Shadow of Your Smile

Title: The Shadow of Your Smile

Author: pronker

Era: Sometime during the run of the show, but before the final episode.

Summary: Xerophily is an unexpected quality in Doris, as Kowalski discovers.

A/N Using two prompts from the list on theForceDOTnet.

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"You know, Doris, I'm not even going to ask how you got from the Atlantic Ocean into my bunk, much less how you fit into it."

Doris giggles, or she looks like she does in the dawn's early light. I can't tell if I hear her or not because of the whole high-pitched dolphin sonar issue. The only thing I know is that beyond all reason, my unrequited love is suddenly requited, she's here with me, and that is enough.

She snuggles like she had before she broke up with me, she strokes my flippers with her own supple ones, and life is mellow. Life is generally only mellow when I succeed in hypothesizing, when I see my theory proven correct by its application in an invention, and when said invention does not go haywire. Given these caveats, life is rarely mellow for a slightly mad scientist named Kowalski.

Since the Big Boss decreed a budget crisis three days previously and nixed the team's plans for a refreshing vacation sailing off the Carolina coast, everyone's grumpiness proves contagious. The team snaps at each other until our commander commands an early lights out at nine p.m. for the duration to "push reset buttons." I realize that my skipper is as disappointed as his soldiers when he deploys computerese to issue orders.

As the lieutenant of my squad, I prod myself to give options to prevent cabin fever. Declaring our enforced non-vacation a staycation succeeds in subverting plunging morale, but not by much. Waking this third morning to a winsome dolphin keeping me company proves that every stratocirrocumulus cloud has an argent lining. "Staycations," I think as I cuddle Doris. "Gotta love 'em."

Funny how blurry everything is. Ah, it must be love doing this to me. I squeeze Doris like Harry The Octopus would as she sighs into my earhole, wetting my feathers a little with spray from her blowhole.

"My Doris," I croon as I inhale her seductive smell of the sea. "My Doris."

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"My gosh!" cries Alice. "So that's why the penguins haven't shown their fluffy butts in three days!"

Handyman Gus' broad fingers are more suited to operating jackhammers than a delicate gas sensor meter, but he manages to recalibrate it anyway. Calling him in to work on his day off is expensive, but Independence Day crowds demand to see penguins for some dumb reason and Alice really needs her zookeeper's paycheck this week.

"Da. Is hallucinogenic, this gas. I fix underground." Gus' face rumples in sympathy. "Gas build up day by day. Good thing you call before oxygen get totally displaced."

Alice puts on her why-do-these-things-happen-to-me face. "So it seeps into the penguin indoor habitat from the cracked pipe? They're not all dead in there, right, because that would creep me out." She takes off her cap and wipes her face. "You know, in the summer heat they'd stink so bad - "

"Always about you, da, Alice?"

"Well, yeah. I'm the one who'd fish 'em out, take 'em to Doc for autopsies, incinerate 'em - "

Gus smooths his bald pate and then his mustache. "Not to worry. I fix." He flexes Olympic-grade biceps unchanged since his 1979 championship days. "Is done."

Forty-five minutes later, Alice peers down the manhole. "Everything under control, Gus? You okay down there?"

The banging, clanging clamor recommences. "Check habitat in twenty minutes if penguins not show. I blow in fresh air through pipe before sealing. Is old Siberian technique." The bangs change to a hiss and hum of a large fan.

"Okay, if you say so. They oughta come down from their high by then, huh?"

She has to lean her head into the manhole to hear Gus' reply. "Da. If they wish."

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"Doris, do you want to come along on our next vacation?"

I listen hard, but Doris' answer seems to be supersonic. I must know. "It could be to Atlantis. You'd like that, yes?"

She is being her amazing self, beautiful, soft-skinned and mysterious as the Mariana Trench. I listen harder.

"Bang!" she exclaims.

"Er, why did you say bang?"

Doris' entrancing beauty mark vanishes in a crinkle around her eyes as she smiles broadly. Her expression hints of trysts unlike any we had shared before.

"Hiss," she whispers.

"I'm not following you - "

Moans arise from the bunks above and below me. Oh great, the guys are up now. Maybe they can pick out what Doris says.

"Doris, move over, sugar, and I'll get the team in on this. One of them ought to understand you." I push gently because I recall how ticklish she is.

My flipper passes through her body.

"Wh-What? Doris?"

Like the Cheshire Cat, Doris' smile is the last part of her to disappear.

"Doris!"

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The summer sun makes us blink as we stagger into rough formation on our faux floe. Crowds of squawking humans nearly blot out my commander's hoarse voice. I suppose they are cheering, too, but it doesn't really matter.

"Sound off! Private!"

"Here."

"Rico!"

"Ahgrommmtzhere."

"Kowalski!"

"Present, to my sorrow."

"I'll disregard that last in view of our ahem experiences. Wow. I can't think of what to say, boys."

"Sir, I'd like to go on record as saying this will be a staycation to remember."

"Duly noted in my log, Kowalski."

Independence Day crowds throw their packets of fish our way, but nobody has much appetite and the crowds move along.

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The End.

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