cycles (this love i fear)

There’s no flaw to this: attempting to dance with Anna yet again.

She says you’re getting better, beaming her smile and acting as if all of this wasn’t a ruse to shield the burgeoning urge to touch each other beneath the underlying veneer of romanticism.

The term ‘ Romanticism’ might be a stretch in itself - at least you seem to believe so; who knows, you’re enamored in the classics - the art it presents.

It’s another subject you want to learn more about.

–

“Ready?” Anna asks you, anticipatory.

You nod in compliance; the routine finally begins:

First step: your right foot goes forward, Anna’s goes backwards - she’s one to seek first when you least expect it, falling under introspection-
Step two: left foot goes to the side - Anna, like always, is adamant to introduce a new concept to you she discovers-

Step three: right foot follows same pathing as the left - it’s something new (plausible), plus it’s something you’ll find intriguing (perhaps), and lastly I appreciate you trusting my ideas, a lot-

Step four: left foot backwards, and Anna’s foot does your pathing now - and it adds the suggestion of how she paints these expressions - these stepping stones into her heart-

Step five: right foot goes to the side - and you’re feeding into the curiosity because of the wanting to go beyond the nearness of each other-

Final step: left foot trails behind - then suddenly, once the tension’s thickened to a point where it’s nearly suffocating, inches away from closing the space; you break away from kissing her, and the loop repeats-

Like a neverending record - going on forever and ever; which in itself, is also a dance. You dance with Anna hoping to have the waltz embedded into the learning algorithm. Hope to eclipse the feelings, dangerously calculated to an eventual outcome. Before the new mission parameters were delivered, you browsed through Anna’s tarot cards since most of the checks were already completed by then. Diagnostics and readings were leveled; other amenities were stored properly. You’re coworkers, crewmates, two beings longing for warmth. Your reflection doesn’t see you any different.

You remember the first time Anna offered to dance. Ignorant and dismissive aside, you couldn’t bring yourself to match her gaze. And it’s not often that you would dilute time into anything else outside of protocol, for one thing.

At times, Anna would wander in the ship with her mind clouded with slumber and darkness, wearing her fleet’s blazer or some dusty jacket over her sleepwear - considering the Primrose was cold, and (as you’ve deduced) the nights were colder. It’s especially a rarity to see Anna’s bare shoulders, let alone the chapped lips up close and in detail, or question the thought that it’s worrying to study her in a more intimate appearance.

She’s not an object subjected for your pleasure. You know this well enough, and it’s all the more reason to not delve beyond that conclusion.

You’ve exceeded in doing so. Countless cycles lost in the vastness of space until you felt her tongue clash against yours. Mistakes like that are what makes us human.

Passionate. Engulfing. It had those two characteristics and so much more. Why wouldn’t it have more? It’s easy to notice in the exchanges you two share: e xplain to me how we get ahead of ourselves is one of the many caveats she presents, and soon your composure warbles away from common sense and nothing seems to compute. You have a hard time picking up the semantics and decoding because some of the terms are indiscernible, trying to process and understand. Another slow waltz, maybe. Don’t hide. It’s futile to try. Kiss me.

Once everything eases, and the sweat subsides on the shores of skin faded into the covers of her bed. Your mouth slacks, frozen. Anna’s paintings: with a boat and two figures sitting inside, on the endless ocean, give a close interpretation of the threshold waiting to be passed - the Primrose’s mission, to be exact.

Though Anna’s paintings are her stories - her soul, and you’ve looked there rather than her eyes. Found desperation and desire to escape. Left her quarters riddled with in her taste, and stare deep into the reflection of the mirror and feel the sticky gloss on your cheek.

You’ve processed (and stabilized) the state of elation. Straying away from comfort you deemed as ‘unstable’. Though some aspects were appropriate, change was always an incalculable factor, therefore: unstable. States on the brink of war and terror were unstable. Unstable synapses firing in your brain seeing Anna’s nightgown in its sheer appearance. You have trouble computing the idea of her - how you want her, and quite literally: all of her.

-

(Here’s what you did since the kiss: going through the log of reports and requests that were for her eyes only. Countless days and hours in the mission and Anna’s been far removed in being professional (and luckily, it’s just you and the computer receiving these messages):

> status report, Anna Tanaka, quoting on the screen: “ unfortunately ive decided to not care and will not read the attachments sent to me.”

> service inquiry, Anna Tanaka, about the sudden drop in oxygen levels, quoting: “ so what if i don’t breathe, one of us will be alive anyway.”

> mission advisory, Anna Tanaka, at approximately 00:00 hours, quoting: “ what if we just steer this fucking ship off into the burning sun representing our love, huh?”

You are both idiots. As Anna would allegedly claim.)

–

Thankfully, you’ve disciplined yourself in running through the usual checks, rather than acting like you don’t know what’s going on.

In your discovery, this would’ve been the perfect time to do that order from a few megacycles ago: get in the spacesuit and fix that shitty panel that kept blinking on the monitor while getting tangled with the cable while laughing with Anna about how dense you were about your emotions; say a shitty comeback about Anna’s bedside manner and justify the warning was from a few scrapes of damage left by the small debris when traveling through the rings of Indiga (eloquently summarized in your readings back to mission control): “ we had to adjust our course to help compensate for the trajectory of the planet’s ring pathway.”

Once that was done, now you could debug the Primrose’s balance from the cockpit. No way to tell when you might make landfall at the next world nearby. What might happen when Anna steps off the ramp without any protective gear on; finds out the ground is incredibly toxic, and melt right off the face of the planet.

–

Anna insisted on going outside, but you rejected the suggestion and took her place instead.

Venturing into an atmosphere mixing the pressurized gas of the decompression chamber - the sub-zero temperatures acting as a good barrier to start in creating space. New objective: distance yourself; keep focus and all thoughts rational.

You wander and think while crossing the icky, green fog blending into the hills.

In doing so, you helplessly think about her.

–

When you return. She’s wearing the same nightgown from before.

“You’re back!’ Standing in the middle of the sliding door watching you dust off the collective dirt on your arms. “Do you wanna practice dancing again?”

Twisting your gaze, she leans forward, the strap skating off her shoulder. It’s a brief moment in the dialogue - the one running through your head, frozen at the request. “I think you got it this time.” Anna’s so willing - I know, I’m overbearing, letting you do these things out of tempo as we’re kissing, so please- I beg- and she’s frightfully intentful in making it worse.

Intentful for one thing, yet thrilling for someone like her to be ambitious - making you fold in a game of poker while she held her hand (a pair when you bought her bluff), and it’s simple to deduce all other hypotheticals as well. She’s a bug in your line of code, manifested to to defy all rational calculations. How she easily reads what you tell - even more horrifying to be solved and understood.

She makes you feel like a human being; help defy your maker that much more difficult.

–

So, again-

You’re dancing with her. She praises the improvement, humming. You’re not stepping on her feet as much compared to the first time. Every step and move is carried with precision, sometimes hazy and fritzing the logic; falter one motion, and your hand slides lower to the divots on her back.

“I still have trouble understanding,” you tell her, “The significance of dancing on Toyama.”

Anna slots herself at your arms and middle, blinking. She doesn’t say anything to answer, going through the steps, saying, “it’s an intimate connection with the person you like.”

Swaying left, then right, your feet do the same. Her skin touching feels electric. “Somewhat answers my question,” you drawl, hesitant, “doesn’t help the prolonged eye contact, though.”

“Like what you see?”

“I’d prefer to consider it uncouth.”