The Girl That's Out of This World

"Liftoff in 3, 2, 1!"

You're slammed into your jump seat, the g-forces pressing against you, metaphorical straps against the literal straps around you. Your ears are filled with the loud roar of thruster explosions, your eyes only seeing blue, then white, then grey as your vessel strives to break through the atmosphere. It's a rough launch, there's lots of rattling, maybe this is the one time things go sideways—fuck why are you thinking like that, fuck fuck fuck—

Everything goes black, and you blink, finding yourself in the stars.

"You good?"

"Yeah, bit of a bumpy launch eh?"

"Eh, it was fine." That's Kim Yooyeon for you, your fellow astronaut on this trip, utterly unflappable she might as well be gliding through life, so unfazeable that she might as well be her own phase of matter. She's already unbuckling herself from the seat and floating to the back. The mission is long, 2 months to be exact, but there's lots to do. "Monitor the systems."

"Copy." You stay seated, coordinating with mission control until finally you call out to her.

"We're enroute to the space station."

"Copy, support systems are operational, no damage from the launch."

"Really? After all that rattling?"

"All bark and no bite, luckily." Yooyeon straps in again next to you. "Get some sleep, it'll be a few hours before we get to the station." You lean back, and allow yourself to fall asleep to the beeps of the systems and the silence of space.

A higher pitched beep jolts you out of your sleep, and you see the space station ahead.

"Beginning docking maneuvers," you announce, and Yooyeon has shaken herself awake, repeating your order back to you. Both of you hold your breath as you watch the station loom over your craft, and the screen shows your shuttle closing in on the docking port. You move the controls slightly, there's a rumble as contact is made, followed by the whirr of locking mechanisms, and finally—

"Docking complete." Both of you lean back in your seats as the most stressful part of the mission is done.

"Good job, let's get out of here." Yooyeon floats to the shuttle exit ahead of you, and after disengaging the door locks you're both drifting into the space station. "Ah, finally out of this suit."

As you step out of your spacesuit, the helmet catches on your head, giving you a proper smack. You had forgotten—no, not forgotten, gotten used to—how pretty Yooyeon looks. She was the belle of the space force, as pretty as she is sharp. Many of your colleagues were envious that you got to go on a space mission with her, to accompany the angel on her way back to heaven, so to speak. Over the multiple weeks of intense training and preparation though, Yooyeon became your colleague, your teammate, responsible for your life just as you are responsible for hers on this mission, with safety being the priority above all else.

So you stopped seeing Yooyeon superficially, and yet, a far way from the surface of the Earth, you catch yourself staring at her beauty—long black hair, round eyes, ruby lips, delicate as a flower. Yet she's up here in space with you, suffering through the grueling launch and coming out looking like that, while you just... look like you.

"Have you forgotten how to remove the jumpsuit already? We spent so much time training on that."

"Just adjusting to the low grav environment," you mutter as an excuse. The two of you tour the space station, floating through the various segments that make up the station. You arrive at the living quarters—they're small and claustrophobic, but as with anything when you're in space, ironically space is at a premium. Your sleeping cabin is effectively an open coffin, complete with straps to stop you from floating away, there's a curtain for privacy, but that's about it.

Then there's a small kitchen, which is basically just the area that has the "cooking" machine, reheating and rehydrating space food for human consumption. There's a bathroom, also small, and finally the main body of the station where you'll be conducting science experiments, observing the stars, and watching over Earth.

"Everything is operational," Yooyeon speaks into the microphone, communicating with mission control.

"Roger, please begin the experiments whenever you're ready."

The two of you throw yourselves into the work, working with the command center and logging experiment results. In between experiments there was a lot of maintenance to be done, and you two find yourselves in the little nooks and crannies of the space station, checking for cracks, leaks, and loose bolts. It put the two of you in close quarters, and with no perfect substitute for weightlessness there was no small amount of accidental touches and brushes—you didn't notice your hand drifting close to her chest, she didn't notice her leg drifting between yours. But things remained professional for Yooyeon—everything addressed without fluster or embarrassment. You are in space after all, there were much bigger things to be worried about.

You wish you could say the same for yourself. You knew you would have to abstain as much as possible in space, as any cleanup would be quite hard when everything is quite literally floating about, but over time it became harder and harder to ignore Yooyeon. She dressed simply in a t-shirt and shorts most of the time, and even that was enough to distract you—when did her legs look so good, and her thighs muscled yet juicy, how did you not notice it before?

The breaking point came when Yooyeon pushed herself off a wall to get through the station quickly, only to collide with you coming out of the sleeping quarters and sending both of you spinning through the corridor.

"Ah! I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were awake— Ah!" After the collision her top had come loose and it had ridden up, floating well above her waist, giving you a peek at her midriff and simple bra underneath. Hastily she pulls it down, a light blush on her cheeks. "Sorry about that, I thought the coast was clear."