Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time Mark wakes up, drugged up to his eyeballs and feeling no pain, he's pretty sure he's hallucinating. Or dead. Dead is a possibility, since he'd probably be safe and warm and not in an EVA in heaven.

Probably not dead, though, probably just very high. This is confirmed a few minutes later—or maybe seconds, time isn't super clear cut—when Beck walks in and looks at the screens. He nods, says, "Well, all things considered, you could be in worse shape."

Mark means to say, "Could be dead," but what comes out is a mash of consonants. Beck laughs, the laughter of someone who's still too relieved to be anything but fond, and hands him a water pack, straw already inserted. Mark takes a few slow sips.

When he tries speaking again, it's to ask, "We got anything to eat on this ship that isn't a potato?"

"I like your chances," Beck tells him. "I'll see what I can drum up."

Mark's a scientist, and, for the most part, pretty rational. Which makes the whole Binge Eating Incident even more frustrating for him, because, yeah, he knows it's a shit idea. All the same, five days after being released from the infirmary, when walking is starting to be less agonizing—for certain values of less—he wakes up hungry and panicky.

There's no reason to be panicked, he knows this, he's safe.

The theory behind going down to where they store the rations is that if he just has a snack, maybe it will snap his mind back into believing it, back into knowing he's safe. Ten MRE's later, though, he's sicking up in the nearest receptacle and trying to figure out how the hell he's going to explain his actions to the rest of the team. They're on a fucking space ship. He can't just eat everyone else's food.

(He hasn't caused immediate catastrophe. NASA and the Chinese sent them three times what they need. That's not the point.)

He's still hunched in the hall by the pantry at 0600, when Lewis passes by, presumably on her way to grab breakfast. She stills for a second, and then sits by him. She doesn't say anything.

He rubs a hand over his face and takes a shaky breath. He forces himself to say, "I ate an unauthorized amount of rations about three hours ago."

"Okay," she says it slowly, like she's trying to decipher his code.

"Ten," he says, the word short and sharp in his mouth, on his tongue. "Ten unauthorized rations."

"Okay," she says again, but this time it's just an acknowledgment.

"Yeah," Mark says, suddenly cold. "I, uh. Sorry. It won't—I won't let it happen again."

She doesn't call him on what might very well be a lie. Instead she says, "I need you to talk to Beck," and it's an order, even if it's politely couched. "Go take a hot shower, change. I'll send him to you."

Mark wraps his arms around himself. "It's not my day. For the hot water."

She stands up. "Go take a hot shower, Mark. That's an order."

Mark isn't actually great at following orders, but he's pretty good at knowing when he's going to lose a fight.

When Mark gets back to his bunk after his shower, Beck and Johanssen are sitting in it, facing each other, their backs to opposite sides of the bunk, Beck's feet atop Johanssen's. Mark has to clench his fists at his side to keep himself from climbing in, tucking himself in the space between either one of them and the wall.

Before Mars, Mark is pretty sure he was fairly average in terms of touchy-feeliness. He hugged his mom and his dad, liked to drape his arm over people he was dating, that sort of thing. It wasn't something he craved all the time, nor was it something he preferred to do without.

Over a year without a single human touch has left him desperate. He finds himself staring at his crew mates' hands with a sort of starved longing, and sometimes he wakes with the sense that he was dreaming of leaning into one of them, the skin of their arms pressing tight and warm to his.

Beck says, "It's normal, you know?"

Mark is still getting his desire to crawl into bed with his coworkers out of his system as best he can, so he asks, "What?"

"The binging. I actually should have been watching for it. Mea culpa."

It could be flippant, but it's not. Mark shakes his head. "You're my doctor, not my mom."

"You'd be surprised at the overlap between the roles."

"Also," Johanssen adds, "he needs an outlet for his maternal instincts. Since I'm not it."

"That too," Beck agrees easily. "Anyway, it's not a big deal. We just need to get you on a diet of specified amounts and you've got to tell me if you feel like a snack. That way you and I'll both be more mindful. If it doesn't stop it from happening again, it'll at least lessen the probability."

"It's not happening again," Mark says. He out-stubborned Mars, he can sure as fuck out-stubborn mental trauma.

"Okay." Beck says, "But we're astronauts. Our job is to plan for the just in case."

Mark feels on edge, raw in too many places, and he just stops himself from snapping, saying something he can't take back. It's not their fault he was left. He believes that. He just wishes he could sleep, really sleep, without waking up exhausted, feeling as if he's spent the last seven hours fighting.

Johanssen frowns. "You should take a nap."

Mark rubs a hand over his face. "Pretty sure I'm assigned…something."

Nobody says, we were doing all right without you, which is kind. Instead, Johanssen says, "Somehow, I think we'll manage."

She ducks out of the bunk and pulls on Mark's hand, tugging him down into it. Mark might squeeze just a little more tightly than he should. She looks at where their hands are joined, but doesn't say anything.

Beck stands, too. "Seriously, get some sleep. Doctor's orders."

Mark finds himself lying down, too worn to argue, too done with fighting against everything for the moment. He closes his eyes and there's a stillness to the air that he can't quite describe. Fingers brush against his forehead, blunt and soft—Beck—and then there's the sound of both of them retreating, off to go make it so he can laze about.

He presses his fingers to the spot on his forehead, trying to seal in the warmth, the point of contact. He falls asleep while reliving the sense memory of it.

Mark runs a lot. More than he should, he knows. Beck has been so meticulous, putting together plans for him, calorie counts and sleep schedules and in theory it looks great, but it doesn't factor in the way Mark wakes up three-fourths of the way through his sleep cycle, gasping for air, certain he's back on Mars and something has gone wrong again. That it will kill him this time. That he'll die alone and scared and—

So he runs. Because it's hard to think when he's running. Mostly there's white noise, and a sense of getting somewhere. The latter is kind of hilarious, given that he's on a treadmill. In space.

It's Martinez who catches him at it one night. Mark doesn't see that coming for a couple of reasons, (1) Martinez sleeps more soundly than anyone Mark has ever met, and (2) of all of them, he's the one you're least likely to find in the gym. He works out, but he does it to keep up to the physical standards required of them. The rest of them are a bit more on the endorphin-junkie side of things.

He must see the question in Mark's eyes, because he shrugs. "Sometimes at night, I miss my wife. More than I normally do."

Mark nods. He's never done the wife thing, but he's had enough break ups to know how empty the bed feels afterward. He can extrapolate.

Martinez waits for Mark to slow down, waits despite Mark taking his time to think about whether he really wants to talk, or not. When Mark is walking, his breathing loud but settling into something more regular, Martinez says, "I have this buddy, Dave. We served a couple of tours together before he finished his five years and got out. He was one of the coolest people under pressure I'd ever met. Natural born leader, smart as fuck, all-around amazing soldier in the field.

"He goes back home, Jersey, gets in to Rutgers, every time I hear from him, he's doing great. Then one night I get this call from his sister. She's crying, apologizing, I guess I was the first name in his call list that belonged to an army buddy. She's telling me how Dave hasn't slept in something like seventy-two hours, he won't let anyone in his apartment, that she had to bring her husband to pick the lock and restrain Dave so they could get in and help. And he was freaking out, sure they were the enemy, sure that he was somewhere he wasn't."

Martinez pauses. Mark says, "I know I've probably got PTSD of some sort, if that's the point you're getting at."

Martinez rolls his eyes. "Of course you have some sort of PTSD. You'd be a fucking psychological miracle and have to be put away for study if anything else were true. I'm trying to point out that he probably had symptoms a lot earlier than when he went into a full-blown psychotic break. And that if he'd been willing to ask for help at any point along the way, he might not have spent the better part of six months in a mental institution, getting back to where he could live on his own."

Mark rubs a hand over his face. "I'm not sure what you're telling me to do, here."

Martinez blows out a breath. "Wake one of us up, Mark. Instead of running until every pound Beck has managed to get back on you disappears. Wake one of us up and talk, or don't, do whatever the hell you need to, but—" Martinez swallows. "You're not on your own anymore, man. Stop acting like it. It sucks as much for the rest of us as it does for you."

Mark stops the treadmill, and the silence is loud with the sounds of the ship keeping them alive. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Well." Mark smiles, self-effacing and sardonic. "No, probably not, but I'll try."

"All I can really ask. Now, get your ass back in bed."

"Aye, aye, cap'n."

Beck's checking his ribs—even the bruises have faded, but the guy is nothing if not thorough—when Mark, tired from broken sleep and edgy with imagined hunger, loses his grip on stoic self-denial and leans into the touch. Beck stills and Mark's eyelids, which had been drooping, fly open and he says, "Sorry, man, just a little tired."

The others have put together a Mark Rotation Schedule. They don't call it that, he does, in the privacy of his own mind. But it dictates who he's supposed to wake up if he needs someone to sit with him in the middle of a sleep cycle. He needs it more often than not.

Last night was Lewis's turn. She spent over an hour telling him why she loves seventies nostalgia. Mark is still dubious about her life choices, but he at least has some context for them now.

Beck is watching him, his eyes a little too zeroed in. After a moment, he moves his hand up to grip the back of Mark's neck. Mark holds back a shudder, but just barely. Quietly, Beck says, "Okay."

"Beck—"

"Shut up," he says, just as softly as before, no malice, just enough firmness to get Mark to listen. He hops up onto the end of the table and pulls at Mark until he's lying on his side, his head in Beck's lap.

Mark feels his breath coming faster, but can't seem to stop it, to slow it down. Beck scratches his fingers through Mark's hair, over his scalp and says, "Hey, breathe to my count. In, one, two, three. Hold, one, two, three, four. Out, one, two, three, four, five."

He keeps counting until Mark can hold the pattern on his own. The hand that's not combing Mark's hair comes to settle in the small of his back. "Okay," he says again.

Three nights later, it's Johanssen's turn on the Mark Rotation Schedule. Mark expects them to go to the command console; she likes to fidget and adjust things while they talk, or just sit. Instead, she takes his hand and pulls him to the entertainment area, where there's a couch. She pushes him down onto it, and curls up next to him, cuddling up into his space, her head tucked beneath his chin.

Mark asks, "Beck said something, huh?"

"Not in the way you think. I'm good at listening to what he doesn't say."

"Just to have it on the record, I wasn't macking on your boyfriend."

"Yeah, you really strike me as the type to coordinate us getting together just so you could be the Other Man. Duh, Mark."

He tightens his grip without meaning to, but she just curls up more, maximizing the amount of contact between them. "I just…"

"Yeah," Johanssen agrees, when it's clear he's not going to say anything else. "I get it. We get it. I want to be here. I want to be doing this. So just let me. For fuck's sake. Let me."

He buries his face in her hair and murmurs, "Thanks."

Mark falls asleep and sleeps through the rest of the cycle on the couch. He wakes up to find Johanssen having laid down, her head pillowed on his lap. His movement jars her enough that she makes a tired, annoyed noise. Mark doesn't bother suppressing a smile, but he does say, "Sorry."

Not even two minutes later, Beck shows up, carrying two containers of coffee. He sets them on the ground and pulls Johanssen into a sitting position, getting the coffee under her nose before she can do more than start to grumble.

He shares the smile of morning people everywhere when confronted with non-morning people with Mark, and hands him the second coffee. Mark smiles back and raises the container in a silent salute before taking a sip. He closes his eyes and lets the bitter heat wash over his tongue for a moment. He still hasn't gotten to where he takes coffee for granted. He's not sure he's going to.

There's silence for a bit, Johanssen pressed against Mark side, Beck with one hand on each of their knees, the coffee being ingested. Johanssen's voice is a little scratchy from sleep, but she sounds sure when she says, "He sleeps if someone's with him."

"Sitting right here," Mark says. He can feel her roll her eyes.

Beck squeezes his knee and says, "Good to know."

On the nights when he can't sleep, things settle into a sort of routine. If it's Vogel's turn, he teaches Mark strange chemistry things, the stuff that chemistry geeks get off on. It appeals to the engineer in Mark, the guy who likes solving problems in increasingly wacky ways.

Martinez has been working on Mark's highly questionable Spanish. Lewis has been letting him try and win her over to the Cubs. Baseball isn't really her thing, so she doesn't have a set team. It's the perfect in.

Beck and Johanssen, though, if it's one of their nights, whichever one it is just crawls into Mark's bunk behind him, little spoons him by gentle force, and says, "Go back to sleep."

The thing is, he does.

Mark's going through the motions of his weekly check-in with Beck. It's taken four months, but he's finally starting not to look quite so gaunt. He says, "So, I'm guessing there's a reason Lewis hasn't said word one to me about regulations."

Beck leans against the counter and crosses his arms over his chest. "We're not running interference, if that's what you're suggesting. I think…NASA's not the military. It's a different personality profile altogether, in some ways. You can't send someone to another planet for a month, have them on a ship for over a year each way, and not want or even need them to do some thinking for themselves. Regulations serve a place, and I don't think any of us blatantly disrespect that fact, but this—nobody'd written a play book for this."

Beck looks to the side, then, and there's something that Mark can't read at all in the line of his profile. Mark asks, "If you're not running interference, what are you not telling me?"

Beck looks back at him, but after a second, shakes his head. "Nope, that you've got to ask Lewis about. She would actually kill me if I were to break ranks on this one."

Mark hops off the table. Beck winces. "Now?"

Mark shrugs and pushes himself into the corridor. Beck doesn't follow.

Lewis is on duty, so she'll be up in the command center. He makes his way there and settles himself into a chair next to her. Vogel and Johanssen are each at a different station, but he doesn't really care who listens in. It's clear they all know.

He's still trying to figure out what he's asking when she asks, "Something on your mind?"

Slowly, he asks, "What'd you do that's got you—being less military, I guess?"

She looks over at him, raises an eyebrow, but doesn't say anything. Mark frowns at her. "There's something nobody's telling me. It keeps coming up in little ways. You not getting on our backs about the sleeping arrangements, Johanssen being so careful about the data packets…" Mark taps the console. "Other things that I can't think of off the top of my head right now, but that I've noticed, now that I know I've noticed them."

"Mark—" She starts, a smile on her face that tells him she's going to redirect the conversation.

"Commander," he says. He finds his hand curling into a fist, his nails biting into his palm. "What did you do?"

He can feel the way Vogel and Johanssen are staring-not-staring. Lewis closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them and says calmly, "We came back and got you. And if they court-martial my ass and put me in prison for it for half my natural life, I still would have made the same decision, and so would all of us, so if you use this as an excuse to feel guilty, I swear I will punch you in the face. Multiple times."

Mark blinks at her. "You…weren't supposed to come back for me."

Lewis is too busy glaring at him, so Johanssen cuts in, "You know NASA. Risk-benefit analysis, one life versus six, blah, blah, blah."

Mark turns to blink at her. "Are you—are you fucking kidding me?"

There's a moment of silence before Vogel asks, "About what part?"

Mark honestly isn't sure whether to laugh or cry. He can't feel betrayed by NASA. The higher ups are chosen because they're risk averse. It's the way things work. Astronauts are chosen because they're risk takers. Really, he should have figured this out before. He knew at least some of the variables, there had been, is a good chance that this maneuver could end with all of them dead.

In the end, all he can manage to say is, "If they put you in prison, the rest of us are coming for you. Get ready to spend your life on the run."

Lewis tilts her head. "I guess that's only fair."

Hermes is large in terms of pure measurements. But put six people in her together for over a year and it doesn't really seem that way. They've all gotten used to accidentally walking in on each other in one way or another, even if it's just walking in on Martinez while he's talking with his wife, or catching one of the others undressing for a shower, or whatever. Things happen.

It shouldn't surprise Mark when he goes to the infirmary to grab some Tylenol for a headache and finds Beck and Johanssen having sex against the wall. Nobody's supposed to be in the infirmary this time of day.

"Oh," he says, and walks right back out.

Five minutes later, standing in front of the window in the lounge area and trying to get his heart beat back down to a rate that doesn't make him dizzy, he hears two sets of footsteps make their way into the room. They come to stand on either side of him.

Johanssen breaks first, giggling a little. Mark ends up laughing, too, unsure of how it happens, only that her nervous amusement is infectious. Beck snorts, says, "Sorry," but he doesn't sound sorry.

It's not that Mark hasn't laughed since leaving Mars. He's laughed quite a bit. Martinez and he share a similar sense of humor and have more than once spent hours annoying the crap out of the rest of the crew. But there's something different about this. Maybe because he didn't have to work for it. Maybe because there's no edge to it: he's not making himself laugh about things he can't cry about. He doesn't know, all he knows is that it feels like the first drink of water after dehydration.

His eyes tear up and his abs hurt and it's not even pleasant, not really, but all the same, he's a little disappointed when it's over. They're all on the floor by then, gasping, Johanssen lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, Beck doubled over his knees, staring at Mark.

Beck asks, "You know the funniest part?" a tremble of laughter still in his voice.

"I could guess," Mark says, "but," he motions with his hand for Beck to continue.

"If you'd just waited, we were going to invite you."

Mark stops breathing. Johanssen reaches up to smack him on the back with a, "Relax, it's just an offer, you're allowed to say no," but her voice isn't as calm as her words.

He chokes out a, "What?"

Beck rubs his face. "Yeah, okay, subtlety is not a strength for either of us. But we'd been talking and—"

"If this is, like, a pity fuck thing, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have starfuckers lining up when we get home." Mark can admit, if only to himself, that sometimes his defensive humor lacks a touch of class.

Johanssen bristles at that, there's no other word for it, and says, "No."

"No?" Mark asks, honestly having lost the thread.

"No, this isn't a pity fuck thing, Jesus, Mark, and no, they don't get to have you."

"What if I want them to have me?" Mark asks. "What If I want—"

Beck blindsides him with a kiss. It's more teeth than anything, a little painful, off-center, and Mark finds himself grasping for Beck's shirt, pulling him in. Beck curves his hands over Mark's and pulls away his mouth, but leaves their foreheads touching. "You were saying?"

"Dirty pool," Mark mutters.

Johanssen sits up and slithers toward them, wrapping herself over Mark's back like a lemming. "Mhm."

Mark drops his head, snuffling at Beck's shoulder. "Well, shit, if I'd've known, I'd've stayed and watched."

Mark doesn't know what Johanssen does to score them the bunk room to themselves for a couple of hours. He doesn't really care. Especially not when she pushes him back against the wall and inserts her leg between his thighs. She meets his eyes and asks, "So, you wanna be in the middle?"

Mark jerked off on Mars. He has a hand and a dick and an imagination, of course he did. But most of the time he was too worn out or hungry or lonely or some combination thereof to bother, so it's been awhile since he's really concentrated on his nether regions.

Shakily, he tells her, "I'm gonna come really quickly if that happens." After a second, he admits, "I might anyway."

She nips at his shoulder while Beck says, "I suppose we'll just have to do it again, then. Oh, the sacrifices we make for you."

Mark would laugh, except for how it's true, and how Johanssen's sucking at his lower lip. She tugs at him, and he goes easily, letting them pull his shirt over his head, work his pants down and off. He makes a displeased noise and goes for Beck's shirt. Beck laughs and takes the hint, stripping down, saying, "C'mon, you too," to Johanssen.

Mark's surrounded by skin, then. He can't remember it ever feeling quite this good, not even when sex was new and a bit illicit. Beck kisses the back of his neck and Mark makes a needy, breathy sound.

"Yeah, that's it," Johanssen says. They move him again, somehow fitting the three of them in a bunk space meant for one. It's cramped, but Mark doesn't notice, doesn't notice anything outside of the sharp bite of Beck's teeth into his palm, a counterpart to the wet heat of Johanssen's mouth closing over him.

He shakes his head. "I can't—I c-can't."

"Shh," Beck whispers in his ear. He slips a wet finger in Mark, and Mark's breathing gets a little thin, a little frantic. Johanssen backs off, kissing her way down the inside of his thigh. Mark reaches for her, making grabby hands, and she laughs and brings herself up to kiss him. She tastes like him, and Mark thinks he'd like to taste Beck on her.

Beck slips a second finger in and Mark mumbles, "C'n I, mm, get you wet?"

"Trust me, Mark, I'm plenty wet," she drags the words across his cheek, but she also maneuvers herself so that she's against the back of the bunk, and he can get his mouth on her.

Mark is good at this, the kind of good that comes from having been a geeky kid who liked plants too much and still wanted girls to sleep with him. For the record, he's a blowjob champ for the same reason. But he's not so much worried about impressing her—for once he's totally aware of how much she likes him, how much he is wanted, is strangely but wonderfully comfortable that he's on equal footing in this equation—as making her squirm the way they've made him squirm.

He pulls out all the stops, goes in hard and fast and grins when she fists her hand in his hair and says, "Fuck, that's—" and then a whole bunch of syllables that don't translate into English, or any other language Mark is familiar with.

Beck laughs, a little high, and slips inside Mark. Mark has to stop for a moment, pant. It's been…a few years, actually. Beck says, "Hey," and Mark says, "Good, it's good," and it is, intense in the way he wants it to be, a little too much of just right.

Johanssen takes advantage of Mark's distraction to slide down again, and slip a condom on him, pull him into her, hooking her leg over his. He accidentally digs his fingernails into her, the push-pull of it making him lose all sense of clear thought for a moment. He says, "Sorry, I didn't—" and she grumbles, "Again."

Beck mumbles into his neck, "She likes teeth and nails and…um."

Mark laughs, even though he's having a hard time trying to hold any single train of thought, either. He leans in for another kiss with Johanssen, grabs Beck's hand and seizes up, his orgasm coming harsh and vivid and perfect.

When he's limp against them, Beck starts to pull away, and Mark tightens his grip. "No. Nonono."

"Okay," Beck says, "We got you."

Mark puts a hand between himself and Johanssen, and toys with her, working on getting her off. It's a little bit painful, all the contact now that he's done and over-sensitized. It's exactly what he wants.

There's a honeymoon period. It involves a lot of sex and even more cuddling, Johanssen introducing Mark to more comics than he knew existed, Beck and him arguing over leading men, the three of them making suggestions for a home base on earth.

Mark's pretty sure it's that last that causes their first fight, although, honestly, once it's over, he can't remember how it starts. It's about Johanssen wanting a cat and Mark likes cats.

He ends up in the gym when it's over—more because they're all tired of yelling at each other than because anything has been resolved—running until he gets sick. He cleans up after himself and then sits on the floor, the room smelling of industrial grade cleaning chemicals and filtered air.

Martinez finds him there and sits down across from him. When it's clear Mark's not going to say anything, he opens with, "We're all a little freaked out about what it's going to be like, when we get back."

Mark blinks at him. Martinez shrugs. "Hard not to overhear on this thing. And I'm guessing the issue isn't really about Johanssen wanting a cat, is all I'm saying."

"You have a point," Mark grants.

Martinez sighs. "We know the media's swarming and we know it's going to be a million times worse for you, not just because you'll be the center of it, but because buffer period with us or no, you were left by yourself in the ninth circle of hell for over a year."

Mark rubs a hand over his face. "You know what they say, you can never go home."

Martinez shakes his head. "Don't. Don't make this something trite. You are home. With them. And they're worried for themselves and scared for you. It's amplified in ever y discussion the three of you have about anything having to do with returning. So things are gonna run hot sometimes."

"Yeah." Put in that light, things make more sense.

"You should get the cat, by the way. Animals are good for therapy. Which you need, my friend."

"It'll eat my plants," Mark grumbles.

Martinez rolls his eyes. "You outsmarted Mars, dickface. I think you can handle a little cat-related problem solving."

Mark hadn't realized it was possible for that argument to seem more stupid, but yes, evidently it absolutely was.

In the next communications packet sent from them to NASA, Mark sneaks a request into Mindy for the cutest cat macro she can find. She comes through in spades and Mark presents it to Johanssen with a soft, "I'm sorry."

They've made up long before that, of course. None of them particularly wants to be angry, and it's hard to hold onto the emotion under those circumstances. Mark admits, "I'm terrified of the media. I always figured, you know, we'd come back, we'd do some interviews as a team, it'd be over. People'd move on. Really, the only people who'd watch anyway would be science geeks. Now—"

He swallows and makes hand gestures that don't even mean anything to him. Beck and Johanssen share a look and then they each capture one of his hands. Beck says, "If you don't want to do solo interviews, you don't do solo interviews."

Mark thinks that's probably naïve, but he appreciates the sentiment. He finds himself squeezing their hands, maybe a little bit too tightly, but he can't stop. "What if they figure it out, about us? What if they—what if we're suddenly on the cover of every fucking grocery store tabloid, making it out like it's some kind of crime to just, just…" He makes a face. "They won't understand. They'll want every piece of me and they'll interpret all of them wrong. All my logs, everything, it's all going to be public property, and I—I knew that, of course I did, but I also thought I'd be dead so it'd be, well, at the very least less embarrassing."

Johanssen doesn't skip a beat before saying, "They can't have any of the pieces of you."

Mark looks at her. She shrugs. "Those are ours. So whatever they're devouring out there, whatever they think they're taking, it's just like when you buy a print. Maybe it looks like the original art, but that doesn't mean it has its texture or the depth of color or…or anything that makes it the original."

"That's…a startlingly good analogy." Mark's impressed.

Johanssen gives him the finger with her free hand. He nods in acceptance and says, "I'm still wigged."

"Yeah," she says, leaning in to him.

"Yeah," Beck repeats with feeling, boxing him in from the other side. Mark doesn't know when being penned in began to feel like safety. He worries about what it means for when they're back on earth. For the moment, though, he just lets it sink in.

The last two months are the hardest. All of them are at once desperate to be off the ship and nervous about what happens once their feet touch the ground. Mark stops having nightmares and instead begins sleeping too much, as though he can suspend time by not experiencing it.

For obvious reasons, it just makes time proceed more quickly.

They make plans, little things, to try and keep their focus on the stuff that's manageable. Mark wants lasagna, preferably with four cheeses. Johanssen wants a trip to the mountains to snowboard. Beck wants to go to an open-air concert.

Everyone works out more than usual, sweating out nervous energy. There are more fights than ever before, people snapping out of nerves or weariness or even just cabin fever.

The sleep cycle before descent protocols will begin none of them sleep. They watch earth on the viewscreens. Vogel and Martinez talk about their kids. Lewis talks about her plans to make up for three missed anniversaries with her husband. Johanssen talks about the meet up she's planning with some of her college friends. Beck talks about his brother. Mark talks about how much he misses his parents. It doesn’t even feel strange or like being a mama's boy. It's just who he is, and they all know it.

By the time it's time to start the protocols, they're as wound down as they're going to get. Martinez slaps his hands together and says, "Okay then. Let's do this."

It's raining when they finally depart from the shuttle, NASA having checked and double-checked and triple-checked that everything is in order. It's raining and a little bit too humid and Mark takes off the headpiece to his EVA and tilts his head back, letting the drops fall on his face.

Johanssen stands next to him and says, "Mmm, tastes like pollution," but she sounds giddy, too thrilled to pull off blasé.

Beck comes up on Mark's other side. "With hints of burnt atmosphere."

Mark grins. "Fucking delicious."