Binary Systems [Complete, Slice-of-Life Sci-Fi Romance]

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Marie: Say you move here. And we're in a big fight, and you're super mad at me.
Gordon: Okay, I'll bite.
Marie: How do you handle it? Are you like, shouty and stuff when you're mad?
Gordon: With you I'd probably just set you on top of something tall and let you think about what you'd done.
Marie: Ha ha
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November 15th, 2090, about 8:20 pm MST, Montana City

Gordon stared at the screen, her face framed in soft light. She looked serious—thoughtful, almost like she was weighing something in her hand. Then she spoke, without ceremony.

"Hey, I've been thinking about something, and I don't know a good way to say it, so I'm just going to say it. I was watching the streams, and I didn't feel comfortable with the way Karen was touching you. I think we need to talk about boundaries."

His stomach tightened. Instinct took over.

"I thought we already talked about this," he said quickly, trying to keep his tone casual. Not too fast. Not too flat. Like they'd already resolved this. Like he still believed what he'd said last time.

They had talked about it. And back then, he'd believed every word: Karen flirts with everyone—she doesn't mean anything by it. She knows the line. But that certainty had slipped, somewhere along the way. He didn't know when exactly. The look in her eyes during one of their last streams? The lingering contact? The way he hadn't stepped back?

He didn't believe it anymore.

But if he could get Marie to accept the old truth like it still held weight, maybe he could avoid this whole conversation unraveling.

Just a small lie. A manageable one. A way to keep everything intact.

But Marie was quiet for a beat too long. Then she said:

"We did talk about it. You're right."

He started to breathe again—

"And I wasn't honest with you then."

That stopped him cold.

She looked straight into the camera, voice calm but stripped of artifice.

"I didn't want to be the clingy girlfriend. I didn't want to come between you and the people who've been there for you—Claire, Karen, Harry. The people who kept you afloat when your dad shut you out. I know what they mean to you. I would never want to take that away."

There was more. He could hear it coming.

"But?" he prompted, already tense.

She nodded slightly.

"But I don't want to lie to myself. And I don't want to lie to you, either. It's hard being so far away from you, Gordon. It's hard convincing myself that I'm not... just the girl on the screen. That you won't eventually drift, even if you don't mean to. Not because you're cheating. Just... because you're human. And they're right there. And I'm not."

He felt something inside him recoil, defensive.

"How do you know what I want?" he asked sharply. Too sharply.

Marie didn't flinch.

"Because if you didn't want physical closeness, you wouldn't be receptive to it from her."

It landed like a gut punch. Not because it was cruel. Because it was true.

"I don't know what you think our relationship is, Gordon," she continued, quieter now. "But when she touches you, she touches you like a girlfriend."

He shook his head. "I don't like this," he muttered.

"I don't either," she said softly, but there was steel in her tone.

He hated how cornered he felt. Like the air was narrowing.

"I don't want to be pushed into a place where I have to choose between my best friend and my girlfriend," he snapped, more force in the words than he intended.

Marie's expression shifted—not hurt, exactly. Just tired. Resigned.

"I don't want that either."

The silence stretched between them. Thick with all the things neither of them knew how to say. Gordon exhaled slowly, raking a hand through his hair. He needed space. Distance. Something to let his thoughts untangle without the weight of her watching him do it.

"I need to think about this," he said, not quite meeting her eyes. "I'll talk to you later, okay?"

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She hesitated. Then nodded.

"Okay."

He ended the call. The screen went dark.

For a moment, he just sat there, breathing. Trying not to feel like something important had cracked under the surface. Trying not to think about the fact that she had been honest—and he hadn't been.

Not really. Not yet.
–––❖–––
Marie sat in the dark for a while after the call ended.

The tablet screen had gone to sleep beside her. She hadn't moved to wake it up. She didn't cry. Didn't throw anything. Just… sat.

One day. That's all that was left.

One day until Gordon went up into Earth orbit. Three days until the boy she'd met on-screen became real, became solid, became someone she could reach out and touch for the first time in eight months. The boy she'd imagined holding hands with. Cooking for. Laughing with.

And now, with one day left until Earth liftoff, they'd had their first fight.

Not a breakup. Not even a blow-up. But a real disagreement. Sharp-edged. Defensive on his end. Quietly stubborn on hers.

And the worst part? She could have waited. Could have just sat on the thought for twenty-four more hours. Let herself pretend, one last time, that everything was perfect. Let herself hope, uninterrupted.

But she hadn't, because she was Marie. Because honesty mattered. Because lying by omission still felt like lying.

Still, she didn't feel great about it.

She pulled her boots on and headed down to the cafeteria. It wasn't mealtime—only a few people lingered in the echoing space. The lights were low, warmer than usual, washing the room in soft amber. The hydration stations glowed faintly along the far wall.

She got herself a cup of lemonade. Bright yellow. Too sweet. She added a splash of mineral water, then another.

Her stomach made a quiet noise. She ignored it. She didn't feel hungry. She hadn't really been eating right the past two days—too much anticipation, too many nerves.

She eyed the food counter for a moment, then shook her head and walked past it, sliding into a corner booth with her drink. She pulled one leg up beneath her and folded her hands around the cup. The condensation felt real. Tactile. Present.

She stared at the far wall, where someone had taped up a lopsided poster of a jungle scene—part of the environmental psychologist's campaign to "stimulate greenery appreciation." The leaves looked fake. The lemur in the corner was blurry.

"Is it true?" a voice asked.

Marie turned.

Jillian was standing beside her, practically bouncing with excitement. Her face was lit up like a solar array. At eighteen, she was one of the first "next-gen" Martians born after the first settlement wave. She wore her long hair in two braids and always seemed to have grease on her sleeves.

"He's really coming? Gordon? In three days?"

Marie blinked, then nodded slowly. "That's the plan. Assuming nothing breaks and the weather holds."

Jillian grinned and plopped into the seat beside her. "Your Earth boyfriend! Coming here." She wiggled in her seat. From her vantage point, unless she looked up, Jillian was an oil-stained set of coveralls and two dancing crimson braids. "You're going to have to tell me everything. I will need frame by frame. I am your after-action analyst."

Marie found herself smiling, faintly. "I was hoping you'd vet him for me. Be my second pair of eyes."

Jillian beamed. "We'll all be watching. Except for when you want privacy. Mars needs little Marie-babies."

Usually, Marie would have turned scarlet, but this wasn't the time.

A small body clambered up onto the bench across from them. Jillian's younger sister, Cara—only four years old, cheeks smudged with unidentifiable goo and eyes far too awake for this hour.

"Auntie Marie," she said solemnly, holding out a palm. "Braids."

Marie blinked. "Right now?"

Cara nodded. "Now, please."

Marie reached over and plucked Cara gently into her lap, twisting the toddler's warm, fine hair into little sections. The simple act—combing, parting, braiding—settled something in her. Her hands moved from memory. Her breath came a little easier. "I don't mind. I like having something to do with my hands."

Jillian peered at her. "You've got this," she said in a different, serious tone of voice. Cara nodded, making braiding briefly impossible, and Marie didn't mind at all.

More people drifted over. Cora from systems. Ari from hydroponics. Cora's boyfriend, the 'silver fox' from comms. They asked about the visit. Teased gently. Shared stories. Left her to stew when she didn't have much to offer in return. No one pried.

They didn't need her to explain. They were just there.

Marie sat in the middle of it, a child in her lap, her braid half-done, warming lemonade forgotten.

She realized something: even if Gordon turned out to be the person she feared he was today, and not the person he'd been being most days over the last eight months—she would still be okay.

She had her people.

She had herself.

She had a life, and it was a good one.

It wasn't the kind of certainty that burned away doubt. But it softened it. And it helped.

–––❖–––

She was on her way back to bed when she passed the kitchenette.

Each habitat had one—optimistically named the galley or kitchen, depending on which version of the signage had stuck. Really, it was a glorified corner nook that most families used for midnight tea or breakfast toast. It held a sink, a narrow fridge, and hers held a pressurized toaster oven Marie had fabricated over a week of after-shift sessions.

Marie had wedged the monstrosity into the wall cubby at an angle that on Earth would have probably violated fire code.

Her dad was there.

Vincent sat at the corner of the counter, legs pulled up beneath him like a teenager, tapping through a game of solitaire projected on the composite surface. He got like that sometimes—pacing inwardly, playing cards when something in the bedroom wasn't friendly.

Marie wished she didn't know that.

She wished even more that she didn't recognize the tell: the fast tempo of his taps, the way he kept half an ear cocked toward the hallway like someone waiting for a kettle to boil. She'd grown up around that quiet strain. The kind that didn't escalate, didn't boil over—just pressed in all the time, suffocating, when it wasn't violently releasing itself.

She thought about their bedroom cabinet, innocent young Marie wanting to play the 'board games'. Dice that weren't really for games, with pictographs on them.
She shuddered.
Most people just thought she had hangups.

They didn't know her mom.

Vincent glanced up when she passed, offered a faint smile, then returned to his cards. She didn't stop to talk. There was nothing to say. He didn't want help. He wanted distance. Cards helped him hold it.

Marie padded back to her bunk quietly, bare feet whispering over the gridded floor. She didn't resent him. Not tonight. He wasn't the reason she felt like her skin didn't fit.

But the silence in the hallway reminded her just how much she wanted the next twenty-four hours to go well.

She was going to see Gordon. For real. She just hoped that when she did, she still felt glad about it.