Rommie was piping another sorry blob of icing on her gingerbread cookie house when Harper entered the officer’s mess.
"Hey Rommie… uh… whatcha doing?"
"What does it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to decorate this house for the gift exchange."
Harper opened the fridge and came up with a Sparky. He came over to the table where she was working and tilted his head. Rommie felt a blush spread across her face.
"Hm. Mind if I take a crack at it?"
Rommie pouted behind Harper’s back but she handed over the pastry bag.
"Okay, see? Chef Harper weel show you… how eet eez done. You must squeeeeeeeze the bag liike so… but gently so it weel not… how do you say, cause une explosyon! Voila!"
Harper’s accent was horrible but he piped a perfect section of icing across the roof of the house.
She shrugged at her hologram, which had appeared in the corner to shrug at her.
"Harper, where did you learn to do that?"
"Zees?"
"No, not that terrible accent. Learn how to decorate so well."
Harper smiled and piped another row, and Rommie found herself enjoying his profile, the way his lip curled up and his cheek dimpled. She was suddenly aware of their close proximity and took a step away. Her hologram rolled her eyes at her and fizzed away.
Harper gave her a look but she smiled it off. As Harper turned back to the house, Rommie detected an increase in the blood perfusing his face.
"Well, I’ve had lots of odd jobs. Picked up some skills here and there. Where did you think I got such steady hands, huh RomDoll?"
He turned to her and smirked, and both dimples showed this time.
"Harper!"
"Hey, you asked," he said, laughing. He scooped some of the icing off the roof with his index finger and licked it off. He gestured. "So, you wanna try?"
"Excuse me?!" Rommie’s mouth fell open and she blushed.
"Uh… decorating the house? It’s supposed to be from you, right? So you’d better have at least a hand in it."
"Oh, uh… right, I should."
Harper cocked an eyebrow but said nothing. He handed her the pastry bag and she hovered over the house, but her technique hadn’t improved from watching Harper - she piped a perfect row of uneven globs across the roof.
Harper just leaned on the table and dimpled at her, saying things like, "You’re doing fine, RomDoll…" and "Just show it who’s boss…"
Her heart beat faster and her main A.I., which had appeared on the far screen out of Harper’s sight lines but fully in hers, frowned at her. Because she was thinking about Harper again.
And how could she not think about him? The way he was just leaning there, smiling angelically, encouraging her… not to mention how he fixed her without complaint… how he was always there… how he was her friend, and she his…
"Uh… Rommie? Rommie?"
"What? What - oh!"
She’d gotten carried away and a huge blob of icing clung to the eaves of the roof like a demented icicle.
"Oh… I wrecked it!"
Harper came over to inspect the damage. "It’s fine, Rommie. Look, just take the spatula and scrape it off."
"Oh. Okay."
Her main A.I. rolled her eyes too and vanished. She and her holographic form had been doing that for about two weeks now, when she’d been caught staring at the way Harper’s shirt rode up when he was in Access Tunnel 19, fixing the subrouter. And there had been several problems with the subrouter that week, not one of them genuine… she couldn’t believe herself for doing that… Harper, of all people? But she’d become fascinated with the way his shirt did that riding up thing and that soft looking patch of skin on his stomach that had been revealed.
Harper took the metal spatula and scraped off the offending blob of icing and licked it off. Her eyes went wide and her spine felt strange and tingly as she watched his tongue and she ripped her gaze away.
"Uh… Rommie? Are you okay?"
"I’m fine, really." Hmm, that was an interesting dent in the wall…
"Um… maybe I should go." His dimples vanished.
"NO! No, uh, what I mean is, you should stay."
"If you don’t want me…"
"I want you, Harper…"
"…to stay, you should just… um…"
Rommie’s mouth fell open again and this time, Harper’s did too.
"…to stay, of course, I mean, I want you to stay."
"Oh. Oh, well, good then."
"Good."
"Yes, good."
"Good."
"You said that already."
"Well, uh, I still mean it."
"Good."
"Um… maybe you should finish off the rest. Yours look a lot better."
She handed him the bag again and his hand brushed hers and it was like a spark jumped between them. She jerked her hand away and gasped.
"Did you feel that?" he asked.
"No," she lied.
"Okay."
He piped another section of icing and as he turned, Rommie realized her main A.I. was back, smirking at her. Rommie frowned at her main A.I… You didn’t, she tried to broadcast, using her frown.
Her main A.I. nodded smugly and disappeared.
She shook her head.
"…got Tyr for Dylan’s stupid secret Santa thing… I have no idea what to get a Nietzschean, let alone THAT Nietzschean…"
She found herself riveted to the sight of Harper’s mouth, the way he bit the corner of his lip.
"He likes to read," she said absently.
"Huh?"
She looked at him.
"Tyr. He likes to read. Maybe there’s something in storage that he might like. I did have Nietzscheans on board, you know."
"Uh… I don’t know about that. Going through someone’s stuff? Through a dead someone’s stuff?"
"In that case, I could suggest to Dylan a few hours planetside on Hyphentia. They have some great markets."
"Really? You would? Man, I’m so relieved. Not that Tyr wouldn’t know I’m his secret Santa, what with my fingers touching his present for like ten seconds while I buy it but… I owe the guy, Rommie."
Rommie found herself completely enamored with Relieved-Harper too.
"So who did you get?"
"Sorry?"
"Who gets a present a la Rommie?"
"Oh, uh…"
"Let me guess. Dylan, right? Or… Trance. Trance gets the strangest sugar highs…"
And Harper was off rambling again, but truth be told, she found it kind of sweet. Not to mention the fifty thousand other things that Harper did in his daily life.
Her hologram was back, this time gesturing at the door. It fizzed away.
"Harper? I’ll be right back."
"Sure, Rom Doll."
She went outside and her hologram appeared. "What do you want?"
"In the name of the Vedran Empress, would you do it already?" her holograph said.
"Do what?"
"Something! This is getting painful to watch. Besides, if you don’t do something in the next five minutes, I lose."
"Lose what?"
"The pool, of course."
"Pool?" she squeaked.
"Yes, pool," her holograph said. "Tyr, Trance, our main A.I. and I are the only ones left in it."
"Excuse me? Well, at least Dylan had the sense not to engage in these…"
"He was out first. Silly romantic."
"And Tyr?"
Her main A.I. flickered onto the nearest screen. "Hey! There will be no influencing the outcome." She flickered away.
"He guessed four years."
"And what’s the pool up to?"
"I can’t say. I’ve already said too much."
"Oh, really."
"Two hundred thrones. Oh, come on!"
"It’s not like you need the money, Andromeda."
"I know, I know. But will you help anyway?"
Rommie rolled her eyes. "Split the pot in half with me and I’ll consider it." It wasn’t exactly true - she was going to make a move anyway but she wanted to stop the hologram and the main A.I. from always interfering.
"All right, fine."
"Good," she said, and went back into the officer’s mess.
"What’s up?" Harper said.
"Oh, nothing. How’s it going?"
"Pretty good. What do you think?"
She leaned in, hyper-aware of his body heat. She smiled and said, "Not bad. You missed a spot though."
"I did? Where?"
As Harper leaned in too, Rommie swiped a dot of icing on his nose and then everything seemed to slow down even though she knew that was impossible. She leaned towards him and Harper leaned back, heat rushing to his face, eyes widening, one hand reaching as she licked the tip of his nose.
Harper stopped breathing.
She pulled away, alarmed, but he hadn’t screamed or run for the door, so she thought, what the hell, curled one hand around the back of his neck and kissed him on the mouth. After another moment of not breathing, Harper kissed her back, staggering against the table and putting his hand right through the roof of the cookie house.
"Crap!" he said, but Rommie didn’t care, she pushed him onto the table and onto the mess, and she crawled on top of him, and Harper suddenly didn’t care either. He ran his hands through her hair, kissed her again and again, and she untucked his shirt and caressed that soft patch of skin on his stomach.
Touching him wasn’t like anything she’d expected… it was better, more intense, more vivid, and she had one hell of an imagination.
She finally pulled back because well, Harper had to breathe and she had icing in her ear.
"I’m sorry about the house," he said a moment later, trying to pull out the chunks of mashed cookie out of her hair.
"I’m not."
"Why? You worked so hard on that."
"Well, you seemed to enjoy it. Wasn’t that the point of the secret Santa gift exchange?"
Harper peered at her, incredulous, but the dimples wouldn’t be denied. "You were MY secret Santa?"
She kissed his icing-smeared cheek. "Merry Christmas."
Harper laughed and it was a nice, pleased sound. "Hey, whaddya say we move this somewhere… less messy?"
"I guess that rules out your quarters then, right?"
"Hey! They aren’t that bad."
"Then I’ll meet you there in half an hour."
"Half an hour?"
"Someone has to clean up this mess," she said.
"I’ll help you."
"No need. Go on." She gave him a smile.
"Okay. Half an hour."
Harper slid off the table and headed for the door.
"So we won," Rommie said under her breath as she dispatched a maintenance droid for the officer’s mess.
"No. Trance did."
Rommie laughed. It figured.
"What’s so funny?" Harper asked, turning back around.
"Oh… nothing."
In Hydroponics, Trance
smiled at the viewscreen showing the officer’s mess and said, "Merry Christmas,
Rommie."
The End