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Brian had spent the evening cooking. Carmilla had told him that she would be too busy that night, and asked him to make dinner for the crew. He could convince the rest to help, she added, and he could see it as a bonding experience. When he asked her if she wanted him to bring her something to the lab she declined with a smile, saying that it would not be necessary, and the drumbot got the feeling that he was missing some vital information.
But it had been quite late already, so he payed no mind to it, and decided to go look for the rest. The Toy Soldier had been thrown out of the airlock, so no case there (but he made sure to remind it to try to get inside in time for dinner). Jonny had shoot him before he had any chance to even talk, so he took it as a clue to get out of his room.
Nastya only shoot him after he kept insisting, so that was on him. She did however warn him not to ask Ashes if he wanted to do anything with a controlled fire, even if they had just regained kitchen rights.
In the end he only managed to get Ivy to help him, tough help would be perhaps a bit too much. What he actually managed to do was drag her to the kitchen to keep him company, even if all she did was sit on a counter and read, only taking her eyes out of her book (that she had somehow brought without him noticing?) to tell him by how many grams he was differing from the receipt whenever he tried to measure anything, and the such.
He almost, almost would prefer to be doing it alone. Almost.
It was nice to have someone else in the room. So he decided to ignore her.
Once he finished the lasagna and put it in the oven, he started to set the table.
It was quite late already, he thought guiltily. Carmilla always had dinner ready at least an hour earlier, and everyone seemed already hungry by then. He hoped the rest of the crew wouldn’t be so mad with him.
He decided to call everyone already, so they could start eating right away, and maybe even help him with the plates and cutlery.
The Toy Soldier was the first to arrive, to no surprise. He asked it if it had had a good day (Jolly Good! I Got Frozen Two Times!), before telling it how to help.
But several minutes had passed, and the three of them were still the only ones in the kitchen. Brian looked at the clock, a frown on the face, before indicating TS to get the food out when the small chicken-shaped alarm told it so, and set to find the rest of the crew.
Jonny was the nearest one. He knocked his door, opening it after evading the bullets thrown at his direction, and his heart fell to the floor when he saw what the first mate had been up to. There, laying on his bed, surrounded by papers and clothes and what seemed like a sick octokitten, was Jonny, eating a family sized bag of Space Snacks. “Jonny,” the drumbot whined.
He had sent a memo through the group chat that dinner was going to be late, and he had checked that everyone had read it, but he hadn’t thought that they wouldn’t wait.
“’the fuck you want now,” Jonny told him through a mouth full of bright orange, very chewed, Space Doritos.
Brian squirmed at the sight. “Dinner is ready, I tho- No, stop eating that! You’re ruining your appetite!” he cut himself when the cowboy grabbed another handful from the bag and poured it directly into his mouth, never breaking eye contact with Brian.
He just kept crunching, mouth open, teeth and tongue orange from the colorants, so the drumbot did what he had to do.
“Hey!” Jonny complained when he stole his bag, standing up to try to get it back, but completely forgetting how high the pilot was. “I’m still hungry!” He complained.
Brian gave him a disappointed stare, noticing how light the bag already was. “Well, go to the kitchen, dinner is already served,” he lied, but only for a few minutes. By the time he arrived, the Toy Soldier would surely be serving plates.
He hoped.
“I’m already eating this,” Jonny kept at it, while searching on the mess he called bed for his gun. Brian, having mechanical eyes, spot it first, and took it before the first mate had any chance of grabbing it.
How did Carmilla manage to do this? He tried to get his inner Doc, standing straighter and half closing his eyes in a posture that he hoped would detonate authority and respect. “Go,” he said.
D’Ville smiled, amused at his acting. “No”
In the end Brian had to grab him from the back of his neck and actually push him to the kitchen, where he disgruntledly went to sit on his chair.
The table was set already, but the lasagna still needed a few minutes. Jonny looked angrily at him upon hearing that, leaving Brian with no option but apologize to him. The first mate just scoffed, crossing his arms and looking away in an obvious unforgiving pose.
Brian sighed, asked TS to keep an eye on Jonny, and marched to find the rest of the crew.
He currently had three out of five mechanisms in the table, he tried to cheer himself up. Dinner was about to happen. He could do it, he would show Carmilla she could rely on him.
Who next?
Ashes. They were one of the most sensible mechanisms, or at least he thinks so with the small amount of experience he had so far with dealing with the crew. God, he hopes he’s right.
They aren’t on their room, or in the commons. Instead, Brian finds them by following the sound of a fire alarm, which at this point works less of an alarm and more like those bell collars you put on cats to have an idea of where they were.
It takes him through a corridor he hasn’t been on before, and it takes most of his concentration to keep track of where he is and how to get back to the part of the ship he knows. But he finds them, inside a room that looks that no one had set foot on since centuries, opening some crates that curiously say ‘Inflammable’, and besides, in bold, handwritten letters, ‘ASHES STAY AWAY’. Brian chooses to ignore that last part.
“Ashes?” he calls for them. They turn to him, gun in hand pointed at him, knowing fully well they had been caught red handed. Brian raises his arms in surrender. “Food is ready. I saw nothing”
They nod, lowering their gun and filling their pockets with Brian-doesn’t-want-to-know-what, before going around him and leading the way to the kitchen. Brian is inmensibly pleased.
His relief didn’t last for long, however, because when they get back Jonny had disappeared. “Toy Soldier?” Brian calls for it as Ashes sits down next to Ivy.
“Yes?” it answers from where it’s kneeling in front of the oven, waiting for the final seconds to be over and finally get the food out.
“Where’s Jonny? I told you to keep an eye on him…” he mutters, looking around just in case the bastard was hiding, trying to annoy him as he usually does.
He barely takes notice of the chicken alarm ringing, and the sound of the oven being open. At that he shakes his head, and goes to the cabinets to see if he can find something to lay the tray with the lasagna on. He doesn’t want to burn the tablecloth, and he supposes the mate would get out from wherever he’s hiding when he smells the food.
Brian doesn’t want to sound very prideful, but he can make a very good lasagna, and he has enormous amount of faith on the one he had just made.
“Oh!” TS says, and it isn’t until it turns around to face him that Brian fully understands what had happened. “But I Did!”
The Toy Soldier had done exactly that, and he can hear Ashes laughs as realization daunts him. Yes, it had, quite literally, kept an eye on Jonny, if the empty socket on its face is anything to go by.
Brian looks at it. Looks at its head, at the hole where its eye should be. He listens to the laughs behind him, the ones Ivy had apparently joined in too, and covers his face with his hands. Jonny had escaped with TS’s eye on him (and he didn’t want to know how literal that last part was). He wasn’t supposed to be dealing with this, it was NOT what he was supposed to be doing. His responsibility was to feed the crew one food, one night, not. Whatever that was.
Carmilla didn’t have to deal with this stuff. Why was he dealing with this stuff.
It suddenly occurred to Brian that a member of the crew missing an eye was a thing he should be worrying more about. “Oh my god, TS, are you alright?!” he exclaimed, practically running towards it.
It would be fine, wouldn’t it? A few hours ago it had been out in space. An eye was nothing. Right? Right?
‘Please, let it be alright’, prayed Brian to a god he had just made up specifically for that situation. Carmilla would be so disappointed on him if he managed to somehow break TS.
He wasn’t supposed to be dealing with this!
The fact that its tone was as cheerful as always did nothing to alleviate his heart. “Of Course Not, Silly! I Am Missing An Eye! My Perception Of Space Is Fucked Up! That Is Clinically ‘Not Alright’ In A Lot Of Planets!”
Brian panicked, immediately grabbing the lasagna from TS to prevent any incident. ‘Bit too late for that, uh?’ said a voice in his head that he decided to ignore.
How the fuck was he supposed to fix that before Carmilla found out?
Okay, first of all, he needed to calm down, and leave the food somewhere, preferably on the table. And find Jonny, and the Soldier’s eye (and Nastya! He almost couldn’t believe he forgot her; but he was dealing with a situation a bit more important on the moment, so he forgave himself), and then he was sure he would come up with something. Maybe he could just. Pop it inside again. And it would be fine. Or at least look fine. Carmilla could fix it later, preferably on a situation that did not involve him at all.
“Okay,” he started, looking at it. “But are you in immediate pain?” Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it would be fine.
“No!” it smiled.
“Perfect,” Brian finally allowed himself to leave it to go put the lasagna on the table, hitting Ivy’s hand when she tried to grab a bite. “No eating until we are all sitting down,” that was one of Carmilla’s rules, and he supposed he should keep it, too. “Anybody knows where Jonny is?” Nastya could wait until the eye emergency was solved.
“But I’m hungry!” complained Ivy, not caring a little bit about Brian’s distressed state.
“No” he repeated, more firmly.
Ashes, god bless them, took pity on him, or maybe just wanted the whole affair to be over, but decided to be of use. “He’s probably with Nastya, hiding in the vents somewhere. She doesn’t like to come for dinner either, and Jonny knows it, so they probably teamed”
The vents? Brian looked up. In that single room he could spot five different vents entrances. It was going to be hell to find the pair. “Can you help me find them?” he practically begged.
They laughed at him. “No” they said with a smile.
Okay.
Brian breathed. One. Two. Three times. In and out. He could do this.
“Thank you,” he told them, sarcastically, before walking to the Toy Soldier and giving it their gun. He smiled at the exclamation of surprise from their part. “Toy Soldier, could you please shoot anybody that eats or tries to leave the room before I come back? Shoot them dead”
“Okey Dokey!”
With that, he felt confident enough to leave the room with a chorus of complaints in the background. He stopped at the door however, and turned back to watch at TS’s only eye. “I’ll come back with your eye,” he promised it. It felt like the kind of thing he should do, being in charge and all.
“Sure thing!” it exclaimed happily, and with that, Brian left.
The drumbot wasn’t dumb enough to yell for the two little shits, against all predictions. Instead, he used the braincell he shared with the rest of the crew but Carmilla had given special permission to use for the night to plug in Aurora’s video feed and try to locate them.
It wasn’t too hard. He started on the moment he had left Jonny with TS, watching it get one of its eyes out and yeet it towards a screaming Jonny, barely minutes after he left. Jonny tried to get the wooden orb away from him, but it had apparently grown tentacles, and refused to let the first mate go. He gave up after a few minutes, and left the room after asking Ivy to get him a bag of snacks from one of the tall cabinets.
That-! Brian was angry now. He had told him not to eat anymore, and Ivy! He hadn’t been fool enough to believe she was on his side, but he had hoped that the archivist would at least remain neutral.
Going from camera to camera let him see Jonny’s path, and how he went right to Nastya, just as Ashes had predicted. He saw them talk, and rush towards one of the rooms claimed by the octokittens. Brian took note of the vent they climbed into with a small ‘gotcha’, and ran on its direction.
He could hear them speaking from the moment he entered the room. With silent precision, he climbed up too, the pair not noticing him with their backs facing the drumbot. Brian took all of his frustration out in a single shout. “JONATHAN D’VILLE AND NASTYA RASPUTINA”
They had been sitting on top of a pile of blankets and mechanical parts, eating Space Cheetos, in Nastya’s case with oily hands, in Jonny’s with a wooden eye holding onto him firmly on the neck. Now, they were bloody and being carried to the kitchen on Brian’s shoulders, Nastya grumpily devoided of her work, and Jonny with less neck than before. On one of Brian’s hand was the bit of neck the mate lacked, as well as the wooden eye which apparently didn’t care how much Jonny it was grabbing, as long as it was Jonny.
The very tired drumbot threw each of them on their respective chairs, quickly getting out his gun and threatening both of them. “Stay.” He looked at everybody on the table, trying to spot anything out of place. Finding nothing but angry faces, he turned to TS, throwing its missing eye at it. “Can you put it yourself?” he asked, reminding himself to be kind to the pers- thing, that had been the most useful in the room. Which wasn’t saying a lot.
“Yes, Brian!” it replied.
It did just that, and it went back to normal practically immediately, much to his relief. Feeling like he could cry by the peace that overcame him upon finally, finally having everybody on the table, Brian sat down, before reaching for the lasagna, ready to cut and serve it.
He ignored the brown spots where the tablecloth had been burnt because he had forgotten to put something between it and the tray.
“What am I eating?” asked d’Ville, making Brian break the cutlery he was grabbing by gripping it a bit strongly.
In and out, Brian reminded himself. Breathe in, and out. “Lasagna. Why do you ask, Jonny?” he tried to keep a neutral tone.
Jonny, on the other hand, didn’t give a fuck about his mental stability. “I can’t eat that”
Okay. That was fine. Just a small, last discussion before serving everybody the food, and then his job would be over, and they could go back to kill themselves or whatever the fuck the bastards wanted to do, and he wouldn’t care a bit. “And why do you say that, Jonny?”
The tiny man seemed to be enjoying it a bit too much. He sat straighter on the chair, delighted. “Why, Brian, because I’m an obligated cannibal, Brian.” He smiled, showing what were indeed very sharp, carnivorous teeth.
His heart fell to the floor. Jonny ate only humans? He had made a vegetarian lasagna…
Brian thought about it, and remember that he had never seen him eat anything but meat on meal times. But he also remembered his food being served from the same plate the rest had served from, including himself…
Had he… Had he been eating people? All this time?
No one really discussed where the meat comes from…
Oh God, Brian had become a cannibal too. They all were. Fuck.
“He’s messing with you,” chimed in Ivy, saving Brian from a horrible realization. “He’s an obligated carnivore, not cannibal”
“Hey, get back to your books!” Jonny shouted at her, angry to have his joke ruined.
Brian tuned the rest of the discussion out. He really didn’t need to deal with it. He had to cook something, something meat-y, and quick. What had he seen on the fridge before? There had been some frozen fried chicken. He could do that. The rest should really begin to eat, d’Ville would have to wait, which was good. Punishment for being an asshole, and all that.
He got up, catching everybody immediate attention. Brian saw more amused faces than he was willing to process. “Jonny, I’m making you chicken. The rest can start eating”
And with that, he left the very noisy room in favor of going back to cooking. There were only sounds behind him, not words, and definitely not any directed at him, because he was not going to listen to any of them anymore. He would just. Fry chicken.
But he had just started with it when he heard the group grow silent and then burst to laughs, and the drumbot knew something very, very bad had happened. Which was confirmed by the Toy Soldier calling him.
“I Do Not Think This Is Quite Edible!” TS told him when he went to see what was wrong.
It was completely right. The beautiful, glorious lasagna that Brian had put so much effort in making had been cut, and something green and rancid poured out from inside it. It broke the pilot’s heart.
“I told you those weren’t vegetables!” Ivy told him upon seeing his devastated face.
“I thought you meant the tomatoes,” he replied without looking away from his horrible child. “I thought you meant that the tomatoes were fruit, not vegetables” he whined.
“I mean, tomatoes are fruits, from a botanical point of view,” she started, because that was the perfect time to start teaching Brian about the nature of tomatoes. “But vegetables are not a botanical classification, but culinary, so they are both. No, I meant to say that those were not vegetables, or tomatoes at all” she cleared it up.
Brian blinked. He did not want to know why Ivy hadn’t just said that, he reminded himself. He did not. “Right,” was what he answered instead, before grabbing the thing that had been once been the pride of his life and throwing it to the trash. He watched on the window how it slowly succumbed to space conditions.
The whole crew remained silent while this happened, as if paying their respects to Brian’s broken creation. After the horror was no longer visible from that window, Ashes dared to speak. “So, what are we eating?”
The drumbot didn’t move. Nor did he tried to think. He just. Did what he knew people did on this dire circumstances. “There is ice cream behind the frozen lettuce”
The crew ran towards it, starved, and happy by how it had all turned out in the end. Brian allowed himself one last moment of resignation before sighing and going back to the kitchen. “D’Ville, you are still eating that chicken if I have to force it down your throat!”
Later, when the rest left after finishing their dinner, and Brian had been convinced that Jonny wouldn’t tell Carmilla that he accidentally let him eat the chicken’s bones, the doctor entered the room. She saw Brian washing the dishes, and stood next to him, drying the plates he gave her.
“Did you have a nice experience?” she asked him, in that strange tone she sometimes had. A little too enthusiastic, like she knew exactly what had been going on.
He hoped she didn’t. “It… was an experience” he conceded, before going back to scrubbing the failed lasagna tray. He should have done better, prepared beforehand, taking into account who he had been dealing with…
Carmilla grabbed the tray and sponge from Brian, and left them to the side. She then took his hands on hers. “I’ll take care of it,” she told him, squeezing them in reassurance. “Thank you for being the responsible one, I know it isn’t easy”
Brian’s guilt decided to appear right then. He squirmed a bit. “It didn’t went all well,” he tried to explain.
‘Not all well’ perhaps fell short to someone losing an eye, almost poisoning the crew, Jonny probably in the process of dying right then by consuming birds bones, and feeding everyone a definitely not nutritive diet. And also Ashes stealing stuff they should have definitely not be touching. But it was as far as Brian was willing to admit without bursting into tears.
The doctor laughed at that. “I know. Aurora told me. Still,” she stood on the tip of her feet to give the drumbot a kiss on the forehead. “I’m proud of you, Brian. And happy to know that I can count on you. Now go to bed”
The pilot had to contain his smile on the way to his room. He hadn’t fucked up completely, apparently. Carmilla was proud of him, and she had kissed him on the forehead. It had been good enough.
This time he didn’t try to contain his happy expression. Carmilla was proud of him.
He made her proud. He could do the night again only for that.
Wait.
‘And happy to know that I can count on you’. Carmilla would ask him to do that again?
He took back everything he said. He would not do the night again. No way.
“Carmilla!” he shout for her, ready to discuss it before he forgets. “Carmilla!”