Chapter Text
It was late at night. I didn’t even bother to check the clock. The cold space underneath the accelerator struts had been my home for the past 4 months as the project grinded to a halt around me. Despite Al’s best efforts earlier this afternoon, my back was glued to an automotive creeper, hands re-arranging and re-assembling the same unit I had picked apart countless times before. There was a correct configuration, and I wouldn’t let it slip through my fingers because I had to go off galavanting and chasing skirts with him in dingy smoke filled lounges.
He was so predictable it made me sick. By God, this stubborn bolt. Hell, I could see him now, dressed in a flamboyant suit-- Maybe if I just shifted my weight a little bit --with a ridiculous cigar stuck between his lips-- Twist a little to the right --leaving a trial of smoke like a chimney, and that lecherous look in his eyes-- there’s some WD40 in the toolkit by my feet --he would have his hands on half the women in the club before he finally left-- Just a little bit more --God, sometimes I really couldn’t stand him--
Slip, and a clang as my wrench dropped to the floor. After a merciful second’s delay the pain cracked with a vengeance. The axe of God splitting me in two like an overzealous log. I cradled my fist and let out a pitiful cry. Stupid stupid stupid! Why did I let my mind wander like that?
“SAM?!” Bouncing off the metal walls came that oh so familiar voice. What was he even doing here?
“In here!” Before I could even let out a sigh he had me by the ankles and rolled out into the open. Stomach exposed for him to dig his claws into.
“Sam what did you do?” He grabbed me by the forearm and looked over my hand. My knuckles were torn and bloodied, I didn’t even try to move my fingers.
“It’s no big deal, I uh, I must’ve just slipped tightening a bolt, smashed it against the wall.”
“Must have? When was the last time you slept?” He moved to my face, inspecting my eyes.
“Al really, I’m fine! You’re fussing over me like a mother hen!” I squirmed out of his grip
“I am not fussing!” He straightened up, drew his hands to his hips indignantly, “This is my project too, you know! Staying here all night, running yourself ragged until you get hurt, it’s only setting us back.”
“Oh, and you care so much about this project. Hell, why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be out getting drunk with your own personal harem at that dingy little hole on 18th?”
“First of all: Madam’s is a high class blues establishment!” He put a foot on the corner of my cart, smacking me against the accelerator wall, “And second off: I knew you would be here trying to work yourself to death and I thought you might want to see a friendly face. Big thanks I get.” I looked up at the supposedly ‘friendly’ face, all twisted up in righteous discontent. As if what I needed right now was his drunken needling.
“I’m sorry,” I groaned, reaching out to him with my good hand. As he pulled me up I felt my legs give out beneath me and the rigid support of his shoulder driven into my chest. “Maybe you’ve got a point about this whole sleep thing.”
“Yeah maybe” he spat under his breath.
Despite my decidedly ungrateful attitude, he helped me through the sliding metal door that marked an end to the project chamber. Through it, the control room was filled to the brim with desks and dials and machines all carefully designed and calibrated to monitor the conditions of the accelerator. That is, if there ever was anything to monitor. The wall dividing the two broke at about hip level into a gigantic glass viewport all the way up to the cathedral ceilings. There was always a haunting silence here after hours, the unnatural nature of these machines when they weren’t being operated, whirring and flashing with a strange kind of life all their own. All that filled the room now was the low droning hum of the auxiliary power systems on standby, and Al’s rambling diatribe about personal responsibility mumbled directly into my ear. Al had flipped on one of the lightswitches, but the room was overwhelmingly lit by the red glow of the digital clock over the room’s entrance-- 1:13am. He dropped me unceremoniously into the seat at the main operation panel.
“Wait right there Sam.” He pointed at me severely. I threw my good hand up in the air, resigned to his control of the situation, and he wandered off mumbling to himself about a first aid kit. I knew for a fact where the kit was and that he was wandering off in the wrong direction, but I let him help, thankful for the moment of quiet.
He wasn’t even here when it happened, but somehow I found myself blaming him simply for the space he occupied in my brain. Space that could have been put to much better use. Ever since that first day I laid eyes on him, he’d dug himself into me like a tick and I’d never been able to dig him back out. Remembering he was my friend, I willed myself to think of a more positive metaphor, like a perfume that lingered on my skin, but maybe the former was more honest. His return to the room was heralded by the sharp snap of his voice, like a tree struck by lighting:
“Give me your hand”
I gave.
“Wiggle your fingers”
I wiggled.
“That hurt?”
I nodded.
“Alright, alright, stop doing it.” he sighed, running his hand through his hair, “Let me just do what I can. But don't you come yelling at me when you can't work with the hardware for a week because of this.”
“I know, I know--”
“Because no one ever broke a finger down at Madam’s!”
“I kno--”
“Well, maybe a few people, but it probably wouldn’t have happened tonight.”
“Al, just--”
“I know, I know, just fix it.” He held my wrist firmly in one hand and gently cleaned the broken flesh with the other. He could be so uncouth, sometimes I forgot he was a pilot and an admiral, with deft, talented hands and an incredibly accomplished mind. If only he could do something about that mouth. Before I knew it he had me wrapped in gauze and my index finger set with a few wooden sticks. “There! Good as new.”
“Thank you” I proffered up, half out of appreciation, half out of guilt.
“Well now,” He tapped his palm against my cheek, a gesture that came off half patronizing and half affectionate. “Seeing as you clearly can’t work anymore tonight, what do you say we break into the old liquor cabinet?” He started off without waiting for a response.
“Al, come on,” I scoffed and shrugged him off.
“Oh, you come on yourself, won’t you just cut loose a little for once?”
“I don’t cut loose. I like to be wound. Very tightly. That’s what gets you control of a project like this at my age, you know. What gets you to live out your childhood dreams. And what gets you so close you can taste it, and now--”
“Now you’ve got a busted up hand and I’m prescribing you a night off.” He poured two shots of finely aged scotch into plastic cups from the water fountain. Classy.
“Haven’t you been drinking already tonight?”
“Yeah, but I can drink more than you.” He smiled and gulped down his shot. He did have a point, and a lot of practice. I threw back my own with a slight wince, much I’m sure, to Al’s satisfaction. He immediately started pouring the next ones.
“Hey now--”
“Doctor’s orders! Two more, then you can stop.”
“Oh boy.” I gave in without a struggle. The path of least resistance was usually the way to go with Al. His persistence was a real asset as a colleague, but in personal relationships it was one of the many hurdles you took on in order to get close to him. I took my medicine, and to his credit, he took it with me.
I’d never been much of a drinker, losing my inhibitions, losing my control, I could never find the appeal of it all. The unfortunate downside to my teetotaling was that Al’s medicine hit me hard and fast. Once the nausea subsided, I began to feel that warm fuzzy glow spiraling from my chest out to my fingertips, the weight of my tongue growing in my mouth, the sharp pain in my hand slowly dulling. Thoughts lost definition, slipped out of reach when I tried to bring them into focus. Still, especially with him sitting here in front of me, nothing could shake Al from that little space in the back of my head where he had set up shop.
“What now? Truth or dare? Panty raid? You’re the doctor, right?” I giggled through heavy breaths. He smiled back broadly, clearly overjoyed that he had succeeded in bringing me down to his level.
“Well seeing as the only ‘panties’ around here are probably Gooshie’s, let’s dispense with that idea.”
“Spin the bottle?”
“Not very exciting with two players, Sam.”
“7 minutes in--”
“You need to get your head out of high school and out of the gutter.”
“Oh come on!”I ran my fingers across my cheeks, feeling wildly exciting, seemingly brand new textures. “I wasn’t exactly a party animal back then, you know. Aren’t I supposed to make up for lost time.”
“Yeah, you’re not exactly a party animal now, stud. I couldn’t pry you out of this chrome and wire hell hole with 20 men on my side.”
“You couldn’t get twenty men on your side!”
“You wanna bet?”
“No.”I folded my arms in a hostile surrender. “Well, it’s never the same anyways.”
“The same as what?”
“It’s never the thing, you know. It’s the idea of the thing.” He stared at me blankly. The words swirled in my head like leaves on the surface of the pool as I reached for them with my long necked net: “It all sounds very National Lampoon, very Fast Times when you think of it. You think that you know that everyone else has fun doing it, and you know you’re not having fun not doing it. So what the hell? But it doesn’t do the same thing for you. So you think you must just be broken. You’ve gotta tinker around with the pieces until they fit together right, but you know it doesn’t work that way. So you just accept that maybe you weren’t meant for fun, not like that at least. And once you accept that, it’s just a matter of finding out what you were meant for.” I gestured to the chrome and wire hell hole surrounding us. Al sat there for a minute, calculating the appropriate response.
“Sam, uh, do you think you might need to take a second?” He sounded almost worried about me.
Why did I say all of that? The alcohol? Probably. I felt split open, but for some reason it didn’t hurt like before. All of my nerves had been sealed up. It felt good.
“What I need is a drink of water.” I picked myself up in pursuit of the water cooler. That’s what would put me back right. My legs, trembling like jello, carried me to the edge of the room as it twisted and churned around me. Al’s hands appeared on my arm before I registered his shape beside me.
“Easy does it old girl.” He attempted to be reassuring.
“Old girl? What am I, your prized dairy cow?”
His face twisted in thought, “A case could be made--”
I drove my elbow into his side.
“Okay, okay, I give up! Let’s just get you to your water trough--”
I stepped down hard on his foot.
“Careful! These boots are ostrich!” He kept mumbling as he guided me forward, his gait only a fraction less impaired than mine.
We came upon the cooler like a pair of weary desert explorers discovering a precious oasis. I dropped to my knees and fumbled with my cup, growing accustomed to the clumsy movement of my broken hand. The first cup of water hit my throat in a cool and refreshing wave. The second cup, much to my surprise, I found myself dumping over my own head. It sent a jolt down my spine and brought the world back into focus around me. Al erupted in a fit of laughter that buckled his knees and dropped him down to my side. He frantically reached over, trying to dry my eyes with his shirt sleeve.
“Isn’t that dry-clean only?”
“Shit!” He sunk down into himself, staring at the splotch on his cuff. After only a moment, the corner of his cheek turned up in a flash of inspiration. He filled a plastic cup and released it over his own head. This time I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, and we both fell against each other in a horrible squawking fit.
“Al?”
“Yeah, Sam?”
“If you’re on the ground, and I’m on the ground, who’s gonna help me stand back up?”
He lost himself in laughter again.
“Here,” he said, grabbing my forearms, “hold tight!” And in a frankly embarrassing display of our shared competence, we pushed and pulled against each other until we managed to make it back to our feet.
“Now what?” I asked, still clinging to Al’s arms for support. He swayed back and forth before an idea flashed behind his eyes and he abandoned me to the opposite end of the room. I heard his scrambling and stomping and the slamming of doors echoed across the hall. For a second he went completely silent, and then there was a gentle crack and sizzle that faded into the opening strings of a song by the Four Tops blaring over the emergency alert loudspeaker system. Had I been sober I would have been able to identify it. Al appeared back in front of me in a flash.
“If I can't bring you out to the nightlife, I can bring the nightlife in to you.” He planted a finger on my chest firmly enough that it nearly knocked me flat on my back.
He kicked away a few chairs and started to shuffle in place. His knees bent and his feet stomped in time to the music, anticipating every ornamentation. Realizing that I was standing still, he grabbed me by the wrists and started to puppeteer me through the movements, his stiff and uncoordinated shadow. Soon the song faded to that familiar crackle and pop before starting up again with an Etta James song. Even as drunk as I was I could recognize I’d Rather Go Blind.
“Oh Sam!” His eyes lit up with excitement and he pulled me into posture for a slow dance; his hand on my back, mine on his shoulder. Of course he would make me the woman.
“I bet this is how you get all the girls.” I teased, barely realizing I was swaying with him to the swell of the music.
“Only the pretty ones who refuse to see me outside of their quantum physics labs.”
He shut his eyes and I could see the minute tugs at his cheek with every little inflection of the song. We kept dancing until the record finally ran out and its static filled the room again.
Al escorted me back to my seat before turning off the record and returning it home. As he left me alone in silence I felt the tide of my drunkenness shifting, subtly sharpening around me. He couldn’t have been gone more than a minute, but I felt the time stretch out and twist around me. I was suddenly aware of just how small I was inside this room and inside this project, how much I had said to him. I looked down at the floor, willing myself together. Was this regret? It felt worse. Maybe some secret booze induced emotion. Some kind of horrible come down doled out as punishment for enjoying myself too much. For thinking I could enjoy myself like this. It pushed horribly on my stomach, squeezing my guts out of every pore on my skin. Just when I thought I was about to burst, Al’s distinctive click-clack on the metal floor signalled him before I could even glance up.
“Feeling better yet?” He fumbled in his jacket pocket, presumably for a cigar. He looked almost incomplete without one dangling from between his lips.
I thought for a second, “I feel… drunk. At work. After hours… with a broken finger… and a broken time machine.” I buried my face in my hands, “I feel like an ass.”
“Saaaam. I thought we were having fun! Seriously! What has been up with you lately?” Al perched his cigar carefully, rotated it with his tongue, hands now preoccupied with a search for his lighter.
“I told you it’s, it’s the project. I just feel so, well, so close. It’s like if I fail now, it would be worse than if I never tried at all. Like, like there’s all these expectations, and I’m just--”
“Not buying it.” He shook his head. With a flash of light his cigar sparked to life and his cheeks swelled with those precious first puffs of its poison.
“What do you mean ‘not buying it’? I’m trying to open up to you here--”
“It’s not so much that I think you’re lying, but I can tell there’s something else. Something you don’t want to tell me” He flourished his hands in his own characteristic way, “I can smell it.”
“You can smell that I’ve got something going on?”
“What? Is there an echo in here? You absolutely reek of personal baggage.” He thumbed the top of the dwindling scotch bottle but I grabbed it out of his hands.
“Yeah and you reek like cigar smoke and rubbing alcohol but you don’t hear me complaining about it.”
He sat silently, puffing, for a few tortuous moments while I regretted my cheap jibe, “Words hurt, you know?” he feigned injury, hand over heart.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know, I don’t know what it is-- No, I do.” I took a breath, trying desperately to hold back the words I felt rising in my throat, but my heavy tongue and scotch soaked brain pushed them forward anyways, “It’s you. Something, something, about you I just can’t get you out of my head. Out of my skin. Like an itch I can’t stop scratching.”
“Oh, flattering,”
“No, no, no. Not like that! Not like anything.” I gave up on any discerning urges of being understood, stood up, and frantically paced the room. Disparate thoughts slowly coalesced into a simple truth: “You’re here.” I raised my hand, bandaged and with a finger permanently pointing, towards the back of my skull. “You live here. Every hour of every day, you’re here. Everything about you. Funny or endearing or irritating or hurtful, you are always here.” I looked down at the floor, too embarrassed to meet his eyes. “I should be focused and dedicated to my project. I should be a finely honed instrument to one end and one end only. That’s what I’ve always been.” I threw up my arms in defeat. “It’s all gone now. I’m a wreck. A useless, inefficient wreck.” I took a long shaky breath. “Al?”
“Yeah?”
“You can hit me in the head now.”
“I’m not gonna do that Sam.”
“Well, can you do something so I quit spilling my guts over here?”
“What, Sam?”
“Hell, I just told you what.”
“I told you, I’m not hitting--”
“Anything!” The word propelled me forward as I threw my hands against his chest, lashing out with wild abandon.
“Sam! Calm down!” He grabbed me by the wrists, probably more concerned that I would hurt myself than anything I could possibly do to him in this state. “Christ, I’m sorry I made you drink. I thought, I thought it would calm you down.”
“Yeah, hell of a job that was.”
“I said I’m sorry!”
“Yeah well I’m still broken. Stupid little windup toy running in my stupid little circles.”
“You’re not broken--”
“Easy for you to say.”
“This is not easy for me Sam--” he squeezed the bridge of his nose with this thumb and forefinger, collecting his aggravation, “You know, how about you just sit down, I’ll go to the breakroom and make you some coffee--”
“No! No I just mean… just stay here with me.” I held onto his shirt fiercely, twisting the satin fabric in my hands.
“You know, I really should hit you.”
“Yes.”
“Just knock it off with the whole injured bird routine.” He pushed me off of him. “You can’t blame me for all your problems and expect me to wet-nurse you at the same time.”
“I’m not blaming--”
“Now stop with that okay? If anyone knows what you’re doing, I do.”
“Oh and I don’t?”
“Your brain is practically pickled in alcohol--”
“You would know wouldn’t you?”
“See. That.” He pointed directly up my nose. “I’m not doing that with you. You’re a good friend, you’re a nice guy, we’re having a nice night, but it’s like you’re trying to start a fire and I’m not letting you.” He had raised his voice so loud I could feel it booming off of the horrible metal walls, jolting my bones back into place. He was right. “Now sit down. I’m making coffee.” He punctuated his exit by smothering his cigar and dropping it in the ashtray on the desk. His usual swaggering gait every so often broken by a stumble or a falter. I tilted my head back and felt the room spin out of control around me. All this polished metal and circuitry, the cumulative effort of my entire life, and right in the center of it me, with a lit match and a gas can. I heard his uneven footsteps patter back into range.
“I wasn’t lying before, you know.”
“About what, Sam?”
“I wasn’t trying to start a fire, I mean.”
“Sam--”
“I really mean it. You’re here. Always.”
“Just drink the--”
“If you sober me up I’ll be too scared to say it.”
“You don’t even know what you’re saying, okay, just--”
“You don’t know how right you are. Eleven languages and I couldn’t tell you how I feel in a single one. I don’t know anything.” I stretched out my hand and took my coffee. Chasing the bitter taste of my cowardice with the even more bitter taste of Al’s special blend. “Thank you for coming. For helping me.”
“You certainly don’t make it easy.”
“Nothing worthwhile ever is.”
“Worthwhile is one word for it.”
“Do you think I am?”
“Am what?”
“Worthwhile?”
He sighed, “Of course you are. Even when you’re a gigantic pain in my ass” He smacked my shoulder lightly. “What are friends for?”
Friends. Is that what we were? I turned the word over in my head. It seemed wholly unequipped to bear the weight of my tremendous expectations. I met him when he was drunk. Drunk and angry. For a while it seemed like that was all he ever was. I couldn’t say why, but that was when he dug his hooks into me. Or maybe I dug my hooks into him. After so long, who could tell anymore? I could be so vile inside my head, but if anything his barbs were a comfort. I knew that I would never be alone again. Not completely anyways. Not if I always kept those little pieces of him dug into my grey matter. Is that what it was? I clung onto him because I was scared to be alone? And he was just a warm body to project onto all of my fears of abandonment? It had to be more than that. We had to be more than that. I searched his dark unending eyes for answers. Why. Do. You. Make. Me. Act. This. Way?!
Suddenly it all made sense. Too much sense. Without thought, without reason, without fear, I kissed him. Inception. A wave of tingling numbness rolled out through my body, and the bottle slipped from my fingers, shattering in a horrible mess on the floor. I couldn’t bring myself to care. This room, this dream, which had felt so cold and alien at the start of the night was reignited with newfound passion and warmth. He tasted like tobacco and electricity, pure and unfiltered, and injected directly into my bloodstream. I pulled back, if only to catch my breath, to remind myself that I still was breathing. Parting.
With his forehead pressed against mine, we stood in absolute silence, terrified to move and shatter the stasis. I opened my mouth to speak, no words brought themselves to mind but I could feel them in my throat, about to tumble out. He kissed me. Adhesion. His magnetic pull smashed us back together with terrific force.
“Wait, wait, Al, the security cameras.” I panted.
“Oh, don’t worry,” His lips danced around my neck between words, “I always switch the feed after hours.”
“Always?”
“Well in case I were to bring someone back here, you know, to show them the project…”
“Al. Don’t tell me you’ve been bringing women back into our top secret quantum research base just to get laid!” I peeled him back off of my chest.
“Alright, I won’t tell you!” He broke free from my grip with another strategically placed kiss on my collarbone. My head rolled back in pleasure. My protests were obscured by the growing fog in my brain, I just didn’t want it to stop.
In what felt like seconds he had my coveralls undone and down at my ankles, hands running underneath my shirt and up my bare abdomen. Those hands, filled with nerve endings and etched with physical memory. They moved deftly and gently, the same way they must have felt up hundreds of women before me. I could see them all, sprawled across his satin sheets, mirrored on the ceiling, their every pleasure a descending echo of the one before. I could finally name that vicious bile I’d been choking on all night: jealousy. And a terrible feeling of oneness with that most classic feminine archetype, that here in this lab I would become just another notch on his belt.
Pushed on by a swell of willpower and newfound personal resolve, my bandaged hand found a perfect slot for its crudely twisted form on the side of his neck, the other on top of his stomach, and I pressed him against the glass barrier dividing us from the accelerator. Felt its electric charge run through his back and into my fingertips. He lifted his hands from me, bent back his arms and hung his wrists limply against the wall. Complete resignation in his eyes.
I undid his shirt buttons slowly. Its colors were offensive to the eyes, the warning system of a wild animal: “do not eat” though I guess he was always more of a peacock than a dart frog. Peeling away his protective feathers, I finally glimpsed that soft, elusive underbelly, ripe for the tearing. Cut into his skin was the story of a life lived before me, scars and blemishes weaving their way around his torso into some kind of twisted nautical map. Deltoid, pectoralis major, latissimus dorsi, serratus anterior, external oblique. I could name every piece from memory, clinically and coldly, explain how they all worked together to sustain life, how they evolved from the hominids, how to fix them when they broke; but when it came to the pull that they had over me, I was completely adrift, searching the map on his chest for any kind of sign to proceed. Here there be monsters.
I collapsed into him, absolutely paralyzed with fear. Underneath me he was aflame with that unrelenting heat of life, almost scorching to the touch. He wrapped his hand around the nape of my neck and looked into my eyes,
“Is this what you want Sam?”
“Yes.” I said it like a prayer. Amen.
He dropped to his knees in a gesture so surreal I briefly wondered if I had blacked out and this was some kind of alcohol induced wet dream. Luckily he did more than pinch; little nibbles along my hip bone. How he did it all so effortlessly I couldn’t understand. He moved without thinking, every touch of his hands and lips and teeth a perfectly placed note in my own private aria. With sufficient buildup and with courage and bloodflow established, he unceremoniously dropped my briefs. My erection sprung up almost painfully, so sensitive that every brush of his palm sent tremors jolting through my thighs.
The topography of his mouth unfolded in my mind as it wrapped around me. Dimensions of height and width, the sharpness of its canines, the gentle ridges on its roof. All expressed in the overflow of sensation as he drew back and forth in a steady, rhythmic motion. My hand clutched a fistfull of hair, my hips began to spasm, breath began to quicken; involuntary measures of the body, and me simply watching from the ports in my skull and feeling the waves of ever increasing pleasure engulf me entirely. When the final wave struck my feet almost shot out from under me, all my biological servos firing in perfect succession of purpose.
He drew back and spit hard onto the floor.
“Al!”
“I’ll clean it up later. I’m busy right now.” He crawled up my body until his head was at my chest, stroking and kissing and nibbling.
“You are a maniac!” I pushed him off and swung around against the wall, hiking my hip up onto the metal ledge, if only to get away from him long enough to catch my breath. Al smiled and got down on his hands and knees, crawling towards me. Butterflies swam in my chest, relishing in the way he debased himself for me.
He hitched my ankle onto his shoulder and stood up fast, swinging my hips forward and pressing my back against the glass window. I gasped and grabbed his arm for support. A pair of broad hands, firmly on my waist, held me in place. For a moment we just froze there, panting and pining at each other like dogs in heat, and then I undid his zipper. I brought my hand up to his mouth and, reading my thoughts, he spit into it.
I guided him into me, slowly, but strangely not terrified as I had been before, completely and totally mesmerized by his gaze, and by our total oneness.
“Relax, Sam.” And just like that I did. I felt it in waves at first, and then all at once like a punch to the gut, knocking the wind out of me. There was a twist of pain with every wave, recoloring and reinventing it into something completely new. Wimpers and moans escaped my lips without permission, hell, against my will. Sounds I had never made, didn’t know I could make. Having him inside of me brought on an absolute vulnerability, left me nothing more to hide. My hands on his hips guided his movement, slow and careful. As his confidence grew he took bigger strides, faster, more aggressive. With every collision of our hips the edges of my vision shook, my brain lighting up like a switchboard. Faster and faster. My arms drew back onto the glass above my head, bracing my body against the sheer impact of him. Our bodies twisted together in total ecstacy, voices melding into a single cry, breath and skin and sinew completely indistinguishable.
Ever the gentleman, he pulled out as he came. I felt his trail of sperm dribble down my thigh as we both collapsed to the floor, absolutely spent. There we lay, side by side against the cold artificial wall, radiating pure heat. Al reached over to his jacket, and then to the desk, fumbling for his cigar and lighter. He lit up and sucked a deep breath before eyeing me.
“Want one?” He extended it to me, under the circumstances it seemed exceedingly phallic. “I’m telling you there’s nothing better after a good fuck.” I took it hesitantly in my hand. “Just a little,” he advised. The smoke hit the back of my throat like a lead pipe and suddenly the room buckled and lurched around me. I started coughing so hard I thought I might puke right then and there. All Al could do beside me was laugh.
“You’re evil, you know?” I managed between coughs.
“I really thought you might like it!” He smacked his palm against my chest rhythmically, trying to help me regain my composure.
“I’ll stick to secondhand smoke. That way you can do the hard work for me.”
He smiled, took a short puff, and gently blew out, filling the air around me with a soft haze. Filtered through him first, it didn't seem as harsh, the warm buzz of the nicotine swimming about my head. It felt strangely intimate, sharing the same air.
“Have you… done this before?”
“Sam, are you asking if I'm a virgin?”
“You know what I mean!” I elbowed him
“Well not really.”
“Not really?”
“It’s different in the navy Sam, you’re on a submarine a couple leagues under the sea, a hundred miles from shore and not a single woman for months on end. Men have needs, you know? It’s strictly business.”
“And this was what? Strictly pleasure?”
“I would hope so!” He sounded almost offended, took a short puff off his cigar. “What about you?”
“Been with a man?”
He nodded.
“Well, not really.”
“Oh, not really?”
“I mean everyone experiments in med school, but I was always too self conscious to get very far.”
“Oh, and how far was that? Under the shirt, over the bra?” His hands spidered their way up to my chest.
“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell.” I pulled him off by the wrists.
“Well then it’s a good thing there’s no ladies in the room right now.”
He let his cigar smolder out and rested his head against my chest. Now, after all we had been through, and on the brink of sleep, he seemed so… fragile. We, these tender creatures of flesh and blood and bone, walled in by our own mechanical creations. I ran my fingertips across his cheek, half scared he would shatter under my touch. But all he did was curl his neck and purr. The metal rivets in the ceiling above me sprung to life in the dark and in the quiet as my body slowly returned to a state of normalcy. My spirit, which had been flying ten feet above me, descended back down into my chest. Shadows cast by the red light of the clock spun and flickered like twisted little sugarplum fairies around my head. I let my eyes flutter shut for a moment, drifting in the sea of my own mind. For the first time in months it was a serene and beautiful place rather than a raging typhoon. Thoughts washed over me, I felt their residue between my toes and in my ears. All at once, my eyes snapped open, my body at full attention. I glanced at the clock-- 4:03am.
“I’ve got it”
“Got what?” Al murmured through a fog of sleep.
“I know how to fix the power output problem!”
“Say that again, slower.” He brought a finger to his ear, wringing the sleep out of it.
“The power output. The accelerator always blows when we try to run it, the power demands are astronomical, it needs to be attuned to every--
“Okay, okay, I get it. What you’re saying is, I was right, this whole time all you really needed was to get laid.”
“That is not the take away here--”
“That’s what I’m taking away.”
“Oh, forget it. It doesn’t even matter.” I looked down at my twisted bandaged little hand. “I can’t do anything with this.”
“Sam, come on,” He finally lifted his head, rising into consciousness, “go home, get some shut eye. Come back later, sober, and all your little assistants and grad students will be dying to help you out.”
“You could help me.”
“Sam,” His head dropped down onto my chest. “I’m a pilot, not a physicist.”
“You don’t have to be a physicist, you just have to be a mechanic, and I’ll tell you exactly what to do.”
“Saaam! I’m liable to break my hand and your accelerator! I-I’m tired and I’m drunk and my brain is swimming in dangerous post-coital hormones.”
“If I go to sleep right now I could lose it and it might never come back!”
“Write it down, tape record it, tell someone, type it up on Ziggy, hell I don’t care, just call someone else.”
“It would mean a lot to me.”
“Oh, now with the puppy dog eyes.” He sighed heavily. “Fine.”
We each climbed into a pair of coveralls, sex and sleep still clinging to the surface of our skin. We rolled under the accelerator. Its hostile architecture of twisted wires and metal panels opened up to me in some kind of rapture. Al’s hands were broad and yet strangely delicate, they seemed made for this kind of work. I pointed and Al did, loosening bolts, cutting and rewiring connections, my eyes and his hands became one creature, interfacing with the mechanical creature above us. I wasn’t sure if he would see it the same way. Like I said, all he had to be was a mechanic, I would do the hard work. His arms moved with terrific force. I imagined the way they looked under their fabric, pumping up and down, muscles flexing, glistening with sweat. I willed myself in place of the machine, wishing he would work on me this way. His hands, working through my abdomen, tearing me apart and building me back better.
When we fell back, drained and panting, it was done. The machinery looked beautiful. Symmetrical and slotted together as it had never been before. Clean smooth multicolored wiring over vibrant green motherboards, walled in by cool chrome walls and studded with heavy silver bolts. As we shuffled back into the control room, the clock glared at us--6:43am. Even the early birds wouldn’t arrive for work until 8:30. Al threw himself down into a chair, started his cigar back up and rolled back his head in exhaustion. The operation terminal stared me down with its characteristic arrogance. Maybe my characteristic arrogance. Like father, like son. With a twinge of trepidation still, I flicked on the first switches and ran the trial boot up program. The terminal hissed and squealed at me as recording paper began to spit out the top and over the back, stiff metal arms leaving a stagnant line down the middle of each sheet. The accelerator moved into its first stages of activation; coolant pumping through the spiderweb of veins across the ceiling, coils warming and buzzing with electricity. The gentle hum of the room quickly grew into a deafening roar. I looked back to find Al holding his head with both hands in an attempt to keep it on his shoulders. The fire extinguisher eyeballed me from across the room. This was usually right about when the power became too much and one of the internal components would blow, sending the entire unit into a downward spiral. But it didn’t. The accelerator was managing to hold its own, coursing with its newfound strength and power.
It was worth it. It was all worth it. Thousands of sleepless nights, weekends spent inside studying and applying myself, holidays missed, all those paths left untraveled. All of my hopes and dreams and everything I had given up in their pursuit coalesced in the shaking sputtering machine in front of me. Just across the glass. Without realizing it, I had pressed myself against the divider, longing to feel that electric charge. Instead, I felt Al’s hand on my shoulder, saw the concern in his eyes. I flipped the kill switch, watched my creation settle back down onto its haunches. As the room went quiet I suddenly couldn’t stand the stagnant air in this room. I ran for the exit like a drowning man making his way towards the shore. Every locked metal door or security checkpoint trying to drag me down deeper.
The cold desert air hit me like a brick wall. The sweat on my skin froze in an instant and the world came crashing in around me. Wide open spaces of rolling sand and jutting rocks, furnished by smatterings of thirsty little shrubs. The lab behind me and the single road cutting across the landscape and into the horizon perverted the entire scene. It all seemed some kind of sick intrusion upon the natural world.
“Sam! Saaam!!” Al cried out, still echoing off the metal walls. He caught up to me with a hand clasped around my arm. “Christ, you’re shaking.”
“It worked.” I said it like a simple matter of fact. I was barely even happy. There was a growing pit in my stomach, a strange chill creeping up and over the back of my neck.
“That’s good right?” He ran his fingers through my hair.
“Yeah.”
“So what’s wrong?”
“I-- I don’t know.” I wrapped myself around him, busied my hands tracing the vertebrae of his spine. The shapes and contours of the geography of his back. Warmth and flesh and blood pulling me back into myself. “Thank you.” I whispered it in his ear. We twisted and engulfed each other until I couldn't tell where he ended and I began.
“Sun’s about to come up.” he murmured, cheek pressed against my neck.
As we watched the sun crest over the desert, casting rays of brilliant orange and yellow across the red rocks, I felt a kind of peace and satisfaction I wasn’t sure if I had ever known before. The accelerator and the project behind me and the beauty of the world in front fell away in equal measure, and all that existed was Al’s warmth next to me. Each of us, reborn in the coming light of the new dawn.