Work Text:
You look around in what you assume is the control room. There are certainly a lot of colourful buttons and levers and such, and people dressed in uniform slightly cheaper and uglier than the one that you’re wearing. You remind yourself never to give out applications again after 3am, especially not if you’ve drunk a bottle of wine beforehand.
Fortunately, the ship seems to run itself without your help, but still you feel like you have to keep this whole image of a trustworthy Capt’n who knows what they’re doing. Fortunately ,the whole crew seems to know sign language, so at least you needn’t talk as much. A tall man on your left starts to speak about something, so you try to snap back from dissociating (it’s not your fault, space is pretty).
“I’m sorry. I know I’m staring a lot. Huge fan. Huge fan. Been following your career for quite a while now” he says.
For the love of your life, you can’t figure out exactly what career the man’s talking about, but he seems like a nice fellow so you smile and nod like you are someone who in fact has a career and wasn’t spending their last nights with their cat and the latest episodes of The Good Place.
The ship shakes and it definitely seems like things are happening. The man seems like he knows what he is doing. You lose your footing and grab the first thing that can help you regain your stability: the man’s tits. His eyes are full of something you can’t quite place: surprise, disbelief, maybe disgust?
“I was thinking maybe we could hang out or something?” the man asks and for a second you are too taken aback to react. It’s been a minute since someone last asked you on a date, let alone immediately after they met you. “Go get coffee. But you know, beer’s cool.”
He seems genuinely hopeful, waiting for your answer.
The man’s so happy when you accept his offer, he almost trips over his own legs.
“Of course, Capt’n, of course! My shift ends in an hour, meet you at the canteen? Huge fan.”
One and a half hour later you’re sitting at a table for two, drinking coffee and trying to make sense of the man who introduced himself as Girt when you asked for his name slightly embarrassed. You find out he is a former helmsman who got bored of the sea and found the job on a Tumblr blog. Next day he was on his way to navigate a spaceship.
“Anyway, enough about me, Capt’n. Your life must’ve been much more interesting.”
“It’s actually—” you can’t finish the sentence before he cuts in.
“Oh, don’t be shy, as I said, I’m a huge fan, and been following your career since I was seventeen! It’s such an honor to sit with you here tonight…”
After an hour or two of listening to Girt, you start to lose focus. You know everything about the man’s life, and he knows nothing about yours. But it’s nice, being on a date, even if it’s not the best date of your life. When you tell him goodbye and thanking him for the night, he seems delighted, planning the next date. You feel bad about letting him down, but you have to do it anyway. “It’s been really nice, but I think we’re better off as friends. I hope you understand.
” “Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, it was still very nice. As I said, I’m a huge fan.”
You go on your separate ways.
You make your way among the corridors, trying to find your cabin. You wish for a map, but you have to rely to your instincts, which are surprisingly good despite the whole situation. As you run into an intersection and have to choose between left and right, you seem to have lost the sense that got you through the rest of the ship. You choose left and as you turn, you run into a lady with long, blonde hair and blue fur for gloves.
“Capt’n!” she bursts out immediately. “I was looking for you everywhere!”
You blink at her, and you seem to remember her name: Celci. She looks determined and entirely smarter than you feel at the moment. You gesture at her to continue.
“You have to review the reports on the condition of the cryopods and sign the permits for further inspections and oil changes.”
You nod and she brakes the eye contact she kept all along the interaction. She rocks on her feet and clasps her hand behind her back. You wait, expecting her to continue.
“Aaand I was actually wondering if you were interested in getting drinks with me this evening.”
You look at her dumbfounded. Two date-offers already? In less than two days at a workplace you don’t understand but are the head of nevertheless without any qualifications. You start to wonder if you somehow fell into another dimension where not only are you a captain of a spaceship but extremely attractive at that too.
She still avoids your eyes, just waiting for your answer with her lips pressed together.
The date with Celci isn’t off to a great start. You feel tense, trying to get comfortable on the tall barstool. She’s drinking a red sangria and ordered a jellyfish for you. You have a trouble deciding whether she’s anxious or annoyed at you already, so to break the ice you decide to tell her about the strange encounter with the man form before.
“Well, no wonder” she says, and you decide that she’s definitely annoyed at you. “You’re the captain. You can’t just pretend that that’s not going to cause weird power-dynamics.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look” she puts down her glass and looks straight at you, it’s terrifying but also really hot. “I know you think that being a cool leader makes you cool with your employees after work-hours. But it really does not unless you talk about it. You can’t just expect us to trust you to not report us for anything we say in our freetime. It’s weird.”
You never really thought about it, but you think it makes a bit sense. Still.
“What do you propose I do? Just be two different people?”
“Alright. Let’s get this out of the way before we enjoy our evening” she fixes her hair, which is perfect, like always. “I think you shouldn’t be captain. I mean, we all got hired the same way you did, maybe with more expertise. And this whole hierarchy is fucked up anyway. I think you should keep the title, just like, make the whole thing more democratic.”
She relaxes once done with her monologue and asks for another drink. You think about what she said, turning the words in your head until it starts to hurt.
“Anyway, think about it. Now let’s get on with our date.”
After that it’s more than perfect. Celci talks about her friends at home and the new tarot deck she got for this trip and her theories about the meaning of dreams. She asks you about your life on Earth and is delighted to hear about your cats and the jobs you took in publishing before getting here. It’s so easy to talk to her, and you missed being this honest. Pretending to be a competent leader is hard work.
As the night goes on she tells you about her narcissistic ex and her lost brother. You tell her about your childhood and the half-dates you’ve been on before, and the feeling of being lost and alone in the vast universe. You have a great time, and after the bar closes, you ask if you could meet up again.
“Sure! But feel free to go out with others. We don’t really don exclusivity on this ship, but of course, you do you buddy. Also, please think about what I said. Sweet dreams!”
You leave the bar feeling tipsy then go to sleep. The day after you still can’t stop thinking about your conversation about the hierarchy and your title. It really makes sense but at the same time you feel like it might be too much for you to really get into.
It’s strange to keep it so formal with the people you live together with, but you manage. No one asks you anything personal after you established that you don’t want to hear anything unprofessional from anyone. Sure, you never felt more alone in your life, but that’s just how it is. At least the Head Engineer relates when you sometimes you run into each other in ungodly hours sneaking food from the kitchen.
You start to have nightmares, which is weird, you never had those before. Some nights you dream about waking up and seeing a person standing by your bed in a white suit, watching you sleep. Weird. Anyway, you’ll head home soon and none of this will matter. The money’s good enough, you won’t have to work ever again on Earth. Who cares about couple of crazy colonists anyway.
Ending 1/4
After finishing up conversations, making excuses and getting away from the crew, you walk and wonder if the rest of the day will be just as tiring. You really wish for a hot bath (is there even hot water on this hell of a spaceship?) and a great book, anything just not sci-fi. You start to walk again, thinking about all the decisions you had to make today.
You think about that theory you heard from someone at home: that you have limited amount of decisions you can make in a day before recharging. You wonder what your limit is. As you reach another intersection, you choose left again. You hear some noise ahead and sigh at the choices you presumably have to make when you reach the clattering. A panel falls from the ceiling and with it comes the Bandit. It takes her a moment to notice you, not enough time to question how you know her or why aren’t you concerned with her uninvited presence on your ship.
“Ah, Capt’n!” she shouts after standing up and dusting herself. “I was hoping to run into you at some point.”
“How come?” you gesture to her.
“So, I have this job getting some… things. They are necessary to make the— you know what, it’s not actually important. But I was hoping to get your help with that. It could be like an adventure, but like a date adventure, all fun. What do you think?”
Bandit leads you through endless corridors and doors you don’t recall seeing before. At some point you climb into the walls just so you can climb out of them.
“Why did we do that?” you ask.
“Because it’s fun. And what captain doesn’t know the walls of their own ship?”
After what seems like and endless amount of intersections, she finally finds the room she’s been looking for: a storage room for the mechanics with spare tools and parts. She huffs and starts to rummage through the stuff on the shelves.
“Would you hold this please?”
You do, it’s a bundle of wires. You feel kind of important except you have to put it down every time you want to say something.
“So Capt’n, tell me about your life here, how do you like it?”
“It’s a bit chaotic, but I think it’s growing on me.”
“Heh, no shit. Celci said the same on like day 2.”
“You know her?”
“You bet I do. We’ve been hooking up since I first got here. Don’t ask how, I don’t even know. I was just falling through the vents and there she was, standing in front of me, shouting. It was hot.”
You blush a bit, but surprisingly you’re not just okay with the information but rather happy too.
“She even gave me some of the hormones you have on board which is a lifesaver. The stuff we have at home is not always the cleanest, and you have tons of it here.”
She tells you about the places she lived in and the adventures she had. It’s nice to hear these stories so much different than yours, and it’s kind of satisfying to see Bandit tinkering while talking about robbing a market. You find yourself talking about the things you never had, the opportunities you were too afraid to take. She hears you out and asks what changed. You don’t really know.
“I guess I was drunk one night and here I am.”
“I feel you” she says. “I’m practically living here now. It’s strange, I never really felt at home anywhere and trust me, I’ve seen a lot. But you guys are kind of like you tried to concentrate all of the things in a tiny little ship, and it’s working. I still do a lot of jobs outside, but I don’t know if there’s any other place with vents like this.”
“Do you want a cabin for yourself?” you find yourself asking.
She stares at you for a minute, a half-finished thing resting in her hands. She seems genuinely speechless for a moment, then she nods and goes back to cutting wires.
“Come on” she says, going for the door. “We have things to do.”
You wander around the ship again until you find the places she wants to find and steal the things she needs from your own ship. At some point she asks to hold your hand.
“It won’t work if you don’t” she winks, and you find yourself smirking. Her hand is firm and a bit sticky from the oil she used on the machine. You can’t wait to see what’s going to come out of it. After a bit of hammering, welding, and painting, she gives you the finished thing. It’s small enough to fit in your palm. It resembles a pager form the older times, with two buttons and a tiny screen.
Bandit wipes her forehead and smiles at you.
“Everyone has one in the group you can reach any of us whenever. It’s strictly for non-professional matters” she grins, and you blush again.
You’ll definitely want a second date sometime.
After heading back to your cabin, you can’t help but feel like something’s missing. The walls seem dimmer, the whole ship’s smaller and you start to feel claustrophobic. The time spent with Bandit makes you realize how the whole thing is inescapable, that you’ ll probably live your whole life among these people. This is your life now, and that thought scares you.
It’s surprisingly easy to leave your own ship. You listen to your travelling playlist as the Invincible shrinks into a tiny dot of light, another star in the endless sky. You feel restless, like robbing or blowing up something or crying. After a while you’re feeling better. At least you don’t have to be responsible for a whole crew, a whole ship, an absent Head Engineer. You want to feel light again. You want to pet your cats. You head for the nearest planet.
Then you fly right by it, because you don’t feel like you want to be known anymore by anyone. You have limited supplies of oxygen, but you only live once, right? After a while, you see something pink ahead of you. It looks like some kind of wormhole, but you never seen a wormhole this… pink. You think about how it must’ve cost a fortune to paint a whole space-thing with the Pinkest Pink. You hope it’s not owned by Anish Kapoor.
Ending 2/4
After getting lost and turning left again and again and again, you finally see the sign: Capt’n’s Cabin. It’s a sight for sore eyes. You brace yourself for the nice, lonely hours of silence, where there are no choices, no responsibilities, just the latest season of the Russain Doll and ginger tea.
But once you closed the door behind you, you notice a person sitting on the edge of your bed. At the sight of you, they stand up immediately.
“Hi Lady, what can I do for you?” you try to mask your surprise.
“I’m not here in any… official quality” they burst out a fidget toy clatters in their hands. “I didn’t think this through. Showing up in your room? The implications alone! I’m sorry Capt’n, I’ll go right away, this was a stupid idea. Please forget I was ever here.”
They start to reach for something you assume is a teleportation device but stop short once you gesture at them a bit more frantically than you’d prefer. Stay professional, straighten up.
“Tell me” you sign and gesture them to sit, but they stay on their feet, walking nervously around the room.
“I was about to ask you on a date. I know it’s weird, especially since we worked together, but that’s like, over for now, and I just wanted to know if you… where up to it I guess. And I have to let you know that I’m asexual, so there’s that. I was thinking maybe a virtual picnic. But it’s a stupid idea. You don’t even have to say anything.”
They take a deep breath and shut their eyes like bracing for an impact.
The virtual picnic is… weird. Lady did their best to mimic something human, but everything is off-color, the food all tastes like grass and there are strange flying things in the air. You try to hold a straight face while they try to get the fruit cake into wine glasses with a cheese knife. You aren’t very good at it and a laugh slips out.
“Oh, it’s all wrong, isn’t it?” they ask when they notice. “I’m so sorry, it was a stupid idea. You should go, I’ll… uncode this whole thing.”
“No, no, it’s nice, just kind of strange” you say with a smile on your face. “But you don’t seem very comfortable here.”
“I guess not. It’s just that you humans have such a strange way of courting, and I never got it right, not even with the books I stole from the archives.”
“How do your people usually do dates?”
“Oh well, we bite each other. But that’s because we have different pain tolerance than you do.”
“I don’t think biting is really my thing” you say. The idea of Lady going around and biting people on dates is really entertaining. “But we’ll figure out something. Tell me about the things you like to do in your freetime.”
Soon you find out that Lady is fascinated with the videogames on Earth, especially with the open-world ones.
“It’s just so silly and nice” they explain. “So simple yet entertaining, it helps me relax after a long day seeing everything in twelve dimensions.”
You ignore the last bit and propose that you go and play together in the common room. It’s quite nice, just sitting next to each other, sometimes sharing things, but most of the time just playing and enjoying your time together, separately. Lady tells you about their job and coworkers, and how they sneak on the ship sometimes to just be around humans.
They ask about the most niche things about humanhood. You gladly answer everything. You never really seen your culture like this, the habits, the language, the way of thinking you took for granted. Suddenly everything seems so much colorful and yet less important. You ask Lady about their favorite forms of art and learn about controlled dimension-bending as a performance art. It’s great, and despite you feeling like it’ll take time to get to better know one another, you are optimistic.
They say goodbye after midnight, promising to keep in touch. You go to bed tired but content.
You start to lose your grip on time, but you’ re quite sure that during your entire captainship there was never a day when you woke up to explosions. Until you did. You get your robe and rapidly walk toward the fading sound. You turn left a couple of times before finding a door to a storage room. You hear grunting from behind it and soon what could be a glass breaking. You rush in, fearing the worst.
You find Gunther in the middle of a room that definitely seems like it’s storage-days are behind it. There are empty bottles and containers everywhere, the floor is covered in shattered glass, glinting in the light of a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Gunther stands in the middle of the room, wearing a helmet and protective glasses, with baseball bat in hand, panting.
“Hey Capt’n! You are just in time, I was hoping to show you this thing of mine” he says, propping the bat on his shoulder.
With his other hand he takes the glasses off, while grinning at you with childlike joy. You stand and try to process the situation, looking at the glasses and at the man standing in front of you back and forth.
“We and the crew talked, you know. We think you need to let the steam out a bit, if you know what I mean. Don’t worry about the explosions just experiencing with the mini-Molotovs. I was hoping to introduce you to my little rage room, a mad-mans-cave as C likes to call it. We could make a date out of it. It’s fine, I talked with the others. Now what do you say, can I get you a pair of glasses?"
Gunther seems delighted and gives you all the protecting equipment to be safe while smashing. The glass of course. And you have a great time. You don’t really talk much he seems to accept your anger without saying anything. It feels right, and you even try those mini-Molotovs. After he gets you beers and some leftover gyros. He doesn’t talk much, but when he does, you find out he is surprisingly observant. He tells you about the things worrying him, about the crew and the ship, he even mentions the Head Engineer.
“I worry about them sometimes. He reminds me of my brother, he obsessed with stuff like that until it was too late for him.”
“I can sort of relate” you confess. “Sometimes it seems easier to get stuff done on your own.”
You think about all the times you wanted to just run away and do things your way, clutching into your independence like your life depended on it. Which is sort of ironic. But then if you never rely on anyone, you can’t hurt them, right? Now even the thought sounded false in your head.
“You can do that, sure, if you want to burn out” groans Gunther.
“Says the explosion guy.”
“Hey, at least I have a somewhat harmless way to cope.” He bumps into you and lays his head on your shoulder. It’s nice in a way you never thought a date could be nice.
“Can I come back sometimes?” you ask after a couple of minutes go by.
“I’d like that” he says.
You stay like that until you can’t keep your eyes open for the life of you.
You get a few hours of sleep before your next long day of work. Everything works fine but not fine enough, everyone is helpful but not attentive enough, and you’re so so sick of repeating yourself. You miss your cats, their comforting company, simple needs, direct communication. After talking everything through again about route with Girt, signing all the necessary paperwork, hearing out the maintenance group, keeping the official documents up-to-date and checking the shield, you head to the common room to wind down a bit.
After what feels like an eternity of left turns, you run into Burt, standing on the side of the corridor, muttering something under his nose. He looks at you startled and stutters a bit when speaking up.
“C-capt’n! Hi! You’re so nice— it’s so nice to meet you!”
You close your eyes for a minute, you think you know what’s coming next.
“I was actually just going to see you. You see I wanted to see if you would like to go on a date with me. Oh well, me too I guess.”
You smile to yourself and take in the man standing in front of you, hands clasped, fingers tapping nervously.
“I heard you enjoy reading and I was thinking we could talk about that. You know, I write poetry in my free time. It’s nothing fancy, but I want to hear what you think about it. Or I guess, see. If that’s alright with you I mean.”
The library is surprisingly big even for a never-ending ship. Burt shows you all of his favorite books, the one he has been sneaking out and reading instead of sleeping, the ones he didn’t like and why, the ones he wants to read if he’ll have the time. You try to do the same ,but the library mostly has classics, none of the romance or horror you have been reading on Earth.
After hours of listening to Burt gushing about poetry and Shakespeare and how he wants to start a club, maybe a drama club, maybe just reading club, it’s not clear, but you like the idea. He recommends you a book called Rebecca, and you promise to read it for the next time you meet. Possibly for a reading club, who knows. You drink tea and eat biscuits.
“I made them with Gunther” Burt says smiling proudly. “We bake together sometimes. He really likes you, Capt’n, he said so the other night. We all do, really.”
“Thanks” you gesture, wondering where this is going.
“We were thinking Capt’n, you know. And we decided that you are really great, and it would be great if you’d join the group like, properly. I know it’s weird since you are or… were the boss and like best pals with the Head Engineer, but we really like you. And it would be great if we could all just be together in whatever ways. So.”
You look at him, this strange man, standing and fidgeting nervously in the middle of the dim-lit room full of books. You inhale the smell of tea and try to think about how you feel. There’s no rush, but you’re still wondering if you might be ready to take a step so big.
After getting to know the people better, you feel a bit less alone. It’s not like you mind being single, getting long baths, reading your books in quiet and rewatching She-Ra for the third time. Everyone is very civil, although you sometimes catch them staring. Well, you can live with that.
You still worry about the Head Engineer and their strange project, but well, it’s really none of your business. It’s not like It could destroy the universe or something, these engineers where never that good. It’s a shame though, you really wanted to get to know him before landing on the new planet. Oh, well.
Ending 3/4
After you all talked for long hours about how you imagine your relationships and life on the ship, everything falls into an easy rhythm. You officially quit being a captain, just the title remains. You manage the ship together, and nothing really changes, except for the fact that you feel more accepted and loved than you ever would’ve imagined. You go on dates and have friendly chats, play boardgames and read poetry, listen to stories and telling yours in return. The only thing that worries you is the Head Engineer.
You didn’t hear from them for a while, and only saw him once, crying in the common room. Then on one of your weekly dinners with Celci you try to bring him up, and she frowns immediately.
“That idiot? That’s just how he is. Burt’s been trying to get us to make some kind of intervention for them. I don’t really see the point but if you’re worried too, then I guess it’s high time to get that dumbass out of his one-person pity-party.”
You feel better at the very moment she says it. You didn’t even notice how much the Head Engineer’s mystery has been weighing on you, and the whole thing seems so much brighter once you know your crew has your back on it.
You call a meeting and start to make plan to get the Head Engineer together.
You find the Head Engineer alone in the common room. The others stayed behind, leaving you a few minutes to be alone. A song is playing in the radio, one you recognize from before you took the job. Seems like lifetimes ago.
The Head Engineer sits on the couch, drawing on a tablet, murmuring the lyrics. You listen in for a bit.
“It's not fair, the past is clear but it's clear back there. What's ahead? No one knows, but it's closing in, we swear. Still not in my prime, I have so much to do…”
You shut down the music, and he looks at you tired and expectant. Like they already know how this is going to go. Like he read the script already and just waits for his cue to say the things he already said before. You sit next to him and don’t say anything for a while, just grab one of their hands. They blankly stare ahead until you let it go.
“It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You need to stop.” you sign and cut in before he starts to speak. “You’re destroying yourself, and that never makes anything any better. I’m sure there are other options, but you need to talk to me and the others.”
“You don’t understand.” he frowns, running his fingers through his hair. “I have to get it right. I made so many mistakes, I hurt so many people. This is my only chance.”
“You should apologize then and make things right.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It literally is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“So, you’re saying that you rather go and self-destruct and hurt more people than to swallow your pride and apologize? That’s stupid. And then what? You have to start the whole thing again from the beginning to not hurt the people you hurt while un-hurting the people you previously hurt?”
They laugh in disbelief; the tablet falls on the floor.
“Well, if you put it that way…”
“Maybe consider getting therapy before building any more spaceships” you add with a cheeky smile on your face. “Might be cheaper.”
“Yeah. I’ll think about it, just… give me a little time, alright?”
“As long as it’s not space.”
“Very funny.”
“Well, then it’s time for the crew.”
“What?”
You press a button on your pager and the others start coming in. They brought boardgames and snacks and champagne, and the Head Engineer stares at them in disbelief.
“What?” they ask again.
“Oh no, he is in a loop again” Burt says as he sits down on the rug.
“Please don’t start, it was enough last time” Celci ruffles your hair as she passes by.
You join the rest of the crew and sit down on the floor while they chat and laugh and ask the Head Engineer the stupidest questions you ever heard in your life. Slowly as the night goes on, he opens up about their plan, you don’t understand the half of it because you’re drunk on champagne and company, your head is in Ladys lap and Gunther is making you a cocktail that’s name has the word “bomb” in it. You’ve let yourself go, and you think it’s okay.
“Well, that’s the stupidest plan I ever heard in my life” Celci apparently understood it better than you did. “We would’ve definitely died. At least once.”
“Cut them some slack” you sign, hands blurring.
“Oh no, they have to understand how it’s so stupid on so many levels. Tell him.”
After that the others take turn agreeing on how idiotic the whole thing was and it would’ve been so much easier to just talk things out. Even the Head Engineer laughs after a while, sometimes cries a bit and gets infinite amount of hugs. Bandit claps them on the back.
“Now there, dude, nothing wrong with a bit of breakdown sometimes.”
“Don’t encourage him, darling” warns Celci.
“But look at their stupid little face! I kinda want to see how it plays out.”
“I got pizza” says Gunther.
“Thank the gods for human trash food” groans Lady.
After the night’s over and you go and try to get to you cabin, the Head Engineer offers help finding it. They definitely look better now, not his best, but still better. There’s something on their mind, but you’re way too tired to ask them about it, so you just walk in silence until he grabs your hand and stops you before you reach an intersection.
“Capt’n?” he says, looking at the ground. He pauses, you wait and look at them patiently. “Would you… would you like to go on a date with me?”
Ending 4/4
The man seems disappointed but doesn’t show it for long.
“Yeah, cool, sure, yeah” he babbles before collecting himself. “I think they are on the Bridge, Capt’n. He said he has to figure out something themself.”
You salute him and go on to find your employer and employee. It’s kind of a weird situation, but at least he is nice and pays nice. They are handsome too which in no way in correlation why you accepted the job.
You find them sitting in the middle of the Bridge, muttering to himself. You get his attention by stomping twice on the floor, they look at you briefly and go back to his work.
“Go away, Capt’n. I’m working on something big, and I need some… I guess space. Yeah. Go get to know the crew and everything, I’ll join you soon.”
You shrug and wave him goodbye, not that they could see it. You think about what to do with the rest of your evening.
Celci eyes you with suspicion.
“According to…well to the cursing I heard from the Conference Room 2, he must be in there. Don’t know what they’re doing or if it’s up to code, probably best if you take a look. Anyway, think about the drinks, Capt’n and don’t forget the paperwork.”
She leaves and you get lost only twice before finding the room she mentioned. You knock on the door post when you enter and see them hunched, looking at a bunch of papers layed out on the round table. You can’t really read his messy writing, not that you really care about the papers anyway. The state he’s in is worrying to say the least. Not that the light stubble makes him any less handsome, still, you start to feel nervous because of them. You met the person a couple of times before and he always looked pristine to the point where you wanted to ruffle that perfect hair of theirs.
“Oh, hey, buddy” he says. “Everything alright?”
“Weird day” you sign. “I think I’m a bit lost, could you help me find my cabin?”
They let out a weary laugh and start rubbing his eyes.
“As much as I would love to show you to your room, I can’t right now. But you go, have fun.”
You hesitate at the door, but they don’t seem to pay attention to you anymore, instead he starts to rearrange the papers on the table, like a puzzle. Some fall on the ground, you crouch down to get them, but he is too deep in to even thank you.
You find the Head Engineer sitting in one of the window seats, looking out into the vastness of space. He changed and shaved since you last saw them, his eyes red and unseeing. He must’ve zoned out at some point. You wave your hand in their periphery until they blink at you startled.
“Oh, I must’ve spaced out. Apologies. What can I do for you Capt’n?”
You shrug and sit down next to him. The air around him feels heavy and closed, and no matter how hard you try you can’t think of the right question to lift it.
“Everything alright?” you sign eventually.
“Everything’s fine, Capt’n.”
The air crushes down at you even more, makes it hard to breathe. They didn’t seem to notice any of it. You try again.
“There was something I wanted to talk to you about. I’m not really sure if being the captain of the ship is what I—”
“Listen, can we talk later?” he cuts you off. “Once I’m done. I’m sure you can handle everything until then, I trust you. Try to get to know the others better, I’m sure you can find someone who is better listener than me anyway.”
You stare at him for a long time before standing up to leave.
Lady reaches for their belt and tosses you something that looks like an old pager. You don’t remember if you have one already.
“Just call me and I’ll be here. Sorry again about the bother, I never know how to act about you humans.”
They disappear into thin air, and you go on to find the Head Engineer. You find his cabin door slightly open, the noises coming from the inside sound like a podcast. They stop once you knock on the door, then shortly after the head of the Head Engineer appears in the gap.
“Capt’n! You still up? Someone must’ve kept you awake” he grins, but it doesn’t reach their eyes.
“How about you?” you ask, peeking inside, but only catching the sight of a bunch of cables and tools littered on the floor, blueprints taped to the walls. They stand in the way, smiling tightly.
“Nevermind me really. It’s just your ol’ tinkering, nothing to fret on. I heard you were offered quite the number of dates, you damn heartbreaker. I knew you would fit right in, first when I saw your big grey eyes. Keep it up, pal!”
He shuts the door in your face and soon you hear a familiar song playing: This Ship’s Going Down by Aurelio Voltaire. You contemplate knocking again, making sure they are alright. He didn’t seem like it but it’s not like you have a therapist on the ship with you, although it would’ve been an excellent idea, you’d bring it up at HR if they weren’t in their feels behind a closed door.
Gunther frowns and shakes his head no. You storm away, rehearsing the things you want to say to that damn person when you find them about safety protocols and the mental state of the employees. As you head for his cabin, you see light coming out from the kitchen entrance, and you go on to investigate.
You find the Head Engineer sitting on a counter, eating the leftover from last days menu from a box while hastily writing in a notebook with his other hand. You turn the light quickly off and on again to get their attention.
“Midnight snack?” you ask.
“I suppose so. Technically it’s always the middle of the night here” he says with mouth still full. “You want some?”
“No thanks. What are you writing?”
“It’s nothing really. Don’t mind me, just go back to sleep, buddy.”
“It’s something and I need to you to tell me, what. I’m your captain, I’m responsible for your safety, and I can’t do anything if you don’t talk to me” as you talk you feel the anger welling up inside you. It doesn’t really make sense, but it’s late and you’re not in the mood of mask your emotions.
“Well, it’s none of your business, Capt’n. Your business is to go and have fun with everyone else, leaving me the fuck alone. There isn’t any babysitting in your job description. I know that because I wrote it. Like I built this kitchen. So fuck off.”
You turn and hurry out of the room before the tears start running free. You try to take a few deep breath, but the pressure in your chest doesn’t go anywhere.