Running Warm

Engineering on the Dutchman did not really have a night cycle. The lights stayed at operational level around the clock and the core hummed regardless of what the chrono said and Mei-Lin had long since stopped noticing the difference between working late and just working. There was always something that needed doing and she had always found it easier to do it than to lie in her bunk thinking about it.

Tonight it was the EPS relay housing on the port side of the secondary power grid. Intermittent variance readings for three days, traced to a micro fracture in the housing that was invisible to a standard scan but present enough to turn into a real problem if she left it alone. She had the housing partially disassembled on the work surface and her hair had escaped its tie somewhere around the second hour and she had pushed it back behind her ear three times already without it staying there.

She was on the fourth attempt when she heard someone come in.

Zedd leaned against the console two feet to her left with his jacket half open and his arms crossed and looked at what was spread across her work surface with the expression of someone who had walked into engineering at whatever hour this was for a reason he had not quite decided to commit to yet.

"You're up late," she said and went back to what she was doing.

"Couldn't sleep." He glanced at the disassembled housing. "What did it do?"

"Micro fracture. Port EPS relay." She made a careful pass with the sealant tool. "Nothing critical yet."

"Yet," he said.

"Yet," she agreed.

He was quiet for a moment and she was aware of him in the particular way she had been trying not to be aware of him since approximately the third day she was aboard the ship which was an inconvenient amount of time to have been managing that particular awareness.

He was looking at her work, genuinely, not just making conversation, and she had noticed early on that Zedd's attention when it was actually on something had a quality to it that was different from most people's. Like he was actually thinking rather than just looking. She found it distracting in ways she had not budgeted for.

"The fracture branches at the secondary mount," he said, leaning in closer to look. Close enough that she could smell whatever he used on his hair which was not something she needed to be cataloguing at this hour. "You'll want to run the seal another four millimeters."

She looked where he was pointing and he was right and she extended the pass without saying anything about it.

"Shipyard?" she asked.

"Years of it." He straightened up. "You learn to follow the whole line or it opens again."

She finished the seal and set the tool down and reached for the diagnostic scanner at the same moment he did and his hand closed over hers and they both went still for a second, which felt considerably longer than a second.

He let go first.

"Sorry," he said and handed it to her.

"It's fine" she replied shakily.

She ran the diagnostic and kept her eyes on the readout and told herself very firmly that her hand was not warm where his had been and that she was a grown adult who had worked alongside men before without turning into someone who noticed things like the way their hands felt and she was doing great at that.

99.4 percent integrity. She set the scanner down.

"Not bad," Zedd said.

"It'll hold." She started reassembling the housing and he stayed where he was and she was beginning to suspect he was not in any hurry to go anywhere and she was beginning to suspect she did not entirely want him to, which was its own kind of problem.

"You do this every night?" he asked. "Just find things and fix them."

"Not every night." She reached for the secondary mount panel. "Just when I can't leave something alone."

He reached for the same panel at the same time, again, and this time they both laughed, quietly and a little awkwardly, and she let him take it and he fitted it into place while she held the housing steady and they were close enough that she was paying a frankly unreasonable amount of attention to the exact distance between his shoulder and hers.

"You could have left this until morning," he said.

"So could you," she said. "Whatever you came down here for."

He glanced at her sideways and she caught it and looked back at the housing and the silence between them had a particular texture to it that she was going to need to think about later when she was alone and could do it properly.

"Relay on the starboard side has been running warm," he said after a moment. "Half a degree for about two days. Figured you'd want to know."

She looked at him. "You've been watching the relay readings."

He shrugged one shoulder in a way that was almost but not quite casual. "Old habit."

She held his gaze for a moment and he held hers and she was aware of exactly how close they were standing and equally aware that neither of them had moved to put more space between them and she was going to need to do something about that or stop noticing it and she was clearly not going to stop noticing it.

"Get some sleep Zedd," she said.

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah." He pushed off the console. "You too."

He headed for the door and she watched him go in a way she would have denied if anyone had asked and then he paused in the doorway and looked back.

"Goodnight Mei-Lin."

"Goodnight," she said.

The door slid shut.

She stood there in the hum of the engine room for a moment looking at where he had been standing and then she turned back to her console and pulled up the starboard relay readings because she was a professional and that was absolutely the only reason.

He was right. Half a degree warm.

She flagged it for the morning and did not think about his hand over hers for the rest of the time she was in engineering which was considerably less time than she had planned on staying.