DT 2021: Slow-Mo Pucker Factor

Merlin’s eyes traced the endless stars glowing in the night sky. They burned brilliant with color and a hinting hue of the purest pale blue. Even as the day long left him behind to stargaze, its memory never quite faded from the dome of space above.
The twinkling lights arranged themselves in exciting, alien formations – a fundamentally different spectrum from the night skies of Earth choked with contaminates and light pollution. Here, the Milky Way was truly a stone throws away.
Furthest Point was like the boy’s home-of-a-military-base back on Argus V. Wide open spaces, greenery, and the untamed wilderness in all directions. Untouched and pristine. A perfect navel world.
A world he could call his own. Little farm houses twinkled in the valley below like the stars above, their porchlights aglow to remind their neighbors that friends were always nearby. During the day, the shadowed meadows filled with golden grain that extended for miles only to be broken up by the occasional mountain river or minimally-invasive canal cutting through the fertile land owned by the smalltime Waffle-Davis farming collective.
After weeks of sweat bled pulling local odd jobs for his Smart AI Althea, a day to truly slow down was a nice change of pace. It took some time to find the groove for an uppity and jittery Spartan supersoldier like himself but after so long the away from the military and war, Merlin could tangibly tell – he found his groove.
It helped to have the girl of his dreams sitting there next to him, ever so stuck between moods of quiet contemplation and slumber. Andra was quite literally the girl of his dreams; her caricature dominated his nights since they were six years old and barely surviving through the excruciating process of SPARTAN-III training. She was his constant companion and a reliable shoulder through everything. It was unimaginable what he would do without her.
Her dark hair wrapped up in a bun tonight and cutely twisted into a tiny, lazed pony tail curling to the side of her skull like some obnoxious flower bud unsure which direction it needed to grow. Andra’s eyes glowed like the night sky, fully absorbed and wide with the wonders of the universe. Her nose and cheeks were a little red and dotted as usual with the faintest hint of freckles and old exposures to intense combat.
Andra’s perfections and imperfections enthralled Merlin. They drew him in as he felt in this moment as if seeing their exquisite detail for the very first time rather than something he tended to take for granted. She was beautiful.
The boy leaned his head in towards her neck, catching her underwhelming and incoherent scent beneath the scent of wild grass and summer flowers. Andra didn’t smell of much except a distinct measure of sweat, rather she smelled like the world. A piece of it all, an integral part of it.
“Can I kiss you?” Merlin mumbled on the air; his voice so light he wasn’t sure it reached his companion.
It took a slow moment for Andra to shift away from her spell of the night sky but a so-subtle nod was all the two needed for both to lean in at once. She went low, attempting to close the distant. Merlin went high, attempting to lean into her attractive presence.
Something wet and hard contacted Merlin’s prickly chin. Lips gripped against his rounded chin. Merlin’s nose found something flicker rapidly at the peak, little hairs of Andra’s eye lashes. His lips found another sharp peak to nibble on for himself. No experience among the assortment was pleasant, rather awkward with a bitter taste on the tongue.
Andra puckered up to Merlin’s chin, her eyes widening in shocked realization. Merlin’s eyes grew very slowly to sauce pan sizes as her nose between his lips wiggled in confusion.
“Wh-what the hell?”
The embraced duo bounced apart, resetting their moment of engagement by an extra wide meter.
“You-you were supposed to go up!”
“How the heck was that a kiss?”
“It wasn’t!”
“No shit.”
The two stared at one another in exasperated annoyance. The calm moment was still there but now it held a wrongful stiffness as if consumed by a forceful cloud. A pregnant silence didn’t last long but for the Spartans it still felt like an eternity and then some.
Merlin slurred through the abject embarrassment, “Sorry, we can try again?”
Andra got up from her spot, dusting off her sleeping shorts. “Nah, you should’ve practiced with Shima before all this.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find me another hill. You can have this one to yourself tonight.”
The boy was left with the quiet of a miserable memory formed in matter of moments. The screw up rewound and replayed over and over for his internalized humiliation. Why did he mess up so badly and so simply? Why did she have to bring up that old, old misunderstanding? Shima never even liked him to begin with!
Despite the screaming and wounded animal left to fester in Merlin’s mind, he didn’t get up to give chase or call it a night. He was still too soaked up in the beauty of the universe, even if his best friend just walked off to go who-knows-where to do who-knows-what.
It was the drugs talking, or rather acting. An entire jar of local sedative balm ate and lathered up by Andra and Merlin in a day of boredom. Maybe that’s why everything felt so slow and calming despite him mentally screaming expletives at the Universe and at the speed of Covenant Slipspace engines.