That evening we heard it before we even pushed through the door — raised voices bouncing off the low ceiling, two clear factions. Sam and I shrugged off our parkas and hung them on the hooks by theentrance.
The lounge was warm from the number of bodies already packed into it, the bar pushed to one side to make room, mismatched armchairs and the long couch arranged in a rough horseshoe facing the wall screen.
This was one of the facts of life at Waypoint Station that incoming personnel were warned about in their pre-deployment paperwork.
No streaming.
We were so remotely located that bandwidth was limited — sanctioned for research only.
The lounge ran on a stockpile of DVDs. Everyone who came to the station knew to load their hard drives with movies and shows. On Friday nights the station had a vote on what went on the screen.
Tonight the fight was between Die Hard 4 and John Wick 4. Both sides had committed entirely.
I leaned into Sam’s shoulder. “Which one?”
He rubbed his jaw, considering it with the same expression he gave weather forecasts and equipment checks. “John Wick.”
I turned and walked into the group huddled by the TV screen and raised my voice. “John Wick! John Wick!”
Sam walked past me and dropped into the far end of the couch. Such petty things were beneath his highness.
The debate ran another ten minutes. Someone produced a scoring algorithm on a whiteboard — points for rewatch value, points for action-to-plot ratio, points for runtime — and the math came out in John Wick’s favor. The Die Hard contingent relocated to the bar end of the room with their drinks, maintaining a dignified silence.
I dropped onto the couch next to Sam with a huge grin. The room settled. The bar end quieted. Someone killed the overheadlights. The screen flickered on.
Outside the R&R windows the harbor was awash in the twilight glow of the night sun of Antarctica. Inside, the only sounds were the movie and the low hum of the station doing what stations do at night — running, cycling, keeping everyone alive in the cold.
At some point in the second act I shifted. The cushion was deep and the room was warm and the week had been long. My head found Sam’s shoulder and came to rest there. His arm moved. It came up and around me, settling across my back, pulling me closer into his side. He did not look away from the screen.
I did not look away from the screen either.
It was not the first time we had watched something like this together. Back in Alaska, Sam had no television of his own and most nights we had ended up in my bedroom with the small TV set propped on the dresser. Sam loved baseball and was completely unhinged about it.
I had found the sport incomprehensible and boring as hell. A man threw a ball. Another man hit it or didn’t. Everyone stood around waiting. It was so slow.
But Sam — Sam who never raised his voice, who delivered bad news and good news in the same flat register — would watch that stupid sport with his entire body. He would lean forward and argue with the screen.
I had watched Sam more than the game.
My revenge had been ice hockey. The first time I had come to know he had no idea about my dear sport, I had sat him down in front of a playoff game and delivered a full explanation of the rules — icing, offside, the trapezoid behind the net, the difference between a hooking penalty and a holding penalty. To his credit, Sam had sat through the entire forty minutes and bythe time I was done, he had every single rule memorized.
Obviously, that hadn’t helped with my growing crush on him.
On the couch in the R&R lounge, I nestled further against his warmth.
“Want to go to bed?” Sam’s low voice against my ear gave me goosebumps.
“Nah.”
“You’re falling asleep. C’mon.”
“Nah.”
I didn’t tell him that leaving would mean missing out on time with him. This was the only opportunity I had nowadays to be with him in this way.
4
Chapter 4
