Small Spaces

A/N: For those of you wondering why this story is so.fucking.slow, just remember that it's a novella. The smut will come soon (some in the next chapter, even!) so hold your horses kiddos. And thank you again to my kind reviewers!

It was relieving to get everything out of the way. Questions still nagged his mind, but they could wait. He had all the time in the world with this woman, and she certainly didn’t seem shy.

“Well, it’s almost six. Would you like to go get something to eat with me? We can discuss more then. I’m starving,” she stood, offered him a hand up. He accepted, again marveling at how small and soft her hands were, before they each righted their chairs and left the room.

The corridor wasn’t nearly as long as he’d imagined it was when he’d first stepped into it. Each wing had ten rooms, and people would pass them, some smiling slightly. Nora had a way of smiling at them all.

“Nora, good to see you out. Is this your partner?”

A stout woman in her late-twenties greeted them. As she neared, Jacob saw that her make-up was quite thick, her hair dyed in places, and that she was perhaps older than he had guessed at first glance.

“Yes,” Nora smiled up at him, her brown eyes shining, “this is Jacob.”

The woman sized him up quickly, before nodding her head once, “You take care of him, now Nora.” She smiled and hurried past the pair, and into a room two doors down from their own.

Jacob had the urge to cough, but managed to suppress it, “Who…”

“That was Janet. Don’t worry about her. She likes to speak cryptically sometimes. You’ll see her partner down at the library when he’s not working; I don’t think they like each other very much.”

Nora’s pace was as quick as his own, but it took many of her little steps to equal one of his long strides. She kept looking up at him, studying him as he walked, but he pretended not to notice.

When they arrived at the atrium, Jacob’s gaze was drawn to the sky just beyond the glass. In the few hours since he’d been through, the clouds had shifted away, and a few blessed rays of the setting sun peered out from behind the gray.

“Lovely,” Nora breathed, her rich, warm voice making the hairs on his neck stand up.

“Would love to go for a walk outside, watch the sunset…”

She gave him a sideways look, one eyebrow arched in disbelief.

“Did you watch the introduction?”

Jacob shrugged as they continued walking in the direction of the communal eatery, “Some of it. I had to turn it off.”

Before she had a chance to ask him about that, they were in line to order something to eat.

“Then I suppose you didn’t watch long enough to see that we get free meals as long as we eat together?”

He ran a thumb over his new passkey, “That so? No, I hadn’t realized. Someone had said something about free meals before I applied, but it didn’t really interest me.”

“Another of those little encouragements. There are lots of them, you’ll find.”

She chose a salad of fresh-looking greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, green and black olives, and cheese. He wondered how much of it she’d actually worked on herself in the lab. Jacob wasn’t feeling as hungry as he had when she’d mentioned getting dinner, so he only took a roast beef sandwich and a cup of barley soup. They crossed through the crowd to a booth in the corner, lit by a single-bulb lamp overhead.

Once they were seated, she dove right back into their conversation, “Jacob, you should really watch the rest of the introduction…Dr. Farwell frowns on Program members leaving The Den, except for work-related purposes. And we’re forbidden from going outside.”

He bit into his sandwich, but at this revelation, he couldn’t find it in him to chew. Couldn’t go outside? What was this, prison?

Jacob swallowed, “We can’t go outside? Why the hell not?”

Anyone else might have become impatient with his ignorance, but her voice was calm, “It’s not conducive to reproduction. We’ll get the best sunlight filtered in through the special glass,” she pointed to the atrium, “but without the harmful effects that unprotected exposure could have. Trust me,” she winked at him, laughing, “your sperm is too valuable to just be strolling outside in that hotbed of radiation.”

At that moment Jacob decided that the most beautiful feature about this woman was her laugh. It was so warm and genuine, very unlike most laughs he’d heard in his lifetime. She was pretty, yes. Nice to look at. But he himself had never laughed, and her soft laughter reminded him that maybe he should start trying to find his own.

“This can’t be all bad,” Jacob finished his sandwich, his soup untouched, “lots to do, I imagine. You don’t have a leash anywhere that I’m supposed to put on, do you?”

She laughed again, and he made a mental note to make her do it as often as possible.

“No, no. Free reign within The Den. But curfew is at nine, for obvious reasons.”

Her voice had taken on a suggestive quality, one which he liked very much. All in all, he was starting to think that sharing a space, and occasionally a bed, with this woman wouldn’t be so painful. However, if he wanted to perform his best, he would have to focus on little things about her; how her hair smelled, her pretty pink lips, that laugh. The list would be very important, especially for the dates when she would be most fertile, and neither of them were in any kind of mood for sex.

Sex. God, he was going to have sex with this woman. Not now, not the next night, but very soon after that they would be expected to begin their routine. How long had it been since he’d touched another person? Years. And while the thought of being able to have sex with her was appealing, it was also, in a way, repulsive to him.

“Whatcha’ thinking about?”

Her normally formal tone dropped for a moment. Jacob brought his eyes back up to meet hers.

“Just…thinking that it will be odd to live with someone, after all this time...alone.”

She gave him a wistful, half-smile, her plump lips entrancing him, if only for a moment, “Dr. Wren thought maybe you’d have some problems adjusting. I’ll try my best to help you.”

“That’s another thing,” he didn’t mean to sound upset, but he couldn’t help himself sometimes, “Why is it that you know so much about me? You said earlier that you were allowed to look at my test answers…why?”

Nora’s eyebrows raised in defense, “because I asked.”

He immediately felt foolish, “Oh…but…would…if I had asked, would they have let me see?” As he went, the questions kept forming, “and why are you such an authority on all of this, anyway?”

She sighed, “I’ve been in The Program for over a year. Jacob…you’re not my first partner. Didn’t they tell you that?”

Whatever hope he’d had that this might work out was almost lost with that simple statement. He wasn’t her first partner. This wasn’t her first attempt at pregnancy. What he’d hoped would be a quick few nights together resulting in a child that he could help her birth, share responsibility raising, and then get on with his life, might turn out to be far more complicated than he’d originally planned.

“You had problems?”

He didn’t like to see the sadness in her eyes, “Yes. He and I…we weren’t a good match. After the first few tries, he became frustrated. And I just kept pushing him, until he requested to be removed. I tried to be patient, but I had to follow orders. It was the best way to assure that a pregnancy would take place. Things just didn’t…work.”

She must have seen his doubt because she went on, “but I’m on a fertility regimen now. I’ve been working with Dr. Wren, and we think we know a way to keep that from happening again. In a lot of ways, you’re a better person for the job, Jacob.”

He shook his head, and they got up from the booth, tossing their garbage, tray and all, into a chute that led who knew where.

“No, really. I mean that. You’re more stable than he was. He was a natural-birth, and you know how we can be.”

“Flighty,” Jacob said. A couple holding hands, the woman very obviously pregnant, passed by them as they strolled lazily in the dying sunlight of the atrium.

“…Flighty, yes. Too many opportunities. Too many choices, not enough guidance. I specifically requested a Lab Baby for my partner this time around, and you just happened to be what I was looking for.”

Lab Baby. He hated the term. It brought back all of the moments in his life when, with his fellow lab children, he’d had to stand in line to use the bathroom, had to sleep in a bunkhouse that was too often cold, taught in schools but never hugged or admonished for his good work. Just there, like all the others. Looked down upon in the work force. A Code Monkey, because that’s all he’d ever be good for.

And Nora was a natural-birth. It explained a lot.

“Don’t your parents…don’t they mind?”

They were walking back to their room, more slowly than they had left it, “that I’m paired with a Lab Baby this time around? No, not really. They just want things to work out for me here. If you hadn’t noticed, the opportunities in The Program are simply endless. I don’t think I could have had any hope of conception –naturally anyway- on my own.”

He swept his card, allowing her to enter the apartment first.

“Why’s that, anyway? Why this way? You could have gotten a donation.”

“But The Program will teach me to be a mother, and you to be a father, Jacob. It will give this child something to live for. And not grow up…”

She hesitated, and blushed, ashamed of what she almost said.

“Not grow up like me,” he huffed, taking off his coat and hanging it in the hidden closet. “I see.”

“I didn’t mean…”

He didn’t want to hear her say anything more; nothing about The Program, no more words recited from some creed that he had neglected to immerse himself in. He was done for the night.

“I’m taking a shower, don’t expect me out any time shortly.”

Jacob was careful not to allow himself to slam the bathroom door in her face.