Chapter Text
It was unfamiliar for Vespa to see the thief in her medbay.
Buddy was in here all the time, checking in on her, smiling coyly from around the doorframe, listening to Vespa’s tangents. Maintaining rapt, one-eye contact while she rambled on. Reaching out when she tumbled to an awkward stop and encouraging her into a stumbling continuation instead.
Jet was in here frequently, checking in on her, ensuring that she’d eaten and had some water. Sometimes Vespa needed another set of hands for her experiments or treatments, and she didn’t want Buddy to have to watch her own hands shake.
Steel was in here constantly, injured or convalescing. Vespa regularly found herself in “doctor mode” prescribing Steel a night of rest in the med bay, only to immediately have to grapple with a night spent in the med bay observing him rather than in her own bed alongside Buddy.
The hacker was in here too, usually alongside Steel. Distracting him with her endless jabbering while he got blood drawn. Vespa had long since outlawed her powdery, crumbling snacks from any sterile rooms or proceedings, which she had assumed would keep the hacker out. But it seemed that the only way to keep Rita out was to keep Steel out, as if Vespa wasn’t already doing her damndest.
But Ransom-
For every effort Vespa had made to get Ransom into her medbay, the thief had returned it tenfold. He had allowed a basic wellness check, nothing more. Vespa never imagined seeing him walk willingly into her medbay.
But Ransom had been carried in instead, toothpick thin in Jet’s arms, Juno fluttering nervously in on his coattails. The thief was just short of a contortionist—able to take up as much space as he wanted or as little as needed. And on the gurney bed, curled as he was around a shattered leg, he looked as small as Vespa had ever seen him. His eyes were open, one hand clutched on the frame of his cot. His leg was shaking, face tight with pain as each spasm shifted the break.
“That looks bad even for me,” Vespa informed him, prepping her supplies.
“Always glad to exceed expectations,” he gritted out, voice as unsteady as Vespa had ever heard it.
There was a bone actively sticking out of the skin—as shining and white as Ransom’s face. Truth be told, Vespa had definitely seen worse. But no one wanted to be told their injury “wasn’t as bad as it could have been” at this stage. If it hurt like a bitch, it hurt like a bitch, and telling someone that it could hurt more wouldn’t really do much to fix that.
That being said, Ransom was doing his best to pretend like it didn’t hurt at all, even if the blood and visible bone undercut that performance a lot. He didn’t need to hear that his injury wasn’t even in the top ten ugliest breaks she’d seen. Given how much of that pain he was letting Vespa see, it probably felt just as bad as those top ten had anyways. And Ransom already knew he’d survive—assuming he trusted Vespa not to kill him.
He let her set it without complaint, without noise. Watched her impassively as she wrapped it in a cast.
“I’m gonna need to do a blood test,” she informed him bluntly. “I need to know what to worry about when treating this.”
Ransom set his jaw stubbornly, but he let her take the prick of blood she needed without a word of complaint. She entered it into the computer, put in the scans she needed, and prepared for the waiting game. Modern medicine had come far in the speed of tests like this, but the Carte Blanche equipment was still a handful of years behind most solar hospitals. They were lucky it would only be an hour rather than days or weeks. Certainly she could make some progress on her latest experiment in the meantime-
A tapping noise, a drumming of fingers against the metal rails of the cot.
Vespa’s patience could only take so much.
“Sit still, Ransom,” she hissed, smacking her palms down flat against her workspace. The thief just barely concealed his flinch, hands tight as vices around the handrails of his cot.
“Whatever do you mean?” he asked, saccharine and strained. When she turned to glare at him, his simpering smile faltered.
“Cut the crap,” she snapped back, overenunciating every syllable. “Steel might like your pretty words and pretty face, but they’re just pissing me off.”
“I’ll stop having a face then, shall I?” he snipped back, eyebrows climbing. Vespa gave a groan that devolved into a growl. The medbay was silent for a few, blessed moments.
“I really am sorry for the inconvenience, Vespa-”
Vespa slammed her comms down and spun full to face the thief.
“I’m sorry that you’re stuck in here with just me for company while everyone else is out training, but if you haven’t noticed, I’m not the most talkative person.”
Silence again, save Vespa’s shallow breaths. Then-
“Apologies-”
“Stop apologizing!” Vespa snapped. She didn’t realize how loud she’d been until there was no sound save the echo, She sighed, putting her head in her hands.
“Fuck,” she muttered between her fingers. Ransom had gone stiff on the cot, shoulders taut as a tripwire. His gaze, placid as ever, stayed fixed on the corner just above her head.
Vespa peeled her face from between her fingers and yanked open her junk drawer. Ransom pretended like he wasn’t tracking her every movement as she rifled through the contents, found what she was looking for, and approached his bedside. He dropped the facade and watched with obvious interest as she swung the tray table up against the cot, pulled over a chair, and dropped down to sit opposite him.
She smacked the deck on the table between them.
“Know how to play?”
Ransom blinked at her.
“Rangian Street Poker? Of course. Why-”
“You’re losing it without anyone to talk to. I’m losing it with your bullshit small talk.” Vespa gestured at the cards with both hands. “Compromise.”
“I hardly think that you demanding my personal information is a compromise between silence and small talk,” he said with a scoff. Vespa smiled at him, showing a few more teeth than strictly necessary.
“Then don’t lose.”
She began settling the cards up, stacking and shuffling decks as she went.
“You need the solar variation?” She flicked her gaze up to the thief.
“No,” he said simply, brows furrowed. “Is it safe to assume you’ll gut me if I lie?”
Vespa hesitated, hand hovering over a pile as she considered.
“Nah,” she decided after a moment. “I won’t lie if you won’t.” Ransom nodded.
“Your ask first,” she said, straightening her final stack.
Ransom considered for a second, fingers drumming on his lap.
“Why not threaten my life if I lie?” Vespa blinked, tilting her head like a curious animal.
“Who taught you how to play?” she returned. Ransom released a single breath, a sigh through his nose.
“Play.”
It took a few moves for Vespa to get the hang of it again- Ransom too, though it was obvious that they both took to the game easy as breathing.
Vespa had almost always thrown her first hand when she played back in the day; it helped to give her opponent false confidence- make them more likely to trip up as the game progressed, more desperate at the end to recover the game because they’d started with that glimmer of hope.
It was harder than she expected to throw the game. She had only a few moves to get a feel for the game again and a feel for how Ransom played. Vespa half expected his style of play to be as fake as the rest of him. A solar method chafing under the original Rangian rules. But if Vespa hadn’t been as good as she was, it wouldn’t have been necessary to throw the game- a lesser player would’ve simply lost. Vespa held back a smirk, furrowing her brow in smug concentration.
Ransom did take that round, though she ended it confident she could have won if she’d meant to.
Ransom ripped his cards primly, face semi-smug and shoulders still just as tense. It took Vespa a moment to remember his question.
“You care so much about the idealized thieves’ code. You know Rangian Street Poker even though none of your generation of thieves use it. And the way that you look at Buddy and Jet-” and me, she didn’t add, not sure if she was willing to examine that detail in depth. “You’ve got some kind of respect for the old ways. You’re not about to lie in Rangian Street Poker.”
Ransom was staring at her, and Vespa could suddenly sympathize with him- absent of the shuffling of cards and her voice, the silence was suffocating.
“Plus,” she continued, voice dry and crackling as she broke his gaze and began resetting the cards. “If I slit your throat, Steel would come for me, and I’d have to handle him too- that’s putting us down two people for the Curemother heist. Wouldn’t want Buddy’s six person plan to go to waste.”
“Down three people,” Ransom said, voice slow to start as if he expected her to cut him off. Her confusion must have been evident when Vespa looked up at him, as he immediately continued, faster and more confident now. “Rita would certainly come after you for killing Juno.”
Vespa snorted before she could think to stifle it. She went back to shuffling to avoid having to look at what she assumed was a very proud expression on Ransom’s face.
“What’s the first thing you stole?” Vespa asked as she finished shuffling. Ransom considered.
“Same question,” he said finally.
Vespa didn’t hold back that round. Ransom lost rather quickly, temporarily taken aback by her sudden switch to her typical, aggressive playstyle. Still, he adapted to it faster than she’d expected, matching her move for move. But his surprise had cost him the round. He set down his cards gracefully, poised as always with just the edge of frustration tugging at his lips.
“I must confess, I don’t entirely remember. I have to assume it was food of some sort.” Vespa tried not to let her confusion show on her face at that.
“Why don’t you remember?” she asked, brow furrowed.
“I believe it’s my ask, actually,” Ransom said, expression smug. He was pointedly not meeting her eyes.
“How did you complete the Ganymede Gallery job?”
Vespa wracked her brain for a moment. “That was- how many years ago? How old would you have been?”
“Is that your question?” Ransom challenged.
“No,” Vespa growled at him, thinking for a second. “Where are you from?”
She’d hoped it would be vague enough- she usually wasn’t that nice about it, asking a question with so many obvious redirects. He didn’t have to give a city or even a planet.
His proud expression shuttered.
“Pass.”
Vespa had had to step back after that, falling back on simpler, less important questions. Reversing enough to give herself room to maneuver.
“Are your glasses prescription?”
“Were those reading glasses in the sitting room yours?” Little shit. Everyone knew they were- he just wanted to make her admit it.
She made sure to win that round.
“Yes- though I wear contacts on most missions, out of caution.”
And they continued from there. Vespa confessed her favorite romance novel through gritted teeth, and Ransom couldn’t look her in the eye as he admitted his most embarrassing failed heist involved his knife missing its sheath and making a home in his shin instead. Sometime around asking the thief what he was up to in the vents and being asked how she had first gotten caught, Vespa gave up hiding her smirk. It took too much energy to pretend that she wasn’t enjoying the thrill of the game; energy she needed to defeat Ransom.
Sometime around being asked what took him thirty minutes in the bathroom in the morning, Ransom had started smiling too. Not the too-wide, headshot quality grin he usually threw out either- a small one that tugged at the corners of his mouth, showed the chipped tooth on his bottom jaw.
Ransom may or may not have been a better player than her, (and he wasn’t, Vespa was sure of that) but he was a good player. Someone who knew the game, who played unpredictably. Every round felt independent, isolated. One round would have Vespa demanding to know Ransom’s reasoning behind favoring Neptunian blades, and the next would have Ransom asking what had made her become a thief. They both knew without saying that a silly question had to be answered with another, and the same was true for the serious ones. If you asked a serious question, you’d have to prepare to be asked one in turn.
“Why haven’t you asked my name?” Ransom asked finally, tucking his crooked grin away and re-squaring his shoulders. When she attempted to meet his eyes, he held her gaze, eyes placid and empty. Vespa tilted her head, considering.
“Are you Outer Rim?” she tried, feeling like she was testing a landmine with her good foot. A pause.
“Play.”
He played like a man on death’s doorstep, frantically flipping cards and shuffling hands between manicured fingers. Vespa began to understand how animals could smell fear on people.
She wouldn’t feel bad about causing his worry. He had let her ask, after all.
In the end, it was his win despite Vespa’s best attempts to the contrary. She sighed, setting down her cards.
Only to be interrupted by the beeping of one of the medbay computers. She cast a quick look at Ransom, rising to her feet with no small degree of swearing. Her knees and back filled the silence with plenty of cracks and pops, which did nothing to ease the discomfort of the moment.
“That’ll be the blood results, then?” Ransom asked innocently. Vespa hummed in the affirmative, scrolling through the numbers and charts.
When it came to Steel, Vespa had a hard time deciding whether or not she liked him. It was easier to say that she’d probably find his absence irritating, if he were to suddenly vanish. But Steel was easy to handle; he took his feelings and shoved them through a sieve until they could come out as anger. Steel was understandable. Even if he was a pain in her ass, Vespa got why.
Ransom, on the other hand, was a mystery. Annoying like Steel, sure, but worse because she couldn’t fathom why. Lying and acting and pretending to be something you weren’t- Vespa could understand that for a job. But there was no reason not to take that mask off around other thieves, around family.
Except maybe the thief was just as simple as Steel. That emotions overflowed into that sieve only to come out as simpering, smiling bullshit. Because here was Peter Ransom, looking thoughtfully at her with a face of abject calm, voice steady and calm even when Vespa knew full well he was terrified. He’d never let her do a blood test before, had been as evasive as he was on heists. She was pretty sure that’s what he’d been doing in the vents, even if she hadn’t won that round and that piece of information.
If he was stiff and annoying and fake when he was nervous, then how often was he-
“I didn’t ask for your name,” Vespa began, head tilted just over one shoulder, “Because you weren’t willing to give it.”
“I-” the thief began, brow furrowing. “You hate that I’m using a pseudonym.”
“Yeah,” Vespa said, gathering papers and meds as she went, sorting them out along her workspace. “And if I make you give me your name through a game, you still chose to use a fake name.”
“I’m afraid I’m not following,” he said haltingly. Vespa groaned again, resting her face in her hands before scooping up a handful of bottles and depositing them atop the cards from their previous round. She balanced both palms flat on the table, leaning forward slightly.
“I’m not annoyed because I don’t know your name. I’m annoyed because you don’t want to share. Does that make sense?” Ransom nodded slowly. One hand was resting on his hip- right atop the space she knew he kept a blade. She pulled back, sitting back down. The cushion of her seat was still warm, and she drew her legs up, crossing them atop the chair. The soles of her boots cut into her shins.
“I’m sorry that you won this round, and I still got my question answered.”
There was the flinch she expected. Vespa nodded at the assorted bottles, arms crossed.
“Those should all be taken in the morning with food. You’ve got most of the common vitamin deficiencies, and while we can’t fix the ones you collected as a kid, these should help lessen the symptoms. It’s no wonder your leg snapped like that- bones as brittle as mine.” She shuffled another bottle to the front, rapping the lid with a fingernail.
“This one is more of a preventative- hard to find on the Outer Rim, but it lessens the risk of homesickness cropping up if we drift too far out. Take it at night, just before you go to sleep. You follow?”
Ransom swallowed slowly, hands steadying him on the cot’s handrails again.
“Crystal clear,” he said, throat as dry as the bone she had shoved back into his leg. He pulled the bottles off the table, shuffling them into the bag alongside his bed. Vespa’s shoulders slumped.
“Ransom?” she said, waiting for him to look back at her before she continued. “Your bloodwork? Numbers like that don’t come without symptoms. Chronic pain, nausea, low energy levels. Can I trust you to talk to me about that when you’re not trapped in this cot anymore?”
The thief hesitated, tension bleeding from his body.
“Yes,” he said simply, eyes on his lap. Vespa breathed again, not sure if her sigh was of exhaustion or relief.
“Thank you,” she answered, climbing slowly to her feet and drifting back to her workspace.
If she had thought that Peter Ransom had been annoying before, it was nothing compared to the annoyance of being vaguely fond of him. She didn’t like him, sure, and she still wouldn’t trust him as far as she could launch him from an airlock.
But maybe she could understand him, just a bit.
“Thief?” she asked, drumming her hands on the counter. “Let me know when you want to continue that game.”