Depressurization
The docking bay airlock blew. Pressure system failure or something, he’d ask Hera later. That wasn’t the scary part. The “holy shit I almost just died in space again” part wasn’t even the scary part.
“Brace for depressurization!” Hera’s panicked voiced glitched through overhead and instead of finding something to hold onto or hide beneath or…screaming, Eiffel’s first instinct was to grab Minkowski’s hand.
That one touch changed everything.
Touch starvation is a whole different game in deep space, constantly plagued by the all consuming awareness that the nearest humans beyond the crew were trillions of miles away.
So when Doug gripped the commander’s hand and yanked her towards him, bracing her back against the wall, he didn’t realized that would be the first time he’d touched someone or been touched in months, save for physical exams.
Doug steadied himself, snaking one hand around the commander's waist and gripping a handhold with the other as alarms blared, flashing angry red warning lights above their heads. He felt Renee’s arm wind around his waist, hanging on for what may well have been her life. Her other hand shot out, gripping the opposite handhold as they both planted feet on a floor they could hardly reach. Gripping the back of Eiffel’s suit, Renee squeezed. That was new.
Doug Eiffel was a hugger, always had been. Renee Minkowski was decidedly not that. Even when they'd first met, she’d offered him a firm handshake and that was that. A business transaction, nothing more.
Now, Doug would be the last to admit that he'd imagined hugging his commanding officer. Maybe even kissing her, if he'd ever be so lucky. Burying his nose in her hair, he squeezed his eyes shut.
Terrifying moments pass as the whole station shakes violently. More alarms and blinking red lights of doom before finally, blessedly, pressure through the station stabilizes. Flimsy and unreliable as their floating hunk of scrap metal feels, she hasn’t betrayed them yet. Though everything still shakes a bit, Hera’s rambling voice chimes through the room with a sigh.
“Pressure systems stable. Secondary docking bay airlock engaged and thankfully, not too much damage as far as my sensors can tell. Whoo, that was fun. Are you both alright?”
As the tremors subsided, both in metal and flesh, Doug realized how tightly he’d been gripping Minkowski and immediately loosened his grip, not quite pulling away. Desperate though it may have been, he was loathe to give up the only physical contact he would receive for the foreseeable future just yet. He would wait, never admitting to himself that he was definitely desperate and absolutely basking in it, until Renee moved away.
Only she didn’t. Moving just far enough away from the cold metal he’d braced them against, Doug felt the pressure of a hand on his upper back, the arm wound carefully under his keeping him close. The opposite hand wrapped around the collar of the jumpsuit he’d chosen to wear properly today, rather than wrapped around his waist, tied by the sleeves as it usually was. Renee’s breaths came in hard little puffs against his neck, warming the skin and making Doug shiver in a way he would put out of his head for the moment. Enough time for emotional analysis when they weren’t worried about getting vacuumed into space.
Neither seemed all that eager to get away from the other. Thank god for that, as Doug didn’t think he’d survive if she let him go too soon.