Trimmer is shrieking curses like he only does when he's really scared. Rich has to get to him, but there's a seething mass of brawlers in the way, because Captain Monroe's faction has moved against Flaherty's and now half the Sympatico is knotted up together screaming and swearing and it's not just posturing, anymore. They're trying to end each other, and the only neutral party is a dead one.

Rich wades in to try to reach Trimmer, shoving and throwing combatants out of his way, but no matter how fast he tries to go, there's always another snarling face coming at him, twisted with hatred. A knife flashes, and then another, and the mob is closing in around him, grabbing and tearing at him. Trimmer is screaming: he needs Rich and Rich can't get over there, he's surrounded. When he strikes out in terror, bones give sickeningly under his fists, ribs snap and skulls crack, men are screaming in pain and vomiting blood and it's his fault, he did that.

They grab onto his arms and pull him down and he can't fight or he'll break them, if he tries to get away he'll crush them but if he doesn't they're going to cut him apart. Then a club comes down on his shoulder and everything locks up in agony. Security is here and he's dead, he's curled up twitching on the deck and the knives are coming for him while he can't defend himself and he can't even breathe—

Rich lurches awake to the sound of his own hoarse moaning, the closest he gets to screaming when he's asleep. He flails out an arm to gesture the lights on and nothing looks right, and then he remembers with a dizzying mix of relief and terror that he's not on the Sympatico anymore, he's stuck in Reassessment—no, he's on the Reliant, he got his new assignment.

It's okay, he's okay. That last fight is over and he's safe now. He shoves himself up to sit and focuses on breathing, one arm curled around his middle, one hand on the back of his neck. His skin is clammy with sweat, and his gut is all hollow and shaky.

He feels sick. He can't stop reliving the sensation of bones breaking under his fists, the horrible pained noises from the men he broke with every desperate punch he threw. He didn't even want to be there, he didn't want to hurt anybody, he was just trying to get Trimmer away and safe, and everything had gotten so crazy.

At least he didn't really get clubbed then, like he did in the dream. Security had been solidly neutral between Flaherty and Monroe: Flaherty and his friends caused most of the fights and did most of the drugs on the Sympatico, but Security really didn't like Captain Monroe trying to play gang lord with them, trying to use them as his personal enforcers, and they hadn't liked the tantrums he'd thrown when they wouldn't fall into line. So they sure as hell hadn't felt like wading into the brawling mob that had developed when Monroe's favored goons had tried to take Flaherty himself out in a frankly insane act of straight-up full-frontal murder.

Which is lucky for Rich, because if they'd come into the fight with their batons out, the giant tweak covered in blood and surrounded by screaming men on the deck would've been their first target. And if Rich had gone down in that fight, he wouldn't have gotten back up again. Neither Monroe's people or Flaherty's would have hesitated to take him out while they could, to finally be rid of the big dangerous soldier mod with the bad attitude who hated everyone back as hard as they hated him, and who had long since grown out of being young enough or dumb enough to take advantage of. Rich and Trimmer had been a faction of two, by the end of things, and they'd almost gone down together for it...

Rich doesn't want to think about that anymore. What he really wants to do is pound back his vodka stash without having to goddamn ration it, then go back to sleep for like a year. What he wants after that is to hack into whatever database caseworkers use and go find where Trimmer was reassigned. It gnaws at him not to know where Trimmer's gone, if he's sitting up at night like Rich is, sick and scared, if he's getting pushed around somewhere new, if he needs Rich and Rich isn't there for him. Rich is sitting on his ass playing with kittens and taking naps in the sunshine and listening to puppets sing about friendship while Trimmer's just—out there, somewhere, without him, alone.

What he should probably do, instead of violating the terms of his parole just because he's had a bad dream, is go take a shower and have a walk and try to clear his head. Maybe get some work done somewhere quiet. Maybe go play with some kittens some more.

Yeah, definitely what he needs to do is go look at some kittens. It doesn't seem likely that he could be screwed up and miserable over a dumb nightmare and also surrounded by kittens. Rich is pretty sure that's like, brain science. Or maybe kitten science. He could ask Liam…

He gets a change of clothes, eyes his vodka, sadly decides against cheating his budget any more than he's already done, and slouches tiredly off to the showers.

The shower doesn't help much, except for he's less sweaty afterwards. And clean new clothes feel good. So, the shower helps a lot, Rich is just feeling like a huge whiny baby about everything right now. In a bad mood and basically disgusted with himself about it, he slumps off to the lounge with the kittens in it.

...And Basil's there, of course. Awesome. Great. Tonight's going so well. It's ass o'clock in the morning, so it's probably near the start of Basil's preferred night-owl shift, so here he is, in the way of Rich's kitten fix, and also looking up from his screen and blinking stupidly at him.

"Uh, hi," he says, and there goes Rich's last possible chance of ducking out and running away without being rude, and also, a total coward.

"Hey, kid," he sighs, and pushes his way into the room. If he's going to be a big stupid unhappy mess about everything tonight, he is at least going to hold a kitten for his trouble. The universe owes him that much.

It hasn't been that long since he was last here, but the kittens are noticeably bigger, their little tails longer and whippier. Rich picks up the black one with white socks and sits himself down in a chair to give ear scritches and try to avoid any new scars from kitten claws.

Basil mostly stays focused on his screen, although Rich catches him sneaking a glance Rich's way once or twice, eyeing the kitten-petting. Rich catches him because he's sneaking his own looks, of course. He's noticed before how perfectly Basil's artificial hand works, the fingers of the work glove tapping and dancing over the keys of his holoscreen with a speed and precision that matches his intact right hand. It makes it all the more impressive that the guy designed it himself.

Of course, having Basil sitting right there with the nightmare foremost in Rich's mind just makes him think about how upset Basil must have been to be treated like he was some jerk from the Sympatico, how royally Rich screwed up with him. There's only so long Rich can bear it.

"I'm really sorry, Basil," he says finally.

Basil blinks at his screen and then frowns over at Rich. "What?"

"I said, I'm sorry," Rich says. "I didn't—Liam explained some stuff to me, and I get it now why you were upset about that night. I didn't mean to, like, say I didn't think you'd be nice to me unless I made it worth your while, that wasn't, that wasn't it. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

The way anyone would have said that back on the Sympatico—I didn't mean to hurt your feelings—would have been enough to start a fight right then and there, and it makes Rich's heart race to see the confusion and distress on Basil's face as he stares at him. But he means it, and Basil's got a goddamn Family Fleet t-shirt, of all things, Basil should get that Rich means it for real and not as some petty taunt.

"That wasn't why I was upset," Basil says unsteadily, and, okay, Rich is now completely lost.

"So was it the, uh," Rich gestures vaguely at his mouth. "You did think I was, uh…y'know, dirty?"

Basil's eyes go wide and he looks completely horrified. "Holy shit, no!" he blurts out. "Wow, fuck, no, okay, I—wow, no, I'm so fucking sorry it came out like that, I wanted to kill myself for how you thought that. God. No."

Rich has to look back down at his kitten, because that should be a relief, but it just makes him more confused and upset.

"I have no idea what the problem is, then," he admits. "I was having a nice time, like, with you, and everything, uh…just, everything. I thought it was going great. So what the fuck?"

Basil gives a long, unhappy sigh. "Yeah, what the fuck is about right," he says. "I, uh, shit. Man. I just…wanted you to have sex with me because like, you thought. Uh..." He mumbles something basically inaudible.

"What?"

"Because you thought I was cool and mature now! Shit! C'mon!"

Rich looks up at Basil incredulously. "Kid," he says, and gestures at Basil; gangly, messy, easily flustered Basil who followed him around like a lost puppy the entire year he was fifteen and still owns a Family Fleet t-shirt. Basil who is barely twenty and is handsome and fun but also like, even worse than Rich is at articulating his feelings, and who had to get himself ridiculously drunk before he could so much as ask Rich to fool around.

Basil flushes. "Shut up," he says. "Shut, just…shut your entire—shut the whole entire fuck up, Rich."

Rich goes back to playing with his kitten, but he can't help but smile now.

"And, like," Basil says, like the words are being dragged out of him, "it also…seemed like if you were doing that out of gratitude, it wasn't about you liking me, or thinking I was fun, or anything, you were just humoring me. Like a kid. And you were used to doing that stuff on your old ship, even though that's not how it's supposed to work, and instead of telling you you didn't have to do that, I took advantage of it." He gives Rich a miserable look.

Rich meanwhile is staring at him in disbelief. "For fuck's sake, really?"

Basil shrugs, looking away. "I mean, maybe. It seemed likely."

"I wasn't fucking humoring you, okay!" Rich says in exasperation, and the kitten jumps off his lap with a thump when he waves his hand around. "I was having fun! Because yeah, actually, I like you fine, kid!"

"Oh," Basil says, flushing darker. "So then, it wasn't—you wouldn't have done that if you hadn't liked me, if it was just gratitude?"

Rich has to stop and think about that one, which Basil apparently takes as an admission. "Cut it out!" Rich says in annoyance as Basil groans and covers his face with his hands. "I need to think it through, okay?" He leans down and wiggles his fingers at an exploring kitten, but fails to attract it.

"I wouldn't have done it like that, if it was just gratitude," he says finally. "I probably would've still blown you, fine, but I wouldn't have drawn it out and, y'know, had fun with it. It would have been, I dunno, a 'hey thanks' thing. Fast."

"That's still so fucked up," Basil complains. "You get that, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, fuck off," Rich says tiredly. "I'm fucked up, I fuck things up, I get it, kid." He goes and snags another kitten as it scampers by and holds it up in the air, tickling its front paws as it meeps ferociously at him.

Basil gives a long, mournful sigh, and flops back on his couch. "I'm sorry," he says again. "I don't mean to be such an asshole about all this. I know you got a lot to be like, working through, I just—I wanna help, okay? I wanna be good with you, about, uh. About this stuff. Feelings, and junk."

"Other guys have it worse, y'know," Rich says. He puts the kitten on his shoulder to see if it'll perch there. "I'm not some like, some sad traumatized little victim, here, I don't like—I'm not curled up in my bunk crying about being—I dunno, violated, or whatever. It was way worse for some other guys."

"Yeah and in Detroit they eat rats and glow in the dark," Basil says sharply, and makes an impatient hand gesture: quit it. "C'mon, just because you didn't get, what, gang raped to sleep by mutant pirates every night, doesn't mean like—maybe you still got some stuff to work through, okay? Maybe you should take it easy, or whatever. Cut yourself a little slack while you process everything."

"You sound like my caseworker," Rich complains, and completely fails to catch the kitten when it leaps off his shoulder like a tiny kamikaze potato. It hits the deck with a heavy thunk and scampers away, unconcerned.

"What, she know a lot about mutant pirates?" Basil asks, and it surprises a laugh out of Rich.

"She definitely knows some stuff, that's for sure," Rich says, and huffs. "Those questions they give you, man, they don't fuck around. They're gonna know me better than I do, by the time they're done grilling me, fuck." He glares absently at a stray kitten, which displays no concern or awareness of this. "Nobody wanted to hear jack about shit the whole time I was on the Sympatico, and now everybody and their grandma wants to hear every gruesome detail. Even Liam was asking about...stuff."

"Yeah," Basil sighs, and leans forward on the edge of the couch, skinny shoulders coming up around his ears. "Liam's…big on fixing things and helping people, but like, he doesn't ask if you wanna be helped, or if you think what he wants to do will help, he just...decides he's gonna help, and does whatever the fuck he thinks is best."

"I noticed," says Rich dryly. "He got all worked up about it, wanted to run off and—for one thing that shit's all past, and for another it's not like he could fix it!"

"Yeah," says Basil. He's quiet for a minute, then he shakes his head, glances up at Rich and tucks a stray curl behind one ear. "...Did, uh, did that go okay? With him?"

"Yeah, I just held him down until he gave up," Rich says.

"Oh," Basil says, and—blushes hard, oh.

Rich reviews his last sentence hastily and clarifies, "I mean I held him down afterwards, when, uh, when he—wanted to go and kick some ass that didn't need kicking, I mean, beforehand, it—uh." Wonderful, now he's blushing too. Looking determinedly at the nearest kitten wrestling match instead of anywhere near Basil's face, Rich blurts out, "It went great with him, mostly, like, it was great. He's great."

"Oh," Basil says, sounding more…resigned, or something. "Yeah, that's…that sounds like…him. Everyone says he's great."

Rich dares to glance over at Basil, raise an eyebrow at him. "You sound like you've had experience with helpful Hurricane Liam. Not such a fan yourself?"

"No, I mean yeah but I mean…" Basil waves his hand awkwardly. "I mean I like him fine, okay! He's a really, a nice guy, he really does care—he is great, but. He started his whole resident thing like a year after you…" he makes a vague gesture which is probably meant to stand in for went away to the awful murder-ship. "And he started showing up on the Reliant during storm docking and immediately like…decided to introduce me to probably a dozen guys from as many boats because he thought I was some sad lonely baby who needed to bloom like a beautiful flower." He spreads his hands rapturously, pitching his voice in a passable imitation of Liam's passionate tone. "I was fine on my own, y'know, but he was just, he was committed, I was a pet project now! I was gonna fucking bloom, so help him."

Rich can't help snickering. "Sounds like him, yeah." The guy is so lively, throwing himself wholeheartedly into everything he does or says, and Rich can imagine Liam towing Basil around by the wrist, tiny and gorgeous and electric, grinning that pretty, dimpled smile…

Rich realizes he's gotten way off track, and hastily tries to remember what he was about to say. "So, have you bloomed yet, kid?"

"I'm fucking trying, man," Basil says, half-laughing. "I mean, I've got…I've got friends and all, I get along alright with my own age-group, finally, but like…I showed up here as a child genius, and it feels like I'm just gonna be everyone's little brother, forever! I mean, Ben and Raoul it kinda makes sense? They're old. But Liam and Anton are only like, what, six or eight years older than me? And Nate's only three years older, we're practically the same age! A couple years shouldn't matter when we're all, like, twenty-something! But they all still do the, the, 'hey, kiddo, don't forget your bedtime!' thing. Eat your blocks, brush your teeth, take a shower!"

He shrugs and rakes his bare hand through his curls, obviously irritated and just as obviously trying to get over it. "It was nice having this last bunch of interns around, they were finally all younger than me and thought I was grown up and cool, but everyone else…It's just, it sucks, it's hard to be real friends with people who still look at you and see, like, a scrawny little thirteen-year-old. Forever."

Rich stares at a kitten chewing on its hind paw as he thinks that through. "Guess I should quit with the 'baby boy' shit, huh?" he finally says, reluctantly, looking back at Basil. He never meant it to be derogatory, he assumed Basil could tell Rich was using it fondly. Like one of the silly endearments Basil and Mitch sling at each other, not that Rich ever planned to admit that. If being treated like a kid is such a big thing to him, though, maybe it doesn't matter what Rich meant by it.

But Basil's eyes skitter away from Rich's and he gives a deeply noncommittal shrug.

"I mean," he says awkwardly. "You could stop calling me 'kid' all the time, that'd be cool."

"Oh yeah?" Rich looks at the shy, clumsy way Basil's avoiding his eyes and smiles slowly. "You like 'baby boy' just fine, then?"

"I didn't say that!" Basil huffs, but he's still not meeting Rich's eyes, and Rich is so relieved. Basil did notice, he likes it. "I'm just saying, like, I can't expect you to stop being a big jerk completely, that'd just be unreasonable!"

"And us adults are always reasonable, as I'm sure you've discovered, in your advanced age," Rich says solemnly.

Basil snickers. "Oh, totally."

There's a warm, taut moment where they just...look at each other.

Rich takes a breath that shakes a little, then admits, "I kind of thought we were getting along pretty well, before…uh, before we had that whole, that misunderstanding." He hopes his nerves aren't too visible as he shrugs. "You think we could try again?"

"Yeah?" says Basil, and gives Rich a soft, bright little smile. "You want to?"

"Yeah," Rich says, and feels his cheeks heating, despite himself. He puts on a slightly sing-song, Family Fleet tone, a little too embarrassed to be completely sincere. "Yes, Technician Wright, I would like to be your friend, please. And thank you."

"Oh, please and thank you!" Basil repeats, and laughs delightedly. "So polite, Technician Merrill! Okay, okay, man, yeah, though. I would like to be your friend, too."

"Okay, cool," Rich says, deeply relieved. He gets up, feeling a little silly but mostly pleased, as he steps across to the sofa and holds out a hand.

"Yeah, cool," says Basil, and takes it, giving it a firm, business-like shake. A second later he meets Rich's eyes, and then both of them dissolve into undignified snorting fits of laughter. Every time one of them tries to get it together, they lose it again as soon as they look over. Rich drops onto the other end of the couch from Basil, knees weak and heart light, and Basil just shakes his head and presses his hand over his mouth as they slowly wind down.

Finally, Basil sits back and pulls up his work again and Rich picks up one of the furry shapes zooming squeakily across the deck. He starts petting, focusing on the feeling of the fur under his palm instead of the bright, giddy warmth still dancing in his chest.

"...Your sunburn looks better," Basil says, after a long, comfortable silence.

"Yeah, I heal fast," Rich says, and reaches up to the back of his neck. The skin doesn't even feel sore anymore, and it doesn't peel when he rubs it. "I guess if they were gonna make people as pale as me, the least they could do is make it so my sunburns only last for a couple of days. And look, I'm so tan now!"

"Pff, yeah," Basil says, grinning. "You'll be the same color as me soon, if you keep working at it." He leans over, reaches up and ruffles his bare hand briefly over Rich's hair. "You're getting these really bright red highlights in your hair, those are cool, too."

Rich blinks at him and reaches up to his own hair like a dumbass, like he'd be able to feel the highlights or something. "Yeah? Cool."

"Yeah," echoes Basil, and pulls his hand away sharply before their fingers can touch, drops his eyes from Rich's face and fixes them firmly on his screen instead. Under the freckles, his cheeks are turning dark rose again. "Cool!"

Well, huh. That's...something. Rich eyes him a minute longer, starting to smile, and then goes back to patting the kitten. Maybe the chances of reeling Basil back in sometime in the future aren't as thin as he thought. And in the meantime, Rich will try to make himself useful. Their crewmates treating Basil like a dumb kid definitely isn't as bad as anything Trimmer had to deal with, but if Basil doesn't like it, Rich has something he can help with again, finally.

They sit in companionable silence for a solid half an hour, Basil working and Rich just sleepily fooling around with the kittens, before Rich realizes that the ache in his stomach has changed. Before, it was hunger and misery, a knotted-up mess of leftover nightmare-fear and the nausea that came with it. Now, it's just hunger, simple and straightforward, and Rich can get food now.

"Hey," he says, and reaches out, tapping at Basil's elbow. Basil blinks and surfaces from whatever he was working on with a bleary little "mwuh?" noise, staring dazedly around before focusing on Rich.

"Hey," Rich repeats, "you wanna go get some food? Breakfast, maybe? Lunch? Whatever meal this is for you?"

Basil does. They leave the kittens for the moment and wander down toward the mess, and when Rich presses his hand to the pad, the dispenser gives him four whole bricks without so much as a beep of complaint. Rich stares at them, fighting the urge to shove them down his throat as fast as humanly possible, to get them all in before somebody goes 'Hey, that's too much, put those back!'

Basil doesn't register the way Rich is staring at his food blocks with wide-eyed disbelief; he steps forward past him, gives his own handprint and collects a single block...and a bag of potato chips.

Rich blinks, distracted from his own meal. He's seen guys with snacks and things, optional items, but somehow he completely managed to forget that snacks are a thing you can order from the dispenser with your work credits. If you're on a boat where the food system isn't subject to the whims of a complete bastard of a captain. And you have work credits.

And Rich has work credits now. He steps back up to the dispenser when Basil's done, and brings up a menu screen that he hasn't seen since he was seventeen. There's a counter that shows how much credit Rich has stored up, which is, after less than two weeks of actually getting credited for his shifts, a shockingly substantial amount. Rich completely forgot that overtime work is supposed to get overtime pay: double credit for the seventh through ninth hours worked, and triple for anything after that. And he's been dutifully pulling plenty of overtime, trying to make sure no one would think he's going to kick back and freeload as soon as the pressure's off.

Feeling weirdly, self-consciously delighted, Rich orders an extra-large salad and a carton of strawberries and a bag of veggie chips and half a dozen oranges, and does his best not to bounce on his heels like an excited toddler when it all dispenses in a messy, delicious-looking heap.

"Well, someone's hungry tonight," Basil says wryly, and hands him a tray. Rich grins at him, pleased with the whole world right now and this meal in particular, and Basil blinks in surprise, then tentatively smiles back.

"I earned this," Rich says proudly, and heaps all his food up on the tray. Feeling triumphant and magnanimous and gleeful and basically just good, he picks one of the oranges up and hands it to Basil. "Here. Can't have you getting scurvy, Technician Wright!"

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Basil blushes. "I'm not gonna get scurvy," he says, but he also grabs the orange out of Rich's hand and sets it on his own tray. They walk back to the kitten room together, and Basil picks his way through his snack while Rich piles down the salad and all his food blocks and then enjoys every last piece of fruit.

He's startled, when he finally finishes inhaling everything he's gotten, to find himself not only full but stuffed. It's almost uncomfortable, but the feeling of fullness is novel enough that he's absolutely not complaining. He settles back in the comfortable, worn-in sofa, feeling heavy and warm and amazed all over again that this is his life now. Basil shifts around just enough that his crossed knees are brushing one of Rich's thighs. Rich reaches out, sleepy and reflexive, and pulls Basil into his lap, all muddled up and thinking of Trimmer. Basil gives a sharp, startled giggle before relaxing back against his chest, adjusting his screens to keep working around Rich's arms. Rich realizes his mistake, but his stomach's so full and his head's so heavy, and Basil's so warm and he smells so good: Rich drifts off before he can manage to apologize for the confusion.

He wakes up slow and cozy, and finds that Basil's pulled free at some point, and Rich has the whole couch to himself. But as he's pulling himself to his feet and trying to think of how to apologize to Basil, the guy wanders back into the room with two big cups of tea and an orange.

"Hey!" he says, before Rich can say anything. "Here, Technician Merrill, you can't go getting scurvy!" and he tosses the orange at Rich's head.

Rich laughs and catches it, a little slow and off balance, and sits back down.

"Sorry," he says. "You okay?"

"It's dawn, so I'm wiped," Basil says, and hands him one of the cups of tea. "Time for you early birds to get to work and us vampires to haul ass for our coffins."

"Yeah, I, yeah," Rich says, and yawns, and sips his tea. Basil doesn't seem at all upset that Rich got grabby once his brain went offline, but then, he and Mitch are pretty handsy. Maybe it's no big deal. He dares to reach out and pat Basil's hip a few times. "...Thanks. This is, thanks."

"You're welcome," Basil says, looking amused, and pats Rich's head exactly as many times. "I should have gotten you something with caffeine."

"Mmn, caffeine," Rich moans, and lurches sleepily upright. "Yeah, I'm gonna, yes. Caffeine."

"Good morning!" Basil calls after him, laughing.

"G'night," Rich calls back, and makes for the mess. To his absolute delight, he gets just as big a meal for breakfast as he did for his midnight snack. Giddy with triumph and maybe a larger cup of strong black tea than he should have chugged, he goes back and orders himself an entire sack of oranges, and just carries them around with him for the rest of the day. He gives an orange to Nate when he sees him walking in to breakfast, and one to Anton in passing, then lets himself onto the sundeck and shares his oranges with whoever wanders by and wants one. He's got a friend, now, and as much fresh fruit as he can handle. Things could be going a lot worse.

-

The rest of the day and the next few are shockingly weird, because Rich doesn't remember the last time he ever felt this good. He guesses it's because he's finally getting enough to eat, and it's obscurely horrifying to realize how much of the dull, heavy, dragging misery he's been used to carrying around inside his bones day in and day out was just…hunger. Fully fed, he feels alive in a way that's almost scary: awake and alert and nearly giddy with excess energy, ready for anything. So, on the one hand it's all weird, but on the other he really likes it, thanks.

He cleans his room top to bottom a few times, signs up for a few voluntary shifts to clean the bathrooms and public spaces, stops spending all his free time just lying in the sun and starts pacing the top deck inside and out, walking while he thinks through problems. He finds himself constantly amazed at himself, at the growing sense of his own strength as every meal leaves him feeling better and more alive, instead of being just a brief reprieve from the endless desperation of trying to cope with his stupid body's stupid limitations. Now he doesn't have limitations: now he starts to get why a bunch of scientists would design someone like him on purpose. Six or eight solid, full-to-bursting meals in, he feels like he could pick up the Washington itself and throw it clear over Chicago.

Nate catches him wearing a groove around the sundeck and invites him hoverboarding again, and Rich jumps at the chance, even when it becomes obvious Nate's just being nice. His crewmate fixes his gear on with desultory carelessness while Rich races through his own checks. Rich is too eager to get out on the water, to get moving, to even be all that flustered that Katrina's kept his custom-fit gear put by for him. It's still just as awkward-looking as it was last time, chunky electrical tape and mismatched grips, and it takes two sets of her regular gear out of commission, but she kept it ready for him anyway.

But when he gets his board under his feet and his clips engaged and launches off, nothing matters in the world but motion and balance, water and momentum and gravity, the beautiful interaction of mass and energy and kinetic potential. He's so much bigger than he should be for this, but he can make it work if he tries hard enough, goes fast enough, picks himself up out of the water often enough.

He throws himself recklessly into the exercise, glorying in the steadily rising ache of it, because he knows for the first time in years he's not going to have to pay for it later. He can exhaust himself today and wake up stronger tomorrow, not starved to begging just to get the hunger to ease off.

Nate does a slow, easy couple laps around the obstacle courses, then drifts back to the pontoon and helps himself to his aunt's deck chair and a watermelon from her cooler. Rich stops trying to get an infinity hairpin right—he's probably never going to, he just builds up way too much momentum to whip around the poles like Katrina would, and he's getting tired of faceplanting in the lake halfway through—and goes to go try and mooch some fruit from over the railing. Nate amuses himself by throwing slices overboard for Rich to try to catch out of the air, and Rich catches most of them and lets the lake have the few he doesn't, eating his fairly won fruit with deep enjoyment.

"Dude, you gonna get those?" Katrina asks, leaning on the railing.

"Get what?" Rich says, confused. She points at the slices of melon in the water. "Oh! Yeah, no."

"'What the lake catches, she keeps,'" Nate quotes the old saying, and Rich nods emphatically.

"Yeah, you can't take food back from the lake," Rich says. "Tools and toys, sure, but never food."

"You guys fish in the lake," Katrina says, sounding amused. "And grow rice right out on the water."

"That's, uh," Rich says, and stalls out. How is he supposed to explain something everyone he's ever met already knows? He looks hopefully to Nate, who's got to be used to talking to foreigners by now.

"If I give you a fish, I give you a fish," Nate says. "If you stick your hand in my mouth while I'm eating a fish, you're gonna get bit."

"Huh," Katrina says, thoughtfully. "That checks out."

"Okay, cool," Rich says, deeply relieved. "Uh, but I can probably move the slices away from your course, if you don't want them floating around?"

"Yeah, thanks," Katrina says, and Rich carefully scoops up the dropped slices, takes them far enough away from the course that they won't drift back, and drops them all back into the water with a sheepish, mumbled apology. It's not like Lake Michigan is really alive, really listening to them, really going to eat some watermelon. But it's also not like Rich is stupid enough to ever deliberately disrespect an entire fucking lake.

Nate puts his feet up when he runs out of his own slices of watermelon, and settles in for a nap—and Katrina Chau hits the water. Rich follows along at what's hopefully a respectful distance as she does a few circuits of her obstacle course, warming up, and then Rich has to park himself by a pole and hang there watching in awe as she goes faster, and harder, and flashier, like gravity is a concept no one ever told her about but velocity is something she likes just fine, her prosthetic leg no apparent hindrance at all to her perfect coordination. Rich feels like he's thirteen again, watching her dance through the course like physics in fast-forward and aching all through his chest with how much he wants to be her and how much he knows he'll never manage to be anything close. He can't even do a hairpin.

"Okay," she says, abruptly, pulling up with a fantail of spray in front of where Rich is parked, and Rich almost goes over backwards into the lake from shock.

"Uh! Okay?" he manages.

"So, you like hoverboarding," she says.

"Um, yes," Rich says, getting worried now. "I know I'm not any good at it, but—"

"No, you're doing fine, dude," she says. "It's just that like, you're an interesting case. I've never seen a soldier mod in this sport before. Skating, sure, surfing, definitely, snowboarding, you can't throw an elbow without hitting a dozen lykoi hotshots, but not hoverboarding."

"Um, there aren't any," Rich says. "I don't think, anyway. The biggest professional hoverboarder on record was baseline, this guy Andrei Kovaks, and he was a former award-winning gymnast, and he still never actually placed above fifth in any actual competitions—he mostly just sold like, fitness vids—"

Katrina's got one eyebrow raised at him. Rich's face heats.

"—I looked it up when I was fourteen," he mumbles, feeling stupid as hell. "I was growing too fast cuz my mod was kicking in and I wanted to see if I should give up or not."

"You shouldn't have given up," Katrina says.

"Well, I, um. Here I am, again," Rich says, and shrugs. Katrina nods approvingly at this.

"Here you fuckin' are," she says, and reaches out to clap her hand against his hip. "Follow me, soldier boy, I wanna see some shit up close."

"Oh! Uh, I—yeah, wow, yes ma'am," Rich stammers, and follows her, heart racing.

She leads him off through the course, slowly and with no tricks at first, then takes the second time faster, with basic tricks: jumps, reversals, a couple flips. Rich does his best to follow along, demonstrating—he hopes—his core competency at the stuff any amateur should be able to keep his feet on. Katrina does the whole third lap backwards—though she gestures that he shouldn't be trying to do that—studying him intently.

It should make Rich nervous, and it does, but more than that it's thrilling, and he thinks he manages to rise to the occasion. He keeps his balance, executes nice crisp turns, times his jumps right, lands the flips without extra spray or, worse, faceplanting into the lake.

"Okay," Katrina says, pulling to a halt after the third lap. "So, I got a theory."

"Yeah? Uh, shoot," Rich says.

Katrina pulls up a few holoscreens, video clips of Rich's performance: her screens look different from Fleet standard, with a much higher saturation and opacity to the colors but a different depth of field and a subtle weirdness to the frame rate. She's got ceramic data-rings on her fingers, Rich notices, like a kid, instead of an adult's communication implants. He wants to ask if landside people don't get implants at all, even when they grow up, but she's already talking.

"Hoverboarding is like, the top micro-friction sport out there, followed by rail-chess and frizzle," she's saying. "And with a near-frictionless field of play, control over your own momentum is like the most crucial thing, right? It's not incidental, it can't be, it's gotta be the main focus. But what that control is supposed to look like, what it's supposed to be used for, for hoverboarders, is—fuck, like, for hoverboarders. I think like, there aren't any big guys like you in this sport because there's only small guys in the sport and so they all say that the sport like, necessitates being small. But this isn't something like horseracing where your mass like objectively slows you down: all it's doing is changing the scale of your momentum. Right?"

Rich nods uncertainly.

"So. Like. Here's what I figure: that's bullshit. There's nothing wrong with your reflexes and coordination, big guy, it's just that you can't do the regular moves because all the regular moves have been established by regular boarders, and you'd have to break physics to do the regular moves because you're not regular. You're like two or three times the mass of what's regular, so your momentum's scaling differently in distance and time. Which means that like theoretically you should be able to do a different set of moves, ones that boarders like me couldn't ever hope to pull off, because like, we don't mass enough. You should be able to pull off moves no one's thought to invent yet."

Rich stares at her in shock. "...What moves would those be?" he asks, and his voice cracks with hope.

She smiles brightly. "No idea! You wanna find out?"

Rich nods. "Yeah," he says hoarsely. "Oh, wow, yeah."

"Right on," she says, with immense satisfaction. "Okay, so I wanna see you do that infinity hairpin you were crashing out at earlier, but this time I want you to do it with a run-up distance of ten meters instead of two, and hit the poles at least twice as hard, and don't worry about how long you coast on the dismount."

"Oh! Okay." Rich looks at the nearest set of poles. "That would do it," he says, already calculating the timing. He's got his heart in his throat all through the run-up, but then the thrill of it takes over and he grabs one pole as he shoots past, whips around the full turn of it to grab the other, executes the perfect figure-eight shape at an absolutely ludicrous speed, and sails through the dismount with an enormous fantail of spray trailing behind him—but he doesn't try to pull himself short to stick the landing inside normal distance parameters and so he doesn't faceplant. He keeps his board under him the whole time, centered and burning with adrenaline and thrilled as he coasts to an easy stop.

"Yes!" Katrina's yelling at him from across the water, pointing emphatically. "Yes! Fuck yes! I told you!"

Rich guides his board back to her, feeling like he's glowing all over with the sheer force of exhilaration, and is deeply surprised when he gets in arm's reach to have her immediately jump up to ruffle his hair, her prehensile toes grabbing his knees—he catches her waist automatically, more than used to Trimmer climbing up him like that, then freezes in awestruck confusion.

"That would have snapped my ankles," she says, grinning ferociously, and drops back down to her own board. "That would have dislocated my fuckin' arm, you were pulling an insane amount of G's around that last turn. You can't just do stuff we can't, big guy, you can do stuff that would kill us. Oh, this is gonna be so cool! Do it again!"

Rich does it again—then a third time, then follows her off to the next trick and the next and the one after that, as Katrina fucking Chau methodically changes the parameters for every basic trick in the beginning boarder's manual, and jumps up and down with triumphant excitement when they finally work for him.

He spends six hours out on the water with his board and Katrina and the sheer joyous excitement of getting something back he never even dared to hope he'd have again, and getting it back even better. Nate goes home without him after a few hours, waving an amused goodbye that Rich is almost too distracted to return, and later, when it's getting dark and Rich is so magnificently tired he's shaking from it, Katrina flies him back to the Reliant on her own sexy neon-blue personal hoverbike.

"Come back soon," she tells him, as he scrambles off her bike onto the Reliant's landing deck. "I'm gonna work out some more shit for you to try, it's gonna be great, you're gonna do awesome."

"Okay," Rich says, his knees wobbling at the feel of solid decking, and leans heavily on the rail. "Thanks, thank you—thanks for everything—"

"Don't," Katrina says, like she's said every time Rich tries to articulate how much this means to him. "Don't say 'thanks,' just say 'let's do it!'"

"Let's do it," Rich repeats, and she ruffles his hair again, lifts her bike up, and sails off into the night. Rich wobbles off to the mess, aching everywhere and probably radiating delight. He eats until his stomach hurts almost as much as his thighs and shoulders, grins at everyone who so much as says 'Hi' to him, showers without freaking out about anyone else in the washroom even a little, and goes to bed ridiculously happy.

-

When he went to bed, Rich somehow managed to forget completely about the meeting with his caseworker the next day. He's distracted enough by how sore he is, how gloriously worked-out, he doesn't even think about it before taking his first shift on autopilot, then shoveling an equally glorious lunch in.

He's settling back in after lunch, about to initialize his second shift and feeling unusually excellent about it, when his comm chimes politely at him.

Rich glances over at it, startled, and then sees the professional headshot and the subtitle S. Travis, SRT and jumps so hard he shorts out his screens. "Shit," he hisses, and scrambles up off his bed and into his desk chair, raking his hands wildly through his hair in an attempt to make it less rumpled. He manages to make himself look at least a little less like he's been lying around working from his bunk for six hours, and he's about to try to put on a nicer shirt when he realizes the call's been ringing long enough he's likely to accidentally drop it if he doesn't pick up soon.

He also remembers too late as he's hitting the accept button that he probably shouldn't look startled and guilty. It's hard when he's panicking to remember how to smile nicely, like a well-adjusted citizen, and Ms Travis looks about as startled as Rich feels by whatever expression he manages.

"Ma'am!" says Rich. "Sorry! I got—I was working, I forgot, sorry!"

"Oh!" says Ms Travis. "That's—yes, of course—do you need a minute to, um…" she nods, apparently at his entire everything. "Compose yourself?"

"Yes! Yes, just a minute, I'll, thanks, be right there," Rich babbles, and sets the comm screen to hold still instead of following him. Then he ducks past it and scrambles into a nicer shirt faster than he has done since he got out of cadet training, rubs his hands over his face to try to freshen up and snatches up his battered comb to bully his hair into better order. At the last minute he remembers to shove his box of blocks along with his vodka back into his locker, and shoves the lid mostly shut on both of them.

He reclaims the comm screen and sits down in his desk chair, hoping to feel slightly more professional and in control instead of nervous and off balance. It…sort of works.

"Sorry about that, thank you. Um, good...afternoon!" he tries.

"Good afternoon," says Ms Travis, looking amused now instead of startled. "I didn't mean to catch you off guard—I didn't know you were working third shift today instead of second." And then, before Rich can correct the assumption that he's not pulling his weight, that he's only taking one shift, "It sounds like you had an...eventful time a few days ago, I'm not surprised if you'd rather get the extra rest in the morning and recover."

It takes Rich a minute to figure out what she's talking about, so many things have happened since the run-in with Burton, but then he stiffens. "Uh. Yeah." He totally forgot she'd get the Security report, but he was involved, of course she would. "I, I tried to de-escalate everything, ma'am, I swear, I didn't like, wade in punching or anything, he just—Burton's a fucking dick, he wasn't gonna leave off and he was saying the worst shit to Basil, I couldn't just—"

"Mr Merrill—Rich." Ms Travis raises her voice, talking over him. "You're not in trouble. The Security report—and all of the eye-witnesses—were all very clear that you did everything you could to avoid violence. That's impressive, you did a good job!" She sits back, now that Rich has been effectively silenced by the wave of relief and a tentative thread of startled pleasure. "...I received some notes from a community source that say you've been having some issues getting enough food? Is that correct?"

"Oh, yeah," Rich says, blinking at her, and then narrows his eyes. A community source, huh? He shouldn't feel so betrayed, but—"For fuck's sake," he growls, "Liam already fixed that, he didn't need to bug you about it!"

"It—" starts Ms Travis, with the cagey tone of somebody about to attempt a professional lie—then she visibly gives up on that and sighs. "Yes, well," she says instead. "Engineer Beaker likes to make sure we know about issues in our system. And in his defense, he has caught several…social errors, that no-one else had brought to our attention."

She hesitates, and then leans forward on her desk and gives Rich a thoughtful, concerned look. "...Like the threats and—implications, the man who attacked you was making," she says slowly. "We're very concerned about those. About your health, and safety."

Rich isn't sure what she means, but god he doesn't want to talk about Burton anymore. "Burton's just a jerk," he says, "he never had the guts to do more with his knife than wave it around until people backed off, it's not like he ever even tried to threaten me into doing stuff. So I mean, he wouldn't have killed me or anything."

That doesn't help. Ms Travis's brows lower dramatically and she leans forward even more. "And who did try to get you to 'do stuff'?" she says, clear and tense. "Because I'm assuming that you mean that some of the men we redistributed across the Fleet are willing to sexually coerce people with the threat of violence, and we need to know that, Rich."

"It was just—trading, for things," Rich starts, and cuts off short with the look she gives him. "Um. I guess there were...a few guys? Like, Bates, Giannini, uh, Anderson…They could get me food and stuff, and I could trade—" he doesn't want to talk about what he could trade, doesn't want to talk about getting on his knees, hard hands in his hair, "—so knives didn't have to come into it most of the time. Uh, Galveston, he was a piece of work, he was really dangerous and if he wanted something he'd just tell you so and let his knife do the convincing for him, but—I think Galveston's dead? I think I saw him go down…Yates, I forgot Yates, he was pretty mean…but I mean, don't we all get clean slates, now? I thought nothing we did on the Sympatico to survive counted against us anymore..."

She's writing down the names. Rich trails off, and Ms Travis looks up at him, lips thinned like she's as worried as he is, if for somewhat different reasons.

"It hasn't been quite that simple, Rich," she says. "We do want to give everyone a new start, a clean slate, but sometimes…well. We've had a worrying number of reports since the redistribution. People making inappropriate advances, sexual misconduct—several people, on several different ships, including this man who tried to attack you yesterday. Some of the names I've been given match the list you just gave me." She reaches up, massages the bridge of her nose. "...If you're willing to talk about it," she says, "I need to know what experience you had with…inappropriate behavior."

"No!" Rich yelps. "I don't do that, I never—I swear I'm not like that, I wouldn't!"

Ms Travis leans back a little in her chair like his outburst startled her, eyes going wide. "What?" she says, and then, "—No, that's absolutely not what I meant, I know! You've given us every reason to believe you, Rich, no one is accusing you of abuse!"

"Oh," he says dumbly, and takes a couple deep breaths to rein in the panic. "Cool, okay."

Ms Travis does that thoughtful glance over him again, like she's trying to guess how he'll react to something. Automatically, Rich tenses. "...If you felt comfortable," she says slowly, "it could be really helpful if you could share with me your history of sexual abuse. Of the abuse other men gave you, I mean."

Rich flinches, hard. Sexual abuse, like he's some—some victim, some helpless, pathetic little boy getting slapped around and bent over, someone to coddle and cry over. Damn it, what did Liam tell her, what did Liam think of him? Rich is going to have some things to say the next time he talks to the guy. He drags a hand through his hair, trying to get words together to explain.

"It's not—I wasn't. I'm fine. It—what I did, with—whoever—that was just, how it was on that ship. It wasn't—I mean maybe in some larger context yeah it was, it was abuse, maybe, it wasn't great! But it just, when I was there, it was what made sense, it was how things were. You need something from someone, you have to have something they want, that's—y'know, that's basic economics! Okay? My pay all got docked with the demerits I racked up, so I didn't have much to offer. I didn't even have the time to take anyone's shift for them."

He pauses and eyes her uncertainly—he knows that informal shift trading is technically illegal, you gotta get all your work arrangements cleared by a supervisor even though no one on the Sympatico ever gave much of a damn about that kind of authority. But her expression is intent, doesn't give much away, and he can't tell if she's offended by the impromptu economics lecture or still pitying him for being such a screw-up he couldn't even take care of himself or what.

Looking away again, he shrugs unhappily and goes on. "It wasn't harassment, assault, whatever, not for me, anyway, not once I wised up and stopped taking it. I mean, I'm big, right, so it wasn't like it was for some people, like Trimmer. He's, like...small and good-looking, and they wouldn't lay off the guy, no matter how hard he made it for them, no matter how loud he told them to fuck off. Hell, I think some of them wanted him more the nastier he got, and he was such a cute little guy people thought it'd be cool to just—but they didn't do that to me, fuck, no one actually thought they could—y'know, force me into anything I didn't agree to, once I grew up some, it was different."

"But you still didn't feel you had any other options," she says, and her tone is even and calm, thoughtful, but there's a tight line at the corner of her mouth. "That's the important part. It's completely unacceptable for you to feel like you have to...do things like that, just to get your basic needs met."

Rich hunches his shoulders, feeling lost and resentful. Maybe she doesn't mean he was acting unacceptably, just having unacceptable attitudes, or whatever, but it sure doesn't feel great to hear. He did the best he could, or he thought he did, anyway.

"Rich," she says, softer and warmer. Sympathetic. "Can you tell me more about the ways people treated you differently than Trimmer?"

Rich's head comes up to give her a disbelieving look, because: how isn't that completely obvious? He shrugs again, jerkily, and waves a hand. "I mean, look at me, I'm fucking huge," he mutters, looking away again. "Guys look at me and get scared, or pissed off about being scared, or assume I wanna fight just because I'm big—like I was showing off or something. So, like. Trimmer was a real pretty little guy, but he'd run his mouth off, he was mean, and I'd be too damn big all over the place—it pissed them off that I existed—" his voice is rising. Rich swallows and forces it back down again, tries to make his voice even. "The older guys on the Sympatico were big on—being in charge, making it clear who was in charge, and that it sure as fuck wasn't me."

It was a fucking rush for them to make me take their dicks, he almost says, any way they could. He bites the words back, swallowing it down like the taste of bile at the back of his throat. Nobody's tried to fuck him in a while, no one's succeeded at it in longer, and by the time he left the Sympatico Rich was only blowing people when they cut him a good enough deal for it. It wasn't a problem, and it's not a problem, and she doesn't need to hear about it.

"I wasn't stirring up trouble on my own," he says instead. "I don't throw my weight around, I swear, except when I gotta protect Trimmer, because the little bastard doesn't go down easy but he makes—he made, a lot of enemies, just by telling them 'no' and sticking to it. He'd give me his lunch when he could spare it. He's a fourhands tweak, y'know, they're...efficient, he could do better on short rations than I can."

He feels like he's been babbling like an idiot this whole time, but apparently something in there was finally what Ms Travis was waiting for because she's nodding thoughtfully, like she's thinking about all of that and making conclusions and holy shit Rich wants to be done here. Please let them be done.

No such luck, apparently, because a minute later Ms Travis says, "The Fleet takes sexual assault very seriously—"

"Good, cool," says Rich, too fast and loud and miserable. "That's good for people it fucking happens to!"

There's another long, silent moment, and then Ms Travis breathes out and shakes her head. "We don't have to discuss this now," she says. "I can see you're uncomfortable."

Rich crosses his arms, resists the urge to mutter something like yeah no shit. Focuses on the bottom of the screen and sees her hands fold and spread and fold again.

"There will be a few questions in your assignments this week to help you talk about what did—or didn't—happen," she says. "I think it might be easier for you to express how you're feeling if you're not face to face with anyone."

Rich sincerely doubts that, but he doesn't say anything. It feels like they're winding down—please, let them be winding down now. God, he needs a drink.

"Do you have any further questions or concerns?"

"No," says Rich. "Ma'am," he adds, a little late, because he knows how to put his head down until things are over, and mouthing off at his caseworker doesn't end well in any universe. "No, ma'am."

"Alright," says his caseworker, and sits back, closing her notes. "If you think of anything you want to talk about during the week, you can always call me, Rich. I'm here to help you succeed."

"Yeah okay, cool, thanks, ma'am," Rich mumbles. "Bye."

The call closes. Rich sits there for a long minute, staring at where the screen was, and then growls and pushes himself up to get a drink.

Given the way it started, Rich shouldn't be surprised that it's not a great day. Basil's already asleep by the time Rich is out of his berth and ready for company, Nate and Anton are off on some assignment somewhere else, and there's a whole rowdy gang of mechanics he doesn't know hanging out in the kitten room and playing with the kittens. They've got a dead rat on a string, and even if it's important job-training and the kittens are ecstatic, it still grosses Rich right the hell out. He books it out of there fast when the dead rat comes horrifically close to making contact with one of his boots, all chewed up and floppy and dead, and Rich has to fight down the urge to go sterilize his entire outfit and maybe all of his skin too.

Even the sundeck isn't great, when Rich wanders up there: it's a weird windy day, with enough cloud cover that the deck keeps going from blinding sun to chilly shade every couple minutes, so he keeps taking his overshirt off and putting it back on, getting more irritated each time. After half an hour of trying to tough it out, Rich throws his overshirt back on and sulks irritably back down to his berth to try to get some more work done on his own.

Even in his own berth, on his own bed, where he should be alone and peaceful, there's still a hot, prickling unease strung through him, drawing his shoulders in and his spine tight. Rich rolls over on his stomach, on his back, gets up and goes to his chair, but no matter how long he ignores it, the feeling won't be budged.

The last couple of days have been so good, Rich fiercely resents the change. He keeps thinking of Burton, of knives and clubs and dirty passageways in the dark, cruel hands in his hair. And, worse, he keeps thinking about Ms Travis' invasive concern and how upset Liam and Basil got and the tense, worried way Nate looked after him when he freaked out in the bathroom and the way Mitch knows Rich is scared of him sometimes and how Rich supposed to be better than this now. He's trying so hard to be better now.

It burns that he can't just be better already. He hates it.

The one good thing about the day is that he's still getting as much as he wants to eat, which on an awful day like this one is more than ever. He packs down as much as he can stand, carries around one carton of strawberries after the next like a kid with a comfort toy, commits himself to a Family Fleet marathon like the best possible citizen ever, then finally gives up halfway through and cheats his alcohol budget just enough to have a couple extra shots so he'll finally be able to stop thinking. Only it doesn't work until he has so much extra he's taken a solid month out of his plan and he still feels like a stupid, fucked-up mess, and he's gotten strawberry juice on his pillow. He cleans his whole room top to bottom, twice, because he's drunk and doesn't get it right the first time, and finally falls into bed aching and dizzy and grateful beyond words that the day is over.

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