100 More One Shots ✔️

Here For You >> Mark Watney X Male!Reader

Sure, there's other things on your mind now – the grades of an upcoming test result to be released within the next month, job offers, the prospects of not passing any of the classes of your college courses...but tonight, you're not thinking of them. Nope. Not at all. While classmates are downing their third and fourth jägerbomb for the night, you're nursing a barely-touched Bud Light, sitting in the corner with a couple who've been making out for the last five minutes straight.

It's a new year's party, and it's nearly the next year, it's that late in the night. While you're excited for the prospects of 2019, it's not something you want to focus on.

"You look like hell," Mark smirks, sitting beside you. He smells of alcohol. He notices the couple making out, makes a face, and turns to you.

You harrumph. "Thanks, man." You mutter.

Mark raises an eyebrow. "I didn't mean it like...hey, if you're worried about getting into the NASA program, don't be. I put my name down too."

Your eyes widen. "But your grades are worse than mine!"

Mark splutters his mouthful of vodka and orange juice. "Hey!" The couple beside you finally break apart from their lip-locked love affair, and the two girls eye you both, and go to find somewhere else where there aren't any chatty, silly boys. "I meant it like, you know, if you don't get in, it probably means I won't get in." He says.

You feel a heat raise to your cheeks. It's when Mark says stuff like that that makes your heart splutter just so.

Downstairs where the main party's at, people watching the Times Square broadcast on the TV chant alongside the new years eve countdown. Five. Four. Three –

"Happy New Year, Mark says to you.

You kiss him on the cheek, just as you hear someone shout 'Two!'. But he moves his face, and suddenly, when nearby some asshole sets a bunch of illegal fireworks off, your lips aren't on his cheek, but his own lips, and they're soft, and taste like orange juice and it's so wonderful.

"I'm s–,"

Mark cuts you off, grabbing your neck, deepening the kiss.

While he's working on creating a way to splice the potatoes sent for Thanksgiving, you're working on a code to contact Earth using the pile of space junk they sent up here years ago. It's a small glimmer of hope, but using it, you work with it. It pays off – within a week, there's contact, albeit patchy with Earth, and Mark has a way to make sure the both of you have a sustainable food source.

When JPL and NASA end the communication one day, you're left with Mark, feeling just how empty this planet is without the use of decoded messages from scientists millions of miles away.

"I couldn't have done this without you," Marks says, that night over potatoes and ketchup. "I'd be dead for sure without you."

"Don't say that..." you whisper quietly. "I couldn't do this without you either," you say back to him, "I'm useless at agriculture, biology...anything beyond calculation and coding. When we get back to earth, I'm taking a real course on how to grow food. We'll never eat potatoes again."

Mark considers his meal before him. "But I like potatoes."

You laugh.

Later, you turn to your fellow Ares III crewmember, and stranded Earther. "This is probably going to sound weird...do you remember New Years, 2019?" You're sitting in the bunks, laying on Johanssen's bed, legs dangling down. "You were plastered."