Three Months on the Borealis [M30/F30][sci-fy][Navy][forbidden romance][friends-to-lovers]

I stood on the steel grate of the gangway that led to my newest assignment, a sleek “science vessel” called the Borealis. I had been inside her many times, given that I was the Petty Officer 1st Class in charge of the nuclear reactor that powered this polished tub.

I could run it through initial tests while it was drydocked like this, but when we took off for the stars tomorrow, I’d need more hands than just myself to keep it monitored and stable. A three month journey was going to test if this ship was going to be viable over time, or if this was the Navy’s latest wet dream and a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“Not a bad boat, hey sir?” I heard a familiar voice behind me, and it made me stand stock-still. I’d know that voice, that home-grown Southern accent anywhere, because it was my accent. 

I turned around on one toe and one heel and looked down. There stood all 5’3 of Petty Officer 3rd Class Lexi Covington. Those dark eyes looked up at me and she had a big, shit-eating grin on her tanned face from years of being an outdoors bumpkin. 

“What the fuck are you doing here, Lex?” I said as I wrapped my childhood friend in a big bear hug, making her giggle as she hugged me back. 

“What do you think, John Givens? I’m the other operator for this reactor,” she said as I let her go. “I’m gonna be stuck on this floating piece of shit with you for the next three months.”

I just blinked and pulled my head back like someone had tried to hit me. “You’re fucking me right now? We’re on the same assignment for three weeks?” I was fucking stunned.

“Yessir!” she chirped happily and slapped my chest like the little tomboy she was. This girl was prettier than a flower bouquet, but she could throw hands like an inmate and swear like the sailor she was. “It might be longer than three months if Chief Science Officer Briggs wants to keep us assigned to the Borealis.”

I just scoffed and put my hands on my hips, my duffel bag with the name “Givens” still at my feet. “Well I’ll be damned. Welcome aboard, PO Covington,” I said with a smile as I shook her hand. “I didn’t know you were trained to work on reactors, though,” I said, scrunching my brows together.

“Oh, that’s the funny part; I’m not! You’re my TO,” she beamed and squatted down to grab her bag, that tight cute ass looking amazing in her fatigues. I needed to reign my ass in and remember that Lexi wasn’t just a gym body, but that she was also one of my longest friends that I respected, but was also now my subordinate and under my purview to train. This was going to be a long fucking voyage, I told myself as I grabbed my bag and followed her.

—

“Petty Officers Givens and Covington to Main Engineering, please. Givens and Covington to Main Engineering,” a dull and bored as hell sounding voice droned over the ship’s loudspeaker. 

“We’re not even settled in yet,” I groused, my heavy duffel still slung over my shoulder.

“Sorry you don’t get your afternoon nap,” Lexi pouted, looking up at me, and then she cracked a toothy, teasing smile.

“Fuck you too,” I chuckled and picked up my pace. We had about two minutes to get to main engineering before they put the announcement out there again, and nobody on the ship wanted to hear it twice. 

Lex and I had just made it, and Chief Science Officer Briggs had just released a comm button that would have had us summoned again. “Oh good, there you two are,” the older man with a Santa Claus looking white beard smiled at us. It was far more trimmed, so he looked more like the captain from the Titanic. 

“Petty Officers Covington and Givens reporting, sir,” I said for the two of us and we both snapped to attention. 

“At ease,” the older man said, and then the hydraulic door slid open one more time, the captain and helmsman both joining us.

“Afternoon, sailors,” the captain said. I had been onboard a few times to make sure the reactor wouldn’t blow up on us immediately and check readings, but I hadn’t spent a lot of time with the crew. I’d spent so little time with other crew members that I was just now seeing the captain for the first time. 

“We need to talk about what exactly this trip is going to look like,” the captain said and ran a hand over his salt and pepper crew cut. “This is first and foremost a science vessel and mission, however, we will have a platoon of Marines on board as well. And if anyone cared to look closely, we do have bow and stern deck guns as well as two ion cannons on the hulls.”

Lexi and I shared a look. This didn’t seem like a mission designed to collect samples of some rare mineral on an asteroid or some shit. Where the fuck were they sending us?

“I see that look,” the captain chuckled. “We’re not flying into a warzone, but this voyage will take us to the Between,” he explained. The Between was a semi-militarized zone between contested territories which bred “accidental” skirmishes, smuggling, the illegal transport of humans, and piracy. Essentially, it was an absolutely lawless, unofficial warzone. 

“Is the entire crew permitted to carry sidearms sir, including engineers?” I asked. His mouth twitched in what had almost become a smile.

“Indeed, PO Givens, but not until we’re within one day’s flight of the Between. You two aren’t exactly bridge officer staff, so I’ll get to the meat of why you two are here. This ship isn’t designed for a fist fight. It’s built to throw some sand and get us out of a tight situation if one should show itself, because this is a science vessel first and foremost. What’s extra special about this tub is the nuclear reactor that runs it, and it’s unique modifications, which will be your baby.”

“The recycling emissions system,” I said for him, and Lexi turned her head to me in question. “I noticed that when I was familiarizing myself, sir. We have an abnormally large emissions container, and what I believed to be a converter in the stern. We can recycle the emissions into extra fuel, and then we don’t have to discharge the emissions, making us a lot harder to pick up on scans and extend the use of our uranium. We can’t fully cloak, but any enemy ship would have to be on top of us to pick us up.”

The captain laughed and shook his head. “You’re spot on, PO. We need you and your trainee, PO Covington here, to not just make sure we run smoothly, but to note just how much emissions we can store before we have to convert it, and then what that fuel is worth.”

“Yes sir,” I said plainly. “I’ll adjust the spreadsheets to include that monitoring data,” I told him with a nod. 

“This is experimental tech and I expect it to be extremely sensitive,” the Chief Science Officer spoke up. “Your lodgings are closer to the reactor and separate from the rest of engineering. It’s smaller quarters than engineering bunking, but it’s just the two of you, like a dorm room. It’ll be a little cramped, but it should be comfortable enough. “Get settled in and get your equipment running and ready to start sending me and the Chief Engineer reports. A lot of this voyage relies on you two. 

“It wasn’t easy, picking you two, but given your experience, PO Givens, you were a clear choice. Your history with PO Covington made her an obvious choice for your trainee and second. You two can work together and handle the extended close proximity closer than we could expect any other pair to. Good luck, and please keep in close touch.”

“Dismissed,” the captain said, and we snapped too, saluted, grabbed our shit and got out.

“So we’re gonna be bunkies, huh?” Lexi asked with a big grin. “At least I know I can get along with you,” she teased and bumped my shoulder.

I was supposed to share a private, close quarters with Lexi? One room, two beds and a shower unit? I was to be her TO and supervisor for three months? She was going to be in my bunk room, just us two, and I had to behave myself? This was going to be fucking torture. She knew how hot she was, and she had to know how hot I found her. There’s no way she couldn’t.

—

The hydraulic release to our quarters whooshed open and I stepped in. Lexi pushed right past me like an anxious little kid. “I call top bunk! Oh…” she finished flatly, seeing there were two beds, completely opposite sides of the room from each other. 

Just fucking great. We could see right into each other's beds. Who the fuck designed this, and why did they hate me? “Pick your side, punk,” I said jokingly and she stuck her little pink tongue out at me.

“I choose…” she said slowly, tapping her chin, “I pick right side. It’s closer to the bathroom.”

“By like two feet,” I scoffed and tossed my ruck onto my bed. 

“Still closer,” she said and started to unpack. 

The beds were slightly off the ground with storage drawers under them. We each got a foot locker and a cubby for boots/shoes. We also each had the world’s smallest open faced closet to hang our uniforms and whatnot. 

I sat on my bed next to my ruck and watched Lex bending right over to put her clothes away. I stared right at that high and tight ass of hers. The friend in me wanted to look away, but the animal that would be spending three months with her wanted to just grab two healthy handfuls of that rump. 

I looked away from her appetizing ass and noticed that where I was sitting pointed me right at the bathroom. Our small, private bathroom. I’d be taking a lot of cold showers in there. I needed to distract myself.

“You get set up and cozy here. I’m going to go get systems running and take a test reading,” I said, happy I hadn’t popped a noticeable stiffy yet. 

“Oh, okay,” she said standing up, her hands on her wide hips and a pleasant smile on her face. She was so fucking cute, even when she wasn’t trying. Three fucking months of this, every day.

—

I had run initial diagnostics three fucking times. Everything was fine. We were set for launch tomorrow. Every reading was set on its proper path in the cloud recording system. The new sheets were set up for the new data on nuclear emissions and their viability as additional fuel once recycled. 

I had been in here for a suspiciously large amount of time, and I knew I had to get myself used to being close to Lexi. I was her training officer and only bunkmate. Trying to stay away from her might drive me as crazy as being close to her. Maybe I just needed exposure therapy to make myself get over her?

I sighed and pulled the ergonomic wheely chair from the work desk, but I left everything running, and I left the small observation room overlooking the reactor. It was a small room with disgustingly thick lead walls to keep out the cancer goblins and had a tinted observatory window made of go fuck yourself grade glass, again, to keep out the cancer goblins and to make sure we didn’t go blind looking at the nuclear reactor. The core inside, when being drawn for power, was like looking into an eclipse or a supernova or some shit. Bunch of science-y fluff aside, motherfucker would make you go blind if you looked at it with straight eyeballs.

There was a very short L-shaped corridor between the reactor observatory and me and Lex’s quarters. Not even a 30 second walk. I could hear the low droning “Whomp-whomp-whomp” that it constantly made. It was audible even in the bunk room. The sound of the multi-million dollar piece of responsibility was always there, a white noise that could drive you nuts like rats in the wall if you couldn’t train yourself to block it out.

I shouldn’t have been shocked when I pressed the button that whooshed the door open, to see Lexi sitting on the floor, cross-legged and meditating. There was some kind of soft tranquil music playing. Singing bowls or something. What I wasn’t expecting was for her to be in booty shorts and a sports bra, nothing else. It was enough to make my mouth go dry.

Lexy had a perfect tan, long dark hair that she now let down around her back and shoulders since she didn’t have to be posted and in uniform at the moment. She had a zen smile on her face as I took in her abs and sculpted muscles from being a life-long busybody and gym junky just like me. 

I looked over to my bed and saw that my ruck sack was empty and neatly folded. She had put all of my stuff away, too. Even my underwear. Black boxer briefs weren’t exactly what I would refer to as “sexy delicates,” but it still felt weird to know she’d touched my stuff, as much as I appreciated her help.

“You look comfortable,” I chuckled as I laid down on my bed and started playing with a grip strength trainer. It had become more of a stim than anything, really. 

She opened her eyes and turned her head, looking at me with that easy, relaxed smile. She looked like she just woke up from a nap. She wasn’t bothered at all about me seeing her in her minimum workout clothes. It wasn’t the first time. When we had been on leaves or on station together, we often worked out and spent off time together, usually outside enjoying nature or in a bar. She could drink most guys I knew under the table. “Good and relaxed. Just trying to acclimate to home.”

“Well we might have to have music like yours on all the time so we don’t have to hear the reactor for three months straight,” I said, turning my head and staring up at the ceiling.

“You just need to find distractions, John,” she said softly, and then I heard her breathing just noticeably shift. I rolled my head over and she had switched from meditating to doing yoga. This fucking girl.

—

Because it was the day before setting off, the two of us didn’t have a whole lot to do. We had the reactor running minimally just so the ship could operate all functions normally as the crew settled in, and because we didn’t want to leave drydock on a cold reactor start. It was like warming up a car before trying to drive somewhere, but with a vehicle and reactor this large, the start up time was longer than a car, of course. 

We had gone to the on-board gym, which was very similar to an in-hotel gym, but it was better than nothing. After getting back into the room, Lexi told me the last thing I wanted to hear. The simple words, “I'm going to take a shower.”

I swallowed, instantly picturing what that would look like. “Maybe we should take records of water pressure and temperature,” I joked weakly, just trying to cut through the palpable anxiousness I was feeling.

“You do that,” she joked as she went into the bathroom and shucked her sports bra, giving me a view of her bare back before she closed the door. She had to have done that on purpose.

After just a minute of the water being on, Lexi cracked open the door. “This bathroom is so small and this room has no ventilation!” she bemoaned. 

I looked over and I could just see the bathroom mirror, which reflected the frosted and steamed glass of the shower. I could just make out Lexi's fit, curvy little body, but I couldn't see any details. I cursed myself for trying so hard to see them.

I busied myself by thinking about… well, anything but Lexi's wet, small but hard body under the water. When the water turned off, my attention was back on the shower mirror. It was still a little foggy when she stepped out.

The longer she took to dry herself off, the more the steam dissipated from the mirror, but she had just wrapped herself in a white towel before I got to see anything. I must have had a backlog of good karma, because Lexi came out of the little bathroom in just her towel, her hair still mostly wet and down.

“The shower is actually surprisingly good,” she said as she looked down at me, seemingly not caring that the bath towels were barely long enough to cover her from the swells of her chest to mid thigh. 

Keeping the towel wrapped tight around herself, Lexi laid down on her twin-sized bed, crossed her ankles, and carefully put her hands behind her head, her hair still damp. She glanced down and saw that her towel was still in place. “Are you taking a shower now?”

“Yeah, I'll see if the water will still be hot long enough for me to finish up,” I said and grabbed some basic sweats out of my bunk drawers.

After a quick shower that was sped up by my want for the water to stay hot, I got out and casually dried off and dressed, knowing that Lexi didn't have the same periscoping capabilities with the bathroom that I had.

I left the bathroom, and put my dirty clothes on my bed and looked over to see a sight that stopped me cold. Lexi had fallen asleep. Her towel had shifted, and her leg was off of the bed, her foot just touching the floor. Her entire leg was exposed and the towel just barely covered her pussy. I licked my lips and just stood there, frozen. I’d known Lex for years, but this was easily the most of her I’d seen. The only thing stopping me from seeing all of her was that little white bath towel. 

If she moved again, rolled any way, I didn’t know what else I’d see. The horny sailor in me wanted to watch and see, but the friend in me told me to wake her up, to maybe try to move her leg back on the bed to help cover her up, but I didn’t want her to think I was doing something untoward by touching her like that.

I decided the safest option was to try waking her up. “Hey, Lex. Wake up. You’re about to fall off the bed,” I tried to warn her, and I shook her shoulder.

“What?” she woke up with a start and sat right up, not thinking to secure the towel, and as she sat up, her ass kept the bottom of the towel pinned but her torso cleared it, leaving her naked to the hips.

“Oh, shit,” I said, putting a hand up and turning away. I had just stolen the smallest glimpse of brown areola and dark nipples, but I forced myself not to gaze.

“Fuck!” she cursed and pulled the towel out from under her and then draped it over herself like a blanket and curled herself into a ball, trying to make her little body even smaller. “You didn’t see anything, did you?” she asked, now wide awake. She hadn’t been out long enough to experience REM sleep anyway.

“Not really, just the shortest blur,” I said truthfully. “When you were asleep, your leg was exposed up to your hip, but I didn’t see anything… extremely personal,” I explained. 

“Oh, good,” she said with an adorable blush, looking away from me. “I should probably get dressed. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep with only a towel, anyway. That’s my bad,” she said with a pout.

“It’s fine. I don’t blame you at all. You looked cozy,” I said with a shrug. “No harm done. I’m your trainer in the observation room, but in the bunk I’m still just John.” I can’t imagine how fucking embarrassing it would be if I woke up like she did to my old TO. I never would have lived that shit down. Hell, pictures of me sleeping in the towel with my balls hanging out would have been all over the ship before he would have woken me up with a sack tap.

“Thanks, John,” Lexi said with a smile, showing me straight white teeth as she stood up and held the towel to her chest with one hand as she tried to cover her bubble butt with the other.

“Uh, I’ll go check on the readings and give you a minute to get dressed into something. We should head to mess for dinner soon, anyway,” I said, clearing my throat. 

I turned my back to her and was about to hit the door release, but her voice stopped me.

“John,” Lexi said softly, and I turned around slowly. When I was facing her fully, she licked her lips, and she looked nervous as hell. “I’ve been trying for years to get an assignment with you, and now that I have it… that it’s just us in this little corner of the ship….” She dropped her towel to the floor, covering only her little feet.

She didn’t need to say anything else, and I didn’t let her, because I rushed across the tiny space between us and picked up my little Southern Belle and kissed her, and she kissed me right back. 

I had no idea Lexi Covington felt the same about me that I felt about her. I had resigned myself to the friendzone. I never would have had the guts to make myself vulnerable like she did. Never in a million years would I have dropped my towel in a confession, but she had always been a bigger risk taker than me. 

Our barrack space was so limited that I struggled to find a space of open wall large enough to press Lexi's small but muscled body against, and I held her bare ass in my hands for the first time as we kissed like love-sick camp goers who wouldn't see each other until next summer, but our story was just getting started, not being put on pause.

When Lexi broke the kiss to breathe, a string of thick spit still connected our lips. Instead of bashfully giggling or looking away, she reached down between us and grabbed my junk over my sweats.

“You're wearing too much clothes, John. You should let me help you with that,” she said with a lowered, velvety voice, and I put her down. She was barely on her feet before she was tugging my shirt up, but she was short enough that I had to tug it over my head myself.

Lexi was kissing my chest and running her hands along my abs. They weren't action star, but they were there from a military career. The Navy, fitness, and Lexi are the three things I could always count on. The Navy and fitness were the last things I wanted to think about as this beautiful dark-haired woman was pushing my sweatpants down my legs.

“I want to see you, John. I've wondered for a long time what you look like, how you feel,” she dropped to her knees, “how you taste.”

I couldn't help but to let out a little groan when she said that, her hands pulling down on the sides of my underwear and pulling them all the way off. She wanted me as naked as she was, not messing around with a partial reveal and taking off more later.

I was on the bigger framed side, and Lexi was a petite thing, so I decided I wanted to try something with her I'd never done before. I helped her stand up and her hand immediately went to my cock, stroking me with long and slow pulls. That was fine. She did let out a little squeal when I picked her up and flipped her over.

“Oh my God, John!” Lexi giggled with my hard cock right in her face, her cute, clean shaven pussy in mine. Instead of talking, I went to work, going straight down to trace her folds with my tongue, making her sigh out as she opened her mouth for me, her hot breath washing over my sensitive and swollen head.

I felt her lips wrap around me and she slid me in, and then I felt that clever tongue of hers circling the head. She was doing such fine work that I was getting mad at my nerves for instinctively wanting to buck my hips.

Lexi kept playing her tongue games, so I played, too, no longer lapping at her lips, but hardening my tongue and running it along the divide, pushing in harder and deeper to get past those lips so I could get to her opening. She was getting good and wet, and her natural taste was so fucking good that I swore it made my cock twitch in her mouth. Or did she do that when she flicked her tongue forward and backward over my frenulum?

She seemed to have had enough of the tongue teasing, because she dug her fingers into the meat of my thighs and started to push her head forward, taking me into her throat and purposefully fluttering it, giving my cock head soft little squeezes, and then she took me a little further, deepthroating me.

Her hot and wet mouth and throat covering so much of my cock felt fucking amazing, and it was actually me having the hard time focusing on what I was doing. I was in the process of sticking my tongue into her tasty pussy as much as I could and rubbing her clit with the tip of my nose. I inhaled her musky, womanly scent as I got my whole face involved.

With a wet, almost gagging sound, Lexi took herself off of me and took a second to breath. “John, I want you to put me down so you can fuck my face, okay?”

I did put her down, but held her hands. “Like you want to keep sucking me, or you want me to just go nuts while holding your head?” I checked in because they were two totally different things.

Lexi smiled up at me, her hands working in alternate patterns on my cock, spit running down her chin. She was gorgeous in a feral, jungle Amazon kind of way. Her tanned, almost dark skin was so damn attractive to me. “I want you to make it hard for me to breathe, big boy. I don't want you to stop until you're pulling out to cum all over my pretty face. I *know* you've thought about that, haven't you?”

I bent my knees just a little so I could reach her pussy and stick two fingers inside with a bit of effort, her dropped jaw and closed eyes told me she liked it on the rough side. 

“Lex, we've been friends for years,” I told her as I started moving my fingers around, and I could hear that wet noodle sound. “Since we went through the academy together though… you have no idea what I've thought about doing to you from then until this moment. If we get caught, though… we’ll both be court martialed and dishonorably discharged,” I warned her. “I should have brought this up before we 69ed, but….”

Lexi giggled and still dropped to her knees in front of me, not letting me out of her hands. “I’m well aware of the risks, John. Us having been friends for years, will make this all the more easy to hide,” she told me as she licked the narrow opening of my tip. “Honestly, I love the risk.”

I just looked down at her bright eyes as she swirled her skilled pink tongue around the mushroom tip of  my cock head. “So are we friends with benefits, sleeping coworkers? What exactly is this?” I asked, running my hands through her freshly washed, mostly dry hair.

She suckled on my top and kept wiggling her tongue on my glands for a moment before extracting me. “You’re asking too many questions right now, John. Let’s enjoy this, have our fun, and we can figure this out, okay? I don’t entirely know what I’m feeling yet. I haven’t pinned the words down. I do know that I want this. I want you, I just need to know how to tell you how much of you I want, but… I think I want all of you.”

“We can play BJ games later,” I said and picked her up under her arms and pulled my sweet little Lexi into a hug, pressing her head to my chest. I breathed in the scent of her shampoo and rubbed the small of her back. 

“I’m willing to give you as much of me as you need, Lex. You’re beautiful, and I’ve cared about you for so long. We’re fucking morons, but I trust you enough, I want you enough, to risk this.”

“Yesss,” Lexi purred and circled my nipple with her tongue. “I want you to fuck me with that crazy, ‘we may get caught’ energy, John. I want you to screw my brains out until this feels like a good idea, and not just what we want.”

“I’d be happy to do that, honored,” I chuckled and picked her back up easily, enjoying how I could manhandle her much smaller body. I had planned to just bring her to the bed, but she wrapped one arm around my neck and her legs around the small of my back. She reached behind her and grabbed my cock, aiming it, and then dropping onto me with a sharp gasp and a full shutter.

“Oh my fucking God, John!” she moaned and then started to bounce, both of her arms holding me tight.

If she wanted me standing defiantly in the middle of the room, then so be it. I’d give it to her here. With my hands on her ass I could easily bounce her up and down on my cock. Her pussy was so wet and so fucking tight as she slid from the base up to my tip, and I could feel that feminine cream inside of her, helping us glide. “Fuck you feel so good. This feels so much better because it’s you,” I chuckled and kissed her neck.

She giggled and rocked up and down with my thrusts as I edged us closer and closer to the bed. “Your cock feels huge in my little body, John. I love the way you fuck me. I love that it’s you, fucking me,” she groaned as I dropped her on the small bed, my arms cradling her and caging her into me at the same time as I fell on top of her.

With Lexi pinned to the bed, I bit her neck and started to drive my hips, really fucking her and making her dig her teeth in my shoulder to keep her from screaming. This was our little nook of the ship, but I didn’t want to tease the good luck gods by making what we were doing obvious. 

“John,” she panted, raking her nails over my back, “You can’t cum in me, okay? You can’t, as much as I want you to,” Lexi warned me as she tried to meet my thrusts, but I was going to hard, too fast. I was pinning her to the bed with my body weight and tempo.

“I won’t, I promise,” I growled low in my throat, meaning it. “I’ll cum wherever you tell me, Lexi.”

“I want you to pull out and cum on my face, John. I want you to paint me, so you can see, so that I can feel, that I’m yours.” Lexi was having a hard time speaking through gritted teeth and stolen breathes as I kept savagely humping her. I was getting so tight in my balls, and I knew I had to pull out. I was getting too close.

I pulled out and got on my knees quickly. I kept stroking my wet and creamed-on cock with one hand while I grabbed Lexi by the hair and pulled her face close. She closed her eyes and I erupted all over her stunningly sharp features, a smile on her face,a dn then she thought to open her mouth and stick out her tongue. The first couple surges hit her darling face, and then I finished the last couple globs on her teeth, on her tongue. 

Lexi opened her eyes and looked at me so proudly as she swallowed down what I had deposited in her mouth, and then she licked her teeth, getting all of it. “How do I look?” she asked, giving me a movie star grin.

“You look fabulous, and like you’re mine,” I said and kissed her hair, happy she wouldn’t have to wash it twice. “I think it’s been long enough for the tank to heat back up. You should go clean up,” I suggested, and she nodded, kissing my cheek and not my lips. I appreciated that.

As she scampered into the bathroom, giving me a view of that tight ass, I heard a knock on the door. The timing couldn’t have been more forgiving. I grabbed my sweatpants and pulled them up quickly and grabbed the door. It was the Chief Science Officer.

“PO Givens, how are the first readings and additions to the data collection?”

“Come with me and I can show you, sir,” I said, happy to lead him away from the scene of my dirty secret with Lexi, who was just about to wash away the evidence. This was going to be an interesting three-month assignment.