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“Listen. Listen t’me. This is your captain speaking and I’ve gotta… I’m gonna tell you who you should be toasting.” Ryan’s voice had gone pitchy and his accent was slurring but he was determined to make this point. He’d tried a few times before but the rush of adoration had been far too enticing.
It had felt good, basking in the glow of their accomplishment, feeling like something more than a gibbering cock up for once. But seeing Billie’s smile sag lower and lower tugged at him. He’d promised himself he’d make it up to her and then… well, a lot of other shit had happened.
But now, after their second space walk together, when he’d nearly bashed his helmet against the ship while inadvertently doing a backflip, she’d managed to swoop in and get the job done right.
Cool head, steady hands, and a stream of profanity on the comm, Billie had saved his bloody life. Again. He owed her so much more than a drunken rant, heard by the few remaining patrons too deep in their own cups to leave. He hoped it was a start.
“If you want to talk heroes, s’not me. It’s a hero - a heroine - right there.” He pointed with the hand holding the microphone. The other held his nearly finished glass of bourbon. He took a hearty swig.
Billie’s shoulders hunched and she pressed two fingers to her temple. She gave a half hearted salute and then downed the rest of her drink.
“Wait - who sells heroin, here?” A voice in the crowd jibed.
A few assembled onlookers chuckled before returning their attention to their own tables.
Ryan flushed hot. This was not going as planned. What little planning he’d done since returning from their second brush with the abyss and drowning himself in both praise and booze. All evening, he’d felt Billie’s glare as she was once more pushed aside and dismissed.
“Very funny. But. Look. Look! It’s blood- um that is, it’s time you all gave her some damn credit! So. So, can we hear it for Billie… uh, now hold on I know this…”
Great buggering bullocks, he’d forgotten her surname.
Those assembled must have assumed he was finished speaking. A smattering of indifferent applause rippled across the bar, dying out quickly.
“Oh, fuck this,” Ryan muttered, the hand holding the mic falling limply to his side. It slipped to his listless fingertips as he drained his glass.
Iris had just started saying “Please don’t drop th-
It crashed to the floor, feedback reverberating. Everyone winced simultaneously.
Head down, Billie slunk from the room.
Ryan waved an apologetic hand toward those gathered as he stumbled away after her.
Matt lurched toward the stage, clapping an awkward staccato. “Well, I, for one, am inspired. What a…speech, right? What a captain. Let’s all raise a glass. Except the Captain, maybe. He’s clearly had a few already.”
A few weak titters of laughter followed Ryan out of the bar area and he grit his teeth against the sound.
Not the first time he’d made a regrettable drunken display and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. He was more concerned with his favorite engineer’s less than lukewarm reaction.
Hadn’t he at least made an effort on her account? That had to count for something.
“Billie!”
“Go to bed, Ryan.” She didn’t turn even as his long strides ate up the space between them.
“I did that for you. So they’d know… you know. That you’re…”
She wheeled around so suddenly, Ryan was nearly thrown off balance. He steadied himself with one hand against a wall.
“You did what? Rambled incoherently at a group of fellow drunks? Waited until practically everyone who’d been toasting you all night had already left before bothering - no deigning - to include me in the celebration?” Her mouth went tight, gaze sharp and furious as her hands framed her hips.
Ryan backed away, hands raised defensively. “I tried telling them earlier! I did. You heard me.”
“No, what I heard was you laughing and schmoozing and thanking your ‘talented crew’.” She crooked her fingers in air quotes around the term. “What I didn’t hear, not from you, not from anyone, was a goddamn ‘thank you, Billie! Thank you for your quick thinking and your ingenuity. Thank you for once again single handedly saving the day!’”
Ryan grimaced, a familiar spot behind his brow beginning to throb. Has he really been so high on survival and attention that he’d forgotten to even thank her? “I meant to thank you.”
She blinked slowly. “Oh, well. If you meant to, I guess that makes it alright then.”
He swayed slightly toward her. “Really?”
Billie’s nose scrunched as she scoffed. “No. Idiot. It doesn’t.” She turned to stalk away once more, muttering something that may have been insulting to Ryan’s mother.
“Yeah well. I do get sarcasm, you know. My people practically invented it, so.”
Billie turned the corner without a backwards glance.
“And she’s gone. And I’m just standing here like a pissed fool. And why am I still talking?” Ryan’s back hit the wall, his knees going wobbly. It felt right to let gravity take over so he slid to a seated position.
Sometime later, Matt and Iris found him there, staring at nothing in particular.
“Do you need a security escort to your room?”
His head shot up at the woman’s curt voice. “What? Oh. No. I can walk. I just. I’ve chosen not to.”
“Hey, life is full of choices. Some good, some bad,” Matt offered. “We don’t always know if the right one is good or the good one is right.”
Iris cut off the tall man with a sound of disgust and thrust out her hand to Ryan. “What we do know is that it’s Last Call and we don’t need our Captain looking like he’s about to start asking guests for spare change.”
Ryan took the offered hand and was pulled to his feet with a surprising strength. He stared down at Iris for a moment, disconcerted, before she scowled deeply.
“Go sleep it off, Captain Morgan.”
She took off in another direction and Ryan realized that he had no idea where she actually bunked in the ship. Some part of his brain pictured her hanging upside down like a bat over Judd’s bed.
“Want me to walk with you, man? Do some talking? Soul sharing? Mano-a-mano?” Matt asked, resting a hand on Ryan’s shoulder.
Ryan shrugged it off with a shudder. “Tonight’s been bad enough, thanks.” He felt a mild jolt of regret at the flicker of hurt that ran across Matt’s face before being replaced with that mild, insipid smile.
“Ok then. Night!”
Matt loped away and Ryan went in search of his bedroom, hoping the door would be kind enough to at least let him in without a major struggle.
***
He woke to a trilling tone from his wrist letting him know Judd wanted to see him. Right away.
Fuck.
His mouth felt like he’d been chewing sawdust and his head was pounding. Making liquids a priority, he managed to stabilize enough to run through a shower. Once he was washed and freshened up, a clean towel wrapped around his waist, he was starting to feel a bit more human.
A glance at the mirror told him today was a day for under eye concealer. His wrist sent him 3 more reminders, which he ignored as he tapped the yellowish color under each eye.
There was a knock at the door.
“Be right there!” He tried to infuse a smile into his Captain Voice, even as he bit back some choice words.
“We need you in Judd’s office.”
Billie.
Ryan froze, remembering the previous night’s disaster. “I’ll be just a minute.”
“He’s got some idea about a parachute made of mylar,” she continued, “we need to talk him down before he destroys our remaining suits.”
Ryan could hear the contempt in her voice. It was nice to not have it directed at him. “I’ll be there in just a bit.”
“Not good enough. I’m coming in.” Billie announced, pushing easily into the room. Because apparently the door worked fine for people who weren’t him.
“Ah,” he tried to make a sound of protest as he turned, hiding the concealer behind his back.
Billie took him in with a sweeping glance, her lips parting slightly before her eyes settled on the arm he held behind him. “You’re not seriously already drinking again? Or did you just not stop?”
“What? No! No, I’m sober as a…” he struggled to remember a good colloquialism, “as I can be with, let’s face it, probably years of liver damage.”
She stepped closer. “Yeah? Then what’s that you’re hiding?”
Ryan’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again. His fist closed tighter around the little tube of makeup. “There’s nothing… look, I’ve got to get dressed if you want me to go to this meeting.”
Billie crossed her arms, eyes narrowing.
He reached slowly for his towel with his free hand and her eyes went wide.
“You wouldn’t.” Her gaze flicked from his towel to his face.
“Don’t see how else you expect me to leave here. I can’t go out there in a bloody towel.”
It was a bluff. His face was flushed already, knowing that his physique was not what it had been in his youth. Billie had already seen more than most people aside from his partners had seen in years. He could fake it well with angles and false confidence, but Ryan couldn’t even remember when he’d last felt comfortable in his own skin. It pained him that so much of it was on display in front of this (admittedly attractive) woman that he… that he esteemed.
A series of unreadable expressions washed over Billie’s face before she swallowed visibly. “Fine. Just. Put down the bottle and I’ll wait outside the door.”
He exhaled loudly. “I’m not holding a bottle!”
“Then what-“
“It’s fucking...makeup,” he admitted gruffly, tossing the tube onto the nearest table and closing his eyes against her inevitable judgement of his vanity.
There was a pause. He cracked one eye and then the other.
Billie was holding the tube of concealer, turning it over in her fingers. “That was your big secret?” She met his eyes, her mouth tilted up at the corners. “Lots of people wear makeup.” She held it back out to him.
He shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. “Not everyone needs it like I do.” He took it from her. “We can’t all spend a night drinking and wake up looking so...” he waved a hand in her direction, encompassing her bright eyes, her clear, soft looking skin.
Both her brows shot toward her hairline. “Um.”
Ryan’s back teeth clenched. Complimenting a pretty woman half his age in his quarters, while he was wearing nothing but a towel. While also being stranded in space with said woman, whom he’d angered greatly only the night before. Smooth.
“I’m sorry, that was inappropriate,” he began.
“No, it’s, um,” she interrupted, shaking her head. “It’s fine. I uh.” She ducked her head slightly and he could have sworn he saw a little color in her cheeks. “Thank you. For… thinking that.”
She turned toward his door and paused with one hand on the frame. “I’ll wait exactly 4 minutes. If you’re not done, I’m gonna go hide and you’ll have to face Judd alone. So. Get to it.”
The second she was gone from the room, he sprang into action, pulling on his clothes haphazardly. He managed to make it just under the cut, still fastening his cuffs.
Billie offered him a lopsided smile and straightened his collar, smoothing a lapel.
He smiled back, something catching in his throat as he tried to regulate his breathing. They stood like that a moment too long and he felt himself wanting to lean toward her. He reared back with a polite cough. “Shall we?”
Billie’s eyes darted away from him and she fussed with something on her jumpsuit. “For what it’s worth, you looked... I mean you look… fine.” She nodded. “Good, I mean. Captain-ly.”
Ryan’s breathing was still just slightly off and he swallowed hard. “Thank you.”
She shrugged and started walking toward the office. “Of course, you’re still not a captain.”
“Duly noted.” He followed, hands folded behind his back.
“And you’re still a spotlight-hungry idiot.”
He grimaced slightly. “Billie, about last night...”
Billie stopped short and Ryan nearly collided with her back. She faced him. “Look, you were out of line and I was embarrassed.”
He opened his mouth to apologize but she stopped him with one hand raised, palm out. “But I had also maybe been stewing on it all night over one too many vodka sodas. Instead of just, you know, saying something. Maybe let’s just... call it a wash.”
Ryan felt his shoulders drop almost a full inch as he exhaled gratefully. “Absolutely. Best plan, yet.”
She inclined her head. “Mine usually are.”
Ryan laughed and they resumed their walk, though he stopped twice to cheerfully greet passengers.
As they fell back into pace together in the final corridor, Billie sighed. “This meeting is going to be awful, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Would you have really made me face it alone?”
She grinned up at him. “In a heartbeat.”
Despite himself, he grinned back. “Fair enough.“