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"Oh come on, Douglas, just this once."
"No, Carolyn, you know the criteria."
"Ah yes, nothing less than the world ending. How overly dramatic of you." Carolyn regarded him over the top of her glass of brandy. "Although I do seem to remember that one definition of the world ending was a middle aged woman with her young son clinging to her hand, in tears in an airport in Germany because her husband had just ended their marriage in the middle of the concourse."
"And good riddance to him," said Douglas gruffly. "She was much better off without him."
"So said an Air England captain at the time as he folded that woman into the world's warmest hug and told her there were many other fish in the sea."
"Well, if I'd known then you were going to have the appalling taste to take up with Herc Shipwright, I'd have kept my hug to myself. Anyway, I thought this was something we never speak of."
"Actually it's the next one that we never speak of."
"So let's not."
"Oh no, I think we should. Because another moment when the world apparently almost ended was when a newly fired, and newly sober, pilot found himself employed once again and might just have hugged his new boss with considerable relief."
"Well, the world is back to rights, so can we end this appallingly sentimental session of reminiscence and go to our beds?" Douglas pushed away his glass of apple juice and rose from the bar.
"Douglas! It's all very well for you and me, we're old hands at surviving disaster, but that boy is shaking apart with post-near-death nerves, and he can't even have a stiff drink, given that we fly first thing in the morning. If ever there was a man in need of a hug..." They both looked over at Martin, who was staring glassy-eyed into his glass of Coke while splintering his twentieth toothpick in half an hour.
Douglas sighed heavily. "But he's such a tit."
"That may well be true, but he's our tit and he landed our plane and saved our lives and if you don't do something he's going to lose all the confidence he might've gained from the experience. Now, I am going to go to bed and take Arthur with me, and you are going to accept that Martin's world is ending and do something about it."
Douglas smiled wryly at her. "Yes ma'am!" He sauntered over to Martin, pulling him from his bar stool. "Come along captain. Time to stop torturing toothpicks and go to sleep."
Martin followed him numbly to the lifts. "I don't think I'm going to manage to sleep much," he muttered. "You should probably fly the home leg."
"No, none of that, you landed a plane on one engine today, I'm fairly sure you'll remember how to take off with two tomorrow."
They stood outside the door of Martin's room as he fumbled with the key card until finally it dropped out of his shaking hands to the floor. He lent his head against the door. "I don't think I will. I can't... Douglas... We nearly.... I nearly...."
Douglas scooped the card off the floor, opened the door and hustled Martin inside. He shut the door behind them and without bothering to turn on the lights, he pulled Martin into his arms. His captain gave a surprised squeak but he was too drained by nervous exhaustion to resist.
Douglas arranged them to his liking, Martin's head tucked into the crook of his neck, one of his hands cradling the back of Martin's neck while his other stroked soothingly up and down his captain's back. He nudged at the back of Martin's elbow until Martin tentatively wrapped his arms around Douglas's waist. He could feel the moment when Martin finally trusted himself to the hug, sagging against Douglas, arms wrapped tight around him, giving a guttural whimper of distress.
Douglas held him in a warm, solid embrace, talking softly to him the way he might have to his own daughter. "Shhh, Martin, it's okay. You did well, really well. You were marvellous in the cockpit. I'm so very proud of you." And he realised that it was true. Carolyn, damn her perspicacity, was right. Martin was their captain, his captain, and after his heroics of the day he deserved everything Douglas had to offer, up to and including his very best the-world-must-be-ending Douglas Richardson hug.