Work Text:
Corbin was not intrusive by nature. He never had been. Except when he was irritated.
Now he studied unobtrusiveness like an art form, or religion. Or like a science.
Corbin did his job. He reported to Ashby. He kept an eye on Ohan as he recovered. He communicated clearly and succinctly with Rosemary or Sissix when necessary. But he was careful not to intrude.
When he crossed paths with one of his shipmates, he nodded quickly and passed them with as little eye-contact as possible. When they asked him a question, he responded in short order. There were very few questions that really required more than a word or two in response.
At night, Corbin did not sleep. Tycho did not know Corbin, although he did know Corbin’s citizenship status and had likely accessed professional and personal memories of his predecessor to determine the best methods for working with Corbin. Somehow Corbin did not feel as awkward, or as much as though he were a bit of algae under a microscope, when he asked Tycho to run searches that were painfully obvious. There was no point, after all, trying to research something tangential to what he really wanted to know.
How to be a decent person
How to be nicer
How to change your personality
How to change your personality clones
How to change your personality clones difficult to work with
How to make other people like you
How to make yourself like you
There was different advice out there depending on what species and philosophy one ascribed to, but much of the human advice Corbin had discarded as useless to him. Be yourself, it suggested. Take the first step. Talk to people. Realize that your insecurities are all in your head.
Any aadnrisk research on the topic was even less helpful. Maybe all aandrisks were like Sissix, overly touchy and affectionate and uninhibited.
He had fallen back on the old medical oath. First, do no harm. After all the harm he’d done by opening his mouth and just being himself, it was probably the time to do none.
So he excelled at his job and tried not to bother the people of the ship, especially Ohan, whose choices he had violated. Especially Sissix, who was chained to him for the rest of the standard. He would make it as painless as possible for her.
He went for dinner just a few minutes after everyone had usually finished eating and left the table. Not so late that Dr. Chef would have to wait on him to clean up, but late enough that he could avoid seeing them at the table. So that they could avoid seeing him.
Only this time, the plates and bowls around the table were not dirtied, the food was not picked over, and most significantly, the room was not empty.
“What is everyone doing here?” Corbin snapped, looking from Dr. Chef to Ashby.
“It seemed that the time we ate dinner no longer worked with your algae care, so we moved dinner back about half an hour to coincide with the time you’d been coming to eat,” Ashby explained, serving himself a redcoast bug.
Oh. Corbin sat in his usual spot. “I apologize for the inconvenience,” he managed.
The table filled. Even Ohan, it seemed, had taken to dining with the crew. Corbin studied Ohan. His hair was patchy--filling in but not entirely even yet--but his eyes seemed brighter, more lively. Corbin could not feel remorse for what he’d done to Ohan, but then, he rarely did feel remorse. That was part of the problem.
Corbin listened to Kizzy’s rendition of her day and answered all of Rosemary’s polite questions with a word or two until Sissix finally snapped. “Stars, Corbin. Everyone’s trying. Would it kill you to put in a little effort?”
Corbin studied the meal in front of him and took a precise bite. He wanted to snap back, wielding words that always forced Sissix to back off, but he couldn’t do that any more.
Before he could force himself to apologize for whatever he did to offend, Ohan’s voice broke in. “That is what our Corbin does when he is putting in effort.”
Everyone stopped to look at Ohan. It seemed that even now, Ohan was a being of few words.
“Our?” Rosemary ventured.
Ohan nodded. “Yes. There are two.”
“But when you say our,” Rosemary pressed, “Ohan, are you--”
Ohan raised a long digit. “Not ours,” he said, pointing at his chest. “Ours. “ He pointed at his own chest, then slowly shifted the finger to point first at Sissix, then Dr. Chef, Kizzy, and Jenks, Ashby, and Rosemary. “Our Corbin.”
Corbin took another measured bite of his soup. Dr. Chef was using rosemary in everything he could. In the past week, Corbin had eaten rosemary bread, rosemary soup, and rosemary roasted redcoast bugs. The flavor was inoffensive.
He could feel the eyes of all the crew studying his motions, but he did not look up to meet their gaze, and after a moment, Sissix spoke up. “Ohan, what possible hint do you see that Corbin is putting in any kind of effort?
Corbin was not an expert at reading the emotions in anyone’s voice, particularly not Ohan’s, but he would have pegged Ohan’s response as surprise. “He has changed his pattern of behaviors in response to negative feedback. Before, he responded to negative feedback with negative output. Now, he is nonresponsive.”
Corbin thought of examining his algae under a microscope and how easy it was for him to understand why it reacted as it did. Ohan could understand the fabric of space and time. Corbin was probably not a mystery to Ohan.
Sissix sniffed, “So I’m supposed to infer, from the fact that he won’t talk to us, that he’s trying to get on our good side?”
Corbin was no longer taking small, slow bites of food. He needed to get out of here and back to the algae, which couldn’t analyze him back.
“It was difficult for me to understand and remember when we were dying. But Corbin spoke to us.”
Corbin looked up sharply. “That’s enough, Ohan. I’ve been reprimanded already for those actions.”
“He explained that he gave me the injection because he witnessed everyone’s grief after the loss of Lovey, and he wished to spare all of you more pain. I believe he said that, contrary to popular belief, he does care about the feelings of the crew.”
Corbin remembered being forced to march naked from the pits. He remembered being unable to cover himself and having nowhere to hide. He put down his spoon and stood up. “I need to go.”
“Sit down,” Ashby ordered.
Corbin was torn between his new policy of never arguing and his need, his compulsion, to flee.
Kizzy piped up, “Corbin, if what Ohan’s saying is true, that’s definitely the sweetest thing I’ve heard today. At least during dinner time. I guess I didn’t really think about why you stuck Ohan with the cure, especially cause we were all kind of overwhelmed at the time with other things, but that is so nice. You should sit down and eat dinner with us, because we moved dinner half an hour later so we could eat with you.”
He kept his gaze trained on the table. “I am trying to avoid offending you. Eating dinner, answering your questions--I am more adept at doing things that upset people, so I’ve been trying to minimize that impact.”
“Stars. Sit down, Corbin. If there’s one thing worse than you stomping around and yelling at everyone all the time, it’s you moping around and feeling sorry for yourself. You are a part of this crew, and there’s no getting out of that.”
Rosemary placed her hand over Sissix’s arm and interrupted. “Nobody here is perfect, Corbin. You can’t expect yourself to be. It’s okay if you make mistakes.”
He hated mistakes. He’d never had any patience for them in his own work, much less the work of anyone else on the Wayfarer. If he was going to be get better at interacting positively, it was going to be more mistakes than not. He was more mistake than not.
Ohan looked from Rosemary to Corbin and nodded heavily. “Our Corbin should stay. Every seat at the table is filled because of him. He belongs here.”
Corbin’s stomach rolled. He was sweating. He wanted to be somewhere sterile and cool. But he needed to be here.
He lowered himself back into his seat.
Ohan nodded again, and Corbin guessed that he was pleased. “Give our Corbin more soup,” he ordered. “He has not been getting enough to eat.”