THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

"It's not my hive, and when I asked you whether I was supposed to hide for a week you wouldn't answer me. Anyway, Galley was looking out for me. He pranked me a little, but he wouldn't let anything really bad happen to me. He helped me make an ID badge so no one has to know I'm pre-ascension." You cross your arms and frown up at him, stubborn. "I'd really like if we could get off the age thing. I know it's hilarious to you, but I didn't exactly come here of my own free will."

 

"Helmsman Galgal kills highbloods for fun," you snap, fins flaring. "He sent you into the fucking catacombs! Do you know how many of those old docking blocks don't have oxygen? MOST OF THEM. AN ENSIGN CAN DROP DEAD IN THE TIME IT TAKES THEM TO DRIVE DOWN A HALLWAY." You rake one of your hands through your hair and take a deep breath through your nose, struggling for the self-control necessary not to kick this little shit right in the face.

"I will stop treating you like an ignorant, immature, irresponsible child when the fact that you are an ignorant, immature, irresponsible child stops being so bloody relevant. You were dropped into my lap and I am doing my best here to take care of you, and stars all fucking witness me, pupa, if you kill yourself in a fit of pig-headed self-righteous reckless ego and your corpse is insufficient to bring my Commander back I will keep your ghost in a bottle and piss in it nightly."

 

"Galley wouldn't kill me, he wants Commander Me back as much as you do! What the hell do you mean, take care of me, you're not my lusus and I don't need babysitting!" Whoops, you stood up. It's just that he's yelling, and also wrong. "If you thought I was such a helpless wiggler, you shouldn't have gone to sleep. I think you knew perfectly well I was going to be fine, and you're just mad at me because you flipped out and now you're embarrassed."

Psychoanalyzing his freakouts never fails to get your Erskin to blow his top. You're morbidly curious to find out how it works on this one.

 

"I'm sure playing psychoanalynch gets all the little pupa versions of us very hot and bothered back in your playpen, but in the Big Girl Galaxy up here, things are actually dangerous, and you're being deliberately idiotic," you bite out. "Galley is neither your friend nor your guardian cherub, he's a short-sighted self-destructive bit of bad work who'd throw us all into the fucking sun for a laugh, whether he had your bulge in his nasty little mouth or not. This ship is not in any kind of shape to go skippedy-hopping blindly through for a picnic. And you need to decide whether you're going to listen to me for once in any of your ASSHOLE little lives, and I can put my goddamn heels up for more than a minute at a stretch, of if you're going to continue pretending you're the absolute authority of your own incipient demise and I will have to throw you in the fucking brig."

He's trying to loom at you. That's cute. You cross your arms threateningly and loom right the hell back.

 

Fury bursts through you; you get right up in his face. "How dare you talk that way about Galley. I should've known -- you're just like those clowns you were complaining about, you just can't wait to drag lowbloods for being lowbloods. No, of course he can't be trusted not to murder his matesprit's double, because he's yellow! Go to hell, Erskin, you're as douchey as your younger self, you just dress it up in gold braid."

 

You can't help your fins flaring forward or your snarl from showing every one of your front fangs. "Galley isn't going to murder you because I'm castist, he's going to murder you because he's murdered six captains, possibly double digits worth of officers, at least two bluebloods since I got dumped here, and quite possibly you, very soon, because you're a naive little idiot from some alternate dimension where he hasn't been angry hardware since he was five, and you'd make it so easy he couldn't help himself. You don't think you'd get your shots in where you could, if some boy near the color of everyone who ever hurt you opened himself up for it?"

You reach out and give him a firm shove, flat palm to his chest, just to push him back to a less biteworthy distance.

 

You slap his shoving hand aside and don't budge. "I'm not just some blueblood, I'm the balance he needs to get his matesprit back, and he's not stupid, you just think he is because you always think everyone but you is! My Erskin is always assuming I have no idea what danger is or how to protect myself, just because I'm not a big scaredy cluckbeast about it, so I shouldn't be surprised you're the same. Go on, keep assuming I survived to nine sweeps by blind luck and privilege. Go right the fuck ahead."

 

"ANYONE CAN DIE, YOU ARROGANT LITTLE SHIT," you shout at him, and grab one of his horns by the fork since he's not going to back off, squeeze it punishingly.

"There is no one so strong or smart or lucky that they don't die. Do I have to fucking drag you to the goddamn wake we just had and rub your nose in the ashes like you're a rug-pissing puppy?"

 

"Oh for hate's sake." You roll your eyes. "I literally just had this same conversation with my Erskin the night before the switch. What planet do you even think I'm from? I am honestly curious how you can think for one second that I don't know death is on the caegar menu for every troll in the galaxy. Why does it make you so panicky to see me not panicking over it?"

 

"You can't keep changing your position every time you think it'll make me angrier!" you say. "Either I should have trusted you when you said you'd stay put or I should have stayed up to guard you because your word means nothing. Either I should accept that you're too big a badass to ever die, or you're fatalistically resigned to biting it whenever! I am not scared that you're not scared, I am exhausted and you and your juvenile nonsense are the absolute last thing I need right now! I want my fucking Commander back!"

Your voice might crack a bit on the last sentence. Whoops. You pull your fins back and drop the little asshole's horn.

"We need to come to some kind of understanding, Kadros," you tell him. "You can't just run around on your own recognizance, and you can't think everything's going to work out just fine and dandy because it did in some other universe."

 

"I never thought that, stop arguing with your straw troll and listen to me for once!" This is dangerously infuriating; you have to remind yourself that this isn't your rival. "What I'm saying is I know there's danger but I'm not letting it stop me from being curious and getting things done! I'm saying if you thought I was that helpless it was hypocritical to fall asleep. But in the end nothing bad happened, because I am not a bitty grub playing in traffic, I'm biologically an adult and perfectly capable of not tripping out an airlock the moment you take your eyes off me! You want to come up with a better plan than wrapping me up in cotton and stuffing me in a shoebox for a week, I'm all ears."

 

"Oh, listen to you for once, I'll get right on that when you return the favor!" you snap back. "You are not an adult, you are not competent to navigate this ship alone and unsupervised on the whims of a helmsman with a proven record of fatal sabotage, you are not getting anything done except give me a headache bigger than the condescension's bulge! How is it SO MUCH TO ASK that if you want to know something, you ask me, and if you want to do something, you ask me!? Me, the bastard in responsible for this ship you literally just arrived on! I mean, absolutely dash it all, Bel, if you were running a disposal ship and some little kid dropped out of fucking nowhere, would you wave them merrily off to raise whatever hell they wanted?"

 

"A little kid." You throw your hands up. "I can't talk to you. You're being melodramatic and putting words in my mouth."

 

You are just about ready to snap his fucking head off. Instead you go, "Alright," through your fangs, "if you were running a ship and you just got transferred a fresh ensign with no training! How about that, does that suit your—" you make an extremely contemptuous gesture at him, abbreviated horns and big paws and all "—dignity? How would you handle that?"

 

"I certainly wouldn't lock them in their quarters! And I'm pretty sure I'd trust them to not die of stupidity the moment I took my eyes off them, especially if I had good reason to believe they were actually pretty goddamn competent and not a moron!" Another gesture of exasperation, of disbelief, you can't stop making them. "I expected to get yelled at for leaving after I said I wouldn't. But this thing where you, you panicked, you're all freaked out, like you think I'm doomed, I don't appreciate it and I don't understand it and what is that even -- Erskin, what is this really about?" Your anger is dropping you now that confusion is ascendant.

 

You glare at him. "I did not panic and I am not freaking out," you snap, hands on your hips. "I am, with an enormous amount of justification, exhausted, worried, and pissed right the bloody fuck off with you, which I can keep up indefinitely. You've got all the emotional intelligence of a newt, Kadros, how many times do I have to say I was just at a wake for a huge fraction of my crew or I've had three hours of sleep or If you die too I probably don't get my First Mate back? You were supposed to stay put for one fucking day so we could figure out a game plan in the evening, but no! Here we are! If you insist on being one more pain in my ass you can't keep whining when I treat you like one, I am trying to work with you here! Could you stop throwing a bitch fit already over your precious flipping planet-sized ego!"

 

You roll your eyes. "Wow, you make it sound so appetizing, like I can totally agree with anything you said without also accepting a ton of shitty unfair judgements about me."

 

Your fins flick. "Kadros, you've snuck out of your hive at mid-day, stolen a vehicle and driven it off into extremely dangerous territory to try and rendezvous with your inappropriately old and malicious flush-crush, and now you keep rolling your eyes and scoffing at me while I try to convince you to listen to some fucking authority. Please explain why we are not at this very moment engaging in some pork-fisted morality play about why juveniles should listen to their lusus, floss their fangs, and wash their buckets with the good soap."

 

"Yes, I did a thing I should not have done, and I deserved to get yelled at. But you keep making it be about how I'm totally going to die if you don't sit on me. And how I'm a helpless baby idiot. That's what I'm not going to agree with." You cross your arms. You're not budging on that.

 

"We both agree that you shouldn't have done it, but why you shouldn't have done it is important, Bel. This isn't your universe. My Helmsman isn't your Galley. The Sunslammer is absolutely riddled with areas that visiting trolls shouldn't go without the proper clearance, equipment, or forewarning. I will repeat this again: Galgal kills highbloods for fun, and you survived the catacombs he sent you to by blind fucking luck. You're not a helpless baby idiot, but you seem to think being told to fucking slow down and listen to the people in charge of this place you just arrived at is a direct criticism of your hardass quotient, and you need to stop."

Slowly and deliberately, you put your hands on his shoulders, so he can see— hopefully— how very seriously you are trying to take him and his frustration. It doesn't help your bloodpump that your palms cover so very much of his shoulders, when he's like this.

"I'm your Captain now, Bel," you tell him. "I don't know what it's like for you at home, but I only want to keep everything ticking along, here, until we can get you back there. Can you work with me on this?"