Trimmer obviously isn't expecting Rich to show up. He's sitting on a squashy, threadbare sofa on the top deck of the houseboat Wonderland, wearing an oversized brown sweater and a cold-weather sarong patterned like Neapolitan ice cream. He's being sat on by a tiny blonde fourhands girl who's painting his nails a bright vicious pink. When he glances casually up to see who's climbing over the rail, he sees Rich and goes the same color as his nails.

"Wh—Merrill, fuck!" he yelps.

"Don't move, it's still wet!" the tiny girl shrieks, clinging to his wrists with her hands and feet.

"Get off! Holy shit! Merrill, what are you even here for?!" he demands.

"Your grandma invited me to your parole party," Rich says, strolling over as casually as he can. "I couldn't say no, have you met her? She's terrifying."

"If you don't turn around and fuck right the hell back off, I'll give you something to be scared of," Trimmer blusters.

"What, a sugar coma?" Rich snorts. He reaches out and ruffles Trimmer's hair, grinning: Trimmer's firmly restrained by his little cousin or niece or whatever, he can't do anything. His hair's so soft now, clean and neatly cut instead of the greasy blond mop that Trimmer would saw short with the nearest sharp edge when it got in his eyes or reached his shirt collar.

Trimmer growls, still flushed with embarrassment, and bites at his arm. It doesn't even hurt.

"No biting!" the tiny girl says. "That's against the rules!"

"So go tell," Trimmer snaps, and shakes her violently off him. She hits the deck and bounces a few times, then dashes off on all fours like a mutant cat, screeching furiously.

"So being a squeaky little maniac runs in the family, huh," Rich says, as she disappears below decks.

"Yeah, well, only Lark's seen you so far, you can still bail," Trimmer says. "You should bail. Why are you even here? I can't fucking believe you're here. Holy shit."

"Parole's up, we can see each other again," Rich says. "Like I wasn't gonna show, Monkey, it's been months! So c'mere, you tiny bastard, I've got some grief saved up to give you—" he scoops Trimmer right off the couch, hefting him up against his shoulder and squeezing just gently enough not to crush anything.

Trimmer kicks a little, then goes limp with a gratifying sigh, dropping his face against Rich's shoulder. It really has been too damn long: Trimmer's Jabberwock was reassigned to dock with the Deus Ex for every subsequent storm after their one single encounter on the Reliant. Rich even had to find that out from Ben, because his comms got blocked off from Trimmer, too. It's been rough.

"I can't believe you're here," Trimmer grumbles again. "No one ever comes to our stupid family things. They're crazy. You're crazy." He runs one of his cold little hands gently up and down the back of Rich's neck, and Rich hugs him just a bit tighter.

"See! He was biting!" the little girl announces suddenly, startling Rich. "He bit this big guy! That's against the rules!"

"Grown-up friends can bite each other if they want to, Lark," says a woman who looks distinctly related to both Lark and Trimmer. "They have special agreements about it."

"That's stupid," Lark says.

"And when you're grown up you can be stupid too. Now go help set the table." The woman shoves the girl back down the stairwell with a bare foot, then approaches Rich, smiling. She really does look a lot like Trimmer, except for the smiling.

"Hey, you must be Merrill—I'm Alice Klein, Joey's aunt," she says, and offers him a quick, warm handshake. "Sorry I missed your arrival. We were all taking bets on what kind of shit Joey was gonna flip if you actually showed. Care to fill me in?"

Trimmer gives a low, betrayed moan into Rich's shoulder.

"He yelled at me to go away a couple times and bit my arm," Rich smiles, patting Trimmer's thin back. "Which is a pretty warm welcome, honestly. That cushy single-residency of his is turning him into a total softie."

Trimmer bites Rich's ear. Rich yelps "Motherfucker!" and bowls the little bastard across the deck. Then he realizes he's just thrown Trimmer like a crumpled paper ball right in front of his aunt, who might have objections.

He stammers, "Ma'am, I, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cuss or hurt him or anything—" but Alice just laughs, doubling over as Trimmer slouches back towards them, looking sulky.

"Nice to see you're keeping him in line," she says, and slaps Rich's elbow amiably. "This family's spawn tends towards the rambunctious, and it just gets worse when we all pile in on top of each other. In-laws usually stay well away from our family gatherings, but Joey did say you were brave."

"Aunt Alice!" Trimmer hisses, looking embarrassed.

"Oh, uh," Rich says, nervousness settling in alongside a cautious sense of pride. "Well, ma'am, Hellbender invited me, and I figured it'd be safer to keep her happy."

"Aw, Mom's never safe," Alice laughs, which doesn't at all help Rich's nerves. "But c'mon, since you're here, let's get those boots off and you can come down and meet the rest of the family! Trial by fire. You already met Lark…and of course you and Joey are well acquainted..." she puts a wicked emphasis on that last bit, and Trimmer hisses, "Aunt Alice!" again, going an even deeper pink.

Rich gives Trimmer a big, gleeful grin. If Trimmer's going to be embarrassed about everyone assuming they're a couple, Rich sure as hell is gonna enjoy it.

"Well, you know, we could always stand to get a little closer," he says, and scoops Trimmer back up into the crook of his arm, pressing his cheek to Trimmer's soft, clean hair while Trimmer squirms and curses. "You sure you guys need us along for this dinner...?"

"Oh, behave," Alice says, and swats his hip. "Save it for after dessert, big guy. Rosie's made half a dozen apple pies, I guarantee you it's gonna be a lot better than picking your teeth with Joey's skinny little bones."

Trimmer makes a noise of absolute misery, and Rich has to bite the inside of his lip hard to keep a straight face.

"Yes, ma'am," Rich says politely, instead of cackling like a madman, and lets himself be towed toward the stairs.

The Wonderland is definitely decorated according to its namesake's theme: big purple cat paw prints fade in and out along the ceiling, antique clock faces are nailed up here and there, and Rich is pretty sure Trimmer himself must have painted most of the monsters that run along the passageway bulkheads and pose against the doors. There's also what seems like a full deck of playing cards glued in odd, hard to reach corners of each room and passageway, all of them with their faces nearly worn away. As Rich carries Trimmer past the ace of spades, the fourhands reaches out and taps a finger against it with probably the softest, fondest smile Rich has ever seen on his face.

"Think you could still beat your cousins?" Alice asks, and Trimmer's soft smile is immediately swapped out for the cranky, defensive sneer Rich is a lot more used to seeing.

"Oh c'mon, like any of us would play—it's a kid's game!"

"Sure, sure, I forgot you were so old and mature, Joey," Alice smiles. "Do the diamond run, then, grandpa."

"You can't make me do any of the runs, I'm—"

"Do the diamond run or you won't get dinner."

"You can't make me!"

Alice turns around so she's walking backwards, and just smiles. "Oh," she says. "Can't I?"

"Fuck," Trimmer says, and Rich feels him slump, defeated, against his shoulder. "Okay. Goddamn it. Merrill, take the next left."

"You wanna tell me what we're up to?" Rich asks, obligingly taking the next left.

"Court Order," Trimmer says, sounding grumpy. "Aunt Alice glued a deck of cards around the Wonderland for decoration like, thirty years back, and her kids came up with this dumb racing game—you gotta—" he stands up on Rich's forearm, his toes squeezing for balance, and slaps his hand against the ace of diamonds, which is glued on the ceiling near the light fixture. A couple kids piled on the couch playing a screen game all look up with interest. Trimmer goes on, "—You tag ace to king in one card suit before whoever you're racing against finishes their run. Diamond's the easiest—"

"—I call spades!" one of the kids on the couch shouts, and streaks off.

"Fuck," Trimmer says.

"No cussing!" one of the other kids says.

"I'm a goddamn adult, I'm fucking allowed, so cram it," Trimmer snaps back.

"I call clubs," the third kid says, and runs off too.

"Heck," the second kid says. "Hearts is the hardest. No one ever wins hearts."

"It's a metaphor," Alice says.

"Shut up, it's totally random," Trimmer says. "But at least diamonds doesn't take much backtracking. Go back in the passage and turn right."

Rich follows orders, completely charmed, and is led on a briskly chaotic tour of the Wonderland. The ship's a cozy, well-loved three-deck houseboat, scuffed and shabby in a way that speaks to long use by lots of children. Specifically fourhands children: all the furnishings have extra bolts securing them to the decks and bulkheads, and there's a lot more padded corners than might be found on a baseline-centric houseboat. Everything seems custom-fit for a population of natural acrobats with no particular respect for gravity. There's plenty of extra ladders scattered all over the place, and grab-bars installed in surprising locations, like the sides of tall cabinets and along passageway ceilings. And then there's the couches built into the frames of bunk beds, the shelves stacked up to the ceilings, and the cargo netting holding clumps of pillows and crates of toys…all of which Trimmer navigates with practiced ease, touching one card and then the next with the confidence of long familiarity.

Rich carries him around and watches him, in this strange space he fits perfectly, this place he must have grown up in, and feels something sharp and tender burn in his chest. He and Trimmer have taken care of each other for more than two long, awful years, and they've never talked about much of anything, let alone their childhoods, and he wishes so badly that they had. They could have been better people, braver, nicer. But they weren't. They never even thought of it.

Well, they've both passed parole, now. They both completed all their Behavioral Adjustment. They're theoretically well-adjusted members of society again. Maybe it's time to finally have some kind of actual relationship that isn't just rough-housing and trash-talking...

"What're you looking at?" Trimmer asks, when he catches Rich smiling at him. He crouches suspiciously on top of a wardrobe like a cherub pretending to be a gargoyle.

"I dunno, pal, I went blind looking at your ugly face," Rich says, reflexively, and holds his arm up. Trimmer snorts, and deigns to climb back down to his shoulder.

"What'd you go and do that for, idiot?" he says, and tugs a fistful of Rich's hair. "Now you're gonna be even harder to steer, and you already handle like a garbage scow."

Being nicer to this asshole is just going to have to be a work in progress.

"I'm winning," says one of the kids in unrequited competition with Trimmer. The tiny little guy scrambles up the back of Rich's jeans, scales his shirt, and perches on Rich's other shoulder. "I'm already at the spades queen, Uncle Joe, you better move your ass."

"No swearing!" Trimmer snaps, and shoves the kid off. He bounces like every other fourhands Rich has seen so far, and runs off laughing.

Trimmer pulls on Rich's hair again.

"Okay, shake a leg," he says. "Let's get this over with."

Easier said than done. The Wonderland has a regular residency of ten or so, enough for a big family. Right now it's crammed to bursting with at least twice that in company, all of them bouncy and shouty and startlingly happy to make Rich's acquaintance, congratulate him on clearing his parole, and embarrass the hell out of 'Cousin Joey'.

Rich, for his part, plays along, shakes hands very carefully, and forgets names as soon as Alice tells him any. Not all fourhands look the same, of course, but Hellbender's clan is a disorienting blur of pretty little blonds with bare feet and intimidating lung capacity.

Kids are running around shrieking both underfoot and overhead, as wild as goblins; every lounge room is crammed with people playing screen games and card games and sometimes both; somebody is bellowing orders in the galley; somebody very pregnant is in the dining room, setting two long tables shoved together with a hodgepodge of chairs and yelling at Lark; Lark is assiduously attempting to set a kids' table in the nearby lounge room and yelling back. When Trimmer finally, triumphantly slaps the king of diamonds glued above the light switch just outside the galley, Rich spots Hellbender herself, set up in a scruffy red armchair at the head of the dining room's table like a queen on her throne, looking smugly satisfied in the center of all the chaos.

She looks even more pleased with herself when she sees Rich; she reaches over absently, picks up her stick with one foot, transfers it to a hand, and then she's picking her way over, grinning up at him.

"Look at you, big fella!" she says, and pokes her cane at his wrap, narrowly missing stabbing him in the shin. "Lookin' sharp!"

"Thank you, ma'am," says Rich meekly. Trimmer makes a scathing noise in his ear, then yelps as his grandma swats him firmly in the thigh with the head of her cane. Hellbender heads back to her throne, beckoning Rich to follow; Rich sits down at the head of the table where he's directed, and deposits Trimmer right next to him.

"You dress up special, big boy? You're looking a lot finer than I remember."

"Well, I wanted to impress," Rich admits, and preens bravely as she looks him over. "I got my friend Liam to dress me up to match the wrap you gave me. Last time you didn't let me carry you off, y'know, I was thinking maybe I just didn't look cute enough—ow, Trimmer, fuck!"

"Stop hitting on my grandma, you freak!" Trimmer protests, and tugs on his earlobe again. "Fuck, Merrill, are these pearl? You wore pearl earrings for my grandma."

Hellbender is cackling delightedly.

"Liam got them for me," Rich smirks. "He said I was irresistible." It had been a really fun morning, and Liam demonstrating just how little resistance he had to Rich after he got dressed up all fancy had definitely taken the edge off Rich's nerves about tonight's dinner.

Trimmer goes pink and furious-looking, and Rich laughs and ruffles up his hair.

"You'll have to wait until after dessert," Hellbender says. "I'm not missing Rose's pie."

The pregnant lady finishes setting the table and comes to sit herself down opposite Rich with a relieved sigh and a cheerfully brisk introduction. It's Rose herself, who's Trimmer's first cousin by way of being his Aunt Alice's second daughter, and she's working on her fourth kid, in between apple pies.

"I work at the Sweet Stop," she tells Rich. "You know, the old bakery boat? At least until next month, then I'm gonna put my feet up and just collect maternity pay till this little bastard pops out. I like working well enough, but it's getting to the point a bad fall could really fuck things up, and the Stop wallows around like a drunk pig. Oh—hey, the baby's kicking, you wanna feel?"

"Oh!" Rich says, deeply intimidated. "Um, sure?"

He's directed to lean across the table and put his palm across the huge, taut curve of Rose's stomach. He flinches back when what's unmistakably a limb bumps against his palm from the other side of Rose's skin, and would bail out entirely if it weren't for Rose's slim, tiny little hand clamping firmly down on his wrist.

"No, it's fine, go on," she says, and smiles up at him as he stares at her stomach in horrified awe, feeling the baby bump against his hand over and over.

"Wow," he finally says.

"I love what men's faces do when they feel the kicking and shit," Rose admits. "You all look so horrified."

"Well, I mean—doesn't it hurt?" Rich asks.

"Oh, sure, but mostly when the little monsters nail your kidneys or bladder or whatever. Whacking at the front of the stomach's pretty small potatoes."

"Wow."

The baby eventually calms, and Rose sits back down with a relieved sigh. The conversation turns to the recent storm season, and if the surprising earliness of this winter means it's going to be an extra-long one or what. The seasons aren't as irregular as they used to be, back during the initial climate collapse, but it's still anyone's guess how long anything's going to last from year to year.

A tiny, skinny toddler in a neon yellow wrap crawls under the table and starts playing with Rich's toes with the same single-minded determination as the Reliant's kittens. When Rich carefully tries to push the kid away with one foot, it squeals in delight and attacks, biting wetly.

"Excuse me," Rich says, with careful politeness, "but whose kid is this and how do I get it to stop?"

Rose cranes herself carefully around in her seat to check. "That's Lily's first," she says. "Kick her this way—"

Rich carefully scoots the toddler towards her with his increasingly wet foot, and she snags it by a back paw, then hoists it up to perch on the broad curve of her stomach. The toddler squeals and babbles something completely incomprehensible, and she covers its face in noisy kisses until it's shrieking like a tea-kettle and batting her face with tiny little fists. The minute she lets it go it streaks off like a tiny blond bullet, careening wildly around the room, scaling a cabinet, then swinging away along the grab-bars and netting attached to the ceiling.

"Huh, I didn't know she'd gotten old enough to go full arboreal," Rose comments. "Poor Lily. That stage is a literal headache, they start dropping on you, and I don't think she's actually believed any of us when we warned her about it. Twenty pounds doesn't sound like much for a toddler, but when it slams into your shoulders out of nowhere it's hell on your spine."

"Ah," Rich says, inanely. "Yeah."

"So are you thinking about kids yet?" Rose asks. "I heard you're kind of young for Joey, but he's closing in on thirty. It's about time he thought of settling down somewhere, getting back into family life. He's more than done his time as a working man—"

Stolen novel; please report.

"Rose, you can't just ask a guy that!" Trimmer protests, while Rich's brain runs in panicky circles around the inside of his skull.

"Can and did!" Rose says, completely unabashed. "I mean, I assume you're not gonna be cooking up your own—" a quick glance at Rich, and Rich shakes his head hastily, "—but there's always adoption. God knows the Wonderland's got plenty of kids underfoot if you wanna abduct a nephew or three."

"I—don't, uh, I don't know, I haven't been thinking about it," Rich says. Kids, god, like he was some normal adult who could handle that. Holy shit.

"Me neither!" Trimmer says. "Fuck, Rosie, we're not even looking at getting our own space together yet, cut your fucking engines."

Rich stares at him, at that, because…pretending like they're gonna get married just because Trimmer's family keeps assuming they're a couple is funny, but something in the way Trimmer says yet sounds like…he's been thinking about it. Our own space together yet. Rich finds himself feeling warm and flattered and shy, all at once.

"You could swing a posting at the Reliant," he offers. "Get back to being an electrician. It'd be nice to have you around again."

Trimmer's expression goes distant. "No," he says tightly. "I can't, no." He leans against Rich's arm, his mouth a flat, hard line. "You'd get tired of bailing me out of scrapes, anyway. God knows you bitched about it enough back on the Sympatico."

Rich sighs, and shifts enough to get his arm around Trimmer, hold him close against his side. He can feel how fast Trimmer's breathing, and he squeezes the little guy very gently.

"Well, at least come visit, now that we're off parole. The Reliant's such a cushy posting, I need more things to bitch about, I'm getting out of practice."

"Sure, I believe that," Trimmer snorts. "Life's all peaches and honey without me around, huh?"

"I mean, yeah," Rich says, and Trimmer socks him in the side. Rich huffs at him, but Trimmer's less taut against him now, so Rich can relax too.

People start carrying dishes out of the galley, loading them onto the table and going back for more until the tabletop's packed end to end with steaming, delicious-smelling food: roast potatoes, zucchini bread, big platters of grilled fish, veggie casseroles, even a couple roast chickens. Rich does his best to keep making conversation without drooling all over himself. He's intensely grateful that he's not starving anymore so he won't make a spectacle of himself by staring fixed and desperate at the nearest dish until he can dig in, but even so, it's a close thing. It's going to be hard enough matching his appetite to that of a bunch of dainty little fourhands without looking like a complete pig.

The call to dinner goes up and people start coming over to the tables, still chattering and yelling as they get seated. Rich reels with the sudden influx of noise and people, but it's okay, it's fine. Everyone's cheerful and friendly and they want him here, and Trimmer is right next to him, reassuringly near at hand at last as he bickers familiarly with his cousins.

It takes a few minutes for everyone to get seated, the little kids at their own table squabbling over seats and perching every which way on the chair backs and tabletops, until Alice comes along to forcefully plunk everyone down in their seats like regular humans, scolding affectionately. At the far end of the adult's table, a teenaged member of the family climbs up to perch on the back of his own chair, and is quickly hauled back down into his seat by a pair of embarrassed-looking younger teens, with a lot of snickering on his part and quiet cursing on theirs, and the adults around them all pretend not to be watching. Finally, the whole family is sitting down, and someone clears their throat, and quiet gradually falls.

"So, I'm from Detroit, you know," Hellbender says to Rich. She has both hands folded on the head of her cane, and her expression is bright and intent as she looks around at everyone assembled at the tables, who all sit there looking silently back at her.

She says, "I cleared out after we'd eaten all the rats and just before they started in on eating the tweaks. Back then everyone was sayin' it was the end of the world, that we had maybe two, three more years before there was nothing left anywhere but bones, picked clean. Human bones, city bones, the Earth's bones. But I made it all the way across Michigan state, and I signed on for the old Admiral's crazy Fleet idea, all of us stealing whatever boats we could get our hands on and sailing out into the lake, because she told us we could still make something that lasted. Whole world gone crazy, snow in July and fires in February and they were eating each other back home for lack of any better ideas, and everyone said the Fleet wouldn't last a year. Then they said it wouldn't last five years. Then they said it wouldn't last the decade."

She points her cane at Rich, then gestures all around with it. "It's been almost fifty years, kids, and the world ain't ended yet, and the Fleet hasn't quit either. I had three daughters who gave me thirteen grandchildren—me, a Martian runaway from Detroit, I got thirteen fucking grandchildren! And god knows how many great-grandkids, the mess of you are like roaches, I blink and there's a dozen more.

"It hasn't been easy. We've all of us spent our lives haulin' ass and I expect it'll continue on that way for just about the rest of forever. And we haven't all stayed out of trouble, either. Joey here isn't the first mouthy little reprobate to get his attitude professionally adjusted, not by a fuckin' generation, and he sure as fuck isn't gonna be the last. But the world ain't ended and the Fleet's still floating and we're all still here." She thumps her cane on the deck, for emphasis. "We're still fuckin' here. Let's eat."

"Let's eat," her family says, in rote response, even Trimmer where he's still tucked under Rich's arm. Then there's a clatter of silverware and conversation as everyone digs in.

Rich doesn't have to worry about eating too much: Trimmer's family seems to have gotten the idea that Rich is actually a bottomless pit, and everyone around him is determined to pile his plate back up with food the moment Rich's fork hits a spot of bare ceramic. He eats as neatly and politely as he can, but everything is completely delicious, and there's tons of it.

"We've got a lot of busy interns underfoot right now," Alice tells him, with the fond resignation of a woman who's had to raise a whole lot of teenagers. "Even fourhands turn into calorie sinks when they're dealing with work shifts and growth spurts at the same time. Have you tried the fried rice yet?"

Rich catches Trimmer watching him eat, a few times, an odd little smile on his face.

"Yeah, what?" Rich asks finally, and elbows the side of his head gently.

"You're going soft, Merrill," Trimmer says, and pinches his side, where his skin doesn't fit quite so close to his ribs anymore. "It suits you."

"I'm fat and happy," Rich agrees. "You don't watch out, you're gonna have to be fighting the boys off me to get any one-on-one time in."

"I still got my straightedge," Trimmer says. "The boys'd better fucking watch out."

Rich smiles at him, warm all through, and Trimmer smiles back before going pink and turning back to his own plate.

The conversations go on all around him, and one cheerfully curious relative after the next tries to draw Rich out: it's flattering and intimidating, all at once, to be getting this kind of attention. Where'd he grow up, what's he work at, does he like it, how's his family? Rich speaks when spoken to, minds his manners, and stuffs his face. His social skills feel rusty as hell, but no one seems to care enough to kick him back off the boat. Of course, next to Trimmer, who's apparently an unrepentant grouch even with his own family, just about anyone would look polite.

After dinner, there's dessert, served by a few of the most recent deckhands. They perform the job with adorable preteen seriousness, carving slices of pie and ladling out ice cream with all the intensity of sanitation engineers working to sequester an apocalyptic amount of fissionable materials. Rich is served an entire quarter of a pie by a tiny kid who seems to be calculating serving sizes by body mass, and who nods proudly when thanked.

"Your cousins are so fucking cute," Rich tells Trimmer, after the pie server marches self-importantly away.

"Yeah, sure, when they're giving you ice cream instead of headaches," Trimmer says. He's already halfway through his portion and accelerating. Rich had no idea he had such a sweet tooth.

The pie is delicious. Rich eats his slice slowly enough to really savor it, until Trimmer finishes his own portion and shamelessly goes after Rich's. Rich has to fend him off, laughing and cursing, and finishes the last bite of pie with one hand wrapped firmly around Trimmer's entire face.

"Nice technique," Alice says approvingly. "You let him up before he suffocates, or what?"

"Oh, but he's so sweet when he's unconscious," Rich says, and then Trimmer pokes him in the ribs with his fork. Laughing again, Rich drops him back in his seat, and lets him hog the rest of the ice cream just to see his triumphant little smile.

There are tall, pretty glass bottles of imported gin being passed around the table now; the liquor smells sharp and strange and expensive. Once all the adults have been served—and several teens have gotten their wrists smacked—Hellbender hefts her cane and one of the bottles and makes her way over to the nearest porthole to pour the first drink out into the dark water. Everyone raises their glasses respectfully and choruses, "One for the lake, may she rest easy!" before drinking.

Rich has never had gin before, and finds that he really likes it. It tastes a lot nicer than vodka, burns a bit less, and feels nearly as strong.

Alice asks what Rich does for fun, if he plays any sports. Cautiously, trying hard not to hog all the conversation just because someone's finally asked him about something he could talk about forever, Rich tells her about hoverboarding. He's out on the water just about every day the weather allows, lately, and he just bought his own board from the Mall last week, with really nice custom-sized grips, and he's never had this much fun in his life. Shyly, afraid that people might think he's bragging, he admits that he's gotten lucky enough to train under Katrina Chau, and that it's been going really well, and that she thinks he might be ready for an actual competition by spring.

"Katrina Chau...God, I remember her!" Alice says. "That scary Chinese fourhands, right?"

"Californian," Rich says.

"Yeah, her! My eldest boy had so many posters of her up in his room, I felt like I oughta add her to our crew manifest. Kid had the special calendars, too. Spent a hell of a lot more time in his bunk than on the water, as I recall."

Rich finds himself snickering a little guiltily into his drink. "Okay, well, I mean—teenagers, right? I mean, I wasn't downloading swimsuit guides because I was looking to get myself a bikini."

"Well, whatever keeps you happy and healthy," Alice says, "though I gotta say, big guy, I wouldn't mind seeing you in one," and raises her glass. And one eyebrow.

"Aunt Alice!" Trimmer hisses despairingly.

Laughing even while his ears burn, Rich carefully knocks his glass against hers, then downs it and gladly lets Hellbender pour him another.

The conversation moves on to sports in general, and then to whose stupid kids have gotten hurt in which ridiculous ways lately, and Rich works his way happily through a couple more drinks, perfectly content to sit out further conversation. He's starting to feel the soft, warm insulation of a good buzz settle around the anxious jagged edges of his mind when he catches Trimmer looking up at him, storm-colored eyes sharp, lips pressed into a tight, worried line. Rich falters, shooting him a questioning look, and Trimmer blinks and then looks away, taking a deep swig of his own drink.

Rich is trying to figure out how to ask 'Hey, what the fuck?' without dragging Trimmer into a public conversation he obviously doesn't want to have, when Rose starts piling plates and the kids who served the dessert jump to help, snatching up plates and bickering over who can carry the most.

"Oh, I can help with the clean-up," Rich offers, and goes to push his chair back.

"Don't bother," Hellbender says. "You'll just get in the way."

"I'm good at cleaning," Rich says, and under his arm, Trimmer snickers.

"You're neurotic at cleaning," Trimmer says.

"One of us had to make sure our berth didn't fill up to the ceiling with garbage and it sure wasn't you, you nasty little goblin," Rich snorts. "I bet your aunt sent Reassessment a picture of whatever your bunk looked like after a week without me riding your unwashed ass and they gave you a recycler the next day. With a note taped to the bow that just said 'Oh god, please'."

Alice starts laughing into her drink. Rich holds up his glass triumphantly and she clinks hers against it, pink with mirth.

"Okay, fuck you, it took two days," Trimmer says, but there's a sharp, pleased little quirk to his mouth, and he lets Rich have the win.

"You're still not fitting in the galley, big boy," Hellbender points out, and pours more gin all around. "Stay put and let's talk some shop already—what do you think of the new diagnostic protocols the ISE's rolled out last week?"

Rich rolls his eyes in answer to the question, making a derisive jerking-off gesture with his free hand: the new diagnostic protocols are a bunch of self-congratulatory busywork that look great, sound brilliant, and are totally goddamn pointless to actually perform. Then he remembers that this isn't just any IST to commiserate with, it's Trimmer's grandma and he just did a jerk-off gesture at her, and he practically slams his hand back down on the table, completely embarrassed.

Hellbender only throws her head back and cackles. "Yeah, if it ain't broke wait till the engineers fix it, huh?"

Rich can't help laughing along.

He helps stack plates and hand them off to the kids who are clearing the tables, and chats with Hellbender, and works his way through a couple more drinks as she portions them out. Trimmer gets through about one more, then goes warm and sleepy and heavy against his side, and Rich finds himself petting gently at the silky blond fall of his hair. He looks so deceptively sweet and delicate like this, half-drunk and cozy enough to let his guard down.

Finally the table's cleared, and a few of the older teens come back with a board game, and look hopefully at Hellbender.

"Can we have the table, Gramma?" one of them asks.

"Oh, yeah, that's alright," Hellbender says. "What's the game for tonight?"

"Murderface," the teen says.

"Well, that sounds like my kind of jam, for sure," Hellbender says. "Load it up, kiddo."

The teens start setting it out, talking eagerly.

"You wanna stick around and learn a new game, or take my grandson off to bed?" Hellbender asks Rich, and he chokes on his gin.

"Uh, I—well!" he says, and looks down at Trimmer, who's nodded off in his lap. "I'd, yeah, I'd rather go—I don't think I'm up for a game night, sorry. Is that rude?"

"Oh, you're going to have to learn to be a hell of a lot ruder to make a dent in this family," the old lady snorts. "Go on, take your man and scram. I gotta kick some teenage ass over here." She pours him another shot, hands it over. "One for the road, big guy."

Rich obligingly knocks it back, then scoops Trimmer over one arm and stands up—and grabs clumsily for the back of the chair as the Wonderland dips and wheels around him.

"Ha!" Hellbender hoots. "Fuck, I was wondering when all that was gonna kick in. You sure can hold your liquor, can't you?"

"I try," Rich says numbly, and takes a few steadying breaths. Trimmer's squirming in his grip, grabbing vaguely at his sleeve to keep from sliding down his chest. It takes a lot more careful coordination than Rich would like to get him situated at his shoulder.

"What's—mm. Merrill? What's up?" Trimmer mumbles, nudging at the side of his neck.

"We're going to bed," Rich says. Trimmer goes tense in his grip.

"Merrill, I don't like you like that," he says, very quietly.

"Aww, you like me," Rich says, stupidly pleased to hear him admit it. But Trimmer makes a tight, panicky little noise right into his ear, and starts breathing in fast, shallow gasps, and Rich realizes all at once how badly Trimmer's misunderstood all of tonight's teasing.

Rich blurts out, "Holy shit, Trimmer, I'm not gonna fuck you!" and all the teenagers in earshot, plus Hellbender, pause and stare at him.

Mortified, Rich says, "Excuse us, please—ma'am—thanks for everything—just gonna go yell at this total moron for a minute, thanks. Sorry. Goodnight!" and strides quickly out of the dining room and up the nearest stairs, aiming for the top deck. Trimmer's as pointy and unyielding in his arms as a load of scrap metal, and Rich's head is thick and blurry and his balance is pretty bad, but he makes it up to open air without bashing into anything or tripping over his own feet. It's cold up there, crisp autumn chill starting towards true frost, and it helps clear some of the hot fog out of Rich's brain.

"Okay," he says, and just stands there, swaying, holding Trimmer close under the night sky. "Okay, so, I missed you, man, I keep having nightmares and you aren't there and I wanna sleep with you again but like—just sleeping. Only sleeping."

"...You swear?" Trimmer says finally. He's still breathing too fast. "Because you're so—you're huge, you know, and you get so pushy when you're drunk, if you change your mind halfway through tonight—"

"Then you'll slice my fucking dick off, probably," Rich says. "You still got that straightedge, don't you? Trimmer, if I ever put my hands on someone who doesn't want me to, you can hunt me down and cut my throat, but I'm never even going to try that shit with you. I swear."

"Okay." Trimmer takes a deeper breath, shudders on the exhale. His small hands knot in Rich's shirtfront, and he presses his face to Rich's shoulder. "...Okay, then. Fine. If you promise."

"You're not even that fucking pretty, you know," Rich says, and jiggles him carefully. "Did you really think I was gonna be, what, consumed with lust over here? Take one look at your cute little ice cream wrap and dive for you dick first?"

"Yeah, so, it was a possibility," Trimmer says, with a shaky attempt at snark. "My ice cream wrap's pretty goddamn cute."

"Yeah, too bad what it's wrapped around is a bony little goblin with a dirty mouth and a nastier mind."

Trimmer gives a soft snicker.

"I wouldn't fuck you if it was an express command from Admiral Clearwater," Rich says. "I wouldn't stick my dick in you if you were the last warm body in the Fleet, I'm still traumatized from that one time you put your nasty goblin paws on the poor thing. It was the worst handjob of my life. I get nightmares. I'm in therapy."

Trimmer's still snickering—though it's more like giggling. Encouraged, Rich makes his way over to his deck hopper, still trash-talking Trimmer's utter lack of sexual desirability, and sits down heavily in the driver's seat.

"Which of us is less drunk?" he asks, wondering if he's gonna have to crack open the hopper's drunk-block, and palms the access plate. It gives him a stern beep and refuses to light up. He grabs Trimmer's bare foot and mashes it against the plate, whereupon the deck-hopper grudgingly turns on. Apparently Trimmer's just being a lazy little shit.

"Haha, you've gotta drive. Suck it."

"Thought we just established neither of us are sucking anything."

"Shut up and get us back to the Reliant, Monkey." He shifts over to the passenger side, then dumps Trimmer into the driver's seat.

Trimmer grumbles, yawns, and lifts them off. He turns out to be an even worse driver than Rich, taking them on a terrifyingly high-speed meander from the Wonderland to the Reliant with a few detours to the top of a deck-hopper's range as well as way too many almost-stops in the lake itself. Rich gets an uncomfortable sense of what it's like to be a gull on the kind of drugs that make you go blind, before Trimmer lands them on the Reliant with an ominous crunch.

"That could have gone worse," he says, in the breathless pause afterwards, and flops over into Rich's lap. "Take me to bed, Merrill, I'm tired."

"What, like my legs are working any better after that?" Rich asks shakily. "Holy shit, Trimmer, you scared a year off my life."

"Mmm, so what. You're a baby. Swear to god if one more cousin called me a crèche-raider I was gonna start biting." He aimlessly bites a fold of Rich's shirt, and Rich sighs and hefts him up over his shoulder, before cautiously dismounting the hopper.

"Holy shit, you caved in the whole back corner," Rich says, and leans back over the access plate. In a couple sharp gestures he's overridden the drunk-block, dug into its memory, and wiped the last day or so. The guys in hopper maintenance are gonna be extra mad, probably, but now they won't know who to be mad at. Trimmer doesn't need more enemies.

Rich probably should've overridden the drunk-block to start with and driven the hopper himself. Oh well.

"Bed," Trimmer whines, tugging on his shirt, like Rich has just been messing around for no reason, and Rich sighs and turns and makes his careful way across the Reliant's top deck. The gin's hitting hard, by now, and everything is a soft and beautiful and dizzying blur. He loves the Reliant, and he loves his friends, and he loves his life.

Basil pokes his head out of his open doorway, when Rich fumbles at his palm plate to get into his own berth.

"How'd it go?" he asks.

Rich smiles at him warmly. "It went great, baby," he says. "Thanks for asking. Did you stay up for me?"

"...Maybe," Basil says sheepishly. "I mean, I wasn't worried or anything, I just, um, wanted to make sure you were okay. You okay?"

"Had a couple too many," Rich admits. "Hellbender can drink. But it was great, I'm great. You're great. Did I say that? I don't say that enough. C'mere." He takes a step across the passageway, tips Basil's chin up, and kisses him thoroughly.

"Fuck," Basil breathes, after he's let go, and looks up at Rich with dark, hungry eyes. "You wanna, uh—?"

"No, I'm, bed, we're gonna sleep," Rich says, and shrugs the shoulder that Trimmer's draped over. "Just sleep. I missed him."

"Oh," Basil says, and looks at Trimmer with distinct jealousy. But instead of anything mean or petty, he says, "Well, have a nice night, then," with every sign of sincerity.

What they've got with each other is still too new and strange to put a label on yet, especially when Basil's so close with Mitch and Rich finally has Trimmer back and really likes Liam, too...but when Basil told Rich they were friends, he'd really meant it. He's in this, whatever it is, because he likes Rich, not just a spare hand or an easy mouth. He likes Rich, himself.

It's hard to keep trusting in that, but such a thrill to keep being reminded over and over. Rich finds himself full of a raw, prickling tenderness he doesn't really know what to do with, so he just leans in and kisses Basil again, soft and grateful.

"You have a good night too," Rich tells him. "Maybe call Liam up, huh? He probably wouldn't mind keeping you company over a screen call. He's great at screen calls."

Basil blushes. "Yeah, okay, shit," he says shyly. "Maybe I will. You think?"

"I definitely have been known to think sometimes," Rich says, and then when Basil grimaces at the joke, kisses him a third time. Then he turns—catches himself clumsily against the bulkhead—recovers, and carries Trimmer into his berth.

Trimmer's just about entirely asleep, and barely stirs on the bed when Rich peels his sweater and ice cream wrap off. He gets a little frown on his face, which smooths out as soon as Rich strokes his hair, and Rich has to bite his lip hard to keep from laughing. He goes and gets Trimmer's stuff folded and put aside on the desktop for the morning, then changes into his own comfortable sleep clothes, puts away his fancy stuff, unclips his new earrings and carefully puts them back in the special little dish he keeps on his dresser for jewelry. Then everything is perfectly taken care of, and he climbs into bed and scoops Trimmer close, curling around him all warm and protective and happy.

...Oh, fuck, Rich totally went and left his boots back on the Wonderland. Well, that'll give him a fine excuse to turn up after tomorrow's shift, and maybe see about leftovers…

Some indeterminate time later, Rich surfaces from the vague, muddled dreams that sleeping drunk gives him. It's the middle of the night, a faint sliver of moonlight coming in through the window, and the room is quiet except the rough sound of Trimmer panting harshly. Trimmer's sharp little spine is shoved hard against Rich's chest, all four hands are cuffed tightly around his arm, and Trimmer's face is pressed wetly into his palm. For a long moment Rich thinks he didn't wake up after all, that this is just another dream inside a dream. It doesn't feel real that Trimmer's finally here again, small and sharp and clinging so familiarly it aches.

"Hey, Monkey," Rich says gently, and strokes his hair with his free hand. "Hey, hey, c'mon, wake up, I'm here..."

"Mmngh," Trimmer goes, and then, "No, no, no, STOP—fuck!" and wakes up with a jerk, sitting bolt upright.

"Fuck!" he repeats, and pops open a location screen, blindingly bright in the dark berth. "Aaah, haah, fuck…Merrill?"

"You're okay," Rich says softly, and runs his hand slowly up and down Trimmer's narrow back, feeling him shake. "I'm here, we're both here, we're good."

"We're—yeah. Okay. You're here, you're here too. Aw, fuck, my head..."

Trimmer rubs at his forehead, then shoves a hand into the waistband of his boxers and comes out with a small paper packet. He dry-swallows two pills, then hunches defensively at some imagined look from Rich.

"Got anxiety meds now," he says. "They work better'n drinking. You should—you should maybe try 'em out, sometime."

Actual medication, like some poor traumatized refugee who needs serious chemical adjustment before he's fit for society, like Rich can't handle his shit on his own. Rich's stomach turns over at the thought, but…he's still working on scaling back how much he needs to drink, anyway, and it's been a lot harder to cut down on it than he'd thought it would be. Basil might approve. Liam, too. And if Trimmer's already trying it out...

Trimmer sighs, and elbows him on the bicep. "Just think about it. I know you got a steel liver and a skull that's bone all the way through, but…think about it."

"I'll think about it."

"I never liked how much you drink."

"I said I'll think about it, Monkey, fuck! Lay off."

"Okay, okay."

Trimmer turns and burrows back down against Rich's side, battening himself to Rich's shirtfront.

"Hey," he says after a long, quiet minute.

"Yeah?"

"We made it, big guy," Trimmer says. "World ain't ended, Fleet hasn't sunk, and we're still here."

Rich lets out a soft, heartfelt laugh, and holds Trimmer closer. Feeling brave, he dares to drop a kiss on Trimmer's clean, silky hair.

"We made it," he repeats, and it feels like ice cream and apple pie on his tongue.

They made it, both of them. All of them, Rich and Trimmer, friends and family, the whole entire Fleet: they made it through every storm that ever hit them, and they're still here.

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