Ben catches Rich unexpectedly after dinner, arms crossed and already frowning. "Hey," he says, by way of preamble. "You've been here two weeks and you haven't taken a single day off yet."

Rich swallows. From the way Ben says it, Rich can't tell if he's pleased Rich isn't taking liberties or annoyed for some reason. The frown is no help; Ben's usually frowning, looking either bored or annoyed.

"I try not to take days off unless I really need them," Rich says, and barely cuts off a 'sir'. Maybe this interrogation feels like it warrants a 'sir', but he can imagine the incredulous look Ben would give him.

Ben's eyebrows arch high. "Uh-huh. I notice you've taken a few hours off here and there, so it's not that you don't know what to do with free time."

Rich has no idea what to say, so he keeps his mouth shut, palms pressed to his thighs. Is that an accusation? Was he not supposed to use his leisure allotment? Maybe he should've waited longer, two weeks isn't long enough to have proven himself yet—

Ben sighs at whatever look is on his face. "You have a legal fucking right to a rest day, kid. People need at least a day off every week so they can recharge, and on the Reliant we expect you to use it. I appreciate your work ethic, but this isn't a hell boat like your last one." He points a stern finger at Rich, who's reeling internally. "Before the end of this week, take your rest day. Got it?"

"Got it," Rich says automatically.

"And stop working extra shifts every goddamn day," Ben adds. "You're gonna burn out."

Rich stares at him. "But…Basil said you guys are overworked. I thought, I mean, I gotta help with that, so—"

"Cool, but this isn't some Chicago sweatshop, kid," Ben says. "We're overworked, yeah, as in sometimes I've gotta hand out extra half-shifts to get big projects finished on time, and some of the boys whine about it like you wouldn't believe. But it's not like the day-to-day crap needs this kind of suicidal dedication. I think you've signed on for eight full double shifts in the past two weeks, and half-shifts most of the rest of the time. You're flirting with brain damage, and that's not okay. I don't need a hospitalization on my record."

Rich is completely wordless. He's been waiting for accusations of slacking off because he only took a single shift a number of days, or overstepping for the time he's taken off to go hoverboarding. It never once occurred to him that someone might scold him for overworking, not when working conditions on the Reliant are so much better than the Sympatico that Rich hasn't come down with so much as a bad headache, let alone the kind of burn-out that takes him out of action.

"I'm sorry," he says, and his voice comes out embarrassingly small and confused. "I thought I was, I mean I was trying—I just wanted to do a good job here."

Ben passes a hand over his pulled-back hair, looking tiredly at Rich. "Just…chill, okay, kid? You're doing fine. This department could use you sticking around, we don't need you burning yourself out for us inside a month."

"I, okay," Rich says, flustered. "I won't. I mean, I'll chill."

"Good," Ben says, nodding sharply, and walks off.

Rich stands there in the passage for a minute, bewildered and embarrassed and…kind of warm and fuzzy inside, wow. Ben wants him not to end up in Medical like, at all. Rich wouldn't, he's used to working at least twelve hours a day, every day he could, year-round, taking double or even triple shifts to manage a workload that regularly laid him out senseless, but—this department could use you sticking around. Ben wants him here. That's…really, really nice.

So, okay. Rich has been ordered to take a day off. Maybe he'll try that.

The next morning, feeling very daring, Rich eats a big breakfast, gets on a deck-hopper, and heads off to hoverboard without Nate.

He doesn't know what to expect, landing at Katrina's all on his own, and it's terrifying as he approaches: he has to force himself to stay on course, and not peel off and go back to the Reliant and maybe hyperventilate in his berth for the rest of his life.

Worse, he doesn't immediately see Katrina, when he pulls the hopper to a careful stop by her pontoon's rail. Then what he'd thought was an equipment net hanging from the raised half-deck gives a wriggle, and a bare leg with prehensile toes slings itself over the side, groping aimlessly at the other equipment racked all around.

"Wshfgh?" Katrina asks.

"Uh!" Rich says.

She sits up, shoving messy, silver-streaked black hair out of her face. She's not wearing a shirt. She has glow-tattoos all across her torso, her signature radioactive blue crocodile skeletons clawing their way up along her ribs, their bony jaws curving inwards along the sides of her breasts, glowing blue fangs framing her nipples. She's probably the coolest person Rich has ever seen in his entire life and he stares at her like he's gonna go blind any second from just how cool she is.

"Oh, hey, it's you," she says, because she recognizes him, and yawns. Scratches at her bare chest. "Up and at 'em early, huh?"

"Uh!" Rich repeats, realizing all at once that he's being really rude, and almost rams the hopper through the railing trying to get it turned around. "I'm sorry! Ma'am! I'm sorry I can go now I'm sorry!"

"What? No, dude. It's fine. You can like, manage your grips and shit yourself, right? Go for it." She curls back up in her hammock. "I'll be up in a few. Have fun."

"Uh," Rich says again. He maneuvers his deck-hopper back to the railing. "You really don't mind?"

"I will if we have to have an argument about it," Katrina says sleepily.

"Right, okay, got it," Rich says, breathless, and shuts up. He tethers his hopper to the railing and climbs aboard as quietly as he can, feeling more awkwardly enormous than ever at the dip of the deck under his feet as the pontoon bobs under his weight. He fetches a hoverboard and his set of resized gear and gets himself ready, all while trying not to make any noise so as not to wake Katrina again and annoy her into kicking him off her boat.

It's a beautiful morning, though, an hour or so past dawn, with the morning sun still coloring the clouds a soft pale gold. The water's cold as hell and no fun at all to fall into, but he throws himself into the basic routines anyway, until he can manage a few steady laps around the course without wiping out, and he's warmed up enough that he's at least not shivering.

"You got any like, actual swimwear, big guy?" Katrina drawls, the next circuit he makes that brings him back by her pontoon—casually checking to see if she might happen to be awake now, which, hey, cool, she is! She's gone and put on a loose purple jersey top over neon blue athletic shorts, and Rich is a little disappointed and a lot more relieved that she's not gonna spend the whole morning casually topless.

"Oh, uh, no," he says. He had a pair of swim shorts when he went off to the Sympatico, but they wouldn't fit him anymore even if he still had them. And also he's certain he wouldn't be able to step out of his berth wearing so little, much less step in front of Katrina Chau like that. It'd feel like some awful combination of vulnerability and vanity, stupidly trying to show himself off when he doesn't have much to be proud of. He's not fit like she is, muscles honed and beautiful from decades of hard work, he's not an actual athlete. He's just…some hulking, oversized tweak playing pretend.

"I don't, uh, I don't really need it," Rich tries. "I mean, I'd rather try to get good enough I don't fall in?" That definitely sounds better than 'having that much skin exposed would freak me out and also I'd look stupid', he thinks.

"Decent goal, if you don't mind the chafing," she says, and goes and starts getting her own grips on. "Still, your boat town's whole, I dunno, industrial peasant vibe, it's kinda depressing? Can't say I'm a big fan."

"Oh," Rich says, offended but trying not to show it. "Um. Sorry."

"What, are you the fashion designer around here?" she snorts at him. "Unclench, dude, I'm just saying."

"Some people dress nicer than I do," Rich says, feeling like he has to be fair. "Probably, uh, probably most people? I'm just, shit doesn't fit me very well, and anyway I'm a technician who does a lot of mechanical stuff on the side, so black is just, it's practical. Um. What do people wear where you're from?" Then he winces because that sounds so dumb, like he doesn't know jack shit about the rest of the world, or even that Chau's from California.

Katrina just snorts, though, like she didn't expect any better from him, anyway. "What, L.A.? Shit, what don't they wear. You know last charity gala my publicist sent me to I had to wear this whole skimpy little pixie dress sewn out of leaves? Like actual leaves, alive leaves, the theme of the gala was 'cherishing nature' or something, like anyone from L.A. would know nature if it fucking spat on them in the street." Katrina spits, demonstratively, over the rail and into the lake.

"So like, there we all were in our cutesy woo-woo nature time bullshit onesies and everyone's rubbing elbows and smoking completely pretentious amounts of hash while wearing leaves all sewn together with spiderwebs like it's just like, fucking, like we all happened to have brought our film crews off to fairyland and shit to record us while we have our twee little fairy tea parties and I still had to remind all these crusty bitches to like, 'Oh, hey, please give a tenth of a fucking percent of your fucking nine hundred billion dollars to some starving kids for once, thanks!' God. It was awful. The matching panties dyed my dong green, too."

"Oh," Rich says, voice strangled. "Oh you, uh."

Katrina Chau raises her eyebrows at him. "I, uh?" she says, challengingly.

"You, uh, you still have...?"

"I thought you were some kind of super fanboy," she says. "Nate said, anyway. Thought you already knew I uh yeah gosh wow still have the sausage factory in operation. It's all good. Right?"

"Right! Yeah, um, that's great, fine, good for you!" Rich says, hastily. "I mean yeah, it's your body, whatever you wanna do with it is great!" If this is a prelude to Katrina Chau offering to let him at her dick he is going to die. God, it's a good thing his jeans are sopping wet and icy cold, things could get unfortunate here otherwise.

She just laughs at him, though, and clips herself onto her board, then launches off the railing.

"Lemme guess, dude, some of your best friends are gender variant," she says, with a tired-looking sneer, and then casually does a completely perfect black star reverse helix off the nearest grab pole.

"I don't have many friends," Rich says. "Yet, I mean, I'm working on it! But one of my little sister's friends from our old family boat got her gender transferred over when she was, uh, I think sixteen? You can start changing over sooner if you need to but she wasn't sure until she was a little older, I guess. I don't think there's like, a lot of folks in the Fleet who've done that but there's definitely, they're around, it's just, it's fine. Like maybe it makes more paperwork for some social administrator somewhere but I think it'd be a whole lot worse if they weren't allowed to get out of women's boats or men's boats when they needed to, probably."

Something awful occurs to him then. "Wait, did you think I was gonna be a jerk about you still—about how you've got your, uh, your body set up? Are people jerks about it out there? Is it—is it a thing like the tweak thing?"

"Dude, people are awful about everything everywhere," Katrina says, "you just gotta make sure they can't stop you from doing your thing anywhere." She then proceeds to do a half falcon off one ramp and then a complete layover crossfade along the next one. Rich contemplates falling in the lake again to make absolutely sure he doesn't have a boner issue, because: holy shit.

"Okay, right," he says faintly, and looks around to see if there's anything new he dares try in front of her, instead of floating here gaping like a useless fanboy. Which he is, but he could at least pretend.

"Yeah so that's another thing, what's with the girl boats and boy boats?" Katrina asks, skimming back around. "Is that like, a 'no sex before marriage' thing, or do you guys think men and women will like, pollute each other or something, or what?" She gestures with her chin for Rich to follow her, and he does, sticking carefully close as she starts leading him through simple, meditative figure-eights and clover-leafs around the course.

"No! What?" he says, almost as bewildered by the question as her weird hypothetical answers. Landside societies sound screwed up. "No, I mean, sex is fine, obviously, it just—I mean even landside don't most men and women wanna get with each other when they have the chance? On small boats there's more, like, more supervision, I think, smaller departments and stuff, more oversight, but like if you had anything over a 50 that was mixed-gender, it'd be crazy, the men and women would be on each other all the time instead of working, right?"

Katrina shrugs. "I've known some places like that, yeah," she says distantly.

"So—yeah. Sorting bigger crews out by gender means if a woman wants to land a man, she has to hunt them down in her own time, after work. And the guys don't have to deal with her, y'know, going after them while they're working. We only have to deal with getting bothered by other guys sometimes."

It's bad enough to deal with just that much harassment when fortunately a lot of guys don't have any interest in men, let alone men Rich's size and shape. But when Rich considers what it would've been like if the Sympatico had been half female, he feels a sick chill go through him that's got nothing to do with lake water.

Women generally like men fine, and they seem to like as much of them as possible, too, if the reaction of the ladies on the So Long is anything to go by. So there'd be a few less guys angling to get him on his knees, and two or even three times as many women in their place. Not to mention how many of them might have been after Trimmer too. And a guy couldn't even fight off women like he could fight off men. Same-gender violence is an inevitable part of the pecking order in any society, Rich is pretty sure, but cross-gender violence, there's inquiries about that, a guy could get in huge trouble for hurting a woman. Rich wouldn't be able to scare women away from Trimmer the way he can drive off men, his size is even more of a liability around them...Okay, this whole hypothetical is horrifying, and he's going to stop thinking about it right now.

"This way is better for everyone," he says with absolute certainty.

"Huh," Katrina says, like she's thinking about it. "Yeah, even landside there's a lot of like, women's enclaves, women-only spaces and events. I can see that."

Rich feels his shoulders loosen with relief that he didn't completely screw up the explanation.

"Admiral Clearwater was a woman, you know," he says. "She'd have known what women were like, when she was setting the Fleet up."

Katrina laughs, like he's made a joke. "Yeah, she'd have wanted to protect all you poor men!" she says, like she's making a joke.

"Yeah," Rich says, confused. "What?"

"...What?" Katrina says.

"I, uh…I mean, yeah," Rich says. "Yeah, she would have? Is—were you—it's not funny? Or uh I mean if it's funny, I don't, um. I don't get the joke."

Katrina actually coasts her board to a stop and stares at him. "Dude," she says. "Women need to be protected from men."

Rich slams into a pole, and scrabbles clumsily to grab it before he falls into the lake again.

"Ma'am," he says carefully. "I don't know what's going on out there on land, but normally, in a regular society, women are terrifying."

"Oh, yeah?" Katrina says. "Maybe you just haven't spent enough time around us to be comfortable."

"I have two sisters!" Rich protests. "I've spent plenty of time with them and they're terrifying!"

"Are they around your size?" Katrina asks. "Women who aren't a whole fucking shitload of soldier mod tend to have to work a little harder to intimidate."

Rich blinks at her. "Thena would still be a fucking menace if she was a lolita mod," he says with conviction. "If she ever develops a taste for boys I think half the guys in the Fleet are gonna be hiding under their bunks."

Katrina laughs, this time at a joke Rich meant to make, and sets her board in motion again.

"So how's it work on land, then?" Rich asks cautiously. "Like—do women, are women, are they—not okay, if they're not big like me and my sisters?" He realizes a horrible possibility. "Your leg—are you camping out here where it's safe for women because of some guys out there, did a guy hurt you? I'm—I could fight for you, if you need, I can, I can do that, I did that for a guy on my last boat."

He doesn't want to have to hit anyone ever again, but for Katrina…if she asked him to, if she needed someone to have her back, of course he would. He'd turn someone into paste, if he had to. But she's laughing again, shaking her head.

"You're sweet, dude," she says. "But chill out, I can kick my own amount of ass as necessary. I didn't lose this leg cuz of domestic violence or anything, I lost this leg cuz some chucklefuck tried to sabotage my board during a competition and she did it really wrong and she is now really dead and I really don't wanna talk about it. Here, show me if you still remember how to do that crowfoot cross I had you working on last time. Twice as long and twice as fast, okay? With an extra loop at the end, and don't be afraid to make a big splash."

Rich nods and does his best. The changes she made are tricky to remember all at the same time, so it comes out embarrassingly sloppy. He growls at himself as he wobbles to a stop, scrubbing lake water out of his eyes, and turns plaintively back to Katrina.

"Sorry, that sucked, can I try it again?"

"Go for it," she says, and the next attempt comes out better. He's still not satisfied with it, though, so he practices a few more times while she does wide loops around him, watching.

"That one was pretty good!" she says after a bit.

He gives her a sheepish smile, pleased but not sure he should be. "Guess I'll have to keep practicing."

"Well, yeah," she snorts. "Changes like that, it's gonna take more than a session or two to get it down. Don't expect to be perfect already."

Rich heaves a mournful sigh at her, then wonders if that was too much, but she laughs like he was hoping. He follows her through a few easy laps in silence, watching her back, wondering about a lot of stuff. About L.A., about thousands of people packed close in huge cities, about major hoverboarding championships and what it's like to actually live somewhere other than the endless expanse of Lake Michigan. He'd seen pictures of the massive boarding parks in coastal cities, built around the skeletons of old skyscrapers where they collapsed into the encroaching oceans. He'd wanted to get out and go see it all for himself, when he was a kid.

It had always been a daydream, though, a way of ignoring what his actual reality was. Too big, and getting bigger, shoved into Security and then mechanic training because some assholes a hundred years back wanted supersized killing machines and even today the Fleet doesn't really know what else a guy like him could be good for.

He'd wanted to run away, take his board and hitchhike his way across the continent to the coastal cities where the real boarders trained; not just L.A., but New Orleans, Houston, Miami, maybe even New York. Distant shores where anyone could do anything and Rich could do something he really loved, in a place where nobody told him he should grow up already, like he wasn't already grown half as big again as anyone else and getting bigger every damn day. He'd lie awake at night, frustrated and hungry and sore, and imagine finding some way, in some distant city, to stop it before he got too big to board anymore.

He got too big a long time ago, now, or he thought he had. But Katrina doesn't think so. She thinks he can do this, she's lived in those cities and trained with those pros and Rich doesn't really want to leave the Fleet anymore but some part of him still twinges with old, wistful hope. He doesn't want to leave, but having her here, some part of the outside world, that could be enough.

"So, uh," Rich says, and sees her glance over at him. "So, you said you're only here until you get used to the prosthesis, right? After that you're gonna go back landside? You're not…staying?" He hopes he doesn't sound sad or creepy, but can't help adding, "If your brother married in and is a citizen in good standing, you're halfway in already. If you wanna be a citizen too, um, you could, I bet. And you're a fourhands, everyone knows the immigration admins rubber-stamp fourhands into the Fleet..."

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

But she's already shaking her head, smiling like he's being silly. "No, dude, sorry! I'm just visiting, taking some me-time. I couldn't stand being locked away from the entire rest of the world forever. You're all pretty damn isolated, you know that?"

"We can leave if we want to," Rich says. Maybe his childish fantasies were impossible, but there's still citizens who do go out and about, who travel to visit landside relatives or even find a better life somewhere else and don't come back. He says, "My dad was a reporter, he was always going to Chicago and stuff. And there's the Mall, you can visit the Mall. Half of America goes through the Mall!"

"And none of it gets any closer than a mile offshore," Katrina points out, "or you blow it up."

Rich blinks at her, confused at the non sequitur. "Yeah," he says. "But I don't think we've had to blow anyone up for trespassing in like, my entire lifetime. And it's not like we claim the whole lake either, that'd be a dick move—people can go fish in the northern part, and the landside territories are always shipping stuff down from Lake Superior. So."

Katrina shakes her head again. "You're a good kid," she says. "And your little boat cult's not so bad, considering. But I'm not looking to stay, that's for damn sure."

Rich tries not to let his disappointment show, but apparently does a bad job of it: she rocks her board forward and back in a sharp flick, and splashes a fantail of water up the side of his leg.

"Don't mope, dude, I'm not leaving tomorrow," she says. "We got plenty of time to work on getting you through some amount of chili roll—no, don't make that face either, you don't think I noticed you hate it? C'mon, do ten of them, right now."

Rich groans at her, but then he does his best…at least for the first four. He's kind of trying, during the rest, but also just trying to get them over with as fast as possible, because ugh.

The look she gives him when he's finished suggests she could tell. "Y'know, dude, you're gonna have to work your tail off if you want to be my next trainee," she says.

Rich stares, poleaxed. "Wh—that's an option?" He knows she takes a trainee every five years or so, raises them up into the next big thing, it's happened enough to establish a pattern, but he never imagined she'd be willing to take him on.

"Why not?" she says. "You're enthusiastic and you're different; training you is gonna be cool as hell. You'll blow some minds the first time you compete."

The rising giddy delight runs headfirst into an unsettling thought. There's no way the Fleet's going to host a hoverboarding tourney. Chicago, sure, there's an annual competition that Hyde Park puts on that Rich wanted to go to when he was thirteen, and which his Dad comprehensively forbid him from getting anywhere near, but even if that's a pretty exciting, exotic prospect for Rich, it's probably nowhere near special to someone like Katrina. So she'll leave, and he'll need to go with her. He'd need to go, him, he would need to leave the Fleet, leave Lake Michigan, go past Chicago and keep going, go to—he's not even sure where, L.A. or New Orleans or anywhere at all, he would have to leave. But he gave up on that such a long time ago. It's not possible, he can't. Can he?

…He can, though. Hendricks doesn't own him anymore, Rich has credits and free time and—he could go, if he wanted. He could apply for time off, take a week or two for a competition, he could talk to Ben, he could work something out. Normal citizens, good citizens with department heads that don't suck the life out of them, they can take a week off work here and there without it being the end of the world.

"You seriously think so?" he asks, shy but hopeful. "You think I could really—I could compete?" He can't imagine blowing anyone's mind on a hoverboard, but man it'd be cool if he could.

"That's up to you, at this point," Katrina says, and nods pointedly at the course around them. "Are you gonna be a fucking slacker about your chili rolls, or what, dude?"

"No, ma'am!" Rich says. "I'll be good!"

"Well, get to it, then," she says.

Rich will get the hang of that move if he has to wrestle a pod of selkies to do it. He goes back to chili rolls with grim determination, and does his best without cutting any corners no matter how frustrating it is.

Katrina works him hard, after that, relentless and critical and increasingly difficult to please, but he manages each time, when he really pushes himself. She's got an uncanny knack for knowing exactly when he's cutting corners and wimping out, and she demands each time that he do better, push himself further, try harder.

She's had a dozen trainees before him—he's one of her trainees now, if he doesn't fuck this up, if he does his best, holy shit—and she knows exactly when and where and how to demand he do better than he ever thought he could. It's terrifying, and frustrating, and exhilarating. He's never had someone really care if he does his best before, let alone force him into it. Angie used to try, but half of the things she got on his case about weren't his fault, or weren't worth his best anyway. Even Hendricks only cared that work was done, not if it was done right, or done as well as Rich could manage.

By the time Rich's stomach's telling him it's lunch time, his legs and lower back are telling him they died three hours ago and could he please knock it off, his brain is an overheated jangle of nerves and triumph, and he feels like telling the whole world to suck his dick and then throwing up in the lake.

Katrina's definitely had plenty of trainees before. She takes mercy on him about thirty seconds before he either passes out or starts crying, and leads him gently back to her pontoon, a reassuring hand on his hip as he tremblingly syncs his board up alongside hers.

"You did good, dude," she says. "That was a kickass first day."

Rich just nods, and sits down hard on the deck. "I haven't worked out this hard in my whole life," he says numbly. He doesn't think he can stand back up.

"Well, congratulations, you big weenie," she says, and pats his shoulder. "You'll do better next time. Do you want ham or chicken in your sandwich?"

"Ham," Rich says immediately. Then, his brain kicking feebly in his skull, he asks, "Wait, you have sandwiches here?"

"Uh-huh," she says. "I gotta go buy the bread at the fucking Mall every week. How sad is that? I can't believe sandwiches are exotic cuisine around here."

Rich has never had a real sandwich before, but doesn't want to admit it in the face of her obvious scorn. He watches Katrina open up a cooler, take a bunch of bags and containers out, flip the cooler closed, and start stacking various slices of meats and vegetables and sauces together in semi-rectangular blocks until she reaches some final stage of doneness and brings them over.

What she hands him does in fact look like a sandwich. He's seen plenty of them in movies. He holds it carefully in both hands, like a tablet made of food, and takes a tentative bite. It's weird, but not bad: he can recognize a thick slice of ham in the middle of the complicated barrage of flavors and textures. Then his stomach takes further deliberation off the table, the ravenous howl of hunger driving him to inhale the whole thing as fast as he can and look around for more.

"Yeah, I know that look," Katrina smiles, and hands him the other half of her sandwich. "Sit tight, I'll make a stack."

"Thanks," Rich says sheepishly, his mouth already full of chicken sandwich. She waves it off, goes back to her cooler, and starts putting together a whole series of sandwiches. Rich doesn't have to wait long before she's sauntering back over with an armload of the things, plopping them down in a couple untidy stacks on the deck by his hip.

"The fourhands metabolism is supposed to be one of the most efficient digestive systems ever installed on a mammal," she says casually. "Which only goes so far when you work a healthy young man right down into the water. I've seen a dude smaller than me work his way through an extra large pizza all on his own after a good jam. I figure a dude your size is gonna like, start gnawing through my deck if I don't buy a bigger cooler before your next session."

Rich feels his face heat. "Sorry," he mumbles, through a mouthful of sandwich stuff.

She laughs and pats his thigh. "Don't be," she says. "This is fun, dude. You're fun."

Rich pauses before he takes his next bite, looking at her hand on his leg. "You, uh, yeah," he says, and his face is only getting hotter, but—well. She's his boss now, his mentor or whatever, and she's Katrina Chau, and she told him about her dick. If she wants what he really hopes she might want…he swallows his last bite of sandwich hard.

"So, do you," he starts, and chokes, then pushes on, increasingly desperate not to screw this up and horrifyingly aware that he probably is anyway: "do you want, are you going to want—if you're doing all this stuff for me, then, do you, uh. Would you want. Me, to, I mean any part of me, do you want that. Would that be fun?"

"Oh," she says, and takes her hand back. "Okay, yeah, so, wow, no, dude."

"Okay cool sorry," Rich says, and thinks hard about drowning himself in the lake right now. "You can though," he presses. "I mean even if you just want my mouth or whatever. I'm, uh. I'm pretty good at sucking dick. People say, anyway."

He thinks about Liam, and about Liam telling him he's really good at sucking dick, and Liam also telling him that he doesn't have to trade sex as a favor for anything anymore. But like: there's favors and then there's this, there's getting to train under Katrina fucking Chau herself, which is something he'd probably owe his ass for if she felt like asking for it. And maybe he wouldn't enjoy that so much, however small and cool and nice she is, maybe he's screwed up about letting people at his ass anymore, but his mouth he can definitely offer, and happily.

"Dude, you're like, still a kid, and you've got some really weird ideas about women," Katrina says. "I don't fuck my trainees and even if I did, I think getting down with you would be a hell of a bad call for both of us."

"Oh," Rich says, staring at his sandwich with his face burning. Okay, well, that stings, and he's not sure what she thinks would be so bad about fucking him, but—fine, okay, that's…that.

"I don't think it'd be bad," he mumbles to his sandwich, and he's not sulking, he's better than that, it's just, ow. "But okay, I, sorry."

"If you didn't want to have sex with me and I went and stuck it to you anyway, what would you do, buddy?" she asks. "Would you tell anyone? Get some help? Bail out? Would you even tell me no?"

Confused and a little apprehensive, Rich shakes his head firmly. No, of course he wouldn't, she's Katrina Chau, she could have whatever she wanted from him. But she raises an eyebrow at him like that was the wrong answer somehow, and furthermore proves whatever point she's trying to make.

"If you can't tell someone no, then it doesn't matter when you say yes," she says, speaking slowly, like he really is a kid, and a stupid one at that. "Win a championship, grow up a little, get your head on straight about consent, and then maybe we'll see how it goes. Right now though, we're keeping this clean and simple. Okay?"

"Okay," Rich says uncertainly, eyeing her carefully. Is she serious about him somehow winning a championship, or is that is a nice way of saying 'No way, not happening, not ever'? He doesn't really get what she means about the yes or no stuff, either, he's gonna have to chew that over for awhile in private, but the bit he gets for right now is that she's not interested in anything he has to offer. Maybe he wouldn't say no, himself, but he can sure as hell leave someone else alone when they say it. He gets that much.

He picks up another sandwich and applies himself to getting some calories in instead of sulking like a spanked puppy. So Katrina Chau is the one bird in the whole world who doesn't want to have a go at him, big deal! He's a grown man and he can survive getting turned down. He would've loved making her feel good, showing her that there's some stuff he's already skilled at, that he's good for something already without any further training. He'd have liked to see what those glowing tattoos felt like under his hands…But she said no, repeatedly, so…so much for that.

A horrible thought reoccurs. He blurts out, before he can overthink it: "You don't have to be scared of me or anything!"

She looks up at him, a dark eyebrow raised. "Oh, yeah?" she says, sounding amused.

"No, I mean, yeah, no, like—you said out there women are scared of men, that maybe men—do men? With women, like, uh—" god he doesn't want to say rape, but he's pretty sure that's what all this has been about, "—maybe guys do shit you wouldn't want out there, like even if you say no and they go and do it anyway, but here, I wouldn't, I'd never. You don't have to worry about me, ma'am, I swear."

She just laughs, and pats his leg. "Slow your roll, dude, I know. You're a good guy. And also I have shock pads built into my nail beds." She raises her bare foot and snaps the long, prehensile toes: a bright, sizzling white spark jumps between them, then grounds itself with a little scorch mark on the deck.

"Holy shit," Rich says faintly.

"We're fine," she says. "Any dudes wanna come after either of us, I'll fry their hotdogs clean off. You want some watermelon?"

Rich sits there, then cautiously asks, "You mean watermelon like, the fruit? Not like, uh..." some weird metaphorical continuation of the worst conversation Rich has had in weeks, hopefully. He gestures helplessly to try to convey that without having to actually say it.

"Yeah, dude," she smiles. "I was changing the subject because this is awkward as hell. You want some fruit?"

Rich does in fact want some fruit. And to change the subject. She gets him a watermelon and they share it, and talk about nothing more stressful than fruit for awhile. Katrina tells him about all the weird tropical and hybrid stuff she's eaten that doesn't grow in the Fleet, and Rich tells her about what does grow in the Fleet. It's shallow, pointless chit-chat, but it makes him feel so much better, somehow. Just being able to talk to people about things that don't matter feels like a triumph, every time he gets to.

"Alright, dude," she says finally when they've finished the watermelon, "you go on home and take it easy the rest of the day. Make sure you stretch tomorrow." She frowns suddenly, and looks doubtfully from him to his deck-hopper. "You think you can make it back okay?"

Rich assures her he'll be fine, and he is, he gets back to the Reliant just fine, even if he's moving stiffly and gingerly. He waits until he's sure there won't be anyone in the washroom before he goes and takes a nice hot shower and changes clothes, and then looks around his berth and realizes he's got the rest of the day to himself, no work duties or anything, he's not even on call because he took the day off. It's a strange and decadent feeling, and it's hard to ignore the sense that he should avoid running into anyone so they won't be disgusted at him for slacking off.

Ben told him to, though, it's okay. Defiantly, he goes to the kitten lounge and hangs around playing with bright-eyed little furballs, eventually lying down on the couch and letting them curl up on his stomach.

He doesn't intend to nap, but sleepy kittens are contagious. The next thing he knows, somebody is shaking his shoulder gently, and Rich comes back to consciousness in a slightly dizzy rush and then jumps at the sight of a short, sturdy-looking guy in a Security uniform. Not somebody Rich knows—he's gotta be night shift, what time is it? Is Rich in trouble, should he not have—

"Gonna get a crick in your neck sleeping in here all night, son," says the guy, instead of—anything, any of the bad things Rich's panicky sleep-clouded brain was imagining. "You okay to get back to your berth?"

"I, yessir?" Rich says, nervous and still groggy, and pushes himself up, and then catches a flash of a pin on the officer's lapel, a plain little enamel circle with a few lines that suggest the shape of a flying fish. Rich winces. How does he manage to be rude to every Security officer he meets? "I mean, yes sen, Officer, sen, sorry, I'll go—uh, right now."

"Nothing to be sorry about," says the Security officer, and doesn't even blink when Rich stands up, towering over them. "You boys need your sleep, is all. Hate for you to stunt your growth."

Rich laughs, shaky and a second too late, but—that was a joke, and it wasn't even a shitty mean one.

"Yes, Officer," he says again, and the Security officer smiles at him and doesn't even follow Rich back to his berth, doesn't ask for his name or assignment—just nods at him and heads back out the door.

...Which is right, it's right that they should do that, because Rich didn't do anything wrong. And that matters, here. Rich can take the day off, he can have the food he needs, he can hoverboard even though he's too big, he can have what he wants. And he's not doing anything wrong.

Rich makes it back to his berth in a wondering daze, confused and relieved and amazed, and he falls asleep before his head hits the pillow.

-

Rich wakes up feeling like somebody beat the hell out of him, but in the best way possible. He gets himself upright with a lot of groaning and huffing, and then pries himself out of bed and follows Katrina's advice, painstakingly stretching the worst of the burning ache out of his muscles.

He manages to limp his way through his morning routine after that, and then he goes to pour his morning shot and stops, hefting the jug and frowning. He's getting real low on vodka. Fortunately, with some thought, a potential solution to that problem suggests itself. Anton showed up with beer at the fish grill. Maybe he knows where to get something harder.

Rich carefully works exactly one shift, six hours on the dot, then meticulously annotates the last coding problem he hasn't managed to finish up for either tomorrow's shift or someone else to take it on and complete if they feel like.

He goes and eats a huge lunch that takes at least the edge off his anxiety, and steels himself for talking to Anton about the alcohol issue. Checking the IST department chat board, it looks like Anton took first shift today and half of second, which makes Rich twitchy and worried about his own productivity, but—Ben has, presumably, talked to Anton too about what's expected, and no one's going to be mad at Rich for working less than them when Rich was told to, specifically. He's not going to be the Reliant's resident freeloader for taking only one shift after Ben practically ordered him. Right? Right.

Probably.

Anton's still marked as online on the chat board, not settling down to sleep yet, so Rich gathers himself and messages him.

Richard Merrill, IST: Hey, you free to talk?

Anton Dubois, IST: Sure! C'mon by my berth!

Rich would have preferred to meet him somewhere less private, somewhere not his berth, even if it's only a couple doors down from Rich's own, but…Anton's not gonna cause any trouble if they're alone somewhere, Rich knows that. And Rich isn't gonna offer anything he doesn't want to, and Anton's not gonna expect him to. It's gonna be fine.

Rich still has to stop and breathe for a minute or two outside the door anyway, staring at the scattering of colorful postcards showing famous landside cities that Anton apparently collects. He reminds himself over and over that if his pay hadn't been docked on his old ship, things would've been way different. Rich hasn't heard that Anton's from anywhere like the Sympatico, so while he probably doesn't do favors for free, he'll probably ask a fair price and he'll be perfectly happy to take it in credit instead of anything else. Guys are decent, on the Reliant. Professional.

He knocks cautiously, and Anton calls through the door, "Hey, c'mon in, it's open!"

Rich opens the door. Anton is sprawled on his bed wearing just a short grey wrap, and Rich hesitates, unnerved. Then he takes in the rest of the picture, the bag of apple chips and the game of Cat's Cradle playing on Anton's screen, and he relaxes again and manages to step inside. Anton throws him a brief grin, and then joins in on the recorded laughter and cheering as, on the screen, somebody topples off the rope they're balancing on and hits the water with a resounding splash.

"Uh, hey, man," Rich says. "I don't mean to interrupt your downtime—"

"Nah, it's cool, I'm just lazing around," Anton says, scratching abashedly at his bare chest. He blanks his screen out, sitting up from his nest of pillows. "Sorry I'm not exactly dressed for company, but—have a seat, what's up?"

Rich turns the desk chair around and is abruptly distracted by the three potted plants Anton has on his desk, looking green and beautiful in the sunlight slanting through his open window.

"Whoa," he says, looking from the plants to Anton as he lowers himself carefully into the chair. "How, uh, can you just move plants from wherever into your berth if you want?"

"Probably not a good idea," Anton says, raising his eyebrows. "For one thing, you don't know which of the ship's plants need more or less light than they'd get in your berth, and for another, just pick up a cabin plant from the Versailles' gift shop, man. It's cheap because it keeps your air clean, so like, y'know, you can underwrite the cost as a health and sanitation expense."

"Awesome," Rich says, staring over his shoulder at the plants, which seem perfectly content with their lot. Very fluffy and leafy, which he's pretty sure means they're happy where they are. It takes him a minute to remember why he's here.

"So, uh—at the fish dinner party, you were handing out beer. Where do I find the guy you got that from?"

"Mark? Sure, I can get you in touch with him," Anton says, "but unless you're willing to wait for three months or so, he's not gonna do you much good. There's a hell of a waiting list."

"Oh," Rich says, heart sinking. "Well, shit."

"He'll be flattered you liked his stuff that much!" Anton says. "Are you willing to settle for something else, or—"

"Yeah, totally," Rich assures him. "I actually was hoping he might have some stronger stuff, like vodka, maybe."

"Oh, yeah?" Anton sits forward, thoughtful. "Well, I can help out with that. If I could get you something, would you have any preferences?"

"Uh...vodka, high-proof, and preferably not the kind that makes you go blind?"

"What? No," says Anton, and waves a hand in quick negation. "No, no, I mean, would you want anything flavored, do you want potato or yam or sugar beet vodka, is this for a party or like, personal use...?"

Rich shrugs, uneasy. "Just for me, yeah. Uh, if I could get enough of it, like a nice big jug, I'd be happy to share with friends, though."

"Well there's my motivation to get you enough of it, big guy," Anton smiles. "And stay friends with you afterwards!"

Rich smiles back involuntarily, like an idiot, but—it's warming, anyway, even if they're just joking around. He's not doing so bad at this friendship thing if people are at least willing to joke about it with him.

"Help me out with this and we can be fucking besties," he dares to say, and Anton smiles wider.

"Okay," he says, "So! When you say a big jug I'm guessing you mean," he gestures up and down at Rich's whole everything, "a big fucking jug, for your troubles, and while I wouldn't ever hook anyone up with rotgut, you're still kinda stuck getting what you pay for. Quality is always gonna cost." He spreads his hands. "So, what kind of trade are we talking, here?"

"I don't care if it's like, quality, I'm not looking for anything fancy," Rich says hastily as his stomach tightens. Anton's a decent guy, he reminds himself, he's probably not gonna be asking for Rich's mouth. Then Rich sees the way the guy's watching him, eyes drifting over Rich's arms, his chest. Okay, maybe Anton would take it if it was offered, but he's not expecting it. He doesn't have any of that smug, predatory sharpness Rich is used to seeing in the face of a guy he's making a deal with. And even if he did, even if he demanded it, Rich doesn't have to say sure anymore. He could ask Basil, next, or maybe Liam, or Nate. He's got options.

He takes a deep breath, steeling himself, and says, "I don't know what the going rate is, in credits, but I can definitely pay you with credits. Since, y'know, I'm getting paid now and all. With credits."

Anton blinks at him for that. "Cool," he says, confused and cautious. "Credits are fine. I heard from Basil the other day that Liam set you up with a whole spare box of ration blocks, though?"

Some part of Rich's brain shrieks at him for that, and his guts clench: that's his, that's his food, no way. Anton's so small he's probably never been hungry in his life, he doesn't know what he's asking for, that Rich give up even a single block for anything—

But Rich isn't going hungry anymore, either. He gets four blocks a meal now, every meal, two thousand calories three times a day, enough that he can finally re-wrap some of a portion he's too full for and carry it around in his pocket for a snack like normal guys do. But if it stopped—if he went to breakfast tomorrow and there was an error and he only got two again—and he'd traded away his box of spare blocks just for booze—he'd be screwed, he'd be so screwed.

"Credits are fine too, buddy," Anton says, and reaches over to pat Rich's knee carefully, looking up into his face with wide-eyed worry. "Hey, breathe. I'm not gonna go steal your stash or anything! You don't have to do a damn thing you don't want to, okay?"

"Okay," Rich says tightly. "Cool, okay." He stares unhappily at where Anton is touching him, until Anton takes his hand back and runs it through the dark fall of his hair, sighing.

"I just meant," he says carefully, "that ration blocks spend a lot better than Fleet credit at the Mall. Chicago vendors can't use our credit anywhere but the Mall, so they drive harder bargains with us if that's all we got. But clean, shelf-stable calories are a pretty much universal currency landside, and since ours are even soy- and gluten-free, they actually trade on par with New York silver. If you can spare maybe a dozen blocks out of your stash then I can show you where to get some really good shit, man. I know some guys. I was thinking I could just pick you up something next time I go, but—maybe you'd prefer I show you where to help yourself to what you want."

Oh. Well, that makes sense, and Rich feels like an idiot for not thinking of it himself. Of course he could find alcohol at the Mall. A guy can get practically anything there, though getting it from the Mall back to his berth without anyone taking it off his hands en route might be an issue. And also Rich hasn't been there since he was seventeen and thought buying a t-shirt with a cuss word on it was the absolute zenith of antisocial behavior. He admits this much, and Anton laughs at him, but nicely.

"Shit, I remember being seventeen and thinking I was a hardass too," Anton says, settling back against the headboard of his bunk. "I dyed these bright pink streaks in my hair and wore fistfuls of glitter-gel. I left slime trails. It drove my brothers absolutely nuts, I think my youngest brother actually went and filed an environmental nuisance complaint against me."

"That's adorable," Rich says.

Anton laughs again. "Me and my friends would hang out at the Mall for hours like, sharing bacon crisps and daring the Chicago gangbanger kids our age to come chase us around. I don't know what the fuck any of us would have done if we'd gotten caught."

"Die, messily?" Rich suggests.

"God, probably, I was like sixty pounds of gristle," Anton says. "Anyway do you wanna go tonight, or what? When's your next off day?"

"Uh, now would be cool," Rich says, blinking. "If that's cool with you. I mean, I don't think I need to go spend a whole day feeling tough and teasing Chicago kids anymore, so like, if you were up for a quick errand...?"

"No, yeah, that's fine," Anton says. "I could stand to get some booze for myself, maybe some nice cooking wine or something for Phil. It's always good to keep a guy happy who knows how to cook."

"I would do anything to keep Phil happy," Rich says solemnly. "That fish was so good."

"God, it was," Anton says. He sighs wistfully, and there's a moment of respectful silence for the dearly departed fish. Then Anton rolls off the bed and pops to his feet, stretches his back out, grabs hastily for the top hem of his wrap as it loses structural integrity, and starts rummaging in his dresser.

"You can meet me by the hopper stations," he says. "Bring a dozen blocks in a backpack or something, something sturdy. And dress tough, okay? If you still got that shirt with the cuss on it, wear that."

"If you wear your glitter," Rich dares to tease him, and gets a friendly middle-finger in his face for it before he's pushed out the door.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.