Chapter Text
Harlan caught up to Radu in the hallway after the morning lesson. Luckily, the others had already gone ahead to lunch so Radu was alone. Perfect. He didn’t want an audience if this got awkward.
“Hey, uh…” Harlan began. Great start.
Radu paused and spun around at the sound of his voice, he looked… nervous? Or was Harlan was just projecting his own feelings into this reaction?
Harlan continued, in what he really hoped was a casual tone. “Did Suzee tell you that she got that old exterior camera working again?”
“Yeah, she mentioned it.” Radu was eyeing the distance between them.
“So yeah,” Harlan cleared his throat. Here it goes. “Did you want to check it out later? That nebula we found earlier will be a lot clearer now.”
Harlan hoped Radu hadn’t noticed how breathless he sounded.
“Oh.” Radu seemed surprised but pleased. “Yeah, alright.”
“Great! Meet in Command before dinner?”
Radu nodded.
Harlan let out a breath and grinned. “I’ll get it set up, don’t worry about anything!”
“Alright.”
Harlan caught the slight tilt of Radu’s head and realized that he probably had noticed Harlan acting strange after all.
Harlan had the whole afternoon to plan. He was supposed to be working on his independent study, but he had time for that later. This was more important.
By the time Harlan was done that evening, the Command room had been transformed into a luxurious picnic space.
Harlan had turned on the large front view screen which blanketed the area in front of the console in a warm light, every surface glowing slightly from the image of the nebula. Harlan dimmed the room lights to increase the effect. He had also found a spare blanket, which he spread over the floor, and covered it with an array of food.
Several cushions (clearly borrowed from the gathering room) were piled against the console in an effort to make the usually cold and empty space more comfortable. Harlan was rather pleased with how it turned out: gentle lighting, pillows, food to share...
Harlan looked up at the sound of the door swishing open.
Radu stood frozen for a moment, taking everything in with wide eyes before saying, “what’s all this?”
“Well, I figured since we’re going to miss dinner, I would bring dinner to you.”
Radu seemed hesitant. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Hmm? Oh, they’re not coming.” Harlan said off-hand, moving some cushions around. “Have a seat and help yourself, I got some of your favorites."
Radu seemed conflicted and Harlan really hoped he wasn’t going to change his mind, but Radu eventually approached the blanket, opposite of the side where Harlan was sitting, and sat cautiously on one of the cushions, leaving a good amount of space between them.
Fortunately, Radu seemed to loosen up a bit as the night went on and Harlan blamed his earlier hesitation on nerves.
They spent a rather pleasant evening relaxing against the pillows, admiring the view of the nebula, and pointing out details that they hadn’t been able to make out before.
Once most of the food was gone, they both slouched back against the console, indulging in the after-meal lethargy.
Radu spoke up, “it’s too bad the others couldn’t make it.”
Harlan looked over at him with the horrified realization that he never actually explained the purpose of all this. Hadn't he? He couldn’t remember now. He licked his lips, voice scratchy.
“I didn’t invite them,” he said. “This was just for you. Or, well,” he gave a nervous laugh, “just for us, I guess.”
“Oh?” Radu shifted slightly to look directly at Harlan.
“Yeah, there aren’t too many places for a date out here in the middle of nowhere, so I thought this would be a good idea.”
Radu sucked in a breath. “A date?” his voice wavered.
Harlan felt his heart rate speed up. “Yes?” he hadn’t meant it to sound like a question.
At Radu’s increasing stretch of silence, he added, quickly, “it doesn’t have to be one if you don’t want it to, I can just clean everything up here…”
“I want it to,” Radu interrupted, thankfully cutting him off before he got into a full-blown ramble.
Harlan forced himself to breathe slowly but when he finally spoke it still came out sounding strangled. “That’s great…yeah. I’m glad. Me too.”
“This really was a good idea,” Radu went on, quietly, nodding toward the screen.
Harlan relaxed against the pillows with a huff of air. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it clearer… I meant to but I was just …” he trailed off.
Radu gave him a small smile. “I get it. I think if I had known it was a date I would have been too scared to show up.”
Harlan raised his eyebrows, “I didn’t mean to trick you!” he protested but Radu cut him off again, holding up his hand in a soothing motion before resting it on the floor and leaning slightly toward Harlan.
“I know you didn’t,” he said kindly.
He said it with such sincerity that Harlan could only stare into his dark eyes and watch his face glow in a wash of color. For a moment, Harlan forgot how to breathe.
Harlan’s eyes flicked down to Radu’s hand on the floor between them. He reached his own hand out, tentatively.
Harlan heard Radu gasp loudly, yanking his hand away before Harlan could reach it.
Radu cradled his hand with the other, like it had been burned. He stared at the floor, breathing heavily.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Harlan pulled back to his side, leaning away, having the feeling he had ruined everything but not exactly knowing how.
Neither of them said anything for a few very long moments. Harlan watched Radu gradually calm down and relax slightly against the cushion. He still kept his hands clenched together in front of him.
Radu took a deep breath, “it’s not your fault, you wouldn’t know… it’s just…there are… implications to dating. For Andromedans.”
Harlan swallowed harshly, his throat clicking. “And those implications…are why you would have turned me down if you had known this was a date?”
Harlan was fairly sure that’s where this explanation was going.
Radu nodded furiously, eyes wide. “It’s…” he paused, shaking his head, almost to himself. He stood abruptly, avoiding Harlan’s gaze and turning toward the door. “Thank you. For all of this. But I just… I need to think.”
Harlan nodded distractedly even though Radu wouldn’t see the movement.
Radu was gone before Harlan even thought to ask what those implications actually were.
Harlan, in a daze, ended up wrapping the entire pile of dirty dishes and left over food in the blanket and dragging it back to the mess hall. He was still lost in thought when he arrived and noticed Suzee and Rosie were still there, two of the very last people he wanted to deal with right now.
He groaned quietly. They stood as soon as he entered but Harlan didn’t acknowledge them and dragged the whole bundled mess back to the kitchen. When he came back out, both of them were, frustratingly, still there.
Harlan sighed. Might as well get this over with or they were going to hound him forever.
“Your date didn’t go well, I take it?” Suzee asked, arms crossed. Saying she seemed displeased would be an understatement.
“What makes you think it was a date?” he bit back.
Suzee rolled her eyes. “Oh please, making sure none of us bothered you in Command even though we all want to check out the camera? More food than one person can eat? And you were both gone at dinner…” she counted them off on her fingers. “It wasn’t difficult to figure out.”
Harlan sighed again, louder, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“That bad, huh?” Rosie asked, but at least she sounded sympathetic and not like she wanted to shove him out of the air lock.
“I have no idea,” he said finally, waving an arm around. “Everything was going fine until the end.”
Suzee narrowed her eyes at him. “What. Did. You. Do.”
“I don’t know, okay?” he exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “I just tried reaching for his hand and then he panicked and ran off.”
They both gasped at the same time which was… not the reaction he had been expecting.
“What?” he asked warily, wondering if he actually wanted to know.
Suzee and Rosie shared a look and Harlan could swear they were having an entire conversation with only their eyes.
“You didn’t do the reading, did you?” Suzee finally said, turning back to glare at him.
“What? What reading?” This whole night was a mass of confusion and Harlan just wanted to go to bed and sulk. “I wasn’t aware I had to study for a date.”
“In this case, you did.”
“Get to the point, will you?” he sank down into the nearest chair, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He just needed to know how to fix this.
“I’m sending you an assignment I wrote from that biology unit we all took last year.”
Harlan snapped his head up. Suzee had her comp out and was furiously tapping away.
“What does a class assignment have to do with it?”
Suzee glanced up and glared at him before going back to what she was doing.
“Did Radu say anything at all before he left?” Rosie asked gently.
“Just that there were implications to dating.”
“Right. So.” Suzee said, businesslike. “I’m not going to tell you what that meant, you need to figure it out for yourself. And don’t make him tell you.”
“Fine.” Harlan agreed, dragging his comp out of his pocket when it pinged. “Why though? I still don’t know why I’m supposed to read this.”
“You don’t remember the final biology assignment we all had to write?”
Harlan shook his head.
“Figures,” Suzee huffed, under her breath. “You wanted an easy grade so you wrote about human biology?”
“Oh, that assignment.” How does she remember these things?
“The rest of us did it properly. We all swapped. I wrote mine about Andromedan biology and Radu wrote about mine.”
“Yeah but, how do YOU know?” Harlan directed this at Rosie.
She shrugged. “We all proofread each other’s assignments. You were too busy.”
“Does everybody know about…whatever this is, except me?” Harlan asked, indignant.
“Probably,” Suzee said, dryly.
Rosie strode over and patted his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, it’s just a little misunderstanding between cultures. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” She gave him a pitying smile and turned to leave. “Just don’t forget to listen, okay?”
Harlan nodded absently.
Suzee moved to follow her out but then turned and gave him a look that made him wish Rosie hadn’t already left.
“If you do anything to hurt him, and I mean anything, I will break your arm, got it?”
“Got it.” She probably would, too.
Since when was Suzee so protective of Radu? When had that happened? Probably something to do with that stupid assignment, knowing his luck.