007 - Heaven

Aster was on the verge of snapping her pencil in two, frustrated enough to flip the table, punch someone in the face and leave the room with no ill conscience. It was a very tempting scenario, but she instead chose to close her eyes and breathe deeply to quell the anger inside her. Suffice to say, this job wasn't the glamorous opportunity she was expecting. She knew what she was getting into going into research-- days and nights of paperwork and grant applications and ethics boards and bureaucracy, hours of staring into microscopes and synthesizing compounds and observing, looking for results. Hard work and not all that exciting all the time, but stimulating enough if you had a mind and a passion for it. When she'd been offered a position in biochemistry research at ASPEN, she had jumped at the chance-- imagine never having to fill out a plea for funding again, never having to use antiquated lab equipment, chipped microscope slides and temperamental spectrophotometers? And all the lab rats-- in more ways than one-- you could possibly need for your work. Of course she had said yes.

But now the shiny veneer of the Institute was fading away into a distant memory, and she was faced with the harsh reality of the situation; this was a) not what she was expecting, and b) the most difficult thing she had and ever would have to do. The work was never-ending; with no need for grants or extraneous paperwork, they sought faster developments, faster research, more papers, more knowledge, more work. If the research would progress as predicted, then that wouldn't have been a problem, but as usual when working with such variable things as biological entities, there were always deviants. What should have been a simple compilation of simple results derived from a simple theory that worked through wonderful, miraculous science, turned into a several-page-long 'suggestions for future study' section in the report, and extreme frustration for the biochemist whose name had to go on this lackluster article.

When she opened her eyes, still her disappointment turned into impartial, detached vocabulary glared up at her from the paper she was working on, and she could take it no longer. She had put in far too many hours already today, so she had no qualms against packing up her things and leaving the lab early. The urge to flip a table or throw a rack of test tubes was still tempting, but she managed to keep it together and leave the laboratories without doing something brash that she would regret later.

Embarking the elevator was reassuring only in that it meant she didn't have to think about her failed experiment anymore, and she could do with her time as she pleased. Even though the typical canned music wasn't much to listen to, it still made her smile.

At least, until the elevator stopped.

"No, no, please, no, come on..." she hissed, pressing the main floor button again and again, trying to get the stupid useless piece of machinery to respond. "Fuck, come on!" None of the buttons were responding, and pounding on the doors didn't seem to do anything, either. "God damn it!" she roared, feeling the same surge of anger return even more powerfully than before. The Southerner banged and kicked and cursed at the elevator's doors until she finally sank to the ground, exhausted, but the damn thing still didn't budge. In the midst of her button-mashing, she had hit the emergency call button, so she had some small consolation in knowing that at least someone was coming for her, but it still didn't help abate her anger.

An hour and a half later, she was finally free, but simmering in her own rage. The worst part of it all was that she didn't have anyone to blame for anything that had gone wrong today; not the cold shower this morning, not the bad hair day, not the new stain on her lab coat, not the reluctance of cancerous mice to react favourably to the drug she was synthesizing, and not the broken elevator. This series of coincidences was aggravating, but just simply that; coincidences all coinciding to ruin a perfectly good day and put more strain on Aster's already taxed mind.

The elevator fiasco meant that she missed 'dinner time'; the kitchens at ASPEN operated at all hours of the day and night, but most of the residents of her wing chose to dine at about five-thirty. Anselm could only spare so much time to come to the dining hall out here instead of in nearer to the medical wing, so that meant she shouldn't have been as disappointed as she was to discover him not waiting there for her. Her misfortunes even extended so far as to include her favourite food being served that night, but it was all gone by the time she arrived. Her dinner was quiet and dissatisfying, and the rest of her evening spent alone in the common area of the biology wing. The occasional person stopped by, but invariably they all soon left, exhausted after a long week and looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. She tried her best to be pleasant for them, but often fell flat.

Finally, around ten-thirty, the surgeon appeared, looking tired but relatively satisfied with his lot in life. He wore his clinic lab coat, a little wrinkly but unmarred by stains like his scrubs would be after a day in surgery. He stood tall and imperious in glowing white, a little roughed-up but handsomely so, exactly as the hero in any story is. When his eyes fell on her, he smiled the most genuine smile. Aster leapt to her feet.

"I missed you at di-" Aster cut him off with a tight hug, holding him as close as she could and relishing the feeling of his own tight reciprocal.

"I missed you." Aster mumbled against him. She no longer felt angry. or frustrated, or miserable. Everything else drifted away. He tipped her head back and sought her lips, a quick, sweet kiss snatched from a vulnerable place. Nobody was around to witness it, but he still felt dangerous and titillatingly risque. Her concession was potent in his mind, made him forget everything else he was thinking about and

"I missed you, too." he mumbled against the pulse-point in her neck, dizzy against her skin.

Late in the night, entangled together, sticky from sweat and happily exhausted, when the settled silence said volumes more than they could in words, Aster's fingers strayed lazily across Anselm's chest. This moment- this whole situation- was perfect. Her terrible day was inconsequential compared to how good this was, how good it was to have something to rely on in this place.

"Heaven," she sighed, the word fanning across his flesh.

"Hmm?" he murmured, opening his eyes again to observe her.

"Heaven. This is heaven, obviously." She kissed a line from his sternum to his deltoid.

"How do you figure?" he asked, meaning no offense but unable to string together his words with much tact in his exhausted state.

"Because even if everything else is going to shit, just knowing I have you here with me makes all the difference. Nothing could ever be this perfect unless I had died and gone to heaven."

"As a doctor, I can assure you you're not dead," Anselm mumbled, pulling her closer and pressing a kiss to her forehead, "But I agree. This is heaven."

--
Going out of order? Blasphemy!!
Six was just stupid, though. I couldn't think of a single damn thing for 'break away'. Maybe later.
And this one is shit, I'm aware.