Ashley and Sarah - Reactor

You've had burns before, at least you're pretty sure. It also occurs to you that keeping the reactor and the people who keep it from going critical in good shape. You punch the reactor core in, following the coordinates to a service elevator that takes you down to what feels like the dark pit core of the station. The service elevator is by nature about a hundred times less furnished and nice than any other place on the station. As the cramped metal box rattles and screeches to a halt, it's hard to imagine even incredibly unscrupulous workers taking something that harrowing routinely. Whoever works the reactor probably lives down on the same level, which can't be safe or healthy.

You pop out of the service elevator, happy to be free of it even if momentarily. The whole of the bottom level hums as the massive generator at the core provides a likely near-infinite supply of energy. It's oddly comforting, in the way most low drones are. It's offset by a thunderous popping noise, followed by a pretty nerve-wracking wheeze.

"No! Firteen, not fourteen!"

"Fuck, working on it!"

The talking comes from around one of the corners of the generator, you poke your head around and find a pair of girls working furiously as steam blows in their faces. One of them is short and round, the other is tall and thin, it's almost cute how cliche it is. You wait for them to get the generator under control and heave a pair of relieved sighs before you clear your throat.

"Ah! Doctor Felma!" The short one exclaims.

"Hey hon," The tall one acknowledges without turning.

Short and round has a smile that looks like sunshine that she's decorated with about a dozen different lip piercings. The flashes of her tongue when she struggles to make "th" sounds show you that it's split down the middle, both halves pierced. The open collar of her work uniform tells you that not much of her pale little body isn't tattooed, though the straining bulge in her chest also says that such a thing could not have been cheap. Her hair is buzzed short enough to be hard to get a read on, but as best you can tell she bleaches it blonde. She's not unreasonably short, all things considered, only a head or two beneath you, but next to her partner she's tiny.

Tall and thin is also cold and apathetic, though her calling you hon is a little curious. She does that "rogue genius" thing that lots of people on the station seem to think is stylish, where she wears her jumpsuit as pants by unzipping it down to her waist and then tying the arms around her hips, what hips she has. Above that, she wears a tank top loose enough that every time she bends your way you can look straight down. While she doesn't have the same apparent affinity for body mods that short and round does, but she does have a pair of horseshoe-shaped rings in her dark brown nipples. She has tannish skin that borders on brown, Indian if you had to guess, but no accent. Her black hair is messy and greasy, if she puts any effort into maintaining it, it isn't enough.

"What brings you down to our little atom bomb?" Short and round asks.

You bring attention to your datapad. You ask if the burn is on Sarah or Ashley.

"Both of us," tall and thin answers, "Do Sarah's first, I'm busy."

Sarah blushes, "W-wait you should go first! Mine's in an embarrassing place."

Ashley unties her jumpsuit arms and lets it fall around her. Her bony rear has a large and quite ugly burn on it that's visible around her ratty plain underwear. "So's mine. Doesn't matter. She's seen you naked anyway."

Sarah doesn't seem ready to budge, so you take a knee behind Ashley and press gently on the burned area.

"Ow," She replies flatly, not looking up from her work.

Fortunately, the burn looks a whole lot worse than it actually is. You do a quick field clean and bandage, but much of the damage is already in the process of healing. What's more notable is how specific and targeted it seems to be. If it was some sort of chemical leak or something, you would expect a wider burn area and less of a... pattern.

You finish up with Ashley, telling her she can pull her pants back up, she seems too busy to listen. You turn to Sarah, who fiddles with her zipper.

"Alright, promise you won't laugh?"

You tell her that as her doctor, you have been trained not to laugh.

Sarah unzips her jumpsuit and pulls it open, letting one of her breasts fall out. As you suspected, they're bigger than her head and pierced through the nipple. Right above her nipple, there's a burn with a similar pattern to Ashley's. Sarah's is worse, the scarring is going poorly. Getting closer to look, you realize that what had looked like random patterns on Ashley's were actually letters. It's the name of a popular brand of hot plate.

You ask how they both got burned by the same hot plate.

"It uh... fell over while we were... in bed." Sarah chokes out.

"Hers is worse cause she was tied down."

"Ash!"

Ashley turns, "Sarah, can you stop being a mega-sub for two seconds? She's literally been part of our sessions."

Well, that's news, you ask when that happened.

"Do you mean you don't remember?"

You tell them that you're having a spot of amnesia lately.

"In that case, I should remind you that you owe me thirty bucks." Ashley turns back to her work.

"Ash!"

You let Sarah know that you still remember what a lie is.

"Well uh... Ash and I were playing with some... knives."

"I told you it was a bad idea."

"I wanted to know! Anyway, Ash got a little carried away and we got pretty scared."

"I got scared, you would have been more than happy to bleed out so long as it meant I stopped edging you."

"So we called you down and you patched me up. You were super understanding, you showed Ash all zuh right techniques for safe knifeplay!"

Well, that explains a bit, but why was a hotplate on during sex?

"I uh..." Sarah looks to Ash to finish the sentence, Ash looks back and shakes her head slowly.

"I was being a brat about dinner so she had to tie me down..."

"Damn right I did."

"And it was suuuuper hot up until I got a little squirmy and uh... knocked zuh hot plate over."

You ask why the hot plate was so close to the bed.

"She gets hungry in bed."

"Like you guys don't!"

You finish treating Sarah's burn, the next few days are gonna suck, but she'll be fine.

"Fanks doc, sorry about making you come down here."

"You should come down here more often, she likes you."

"Ash!"

You didn't expect the people on this ship to be this horny, or this open with their relationship. You ask if they're in an open relationship.

"I mean, yeah?" Sarah seems confused. "We're locked in a tin can wit a nuke fat could go critical any time."

"So we're all horny for each other and that's okay by me. You should hear how Sarah talks about how strong and soft your hands were."

"Ash!"

That would explain a bit about how people have been acting. You say goodbye to the pair, accepting a slightly too enthusiastic handshake from Sarah. You don't waste your time trying to get one from Ashley. You resign yourself to a shuddering elevator ride back out of the pits. As the frame pops and wheezes, all you can do is quietly grumble about the whole nuke thing. That, and mark another entry done on your datapad.