your fingers lightly flirting with the baby hairs at the nape of his neck. Gently wrapping a stray lock of hair around your finger, you can feel a malcontent interwoven with an unfortunately wanton breed of ennui fill your ribcage. You want to be livid, filled with enough ire to make the most ornery of javelinas seem tame, but all you can find bubbling beneath your sternum is an almost suffocating longing. Smoothing over a stubborn golden cowlick at the top of his head, you irresponsibly let your mind wander. You imagine what his face must look like when he sleeps, the thin beginnings of what will deepen into proper worry lines as he gets older smoothed into a content blank expression. To your horror, you discover an impulse to pull him closer, despite the fact that he’s already on top of you, and commit as many freckles as you can find on his cheeks to memory. You move your hand down and gently brush the surprisingly soft skin at the apex of his cheek and find yourself wondering what his skin would feel like under your lips, what his own would feel like--

What the fuck is wrong with me… you ask yourself, cringing at your yearning. You hate this comfort you're feeling, how content and full of warmth you are while the two of you are wrapped around each other. You want to be suffocating under his weight, but you only feel the need to further curl around him and sink into the plush of the futon under you. I can't believe I let this happen… you lament internally, wishing desperately to be released from your newly discovered affections and the complications they bring. There’s no way he’d ever be into you; you two might be tentatively amicable now but your hostility towards him was reciprocated when you first met, and that much you were one hundred percent certain of. Who were you to think the two of you could be anything other than friends after the precedent the two of you set? That all that loathing could morph into genuine affection? You were lucky to have the tentative peace that formed between the two of you this past semester and should be grateful it hasn’t come crashing down around you yet.

Something deep within you objects to this, though; you want to believe there’s more to discover within the evenings the two of you spent together grading, each moment you caught him looking at you and every touch that seemingly made him trip over his own words--something that was certainly surprising the first time you encountered it, considering how smoothly he communicates normally. You remember the day he helped you run the observatory’s booth in the early fall sun and wind that rolled through the University of Chicago’s rec field; how he looked so bewildered when he looked up to you from his position surrounded by the partially assembled skeleton of the space-time fabric demo trampoline. Moments like these, when he regards you with seemingly unabashed sincerity and undivided focus, give you a dangerous amount of hope. They make you think that maybe telling him how you feel wouldn’t end in your emotional ruination--that maybe he would want to be with you too. That he’s somehow different; that he wouldn’t hurt you, or abandon you like others have before. It’s moments like these that you also wish you were better at reading people and didn’t misunderstand intentions so easily.

Letting out a near-silent huff, you move to brush some hair out from what you assume is in front of his eyes, careful not to move too much and wake him. “I thought I told you to get a haircut…” you whisper, your voice scarcely louder than a breath, trying not to wake the sleeping man on top of you. However, combined with the soft movement you made, it was enough to seemingly stir Mark back to wakefulness. Seeing him begin to lift his head to face you as much as he could comfortably, you’re frozen again, this time in fear--not being quite ready to let go of this moment or to be found staring at Mark while he slept. He looks up at you through his eyelashes before lifting his head fully, dawning a bewildered blank stare that you squirm uncomfortably under.

“... You didn’t say that.”

The velveteen rasp of Mark’s morning voice nearly knocks you back into unconsciousness. Logically, you know that this is because his vocal cords are relaxed after not being used for several hours, but it’s hard to think of that while your brain grasps desperately at the memory of the vibrations his lower voice sends rumbling through your sternum. It takes an embarrassingly large amount of mental grounding to calm down before you can eke out a confused “what?” You wince at how rough your own morning voice sounds, wishing you could’ve gracefully cleared your throat before speaking.

Mark continues to look at you with an indiscernible look on his face as he continues. “You told me that I need a haircut… Not to get one.”

This breaks you out of your reverie and causes you to huff out a scoff, smirking at Mark’s cheek and humor, which is present even immediately after waking up. “You’ve got to be kidding me--” you laugh out and roll your eyes while trying to ignore the way the rumble of his voice and the rasp in his laugh both somehow find resonance with your bones, sending a sensory shudder through your body that’s thankfully obscured by your laugh.

While settling back down, you’re met with a questioning look from Mark, a lone dirty blonde eyebrow raised and the beginnings of a smirk blooming on his face, and you begin trying to divert his attention from your reaction to the position you’re in. “Before you start looking at me like that, we were like this when I woke up, and you’re the one on top of me, so…” Mark continues to look at you, his eyebrow dropping back to its neutral position, and you squirm under his unwavering gaze. The look in his eyes, however, is clearer to you than any time you’ve seen it before; he finally allows a smile to break through while listening to you lampshade and responds with a clipped hum before carefully removing himself from on top of you. Lamenting internally from the loss of Mark’s warmth, you start to stretch and work the stiffness from your joints as much as you can.

The two of you take turns using the half bathroom to brush your teeth and handle the homeostatic needs that come with waking up from a deep sleep--you aren’t sure what Mark used, but you visit Hana and Vanessa regularly enough to keep a toothbrush in the guest bathroom. Walking out of the bathroom, you feel your phone buzz in your pocket and take it out to see a plethora of notifications populating your lock screen. One alerting you to its nearly drained battery, another from the Weather Underground about a snow storm that blew through last night, a couple of others from Stellarium showing the rise and set times that just passed for the Starlab and Tiangong space stations, and at least six emails since you went to sleep from the university and your department asking you to RSVP for a cornucopia of end-of-semester potlucks. The notification that seized your attention most strongly, though, was a text from Hana. You can feel your heart sink as you read and reread the message.

<| Heyy! Had to go to work

<| Dropped Colin back home too, but you and Mark looked super tired so we let you sleep

“You too, huh?” you hear Mark inquire before looking up at him. He’s sitting in a half criss-cross with one leg planted on the ground and the other tucked under his thigh. He’s holding his phone up to show that he got a similar message from Colin.

<| Help yourself to anything in the kitchen~! ;)

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” you mutter under your breath, still staring at the screen.

“Seems so,” you respond, cracking the stiff bones in your neck before sitting down across from him. You’re already beginning to dread having to make the trek back home, still tired, and starting to feel your hunger as the rest of your body gets the memo that it’s time to wake up. You look over your shoulder and through the window on the other side of the room, and the view makes you even more hesitant to leave; the bulk of the snowfall has slowed down to stray flurries, but ice and fresh powder blanket every surface you can see through the window at the other end of the room, the icy landscape making you involuntarily shudder.

“Honestly it’s kind of tempting,” Mark responds just barely under his breath. He’s looking over his shoulder and out the same window with a thousand-mile stare, his arm now draped over the backrest (you’d say it looks like an invitation to inch closer under his arm and to his side if you didn’t know better). He looks like the poster boy of confident nonchalance, the bright light pouring in through the window beautifully illuminates his profile and makes his eyes look like peridots. “How much do you think we’ve gotten so far? Eight, ten inches?” Mark looks back to your relaxed form--almost a mirror of his own--a few locks of his hair falling into his face. The weight of his gaze feels almost as tangible as that of your phone now resting on your thigh.

“I think I’ll have to agree with you there--looks like it’s not quite done though, so we’ll probably get a foot by the end of the day…” you whisper the last few words in your response, just barely loud enough for Mark to hear you.

“I agree; which is why staying here, at least until the sidewalks have been shoveled out, seems like an unfortunately practical decision,” Mark adds. You begrudgingly hum in agreement before letting out a defeated sigh as you watch Mark abruptly stand up from his position on the futon. “So… what sounds good for breakfast? You have a usual favorite you go for?” he asks, walking toward Hana’s kitchen.

“I--” you start to respond but pause to contemplate your answer, getting up and following him behind a false wall separating the kitchen from the living area. You actually can’t remember the last time you’ve made yourself breakfast--usually opting to pick up a pack of pop-tarts from the nearest vending machine before heading into class in the morning. “I, uh… don’t really have a ‘usual’. Not anything that would be considered a proper breakfast, at least,” you admit compunctively.

Mark turns and walks backward toward Hana’s pantry to look at you with a disbelieving smirk. “Like what?”

You grouse a bit before grumbling out a response. “...Pop-Tarts--usually strawberry.”

Mark looks at you concernedly and thoughtfully before conceding, “I would not consider that real breakfast, but I am guilty of the same thing,” he says as he opens the pantry door and starts looking through its contents, squatting to peruse the lower shelves for something that looks good. “The chocolate frosted ones are the best, though, no clue why you’d go for strawberry.”

“Bite me, Watney.” you sneer playfully at him, eliciting an amused-sounding huff and a smirk from the man in question.

“Don’t tempt me.” he deadpans, still sporting a smirk as he straightens back up to his full height and turns to start walking towards the other cabinets lining the kitchen. You’re both astonished and regretful at how much it takes to stop yourself from biting your lip at this quip, having to also turn your thoughts away from trying to provoke him further, what it would take to tempt him.

He continues to open cabinet doors, humming to himself softly while searching around the shelves. He settles on a box of Krusteaz pancake mix before casually walking past you to the fridge on the other side of the kitchen. Following him with your gaze, you question his ministrations, asking “What are you making?” while trying to avoid lingering your gaze on Mark’s ass as he’s bent over to search the refrigerator’s shelves.

“Blueberry pancakes,” He confirms, looking back at you over his shoulder before smirking, saying, “Unfortunately, I didn’t see any Pop-Tarts back there,” gesturing towards the pantry door with a curt nod.

“Unfortunate,” you respond flatly, returning his smirk with a raised eyebrow and an unimpressed grimace. “You need any help?” you ask, nodding towards the pack of blueberries Mark found in the fridge.

“I think I’m good. But, if you want, you can wash these blueberries while I get started on the batter,” he answers, handing you the cold box of fruit while he rummages through the cabinets, presumably searching for a bowl and measuring cups.

Mark seems surprisingly confident in the kitchen, settling into a smooth rhythm once he becomes familiar with where everything is kept. Despite his apparent flow state, though, he notices every time you try to sneak a blueberry or two while he’s frying each pancake--jokingly chastising you about keeping your hands out of the food until it’s done. From the smell of it, he’s decently good at cooking as well--the medley of smells from the scrambled eggs mixed with the blueberry and vanilla extract was making your mouth water. You take the time to observe him further while he works, sitting on a stool out of the way while he fusses over a particularly difficult flapjack.

The domestic scene of him cooking for the two of you is nearly unbearable to watch. He’s impossibly handsome. You feel like you’re sinking into quicksand and it’s scaring you how easily you’re finding it to make space for him in your heart. The pesky organ clenches in delight every time you hear him hum to himself, his viridian eyes sparkle slightly with a subtle contentedness that makes you want to believe that maybe he’s feeling similarly--any evidence to the contrary be damned. Your distracted mind wanders and you find yourself regarding his hands as he uses them to (honestly, quite impressively) flip another pancake without the spatula he’s picked up from Hana’s cutlery drawer. He clasps his hands together behind his back and looks over what appears to be the last pancake of the batch, reminding you of how it felt to have one of them clasped in yours; even through the loose, likely in-sleep-initiated grip the two of you had on each other’s hands, you remember being able to feel how soft the skin of his palm is despite each ridge and inconsistency in his skin’s topography made by the veins, muscle, and bone beneath the surface. You wonder what it would feel like to have more contact in that moment and you frown at your sudden desire to feel his warmth on you again. To feel the soft yet firm texture his hands trace over your back, down your sides. You wonder what the rest of him might feel like--

“You know, I learned this recipe from a camp counselor when I was, like, twelve.” Mark breaks the thick silence between you too, his hands still clasped behind his back and gaze trained on the stovetop in front of him.

You blink blankly at him for a moment, tuning back into the present moment, and frown slightly before responding, “Really?”

Mark nods and turns around to face you before continuing, “Yeah, I was feeling really down about being away from home and couldn’t sleep.” he’s fully facing you now, but his eyes are still cast downward to the floor.

“By the time the sun started to rise, I decided to take a walk around the complex of cabins and was caught by one of the councilors--which was probably the most terrified I’d have ever been at the time, I thought he was gonna kill me,” He admits with what sounds like a nervous laugh. “He just asked me what was going on, though, and I told him that I wanted to go home. He somehow deduced that I was homesick and helped me feel less bad about it--which, actually now that I think about it, he mostly was just finding ways to distract me from wallowing in sorrow over not being able to see my goldfish for another three weeks. It was almost breakfast time, so he showed me how he makes pancakes.”

He finishes the story and finally looks back up at you. As usual, he’s hard to read--a slight smirk pulling at his cheeks, but his eyes conveying something more complicated under the surface. His eyes meet yours and his smirk almost instantly widens to a proper smile. The look he’s giving you doesn’t feel ambiguous anymore; his eyes look brighter, the fog of sleep and fatigue and whatever barrier to what they hold nearly fully cleared. What’s left in its wake is what appears to be genuine admiration and trust that almost hurts to look at. Getting your heart inevitably broken by this man would be impossibly painful.

“Ready to eat?”

☆☆☆

Mark’s exceedingly grateful that he wore jeans and his one pair of briefs yesterday. Waking up in an unfamiliar room was jarring enough, but every sensation he experienced initially waking up was shocking enough to nearly incapacitate him--and honestly, he wishes it did. Maybe then he wouldn’t have to try so desperately to hide the frankly surprising consequence of his inability to not be pathetically emotionally non-platonic and, just… weird about waking up with you in his arms. Just thinking about it is venturing into dangerous territory, making him white-knuckle the plate he’s holding in a desperate effort not to lose himself and end up dropping your pancake and eggs.

The first thing he remembers is pins and needles in his left arm. Next, the smell of sleep, heady and warm and accented by the faint memory of M. x piperita and L. stoechas--a cocktail of scents that remind him of the soap you use. Hearing you softly hum--presumably in your sleep--is what tips him over the edge into wakefulness and alerts him to your presence under him, a mere half-second before he can act on his urge to bury his face into the soft cotton separating his cheek and your sternum. The lovely contrast between the cold air in the room and your combined warmth is exhilarating, the starkly different stimuli making him shiver slightly.

The next thing he registers is a soft twitch in what must be your left hand, the fingers of which are currently entwined with that of his right. He wants to press your palm closer to his, but he can’t do that without waking you and potentially invoking your ridicule and anger at your current position. He wants desperately to look up at you, though, and see the peace he finds etched in your features each time he’s found you asleep after a night of grading or after working together in silence on research or other projects. He’s not sure why, but seeing you resting--especially when you work as hard as you do--brings him a deep relief. He used--or, perhaps pretend is a better word--to be concerned by it, thinking incorrectly that you might have narcolepsy or something similar, but your soft snores quickly grew on him. With how cagey you can be about how you’re feeling, it’s become one of the ways he can know that you’re not pushing yourself too far beyond what’s healthy.

Risking a peek around, Mark cracks open an eye and sees Hana’s TV, now dark and idle on its stand. He takes in a deep breath and feels you shift under him, his hand slipping to the small of your back. Your shirt’s ridden up slightly and he can feel the soft skin there, just slightly at his fingertips, as he feels your other arm shift on top of his back and start to play gently with his hair. This almost pushes him into the realm of overwhelm, making him pour every ounce of his self-control into keeping his breathing steady. He’s terrified to move; this is partly because he notices his pants starting to feel tighter than they did when he fell asleep the night prior and he still needs to find a way to move off you without revealing to you what would be a quite visible (at least at your current proximity) silhouette of his manhood. He laments internally at the abysmal luck must have to get morning wood this morning, of all mornings. Most of his fear, however, is rooted in not wanting to collapse this mutable pocket of time into a specific trajectory. He’s positively terrified of what you’d think waking up next to--er, under*--him, of what the delicate limbo the two of you are caught within would become. An unexpectedly dangerous limbo to be in as his body threatens to betray him. He wants to want to shrink away from you, hell, you probably would want that too he finds himself thinking, relishing regrettably in the soft ‘lub-dub’s of your heartbeat audible to him through your sternum. This has to be wrong, he thinks, fighting the urge to throw himself out the nearest window at the mere thought of having so much contact with you without your clear and expressed permission.

And yet, just as intensely and more clearly than he’s ever noticed before, he wants to wrap his arms completely around you and still hold your hand all at the same time--causing him to consider the pros and cons of growing a third arm. Your legs shift on either side of him and he wonders how long it would take for him to commit to memory every scar, dimple, spot, and stretch mark that might adorn them. How they look, how they feel. He wants to compare notes--learn how you see yourself and show you in turn how he sees you. He’s delving into dangerous mental territory, and he knows it. It’s not productive to think of you this way, but he can’t help the way his breath hitches each time your fingertips brush against his scalp. He’s itching to feel more of your touch, however fleeting it might be.

“I thought I told you to get a haircut…” he hears you breathe out sleepily, stunning him momentarily with the intimacy of the--now that you’re awake--newly shared moment. He decides to break the silence with a cheeky response but is quickly humbled when he forgets himself and decides to look up at you. The sunlight’s cutting across your face, and the glow it gives you makes you look like an angel. There’s a beautiful melancholy wrapped around your features that gives him pause but, all things considered, he’s in no position to try to sit up and talk to you about it. He searches your face for disgust or fear and thankfully finds none that he can identify; You haven’t kicked him off you yet, so he takes that as a good sign. You’re still just looking at him, but your hand doesn’t leave his hair and the way your fingers continue to flirt with the wispy locks at the nape of his neck makes him want to weep in ecstasy.

Mark knows this can’t be normal. At this point, his feelings have completely left the zip code just friendly and professional. He doesn’t think this way about any other GTA he’s worked with, or any of his DnD buddies from high school. He’s curious about where this could go, but he wouldn’t ever utter any of his daydreams within earshot of anyone other than Colin and maybe his therapist. Maybe. He’s been more adventurous than this in the past, so he has no idea what’s stopping him from taking the risk and just asking you out; let the love sickness run its course within a couple of months and watch the relationship fizzle out and die--a tale as old as time for Mark and the terrible luck he’s had so far with dating. Maybe he feels like he’s got more to lose now. The strange companionship cultivated between the two of you is too precious. Your affection and trust in him feel like they’re made of glass, and for the first time, he feels like there’s more at stake than his ego.

After putting the plates down on Hana’s table, Mark hears your footsteps behind him and turns around to see you walking out of the kitchen holding a glass of orange juice in one hand and a mug of what smells like English breakfast tea in the other. You hold up the steaming mug and dawn a small smirk before breaking the small moment of silence, saying. “I think I remember you telling me that you’re more of a tea person than a coffee person.”

“That is correct, thanks,” Mark laughs slightly and takes the mug from your hand before continuing. “Where’s your cup of joe though?”

You shrug before answering, “It’s the weekend--I can afford to not artificially vanquish my fatigue today.” Mark raises a questioning eyebrow and you offer the rest of your justification. “And Vanessa’s collection doesn’t include a roast dark enough for my tastes.”

“There it is,” Mark says into his mug, taking a sip of the surprisingly beautifully brewed tea and giving you an incredulous look over the rim of the cup.

“Sue me,” you grumble playfully, rolling your eyes before walking over to the nearest plate to where you’re standing. Mark sits not too far behind you, choosing to set his plate down in the spot adjacent to yours.

Mark takes a bite from his stack of pancakes and feels his soul leave his body--the heavenly flavors and textures rocketing him back into his memories of sleepaway camp. “Wow, I really outdid myself with this,” Mark says around mouthfuls of pancake and eggs. Sometimes Mark can forget how messy of an eater he can be; you grimace at a syrupy piece of pancake that he nearly loses while trying to get a mouthful of eggs with it too.

“Mark, the food isn’t going to run away from you, it’s okay to enjoy them separately,” you chastise, licking a dollop of syrup off your thumb and making Mark wonder if your lips have always looked that soft.

“Wha- I- but they taste so much better together!” he defends himself after taking a sip of his tea, his approach to consuming his beverage somehow more gracefully than how he eats. “Have you ever tried them at the same time? The sweet and the savory? together??--” You giggle at the chef's Kiss Mark blows in your direction, sending a bolt of oxytocin through Mark's heart as he laughs with you. “Perfection. I promise it’s perfection.”

“I can’t say I have, but I’ll take your word for it,” you say through soft chortles. You finally pick up a piece of your blueberry pancake stack and bite into it, letting out a groan and looking up at the ceiling while you taste the fruits of Mark’s labor. He tells himself that the falter in his heart’s beat is from the pride he feels at doing a good job, and not anything else. “Wow. Yeah, okay.”

“‘Okay’? They’re okay? Just okay?” Mark inquires, leaning his head onto his free hand while regarding you, a look of feigned heartbreak stitching his eyebrows together.

“No, no--they,” you roll your eyes, nodding seemingly mostly to yourself. “They’re actually quite good. I’m impressed.”

“Oh my G-d, they’re impressed!--”

“Don’t get used to it--”

“Nah, we gotta stop the presses, this is the most important thing happening right now--” Mark clutches an imaginary chain of pearls, his eyes glittering in mock shock and awe.

“You’ve got to be kidding me--” you wheeze out between laughs, trying your best not to accidentally aspirate a pancake chunk you haven’t swallowed yet.

Mark looks at you, his face still twisted in a poorly hidden laugh while he drinks in how your glee lights up your face. “ you like my pancakes?” he asks for confirmation with a smooth grin pulling at his lips while he looks at you. Your prideful and thoroughly amused pout makes his heart swell. He never would’ve guessed that he would need this much to see you smiling at him. Mark wonders if it’s always been like this, and it just feels different because maybe he’s starting to consider the possibility that he may hypothetically be into you.

“Yes, unfortunately. You win this one, Watney,” you respond, knitting your brows together and exaggerating any hint of annoyance that might be present in you, which is likely quite negligible, considering the seemingly fond smile on your face that you try to hide behind another bite of pancake.

The two of you finish your breakfast not too long after, and you get up to take your and Mark’s dishes back to the kitchen sink. While waiting for you to return, Mark looks out at the hint of a view of the Chicago skyline visible through the window on the opposite side of the table from him. The sparkling, frosty landscape combined with the proper meal he just had and your company casts a warm, rosy bloom over his thoughts. After taking a moment to take in what he can barely see is the faint whisps of vapor rising from the surface of the certainly frigid Lake Michigan in the far distance, Mark breaks the brief moment of silence to ask, “How much longer do you have in the city before you head out to Pasadena?” calling out the question in your general direction, now on your way out from the kitchen.

“Oh, uh… about 3 more weeks,” you respond, walking out of the kitchen with a glass of water and taking your seat next to him again after he pulls your seat out for you from under the table. “After that, I’m headed west to spend some time with family in Alberquerque before flying out to LA. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” Mark responds reassuringly. “Colin and I usually head out to Glencoe to check out the light show at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, and, I, well, uhm--” Mark shifts slightly in his seat, his limbs stilling and becoming uncharacteristically rigid as he feels his heartbeat pick up, “if you perhaps are interested in going too, you can. Colin’s sister is visiting, and we’re going to need to bring another car anyway, so…” Mark finally breaks his gaze away from the window and meets yours, startlingly perceptive and consuming. The beat of silence goes on for a couple of milliseconds longer than Mark expects and he starts to panic; that was a normal question, right? Perfectly normal, it has to be. Why are you so quiet? Did he freak you out? He recalls the first time he asked Colin to go to the botanic garden with him and he doesn't remember his chest aching so much back then. Maybe he should talk to a doctor about that--

“Sure, that sounds fun.” you finally respond and pull Mark back to the present.

“Sorry, I-- wait… really?”

“Yeah, I’ve never been there before, but Vanessa told me forever ago that it’s beautiful out there--especially during the holidays--so it seems pretty enjoyable,” you respond while looking into your lap and pulling your legs into a precariously balanced criss-cross.

“You’ve been here for almost two years and you haven’t gone to The Chicago Botanic Garden?” Mark asks incredulously, tilting his head down and looking up at you through his eyelashes with a concerned grimace twisting his countenance.

You sigh and shrink away from his gaze slightly before laughing out an explanation, “Yeeeaaah, I know. Just haven’t had the time. There’s always too much to do.” you pause for a minute, tilting your head in contemplation, before continuing, “there’s a lot from this city that I haven’t seen, honestly.” You look up and through the window, staring at the same landscape that Mark grew up seeing his entire life. “I’ve still got some time left to see them though. At least it feels that way,” you conclude, looking back at him with a bitter-sweet smile that brings back that pesky urge to lean into you--hold your hand, or bring you into his side and hold you there and trace soothing patterns into your shoulders; to try his best to comfort whatever part of you is feeling that melancholy.

You two look at each other for a moment, eyes locked and suspended within what feels like the most potent silence since the moment before the Big Bang before Mark impulsively proposes something that the more reserved part of him twists up in fear at.

“We could start today. If you want.” The question hangs heavy in the air between him and you, and the nerves Mark is steeling himself against make him acutely aware of his pulse ringing in his head.

You frown slightly at him and ask, “What do you mean?”

“What do you have planned for today?” Mark asks, holding your gaze and softly pinching his bottom lip between his teeth, hoping to find a glimpse into your inner world.

“I-- well, nothing really? It’s the weekend, so…” you punctuate your response with a small shrug. “What’re you suggesting?”

“Have you been to Garfield Park?”

“I-- no? But, Mark, look outside--”

“I know--”

“It is actively snowing???” you interrupt him through a disbelieving laugh

“There’s a conservatory there, it’s not as busy during the Winter,” he begins to explain his reasoning, smiling at the quirky look of suspicion adorning your face. “It’s like a big greenhouse--humid, but warm which is what matters given the state the outside world is in right now. And it’s my favorite spot out here. Other than my fridge.” Mark adds the ending sentence in a low grumble and you break into peals of laughter before weakly nodding, trying to catch your breath.

“Yeah?” Mark dips his head to capture your gaze again and he swears he sees a faint sparkle light them up.

You nod more fortuitously, “Yeah, okay. How far is it from here?”

Mark purses his lips slightly, answering tentatively, “Maybe 20 minutes if we take the L? There’s a station not too far from here if you’re willing to brave the walk.” He nervously draws his bottom lip between his teeth again and he thinks he sees your gaze momentarily flash down to his lips. I’m probably just imagining things--

“You’re lucky I brought my boots,” you say into a swig of water, looking at him mischievously from over the glass.

Mark feels a jolt of panic rip through him as he remembers that this isn’t your place, and you likely have things you need to take care of before entering into the rest of the day. “Shit, sorry, do you have anything at your place you need to head back for? Any meds you need to take?”

“Thankfully, no,” Mark lets out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding as you respond, looking over to where your bag was still resting against the side of the futon. “I keep a dose of my morning and evening meds in my backpack just in case I’m over here late. Do you have anything we should head over to yours for?”

“Nah, I’m okay. Fortunately, I can mostly survive without extensive medical intervention,” Mark retorts, feeling calm enough to tease you again.

You roll your eyes and fail at hiding your laughter at his jest before quipping back at him, “I should’ve coughed up a loogie in your tea, you are so rude--” you’re interrupted by your mutual laughter, Mark snickering out a grating cackle while you laugh so hard you start to wheeze.

☆☆☆

Despite having spent nearly two years of your life in Chicago, you're still not used to the biting cold the winter wind brings into the city. You shrink into your parka as you slowly shuffle your way across the ice on the sidewalk. You step on a rounded piece of ice, smoothed over by foot traffic and the municipal snow-clearing vehicles, and nearly take a spill--sliding into a lunge with your arms spread out in a t pose to help you retain a semblance of balance. The sound of Mark’s snickering just slightly behind you makes you whip your head around in surprise, still on edge from nearly wiping out on a lump of ice.

“Next time I see you eat shit on your skateboard, I’ll laugh at you just like that” you spit out, giving him a pouty scowl from over your shoulder--invoking Mark’s recent addition to his methods of locomoting through campus that he got halfway through the semester--before carefully righting yourself and continuing your slow inching forward to the subway station ahead of the two of you.

“Oh, come on; you gotta admit it’s a little funny,” Mark says still walking slightly behind and to the side of you almost like he’s spotting you. You try to shake the idea of him possibly trying to protect you from falling flat on your ass, feeling heat rise to your cheeks from both embarrassment and something more that you refuse to acknowledge, “Two years and you still aren’t used to the ice.”

“Some of us aren’t winter weather aficionados-- woAEUH!--” You feel your feet disappear from under you again and start falling backward. You squeeze your eyes shut, heart hammering against your ribcage as you anticipate the inevitable crack of your skull against the ice and compacted snow. Your preemptive wincing, however, is met with a much warmer, softer surface and the feeling of even warmer hands holding steadfastly onto your elbows. You crack open one of your eyes to see that you’re still upright somehow, but now your weight is being supported by something warm and solid behind you. You look up and see Mark looking down at you, a slightly panicked energy electrifying the green in his eyes. The small puffs of water vapor leaving his nose and mouth catch the sunlight starting to peak through the clouds and make him look like an angel.

“You okay?” he asks after a spell of silence between the two of you, helping you put your weight back on your feet, his hands still on you--one moving down your arm to wrap around your own and the other offering firm and sure support at the small of your back.

“Yeah, I’m good,” you make sure your footing is as secure as possible before looking back up at him. You’re given pause by how prominent the green in his eyes seems, though, wondering why it seems so prominent now and not when you were leaving Hana’s apartment. You get your answer as your gaze traces down towards his cheeks and see that they, like his nose and ears, are exceptionally rosy, offering a contrast that brings out the color in his eyes. “Thanks,” you finally complete your sentence, chalking up his suddenly ruddy cheeks to a reaction to the frigid air.

After nearly falling another two times after that, you resolve to just hold onto his arm closest to you, clutching the rough texture of the khaki cotton duck layer of his Carhartt overcoat as securely as you can without hurting him. You see him look at you in your periphery, but your pride prevents you from meeting his gaze and the most you can manage is a curt, “not a word.” you feel him huff out a silent chuckle before he shifts the arm you’re holding onto slightly, allowing you to loop your arm around his and get a more secure hold onto his infuriatingly more stable frame.

Reaching the subway station, you two settle into a spot in the terminal close to one of the support pillars on the platform. You feel Mark situate himself behind you, the warmth radiating off him seeping through your jacket and into your bones. For a devastating moment, you feel an intense urge to lean back into him and sink into the plush of your parka and the front of his flannel, now exposed from under his coat after escaping the wind’s harsh bite. You catch yourself before your muscles can act for you, but the thrashing your heart does inside your chest is making it hard to act normal.

Looking off across the tracks for a distraction from Mark’s presence behind you, you see a man with what looks like an earpiece, looking down at his phone and about to walk into a support pole. You gently nudge Mark with your elbow, making him look up from his phone and curiously follow your gaze at the oblivious suited man. Predictably, he does indeed beam himself on a support pillar, making you and Mark twitch with poorly contained laughter while you watch the older man walk off, grumbling about something just beyond the range you could hear over the chatter of the other commuters at the station.

A few moments later, Mark nudges your back and you begin to look up at him before he leans down by your ear and tells you to look to your left, just past the pillar the two of you are next to. You swallow down the soft tremor his whisper nearly elicits from you and look over to your left to see someone with their back to the tracks talking to a slightly shorter figure in front of them just out of your line of sight. Slung over their back is a small backpack with a little window--probably one of those cat backpacks you remember getting popular almost a decade ago.

“Wait for it…” Mark says under his breath, straightening back up and looking in the same direction. Not more than 30 seconds later, you see a tiny cat poke its head above the bottom edge of the backpack’s window--one of the cutest domestic shorthairs you’ve seen in a while, with what looks like mismatching ears, looking back at the two of you with a level of curiosity in its large eyes that’s only achievable by a young kitten.

“Oh!” you respond in a hushed voice, covering your mouth in shock and awe at the adorable creature looking back at you. You slightly raise your other hand and give the little beast a small wave that it silently meows at, filling you with the most intense glee you’ve felt maybe all week. Feeling your heart swell, you look up at Mark and the two of you exchange a look of mutual understanding and shared happiness at seeing the little marvel stare at you from beyond its little plexiglass bubble.

After boarding the train, it takes close to 25 minutes to reach the Conservatory and Central Park station, which isn’t surprising--you don’t remember a single time the L ran completely on time in the 730 days you’ve been in Chicago, the poor CTA being regularly plagued by delays. As soon as you’re back on the icy surface of the unprotected sidewalks, your arm is immediately back around Mark’s, not wanting to risk getting a concussion from your clumsiness.

Closer to the entrance of a large glass building that you assume is the conservatory, the terrain becomes more snowy, the fresh powder allowing you to be more sure-footed and let go of Mark. You do notice an unfortunate melancholy at letting go of him, but you force your brain to focus on the glittering wintery landscape ahead of you. That is until you feel the harsh smack of what you can only assume is a snowball hit your shoulder and the side of your neck given the chill it delivers as little ice crystals glide their way down your collar. Your shoulders scrunching up in defense, you snap your head in the direction the offensive powdery sphere came from and find Mark snickering and trying to look as casual and innocent as he possibly can--which, unfortunately for him, isn’t very much at all.

Deciding that you’d very much like to play this game he’s started, you duck behind a snow-covered bush while he’s not looking at you, and start building a small armory of snowballs. You hear him stop walking and call out your name questioningly before starting to slowly retrace his steps to see where he might’ve lost you. Waiting until his back is to you and he’s close enough, you dart upwards from your hiding spot and lob a snowball into his shoulder blade before ducking back into your hiding spot, your brief stint of baseball in elementary school finally proving itself to be useful for you.

Hearing Mark yelp in surprise at your attack makes you break out in a fit of giggles, revealing your position to him. “Oh, I see how it is--” you hear him say from on the other side of the bush. You can hear the soft crunches of snow as he tries his best to run around the barrier separating the two of you and pick up some snow to make another snowball at the same time. You scramble to move around the bush and evade him, but you don’t escape getting nailed in the center of your back. You pick up two fists full of snow and whip around to find that he’s hot on your trail. Gasping, you fall backward, not paying attention to the integrity of your footfalls, and Mark crashes into you, following you into the snow bank after reaching out toward you and losing his footing. Momentarily relieved that the two of you didn’t accidentally headbutt each other on the way down, the two of you stare at each other for a beat before bursting into laughter

“Ah--fuck--I’m so sorry, are you okay?” Mark asks, concern plainly visible through his laughter.

“I--yeah, sorry,” you flounder, surprised by Mark's proximity and still trying to recover from your laughter. “I’m, uhm, I’m peachy” you finally get out, punctuating your sentence with a short laugh. Mark shuffles back to his feet and helps you stand up with him, the two of you dusting snow off each other’s shoulders, still getting caught in fits of giggles, before continuing your trek to the conservatory’s entrance.

☆☆☆

Mark’s attention on you is unwavering as you walk into the lobby and acquire a reservation for the two of you--which is still possible to get as a walk-in, though the subsequent wait in line is certainly non-trivial. He spends the time standing idly next to you, searching for a tell, something in what you do and how you carry yourself that would give him an idea of your impression of the conservatory so far. You’ve been mostly mum after you two entered the conservatory, the outdoor spaces of which are thoroughly frosted over and dead save for a couple of trees, so unfortunately he can’t rely on just listening and observation. This, however, is a common pattern between the two of you at this point; Mark has to get over his internal hurdles blocking him from just asking you something since you don’t volunteer information to just fill the silence. It’s something that Mark’s grown to appreciate--that he can just be present with you and have that be enough--but he’s still getting used to having to use more direct and active communication to learn more about you. He can tell that this is something that you’re also working on internally, having opened up more over the time he’s known you, but you naturally require more work to learn about.

Just as he finds the right moment (and the courage) to ask you what you think of the place, the two of you enter into the first mini-biome beyond the lobby. Your visible awe makes Mark’s heart leap in his chest, the sparkle of curiosity in your eyes being enough to mostly extinguish his worries about you finding the conservatory to be wanting in any way. He watches you slowly walk into the lush, artificially tropical environment, sunlight streaming in between windows in the melting snow atop the glass panes making the palms’ fronds look like they’re glowing different viridian shades while the two of you walk through the meandering paths in the Palm House.

The humidity in the room and the stunning density of flora in the conservatory bring back a familiar excited prickle to Mark’s skin. He recognizes a particularly vibrant red specimen of T. spathacea when you capture his attention with a pat on the side of his arm. “What kind of palm tree is that? I can't find the label anywhere,” you point upwards to an older-looking palm, nearly the tallest in the room, a thick husk of old leaf bases forming the trunk and massive feather fronds that sagged under their weight.

“That,” Mark responds, injecting a pause for dramatic emphasis, “is Attalea phalerata, also known as a Scheelea Palm; these have been at the conservatory for a little over a century--well, not these specific ones, just in general, they’ve been here since 1926. They produce edible fruit, but I think we’d get in trouble if we tried to eat anything in here.” he whispers the last part conspiratorially, causing you to snort lightly.

“Have you ever had any of the fruit?” you ask, looking up at him slightly and raising a curious eyebrow.

“Unfortunately, no, but I imagine they’d taste kind of oily because of the seeds,” He answers, chuckling at the ‘makes sense’ grimace of understanding that your face twists into.

You take a look around at the different trees and Mark can feel another question brewing in the silence between you. He follows you silently as you start to wander further down the path. You point between another Scheelea and a Bismark palm before asking another question. “Why do their leaves look different? Are they even called leaves?” you ask distractedly, gently taking a few leaves in your hand from the Bismark Palm.

He situates himself next to you before answering your question. “Well, what you’re holding are the leaves, but the larger,” Mark gestures chaotically at the large fan sprouting out of the stout, woody plant, searching for an adequate word to describe what you’re asking about, “... structures are called ‘fronds;’ as a whole, they maximize the amount of sunlight the palm can access with its leaves as well as making a canopy to shade the trunk and ground directly below it--which is important for making sure the roots don’t dry out. The different shapes correspond to different environmental conditions; entire fronds that arent separated like this have more surface area that can do photosynthesis, but it’s also more susceptible to getting scorched, and fan-shaped fronds like this are more prone to getting damaged by strong wind even though they’re less likely to get fried by the sun.” He punctuates the end of his sentence with a light slap on the fan-shaped frond you’re holding.

“I,” you let out a breathy laugh and look back up at the canopy of different palm fronds before continuing, “That’s awesome…” Mark could weep, looking at you gazing up at the foliage encasing the two of you with so much awe and wonder it makes him kind of jealous of the plants you’re looking at.

Wait, he thinks, frowning slightly, why would I be jealous of the--

“This your favorite room?” your voice cuts through his thoughts, pausing his internal spiral into strife and snapping him back into the present moment.

Mark flounders silently for a moment before composing himself and answering, “No. No, it’s fantastic but it’s not my favorite. I’m,” Mark starts to waddle around you and backward deeper into the conservatory, his hands shoved in his pants pockets, “trying to work us towards that direction, but I also want you to get the full experience. Like, the reason why my favorite room is my favorite room won’t have the same…” Mark twisted up his face in concentration, trying to find the right word, “Oomph? Yeah, oomph, that it has for me. Having seen everything else. Yeah.” He nods resolutely and punctuates his sentence with a bright cheeky smile that makes you nod and laugh, the sunlight streaming in through the foliage twinkling in your eyes while you look at him.

Mark regards you for a moment and his previous grin warms into a fond, yearnful thing of a smile that feels rusty but not unfamiliar on his face. You have this uncanny, as Mark is deciding to describe it, effect on him; inexplicably, with a nonchalant look or an otherwise perfectly mundane gesture or touch, you manage to peel back the layers of masks that Mark has spent years building. He’s built a persona that’s helped him garner confidence from those around him--he isn’t just another twitchy, pencil-pushing engineer, he’s Mark Watney. Confident and unflappably plucky, yet brilliant. You invariably blew this completely out of the water though, thoroughly surprising him with how much your presence affects him. You make him wear his heart on his sleeve, your habit of getting to the foundations of things both in your work and in your interactions forces him to confront things about himself that he isn’t used to acknowledging outside the comfortable and protective boundaries of a series of journals that he fully intends to never let see the light of day.

Sensing that the length of his reverie is bordering on the shorter side of ‘far too long to be normal,’ Mark motions behind him and starts stepping deeper into the trail leading through the greenery and pleasantly warm humidity surrounding you, tacitly beckoning you to follow him into the living maze behind him.

“This is the Fern Room,” Mark begins, looking at you from over his shoulder and gesturing lazily to the green, vivacious space surrounding the both of you. “If memory serves me right, this was built back in… 1906? I think?” Mark scrunches up his face in concentration, fully annunciating each syllable in ‘nine-teen-oh-six’, each with a unique distortion to his countenance that he can hear you softly snort at. Smiling back at you, he continues, “The guy who built the place wanted to give people a glimpse into what Illinois was like millions of years ago.” Mark motions to the entrance the two of you came in from while continuing his explanation, “That winter wonderland we just shivered our way through used to be a bustling tropical paradise about 300 million years ago.”

“...You’re joking,” you respond, dawning a blank, incredulous stare. Mark gives you a satisfied shake ‘no’ of his head before you look up at the snow still coming down outside, starting to settle again on the glass above you. You look back down and stare at him for a moment, making him have to stifle a laugh before you continue, “I mean… I know that atmospheric and… literal physical placement of things, continentally speaking, were different, but I’m genuinely having a hard time imagining the spot I nearly wiped out on a chunk of ice was more similar to the Bahamas than the North Pole.”

“It was indeed, and it was probably filled with plants like these;” Mark points up and around to the creeping ferns and un-dismissably tall cycads dominating the space they just walked into. “Ferns, liverworts, mosses, and these ancient cone-bearing plants that need a more humid and hot environment to survive. Oh! Actually, now that I think about it,” Mark starts nearly speed-walking towards a stone outcropping at the back of the room covered in a large and beautifully thriving bundle of D. marginalis before continuing, “A little random, but how do you think ferns reproduce?” he calls slightly above his normal speaking volume as you walk over to his new position, raising an eyebrow at his enthusiasm.

“I… don’t know. Don't they have… seeds or something? Or are they all just the same plant and have sprouts at different locations?”

“Good guess, but no--take a look at this,” Mark beckons you closer and lifts the frond of one of the plants to expose the undersides of its leaves. Mark smiles mischievously as he watches your face distort into a confused grimace at the small, powdery maroon clumps that lined the outer edges of the frond.

“What are those????” you ask, freezing in your tracks, seemingly not wanting to get closer to the strange plant.

“Spores!” Mark exclaims excitedly, beaming at you while still holding the fern, “They get picked up by the wind and get dropped, like a mushroom! Ah, well actually,” Mark lets go of the plant finally and props his hands nonchalantly on his hips while he corrects himself, “Mushrooms--but specifically the ones with gills, basidiomycetes--spread spores by flinging them from the sterigmata they’re attached to, and then they get carried around using atmosphere. But still,” he shrugs, failing to notice your bewildered expression before continuing, “like mushrooms. Kinda. Pretty cool, right?” he punctuates his question with a smirk and a wink, trying and failing to not bite his lip while looking at your curious expression.

Mark smiles down at you with a lopsided smile when you respond with an amused, “Surprisingly, I had no idea that anything other than fungi had spores.” If Mark didn’t know better, he could’ve sworn he saw your eyes flash down to his lips again. He manages to banish this thought to the back of his mind, ignoring the fluttering skips in his heartbeat to answer the question hidden in your response.

“I mean if you want to get technical, all plants are spore-bearing, even seed-bearing ones--they just are heterosporous, the two types of spores turning into male and female gametophytes that combine to make seeds.” he subconsciously steps closer to you and repositions himself next to you while the two of you continue down the path through the Fern Room. “But, all non-flowering plants produce spores, so mosses, ferns, of course,” he nods to the ferns he was just showing you, “liverworts, certain algae--all of those use spores to reproduce.”

“hm…I wonder if this happens in humans too, in some weird way.”

“That’s completely outside my jurisdiction, unfortunately, you’ll have to ask a biologist that.”

At this, you let out a hearty ‘Ha!’ before clapping your hand over your mouth in embarrassment at the sudden outburst of joy, making Mark laugh in return.

“Ah, finally something familiar,” you exclaim, just barely loud enough for Mark and Mark alone to hear as you enter a room that’s much dryer and sandier than the previous two you explored. Mark notes that the air feels much lighter in here, but the temperature is still warm.

“If this is that infamous dry heat you’ve told me about, I’m not sure I’d last very long in the Southwest.” Mark laughs out, eyeing the dry skeleton of a saguaro standing tall amongst the other desert flora adorning the Desert Room.

“Oh, this is nothing,” you scoff, looking at the yucca and prickly pears with a warm nostalgic smile, “this is pleasant compared to how hot it can get in the summer.” you turned back to him and dawned an impish smile before continuing, “you ever see the road start melting because the temperature outside’s hot enough to melt asphalt?”

Mark gulps down his mild horror at the mental image your question is conjuring in him before responding with a terse “nope,” and picking up his pace slightly to follow you, enjoying seeing you explore and tell him about the different cacti and succulents you recognize from ‘back home.’

You two reach a particularly impressive-looking cactus you identify as a Buckhorn Cholla before he does--eliciting a surprisingly strong sense of pride in him as he tries not to notice the heat rising to his cheeks. You turn to him and continue, “I’m sure you already know this, but the spines on these cacti are modified leaves--they use them both for protection and to dissipate heat more effectively. Apparently, this happened in other plants too, though,” you look away from the stately cholla and something catches your eye. Mark’s about to ask you what you’re looking for when you take his hand in yours and tug him along to the other side of the room, the suddenness of it nearly making him topple over his own feet.

“These,” you stop the both of you in front of a prickly plant that looks almost like a cactus but is just slightly off. “I can't remember what these are called, but I remember learning about them in elementary school. Their spines are modified branches instead. G-d, what are they called--”

“Euphorbs? I think this one specifically is Euphorbia virosa, but I’m not 100% on that.” After recovering from the shock of being led around by you, Mark registers that your hand is surprisingly cold. He instinctively draws closer to you and his previously passive grip on your hand becomes more sold and steadfast, trying to pass some of his warmth to you.

“Yeah, I think that’s right…” you pause for a bit, looking deeply troubled for a moment before looking down at your feet, “I don’t know why I did that, you obviously already know all of that.”

Mark frowns at this and angles himself to stand between you and the prickly euphorb, searching for your gaze as he responds. “Hey,” you reluctantly look up at him and search his face; Mark does his best to open his expression up to what he’s truly feeling, to give you no reason to think that he might be hiding something from you. “I still think it’s cool,” Mark searches your face for any apprehension or discomfort before continuing--still holding your hand but now passing his thumb soothingly back and forth over the skin on the back of it. “I didn’t know you learned about all of this as a kid.” he admits, shaking his head slightly, “I’m glad I didn’t try to explain how cacti work to you. Which, in hindsight, would’ve been incredibly embarrassing, considering I’ve never seen a cactus in its actual home biome before.” Mark laughs out, internally kicking himself for how out of breath he sounds while standing so close to you.

“Wait, you’ve never seen a cactus, like, outside? Have you been out west before, even on vacation?”

“No, I haven’t traveled much, my family’s all pretty much in different spots in Illinois, so,” he shrugs, ending his sentence with a hushed huff of a laugh at your bewildered expression.

“... You have to promise me that one day you’re going to take a visit out west. Look at what a living saguaro looks like--in situ.” Your grip on his hand loosens and Mark lets go finally, lamenting the absence of your touch. “They’re massive, each one has a different personality. Sometimes the arms look like they’re reaching out to you, or like you caught them in the middle of a game of twister. And the amount critters that live in them is astounding. It’s easy to see why they’re a protected species.” you’ve got a faraway look in your eye as you recover what must be memories of a childhood field trip to the natural spaces of Arizona and the other four corners states, having so much of the Earth’s natural history available to you essentially right next door to your childhood home.

“Maybe one day--if you’re offering to show me.” Mark finally responds, sticking his hands back into his pockets. “Until then, though,” he meanders around you and starts walking in the direction of the exit, “we’re losing light, and I still need to show you my favorite room,” he says, looking back at you over his shoulder and punctuating his sentence with a well-placed wink before slipping into the greenery of the next room.

Passing from the Desert Room, to the admittedly quite adorable Children’s Garden (despite the shocking amount of boisterous toddlers there are in there, the screams and squeals of which are still audible through the thick layers of foliage and the door you passed through), and into his favorite garden in the conservatory, Mark is struck by how bright it is in the room. Makes sense, he thinks, giving a soft pat to the front of the large stone that greets them at the entrance with ‘SUNLIGHT’ etched into its face. His skin prickles slightly at the temperature increase the sunlight brings with it as the clouds part and the snow stops falling above them, outside the protection the conservatory’s roof brings.

Mark looks back and slows his gait to fall into step with you while you look around, combing through every detail available to you visually with the same scrutiny he’s seen you regard circuit diagrams and chemical equations. Mark takes a moment to look at you trying to silently work something out in your head, patiently waiting for your inevitable question. “I can’t figure this one out… everything in here’s so different; there’re air plants up there,” you point up to a particularly lush bundle of Epiphytes growing on a stump currently hanging from a chain attached to one of the structural ribs of the curved glass ceiling, “but water lilies are floating in that puddle of a pond over there,” you lazily gesture over to one of what he knows is many small bodies of water in the whole exhibit and he smiles fondly at your exasperation. “I mean, those are two very different conditions, this isn’t just one environment…”

“True. Some species of water lilies prefer tropical environments, and that’s one of them. But, yeah, there are lots of biomes represented here. What do all of the specimens have in common?” Mark asks, trying to lead you to the answer and resisting the urge to gush about the room’s theme right off the bat. You hum at this and take a moment to think about it while you take in the verdant environment around the two of you and work your way to the back of the room, trying your best to avoid puddles of water escaping from a small waterfall that visibly surprises you as you walk past it.

The two of you meander into a small outcropping in the middle of the room and find a moment of stillness among the foliage and still premature blooms of cacao and banana trees, the full and unbroken fronds of the latter slightly dampening the sounds of the rest of the visitors on the trails around them. You look up and around, and Mark is silently amazed by the flecks of color in your eyes that he failed to notice any of the other times the two of you found yourselves in each other's personal space bubbles--which, now that he thinks about it, is more often than is probably normal for friends. He ignores that thought for now, though, seeing you lift one of the banana leaves to marvel at the juvenile bulb that would become a flower once the weather warms more and brings with it more light and nutrients for the tree that’s sprouting it.

“The only thing I can think of that everything in here has in common is that they’re all plants,” you say disappointedly. Mark can feel little sparks of joy bubble up from his heart and into the apples of his cheeks as a smile blooms across his face. He nods excitedly, making you smirk and scoff at him. “Don’t tell me that’s it; your favorite room is the ‘plant’ room?”

“Yes, precisely!” Mark begins, his hair falling slightly into his eyes as he nods more emphatically. “There’s a near infinite amount of diversity within the plant world, but the one thing that unites them all is how they get and process energy, it’s one of the things that makes life possible on Earth.” Mark pauses for half a moment to catch a small leaf falling slowly from one of the trees making up the canopy above the two of you, “So, animal cells, they take O2 and glucose and convert it into ATP, CO2, and water, right?”

“For aerobic cellular respiration, yes. There’s also anaerobic cellular respiration that uses just glucose to make ATP and lactic acid, but,” you nod, looking to the side before back at Mark, “yeah, that’s the important part for most cellular respiration, at least in humans,” confirming with a curt nod. “Don’t plant cells do the same thing though? At least not when doing photosynthesis?”

“Yes, but--I, wow, okay, I had no idea that anaerobic cellular respiration was a thing, we’ll have to return to that sometime--but, okay, so photosynthesis, right? What does that produce?” Mark feels like he’s positively buzzing with excitement as he watches you smile at him and shift your stance to sit your weight slightly into your hip.

“Well, I don’t remember the nitty-gritty of it, but don’t plants take CO2 and make ATP and O2?” you ask, raising an eyebrow at him.

“And glucose! It’s almost a perfect inverse to the animal cell respiration process. They take in water--that we as animals produce, at least in part--”

“A small part, considering we live on a planet whose surface is two-thirds water--”

“Yes, yes, but that’s outside of the scope of my point,” Mark says, waving his hand dismissively and making you chuckle. “They take in water, CO2, and sunlight and use it to make ATP but also glucose and oxygen--both things we members of the kingdom of Animalia need to perform cellular respiration; it’s probably the most beautiful nugget of syzygy that this planet has to offer,” Mark waxes poetic just loud enough for you to hear, nearly out of breath from the pride and joy he feels from being a part of this wonderful web of life that evolution’s curated on the ball of rock and water the two of you call home. And, if he’s being honest with himself, from forgetting to breathe a little bit. He finds himself staring at the leaf he caught and twirls it around between his fingers before looking back up at you, your gaze bringing him back to this moment between the two of you. “It’s my favorite room because of that. It reminds me just how fundamental and necessary for our existence plants are. How truly connected all of… this,” Mark gestures the the general world the two of you inhabit before continuing, “really is.”

Mark is suddenly aware of just how close you two are standing to be able to both fit on this small rounded platform in the middle of the room. He feels his breath catch in his throat when he finally notices your gaze is fixed on him, potent like a live wire and consuming in the same way a wildfire is; burning back fodder and dead brush, clearing away the tired and frivolous to take the Earth back for next generation of seedlings and helping pinecones that need heat to open their prickly exteriors and grow into evergreens. He feels heat rising to his cheeks, almost like they’re being licked by flames, as he takes in a bated breath and can smell a faint floral something mingling with your usually quite grounding and calming scent. His gaze flashes down to your lips just in time to see you lick them slightly before uttering a soft, “I see,” just loud enough to be heard, but hushed so as to only be shared between the two of you. For a flash of a second Mark thinks he sees your own eyes blink quickly to his lips before looking back into his eyes before you continue, “... remarkable.” your eyebrows are sinched together slightly in the way Mark tries not to have a crisis about every other day the two of you see each other; the way where they make little dimples appear just above your eyebrows. Having you so tantalizingly within reach has a profoundly troubling effect. He slowly becomes aware of the blood rushing through his veins and can almost trick himself into thinking that he can feel yours too, that maybe the back-and-forth rhythm he’d find there would match his own. It’s altogether too much for him; the muscles in his arm twitch slightly as he tries to resist the urge to reach up to your face and smooth out the tension from your brow, to run his fingers through your hair and let his hand find gentle purchase on the skin he finds beneath it and pull you into a kiss.

Carefully, like a tentative prayer or a step near the edge of a cliff, he says your name and watches your lips part slightly before he begins to speak again. “...I--”

The bubble of tension between the two of you collapses when a grating screech from what sounds like a toddler erupts through the previously still air of the exhibit room. This is confirmed by the voice of their parent telling them that it’s time to go home--upsetting the child that doesn’t want their fun trip to end just yet.

Your shocked grimace at the auditory intrusion makes him crack first, a snicker sneaking through his restrained smile. The floodgates open, however, when a rogue banana leaf falls on top of both of your heads, and the two of you explode into peals of laughter.

You wipe a small tear provoked from you in your glee before saying, “We should probably start heading out, it’s gonna get dark soon,” trying your best to speak around bouts of giggling as your two figure out what to do with the banana leaf that just, effectively, just fell out of the sky.

Mark nods, agreeing with a short and slightly wheezy ‘yeah’ while you clumsily transfer the large leaf into the brush beside and slightly below you.

☆☆☆

Stepping through your door, you kick off your shoes and stretch and crack just about every joint you’re conscious of having before tossing your keys into the nest created by the pillow and blanket you left in your papasan chair after Mark visited a few weeks ago. Collapsing onto your couch with a muffled ‘oof’, you bury your face in the cushions and pillows that meet you there and are left, finally, to quietly let your thoughts and memories from the day wash over you. Turning your face to the side to not suffocate, you contemplate the train ride back home, acutely feeling the embarrassment that you’ve found comes with letting your thoughts wander leashless around your memories of Mark.

You can still feel the warmth from the Sugar from the Sun exhibit lingering under your skin, can feel your heart still racing since you noticed how close he was to you. Seeing his eyes light up felt like going through a religious ecstasy, and for a moment you thought you understood what it would be like to be loved by the botanist expounding on the intricacies and beauty of photosynthesis to you. Regrettably, you wanted--and kind of still do, if you’re being honest with yourself--to take his rosy cheeks into your hands and pull him towards you, and you feel heat rise to your face as you imagine what it would be like to kiss him. You imagine how warm his lips would be if his hands were any indicator of how warm the rest of him is. How it would feel to be wrapped up in his arms again. You remember feeling the soft puffs of his breath halt while looking at you, how close you were to falling into him, the moment so liminal that you could almost feel the sensations from alternate universes where you’d been braver than you are in this one. You groan at yourself, the sound lightly muffled by the cushion below you, not knowing whether or not you regret not acting on your desires at the time.

Looking internally for a distraction, your mind wanders to a different memory, choosing to think instead of the short conversation the two of you had after you got to the bus stop just before your block. The ride there was spent mostly in silence--one that you found surprisingly calm and natural, given the moment the two of you had in the conservatory not too long prior. You remember staring out the window at the brilliant sunset that began to unfold in front of the two of you while you rode the L and hearing Mark let out a soft gasp at the glazed layers of pinks and reds that blended in with the deepening blue of the rest of the sky, darkened by the edges of the Earth’s shadow catching up with it.

The sky started to mature into deep purples blending into indigo and black by the time you reached your usual station and found out Mark, in fact, does not live on the same block you do. Your suspicions started when you saw him start to walk in the opposite direction of your block, notice this after he didn’t hear your footsteps beside him, and whirl back around to start walking in the other direction, citing his ‘autopilot’ for the strange error. You smirk and chuckle at the memory of confronting him about it, still endlessly delighted at seeing him flounder while trying to explain why he couldn’t name the building he and Colin are in without immediately exposing his fib. He blamed his need for it on not liking that you were walking back by yourself in the dark, apparently not thinking about whether or not you’d be any more comforted by the idea of him not reaching home until the wee hours of the morning because he decided to take it upon himself to make sure you were safe.

Suddenly, you feel a jolt of panic rip through you--recalling that the two of you had promised each other that you would text when you both got to your respective homes. You sit up and quickly fish your phone out of your front pocket and check if Mark made it back before you did, and seeing that he hasn’t texted you yet, you quickly open up your messaging app.

Made it back, safe and sound |>

You pause before sending the message, impulsively opening your camera and taking a selfie, the camera pointing down from an elevated point of view and setting it to a wide-angle zoom. Sending the message with the ridiculous selfie, you wait patiently for Mark’s reply and toss your phone onto the cushion next to you, curling back into an approximation of the position you were in and hoping your brain winds down enough to even think about resting later as a possibility. Not more than 10 seconds later, though, your phone vibrates with a text notification from Mark, making you pick your phone up from its position beside your head and swipe up the lock screen.

The next texts he sends you are each separated by a few seconds of ellipses, first revealing a rather shaky image of his boots walking through what you assume must be the entrance to his and Colin’s unit. This is immediately followed by a picture that was also taken at a wide-angle zoom of the top of his head, making it look like his eyes were staring gleefully off in two different directions.

<| like, literally just got in, lmaoo, his next text says, making you snort lightly.

<| hope you had fun today

<| I definitely did ;)

You feel the warm, pleasant kind of static sensation characteristic of oxytocin washing over your brain as you read and re-read his last series of texts while failing to suppress a small giggle. Once you compose yourself enough to do so, your fingers fly across your phone’s keyboard to respond.

Most definitely, thank you for-- |>

You pause mid-sentence, a flash of panic spreading through your chest as you almost type out ‘taking me out’. Out? Out on what? You quickly delete the previous three words and send just the ‘most definitely’ with a thumbs-up emoji and a reciprocating winky face, mentally chastising yourself for the thought that maybe you and Mark just went on a date. Best not to encourage that line of thought.

You’re debating whether or not to send him another text and keep the conversation going when an incoming call from Hana disrupts your screen, making you frown. She usually doesn’t just call out of the blue--and it was certainly out of the blue. Right about this time, she and Vanessa usually spend the evening crossing movies off their ‘to watch’ lists together--the dinner last night being a planned disruption of their usual routine, especially given that Vanessa was still out of town for work; now that you think about it though, Vanessa was supposed to come back home today, and you assumed that she arrived sometime after you and Mark left for the conservatory. Accepting the call, your brain goes a million miles per hour trying to deduce and mentally prepare for what was so urgent that she needed to call you, your stomach dropping from an eerie dread as you answer the call with a brief, “Hello?”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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