THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

"Dainty?" You start to grin. "Really?"

 

"Would I lie about these sorts of things?" the phone asks in a tone of deep offense. "Dainty."

The phone pings as it downloads— a grayscale clip of Aspera splayed out in his ablution trap, face tucked in the crook of one elbow, the other hand between his legs— he's panting, fangs bared, gills flexing in the shallow water, the modest length of his bulge spilling a darker shade into the water as he works at his nook— the phone pings again. Video deleted!

 

You walk into a wall.

 

Glasswind's been sent packing and the celebration is in full swing in your favorite recreation area-- a broad, flat, fragrant-grassed field, the ceiling two decks high and the space scattered with tall, twisting scaffold-grown trees. Rope bridges and platforms twist in grand three-dimensional mazes, ferns and moss and tree-ears spill everywhere, and nearly the entire population of the ship is picnicking on thermal planes. Lusii dash wildly about, playing their own games.

You are wearing, to general amusement, long trousers, hopbeast slippers, a shirt that buttons to your throat, and one of Arguus's shapeless well-pitied sweaters that spills out past your fingertips and down halfway to your knees. His mustard sign over yours feels like a shield.

You are sitting in his lap, shoulder-to-shoulder with Lainey, sampling a wide variety of homebrewed recreational fluids via the methodology of shots. You can't feel your fins. You are so happy.

Kadros! Kadros has finally deigned to put in an appearance! Stars, he looks awkward as a show pony in a sewer pipe.

"Commander!" You yell, and wave at him. "Come do shots! This is your captain speaking! I order you to have some damn fun!"

Lainey gets a gigglefit and you sort of lose focus for a moment because kissing is necessary.

 

You're wearing your only set of civvies: white tank top, black hoodie with the sleeves shoved up, hiking sandals, and a pair of faded red climbing pants that's gotten uncomfortably tight in the butt and thighs since you last had shore leave. (You're ready for this blueblood getting-even-bigger thing to lay off any time, nothing ever fits for long.) You've even given in to the party atmosphere enough to wear your old favorite green-diamond hair clip, and some silver-and-lapis bracelets Pancho gave you for your officer training graduation.

You brought your lusus, and he immediately took up a position in the tallest of the trees and started making friends with smaller bird lusii. You got yourself a beer to keep people from shoving drinks into your hand, and have been roaming around saying hello to everyone who can stand you. You occasionally serruptitiously check your phone for the time; you figure an hour and a half is long enough that you won't seem like you were so eager to leave that you rushed out at an hour on the dot, but not so long that you overstay your welcome. After all, you're the only officer aboard who acts like an officer, and no one wants that at a party. Plus the music is really loud.

Loud enough that you think you can pretend not to hear Aspera calling you, but then some helpful ensign taps your shoulder and points at the captain, and now you have to acknowlege him. You obediently drift over to him. "I am having fun, Captain," you insist, and hold up your barely-touched beer as proof.

It's not a convincing lie, but you hope he'll be merciful and let it pass muster. Maybe he's sensitive enough to realize that -- as indicated by your clothes, if nothing else -- your idea of fun is exploring the wilderness of a freshly settled planet, or some other athletic endeavor, with a few friends. Not courting alcohol poisoning with subordinates you'll have to face in the evening.

 

"No, real fun. Regular-person fun," you insist, setting out a fourth glass. "Look, get rid of the wiggler nutrient device and sit the chief member of the tightass department down. Lainey, what's in this bottle?"

"Tomatoes," Arguus says gravely, and stifles his own gigglefit in your hair as you slap at his leg.

 

You sigh and sit down. "I like beer, sir," you say reproachfully. "And you wouldn't like me when I'm drunk."

 

"Don't worry, Kadros, I already dislike you!" you grin. "Tip it out or tip it back, come on. I'll let you make your shameful retreat after this round. Maybe the next. Arguus is doing romcom trailers and needs someone new to show off to."

Now Arguus is slapping at you. But it's true, his genius shouldn't go unrecognized, it's a criminal shame.

 

You roll your eyes, but it's clear you can't get out of this. At least you know from experience he'll never pressure you to get drunk again after today. "If anyone films my Maudlin Drunk Self-Pity Spiral, I will break both their arms," you warn, and chug the beer.

Then you hold out your hand for whatever they want to pour down your throat. It'll burn, and your tongue will be numb for days, you know that already. When people decide to Make The Tightass Loosen Up they always pick the strongest, most awful gutrot, and two hours later your vomit is flammable. It's such a chore. But of course no one can ever be persuaded to just believe you that it's not going to be as fun as they think it will be. You have to go through with it.

 

Lainey pours out three shots of— hmm, cherry, at a guess, from the color— and one half-shot, half-tonic water for Arguus, because he is a precious buttercup and you don't want him to die.

Glasswind left you with an even dozen bottles of fruit liqueurs each older and more valuable than this spaceship, probably, and an admonishment for you to elevate your palette. You're not entirely sure what you're doing with the stuff is illegal, but you know it's irreverent to the point of sacrilege.

"Alright, have at it," you say, handing the little glass to Bel. It looks like a doll's teacup in his ridiculous paw, and his face says 'I know this is probably hot sauce cut with gasoline and I already hate you for it'. You give him your biggest, stupidest grin.

 

You obediently toss it back. Instead of burning your mouth and throat in agonizing ways, it slides down sticky-sweet, and from their reactions the face you make must be hilarious. "Cough syrup cut with gin?" you guess.

 

"Nope!" Says Lainey, "God, can you even imagine how mad Sal would be? He'd come after us with a million, zillion knives," and lays out-- pear? Apple? You take yours eagerly. Peach! You were so wrong. Not as wrong as Kadros though, so that's alright.

Arguus tries his thoughtfully. "Sunfruit," he guesses. You pat his knee. He kisses your horn. Arguus is the best.

"Sal would skin us," you say. "Sal would— would— he would make pillows out of our cut-off faces."

"Sal would put our eyeballs in jars," Lainey says, warming to the subject. "And string lights in our skulls and use our claws as, um, as paperclips!"

"Sal would grind me up for tuna cans," you say.

"Sal would stuff you and put you on his trophy wall."

"Sal wouldn't do anything to Arguus though."

"Arguus is a starlight potato."

"I love you, Arguus."

Arguus looks deeply touched.

You give Bel an actual, proper-sized cup. "Here, you're too big, it's absurd. If Sal comes for us we're going to hide behind you."

 

"At least put some tonic in it, you alcoholic," you scold. Arguus is the one who does so, bless him. You could never glare at Arguus the way you do at Aspera; he truly is a starlight potato, whatever the hell that is.

You drink obediently. It's honestly not bad. "If I pretend to hate this stuff, will you keep giving me this instead of whatever reactor fuel you're working up to?"

 

"No wonder you've been acting like this party is a one-way trip to the salt mines, you must have radiation burns on your indulgence glands," Lainey comments, mixing him up something properly fizzy and golden with a little pink umbrella and a citrus wedge.

"On the inside of his rumblespheres," you say solemnly. "All of them. All—" you squint at Bel's broad chest, "—seven."

Lainey sporfles and nearly drops the glass.

 

You actually chucke a bit at that. You accept Lainey's offering with a solemn nod, and unbend enough to explain; you honestly like Lainey, even if you are sometimes a bit jealous of her. It's the wrong quadrant, but she gets to touch him as much as she wants. She's a solid officer, though, for all her smartassery, and doesn't treat you like a freak, so you get along pretty well.

"Making the tightass loosen up is a spectator sport," you confide. "I've learned to just let it happen. I get weepy and irritating, I throw up, everyone is satisfied. They usually go for the cheapest, hardest stuff they can get, so this is a change." You raise your glass to her and take a long drink. It's really good. You drink some more. "So yeah, that's why I look dour, I suppose. This isn't my kind of fun. My kind of fun is, well, I'm dressed for my kind of fun, maybe we could install a climbing wall. Build a canal, start a rowing team." You shrug sheepishly at how improbable it is that you could get to have your kind of fun on this ship.

 

"OH!" you say, sitting up nearly fast enough to gore Arguus in the face. "Oh! Oh. We could fix up the shared sign-up aviary for that! From, from— from, er, the, the staircases, the landings! And to them! So there'd be different lengths and all. Heavens, that would be so fun, Kadros, you reckless oyster, you need to tell me about this sort of thing sooner."

 

You get a mental image of having a climbing contest with Aspera, complete with wrestling session at the top, and your ears flame. You try to douse your blush by taking another long drink of the fruity fizzy genius juice Lainey gave you. It's so refreshing! "Do you enjoy competitive athletics, sir?"

 

"Respite block trollympics," you and Lainey say at the exact same moment, then you both have to lie down and wheeze for a little bit. Arguus puts his ridiculous long legs over your side, and you roll over to have his ankles on your stomach and play with his toes. Lainey puts a shot glass on your forehead and fills it.

"Oh, thanks," you frown. She pats your cheek.

"Arguus!" you demand. "Arguus. Orchid of my soul. Do a trailer! Do a trailer and show Kadros."

Arguus tries to remove his feet but too late! You have him. He goes all lemonish and mumbles indistinctly to his nervous, twiddly fingers.

"Pick a movie and Arguus will cut a trailer for it as if it's a romcom," Lainey translates for Kadros. "He's good."

 

"What, here on the spot?" You're impressed. "Do 'The Film Set In A Fictional Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland, In Which The Solitary And Traumatized Troll Known As Dangerously Insane Maxxim, Having Been Captured By Trolls With Shaved Heads And Chalky Body Paint, Joins Forces With An Equally Dour And Quiet Warrior Named Furisa etc.'! Hard mode -- do it for a quadrant other than pale."

 

"Flush," Lainey says, and you make a strangled horking noise, then have to catch the shot as it topples off your head. You drink it and say, "Pitch. Or ashen with Anghar, there was something cute going on there."

"Shh," Arguus says, settling back against the tree trunk. He opens up his husktop and his eyes film over with the lovely iridescence of his particular power— rainbow static crackles along the hard edges of his computer, the shotglasses, the bottles— a spot dances along Kadros's cute little hairclip.

You and Lainey entertain yourself with a few more samples— blueberry, dragonfruit, and pumpkin spice, probably— and shove the tonic bottle and Kadros's preferred peach stuff at him to serve himself as he likes. Then Arguus makes an agonizingly cute ding! with his mouth, and turns his husktop around.

It's an ashen comedy of errors with Furiousa, Maxx, Nux, and Cape, set to the tune of troll yackedy sax— everyone slapping away at everyone else, and all the slips, falls, tender face touches, and biting emphasized at the highest points of the music. The Immortan is cut in for the incredulous reaction shots. You laugh until your gills ache.