Archive of Our Own

Skip has been operating on the assumption for several rigons now that eventually, Norman would finally stop getting weird about having him around. But clearly that’s not the fucking case.

It’s not so much a vocal disgust. He doesn’t tell Skip how much he hates having a slug in his skull. It’s just the little moments—and more frequently now, as well—when Skip looks at something and thinks it looks like a cozy place to climb into and Norman is just…displeased with the thought. Or when Skip wonders what it would be like to soak in some of that bubble bath solution Margaret likes so much, and Norman pretends they don’t shudder.

Maybe it’s just the slimy stuff, actually.

Anyway, it’s not a part of himself Skip can get rid of, so he just tries to hide the feelings as best as he can, but it’s kind of hard when he doesn’t have a place he can hide them. He is using Norman’s brain, after all, and part of renting the real estate is being unable to completely cloak his primal urges.

But at least he’s stopped making Norman stick his hand in soap. That, he learned early on, was a fast track way to get Norman absolutely pissed at him.

Still. Skip had been assuming, and right now, he’s being proven wrong.

He doesn’t get urges the way Norman does. (Or…doesn’t. Norman is pretty good at filing his feelings away, but sometimes they slip through—but never urges like this.)

Dead god, Skip thinks, taking root so he can see what they’re looking at even more clearly. What I wouldn’t give to burrow in that.

Norman grunts under his breath. “That’s a plant.”

“It sure is,” Gunnie sighs wistfully. “It sure, sure is.”

Sidney is also staring up in awe as the Wurst slowly cruises past the outer rim of a planet. It looks like the whole thing has been overtaken by some kind of rooted flytrap, one that very clearly no longer has any source of life. Skip can imagine it in all its glory—vibrant, red maybe—or orange—possibly blue—or green—something stunning and beautiful, and he imagines it writhing—

Norman makes an audible noise of disgust and forces them to turn away. “No.”

“No…what?” Syx asks, and Skip tries to latch on to answer—but Norman holds tight to his control.

“It’s a gross plant,” Norman insists, shaking his head. “Disgusting.”

“Aw, Skip!” Sidney says brightly. She uses the side of her gun arm to touch his shoulder carefully. “I’m sure it can’t hurt you!”

I want it to, Skip thinks dreamily, trying to grab control again. Norman jerks their head—it doesn’t stop Skip from trying again, and again— I bet it would love to use me for nourishment, or—

Norman smacks the back of his skull and Skip shudders and gets dislodged for a moment, then sinks back into place in shock.

“It’s a gross plant,” Norman repeats, with difficulty. Embarrassment is radiating from the center of his chest. “I have to go.”

“You know, I’m sure it’s totally normal—“ Margaret starts, but she doesn’t get to finish as Norman storms back to their quarters.

The walk back is silent. It’s kind of weird; Skip usually hates the silence, but Norman clearly has something on his mind that he’s keeping far, far away from Skip.

That doesn’t happen. Not normally, anyway.

He didn’t always notice the difference in the way they carry themselves, but as Norman opens the door properly and doesn’t fling himself inside, Skip becomes hyperaware of it. This, he feels, is going to be an uncomfortable conversation.

(Unsurprisingly, he’s right.)

“You’ve gotta stop,” Norman says as soon as the door is closed.

Aloud. To an empty room.

Skip decides Norman simply must not be talking to him, and so he stays quiet, feeling the way Norman puffs their chest up in frustration.

“You know I’m talking to you. You have to stop.”

Stop what? he tries, because if Norman’s not going to properly address him, then he might as well make it difficult.

“You cannot make me want to fuck a plant,” Norman mumbles, sitting on the edge of the bed. “That’s absolutely—no. You can’t.”

You’re right. I can’t make you. You don’t have to want to fuck a plant, Skipper.

Something stirs in their chest again, but Norman cuts off whatever access Skip could have to it before he can examine what it is.

“Then what the fuck was any of that?”

Just because you don’t want to fuck the plant doesn’t mean I can’t want to fuck the plant. I’m just saying, we’re allowed to have different taste.

“Not when we’re piloting the same body,” Norman points out, gritting his teeth. “You want that bullshit, it affects me.”

Skip sulks and doesn’t respond. What can he even say? It’s not like he can turn it off, after all. He’s alive as much as Norman is, and their experiences might differ a little, but that doesn’t mean—

Their body shifts again, and Skip feels something like a gentle mental prod. He entertains it, for a moment, and finally they’re having a real conversation. Norman is still keeping himself closed off, but he’s willing to meet Skip where he’s at, at least.

You couldn’t pick something more…humanoid? Norman asks finally. If you’re going to be horny, I mean?

Skip pushes back a little, thinking about the flytrap again, and Norman buries his face in their hands.

“This is pointless,” he announces, shaking his head. “If you’re going to…think like that, keep it away from me.”

Skip decides to test his luck; Norman is just distracted enough that Skip can take control, and then they’re both hanging out up front at once.

“Bit hard,” Skip says. It’s been a bit since he’s had mouth control, so his words come out kind of stilted and strange, and he watches Norman clench one fist while Skip keeps the other one relaxed. “On account of, you know. This.”

“You have to,” Norman says, nearly cutting themselves off. “I’m not going to—”

“What?” Skip tests the waters again, turning off the pain sensors for a moment, but only on his half of the body. He feels Norman jerk them for a moment in reply. “Not going to what?”

“Will you stop that?”

“No.”

“This is my body.”

“We’re sharing.”

He feels Norman begin to say something, then swallow it back. Skip doesn’t like that. He prods their mental connection, but Norman shuts that down too, and then he vanishes from the front entirely and goes silent. Then it’s just Skip alone, in the pilot seat of their mind, staring at two relaxed hands and a body that cannot feel pain.

“Norman?”

There’s no response. He’s locked himself away. Skip slowly turns the pain receptors back on, relaxing back onto the bed, and tries poking mentally again.

Norman? Where’d you go?

No response again. For a moment, he feels kind of sad—and then infuriated, because how dare Norman leave him alone when they were in the middle of a conversation—he tries picturing the plant again, and there’s a very brief flash of annoyance, but Norman stays stubbornly silent.

Fine, Skip thinks hotly. Have it your way, Skipper.

He shifts onto their back and shuts their eyes, letting his mind wander down a path he doesn’t normally indulge. Norman’s body responds in kind, their hips rolling up a little, and Skip settles into it—

The problem is that because it’s still Norman’s brain at the end of the malton unit, it still falls into the same thought processes it normally does. Skip gets to start imagining the slug part—burrowing, finding home, the mental connection—but then Norman’s brain decides to think of it like a human body, the way tentacles would wrap around and slide and ooze—

He doesn’t hate it, but it’s not what Skip wanted. Still, it’s better than nothing.

(Hidden and refusing to come out, Norman watches this all happen with the disgruntlement only a sexually repressed human can have.)

(And a kind of morbid, unsettled curiosity.)

He shoves their hand down their pants, because it really isn’t worth it to try to take Norman’s captains outfit off. Not for this. Not when he can already tell it won’t be long, the way their hips buck up into the touch, the way their dick is already half slick and standing as much at attention as it can—Skip keeps his grip tight exactly the way Norman hates, because despite Norman’s distaste for it, Skip thinks he kind of likes when it almost hurts.

The only thing Norman insists on is keeping their voice down, which frustrates Skip in a different way—but he doesn’t fight it. If Norman wants them to make breathy little moans while he touches them, and if he wants to pant and choke the noises off instead of crying out, then so be it. It’s no concern of Skip’s. Fine, let him sound like a whore to only the two of them. Works for him.

(He doesn’t know why it makes him feel better to know that there’s something just for the two of them. But as Skip has that fleeting thought, he sees white, and the thought vanishes.)

Norman doesn’t come back to the front for a martron as their chest heaves, but at least he’s not completely shut off anymore. Skip lets their eyes shut slowly.

You’re an ass, he announces slowly. Norman only responds with a wave of annoyance. You are. Leaving a conversation in the middle? Makes you a jackass.

I am a jackass. We all know it.

That catches Skip for a martron. He pauses, pursing their lips as he thinks, slowly pulling his hand out of their pants. It’s kind of sticky; he rubs their fingers together, feels the way it slides, sticks their fingers in their mouth—

Will you cut that out?

Skip hums around them happily, smiling. Nah.

I’m trying to have a serious conversation—

By hiding. By running into the back of our head and—

My head.

The smile drops. Skip has full control over their body right now, which means he’s the reason their stomach drops, their chest goes icy—

Fine, he thinks, and he doesn’t put them to sleep. He just relinquishes control and lets Norman’s body go limp on the bed, still staring straight ahead, his fingers still in his mouth.

Stop pouting.

Skip doesn’t respond. He’s half tempted to detach entirely, but he doesn’t want to fully leave—

Dumb slug, Norman thinks, taking the front seat again, and Skip feels a flash of shame—his own, he thinks, actually—and does entirely detach that time. He doesn’t leave—not yet. But he doesn’t want to keep talking to Norman. Not if he’s just a dumb slug.

He curls around Norman’s brainstem, trying to keep himself from oozing too much, and tries his absolute damndest to get some attempt at sleep. Norman keeps shifting, and Skip—well, he’s not really attached to anything at the moment, just hanging out in the back of Norman’s skull. So if Norman is trying to talk to him, it doesn’t work.

Good riddance, Skip thinks bitterly, stewing. And then slowly, slowly, he begins to come up with a plan.

It takes a while for Norman to actually get to sleep, but Skip waits for his body to be still for long enough before he reattaches slowly. The feelings come back one by one; Norman has put them in his classic pajamas, the ones Skip hates because of how scratchy the fabric is, and is snoring softly. Skip does his best not to wake Norman as he stirs their body—and it works. Just barely, but it works, and then Skip has the run of it by himself this time.

They haven’t shaved in a few malton units. Skip takes the time, uses unshaking hands and shaving cream that doesn’t make him want to throw up, takes a few extra martrons at the end to stick his hand in the bottle of liquid soap just to enjoy the feeling…

And then he’s a man on a mission, storming down the halls until he reaches Margaret’s door. He knocks awkwardly, leaning against the wall as he waits. It occurs to him that maybe he should have checked to see if she was even here—

But she is. The door slides open to reveal Margaret Encino in all her glory, wearing nothing but a tiny nightgown that leaves nothing to the imagination.

Skip blinks several times at her tits, because Norman’s body sure has an opinion on it, and then he stares up at her face instead. “I need your help.”

“With what?” She doesn’t sound judgmental, at least.

Skip presses his lips together tightly, sighing. “…it’s complicated. You got a martron?”

“Sure.”

She steps out of the way. The only person Skip is hiding from is inside this head too, but he still looks around, then ducks inside. The door closes behind them with a soft little hiss.

And so the planning begins.

Norman wakes up groggy and not in the clothes he fell asleep in, which means Skip must have borrowed him during the night. The thought makes his blood sort of boil—he’d tried to have a damn honest conversation, give an apology, and Skip hadn’t even bothered to respond. It’s as if he wasn’t even there—when he’s around, Norman can at least feel him reacting to things, but he’d gone totally AWOL and frankly kind of pissed Norman off.

And now he’s out galavanting around as Norman in the middle of the night? Typical.

He also realizes, after his mental rant, that he’s not in the same place he fell asleep in, and Norman looks down to realize he’s sitting at one of the cafeteria tables across from some random Jib Jobber. He stares at her in utter confusion—her face is twisting strangely—god, is she choking—?

But then her expression evens out and she blinks several times, her eyes sliding into a bright green color.

Bright green.

Norman’s eye twitches.

“The hell is going on here?”

“Ooh,” the girl says, grinning. “Never realized how gruff your voice was. No wonder people didn’t trust us.”

“Us?” he asks, bewildered—

And then it all clicks into place.

“Skip?” he asks, quieter now.

“In the—well,” the girl—Skip—says, looking down at her arms. “I mean, not my flesh, but—you get the picture. Flesh and all, baby.”

“What—why?”

And if Norman sounds hurt—well, that’s stupid. He isn’t. He’s perfectly normal about the fact that the only other inhabitant in his head has completely jumped ship into some random girl’s body—

(Some random girl, who has a nicely shaped face and bright white teeth and just the right amount of cleavage showing to be able to get away with being on the front of an Amercadia magazine but not be tagged as pornographic. She’s pretty, he decides, then promptly wishes he was dead instead.)

Norman stiffens, leaning more over the table. “The fuck did you do, Skip?”

Skip leans over with a wide grin, their faces so close now they could nearly touch.

(Norman’s never been this close to Skip before. He doesn’t know how he feels.)

“I solved our problems,” he—she?—promises slowly. “You didn’t want a dumb slug in your head, so I arranged to find new real estate.”

Norman’s face goes red. “You what?”

“Oh, did it—” Margaret laughs as she approaches, tapping the end of their table. “You told him?”

“All settled,” Skip says brightly. Norman knows who’s piloting—he can’t quite make himself call Skip a girl for it, but he certainly doesn’t know what else to do when he looks like that—they, he decides, tensing his jaw. “I appreciate your help.”

“You did this?” Norman demands, standing suddenly. Margaret doesn’t flinch, to her credit, but she does eye him warily.

“I wanted to make sure our team was comfortable,” she says, her voice sharp. Calculated. “And taken care of. Skip told me circumstances had changed, I didn’t ask questions.”

“Maybe you should have.”

“Alright. I’ll add it to our agenda for our rounding,” she says coldly. “Anything else?”

“Call this off,” he demands, pointing at Skip.

“No can do,” Skip announces brightly, also standing, though they almost faceplant onto the floor before they catch themselves. “No, no, it would ruin the whole program.”

“The program?”

“Skip has asked for volunteers,” Margaret explains. There’s a hickey on her neck. Norman thinks about the person that put it there—Lucienne, most likely—and tenses his jaw. “And the Jib-Jobbers have taken him up on it. Turns out there’s more than a few people willing to pay for a little mental vacation.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Norman says immediately. “You can’t just—Skip, get back here.” He turns to stare at them, watching the way they move their fingers, as if getting used to the feeling.

“No,” Skip says simply. “I’m good.” And then they step forward—the girl Skip is inhabiting is short, shorter than she has any right to be, and Norman gets more or less a straight view down her shirt at this angle, and Skip doesn’t seem to have any qualms about it whatsoever. “You’re free, Norman,” they say slowly. “No more dumb slug taking up half your brain with thoughts you hate. I figured you’d thank me.”

And Norman has half a response on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows it back slowly. No use anymore, he guesses—Skip’s made up his damn mind, and whatever he’s punishing Norman for—

He squares his shoulders, staring down at Skip in something close to disgust.

“Fine,” he spits. “Have it your way, Valdrinor.”

Skip jerks back, and the girl’s face wells up into tears almost immediately. Skip looks as horrified by this as Norman feels, but he ignores it, and he ignores them, as he turns and storms off without another word.

Fine. Skip wants to abandon him? He couldn’t care any less if he tried. In fact, he’s so normal about it that he doesn’t think about it for the rest of the malton unit. He doesn’t think about it while he goes back to his quarters, trying to get his bearings; he doesn’t think about it while he showers, or shaves (or cuts himself shaving, because after cycles and cycles of being on edge his hands shake a little too badly); he doesn’t think about it while he picks out some garish set of clothes he can’t remember buying; he doesn’t think about it when he makes his way up to the bridge; and he certainly doesn’t think about it when he sees the way Gunnie, Sid and Syx all turn to stare at him with all-too-knowing eyes.

God. He almost misses Riva, as annoying as they were. At the very least, they were another constant in his head, and—

Not that he needs a constant in his head. He lived a whole damn life without anybody else in his brain but him, and he can go back to it just as easily.

He scowls at his crew, but it doesn’t feel right, so he straightens it out and just waves one hand in a very awkward hello.

“Hi, Skip,” Sidney says lightly. Quietly. She’s not supposed to be quiet, is she?

“You sick?” he asks immediately, though he’s not sure the connection is clear to anyone else—anyway, when she looks baffled, he sighs and waves the question away. “Just—you seem different. That’s all. Anyway, Skip’s not here. Just me.”

“Skip’s gone?” Gunnie says, sounding heartbroken—

(And it doesn’t make Norman bristle, and it doesn’t make Norman consider throwing Gunnie out of the airlock, and it doesn’t make Norman wish he would have just dealt with the slime for a little bit longer. It doesn’t.)

“He’s gonna be hopping hosts,” Norman says stiffly. “He and Encino got it all figured out. I don’t know specifics.”

“You…don’t?” Syx asks, looking perplexed. “I mean, right on, dude, but I thought you would have—”

“It’s like a mini mutiny,” Norman says, grinning sarcastically, then waves for Sidney to get out of the way so he can sit at the controls. “I’m gonna take over up here. Go—do something. I don’t know. Watch a movie or whatever.”

“Are—are—are you sure?” Gunnie asks, tripping over his feet the same way he does his words. Norman stares at him for a moment, then sinks back in his chair and stares out at the inky blackness of space stretching in front of them instead of responding. “Well—alright, Cap, if you’re sure—”

“Get out of here before I change my mind and put you all to work,” Norman says, a little louder now, and the three of them scramble out of the room without much other fanfare.

His head is quiet. He ought to be grateful.

Norman stares out at the stars and tries not to think.

Her name is Thalia, she’s a screenwriter, and she’d been so desperate for a mental vacation to gather some inspiration that she’d paid extra to hop to the front of the line and be Skip’s first host. He’d been flattered, actually—and it was a little funny, because he felt how her brain had been reacting when he latched on, felt how thrilled she was by the feeling of him squirming his way inside her mind and taking over, and he thinks maybe he’s found the perfect host.

Though she isn’t fully perfect. She’d insisted on wearing heels and pants that are too long, so they end up tripping over the fabric four times before they leave the canteen. It gives Margaret enough time to catch up, typing away on her communicator with a wide smile as she passes something over to them.

“What’s this?” Thalia’s voice is kind of high and breathy, though not on purpose. They take the extended object, staring at the metal contraption—

“It’s an identifier,” Margaret explains, setting her communicator in her pocket. “And a tracker. So you’ll just pass it on from host to host, and I’ll be able to find you without having to ask four hundred different Jib-Jobbers.”

“Margaret Encino, the woman you are,” Skip says fondly, sliding the bracelet on and watching it light up.

Margaret smiles even wider, then leans in a bit. “And…you’re sure about this, Skip? He seemed upset.”

“He didn’t like me anyway,” Skip says quietly, curling their fingers slowly. “It’s better this way.”

“So why’d he ask for you back?”

“Beats me.”

“…look,” Margaret says slowly. “I don’t want to get in the middle of personal matters, but—you should probably talk to him when he’s calmer. I thought you said you’d explain.”

“I was going to,” they protest. “But things got a little out of hand.”

“So I saw.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Skip promises, smoothing out their shirt. “Soon. Promise, Margie. I gotta run, though—you know how it is. I have lifeforms to investigate.”

Margaret gives them a sad smile, waving them off.

Norman doesn’t know what the new normal is supposed to be.

Sure, in theory he gets it. He has control over his own body now—something he’s painfully, painfully aware of—and he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He doesn’t have to feel guilty for the rude thoughts or the snarky replies; he doesn’t have to apologize to everyone all the damn time; he doesn’t have to bend over backwards and try to make the moods less awkward when he scowls at the wrong time or something.

But he’s gotten used to some kind of buffer. Some other voice that reminds him of things, some little voice in the back of his skull that is sometimes too fucking loud—he likes these people now, believe it or not, and he knows he does for sure because without the damn slug in his head, he still doesn’t feel as much animosity as he knows he used to.

The damn slug. Norman stops looking in mirrors.

He also stops looking at crew meetings. He’s gotten very good at multitasking with his attention, if he does say so himself, so he doesn’t spend all of Margaret’s speech staring at whichever new face has joined them for the malton unit. The first girl is there for three malton units; the next face, a young, boyish kid with shaking hands, another three; he figures out the calendar without any help, thank you very much, so he’s always braced when someone new shows up, and he doesn’t focus on them at all.

Not like Skip focuses on him either. Damn slug seems absolutely thrilled, looking around with new eyes all the time, tripping and learning new skills, new languages—and Norman doesn’t help at all. He’s a simple man, at the end of the malton unit. He’s not like Sidney, who’s programmed to want to help everyone all the time; and he’s not like Syx, who has some kind of deep seated need to pack bond with any and everyone. No, Norman doesn’t mind solitude, and he’s finding that having only one voice in his mind is actually calming instead of driving him to a loneliness-based insanity.

“…Captain Skipper?”

Been a long time since he’s heard that one. He drags his eyes up from the sudoku page he’s been working on. Margaret claps three more times impatiently, her irritatingly cheerful smile starting to crack.

“Are you with us?” She punctuates each word with a clap. He blinks back at her slowly, gesturing with his hand. “Great. Approve the budget.”

Norman bristles. If he had a smile, it would have dropped; as it is, his nose twitches, and he rubs it, irritated just as much as Margaret is.

What the fuck budget are they talking about?

His mind does not answer, so he shrugs, going back to the page in front of him. “Sure. Whatever.”

Margaret sighs loudly, then claps again. “Fine—fine. Fine! Okay, maybe we just—dismissed, I think. That was all the big stuff. Norm, a word?”

I’ll give you a damn word—

Norman grunts in reply, writing in the number 2 in one of the boxes, then immediately erasing it. Everyone else files out around him, and he stubbornly doesn’t look up as some stranger pauses next to him, looking over his shoulder, and pointing at one of the numbers.

“Supposed to be a four,” the guy says, his voice unusually soft. Norman ignores him. “Hey, Skipper, I said—”

“When I want help with sudoku, I’ll ask,” Norman says sharply. “Leave me alone.”

The guy falters, then swallows audibly. “I was just trying to help, dude.”

“I’m not your ‘dude’,” he says, tossing the sudoku away. “Marge, are we doing this?”

Margaret is rubbing her temples slowly; she looks up at her nickname, practically glaring.

“Will you get over yourself?” she says slowly. “Your pouting is causing issues.”

Norman scoffs, looking away. “I’m a grown ass man, Encino, I don’t pout.”

“You’re pouting right now,” the stranger says, and Norman turns to glare at him, watching the way his eyes shine with Skip’s familiar green. “Look, do you have a problem? Something to say?”

“No,” he snaps. “No, I don’t. You may not know this, because you didn’t ask questions before you showed up the first time around, but I’m not anyone’s favorite person. I’m here to fly the damn ship and—” He gestures at Margaret, annoyed. “—well, I used to make calls, but I don’t even get to do that anymore.”

“You signed off on—”

“I did not sign off on anything. That was him.” Norman points at Skip, who is shifting on their feet nervously. He doesn’t know if that’s a Skip thing or a stranger’s thing; he finds it probably doesn’t even really matter. “But I’m not gonna fight you on it. Ship’s happier this way, whatever. Doesn’t mean I gotta jump in to being likable all of a sudden.”

“I’m sure people liked you before,” Margaret says patiently.

“I’m sure you can go fuck yourself,” Norman replies. “Are we done here?”

“You’re cranky today,” Skip mutters, and Norman pushes back from the table. He looms over this guy by a few inches—and with his back straightened, he can really get some extra height, and he watches Skip’s eyes widen in surprise. “Skipper?”

“You lost the right to call me that,” he says darkly, snatching his sudoku and storming to the door.

“Skipper—Skip—Norman!”

He doesn’t turn around for Margaret. He doesn’t turn around when he feels a hand try to grab his shirt. He certainly doesn’t turn around when he leaves the room, and he double certainly doesn’t turn around when he hears them calling for him down the hallway.

Norman doesn’t know the new normal, but he’s pretty sure this is fine by him.

Margaret gives him exactly ten ribecs of peace before she ruins it. “Skip, I really don’t think whatever you’re trying to achieve is working here.”

“It’s fine,” Skip insists, his voice wavering a little. “I swear. He’s happier this way.”

“Does that look happy to you?”

Irrational rage burns in their throat; today, his host is named Jamie, and he’s angry all the time. This is no exception. Skip swallows it down as best as he can.

“I know it seems like it’s not working,” Skip says, with difficulty this time, “but I know Skipper. He’s coming around to it.”

Margaret sets her files down and rubs her temple, taking a deep breath. “I wonder how much you two even talked if you think this—”

“As if you knew him any better than I did before,” Skip snaps. There’s a venom to the words he doesn’t know how to shake; he doesn’t think it’s solely from Jamie this time. “Look, this is—this is good for us. I know it is. It’s good for him.”

“Alright,” Margaret says, pulling out her phone and typing something in quickly. “Well, we’re rounding on this at the next one-on-one. I have a meeting to hop onto with the—someone. I don’t know. I need to go find Lucienne.”

Jamie’s jaw tightens; Skip lets it, making sure they’re the first one to storm out of the room.

Skip has to find a new person for the next round. The files are in his room—his room, because he can’t keep leaving things in the host’s room, so he’s taken up residence in the old escape pod Margaret used to call home. It’s a central location and he doesn’t really have anything of value, so it works pretty damn well. Anyway—back to the pod, and he checks his files to see if there’s anyone he might like more. Anyone familiar. He’s noticed there are a few Jib-Jobbers that have been going out of their way to seek him out, wanting to talk to Skip and not just the host, and it’s—flattering. Kind, even. He wonders if they’re on the lists somewhere or just trying to be friendly (or flirt, his mind wonders, but he ignores that one pretty steadfastly).

It’s hard to keep track of all of his friends, but he tries. There’s Peter, one of the quieter ones, who likes that Skip says things as if they’re new observations sometimes—I’m aware of the teeth in this body, you know? Have you ever thought about hair? Kinda weird, right? Why is this water spicy—what the hell is carbonation? And Peter has an extroverted friend named Kylie, who boasts loudly about how proud she is of her sister, some president on some planet somewhere. Then there’s E, the Amercadian who is content to debate philosophy with Skip at every turn, and Fragment, the Aguatinisian who spends half their time in a drone trying to find things to break just to feel the way it short circuits the body—

Skip has friends. None of them are Norman. He tosses the files, and he misses Charlie from two hosts ago who reminded Skip it was okay to cry when he was upset—Jamie just wants to punch something, and Skip intentionally puts him to sleep so he can ignore the urge. He turns their eyes to the window that takes up half the wall behind his bed and watches as stars drift past slowly.

He misses the view from the captain’s seat, he thinks, and he misses having someone he could cohabitate a brain with that didn’t make him always feel so foreign, and he misses slender hands and too-long nails and having to duck under some doorways, and he misses his friend, Norman Takamori, who may never have actually been his friend at all.

Skip misses dinner. It’s a small price to pay.

“Skip’s gonna go out on a mission with us,” Barry tells Norman one night, and Norman definitely, absolutely does not drop the glass he’s drinking from because of the words. He drops it for a separate, unrelated reason, one that he doesn’t quite remember at the moment. But definitely unrelated.

“He what?”

“He’s done it before,” Syx reminds him, pointing at Norman’s temple, and next to him Nyne grimaces in—something like sympathy. “But he’s gonna be, you know. Not with you.”

“And I don’t care,” Norman says, then immediately continues, “How the hell is he gonna fight? Who is he taking? Cause I didn’t say he could come back—”

“He’s not coming back,” Syx says, sounding more confused now. Norman’s eye twitches; he stares out the window instead of at the Barry’s, clenching his jaw. “He wants to prove he can be up to snuff on his own. Sort of.”

“So who the hell—”

“I don’t know, man, he’s interviewing people,” Syx says, starting to get a little pissed off. Good. Let him get pissed off. See if Norman cares—he doesn’t, of course, because he doesn’t like this team and they don’t like him, and at this point he’s waiting for them to leave him on a planet and—

It occurs to him, sort of all at once, that there’s a chance that’s what’s happening. That the Wurst really is trying to get rid of him now. Margaret hadn’t even followed up when he missed the one-on-one, and nobody really talks to him unless it’s about the fucking slug, and—

He swallows hard, suddenly feeling dizzy as he stares out at the cosmos just beyond the glass. He used to love this view. It used to make him positively light up, delighted and abreast with the call of adventure, of being able to fall into what he was always told was the big Amercadian dream—shattered to pieces, of course, now.

Norman doesn’t have anything now, he thinks slowly. He doesn’t even have the damn slug. No wonder they’re going to leave him to rot on some backwards Rec Station in the boonies somewhere.

“I don’t care,” he says, not looking back at the Barry’s as he grabs his tray and storms off towards the exit. “Good fucking luck to him.”

Skip was always the one with better attunement and spatial awareness; Norman doesn’t even realize Nyne has followed him until they’re turning into a side hallway and the big boy himself grabs Norman’s wrist.

“Hey,” Nyne says. The pink of his hair falls into his face, in front of his sunglasses. Norman stares up at him—glares is more like it, actually—anyway, he looks, because Nyne doesn’t give him the option not to. “You weren’t listening.”

“I don’t need to,” he replies stiffly.

“Yeah,” Nyne counters. “I think you do. He wants you to help vet hosts.”

“And why the fuck would I do that?”

“Skip trusts your judgement,” Nyne says. It sounds like an echo of something. He pauses, then lets go of Norman’s wrist. “And between you and me, I think he misses you. He doesn’t do well with the cold shoulder shit.”

“Oh, poor baby,” Norman hisses, rubbing the skin where Nyne had touched him. “He can miss me all the fuck he wants. If he wants to come home, he knows where to find me.”

The implication of the words don’t hit him until Nyne raises one slow eyebrow at him. Norman goes pale, then red, spluttering, but it’s too late—not that Nyne seems to be judging. Damn Barry’s, always too fucking perceptive—

“Dude,” Nyne says quietly. “My feelings would be hurt too. I don’t blame you for not wanting to get involved. Look, if you want me to, I can try to redirect him. Let me and Barry help him instead. You don’t gotta get invested in this shit. We know you can hold your own.”

It’s a surprisingly gentle admission, one Norman hesitates at, but he gives Nyne one short, sharp nod. “…thanks.”

“Least I can do,” he says, stepping back, towards the cafeteria again. “And, uh, if you ever wanna talk—you let me know. You know where to find me.”

Norman’s not sure what overtakes him, but he cracks half a smile. “Right on.”

“Right on,” Nyne repeats, his smile brightening, and then he’s gone.

He has to cave and ask for help.

It’s embarrassing as shit to realize he’s the only one who can’t identify Skip on sight anymore—he looks different, sure, but even some of the Jib-Jobbers have it all figured out and he doesn’t. His mouth goes sour when he realizes, and he ends up having to approach Sidney for help, because she seems to be the most removed—

Bad call. She starts jabbering on about something about Skip as she roller blades down the halls of the Wurst, about how he’s finally gotten around to keeping the identification on because for the first few hosts he’d simply forget, and it was always funny having to help coordinate when they couldn’t find him—

Norman stops listening.

The key, he finds out, is a bulky, blinking bracelet that looks more like handcuffs than anything else. He scowls at it, then decides to look at Skip’s face of the three malton unit cycle, and—

Huh.

Dude is lanky, which is the first thing Norman notices. Tall, unable to balance on his own two feet—his ears are big. His ears are massive. He’s not sure why he’s so fixated on them.

(Maybe it’s to distract from the sharp line of the man’s jaw, or the stubble that graces the skin; maybe it’s to distract from those eyes, too intelligent, shining and pointed and bright when they swing in his direction, bright green in a way that’s a hair too familiar; maybe it’s to distract from the swoop of his hair as it falls into one of his eyes, or the piano-perfect hands that reach up to push the offending curl away so he can stare at Norman across the room with a crooked smile.)

(Maybe Norman decides to focus on the ears to distract from the fact that this guy looks a little like him, and Skip hasn’t smiled that brightly at him in any of the other hosts he’s seen.)

“There he is!” Sidney says brightly, pointing her gun in Skip’s direction.

Norman ought to thank her. He just maneuvers around her, making sure not to shoulder check her as he does, and ends up meeting Skip halfway across the Jib-Job worker space.

“You looking for me?” Skip asks, blinking one eye at a time. Norman’s lip curls a bit.

“Heard you wanted advice,” Norman says stiffly. “Some mission something. New host or whatever.”

“I do,” Skip says. He leans, a little unsteady on the feet of this guy, and throws their arms around Norman pointedly to guide him to the escape pod that’s supposedly serving as his room. “Man, am I glad you’re here.”

He’s taller than Norman. That’s another thing he decides to focus on, instead of the cologne that he’s been missing for a few weeks drifting over his face.

“I’m not gonna play your little assistant,” Norman clarifies, his lip curling a little more. He tries to shake Skip off unsuccessfully. “Just came to offer some words of—”

“Yeah, yeah, yes, I know,” Skip says dismissively, smacking the button to open the door. “I won’t keep you long.”

As the door closes behind them, Norman realizes it’s the first time they’ve really been alone since Skip abandoned him, and the room is very small and the air is a little warm and he can’t quite remember how to breathe. It doesn’t have anything to do with the way Skip bends over in front of him—really, it doesn’t. He doesn’t think this guy is attractive.

(But he is half-aware that Skip is the one in charge as the guy’s hips swing and bounce a little, and the knowledge of that makes him look away, trying to remember what air even is.)

“Skip,” he says pointedly, clearing his throat. “The hell do you even want my opinion for?”

“Figured if I was gonna be throwing myself into the heat of battle,” Skip says brightly, standing up with a few files in hand and a wide grin, “I ought to ask the man I trust most for battle advice.”

Norman finally looks back, his face grave and serious, and he watches Skip’s face falter a few times.

“What?” Skip asks quietly, stubbornly keeping the smile up, as fake as it is now.

Norman swallows hard, rubbing his jaw and looking away. “…if you wanted to come on a mission, you could have just—there are easier ways. You know that.”

Skip makes a strange kind of noise—after a moment, Norman realizes it was him trying to hold back a laugh.

“It’s better this way,” he says easily. “Besides, it’s good for me. I’m getting more used to different systems, and it’s—it’s better. You can’t tell me it isn’t better.”

Norman has to bite back his own reply, staring hard at a corner of the carpet. I sure as hell can. Care about me and my opinion so damn much, then why the hell don’t you just come back? I’ll apologize if that’s what you’re waiting for. None of this is better. You ought to know that. Or are you doing this because you know it? Is this some kind of punishment for me?

You could just come home, and you’re not. It’s not better.

Skip, unaware, sets the files on the table, gesturing. “Anyway, if you wanna just give the candidates a once over…”

“No,” Norman says, rubbing under his chin now. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Skip’s head fly up. He just sighs. “I’ll give you my recommendations, but I’m not gonna sit here and help you decide which one of these fucks you’re gonna end up in next.”

“I…guess I don’t understand the difference,” Skip says slowly.

“If you’re going in with someone you’re not long-term bonded with,” Norman says stiffly. “You’re gonna want someone who already knows what they’re doing in combat. Muscle memory, right? You gonna do the whole front lines thing or sneak around instead?”

Skip sits in the chair at the desk, heaving a sigh.

(The same way Norman does. He pretends not to notice.)

“I dunno. What’s better?”

“Depends on what you want out of it. You, me, Marge—we kinda sneak around a little more. Play the field before we blaze the guns. You end up with the android and steroids, you’re probably gonna light the place up without talking. So. Depends on who you wanna hang out with.”

“Maybe I wanna hang out with Gunnie,” Skip says, kind of defensively.

“Then you’re not on the front lines,” Norman informs him. “You’re not even on the sidelines. You’re on the diagonal lines, and Gunnie’s gonna get you into so much trouble there’s not a right answer.”

“I like Gunnie.”

“Kid’s great, yeah. Doesn’t make it any easier when he’s allowed to leave the ship.”

“He’s your kid,” Skip says, leaning his chin into his hand. Norman glares at him. His arms are tight across his chest now, and he keeps shifting uncomfortably—he’s not quite in the doorway anymore, but he’s close to it. Easy escape if he needs to.

“Gunnie Miggles-Rashbax is a grown ass man,” Norman reminds him. “And he’s our navigator. He needs to stay on the ship, unless you’re happy to drag him out of a casino, in which case you’re gonna need a body like the Barry’s.”

“Like the Barry’s,” Skip echoes thoughtfully, turning to one of the files. “Hm. What about—”

“Is that all?”

“Will you take a look at this one?” Skip says irritably, holding the file out. Norman considers, then shakes his head. “That’s why I wanted your opinion.”

“You wanna keep jumping around, I’m not helping,” Norman says hotly. “I gave you my fucking advice. Can I go?”

“You used to like me,” Skip says, kind of sad, and Norman scoffs. “No, really. I really thought you did.”

There’s a weird kind of honesty to his voice that Norman doesn’t know what to do with. He turns to look at Skip with furrowed brows, trying to decipher it, but—he can’t. He doesn’t know what that means. He does like Skip—as weird and annoying as he is. Even with the plants, and the reminders that they absolutely would never, never be the same—

“Huh,” Norman says, which is a non-response, then clears his throat again and stares down at his feet. “Look, you—if you’re gonna insist on hitching a ride with somebody else for this mission, you ought to come with me and Marge. Safer that way.”

Skip doesn’t say anything for a while; when he does, the husky voice he’s borrowing shakes. “Why? What does it matter to you if I’m safe? Or is this just about the Jib-Jobber?”

“It’s not about the Jib-Jobber,” Norman says pointedly. “Think all of us are gonna be a little more comfortable. And that way the teams are balanced. Besides, aren’t you and Margie girl tight as tits?”

Skip snorts suddenly. “Sorry, what?”

“Aren’t you?” Norman demands indignantly, his face heating as he stares at Skip laughing. “Well? I thought you two were—”

“Tight as tits?” Skip repeats, sliding back in the chair and holding his stomach as he cackles.

(For just a moment, Norman is taken back sixty cycles, watching someone familiar and kind make the same move in a small bunker on his Amercadian home planet, and the laugh is just as musical and the smile is just as warm, and Norman feels something long forgotten and stale curdle in his chest. It burns. It aches. And he thinks, for a moment—he wonders about Nicholas, and Natalie, and he’s overtaken with a grief he never thought he’d have to feel again.)

(The color drains from his face, and Skip doesn’t even open his eyes to notice.)

“God, Skipper,” Skip says, wiping under one eye with a wide grin. “Absolutely never cease to—that’s great. Tight as tits. I want that on a t-shirt.”

“Are we done here?”

He’s not sure what Skip hears in his voice that tips him off, but his head snaps to Norman with a sudden, deep-etched concern.

“Skipper?”

“I said, are we done here?” he repeats, and he hears it that time—the tremble of his voice, and he’s acutely aware of the way his hands are shaking now too.

“Norman?” Somehow, the genuine panic in Skip’s voice makes it worse. He can’t care— “Hey, what’s going on? Deep breaths, come on, you know—” Skip starts to get out of the chair and Norman flinches back hard enough to smack into the door. “—what happened?”

“Are we done?” he repeats for the third time, his voice thick now.

“…yeah,” Skip says softly, still half-crouched, one hand outstretched. “You gave me your advice.”

He doesn’t even bother replying, smacking the button to open the door and flying across the Jib-Job space without looking back.

In the escape pod, Skip is left feeling strange and off-kilter. Bord, the current host, sends a wave of sympathy. Skip ignores it, making his way to the door to watch as Norman bolts to the rest of the ship and out of sight.

Is he like…okay? I thought he was the captain.

Be quiet, Skip says, kinder than he means to, tightening their hand on the doorframe. He doesn’t know what to make of it. For a moment he’d almost thought things were going well—but maybe that was confirmation enough. Norman hadn’t outright said he didn’t like Skip anymore, but he was worried about Skip’s safety, with the express clarification that it isn’t tied just to the Jib-Jobber he’s inhabiting. Curious, then, that he didn’t finish the conversation. It was almost a breakthrough.

Maybe that’s why they couldn’t finish it, then.

It’s not as though Norman has ever been forthcoming with anything a malton unit in his life. Even getting him to admit he likes his team was a gargantuan task, much like pulling teeth from Aurora Nebbins. Skip knows it all too well, so he shouldn’t be fucking surprised, should he?

He’s fine, he tells Bord eventually. Get rest.

And Bord takes the hint, vanishing to sleep, leaving Skip alone with his thoughts. He falls back onto the bed, staring out at the stars beyond the glass again. One of his favorite discoveries is that some people can see stars better than others can, and certain people can see loads more, depending on where they are in the galaxy at any given moment. Bord has alright enough eyes. Nothing exceptional. Certainly he can’t see as many stars as Norman can, but that doesn’t matter much, he doesn’t think.

It’s not as though he’ll ever get to see through Norman’s eyes again except in an emergency.

He’s just looking out for the crew, Skip assumes nonsensically. If Skip were to go off with the Barry’s, one wrong step and Nyne would probably lose his shit; plus, he’s got a point. Skip and Margaret are pretty tight at the moment, what with the program and the funds and all the rest of it. So Norman was just being practical, and clearly his feelings had nothing to do with it.

So why did he run? What had made him so afraid?

Skip doesn’t know. He curls up in his bed, trying to ignore the gnawing feeling he’s done something wrong.

Nobody sees Norman for a few malton units, so he misses the final selection, which means when they land on Rec Station 13 he’s faced with a brand new face stalking along behind Margaret with a shitty little bracelet on.

There’s an old Amercadian movie he reminds Norman of. It’s hard to place at first, but it’s something about the way he carries himself, the clunking of his boots, the unkempt hair and the severeness of his face—framing green eyes, ones that haunt Norman in the middle of the night—

“Is it fuckin’ Halloween?” he grumbles. The Barry’s both turn to look at him; it takes Skip an extra moment, then he does too, narrowing his eyes. “Come on, you look like the fuckin’—what’s it called—summer soldier or whatever.”

“What?” Skip blinks, eyes wide, softer now that they’re pointed at him—he wants to scare everyone but the crew, he reasons, so he is intentionally trying to be less scary with the lot of them, of which Norman is a part.

Something. He ignores the strange feeling in his chest at the sight and averts his eyes.

Margaret glances up from her communicator, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “What?”

Norman grumbles, readjusting the holster on his hip in annoyance. “Never mind.”

“Sorry, was that an Amercadian reference?” Margaret continues. “Norman, you’re getting soft.”

“Oh, shut up,” he says pointedly, fighting with the holster until it comes undone entirely and slides out. When he moves his leg to try to stop it, he ends up kicking it across the floor instead, and it skitters and slides until it flies under a table. “God damn it—”

“Easy, Skipper,” Skip says, and Norman has never shot anyone in their universe a dirtier look as he storms off to go retrieve his gun again. “What did I do? Why did he look at me like—”

“Skip,” one of the Barry’s hisses. “Cut it out. He’s in a mood.”

I’m always in a mood, Norman thinks bitterly, his lip curling as he has to crawl on the floor to retrieve his gun. Everyone is waiting for him to load off; he stubbornly refuses to meet any of their eyes as Margaret starts divvying them up.

“Skip and the Barry’s with me. Sidney, I’m sending you, Gunnie, and the Captain up to the top level to see if you can find the ship we’re looking for.”

“And—” Gunnie interrupts. “And if we can’t find it, we can—there’s—we—are pit stops off the table?”

“No casinos,” Margaret says pointedly.

“Not a casino,” Gunnie protests, holding his hands up. “No, no, nothing like that—but—maybe—perhaps—”

“Whatever you’re trying to ask about, no,” Margaret says, snapping. “Gunnie, I’m serious. After the mess you made the last time we were in New Wyoming—”

“Place was crooked!” Gunnie starts shouting, and Norman tunes all of them out.

They’re not even sending Skip with him. He ought to be insulted—he’s been delegated to watch the android and the gambling addict, observing from above, and their heavy hitters are going with Margaret somewhere else. He shouldn’t be surprised. No, genuinely, he shouldn’t. It was probably Skip’s idea in the first place. What better way to learn how to be a real spacer than by going off on his own, getting his host killed, not even near enough to his backup host for it to make sense—

Except, Norman thinks with a poisonous, traitorous pang to his heart, he’s not even worthy to be a backup host anymore. Skip doesn’t want anything to do with him, and Norman doesn’t even give the stupid fuck a passing glance as he grabs Gunnie by the arm and pulls him off the ship.

“Sidney!” he calls, not looking back. “You coming?”

“I am physically incapable, but I am following you!”

Idiot, he thinks, and there’s no forced twinge of fondness anymore, and Norman considers how the crew throwing him off the Rec Station might be a blessing in disguise.

Skip hates how he can tell when people are waiting to bring something up. Margaret is a few steps ahead of them, but the Barry’s are both flanking him awkwardly, and Syx keeps clearing his throat and Nyne keeps nearly tripping, and after only five martrons Skip sighs loudly and looks up at both of them.

“Okay, what?”

“We didn’t say anything,” Syx says immediately, a little too fast.

“Yeah,” Nyne says, always a beat behind the upswing, and Skip sighs heavily.

“No, you two are clearly—you’ve got something.”

“No we don’t.”

Even Margaret glances back to give Syx a disbelieving look. He shrinks.

“Look,” Nyne says, his voice softening. “We just…didn’t realize how bad things were with you and Norm.”

“Yeah, we thought you and the Skipper were—” Syx holds up two crossed fingers, his middle finger wrapped around his pointer. “—tight still. And you’re not.”

“That’s how things go,” Skip says vaguely, though his voice is suddenly much more subdued. He shifts the heavy repeater on his back, ignoring the way the harness is cutting into his shoulder and making it feel weird to breathe. “He doesn’t want a cerebro slug anymore, now he doesn’t have to fucking worry about it.”

The Barry’s share another look over his head. “…I don’t think either of you actually want this,” Syx says slowly. “You both seem kind of miserable.”

“Miserable?” Skip repeats, laughing a bit too loud. “Oh, no, I’m great! I’m thriving. I’ve genuinely never been happier. Hey, look at me now—” He holds out his arms and flexes a little, nudging Nyne. Nyne doesn’t change his concerned expression. “—does this look like someone who’s miserable to you?”

“I don’t think you want me to answer that.”

“I’ve stopped applications,” Margaret says from ahead of them, making Skip frown as he looks at her. “Just for a little bit.”

“What the hell did you do that for?”

Margaret sighs loudly, stopping in place and forcing all of them to stop too. “Skip, you’re acting impulsively, and Norman is even more unpleasant than he used to be.”

“Yeah,” Syx says. His voice is a lot quieter this time. “I mean, it’s less vocal threats, but he’s still clearly not all in about the Gunner Channel, and it’s…worse. Sid’s been upset about it.”

“What’s he done to Sid?”

“He keeps making her feel like she’s stupid or in the way.” Syx glares at Margaret for a moment. “Which is why I wanted her to come with us today.”

“I need heavy muscle with me,” Margaret says pointedly. “She’ll survive one outing.”

“You’d better be right.”

“I just think,” Nyne says, trying to pull it back, “that maybe you and the Skipper need to talk, even if you think you’re on the same page or you’re uncomfortable with it or whatever. Just for the rest of us. Cause if you haven’t talked, it’s a lot harder to take your word for it when you say you’re fine.”

Skip stares up at him, his face hard. Nyne doesn’t flinch. “Well,” Skip says after a martron, pushing past all of them. “I guess I’ll keep it in mind.”

“What was the point of it?” he hears Nyne ask as he storms off. “Look at—that didn’t do jack shit. We need to lock them in a room, and—”

“Leave it, Nyne,” Syx says. Skip hears his footsteps already starting to catch up. “What level are we headed to, Marge?”

If Norman didn’t know how bad he’d get his ass chewed for abandoning Gunnie in the casino, he’d put him there himself with an extra hundred credits for good measure. But Sidney is trying to distract him, and Gunnie seems to also be trying to focus on anything but the flashing lights and bells around the corner, so Norman ends up standing guard at the door to clock anyone coming in or out. It’s a cute little store. A little touristy for his taste. But any time they’ve so much as wandered near the balcony to try to catch a glimpse of some of the ships that are docked, someone else has been trailing them, and they’ve collectively decided it’s better to hole up and wait out the patrols wandering around.

He’s got a sinking feeling their own ship is the reason everyone seems to be so on guard, but credits are credits.

So. He’s people watching, and he hears Gunnie geeking out over some arcanotech whatever with Sidney, talking upgrades and “new, exciting developments!” for both her and the ship, which means he’s only half paying attention when he sees something headed their way. The person recognizes Norman before Norman recognizes them—

And then he catches on, and his gun is already in his hand. He whistles into the shop; Gunnie and Sidney look up, confused.

“We got trouble,” he says, making eye contact directly with Fav Scarsbarg.

Fav was a newer enemy of theirs, born from a contract gone wrong about four cycles ago. He’d been the victim of a theft; Skip and Norman had schmoozed their way into his inner circle for a night, then smacked him over the head with a chair, shot out the window, and jumped ten stories onto a passing skiff being piloted by Sidney and the Barry’s. Fav had tried following them for a few jumps, but he’d lost track of them, and honestly—Norman had kind of forgotten about him. He’s some snooty android that thinks he’s better than other androids just because he’s got a little bit more credits than the average one—about 6.5 million credits, actually—anyway, not a good enemy to have but very forgettable, and he’s storming across the Rec Station with murder in his eyes.

We’re in for it now, Norman thinks instinctively, but Skip is not there, so he swallows hard and ignores the way his thoughts echo.

“Call the ship,” Norman yells to Gunnie and Sidney, holding for an extra moment. “And find another way out of here.”

“Scale of one to ten, how fucked are we?” Gunnie asks. His voice is shaking in that half-excited, half terrified way it always does.

“Forty nine,” Norman replies, then he flips his gun out of his holster and shoots.

Margaret is in the middle of charming some underpaid Rec Station worker when the comms go off.

“Why is nobody on the gunner channel?!”

Syx scrambles for his own comms as Nyne stares down at Skip’s. “Oh, shit, it fucking—died—” Syx manhandles Skip into place, yelling into the comm piece. “What’s going on, Gunnie?”

“Bad news, bad news! Hot exit now!”

“What?” Margaret demands, abandoning the conversation with the kid. He looks disappointed. Skip is still reeling from how Syx is holding him awkwardly. “What happened?”

The comms crackle again. This time, it’s Sid. “Fav Scarsbarg is back and he’s out for blood, even though I’m sure as an android he does not have any of his own to shed!”

“We gotta go,” Nyne says immediately, grabbing Margaret’s shoulder and shoving Syx towards the exit. “If Fav is back—”

“They’re in trouble,” Syx agrees. “What level are they on?”

Gunshots ring out in the distance. Even across the space, even despite how Skip doesn’t technically have any kind of connection with Norman anymore, despite the fact that Norman’s gun is just like any other gun in the galaxy, Skip is sure he recognizes it, and his head snaps up to see returning gunfire on the top floor.

“Found them,” he says, letting the host’s muscle memory take over for a moment and swing the gun over their shoulder and prep for combat. “How do we get up there?”

“Upsie daisies,” Margaret says quickly. “I thought the combat was gonna be down here—shit, shit—okay, plan.”

“Plan,” Syx echoes.

“Syx, you’re with me. We’re gonna get Gunnie and Sid to the ship. You two—” She points at Skip and Nyne. “—find Norman and either kill Fav or incapacitate him, then see if you can find the ship we’re looking for. We may have to split up depending on how fast Gunnie gets the astronav up and running.”

“Like take different ships?” Skip asks, alarmed.

“Sid can pilot for a bit,” Syx says defensively.

“That’s not what I’m worried about!”

“This is why you and the Skipper need to talk,” Nyne says pointedly, grabbing Skip by the cuff of his neck and dragging him along. “Come on!”

“What if we can’t find you guys?” Skip insists, but nobody is listening to him. Margaret is on her own comms relaying the plan; Nyne is dashing to the upsie daisie as fast as he can, and he doesn’t seem to notice when Skip gets caught staring up at the far-away battle.

He can see Norman jet packing up, his gun aiming true every time, his shoes exploding as he fires down on Fav’s security detail. He looks like a dream—a real spacing captain—something Skip had always envisioned, one of the guys on the posters when people would proclaim how great the spacing life was—he’d spent more than enough time in younger, simpler minds that looked up to someone like Norman Takamori, and Skip feels a strange wave of longing as he realizes the host body is having a similar reaction.

My name is Steve, he supplies quietly. And god, what a man that is.

You can say that again, Skip agrees, feeling something well in his chest for a moment. Pride, perhaps.

He raises his gun at just the right moment and fires, unseating the bottom of the railing post from the floor it’s attached to, and he watches the security detail Norman is kicking go flying past the railing and arc over the Rec Station open-air center.

“Nice shot!” Nyne calls. “Come on!”

Skip glances, hissing. “We won’t get up there in time, Nyne!”

“Then what the fuck are we supposed to do!”

Skip grins, feeling feral for a moment. “We bring them to us. Hey, nuts and bolts!”

“That feels offensive,” Nyne hisses, but it does what Skip wanted, which was make Fav turn and glare down at them, raising his own gun.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Your worst nightmare,” Skip laughs, firing again at the railing. It hits the metal pole, then the bullet pings off and hits something else. Fav goes flying back in surprise, and Norman—with a now non-functional jetpack—decides to land—

—on the railing that’s completely unattached now—

—panic flies through Skip’s body with such ferocity it surprises him, but he realizes why after a moment. It didn’t come from the host. It came from him. His slug body contracts in vicious fear at the sight of Norman falling, unable to stop himself or catch himself or—

Skip didn’t know a body could hold this much adrenaline, but he throws himself forward, scales a table and jumps up to the next floor just in time to reach for Norman before he hits anything. He holds one arm out, catches Norman nearly bridal style, and hangs for a moment from the second story as he stares down at the Skipper’s face.

“You okay?” he asks, half breathless. The exertion caught him by surprise; on instinct, he turns off pain receptors. He has a feeling he’s gonna need it.

Norman is staring up at him with wide eyes, a look of surprise he’s never given Skip before, his face flushed red.

“Did I hit you?”

“No,” Norman says, his voice rough. “No, I’m—fine. What’s—” He glances up, but his attention is clearly still on Skip if the way his grip is tightening on Skip’s arm is any indication.

“Shit,” Skip says, glancing up with him, and he takes a risk—pulls Norman tighter to his chest, lets go of the one railing and hauls his grip up another bar, then manages to kick up and pull them both up to the second floor one handed. “You can’t fly anymore, right?”

“How the hell did you do that?”

“Do—what?” He blinks, confused. Norman isn’t moving with him, just sitting on the floor and staring up, looking so owlishly confused that it would almost be adorable on anyone else.

(For a moment—and Skip isn’t sure if this is Steve’s thoughts sliding in or his own manifesting for the first time—Skip thinks it would be nice to see Norman stare at him like that in another setting, one with fewer people and closer walls, with a hand on his thigh and another hand on his throat. Skip tries to envision this, though, and he comes up blank, because he cannot picture a hand that is his own—only someone else’s—and the world starts to fall away from under him.)

(Thank dead god for Steve, who drags him back into battle focus.)

“We have to go,” Skip insists, clearing his throat, ignoring how red Norman has suddenly become. “Your comms work?”

“Gunner channel,” Norman says by way of explanation, his voice still unsteady. “I can—”

“I don’t know what channel everyone’s on,” Skip confesses, pushing to his feet. “Come on, we gotta find Nyne. And look for that fucking ship, I guess—”

Norman follows him after a moment. They find Nyne; they find the other ship, though it turns out the thing they needed to steal is within sight, so Norman books it back to the ship and Nyne covers Skip as he runs inside, grabs the box in question, and bolts. All three of them are back on the ship just as Gunnie makes the last FTL check, and then they’re off, with Norman’s flushed and red face staring past the rest of the crew out at the stars. Skip lets Sidney have the honor of opening the box. Inside sits a new prototype for android upgrades—

“That’s why Fav was there,” Margaret says quietly to the group. “I’d bet a hundred credits.”

Gunnie starts to pop up; Skip pushes him back into his seat. “Not literally, Gunnie, come on now.”

“No, no, not literally—”

“I was just—joking! I knew you weren’t being—and besides, I don’t even gamble—”

“—we saw you at the casino this morning!”

“—anymore! I was going to say I don’t gamble anymore!”

“Fav’s gonna be chasing us for another three cycles,” Syx complains. “How the hell are we supposed to get away from him if he’s chasing this?”

“We kill him,” Nyne points out darkly, leaning against the railing by Norman’s controls. Skip watches Norman look up and give him a very strange look—he prompts the mind he’s in to ask what the hell that was, but Steve doesn’t have an answer.

He should have expected. Norman is as confusing to everyone else as the slug who used to live in his head.

“Okay,” Margaret says, pulling out her notes. “We can circle back around to that, but I think we should head to maybe another Rec Station, right?”

“It wouldn’t be a half bad idea. Get lost in the hustle and bustle,” Gunnie agrees. “And—and, you know, if there’s some entertainment—”

“Gunnie.”

“—or we can just open the casino to the greater masses!”

“Absolutely not!”

“Well—“ Gunnie sputters several times, then waves his arms for a moment. “—look, we’re going to need some help deciphering this stuff anyway, I bet there’s someone on—what, Rec 97? There’s plenty of smart people on Rec 97!”

“We’re not looking for chef’s tools,” Syx deadpans, to which Nyne gives him a very strange glance.

“No chef’s tools,” Gunnie agrees. “But—Rec 97?”

Margaret appraises him for a moment, then sighs, waving her hand. “Captain, if you could? And I need a matcha.”

“On it, Miss Encino!” Sidney says brightly, roller blading out of the room quickly. Margaret follows, then Gunnie and Syx, both of them half-lecturing the other about bartering with spatulas.

Skip stretches, then collapses forward over the back of a chair. Steve’s muscles ache; he’s tired of feeling it, so he shuts the receptors off, at least for now. Slowly, he looks up at Nyne and Norman—Nyne, who is staring at him curiously, and Norman, who is staring out the window presumably without seeing anything at all.

“What a malton unit,” Skip sighs. Nyne raises one eyebrow in agreement.

“What a malton unit,” he sighs back.

“I gotta focus,” Norman says stiffly, and Skip’s eyes land on him again, the way they always do. He looks—still flushed, in fact, and a little haggard. He hasn’t shaved in a bit. Skip thinks for a moment about what the stubble feels like, what it felt like to run his fingers over it when they were his own—

(Skip knows Norman hates the stubble, but there’s clearly still some nicks from the last time he’d tried to do it on his own, and he remembers latching in and helping hold Norman’s hands steady. Something about soothing the nerves for him, the way Norman had been so—he didn’t express gratefulness often, but he did it then, and it was one of the only times Skip ever felt useful and not like a nuisance. Hell, a few times Norman had even indulged in letting them stick their hand in a little bit of the shaving cream to experience the feeling as a thank you to Skip.)

(Skip sees the nicks, sees how Norman has kind of given up, and the ensuing wave of guilt that overwhelms him nearly makes Steve throw up.)

Dude, get it together.

Skip sours just as Norman looks back over at him, so Skip has to look away quickly—but not before he sees the strange set of confusion and hurt on Norman’s face.

If you’re gonna be gay, quit being surprised.

Skip jerks, blinking. Gently, he prods at Steve. What do you mean?

I mean, if you’re gonna be gay as fuck about the captain, quit being surprised about it. You think he’s hot.

I think that used to be my face. What the hell do you know anyway? Go back to sleep.

Steve sends a little blip of annoyance, but he does quiet down, so Skip sighs and resquares his shoulders.

“I’m gonna go shower,” he mumbles, cracking his neck. Nyne claps his shoulder as he passes. “Wake me up when we’re somewhere safe.”

“You gonna sleep in the shower?” Norman calls after him, and Skip almost smiles back over his shoulder, but Steve’s words are still ringing—so Skip laughs, and it echoes, but he doesn’t know if it makes it back to Norman or not.

He’s not sure it would matter anyway.

Norman expects everyone to clear out of the captain’s area, but he’s not left wholly alone. Gunnie is still active on comms, trying to help direct Norman where to go.

And…Nyne doesn’t leave. At all.

He keeps leaning on the railing, staring out past the window at the same sky Norman has been fascinated with since he was a kid, and he wonders how different they really are at the end of the malton unit.

He gives it a marbec and a half before he says anything, then Norman clears his throat, settling back from the controls for a ribec and running his thumb over the smooth indentation of the button by his arm rest.

“You got something to say?”

“Sure,” Nyne says, as if he was waiting for Norman to speak. He doesn’t turn around. “The hell is happening with Skip?”

Norman feels that same rush of blood from earlier, making his face hot and his pants tight, and he swallows hard and tries to steady his voice. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Nyne repeats, his voice still even. “What the hell is happening with Skip?”

“He’s a super soldier at the moment,” Norman says, trying to sound confused and not distracted. “But that’s all I got, I’m not in charge of him anymore.”

“Do you want to be?”

Norman’s hand shifts on the arm rest, flexing, as if imagining what it would be like to put a hand around a throat that belonged to Skip; his hips shift, and his mind supplies him with the sound of his own voice whining, which is—well, it’s something, he thinks, and then he promptly shakes his head and clears his throat.

“I couldn’t control him even when he stuck around up here,” he insists. “It’s not—no.”

Nyne turns around, raising one critical eyebrow. “Dude. You know you made that noise out loud, right?”

Norman has never felt more embarrassed in his whole life, he thinks, except for the time Natalie had walked in on him fisting his dick over a picture of the perfect Amercadian soldier in one of the closets of the bunker they used to live in. She’d teased him for weeks about their sergeant Fred, who looked surprisingly similar to the picture; Norman ended up asking Natalie out for dinner just to prove a point, and—

Now’s not the time. He clears his throat again.

“Okay,” he says, muscle memory kicking in—a muscle Skip had trained. Norman feels something constrict in his chest. “I mean—I didn’t—”

“What the hell did he do to you?” Nyne asks, though he sounds amused now. “Holy shit, why are you all red like that?”

“Shut up,” Norman says, trying to sound sharp but instead sounding like a fifteen year old again. “No, shut up, it’s not—”

“Oh my god,” Nyne says quietly. “You’re into Skip right now.”

Norman has a lot of ways to counter that. One, he’s not into anything about Skip. He’s seen what Skip finds attractive—slime, and plants, and inhuman feelings, and overstimulation—not that Norman is opposed to all of it, but—the point is, even if he was into Skip—which he is not!—Skip would not reciprocate, and that’s the end of the conversation, period.

But Norman hasn’t talked to anyone in ages, and he thinks he’s tired of keeping his mouth shut, because the thoughts he used to be able to dispel with another voice now just bounce in the empty void without any pushback except his own. And he’s not very good with pushing back.

(Just look at his career.)

Instead, what Norman decides to counter with is this: “It’s not just right now.”

He does not look away from the stars. He wishes they were more helpful right now.

Nyne straightens even more, his face falling into something serious—Norman isn’t looking, but he sees it in the corner of his eye, so he shuts his eyes entirely instead.

“Oh,” Nyne says quietly. “Oh, it’s…you’re serious.”

“Shut up,” he says, much sharper now. “I’m not having this conversation with you.” He reaches for the comm and presses the button. “Gunnie, am I holding straight?”

“Yes! Yes, we are going to—just a ribec—we’ll pop out of FTL in a martron, then we should be coasting. Shouldn’t be any asteroids, I hope.”

“You hope,” Norman mutters bitterly. “Yeah, well, you’d better be right, or I’ve got an airlock that needs to get flushed out.”

“G-got it, Captain,” Gunnie says nervously, and then the comms sizzle back into silence.

“You don’t have to be an asshole,” Nyne says after a martron.

“You don’t know me,” Norman says in reply. “You don’t know if I can stop being an asshole or not.”

“You weren’t an asshole before.”

“That was when Skip was here.”

“So the non asshole-ry was all him?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t believe that for a fucking ribec. You know that, right?”

“I didn’t fucking ask you, now, did I?”

Nyne climbs up to the platform, and Norman pushes to his own feet, holding his own despite the several inches Barry has on him. They stare at each other for a martron, both glaring as hard as they can, until Norman puts his finger in Nyne’s chest pointedly.

“You got something to fucking say,” he hisses, “then you can take it and shove it directly up your own—”

“Ah, Captain!”

Norman and Nyne both take a step back and snap their heads to the back of the room where a very embarrassed looking Raymond Zam is straightening his tie.

“Wasn’t meaning to, uh, interrupt,” Raymond continues awkwardly. “I just wanted to see what the plan is.”

“Go ask Marge,” he snips, turning away. “I don’t fucking care.”

“Will it be affecting communications?”

“No,” Nyne replies for him, clearing his throat loudly. “But we’re taking a necessary pit stop, unless you want to get your ass blown halfway back to Rec 13. We’re headed to Rec 97.”

“Right, got it. Thanks. Sorry again.”

Norman runs a hand down his face, feeling the way his skin pulls taught, and opens his mouth—

Just as the comm goes off again.

“Alright, Cap, if you want to, uh, let us out of FTL slowly, then, uh, we’re supposed to be approaching.”

Norman kicks a switch, shoves Nyne to the side, and settles back into his chair. And if his hips are slightly more forward, if he slouches, if he intentionally makes it so Nyne has something to look at—

Well. Sue him.

“Suit yourself, Takamori,” Nyne says instead of getting on his knees, and Norman doesn’t even turn around when he hears Nyne leave. He just stares out at the stars instead, listening to the silent buzz of the ship as he slowly guides it in the direction of the dock at the Rec Station ahead of them.

They hit Rec 97 in a few marbecs, and Margaret has to be the one to remind Skip that he’s supposed to hop this morning. They miss their alarm—something about Skip tiring him out too badly—anyway, Margaret bangs on the door and introduces Livirian, who—at first glance, with bleary eyes, Skip almost thinks is Norman. She’s tall, with angular features, and those same, piercing green eyes—not like his own, of course—

You’re captain brained, Steve supplies unhelpfully.

“Slug brained,” he replies out loud, blinking several times. “Agh. Sorry, Marge.”

“It’s okay. We just need to get a bit of a move on, unfortunately, so if you could…”

He hocks himself into Steve’s hand and goes from calloused, rough skin to dry and curious touches; when he settles in Livirian’s head, he prods her brainstem softly, then attaches. As he blinks into place, she’s massaging where he’s settled on the back of her neck.

“So strange,” she says aloud. “You know, I’ve never seen a brain slug outside of a person before. Before the next switch, would you let me take a look?”

I’ll consider it, he replies. I’m a little exhausted, you mind if I take a backseat for a while?

“He wants to take a backseat,” she tells Margaret. “Is that allowed?”

“Sure,” Margaret says, guiding Steve out of the room with all of his belongings. “For the next three malton units, you and Skip get to symbiosis together however you’d like. Whatever you two agree on. If that’s him fronting, or you, or whichever—but we let you two work it out. Is he—” She sighs, peering to the side, as if she can see Skip properly that way. “Skip, are you okay? Are you sick or something?”

Livirian pauses expectantly, and Skip gives the psychic equivalent of a groan and taps in—eyes, to glare at Margaret, and face muscles to frown, and voice to tell her—

“Am I not allowed to just be tired?” he complains. Margaret raises an eyebrow at him. “Look, I did a lot yesterday. I’m exhausted.”

“Yeah,” Steve grumbles. “You’re exhausted.”

“Go be somewhere else,” he says sharply, glaring at Steve, and Steve ducks out of the doorway. “Thank you for hosting!” he yells after him as Steve books it down the hallway, and though he’s still angry, Livirian’s voice makes it sound almost amused.

“Okay, Liv—can I call you Liv?”

“Livvy,” she announces, and Skip almost slides away, except then—

“You mind if I talk to Skip for a bit, uh, privately?”

“Oh, did you want me to—”

“No, no, just—if you could take a backseat. I’ll let him rest soon, I just need to check in.”

Livvy gracefully pulls back, and Skip—he sort of locks her away, just because he knows that look on Margaret’s face, and he has a feeling this is going to be trouble if he doesn’t.

“Okay,” he says pointedly. “Yeah, what is it?” There’s a kind of strange muscle memory—he follows it, and their hip pops and he puts his hand on it in a display of sassiness that…he actually kind of likes.

Margaret does not seem to share his enthusiasm for it. She frowns disdainfully. “Keep it together, Skip. Look, we—I know this might be a kind of hard ask, but—the Skipper.”

His face sours immediately. “What about him?”

“I know you two aren’t on great terms right now,” she says.

“Understatement of the millennium,” Skip grumbles, glancing away. More muscle memories—he flips Livvy’s hair over their shoulder, grinning when he feels a wave of confidence sweep over him. “So what?” There’s a reflection in the wall—faint, but there—and he inspects their expression, their face, their mannerisms with glee. “Ooh, this is nice.”

“Skip, focus,” Margaret hisses, snapping in their face. “Look, when we get to Rec 97, I need—someone has to keep an eye on him, okay?”

“Okay? The Barry’s can do it. Sidney. Gunnie. I want to just hang out this time.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Margaret says. “Because he knows all of them. I need a subtle eye.”

Skip sighs, rolling their eyes. “What even for?”

“I’m worried about him,” she says, her voice softer now. “I don’t think he needs to be alone, and I’m afraid he’s going to try. Just…see if Livvy can keep him company. And let me know if anything happens to him. Okay?” She passes over a comm intentionally. “Please?”

Skip frowns even deeper, pulling their arms across their chest, feeling—Livvy’s not small, so they sort of get pushed up, and Skip looks down in curiosity.

Not a bad view.

Norman is not here. The thought comes directly from Skip and he knows it—but there’s a cadence, and a headiness, and a feeling of familiarity. The thoughts cannot be Norman’s but they sure sound like his, and Skip feels that wave of nostalgia from before crest again.

Just as easily, he pushes it down. No need to focus on it now.

The comm is still extended. Skip takes it slowly.

“I make no promises,” Skip says. “Can I go now?”

“Yeah,” Margaret sighs. “Yeah, okay, have fun. Tell Livvy to be careful, okay?”

“Okay,” Skip says, releasing her brain slowly. Livvy blinks back into presence, straightening their back.

“Thank you, Miss Encino!”

“Oh, god, that’s so weird,” Margaret mumbles, and then she leaves.

Then there are two. Livvy prods at Skip curiously, but Skip doesn’t reply. She tries again; he ignores that too, but she doesn’t let up this time, so Skip finally relents.

Yes, hello, what?

Hello. Would you like to join me for breakfast?

Ah…no, I’m okay. Thanks, though.

You’re sure?

I mean, it’s not like I really can eat. I just survive off nutrition from the hosts.

Hosts. What a fantastic name for us. She cheerfully heads off to the cafeteria, humming to herself. I can’t believe I get to be a host. I heard a rumor. May I ask you about it?

You’re very strange, Skip replies, then sends a wave of apology. He probably shouldn’t have said that. She doesn’t seem to mind, though. Sure, what’s the rumor?

Are you truly royalty?

Skip’s slightly elevated mood dims again. Ah…yeah. Yeah, I sure am.

No wonder they let you run the ship for so long.

That is definitely not what happened.

Livvy shrugs, though her disbelief is palpable. Seems to me the entire ship bends to you one way or another.

Don’t put that on me, Skip insists defensively. I didn’t ask them to do that. I was just nicer than Norman at the time.

Only at the time?

This time, indigence flares up. Skip shifts against her brainstem and he feels her pace slow for a moment. Don’t disrespect him like that. Who the hell do you think you even are?

I didn’t mean to offend you, she replies quickly. I’m sorry. I thought that was common knowledge.

Skip almost responds with some very choice words, but he forces them back, deciding that maybe having the communication channel open is causing more stress than it should. At the very least, he decides he maybe ought to stop responding. Livvy is smart enough to give him a few martrons before she tries again, going through the motions of acquiring food and getting ready to step off the ship for a bit.

Skip?

Skip takes a moment before he replies. What.

I’m sorry for what I said about the captain.

Yeah, Skip replies unhelpfully. Then he feels bad, so he readjusts and tries another response. He’s not that popular. We both knew it.

He seems very lonely.

Skip recoils at that, shrinking, tossing the words in front of him over and over and over until they stop hurting so bad—he doesn’t know why they hurt, because they aren’t about him, but he thinks he’d spent so long with Norman that maybe he’s managed to absorb some of him—anyway, the words sting, and Skip feels a shiver run through his whole slug body before he manages to try a response—Livvy beats him to it, though.

Isn’t he?

You—he might be. I’m not divulging the captain’s personal information. What does it matter to you?

I would like to help, Livvy offers. They’re heading off the ship now; Skip watches through her eyes, though he lets her have control of their gaze, and they both watch Norman Takamori weaving through the crowd a hundred feet in front of them. Would you help me?

I’m still tired, Skip complains, but he settles into place anyway. Just—I don’t know, get my attention. Don’t ask him anything personal. Be gentle with him.

(It occurs to him that if Livvy fucks it up and Skip has to jump in that Norman will have even more reason to hate him, and Skip…he doesn’t love that, but maybe that’s the sacrifice he’s made by leaving Norman alone. Maybe Skip’s been designated to be the fall guy when everyone else in the universe decides they want to try to reach out and they fuck it up. Nobody else is able to handle Norman like him and he knows it, or else he would have found someone before a slug hopped out of a crate and took over his personality for a nargon or two. He knows the crew hates Norman and likes Skip. That’s the only reason he got special permission to start the program. But he knows the crew tries to care about Norman, it’s just—they have to go through Skip, even though Skip has been exiled, because nobody else gets him.

Norman is someone for Skip and Skip alone, and he wonders how many times he’ll have to play the song and dance of talking people through how to walk on eggshells around one of Skip’s favorite people in the universe.)

(Forever, he hopes.)

I can be gentle, Livvy replies, tilting her head. I’ve been gentle with you.

You’ve been really off-putting, actually. And that works with me, but he—you can’t use kid gloves, because he doesn’t like being babied, Skip explains. But you also can’t come at him too hard or you won’t get anywhere. And you can’t reverse psychology him, because—I mean this with all the love in my little slug body, he’s not the brightest, and he takes shit at face value. Until you want him to take it at face value, and then he’ll find some hidden alternate meaning that nobody else in the universe would be able to find. So he’s just—he’s complicated. You know what? Maybe you shouldn’t—

Like how he feels about the crew.

Skip stops short. What?

Livvy has already started taking them through Rec 97. Norman is tall enough that she can kind of follow him through the crowd, and she does so with ease, her eyes darting around as she tries to figure out where he might be blasting off to. It seems very clear to a lot of us that he cares about the crew, but the more they seem to show it, the less he believes it. And then when someone snaps he takes that as universal law that they hate him. She pauses, then continues carefully. Or when someone leaves.

Skip detaches for a moment. Something in his membrane is starting to boil at the implications, but not out of anger—out of—what, fear? Shame? He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care, and he forces himself to reattach to Livvy’s brainstem so he can ask. Are you talking about me?

Maybe. Who else has left him?

Riva.

I don’t know Riva.

Yeah. They left.

Well, he doesn’t seem to be quite as hung up on this mysterious Riva as he is a certain slug.

Skip doesn’t know what compels him, but he bites the fleshy part of her brain by the stem, and she flinches hard, holding the back of her head where he sits. “Ow!”

Don’t, Skip says darkly. Don’t do this to me. Just—leave it alone. I’m going to sleep.

If you insist, she replies, much more carefully this time.

Skip doesn’t even bother to respond that time, letting his control over her rest. What does she know, he decides? She’s just a dumb human—from somewhere that isn’t Amercadia, no less. He doesn’t need to listen to her. She doesn’t know him, and she certainly doesn’t know Norman—especially not enough to decide who he cares about, or that he cares about Skip—ridiculous notion in its own right, in fact, because Norman didn’t even like him in the first place, so—Livvy is just wrong, Skip decides, and she’s not stupid but she does have fantastical ideas about the way the universe works.

(He almost wishes he could have her optimism. She sees the world through clear eyes—sharper than Norman’s, in fact, and he attributes it partially to the fact that she’s a cool twenty-five years old. She’s—hell, she’s half Norman’s age, he realizes, and dead god knows how old Skip technically is now, but she’s young and she’s spry and Skip decides tomorrow he’s going to relish in it.)

(Today, he sits back and listens blankly as she makes her way inside one of the nearest bars to write.)

There’s plenty of places that feel like home here, and Norman isn’t interested in doing any of the dumb technology stuff—he’s not smart enough for it anyway, and besides, it always seemed to be more Skip’s interest than his own, so he ditches the crew and decides if they lose Gunnie to the casino again then they’ll all be better for it.

Or maybe, he thinks slowly, he’ll be the one left, and that’ll be just as well.

There’s an Amercadian bar on the twelfth level, not far from where the Wurst is parked, and he wanders around a few of the upper levels before he decides it’s his best bet and slides in the door. It’s sort of a seedy place—perfect for him. And for once, people aren’t looking at him like they want to shoot him, so that’s a plus too. He picks a spot at the far corner of the bar by someone with big headphones on and a laptop in front of her. She’s got an untouched can of cola and a half glass of rum in front of her. There is no ice. The barkeep keeps shooting her strange glances; he seems glad to see Norman pull out a card and pass it over to start a tab.

“What’ll it be, partner?”

“Captain,” Norman corrects, nodding. The barkeep grins. Easy banter. A place to lie low. This, Norman can handle. “Ah, just—” He waves his hand, glancing around, then gestures at the girl’s drink. “—I’ll have what she’s having. On the rocks, if you could, and you can combine it if you want.”

“Sure. Single or double?”

“Double.”

“Hard malton unit?” He tugs out a glass and grabs a nice bottle of rum, raising an eyebrow. Norman shrugs.

“You can say that again.”

The girl is typing furiously. Norman watches as the barkeep types in a lower priced rum for him and nods gratefully, then lets his mind wander as he sips on it slowly. The girl in the corner purses her lips, then sticks her tongue out—

And for a moment, she looks like Natalie, and Norman feels his chest constrict.

(A voice that is not there reminds him to take a deep breath. He ignores it.)

She’s got her hair pulled back into a ponytail to keep the longer strands out of her face; everything that’s fallen out of it is being kept back by the headphones. There’s something about the way she bites her bottom lip that makes him almost nostalgic, and—hell, he found an Amercadian bar and is drinking a double in the middle of what’s supposed to be an afternoon. He can indulge himself a little, so he does.

Natalie was always a physical thinker like that. When she focused hard, she had to do something with her face or her hands—biting her lip, or squinting her eyes, or sometimes pinching her nostrils closed so she could control her breathing even more. He liked watching her when she was studying. Nicholas had always teased her about it—he’d reach over, and he’d tug her ear, and she’d laugh her musical little laugh and lean into his side, then kick Norman’s knee until he stopped grimacing at them and agreed to watch whatever movie they’d wanted to put on that night. The girl in front of him now reminds him so much of her, her back ramrod straight and her eyes critically focused, and—

He notices her bag finally. He’s seen her around the ship—of course he has, he thinks bitterly, sighing. She’s a damn Jib-Jobber.

Still…

No, he decides. He can’t indulge himself in—she’s probably not even interested, and—

(Something from earlier hasn’t quite left. There’s a void he wishes he could fill that he doesn’t know what to do with; there’s a need building in his chest that he thinks is going to explode if he doesn’t do something about it soon.)

(He misses Skip.)

(Norman downs the rest of his drink.)

Slowly, but intentionally, he taps the bar. It gets her attention; she turns to him, pulling her headphones off, and he watches how she actually smiles when she sees him.

“Captain Takamori,” she says brightly. “What a surprise.”

“You’re one of our passengers,” he says awkwardly.

“I am.”

“Okay,” he says, and then he nods slowly. She echoes the movement. And…then he turns back in his seat, staring at the wood grain of the bar in front of him intensely.

What the hell was he thinking? He’d almost forgotten, with how gentle everyone else has been, that he isn’t good with people. All his charm had been because of Skip and they all know it.

He hears a stool squeak, and then the laptop slides down to the seat next to him as the girl joins him.

“Do you mind?” she asks, already sitting. He debates pointing that out, but swallows it back.

“No,” he says. His voice is still a little too gruff, so he clears his throat and tries again. “No, that’s—you can sit wherever you want. Big bar.”

“If you’re more comfortable with me sitting somewhere else—”

“No, no, I didn’t—I didn’t say that.”

“I just wanted to offer.”

“You already moved,” he points out, finally looking at her again with furrowed eyebrows. She blinks up with big eyes, a smile threatening to break out across her face, and he can feel his own mouth twitch in the same direction. “If I didn’t want you sitting here, I could move.”

“You could,” she agrees. “Will you?”

Norman pauses, thinking, then finally takes that deep breath his brain has been begging him for. “No,” he decides. “I’m not gonna move. You can sit there.”

“Good,” she says brightly, pulling her headphones until they’re around her neck. She clicks something to pause her music on her laptop, then turns more fully in her seat to face him. “I’ve heard wonderful things.”

“Have you?” he asks, vaguely surprised. “From who?”

“The entire galaxy,” she grins. “Are you kidding? The Norman Takamori, of the Wurst crew, and I got lucky enough to be accepted onto your ship—I mean, honestly, you can’t actually be surprised.”

You really shouldn’t be, a voice supplies. It sounds like Skip, but Skip isn’t here.

(And he checks. This girl is perky, young, and—bright eyes, but maybe a bit dim behind them, if he had to guess. Nobody else in the universe would be excited to see him, nor call him the Norman Takamori, so she either has only heard fabrications—probably started by Margaret, if he had to guess—or wants something from him. Isn’t that the only reason people talk to him anyway?

But he checks her wrist, because he remembers distantly that Skip is supposed to be wearing a bracelet when he hops, and this girl has a noticeable absence of any jewelry and beautiful chocolate brown eyes, so Skip is not here, and so she must be kind of dumb, unfortunately.

Though it might work in his favor. She’s clearly got some interest in him, and she’s young enough—

Another voice supplies a thought, that he could invite her somewhere and she’d probably say yes for the hell of it and he wouldn’t have to care, but that voice sounds a little too much like one Gust Weatherall, and Norman starts to feel sick. He pushes the thought away—no, he decides, he can’t sleep with her, and he wouldn’t anyway, because she’s not Skip. Curse his own brain.)

(But he checks three times anyway.)

When he’s finally sure he relaxes a little. “I mean, I am surprised,” he says—it’s been just long enough that the pause had started to turn awkward, so he hopes that smiling will make it less so. She giggles into her hand; he puffs his chest for a moment. “I wasn’t always a great guy people were jumping at the bit to meet.” He looks down at his now empty glass, debating— “And besides, you can’t blame me for being impressed that a pretty thing like you thinks so highly of me.”

It’s almost smooth. He doesn’t trip over his words, but his voice is rough and not as charming as he would have liked—

She giggles into her hand again, leaning forward with her arms on the edge of the bar. “Oh, come on. You sure you aren’t fighting off the ladies, big strong man like you?” She touches his arm with a gentleness that surprises him; he looks at her hand (small, soft, well manicured) and then at her face (open, honest, beautiful) and swallows hard before he smiles back.

“I’m not most people’s types,” he admits. “But, ah, you sure do know how to flatter a man.” He clears his throat, leaning in closer to her a bit. “You write?”

“I do,” she agrees, glancing at her laptop. “Compiling reports for galactic real estate.”

“Huh,” he says. “Not sure I know much about that, I’m afraid.”

“It’s kind of boring. Lots of reading, copying numbers, then summarizing them into a paragraph to send to the boss.” She shrugs, flipping the end of her ponytail over her shoulder again. At the angle she’s leaning, her shirt—low cut, of course—is showing…quite a bit. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t think he minds the view.

(Natalie had worn a shirt similar on the night she’d taken him to bed for the first time, and the memory is faded and still warm, even though the night had ended in absolute disaster—Nicholas had looked so angry—)

(Norman signals the bartender for a refill, then turns more in the stool to face her. He doesn’t think there will be anyone interrupting them tonight.)

“You should, uh,” he says, clearing his throat again. “If you want, I mean, you can tell me about it. Sounds kind of fun. Lots of moving parts.”

“It’s not that interesting,” she promises, though she does pull her laptop closer between them and starts clicking through tabs. “It is a lot of moving parts, but they don’t do much unless they’re all right. And I’m only one part of it, after all.”

“Like Gunnie,” he says. She glances, tilting her head. He flushes darkly, staring down at the bar again. “Sorry, ah—”

“Gunnie? He’s—part of the crew, right?”

“Yes,” Norman says. “Uh, our astronavigator. He does our FTL calculations.”

“FTL,” she repeats. “What’s that?”

“Faster than light travel.”

She smiles brightly. “See, you’re the one with the interesting life. Do we go through FTL a lot?”

“Yeah,” he says. “We did a jump to get here, actually.”

“Is it hard?”

“I’m not the math guy,” he confesses. The bartender gives him another double, then passes the girl a cola sans liquor. She smiles gratefully, but grabs her abandoned glass and pours the new cola into it. Over her shoulder, Norman watches the barkeep shrug and take the old cola can back. “I mostly control where the ship’s going, uh, physically. Making sure we park right and everything.”

She takes a sip of her own glass, then coughs softly. He laughs, though for the first time he doesn’t think it sounds unkind—maybe more familiar than they are to each other, but it’s fine.

“Ah,” she says flatly, setting it back down. “I don’t think I’m a rum girl.”

“Okay,” Norman says, shifting and taking a sip of his own. It goes down smoothly. “What’s your favorite drink? Non-alcoholic.”

“I like guava,” she says, tilting her head.

He nods, then glances at the barkeep, who is cleaning a glass but clearly listening. “Y’all have guava? Maybe a marg?”

“I can do a guava marg,” he agrees, smiling. “No problem, Captain.”

“And put it on my tab,” Norman says, turning back. “I don’t, uh, think I quite caught your name, little lady.”

She flushes darkly. Her hand is still on his arm; it constricts for a moment, but she smiles.

“Livvy,” she says. “It’s nice to officially meet you, Captain Takamori.”

“Please,” he says. “Call me Norman.”

Skip is restless, but he knows the ribec he comes out of hiding and reattaches to Livvy’s brainstem he’s going to get hit with a wave of questions he doesn’t know how to answer; so he stays at the back, not sure what’s going on in her mind, until suddenly her whole body seems to be going warm in a way he isn’t expecting. He can feel the way her body is moving, jiggling as though she’s laughing or something—

Fine. Curiosity killed the slug or something. He latches in.

Immediately he’s hit with a wave of—something. He doesn’t know what that is. It tastes—pinky purple, he thinks, and he’s not sure how to process the fact that all his thinking processes are suddenly ten times harder. Livvy is laughing with someone, and he can feel her speaking, but he doesn’t tap into that—he does poke her mind softly, just to see—

She doesn’t seem to notice. What he decides to do instead, then, is check her stream of consciousness.

God, he’s so hot. He reminds me of my dad. I mean, he’s clearly—he can’t let anyone into the cockpit, right? Oh, Nini is going to be so proud that I’m getting married before twenty-eight. Take that, you dumb suburbanite, I’m marrying a proldier, or—god, what if he wants kids? Grivaar isn’t a bad place to settle down, but there’s no way I could convince him…oh, fuck, oh fuck— At that, Skip jolts, feeling a wave of pleasure sweep across both of them, and he contracts and wiggles until he settles into it more fully. —his hand is on my knee. Oh, does he—does he—

Skip detaches almost as soon as he realizes where this is going. It feels—strange, he thinks, to be present for someone he barely knows having sex, and that’s clearly where this night is going.

Still. He’d tapped in for just long enough, and he feels…something. If he had a stomach, it would have butterflies; if he had eyes to perceive visuals, they’d be spinning.

What’s the harm, he thinks, in popping in later?

Livvy’s body temperature keeps rising, and Skip tries to monitor it through his own lack of focus. He never knew there were sensations like this out there, or else he’d have been encouraging Norman to do this ages ago—the arousal, of course, on its own is not one Norman usually shared with him. But the drinking? Because that’s what he figures out it is—after another check in, she’s got some fruity something or other, and it makes him nauseous in the best way possible, and he wishes Norman would have gotten properly drunk instead of a sip or two of whiskey or bourbon occasionally. He wants this—all consuming, making every nerve alight like a livewire, making his focus nonexistent and his thoughts kind of bubbly and fizzy and happy.

Maybe that’s just through the filter of Livvy, he realizes. He doesn’t think Norman has ever once been bubbly, fizzy, or—or even happy, he realizes, because he never liked Skip, and Skip doesn’t care what Livvy thinks about them, because nobody will ever understand them. Nobody will get what Norman and Skip had, not even if they tried—not if they were the best host on earth and Skip played nice—not if Norman himself explained it—Skip wonders if Norman is glad to have his head back, echoing and empty. If he thanks his lucky stars that are flying past the ship that he doesn’t have to deal with an annoying, dumb slug whose only real talent is hiding and fucking things up for people. Skip doesn’t think he’ll ever know, because Norman Takamori does not like him—Skip might venture as far as to say Norman probably hates him, in fact, and he decides this with a vengeance that would rival the dead god he never learned to worship.

Livvy is jostling again, and he can feel vibrations coming from her throat—is she moaning?

Oh, dead god. Is he missing the sex?

He’s hit with a wave of realization, that perhaps he shouldn’t hop in while she’s got a man doing things to her. At the very least, he should get her permission before he slides in to watch whatever is making her react like this—and it’s a bit late to ask permission in the middle of it, lest he tip the other person off and they react poorly—anyway, Skip might have missed his chance, but he’s still feeling strange enough that he settles down happily and appreciates the vibrations coming from her chest until they finally fade. He doesn’t get jostled around as much as he expected; but then again, it depends on the sex itself, he thinks, and maybe she’s not bouncing or moving that much. Or worse—maybe it’s over, and if that’s the case then he’s pretty sure that was a damn short excursion and she probably deserves better anyway—

Hesitantly, he latches on again, trying to slide his way into her consciousness without being noticed. It half works; she very, very clearly notices, if the way she prods back at him is any indication, but she doesn’t kick him out.

Welcome back, Livvy tells him. There’s a kind of peacefulness that’s settled over her. It slides into Skip as well and he wiggles in contentment.

Did I miss the main event?

You did. It’s okay. He might be up for round two in a martron. Livvy sighs. Skip isn’t tapped into visuals or audio right now, but he clearly says something that makes her laugh. Would you like to join us?

You told him?

I don’t think it matters much. I don’t think it’s a smart idea to tell him now anyway, after the fact.

You have a point. Skip hesitates, then taps into—tactile sensations first. Livvy decides to show off, running her hand up and down the guy’s chest slowly. Underneath her touch, his chest rumbles. Is he hot?

Oh, god, yes. Skip, he’s so much hotter than I ever dreamed.

Huh, Skip replies. Well. Alright. Can I see?

Go ahead. Under her hand, he vanishes, as if he’s stepping away from the bed.

He wiggles to prepare himself—he doesn’t really find humans attractive, of course, at least not visually. But he’s spent enough time with them that he’s starting to understand what makes a human attractive.

And yes, he might have spent more than one host’s nights applying everything he’s learned to his feelings about Norman Takamori. Sue him. Even if Norman hates him now—

—oh, Skip thinks slowly. If Norman hates him now, it’ll only get worse from here.

Because Livvy is—they’re in some motel room or something, clearly still on Rec 97 if the view out the window is anything to go by, and Norman Takamori himself is coming back to bed with a glass of water and some kind of pill bottle in hand.

“You’ll want this for the morning,” he promises, setting the bottle down after he grabs one for himself. Skip watches with Livvy as he sticks it in his mouth, then swallows it dry. Livvy stretches across the bed on her stomach, staring up at him. Her hair has fallen over her shoulders and biceps; Skip is sure they look like a dream right now, and by the way Norman is looking at them he must agree.

No, Skip corrects himself slowly. Not them. At her. He’s staring at Livvy like that and not Skip, because if he’d known Skip was here he certainly never would have agreed to this. Skip isn’t naive.

He might be about to be sick, though.

Skip considers detaching again, but Livvy prods at him insistently several times. Stay. Please.

He’s going to be mad if he finds out.

I’m not good at this. I’m not good with him. Please.

You were good enough to get him into bed with you, Skip points out. Norman slides under the sheets next to them, cupping under Livvy’s chin and pointing her face up at him. Seems like you’re not doing so bad after all.

“You doing okay?” Norman asks gently. “Got kinda quiet on me.”

“Sorry,” Livvy replies. “Didn’t mean to. Just…” She waves their hand carefully at him. “…not every malton unit you get a childhood hero into bed with you.”

“You’re makin’ me feel old,” Norman complains, though it’s teasing this time as he runs his thumb across her bottom lip. “Come on now, don’t do that to me.”

“Apologies,” Livvy whispers, pushing up to her knees so she can crawl into his lap and kiss him. Skip can’t pull himself away. “Didn’t mean to offend, Captain Takamori.”

He smiles up at her, and Skip—

Skip lets himself pretend for a moment that Norman is smiling at him instead, that he wouldn’t be positively livid if he were to find out that Skip was here, that things are okay and this is allowed and—he pretends, and Livvy indulges him, making sure she kisses him a little more pointedly this time. Like she’s showing off.

It…makes him kind of upset, actually, so he rips the motion away from her so he can kiss Norman himself, harder and more intense and the way he’s always kind of wanted to. And Norman responds after a moment—a little confused, but he’s trying to match the spirit.

“Someone’s randy,” he teases when they pull apart for a moment.

“The things you do to me, Norman Takamori,” Skip whispers, meeting his eyes with a strange kind of desperation.

(He doesn’t know what Norman sees, but he sees Norman jolt a little, his hands tightening their grip—and then he’s the one that pulls Skip in for a kiss this time, harder than before.)

He apologizes to Livvy, but she seems more than happy to let Skip have the front for now. She’s satisfied, though she promises her body doesn’t have to be—and thank dead god for that, because Norman seems as desperate as her, which works out fully in Skip’s favor. He slides his fingers down between her legs and Skip jolts at the sensation, then moans when Norman slides two fingers straight in.

I don’t think he has any more condoms, Livvy supplies. So I think a real second round is out of the question.

Skip groans a tiny bit, feeling their hips jerk, but—it’s not his body, and he’s not going to be that kind of asshole. Alright.

Norman’s fingers are long, and they move up like he’s looking for something—Skip finally realizes why the movement is so familiar, and it’s because he’s used those same fingers to do the same motion looking for screws on the underside of paneling on the ship or searching for spare credits cards when the rest of the crew can’t quite reach. It’s a weird experience to be on the other side, to know how it felt to slightly overextend those same fingers trying to reach somewhere deeper—

(And it’s working in his favor at the moment, because Livvy’s body is reacting on pure instinct, moving down to meet the thrust of his hand. He knows what those fingers are capable of, and it makes it easier to try to help, angling her body so maybe there’s more, more—)

“Pretty thing,” Norman whispers, pulling back from the kiss to pant into their cheek. “Sorry, I shoulda planned ahead, huh?”

“It’s okay,” Skip breathes, dragging their lips along Norman’s jaw to remember what the stubble feels like. He tilts his head back to allow it, crooking his fingers as he does, and Skip feels Livvy’s body jerk and he finds himself biting on instinct. “It’s—”

“Careful!” Norman hisses. “Hey, look, you’re nice, but I don’t do the whole—marks thing, okay?”

“Sorry,” Skip says, pulling back. Her hair falls in front of their face; Norman pushes it back slowly to look even closer, though Skip’s having trouble keeping their eyes open if he’s being honest. The constant, steady movement—the heat pooling in their stomach—the pressure building, the want—and on top of that, the drunkenness of the body he’s in—it’s all just a bit much, if he’s being honest, and he keeps kind of jerking forward to hide their face. Norman doesn’t let that happen now, though, cupping Livvy’s face with reverence and pulling them in for another kiss.

“‘sokay,” Norman whispers. “You’re okay. Come on, lemme hear you, yeah?”

Skip whines at that, the way he always wanted to when Norman would let him touch. For the noise, Norman rewards them with a third finger, pulling the first two out before pushing all three in with little resistance. Strange, Skip thinks—it sure sounds slimy down there, but Norman really seems to be enjoying it, so maybe his problem with the slick and the slug of it all had nothing to do with the inhumanity and all to do with the fact that it was Skip who wanted it, and he’s more sure than ever that Norman Takamori hates him, which is why he lets out another noise—one that Norman seems to very much enjoy, if the way his fingers curl again is any indication—and leans in for a hard kiss, shoving their tongue into his mouth.

It goes a little bit fuzzy after that, if he’s being honest. Livvy wasn’t kidding—they get another two orgasms off before Norman even indicates that he’s up for another, and Norman doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that he has to guide their hands to help jerk him off. Skip knows how Norman likes it, but he seems to be expecting…differently, at least from Livvy.

He encourages her hand a little too tight, the way Skip knows Norman hates, and Skip simply does what he’s told.

(He’s so focused, in fact, on the act of bringing Norman to a climax that he misses what Norman says when he does, which is a tiny word breathed when his focus breaks finally. It’s not a word he’s said aloud in a while—certainly not in front of Livvy—and thank god that Livvy isn’t really paying attention either, because who knows how she’d react? Probably smug. An I told you so thrown in.

Because Norman throws his head back and whispers “Skip,” when he comes, and even he doesn’t realize it.)

Skip’s not sure how to deal with…this part of it. The after effects. And Livvy is too out of it to come back to the front, so he struggles through the dazed controls to try to help Norman clean up a bit and get both of them sort of dressed before they collapse down.

“Do we need to get back to the ship soon?” Skip asks, trying to peek over their shoulder to see if they can see how exactly they’re supposed to be hooking this bra together. It’s still hard; he can’t see, and the things he’s feeling aren’t making sense, so he just groans and considers going without entirely until Norman slides up behind him. With shaking hands, slow but at least knowledgable, he hooks the bra together, then puts a hand on Skip’s waist.

“Nah,” Norman replies. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about the ship, okay? Unless we get a comm from Margaret, we’re free.” He leans down to kiss their shoulder. Skip leans back into his touch, tilting their head to the side, and Norman smiles against their skin as he slides his lips along the curve of their shoulder and up their neck. “‘sides, I paid for the whole night. I intend to use it.”

“On me,” Skip teases, glancing over. Norman locks eyes with him—

—and for a moment, he seems to pause, surprise flashing. But then again, maybe he’s just drunk. Skip reaches up to cup his jaw softly.

“Sorry,” he says softly. “Teasing.”

“It’s okay,” Norman says, though his voice is lower now. “It’s…” His eyes snap to Livvy’s wrist—

Livvy’s bare wrist.

Oh, Margaret was there—she was probably smart enough to realize Norman would sniff that out like a dog if he had his proper identification on, so Skip and Livvy are sans bracelet, and suddenly the night makes a little more sense.

Skip is starting to feel sick again.

“You’re okay,” Norman says quietly. He pauses long enough to press one more kiss to their shoulder, then stands, guiding her to bed. “I, ah, confess I’m not much of a cuddler—”

Who would have guessed, Skip thinks, halfway to bitter.

“—but, y’know, I don’t care to share the bed with you if you don’t. Or I can go take the couch.”

“Don’t take the couch,” Skip says immediately, pulling away a bit. “It’s—I can keep my hands to myself for the night. I promise.”

Norman raises one eyebrow, but he shrugs. “…if you insist.”

They climb in; Skip is so wracked with guilt it’s easier to not curl into Norman’s side anyway, so he stares up at the ceiling and thinks until Livvy’s mind finally gives up and puts them into a deep sleep.

(Norman Takamori hates him. He’s sure of it. And if he doesn’t already, then god forbid he ever finds out about this—about tonight—because Skip knows he’ll never be forgiven, no matter how pure intentions were.)

(Skip falls asleep hating himself, and in his sleep, he fully detaches.)

Norman wakes up to hair in his mouth. Not his own, which…should probably be more off-putting than it is, actually.

He blinks bleary eyes open, struggling against the weight of them. The false sunlight is pouring in through the window; somewhere else in the room, he can hear someone laughing on the comms, which probably means everything’s fine. No gunfire, anyway, which is a plus in and of itself.

The hair in his mouth, he finds out, belongs to the sleeping girl next to him—and god, for a moment he feels sick, because she looks like a kid. He knows she isn’t; last night he gleaned that she’s a college grad at least, has been debating a master’s, and has a big girl job working with numbers and spreadsheets for some legitimate company in the galaxy. But she still looks so young—

(So much like the Natalie he remembers that he almost wishes it was a dream.)

He doesn’t remember her name, though, but clearly they’d done…something last night. He looks around slowly. There’s a single discarded condom next to the trashcan on the floor. He’d tried to clean up, at least. But he still feels strange and kind of sticky, so he pushes himself up, deciding to go check out the shower situation.

The girl stretches in her sleep, one hand trailing after him, and he pauses just long enough for her to be able to properly touch his arm.

“Where’re you going?” she whispers. Her voice is…gentle. Light. He feels bad—gently, he takes her hand and guides it back to the bed.

“Shower,” he says. “I can go and then I can let you, if you want.” His own voice sounds rough. It’s been a hell of a long time since he’s had that much to drink. Frankly, he might have overdone it; there’s a chance he’s finally hitting the part of his life where he officially can’t treat himself like a young adult anymore, with young adult abilities like no hangovers. It sours his mouth a little, but he pushes it down.

“Okay,” she says gently, sitting up a bit. “Oh, did we leave a radio on?”

He makes his way to the pile of pants on the floor where his own comm is buried and tugs it out. On the speaker, he can hear Sid snorting laughter.

“Gunnie, you are an absolute trip!”

Gunnie sputters. “It’s not my fault! But—but I need to find, uh, more clients now, so if anyone is interested in buying, uh chef’s tools—”

The radio crackles again. “I fucking told you, Gunnie, no damn chef’s tools!” Syx—or maybe Nyne, but probably Syx—replies forcefully. He doesn’t sound amused.

“We could use some for the ship if they’re okay quality,” Zortch says. Norman frowns at the device; he hasn’t seen the princeps in quite a bit, if he’s being honest—not that he seeks them out, of course, but—

“I think they’re okay! I have—I have so, so many boxes now, so Zortch, if—you can get a box or two, and if you get two I can throw in the deluxe for free—”

Another uproar on the comms. Behind him, the girl giggles; Norman almost smiles, but then it fades.

Still, he thinks, he ought to make his presence known. He holds the comm up to his mouth.

“Listen, Gunnie, if it means you stop trying to recruit the crew I’ll buy a box for everyone,” he says, clearing his throat at the end. “On the condition they’re all different shit.”

Nobody responds for a moment, and then one of the Barry’s replies, sounding amused. “Aw, Cap, careful. We might start thinking you like us or something.”

Probably Nyne that time, he decides. He sighs before he speaks into the comm again. “And I’m hungover enough to admit you might be a little right. Gunnie, we got a deal?”

“I—uh—I’m, ah, I’m running calculations—I can get, uh, ten different kinds of boxes, and they’re fifty credits apiece—but if you want to sell your own I can discount—”

“I’m not selling my own,” he interrupts. “I’m assuming you’re into pretty bad debt over this again?”

“That—well!—you don’t have to be so rude about it!”

“I’m just—” He sighs heavily. “I’m not trying to be rude, just realistic.” And it’s true; Norman isn’t a numbers guy, but he does some very basic math—fifty credits, ten boxes—he can figure that out. “Look, I—I got a proposal for you. We can talk when I’m back on the ship, okay?”

“Back on the ship?” There’s Encino. Norman scowls. “Are you not on here right now?”

“Miss Encino, I told you that in our morning report! We’re missing the captain and also one Jib-Jobber. That’s why I recommended we wait to go talk to our contact,” Sid says quickly.

Norman tilts his head back. “Well, two birds with one stone. We’ll be back in—what, a marbec?” He turns to glance at the girl, who is putting her hair up in that same ponytail from yesterday. She smiles at him brightly with a nod. “Yeah, just—we’ll be back soon.”

“We,” Margaret repeats slowly. “Who is we?”

“Me and the Jib-Jobber,” he says stiffly. “I gotta shower.” And then he turns the comm off, his face hot. “Ah—sorry about that, they’re a bit much—”

“You’re a good captain.”

He pauses. His hand tightens on the comm; he does not turn around to look at her yet, but he’s still, hyperaware of how she’s moving around, clearly trying to find all her clothing pieces.

“What?”

“I said,” she says—and now she’s next to him, running a hand up his arm slowly and leaning against him. “You’re a good captain. That’s really nice—what you’re doing with Gunnie, I mean. To help him.”

He clears his throat. “Ah—okay. Sure. It’s not—I’m just—” He looks around at anything but her. “Shower,” he finishes lamely, pushing past her and into the bathroom before he shuts the door tightly.

They make their way back to the ship separately, and Norman does not ask where Skip is. He doesn’t join the crew on their outing—he, Sid and Gunnie stay back to protect the ship, and it’s a damn good call, because Fav shows up tearing through the Rec Station levels without a care in the world, so they have to snatch up the rest of their crew and jump through the stars without really receiving any answers about the tech.

When they come out of the jump, nobody is calm.

“—what,” Lucienne is saying, a little too loud in front of the captain’s seat. “A nebula would hide us, right? Or a cosmic storm?”

“Would disrupt a lot of communications,” Gunnie says, already starting to calculate something on his arm. “But Fav wouldn’t be able to track us.”

“Could we track him?” Sidney asks.

“There’s a chance, if I had a tracer on him, but I don’t know—not right now.”

“It’s worth a shot to hide out for a while,” Margaret says. “We can get the jump on him later. We don’t have a tracer on him, he doesn’t have a tracer on us. It goes both ways.”

“It sure does,” Syx says. “Alright, Cap, get us to some cosmic storm.”

Norman stares out the front windows, his face falling into that same focus it always does when he’s about to have to do something damn risky. “Yeah. Fine.”

Margaret hangs out for a bit after the rest of the room clears; she’s not the only one, but she seems to be the one with something to say, so Norman doesn’t snap at her to leave. He just waits until she deems it safe enough to speak.

“We weren’t sure what happened to you last night,” she says. She’s got her notebook out; maybe, he thinks disdainfully, she’ll count this as their damn one-on-one and quit hounding him for the next nargon. “You wanna fill me in?”

“No,” he says immediately. She doesn’t reply, so he looks, and then he shrinks back from the glare she’s giving him. “Fine. I went to blow off some steam.”

“Blow off some steam,” she repeats.

“Yeah. I was—” He makes a very strange gesture to his lap. In the far corner of the room, Barry Nyne is lurking, and he watches how the clone’s head tilts in interest. “—pent up. Do we have to do this?”

“Yes,” Margaret says. “I think we do. Have you talked to Skip lately?”

“I can’t say I have.” His tone sours.

“Well,” Margaret says, sighing. “I think that needs to change.”

“You seem to think quite a lot of things,” Norman snaps. The grip on the handle starts to slide; he yanks it back into place in frustration, then smacks it, his breath short. “I’m not sure I give a shit about any of them.”

“I can’t have a fractured team,” Margaret says pointedly.

“Okay,” he says, feeling a little deranged as he does. “Fine, then—what, I’m out?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you kicking me out cause I won’t play nice with your little friends?” His grip is only getting tighter. He bangs his fist into the comm speaker, then grabs the microphone. “Gunnie, am I getting ready for FTL?”

“Yes! Yes, I just need another two equations, sorry—”

“It’s fine,” he says, still gruff, then sighs. “Look, about the, uh, chef’s tools. I’ll give you six hundred credits for the lot of it, so long as you promise it doesn’t go back into the Starlight Chef company or into the casino.”

In the corner, Nyne whistles low under his breath. “Shit, man.”

“Norman,” Margaret says quietly. “That’s a lot, are you sure—”

“Cap—oh, my god, uh, Captain Takamori, are you—are you sure? Are you actually even the Skipper? Did—where’s Skip? Has anyone heard from Skip?”

“Not today,” Sid chimes in. “That’s very nice of you, Skipper.”

Norman scowls even further. His grip on the microphone goes lethal. “Do we have a deal, Gunthrie?”

“Uh—yes, Dad, that’s—I mean—” Laughter explodes from other people on the channel. “No, no, I didn’t mean to—sorry, uh, Captain! Captain Dad? I’m—”

“I’ll get it to you tomorrow,” Norman says. “FTL. Let me know when.”

“Yes—yes sir! Yes, sir, Captain Dad, sir—”

“Stop doing that.”

“—right, right—”

He shoves the mic back into its spot and settles in the chair again. He has not looked back at Margaret or Nyne. “Am I off the team or not, Encino?”

“No,” she says quietly. “No, Norman, you’re not.”

“Great. Get off my bridge.”

“Maybe we wanna see the stars,” Nyne says.

“I don’t give a shit,” Norman hisses. “I told you to get the fuck off my bridge.”

Margaret types something quickly. “We can…circle around to this in our one-on-one,” she says, and then she leaves, and Norman thinks briefly about crashing the whole ship just to never have to deal with her again. Nyne does not leave so easily; he passes by the steps up to the seat, leaning against the railing to stare directly at Norman this time.

“You got something to say?” he demands.

This time, Nyne doesn’t respond. He stares for a moment longer, then claps the metal bar and walks out.

All for the better, he thinks bitterly. It must be, after all.

They end up having a party.

They’ve been in the cosmic nebula for a few marbecs, and it’s unclear how well it’s working—which is maybe an indication that it’s working pretty damn well so far. A full on rager might not be their wisest move, but no better way to pass the time than booze and gambling, Norman thinks, though he can’t say that most of his crew is doing the same. Gunnie had snuck in; it’s now become a team effort to try to get him as drunk as possible so they can trick him into leaving. Sidney keeps trying to tempt him with minor holograms; Syx is trying to just lift Gunnie out of the chair; even Margaret has gotten in on it, dangling a credits card in front of Gunnie’s good eye a few times to try to tempt him away, but this is the fourth table he’s gotten distracted by in so many hours and he watches the way even Syx sags in disbelief as Gunnie throws a few chips to the Blackjack dealer. Norman himself has settled at a table playing Craps, only occasionally tossing in a few extra credits for the hell of it while he chugs his—what is this, ninth beer? Tenth? He knows the ribec he stands he’ll be knocked to his feet by the sheer force of it, especially because he didn’t eat today—too distracted by everything else—

Like now. He’s missed another round, not that the dealer is surprised, because Norman is distracted again by what’s happening at the bar.

He knows that’s Skip. After the jump and settling into the nebula he’d finally asked one of the Jib-Jobbers, and they’d informed him that he was staying with Steve for another few malton units. Apparently he was a fan favorite, not just for Skip but for the rest of the crew, Norman notwithstanding. So he knows what Skip looks like, knows Skip is wearing that same identifier bracelet he always does, knows those fluorescent green eyes better than his own at this point, and now he knows how strong his arms are, how soft his hands can be—

And the girl he’s talking to really seems to be enjoying their conversation. That, or she’s a slut, Norman thinks bitterly, chugging the rest of his drink.

Skip keeps rubbing her shoulder, and the girl keeps flipping her hair over her shoulder and leaning in, which puts her tits perfectly on display even from here. Norman doesn’t mind tits. The girl last night had some moderately average ones that were—fine, if he’s being honest, but tits are just kind of…tits. They’re not the worst things in the world—he thinks, in fact, that they’re supposed to be some of the most attractive parts of the human body, though sometimes he thinks he can be swayed slightly otherwise. Hands, he thinks. Hands are pretty attractive. Chunky and veiny, with strong callouses and micromovements that could drive a lesser man insane—then again, he likes the dainty ones too, prim and small and lotioned to hell and back. Delicate, but intentional. Or, if not hands, body types. Thighs. A thigh gap is supposed to be conventionally attractive, he thinks, but there’s something nice about strong thighs too, ones that look as though they could crush his head between them. Hell, the longer he thinks about it, the less convinced he is that he even cares if it’s a man or a woman in his fantasies.

What he wants, he thinks, is a mind he knows, and he gestures for another drink refill.

His thoughts are sporadic now, but they keep coming back to Skip in that body, who had used inhuman strength and saved Norman’s life with bulging muscles and an aftershave that had knocked him straight into his teens again. It was embarrassing enough to be so turned on by one simple movement of being caught; another thing entirely, unfortunately, to nearly come untouched by just watching Skip lift them both like he was nothing weight-wise. He hadn’t quite recovered until they were back on the ship, flying away into faster-than-light travel, and then Barry Nyne had to come and open his big damn mouth about it, and—

Anyway. Norman’s not doing very well tonight, is what it comes down to.

Faces are swimming past him. Faces he knows—knew—as Skip—the girl from the very first malton unit, whose name (as Norman had been loathe to find out) was Thalia. The kid from the confrontation. This guy.

The one from a nargon ago who looked like Nicholas.

Nicholas and Natalie were near siblings to him back on Kansas. Natalie had been Norman’s first girlfriend; before he’d graduated, she and Nicholas had been married with a baby on the way, and Norman should have kept up with them, but he didn’t. Not the way he needed to. The last time he’d checked, he’d heard Natalie was raising their son on her own with a grave in the backyard, and Norman hadn’t even bothered to send a damn card.

At the time, he was on the run again, but it’s not really an excuse. Not enough of one, anyway.

And Skip had slid into the face of a kid that looked just like his old friends, had fallen into place so damn easily, had the absolute damn audacity to bring what he’d learned from Norman into a face too familiar, and Norman—

He’d never told Skip about any of it. How could he? They’d only been sharing a brain, after all.

And now he’ll never be able to tell Skip, he thinks in melancholy, downing that beer before the attendant has even left the table.

“Another, Captain?”

“Nah,” Norman says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m tappin’ out. Hey, do me a favor—” The world is swimming in front of his eyes a little, but he tries to read the kid’s name tag. “—Trevor.”

“Tyler, sir.”

“Yeah, yeah, you. Do me a favor. Put their drinks on my tab,” Norman insists, waving a hand at Skip and the girl.

Tyler glances, then nods at Norman. “Yes, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“You got a gun?” Norman asks, deadpan. Fear crosses Tyler’s face and doesn’t quite leave.

“Ah—no, sir.”

“Good kid,” he grumbles, pushing to his feet. “I’m good. Now go on.”

“Yes, sir,” Tyler says, his voice shaking now, and he runs off. Norman has to take a moment, his hand gripping the back of his chair to keep himself steady, waving off one of the patrons when they start to approach.

“I got it.”

“You sure, Skipper?”

His mood sours even more. He turns to give Nyne a piece of his mind, but he’s closer than expected; Norman tumbles into his chest, bitterly thankful when Nyne catches him and holds him up.

“That ain’t my fuckin’ name,” Norman hisses. His accent comes out full force and he hates it, but he doesn’t really have a choice as another wave of dizziness slides up across his eyes from the pit of his stomach. “You oughta fuckin’ know that, Barry.”

“You know which Barry I am?” Nyne asks, smirking. Norman fumbles with his hip for a moment, then has to look down to realize his gun holster is still up at the cockpit. “Hey, now, easy. Down, boy.”

“You shut your fuckin’ mouth,” Norman spits. “I know you, Nyne, now let go of me or I swear—”

“You swear what?”

He’s amused; it kicks Norman from being vaguely annoyed into pissed off enough to try to swing on him, to no avail. Of course Nyne catches his hand. Of course Nyne then catches him around the waist.

“Lemme get you back to your quarters,” Nyne says, his voice much gentler this time. “You drank a little more than you should have, I think.”

“I had plenty.”

“Which is another word for too much,” Nyne says patiently. “Come on, Skipper.”

Norman manages to tug himself away that time, pointing at Nyne with one crooked finger. “Stop calling me that.”

His voice shakes. He’s thankful the casino is so loud; nobody but Nyne seems to hear him, and Nyne simply holds his hands up in apology.

“Sorry, sorry. What do you prefer?”

“My name,” he says sharply, “is Norman.”

Nyne looks as though he has something he wants to say about it, but he politely chooses not to, offering an arm out—as support, or as a scarf—something.

Norman doesn’t want to, but he takes it, because he can feel himself swaying and it wouldn’t do to make a fool of himself here in front of everyone. Nyne doesn’t rush him; he doesn’t even keep making snide comments. It’s very nice, he thinks, if not somehow more patronizing this way. They make their way upstairs, up to Norman’s quarters—private, though not the captain’s quarters—and Norman is stubborn about not letting Nyne inside for a moment. He stands in the doorway, making Nyne run into him as he tries to step inside.

“Nah,” Norman says. “You got me here. Go away.”

“I’m afraid you’re gonna choke on your own vomit,” Nyne deadpans. “Let me at least—”

“I said no.”

“Look, have beef with us all you want,” Nyne says, frowning. “But I’m trying to make sure nothing happens to you.”

“I hope somethin’ does happen to me,” Norman says. The words echo in the empty hallway and room for a moment, and then Norman’s face…falls. He swallows hard. “Not…not like that. I’m not saying I’m—”

“Norman,” Nyne says quietly. “It’s okay.”

“I’m not gonna kill myself,” Norman says, a little too loud.

“I didn’t think you were,” Nyne says slowly. “Let me in the room.”

Norman is shaken. He steps aside.

Nyne doesn’t intrude, which is almost nice. He kind of just…stands awkwardly against the wall, politely looking around. Norman doesn’t have much in the way of personal affects here. There’s nothing to snoop in, no little gathered collections to give away some kind of secret about himself—and for once, in his drunken, half-saddened brain, he wishes there were. He wishes he was more of a real person, the way Margaret and Gunnie are, someone who is more than just his job and things he can (or can’t) offer.

Norman starts stubbornly trying to remove his shirt, fighting with it for a moment before he realizes there’s a jacket he has to get off first; so he fights with that, cursing out the zipper under his breath, until strong hands (that look like Skip’s today) come and straighten the fabric and pull the zipper down for him. Hands (that look like Skip’s today) help guide the jacket off his shoulders, then pull his shirt out of where it’s tucked into his pants. Hands (that look like Skip’s today) rest on his shoulders and rub little circles in the collarbone.

A voice (that does not sound like Skip’s today) whispers to him softly.

“You’re alright, Norm,” Nyne is saying softly. “It’s gonna be fine. You wanna sit down?”

Why in the hell is Nyne being so weird with him, Norman wonders, until he feels something drip off his face and onto the floor.

Well. Shit.

“I’m fine,” he insists, through a thick voice. “I’m not—I’m fine.”

“Crying isn’t a bad thing,” Nyne says.

“I’m not doing that,” Norman spits, trying to wipe at his face—but apparently he’d been holding himself up on Nyne, so he loses his balance and almost topples backward when he lets go to do so, and Nyne doesn’t give him another choice and pulls him over to sit on the edge of the bed. “Let go of me—” But he’s too weak to even fight back, so he gives up, collapsing into Nyne’s side finally.

Nyne doesn’t move. He doesn’t press for more, but he keeps his arm around Norman while he cries into his shoulder, stays as a strong, comforting presence that Norman is going to absolutely regret in the morning.

Honestly, Norman’s going to regret a lot of things in the morning. Might as well go swinging and make the whole night something to forget.

It’s with a little bit of difficulty that he sits up and away from Nyne, though Nyne doesn’t fight him on it. He keeps his hand on the small of Norman’s back for safety, but there’s no pulling him back into place, no unspoken demands—he’s genuinely just here to be a good guy, and that makes Norman almost sick down to his bones, so he decides he has to do what he does best.

Ruin it.

“You have anythin’ to drink tonight?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

“Nah,” Nyne says quietly. “Was a bit worried about you, to be honest. Didn’t really cross my mind.”

“You want somethin’?”

“You keep stuff in here?”

“Sure.” Norman pushes to his feet, waiting until he’s steady before he makes his way to the closet. He has so little, but he spreads everything out to look like it’s full; he also keeps his alcohol in the fancy boxes so it doesn’t look like he’s just got the hard shit sitting and waiting to be drunk, though that’s really all it’s there for. He grabs the newest whiskey and his old favorite, Kansas Straight—a gift from Nicholas before graduation, and one Norman really only tugs out on special occasions or sad anniversaries.

He doesn’t know which one tonight is, but he grabs it anyway.

“Got, uh…cryo whiskey,” Norman says, reading the newer bottle as best as he can with slightly swimming eyes. He gestures it at Nyne. “Couldn’t try this one for ages, y’know. Cause.” He taps the top of the bottle against his temple. “Slug.”

“Skip,” Nyne corrects, leaning back on his hands on the mattress. “Yeah, I get it. What’s the other one?”

“Little taste of home,” Norman says, managing to sound both proud and melancholy at the same time. “It was a gift. Still holds up, y’know. My favorite.”

Nyne hums quietly in response. “I don’t wanna take your favorite shit. Gimme the cryo whatever.”

“Good man,” Norman says, setting them both on the desk and grabbing two of the glasses he keeps in the drawer next to his socks. “Appreciate it.”

“You sure you need any more to drink, Norm?”

Norman stills for a moment, then glances at Nyne. Nyne’s face doesn’t say much—the Barry’s faces never really do. Still, it’s a compelling enough thing—

“Norm,” he repeats slowly. “Gotta admit, that’s a new one.”

“Bit of a mouthful to keep saying Norman all the time.” Nyne clears his throat awkwardly. “‘sides, I’d been told you wanted to be called Skipper.”

That would explain the look down in the casino. Norman looks away from Nyne to hide the absolute gut punch the words give him. He’s not sure it does much anyway. “I used to.”

“What changed?”

“I’m gettin’ you drunk before I answer that,” Norman decides, setting the glasses down on the desk and popping the cryo whiskey open. “How much you want?”

“I’ll match you.”

“Dangerous. Shit’s strong. I’m not holding back.”

“Well, I’ll hold back your hair, if it comes to it.”

Norman barks out a surprised laugh, grinning at Nyne. Nyne smiles in return, though he looks a little confused for a moment. It doesn’t matter, though. Norman pours them both full glasses, brings Nyne’s over and passes it, and doesn’t sit. He stands, right in front of Nyne, lording over him a little—and it’s kind of nice. Makes him feel a little powerful.

And dizzy. But that might be the alcohol.

“Cheers,” Norman says, clinking their glasses.

“Cheers,” Nyne echoes, taking the whole glass in one go. Norman has a front row seat to the way his Newton’s apple bobs, the way the few-malton-unit-old scruff glistens a little in the phosphorescents. Norman’s got the glass up to his lips, but he doesn’t take a sip yet as he watches, feeling a little bit of heat pool in the pit of his stomach.

He wonders if Nyne is doing it on purpose. By the way he licks his lips when the glass is finished, Norman decides he is.

“C’mon,” Nyne goads, clinking their glasses together again. “Impress me, Captain.”

So he does. The bourbon goes down smooth the way it always does, and he tips the glass upside down to prove a point as he tilts his head back down to stare at Nyne. Nyne is matching his gaze with lidded eyes.

“Right on,” Nyne says, his voice low. “You gonna answer my question yet?”

“It’s not my name anymore,” Norman replies. “It used to be. I wanted it to be. But Skip showed up and he liked it better, and nobody called me Skipper anyway, so he can have it.”

“You talked to him lately?”

“Cain’t never find him,” Norman says, shutting his eyes and tilting his head back while the bourbon provides the familiar heat he likes so much in his chest. “Stupid fuckin’…whatever. Tracker bracelet. I don’t look for that shit. ‘sides, I don’t need to talk to him no way anyway.”

That’s embarrassing, he realizes after a moment, when he can hear his twang from home slipping out with a little too much force. His accent had always been worse than his fellow Amercadian brigaders—his parents fault, he admits to himself glumly. His mom had been from New Texas, born and raised, and only moved when she fell in love with his father, who was a tried and true Kansasian. He’d learned that the Brigade preferred the neutral accents, but it’s not how he was raised, so moments like this—he slips. Slowly, he tugs his eyes open to stare back down.

Nyne is staring at him with a curiosity Norman wishes he didn’t recognize. A slow smile is starting to spread across the clone’s face.

(There’s something else underneath it, too.)

“That so?” Nyne asks carefully. “Cause we all seem to think you two need to have a long conversation.”

“We don’t,” Norman says stiffly. “You want a refill?”

“I’m not opposed.”

Norman makes it all the way over to the dresser and picks up his bourbon before he realizes it’s got maybe three glasses left in it. Barry Nyne is a damn big guy, muscles and metabolism for malton units, and Norman stares at the bottles for an extra moment before he clears his throat.

“I’ll cut you a deal.”

“You have my attention,” Nyne says slowly.

“You like the whiskey?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty good.”

“I’ll let you have the entire rest of this bottle,” Norman offers, picking the cryo whiskey up and shaking it in Nyne’s direction. “Tonight, so long as you share it with me.”

Nyne raises an eyebrow. “What’s the catch?”

“What happens in this room stays in this room,” Norman says slowly. “Drinkin’, conversation, or…otherwise.” He does not blink, which means he gets a front row seat to the way Nyne shifts, suddenly going a little red. “If you’re interested, I mean.”

“Being propositioned by the captain,” Nyne says, though his voice is lower now. “Drinks and a fucking show, huh? That’s the deal?”

“That’s the damn deal. Take it or leave it.”

He’s betting on Nyne taking it; thank god he’s right. Thank god Nyne nods his head once, pushing to his feet, already shifting his armor to one side.

“You care if I…?”

“By all means,” Norman says, setting the whiskey down decisively and unscrewing his bourbon again to pour it straight down his throat.

“Don’t get started without me,” Nyne teases. Norman hears the thunk of metal hitting the floor before a hand slides up his back. He doesn’t bother to hide the way it makes him shiver.

Today, Skip wasn’t quite as tall as the Barry’s, but his build was mostly the same, so when Norman closes his eyes he can almost pretend. He leans back into the touch, smiling at the way Nyne intentionally reaches over him to grab the cryo whiskey, then pulls away.

Norman finishes his bottle, and—in a show of boldness he doesn’t usually possess anymore—waits until Nyne is sitting down again to come stand exactly where he was before, standing over Nyne like a god or worse.

Nyne stares up, raises one eyebrow, and takes a slow sip from the bottle before he offers it up. “You want some, Cap?”

There’s a couple of ways he thinks he could respond to this. He entertains the idea of taking the bottle and tipping it down Nyne’s throat to watch the way his throat would constrict, to give himself an idea of how the rest of the night might go. Then, he thinks about letting Nyne do the same to him, though at this angle he’s not quite sure how—

Anyway, what Norman settles for is taking the bottle gingerly and letting it slide down his throat with a menthol coolness he hasn’t felt since the hookah bars at the Brigade.

(The way Nyne’s hands land on his hips and his thumbs slide up under Norman’s shirt hem doesn’t go unnoticed.)

“Your turn,” he says huskily, passing the bottle back down. Nyne takes one of his hands back, but the other one slides around, holding him in place so he doesn’t move too far. Norman smiles a little and leans back into the touch to feel the way Nyne has to constrict his muscles to keep him there.

“Where ya going?”

“Barcelona,” Norman teases, taking Nyne’s chin in his hand. Nyne eyes him curiously. “Never mind. All in, yeah?”

“You got condoms?”

“You think we need ‘em?”

“Dunno. Safe sex and all that shit, right?”

Norman snorts. “You think I go around bumpin’ uglies with just anyone? Nah. Got you on the list and bupkis beyond it.”

Nyne laughs silently, but the movement makes Norman’s whole body rattle. “Alright, alright, point taken.”

“You think somethin’s funny?”

“A little.” Nyne takes another strong sip. “Haven’t ever heard you talk like this. Is this who our captain really is?”

Norman gives him a tight smile. “Used to be. Don’t go around gettin’ it twisted.” And if he’s playing it up a little now, who’s to say?

(He’s pressed squarely between Nyne’s legs on the edge of the bed, which means his thigh can feel the way Nyne is twitching in his pants at every twang and dropped ‘g’. It’s fascinating; some of the girls back home had teased him about it but always been enthusiastic enough, and he wonders if he’d leant into it instead of beating it out of himself if he’d have ended up married before he ever left.)

(He doesn’t think so. Nobody liked him then, even less so than the people who tolerate him now. People didn’t look at him on base the way Nyne is looking at him now, heady eyes and blown out pupils and a mouth that doesn’t seem to want to close all the way as it drifts the rim of the bottle to it once again. Norman has never been looked at like this before.)

(His brain, looking for space to fill, wonders if Skip would feel this way about that damn plant from nargons ago. He leans further into Nyne’s touch to dismiss the thought.)

Norman is sick of thinking about Skip right now, if he’s being honest, and he hates that every move and thought is undercut by a slow, steady wonder of what it would be like if Skip was here. He does what he knows best and squeezes Nyne’s chin softly, pulling his mouth open a little more, stares down—

Okay. He knows in theory what to do from here, he thinks, but not with any kind of certainty. Nyne must see the hesitation on his face—embarrassing, he thinks in passing, but it sort of cracks into several unconnected and unimportant thoughts as Nyne sets the bottle down and uses his now free hand to rub over the bulging front of Norman’s pants.

Norman stares down, his breath heavy now. Nyne gives him a stupid, confident half-smirk.

“When’s the last time someone touched you like this?” he asks, gripping around the outline. For a moment, he seems vaguely impressed.

“Cycles,” Norman admits, swallowing hard. “Been cycles, I’d bet.” Because even the girl hadn’t touched him there until he’d helped, had just been content to let him do all the work, and here Nyne is, putting forth the effort to touch Norman before himself.

“Then let’s hope I don’t disappoint,” Nyne whispers, gripping harder just to watch the way Norman’s hips twitch forward into the grip. “You got anything you don’t want me to do?”

“If I do,” Norman says, “you’ll find out.” He pulls Nyne’s mouth open even more. “Pretty, you know that?”

Nyne licks his bottom lip, then leans down to press his mouth over the fabric, right over the head of Norman’s dick. It’s answer enough; Norman shuts his eyes for a moment, relishing in the feeling.

It doesn’t take long for Nyne to get his mouth around the cock in question, and his mouth is big enough that he doesn’t seem to have any issue with the way Norman ends up sliding in and out of the heat, even despite the fast pace he ends up setting. The sensations alone are making it hard to concentrate on anything else like Nyne’s feelings or ability to breathe; that, coupled with the last of the bourbon hitting him and the whiskey sliding its way through his blood makes for a near holy experience, one Norman is all too delighted to lean into because it means for once, his brain gets to shut up and focus on pleasant sensations and not the gaping absence left by the second voice that used to reside in his head.

He doesn’t want the night to end too early, but Nyne is the one that has to pull him back, taken by a sudden ferocity as he grabs Norman by the back of his head and yanks him into a kiss. Norman makes a sound he doesn’t think he’s ever going to recover from; Nyne responds in kind, pushing Norman just out of the way so he can get to his feet and toss Norman against the mattress instead.

Nyne pulls his shirt off, and Norman ends up grinning at the sight. Nyne flushes.

“What?”

“Never seen a Barry shed before,” he says, letting his eyes wander for a moment. Nyne has plenty of scars—how many of them, Norman wonders, are from when he had a slug in his own skull, taking him by the nerves and dragging him around and forcing him into submission? He reaches up to touch Nyne’s bicep, kneeling on the bed as he does so, blinking slowly as the world tilts but feeling the warm, smooth skin under his touch flex.

“Shed,” Nyne repeats slowly. “What, you mean naked?”

“Sure,” Norman says. He’s not even sure if he used the word correctly at this point. He’s not really sure it matters. “You gonna fuck me yet, or…?”

Nyne barks out a laugh, reaching down to sweep Norman’s legs from under him and force him onto his back again. Norman yelps, though it turns breathy when Nyne climbs over him, pressing his mouth against the base of Norman’s neck this time.

“In due time,” he teases, grabbing Norman’s waistband. “You may be captain in the rest of this ship, but let me take you along for the ride tonight.”

“Oh, yeah, how long you been working on that one?” Norman asks sarcastically, letting his head fall back. “A whole two maltons?”

“You’re a jackass,” Nyne says, grinning as he sits up and starts pulling Norman’s pants down. “I’m gonna fuck it out of you.”

“Good luck,” Norman grins, feeling decades younger suddenly. “Ain’t worked before, ain’t gonna work today. But you can sure as shit give it a shot, if you feel like it.”

He watches the way Nyne shudders, his eyes fluttering, and then there’s a mouth on his own and Norman…doesn’t mind.

He doesn’t mind, because it’s enough of a distraction, and the only times they pull apart after that are to get Norman’s shirt off, or when they accidentally get disjointed because Nyne is jackhammering into him so hard Norman has to completely bow his back and cry out.

He’s sure the sound echoes down the hallway. He finds he doesn’t really mind, in fact.

The girl slips Skip her room number and leaves him at the bar. Steve starts pushing, trying to gain enough control to see where she stays, in case he wants to go see her, but Skip steadfastly refuses to give up control, keeping his eyes trained on the shiny wood of the bar underneath his arms. He’d hopped out of Livvy as soon as he could, using the fact that Margaret hadn’t taken the bracelet from Steve as the perfect excuse. Nobody was the wiser; in fact, he doesn’t like doing it, but he’s removed the memory from Steve just in case. Off to one side, he thinks he can hear Gunnie finally being led away from the seventh casino table and out the door; he finds he’s right when Syx claps his shoulder and orders a drink for himself as he settles next to him.

“Finally,” Syx sighs, leaning his chin on his hand to look over at Skip. “We could have used your help.”

“Sorry,” Skip says dully.

The ticket for the night is still sitting in plain view. He’d made sure to tell the barkeep when he first sat down that he’ll be paying his own tab tonight; Margaret is giving him something like an allowance now, so he could afford a few drinks. But instead the barkeep had vanished to bring someone a drink and come back to tell Skip all the drinks he and the girl had been having were on the captain’s tab.

Norman Takamori’s tab.

Skip still thinks he’s going to throw up. He keeps staring at the way it’s charged, written off to be charged to the captain’s account, and he—not for the first time—thinks about standing up and finding Norman himself and confronting him.

But there’s no point, he thinks sadly, because Norman doesn’t want him anymore. He’s so lost in this particular thought that when Syx clears his throat again Skip jumps, blinking over at him.

“Huh?”

“I said,” Syx says, vaguely amused, “are you okay?”

Skip sighs, thunking his head down onto the bar. “No. I don’t know.”

Syx seems to think about something very hard for a moment, then sighs a little. “Look, uh, Skip. I know we went a little hard in about the Skipper stuff, but—”

“Please don’t do this right now,” Skip mumbles, shutting his eyes. “Please just drop it. Leave it alone.”

“…right. Right, sorry. Marge said I needed to try not to overstep too much.” Syx shifts on his seat a bit. “…can I offer something?”

“I guess. If you have to.”

“You wanna come hang out with one of us instead?”

It’s a weird question; Skip doesn’t understand at first, until he looks at Syx and watches him make a strange sort of gesture at his nose. He feels Steve get it before he does, and their body sits up immediately, confused.

“Or not!” Syx says, holding his hands up in defense. “No, I was just checking—”

“Oh,” Skip says, relaxing. “You mean body hop. Oh, right—I mean—I’m not opposed, if Steve isn’t.”

Steve prods him a little. Are you gonna go fuck the captain with one of his friends?

Skip pushes back. Norman wouldn’t sleep with any of his crew. Stop it.

“Okay,” Skip says, and it’s second nature at this point to get Steve in place before he detaches, then launches himself into a set of waiting hands. Barry’s sinuses are…strangely lubricated. It makes it easier to slide into place at least, and when he taps in, Syx is already getting the tracking bracelet off Steve to slide around his own wrist.

Oof. Hey, Syx.

Weird, Syx thinks back without meaning to, then scrambles. I mean, not that you’re weird. I mean, not that—I just mean—

Dude. It’s okay. Skip stretches, then curls further around Syx’s brainstem.

You think Nyne is gonna flip?

Let him, Skip thinks back, shrugging. They watch Steve head off after the girl, grinning cockily. Skip shudders. Yeah. Guy’s kind of a scumbag.

He was good for fighting, Syx counters. He pushes away from the bar, reaching back to rub the bulge in the back of his head where Skip is resting right now.

Hey, now, that—hey!

Skip jerks them to a stop, and he feels Syx send a panicked apology. Skip readjusts, then resettles, tapping in just enough to have Syx’s muscles relax too.

You’re fine, Skip tells him gently. Just…careful with the physical goods.

Right. My bad. You’re like, ballsack sensitive, aren’t you?

Skip has to make sure he intentionally isn’t tapped into physical responses so he doesn’t make Syx laugh like a crazy person as they approach Sidney at the door to the casino.

That was a genuine question.

I am a very sensitive slug, yes, Skip replies, pulling away a little. I’m gonna try to get some sleep.

“Right on,” Syx says, holding his bracelet up to show Sidney. She gasps, then claps her gun and hand together a few times, but Skip stops paying attention after that. It’s nice to be around but not fronting, he thinks, just tagging along for the ride.

Like he used to, when Norman still liked him.

Skip pushes those feelings all the way down, listening to the way Syx teases Sidney as they start heading up to their quarters. It’s like having a familiar TV show on in the background, or listening to a podcast to keep him company. Not that he’s ever really done that, of course. He knows about the trick from some of the Jib-Jobber hosts.

The only place he’d ever had the space to try things like that for himself had been with Norman, and he follows up his sudden wave of sadness with an apology to Syx.

He slows their gait, forcing Sidney to slow too. “Skip? You good?”

Sorry, Skip says. Ignore me.

“I don’t feel like ignoring you if you’re having a bad night,” Syx says slowly. “What’s going on, dude?”

“Is Skip okay?” Sidney asks, peering at Syx’s face curiously.

Skip shrinks, but he wiggles his way in, gently testing to see if Syx will let him have the front for a moment. He does, acquiescing his role, and Sidney leans back in surprise as Skip takes over, blinking their now green eyes a few times as he gets adjusted.

“Weird,” he mumbles, rubbing their jaw. “Uh—sorry. I’m good, Sid.”

“Skip?”

“The one and only.” He tries to smile. From the look on Sidney’s face, it doesn’t work. “Sorry.”

“Are you alright?”

You got a lot going on, Syx supplies helpfully, and Skip sighs.

“I’m fine,” he promises. “Just got a little—it’s weird, being with someone I know. That’s all.”

Sidney coos, linking her actual arm with his and starting to pull him to their shared room. “Well, we’ll keep you company, if you want!”

“That would be nice,” he admits. “Hey, I heard you guys play video games sometimes?” Margaret used to invite him and Norman all the time; Norman had eventually said no enough that the invitations stopped entirely, despite the way Skip begged to let them check it out for just one night. Anyway, now that he’s banished himself, he might as well give it a shot, he thinks. Syx agrees enthusiastically, jerking their body forward double time, until Skip thinks he had better control over Norman when he was running into walls all the damn time. Still, it’s kind of endearing, so he tolerates it as best as he can.

He doesn’t realize video games will be as hard to tolerate.

Syx is an excitable person. Skip has known this about him forever and isn’t surprised by it; but the first time they boot up the game, Skip feels a strange sort of rush that he scrambles to identify—dopamine, he thinks, and then maybe a bit of adrenaline. Which is fine. Skip can handle being a little dizzy. They’re both at the front for now while Syx shows Skip the controls, letting Skip feel how to play before they release him out into the online world on his own. And the hits keep coming. Skip starts jerking from them, but after a few more he starts leaning into them, expecting them, doing things in game to help facilitate another rush, then another—

He takes more risks once Syx lets him at the controls, playing it dangerously, and he comes in first.

Syx is the one that launches them to their feet with a loud yell, and Sidney, hollers and fires off a harmless grenade to the far side of the room, and Skip gets so overloaded with the adrenaline and joy of winning he thinks he blacks out. In a desperate attempt to—get more, or somehow stop it—he crawls and shifts and lays himself flatter against Syx’s brainstem, only to find that he feels it more this way. It’s intoxicating. It’s addicting.

Syx—Syx, is this what happens when we win?

Syx laughs out loud, collapsing back on the couch, though Skip can feel the way his fingers are still twitching. “Yeah, dude, this is—you should feel it when we’re shooting a gun. If you like winning a video game—?” He whistles. “—man, you oughta come on a mission with me and Nyne.”

“Being a gunner makes me almost have human physical responses,” Sidney agrees, roller blading in a few circles around the coffee table before she sits next to them on the couch again. “Oh, oh, Barry, you should throw a grenade and see if Skip likes how that feels!”

Something spikes and Skip contracts, wiggling faster, and he has to remind himself it’s rude to steal Syx’s hands and grab a grenade and throw it right here inside the ship.

Syx laughs, reaching back to rub the lump that is Skip—much flatter now, which causes a wave of confusion. “Hey, Skip? You good?”

“Oh—did we overwhelm him?”

I want to throw a grenade, Skip tells him, poking at the hand controls a few times. I know how guns feel. I want to throw a grenade. Where?

Syx gives a strange, stilted sort of chuckle. Skip doesn’t understand why he seems concerned. “Well—I mean, next time we go on a mission if you wanna come with me, we can grab a grenade and do that then—”

Why not now?

“I don’t think Marge wants us throwing grenades in the ship anymore.”

Sidney slaps her hand over her mouth. “Oh, you’re right—shit—”

“Nah, nah, it’s okay—” Syx seems even more confused now, and Skip pokes and wiggles until he finally figures out why.

How am I the reasonable one right now?

Skip gives the slug equivalent of a groan, latching on and taking one of Syx’s hands for a moment to start setting another game up. Fine, if you won’t let me throw a real one—

“Was this a mistake?” Syx asks, not as amused anymore. “Skip—hold on, hey, listen—” He wrenches his hands back, holding them up for a ribec. “Skip, look—”

You promised I could hang out with you guys.

“Yeah, hang out, not go mad with power and start trying to obliterate randos on the internet.”

Some people get drunk. Some people gamble. I am a cerebro slug. Adrenaline is the closest thing I’ll get to drugs.

Syx laughs on instinct, then relaxes. “…okay, I mean, fair point.”

Let me shoot virtual grenades. He tugs at the controls for Syx’s hands again, and Syx sighs, then releases them to Skip.

“Yeah, okay, fine. But Sidney—Sid, hey, listen, I’m letting Skip have the run of the…of the me for a while. Okay?”

“Okay!” Sidney says brightly, saluting.

“Get us in bed so we can sleep for at least two hours before the meeting tomorrow,” Syx says seriously.

Sidney nods back, just as seriously. “I will not let you down, Barry Syx!”

And he lets Skip take full control. Skip gives Sidney a bright smile, one that feels halfway to unnatural.

“Hey, Sid?”

“Hey, Skip!”

“I’m not gonna stop till I win five games in a row.”

“And I will be your personal cheerleader,” Sidney says, grinning back just as unsettlingly. “Besides, Barry is usually pretty good at this game, and you seem to be pretty good too. How long could it take?”

Barry Nyne is almost late for the meeting, but at least he knows he isn’t going to be the last one there. He slides into the back of the room from one of the side entrances, hoping Margaret won’t notice, but she’s staring at him pointedly before he even gets inside, so he just sighs and resigns himself to a one-on-one post crew meeting anyway.

“Nyne,” Margaret says, though not quite as warmly as she has in the past. “Glad you could join us.”

“Where’s the Skipper?” Syx asks. He’s got circles under his eyes darker than the Barry armor, and next to him Sidney looks positively guilty about something—Nyne scans him quickly, then notices Skip’s signature bracelet on his wrist.

Oh, Nyne thinks. That’s not great.

“Uh, dunno,” he lies, shrugging. “I haven’t seen him.”

Which…okay, that isn’t technically a lie. He just has a better guess than the rest of them. This morning he’d heard the shower running in the side bathroom, and he’d considered leaving before the captain could reappear and yell at him for some reason, but something told him that it would be a little too rude. So he’d poked his head in; Norman had sounded like hell frozen over, but he apologized for not waking Nyne up, and Nyne had talked to him through the bathroom door for several martrons before they realized they were going to be late for the meeting Margaret had made them all promise not to be late for. Nyne had offered to get them coffee, but Norman had insisted he take care of it, that Nyne should go to the meeting.

“I oughta go shower,” Nyne said. “Before I go.”

“Come back here after,” Norman offered. “Got some shit that you might like for your hair.” He stuck a bottle out and waved it around, and Nyne saw a ring of tight bruises around his wrist that he must have left, and he’d agreed solely on the basis that if he hopped in the shower to get his dick wet again they were both going to be even later and Margaret would probably chew them out even worse.

So Nyne didn’t technically see Norman this morning, and he shrugs, averting his eyes.

“Well,” Margaret says, shuffling her papers. “We can just—”

“We can get started without him,” Lucienne says quietly. “I mean…well, per our conversation—”

“Okay,” Margaret says loudly, clapping. “Enough of that—yeah, let’s go ahead and get started. We need to figure out what to do with the android parts. We can always put it on Sidney, but I have concerns about it being traced. Gunnie?…”

It takes five martrons before Syx shuffles closer and leans into Nyne. They’re talking about technical stuff that the Barry’s don’t normally need to concern themselves with, so Nyne feels less bad about turning his attention to his brother.

“You look like hell,” Syx says quietly.

“Yeah, well,” Nyne replies. “Long night.”

“I didn’t think you were drinking that much.”

“Ended up with a bottle,” Nyne says casually, shrugging.

“And a girl?”

Nyne snorts. “Not a girl. What happened to you?”

Syx waves the bracelet around. “Skip…wanted to try video games. He says hi, by the way.”

“What happened to little summer soldier?”

“Skip was having a bad night, so we relieved him of duty.”

“Ah. Well, hey, Skip.” Nyne cannot look at his brother anymore, his face going a dark red. Syx nudges his shoulder.

“Barry?”

The door opens behind them then, and every head turns to see Norman Takamori in all his glory, covered in hickies and looking the most hungover any of them have ever seen. A wave of horniness blasts Nyne in the face with a ferocity he isn’t expecting.

Norman is holding two coffees.

“Glad you could join us,” Margaret says, her voice tight. “I assume your booty call went well?”

“Swimmingly,” Norman says dryly, then passes the second coffee wordlessly to Nyne. “Figured you’d need it too.”

Nyne has never been more red in the face. Next to him, Syx—and Skip—have gone completely still.

“Worth it,” Nyne says, and Norman gives him some kind of small, genuine smile.

“Agreed.” He waves at Margaret, takes a sip of his coffee, and leans on the wall next to Nyne. “As you were, Encino.”

Nyne doesn’t hear the rest of the meeting. He takes a sip of his coffee, only to find it’s what they call Irish—that is, it’s more whiskey than caffeine, and there’s only enough cream to make it not quite black. There is whipped cream, though. He takes a sip, nearly chokes—out of the corner of his eye, he sees Syx move as if to help, but the hand jerks and Syx ends up stubbornly leaning against the wall again.

Nyne has a feeling if he looked, his brother’s eyes would be bright green.

On one side, Norman keeps shifting, and he ends up fully leaning on Nyne at one point after he’s finished his own coffee. Nyne keeps taking sips out of nervousness, until it’s all gone and he’s just holding an empty cup up to his mouth for show. The air is charged; he thinks he’s going to throw up if Margaret asks him to stay after, which he’s got a feeling he’s going to get told to do.

But Margaret surprises him and dismisses everyone. They’re staying hidden for the next few malton units, just in case, and Sid and Gunnie are going to help apply the new upgrades to one of Sidney’s pet projects.

“Hopefully,” she says, roller blading up to the Barry’s with one sparkling eye and one mechanical combat eye. “It’ll be like having Riva back!”

“That’s gonna be really, really—really nice,” Gunnie agrees. Nyne watches Margaret and Lucienne leave without another word, but they both glance at Norman, who has stubbornly decided he’s not moving from Nyne’s side yet, apparently. On the other side, Syx and Skip are wholly silent, vibrating with a kind of frustrated intensity—

Nyne doesn’t think he likes this anymore. The sex was good, but was it worth this?

He realizes, a little too late, why Norman had probably been so gung-ho about sleeping with him last night anyway, especially since he’d never even had an inkling that Norman was even into men, and it comes down to the boy from yesterday that Skip had been inhabiting, and Nyne had known he was right before this moment but he kind of wishes he hadn’t been. There’s an angry captain on one side, leaning against him, still sore from what Nyne had done to him last night—and on his other side, an angry slug inside his brother—

Nyne feels suddenly sick, and he doesn’t know if he wishes he had more alcohol in his system right now or less.

“Barry Nyne?” Sidney asks. “Forgive me for saying so, and if I’m overstepping, but—you don’t look so good.”

“Dude—dude, what’s up? Are you good?”

Nyne stubbornly takes another sip of his still completely empty cup. It makes a strange noise. “Yeah,” he rasps out. “Fine. Uh, the meetings—I mean, we can go—”

“You got plans?” Syx asks, but Nyne knows deep down it isn’t really his brother asking.

“We might,” Norman says briskly. “Who’s asking?”

“Nyne ditched us last night. That was all.”

“He was with me.”

“So you understand why I’m worried.”

Norman pushes away from the wall, glaring at Syx darkly. “You got something you wanna say, Barry?”

Syx turns his head slowly, eyes narrowed. Nyne does his best to shrink into the wall.

“And if I do?” Syx—Skip—asks pointedly. “You sure you got time to listen, Skipper? Or you got another appointment to go spread your legs somewhere?”

Nyne stares directly up at the ceiling. Someone, please shoot me, he thinks, and then Norman pulls his gun and Nyne retracts it immediately. I take it back, I take it back—

“How fucking dare you—”

“I thought you were sexless!” Skip says hotly. “So why the fuck is it the ribec I’m gone you decide you’re gonna have a good time?”

“What?” Norman asks, completely baffled, but Sidney answers for him.

“Skip, maybe it was awkward for the captain to have sex with you around,” she offers. “I mean, if it were me, I would be embarrassed. I think. Do life forms get embarrassed by that?” She turns to Gunnie.

He shrugs. “I mean, yeah, I would. It would be like having comms on during sex. Seems—seems weird. Voyeuristic.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad to me.”

“Everyone please stop talking,” Nyne begs quietly, but nobody hears him.

“You went for him?” Norman says slowly. His hand is still on his gun; Nyne can see he doesn’t have his fingers anywhere near the trigger. “Is that why you were avoiding me all night?”

“I wasn’t avoiding you,” Skip insists. “What’s his face from yesterday wanted to hook up, so I helped him talk to the girl, and by the time I was ready to hop for the night—”

“Since when do you hop for the night?”

“Since you decide to interfere and pay the bill!”

“I was being nice,” Norman hisses. “I was trying to help you out! How the hell was I supposed to know you weren’t cashing in?”

Skip throws his hands up. “You didn’t ask! I could have afforded the bill!”

“Yeah, and so can I! I was trying to help!”

“I don’t need your help,” Skip hisses. “And I don’t need your money, and I don’t need your head, and I don’t need you!”

Nyne watches how even Syx reacts poorly to the words coming out of his mouth, but primarily, he watches the way Norman’s face fully falls. He straightens; his face is blank. He holsters his gun silently.

I’m not gonna kill myself.

Suddenly, Nyne has his doubts.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says suddenly, surprising all of them. Norman’s eyes snap up—just in time, it looks like, because Nyne can tell he’s blinking away some kind of fog that was threatening to overtake him. “Come on.”

“Barry,” Gunnie hisses, but Nyne avoids his outstretched grip and takes Norman’s arm instead. “Barry!”

Norman is silent. He stares up at Nyne, as if discerning if Nyne means it; when he decides whatever’s happening is acceptable he grunts gruffly, then heads towards the door.

Nyne spares his brother and Skip one last glance, trying not to let his stomach churn at how confused they look, then leads Norman away.

Skip watches them go. Syx’s hands have started to go numb with shock, though Skip can’t tell if that’s something he’s done on accident or if that’s a natural response.

What the hell, dude?

Skip doesn’t respond. He isn’t sure he’s letting Syx even breathe.

Skip. Lock in. What the fuck was that?

“Barry?” Sid asks softly. “Skip?”

One solid thought finally forms. They left together.

Yeah, dude, no shit. You just flipped lids on the captain, Nyne probably didn’t want him to shoot me. You did see him pull a gun, right? Tell me you saw that.

They left.

Syx doesn’t have to fight hard to wrestle the controls back, and Skip feels them groan, rubbing their hands down their face. “What the—yeah, dude, they left! So fucking what?”

Skip doesn’t respond to that, feelings or words or otherwise. He detaches from most senses, stays tapped in enough so Syx knows he’s still around, but…

He didn’t know he felt that way—hell, he’s not convinced he actually does, but there had been this clawing anger deep inside his nerves that wanted him to make Norman hurt. Evidently, he succeeded; and now Norman is gone, with Barry Nyne by his side, and Skip has the bitter, acidic thought that he’d hitched a ride with the wrong clone.

Syx viscerally flinches. “Dude. Not cool.”

“What’s going on?” Gunnie demands. “Did—since when is Skip with you?”

“Last night,” Sidney explains. “We wanted to give him a good time.”

“And I didn’t sleep,” Syx says, a little loudly. “Even though I told them—”

“In his defense, he set a goal, and he did not attain it!” Sidney tries.

“So you’re gonna deprive me of sleep because he sucks at the game?” Syx throws his hands up. “Just tag me in! We could have gone to bed an hour in! I don’t do well without sleep!” He groans again, even louder, then reaches back to poke Skip. “Fucking explain yourself, dude—”

Skip does not explain himself. He just sits, feeling more like a slug than he ever has in his whole life, listens to the world outside of Barry Syx’s skull as if through a window while he lays in a depression spiral. Syx gives it another few tries before he gives up, though Skip can feel how frustrated he is; he keeps their conversation pathway open, pokes at it occasionally as he grabs them a snack then goes to their quarters to lay down. Skip has no opinion on any of it, despite how many times Syx asks.

Their nap turns into a deep sleep pretty early on. Skip lets it happen. He doesn’t really dream unless he’s completely locked in, and he doesn’t feel like doing that right now, so he doesn’t. But even asleep, Syx keeps trying to reach out, so Skip—

He’s not proud of it, but at the end of the malton unit…he’ll do what he has to do.

Norman doesn’t know if he’s supposed to be grateful to Nyne for getting him out of there so fast or not, so he doesn’t say a word until Nyne leads them to one of the benches on the far side of the ship overlooking the stars. He doesn’t get to see views like this very often; but it’s kind of nice, watching the way everything zooms past, understanding just how small they really are in the grand scope of things. It’s not like sitting at the driver’s seat. It’s…nicer. He can see more—he’s much closer to the window, for one, and he can lean against the metal and inspect the view better than he can anywhere else. Nyne stands there with his arms crossed, a few feet away, staring less out the window and more at Norman out of the corner of his eye.

“I told you that you needed to talk,” Nyne says eventually.

“I think that conversation said everything it needed to,” Norman replies, his voice tense.

It’s all he can do to keep his voice from breaking, in fact. He’s breathing slowly—intentionally—he doesn’t feel good right now, the words echoing, that same blasted neon green haunting him—

Norman clears his throat. “Don’t you?”

“No,” Nyne says pointedly. “Look, dude, I’m not that smart—I’m not Barry One, and I’m not Barry Syx, okay? And I’m not Marge or Sid or Gunnie—”

“You’re right. You’re none of those people.”

“—will you let me finish?”

“Talk faster.”

“You’re being intentionally stupider than all of us,” Nyne says sharply. “And you fucking know it. You think we don’t know why Skip’s been having a fucking identity crisis? It’s because he misses you, and he thinks you don’t give a shit!”

“Maybe I don’t,” Norman counters, glaring at Nyne. “You ever consider that?”

Nyne points at him with narrowed eyes. “You’re not this fucking stupid.”

Norman scoffs. “Whatever.”

“No, I fucking mean it! You’re not this damn stupid and you know it. Do you want Skip back or not?”

“He wouldn’t come back if—”

“I’m not asking you to pretend you know what he’s thinking,” Nyne hisses. “I am asking you, Norman Takamori, what you specifically want. Do you miss Skip? Would you take him back?”

Norman scoffs loudly, glaring out the window. “What the fuck do you think?”

“What do I think?”

“Yeah, if any of you fucking clones have an original damn thought in your head. What the fuck do you think?”

He watches in the reflection as Barry Nyne’s head snaps back in surprise. Something like guilt settles in Norman’s stomach; either that, or the two Irish coffees he’d chugged are starting to settle badly, and that’s going to be pretty damn nasty if he doesn’t get out of here quickly.

This whole thing is going to be nasty regardless, he thinks.

“I don’t need any of you,” Norman says deliberately, “to tell me what I can and cannot feel about the damn slug that stole part of my life and changed it.”

“For the better,” Nyne protests, though his voice is weak. “You liked Skip. What the hell happened?”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“Stop saying it doesn’t fucking matter, Takamori! It clearly does!” Nyne starts pacing and kicks the leg of the bench as he passes it. “God, you’re fucking impossible—”

“And what are you gonna do about it?”

Nyne spins; this time, Norman turns to look, his eyes half lidded. Nyne’s face is flushed darkly, a bead of sweat on his temple, and his chest is heaving similar to the way it had been last night. He seems to recognize the look on Norman’s face after a moment.

“No,” he says immediately. “No, I’m not gonna fucking—you can’t seduce me to get out of this conversation.”

“Can I not?” he asks casually, staring back out the window. “Then what the fuck are you here for?”

There’s rustling, then something clicks. In the reflection, Nyne’s blaster pistol—pointed at Norman—glints under the lights of the Wurst.

“How brave,” he deadpans. “Well, at least you’d be doing everyone a damn favor.”

Nyne laughs incredulously, and as quick as the gun was pointed at him, it drops.

“You’re impossible,” he breathes, laughing louder. “God, you’re fucking impossible—I forgot you’d fucking like that, wouldn’t you? If you’re dead you don’t have to deal with any of the fucking consequences.”

“Like my whole crew hating me, or the fact that it isn’t even my crew? Yeah. Tell me why I’m supposed to hate that, again?”

“Norman,” Nyne says pointedly. “We like you.”

“Well, you shouldn’t.”

Nyne scoffs again, turning around in place, then holsters his pistol. “Fine. Fine, whatever, keep—whatever, Takamori. Fucking asshole. Fucking asshole.”

“Weren’t complaining too much last night.”

“You know what I think?” Nyne continues, ignoring Norman. “I think you’re just too emotionally constipated to consider the fact that maybe, Skip feels the same way about you. Did you ever think about that, Cap?”

Norman blinks slowly. He’s been staring at the stars this whole conversation without seeing them. “Then why did he leave?”

“You probably made him feel unwelcome.”

“So you see why it wouldn’t make sense to me that he would want to come back. Right?”

“And I’m telling you that he does. We all know it.”

“He said the words?”

Nyne is silent. Norman shuts his eyes this time.

“Yeah,” he says. “Fucking exactly, Barry. Look, you’re good at fiction. It’s admirable. But stop trying to conflate it with real life.”

“Whoahoaho, big man on campus got a fucking dictionary,” Nyne says, waving his hands. “Well newsflash, dickwad, I don’t know what that word means! But I’m not making shit up!”

“What word?”

“—and you—what?”

“What word do you not know?”

Nyne makes an exasperated noise. “What are you talking about?”

“You said you didn’t know what that word meant, I want to know what word—”

“It doesn’t matter!” Nyne shouts. “Skip is in love with you!”

“Skip is an invertebrate that jumped ship when he realized I’m just human,” Norman says, finally pushing away from the wall he’s leaning against. “I’m just a fucking guy, and I’m replaceable.” He gestures at the rest of the ship. “Just look at what they got set up. He’s got a whole galaxy to explore, Nyne, why the fuck would he stick with me?”

“Because,” Nyne says slowly. “He is in love with you. Why else would he be so mad about this? About us?”

“Us,” Norman scoffs. “Look, there’s no us, we just fucked around—”

“Not in his eyes. Norman—Norman, look at me,” Nyne says, approaching again and trying to lean down to make sure Norman can’t look away from him. “You’re hurt that he replaced you, right? How do you think he feels now that you replaced him?”

“I didn’t replace him,” Norman spits. “I don’t have another fucking slug—”

“No, but you’re going out of your way to spend time with everyone but him, and that’s not fair to someone who—”

“He left me first!” Norman says hotly, shoving his finger in Nyne’s chest. “He was the one who decided he wanted to rotate hosts and not have me on the fucking roster anymore! I never wanted him to leave, I just—”

And for the first time, he thinks back, about a hand and a plant and how different it had been. Norman had masturbated with Skip around before, but it had always been more—together. The both of them working at the same time. They’d figured things out in tandem, and Skip had done some slug shit and Norman had taken care of the physical parts and it was good for both of them. But then they fought, and Skip kept trying to think about the damn plant the whole time, and—

Norman sags back, staring at the floor to the right of Nyne uncomfortably. “—he left and he didn’t even say goodbye, okay? I’m allowed to be hurt by that.”

“Did you tell him you’re hurt?”

“He ought to know.”

“You don’t know why he left, do you?” Nyne asks, much softer now. “None of us really do, but—if he didn’t tell you, that’s kind of a sign, isn’t it?”

Maybe we do need to talk, Norman thinks, then swallows hard and shakes his head.

“He made his decision. He’s a grown slug,” he says pointedly. “And I don’t have to like it, and he doesn’t have to like my decisions either. Good news about him is he can run for-fucking-ever if he wants.”

“Norman,” Nyne says quietly, but he lets Norman push past him and storm out of the hallway. He doesn’t know where he’s going, just that he needs to be away and out of this fucking conversation, and Nyne has enough sense not to follow him, which is—nice.

A few hallways, up a floor, down two floors, and Norman finally decides he ought to just go to the cockpit, so he does. Unfortunately, that makes him predictable—Margaret is slumping in his seat, he notices as he approaches, and he very seriously considers pulling a gun on her until he remembers that she calls the shots here.

Norman just pilots, and he’s not even good for that anymore. Not when they have Skip.

“That’s my seat.”

Margaret hums, typing something quickly before she sighs and sits up. “Right. Norman, how are we doing today?”

“Shitty,” he says. “That’s my seat, are you getting out of it or not?”

“No,” she says simply. “Let’s chat. You can’t keep doing this with Skip. Now, look, I stopped his program—”

“Oh,” Norman says, squaring his shoulders. “Great, so we get the fucking steroid jackass again?”

“No,” she says.

“He’s sticking with Syx?”

“No, Norman, I think he needs to come back to you.”

Norman blinks a few times, staring at her like she’s just spoken a completely different language. “What?”

Margaret steeples her hands as she stares at him. “I think,” she repeats slowly, “he needs to come back to you. The hopping around clearly isn’t helping, and I think it’ll behoove all of us if you two stopped making the rest of us uncomfortable. Actually—specifically you, Captain. I don’t know if you know this, but you’re pretty bad about wearing your heart on your sleeve.”

“I don’t have a damn heart,” he hisses.

“So why’s it bleeding all the time?” Margaret counters. Norman jerks his head back. “You miss him and we all know it. And I was going to bring it up today, but it felt like a bad time.”

“You were right,” Norman agrees stiffly. “Now’s not any better. Get out of my seat.”

“If you don’t feel like cooperating,” she says, staring out the window now. “I can just have you taken off the crew.”

The world goes still.

It doesn’t matter that Margaret keeps talking. It doesn’t matter that she gets up out of the seat to offer it to him when she says he looks pale; it doesn’t matter that she starts saying all the right things, that this ship is supposed to be his home and sometimes the only way to get through to someone is to threaten to take their safety net away. It doesn’t matter that she promises not to actually kick him out, or that she tells him Skip is clearly suffering for having been away for so long.

None of that matters, because she starts the conversation with the threat to kick him off the crew of the ship he’d given his whole life for, and everything else makes it through under a layer of cotton that makes it impossible to understand. He does sit down, at least, but it’s to run his hand over the armrest that he’s held onto so many times when things were getting bad.

“Norman,” Margaret says, putting her hand on top of his, and he yanks it away.

“Go fuck yourself,” he says sharply. “Fine, you want me off the damn crew, then I’ll go.”

“Did you hear anything I’ve said?”

“No, and I don’t care,” he says, staring ahead at the nebula swirling around his ship. “It’s fucking fine, Encino. Borrowed time anyway. Hey, before I leave, you want the knife out of my back or is that a parting gift?”

“You’re acting like a child about this.”

“You just threatened to have me kicked off my own ship,” he hisses, standing now. The last time he was nose to nose with someone Nyne was nearly towering over him; now, he has the height advantage over Margaret and he uses every inch of it, his eyes narrowed as he glares at her. “I gave up everything for this damn piece of junk, and you—”

“I’m not kicking you off!”

“Damn right you aren’t!”

“I think you need Skip back,” she says hotly. “Because you were never this argumentative when he was around.”

“You didn’t know me before Skip,” he reminds her. “This is who I’ve always been, and you can ask anyone else on the fucking ship about it. Sorry I don’t fit into one of your neat little fucking boxes, Encino, but I’m not one of your quarterly goalposts or whatever the fuck it is you concern yourself about. This—” He gestures around wildly. “—is my ship. I gave up retirement funds for cycles for it, and I don’t intend to be talked to like I’m an idiot on the bridge of it. This is my fucking ship! And if you don’t like it, well—” He gestures again. He’s leaning in, and she’s leaning back, and he can feel the way the snarl on his face is setting nicely, like it’s finally come home. “—then by all fucking means, go get yourself another damn ship. Take your sponsorships. Take your gold status. Take your crew, since that’s who they so clearly fucking are, and get off the Red Hot, do you understand me?”

Margaret hasn’t flinched, but she has leant away; in response, she reaches up to wipe some invisible spit off her cheek, then takes a breath. It shakes. He hears it shake.

Good.

It looks like she debates for a moment what to say. What she chooses to say—well, Norman’s pretty sure she should have thought about it longer.

“Are you snapping because your feelings are hurt? Or are you snapping because you really are convinced you’re this unlikeable?”

His hand twitches, and he indulges himself in the thought of how nice it would be to slap that stupid, smug expression off her face—but he doesn’t.

“Get out of my bridge,” he hisses.

“I’ll bring Skip by soon.”

“Like hell you will. Out.”

As she turns to step off the platform, she pauses. Norman collapses in his chair, rubbing his forehead, his hand inches away from the switch that will turn the ship’s engines back on—and he considers it—

“Norman,” she says softly. “We don’t want you miserable, you know that. Right?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I mean it,” she says, not coming closer, but not leaving. “I know we’re all fond of Skip, and I know you and the rest of the crew have—have had your differences—”

“That’s a fucking understatement.”

“—but we want you to be—I mean, I don’t know if happy is something you can feel, but we want you close to that. We want to be a team.”

“So you’re putting the slug back in place,” Norman scoffs, looking away from her. “So he can take away the parts of me that make me a person.”

“That’s not what this is. He misses you, you know?”

“The next time someone says that, I’m gonna fucking shoot them,” he hisses. “I’m not telling you again. Get out of my bridge.”

“Norman—”

He flips open the latch on his holster, putting his hand on the butt of his blaster, until she finally retreats without another word. Then it’s just him and the nebula again, and he stares out at it like it’ll provide an answer. It’s quiet. Of course it’s quiet, because it’s a damn nebula, but it’s double quiet now, he thinks, because there is no answer as to why Margaret Encino suddenly thinks she has the audacity to sidle in and take his own damn ship from him.

(Even if she’s not actually kicking him out.)

The threat still hurts, and he knows he isn’t wanted, but it’s one thing to know this and another entirely to see it in action. Norman Takamori has never been the kind of person to follow and prioritize friendships. He knows the proldiering life doesn’t lend itself to care easily. Hell, even the Brigade didn’t, and since that’s where he learned everything from anyway—well, it just makes sense, but in moments like this he really, really, really wishes it wasn’t how he was raised.

Skip had always had so much fun. Everyone liked him. He was funny; he was smart; he was a wicked shot, too, and kinder than he had any right to be, and he made Norman a better person by sheer will alone, because he’d said once he didn’t want to see Norman suffering in isolation if he could help it. And he had helped it, because Skip had gotten him on speaking terms with almost everyone.

(Except that’s not quite true, is it? Everyone wanted to speak to Skip, not to Norman. It didn’t matter who was in front. Sidney never called him anything but Skip, even now, even with the slug gone; Syx never stopped hating him, except to pity him, which is worse; Gunnie tried bonding, but there had been a connection made while Norman was not there, so Gunnie felt a kind of kinship that Norman was missing entirely; and Margaret Encino, the bitch that she is, had taken advantage of not knowing Norman at all and commandeered the crew of his ship and half the ownership, with the other half going to the fucking slug.)

(And Norman sits here, in his captain’s chair, thinking about how he’s never been on thinner ice, and he misses the damn slug so bad he doesn’t know what to do with himself.)

Maybe Nyne is right, he thinks pathetically. Maybe he does need to talk to Skip like a man, own up to the fact that he’s a fucking failure; maybe he should ask Skip to take over like he used to. Somehow he doesn’t think it’ll go over very well, but there’s no harm in trying, surely.

So he waits, because Margaret is stubborn and he’s sure she’ll be bringing Skip by soon despite his threats, because she knows she’s right and that he’s going to come around eventually because he has no other choice. He waits for a marbec, then another two; Margaret does not come back, and he finally shifts, feeling his back pop in several places as he does. He reaches for the comm—it’s not on. He sighs. That must be why he hasn’t heard anything.

So he flips it on, and there’s silence. He gives it another half a marbec before he starts to get worried.

But everyone’s probably busy, he reasons. There had been something going on with the tech they took, so everyone’s probably dealing with that. That must be what it is. He doesn’t know where they’d be meeting about it, so he doesn’t know where to look—and of course, he realizes he’s probably on the wrong damn channel, so he switches to the Gunner Channel—silence there too.

Well. Shit.

It’s fine, he reasons. He’s probably just—burned too many bridges for the night. It’s okay. He sighs and settles back in his chair, letting his eyes slip shut. He’s slept in worse places. Plus, he doesn’t know if he could stand going back to his room right now.

His empty room, with nothing but empty bottles and a view he can’t see out of anymore.

There’s no real sense of day or night—not in the nebula, anyway—but he knows he gets a few marbecs of shut-eye before the crackling of the radio startles him awake.

“Uh, Captain Norman?”

He grumbles, grabbing the microphone. “Uh—present and accounted for.”

“Oh—good! Good, we thought you’d—well, hello, Captain.”

It takes him a martron to get his bearings, struggling to place the voice. Eventually he realizes it’s either Lucienne or the princeps. “Hello,” he replies awkwardly. “Just—welfare check?”

“Something like that.” The radio crackles, but they don’t say anything else on the other end. Norman stifles a sigh.

“Well, I’m alive. That all?”

There are several more ribecs of silence before someone speaks again—this time, with a background of noise that sounds like several people are in the same room trying to talk at once.

“Captain Dad, are you—is it—I—I mean, uh, is it—are you alone?”

Norman blinks several times, then shifts and speaks into the microphone again, cranky. “Gunthrie, what in the hell are you talking about? Yeah, I’m alone on the damn bridge. So what?”

“Skip isn’t with you?”

Now that…he stills, then reaches back to feel—no lump. And he looks around just in case, but there’s no slime, and—

“Just me,” he replies, much softer now. “You lost Skip?”

“He left.” That, he knows, has to be Syx, because only Syx ever sounds so pissed off when talking to him, even out of necessity. “I don’t know—I laid down for a nap, he said he was gonna go find you and I wouldn’t have to worry about getting up, and that—it was a few marbecs ago.”

“And you didn’t think that maybe, that was ill-advised?” Norman snaps. “You let him go?”

“I was mostly asleep! I’m pretty sure he did it on purpose!”

“Barry,” Norman hisses, pushing to his feet. “If you lost that damn slug and we don’t find him again, I’m gonna make sure they never find all the pieces to your body, you fucking hear me? Lock the ship down until we find him.” He tosses the handheld down, hopping off the platform, and starts looking in—every nook and cranny he can think of, every corner, every edge, until the entire bridge has been swept top to bottom. He doesn’t listen to any of the chatter on the radio anymore. There’s no point.

Barry Syx lost Skip, he thinks bitterly, and Norman is itching to fight about it if he thinks about it too hard.

Not too long later the door to the bridge opens. Norman has started undoing paneling to see if Skip got himself caught in some wires; he doesn’t look up, but he does grunt in acknowledgement.

“Captain Skipper,” Sidney says, rollerblading closer. She sounds…not quite scared, but nervous, at least. “We’ve been trying to raise you on the—”

“The Jib-Jobbers,” he says stiffly, barely glancing up at her. He manages to see a second set of legs behind her, though he doesn’t place them at first. “We got a plan in place to check them?”

“Marge is working on it,” the other voice says—

One of the Barry’s. Norman’s blood boils, but he glances up a little better this time to see that it’s Nyne. His shoulders relax. Neither of them look particularly happy to be here, but they don’t need to be.

They need to help him find Skip, god damn it.

“We need to check their bags,” Norman says, sticking his hand through the wires to feel the crevice behind them all. Empty again. He starts ripping off the next panel before he’s even pulled his arm out of the current one. “Make sure he isn’t joy riding in there. Check the tech—I wasn’t listening, I don’t know if he could commandeer it—get the princeps to start checking for—”

“We did,” Nyne interrupts. “That’s what we’re here to tell you. We don’t think he’s on the ship, unless he’s with you.”

“I took them around the entire ship,” Sidney says. He’s not making it up—her voice is definitely softer this time in fear. “They checked for psychic vibrations everywhere, and in the crews of Jib-Jobbers, and all of us. The only person we haven’t checked is…you.”

He rips his arm out of the panel, hissing when it shocks him on exit. He rubs the new burn slowly, then looks up. “I think I’d know if Skip was back. He’s pretty damn loud.”

“You’re the only one left,” Nyne insists. “You care if they check anyway?”

“We gotta find him,” Norman agrees, shoving to his feet. “Yeah, whatever.”

Zortch has to touch his face, which—seems a little far, actually, because he’s pretty sure they didn’t have to do this to all the Jib-Jobbers, but they’re doing it anyway, and he sits uncomfortably still while they focus.

But eventually, Zortch pulls back.

“Nothing,” they say, almost…sad. “Skip’s not there.”

“Where the hell else could he have gone?” Lucienne asks, rubbing her forehead. “He said he was going to Norman, he should have fucking gone to—”

“He doesn’t have visuals,” Norman reminds her sharply. She looks up, blinking several times. “He’s just a—a fuckin’ gross ass little slug, and he can’t see anything. Follows—what the fuck is it, intellect?”

“Oh,” Margaret says, as if this is new information. Norman swallows back the harsh words he wants to throw at all of them, reminding himself—if he wants to make sure Skip is okay, if he doesn’t want them to put him in the airlock and open it, then he’s gotta play nice.

“I don’t know,” he continues stiffly, “how it really works—if he knows who he’s getting into before he does. But if he was in—what, the crews quarters—? You did a run by my room?”

“I did,” Zortch confirms. “We didn’t go in, though.”

“I’ll go check there,” he says, rubbing his forehead again. “And if we can’t find him, then I’m personally checking every damn one of you, and—”

“How?”

He glares at Margaret. “By taking a damn freezer pistol to everyone—the hell do you even mean? I’ll figure something out!”

“I think,” Sidney says, holding her hand out carefully as she looks between everyone, then back at Norman. “That perhaps we should all just…calm down. Maybe we’re just missing a very obvious answer.”

“If it were obvious,” Norman says pointedly, “then we’d have found him already. I’m going to my room—Princeps, with me.” He snaps at them, then starts storming off down the hallway. Zortch follows, though he can hear them looking back several times before Gunnie joins them, identifiable by the clanking of his metal against the hallway wall when he slides into step with them.

As soon as the door slides shut, Nyne narrows his eyes, then slowly turns to Syx. His brother looks like he’s feeling unwell—most likely at Norman’s anger, if he had to guess.

“We’ll find him,” Margaret says gently, holding her hand out. Syx doesn’t seem soothed. “I know he’s—I know. But we’ll find him. It’ll be okay.”

Syx clears his throat. “…I know,” he says, sounding the most unsure Nyne has ever heard a Barry sound.

Nyne claps his shoulder in an attempt at comfort, rubbing his thumb on the side of Syx’s neck and—

—feeling something strange underneath the touch.

He doesn’t know if Syx notices; if he does, he doesn’t say anything, so Nyne has to swallow back the sudden bile trying to climb its way up his throat, because he—he knows. He knows.

“We’re gonna go check the bunks again,” he says, a little too loud, and he takes Syx by the shoulders from behind and pushes him in the opposite direction of the Skipper. Syx goes, confused, but it’s not as though he has another choice. “It’s gonna be fine.”

“Nyne?”

“What?”

The door shuts behind them. Nyne doesn’t let up, pushing Syx very pointedly. “What are you doing?” Syx asks, his voice starting to shake.

And around the next corner, Nyne deems it safe enough, tossing Syx against the wall and putting his arm across his chest.

It’s not a great feeling, he admits, to be so suspicious of his own brother, but he’s got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Barry,” he says quietly, staring his brother down as intensely as he can manage without going straight for rage or fear. “Tell me about Skip leaving.”

Syx struggles against him for a ribec, but he doesn’t fully push Nyne away. “I—I told you, I was asleep, Barry, he just slid out without—”

“Did he?”

“What?”

Nyne takes a slow breath, then uses his free hand to reach around the back of Syx’s head and rub the now-wiggling lump that sits under the base of his skull. He sees the moment Syx realizes—he also sees the flash of green that denotes the exact moment his brother’s mind is fucked with, and Nyne really does almost throw up that time.

“Barry?” Syx says, his voice small. “What’s going on?”

“It’s okay, Barry,” Nyne replies quietly, pulling his hand away. Syx, who had tensed so totally at the first touch, relaxes slightly. “Hey, hey, Barry, look at me, okay? You’re gonna be okay.”

“Okay,” Syx says, even quieter. “…why are you this close to me?”

“You remember who we’re looking for?”

“We’re looking for someone?”

Nyne’s hands are shaking; he grabs his brother’s head again from behind and wrestles him close until he can hiss into Syx’s ear. Under his fingers, Skip is wriggling wildly.

“I assume you can hear me, Skip,” he whispers. “And on that assumption, I’m gonna let you know that you aren’t gonna get away with hiding forever, got it? You gotta come talk to Norm soon, but I’ll help you hide for a few marbecs if that’s what you need.”

His brother’s voice responds; it’s not him who speaks, though.

“I don’t want marbecs,” Skip replies. “I want cycles. He doesn’t want me anymore, and he especially won’t after this—”

“You are stealing my brother and fucking with his head,” Nyne hisses, shaking Syx a little more pointedly. “I am giving you three fucking marbecs before I’m ratting you out, got it? And I’m not letting you get away. And this is only—and I mean only—if you promise to leave his head alone.”

“I’m just hiding,” Skip complains, trying to shove Nyne away. Nyne doesn’t let him. “I just—”

“I do not care,” Nyne insists, this time grabbing Syx’s jaw and pulling him so he can stare straight into the neon green of Skip’s eyes as he sits behind Syx’s controls. “I will take a cold blaster to his head if it means ridding him of you, but you do not get to run from the captain forever, do you understand me?”

Skip swallows hard; he can feel it under his grip, can feel the strange way the muscles move, as if they aren’t used to it, because Skip is borrowing his brother and Nyne thinks he’s going to lose his mind—three marbecs is already longer than he wants to concede to, but—

“Well then,” Skip says, and Nyne wonders if this is how Syx felt every time Prilbus had used his voice to speak. Syx’s face twists into something half confident and unfamiliar. “It sounds like you’ve just volunteered.”

And then the world goes…green.

Norman is checking every corner of his dresser when the ship lurches strangely. Gunnie’s head snaps in the direction of the cockpit; Norman’s too, and he watches Zortch leap off the bed with the covers still undone to check the hallway.

“What are we—who—I mean—did Sidney start the ship?” Gunnie asks, looking around.

“I don’t know,” Zortch replies.

Norman pushes to his feet just as the ship lurches again, and—alright, yes, it seems getting caught off guard by an FTL jump isn’t very fun after all. His stomach churns as his head collides with the wall—and his instinct is to reach back and cover the back of his skull to make sure Skip is okay—

Skip, who still isn’t there. Norman feels a thousand times worse.

“Who the hell is driving?” Norman demands. He doesn’t have to say anything else—Gunnie extends a hand to help him up and then all three of them are bolting for the front of the ship, arriving with everyone else. Nobody is in the seat; the Barry’s look confused as hell as they see everyone else joining them.

“Norman?”

“Wasn’t me,” he says, staring at Margaret. “Who was up here?”

“Nobody,” Nyne says. “We don’t know—”

“There is a course set for Rec 97,” Sidney announces, touching something on the screen. “I don’t know—”

“Remote ship control?” Zortch offers, staring at Gunnie. Gunnie is calculating something on his data pad and making a noise under his breath. “Could Fav do that?”

“It’s—it’s—I mean, it’s not wholly out of the realm of possibility, I—I—I guess? Uh, Cap, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“You didn’t do this,” Norman says, storming over to his seat. It’s still cold, as though nobody was sitting in it; he frowns even deeper, staring ahead as the stars fly past. “I can stop it, but it might fuck our fuel—”

“We won’t be able to get anywhere in time,” Gunnie agrees. “We gotta just—go to the Rec Station, I guess?”

“I guess,” he grumbles, shifting on his feet. “I don’t like this.” He turns, looking at Sidney, the Barry’s, Margaret and Lucienne each in turn. “Nobody saw anything?”

“No,” Syx says, frowning. “Nothing.”

“And Skip is still missing,” Lucienne says, throwing her hands up. “Great.”

“One problem at a time,” Margaret chides quietly.

“The problem should be finding Skip,” Norman insists, then turns to the window again. “But I guess we gotta go get our ass beat at Rec 97 again.”

“How optimistic,” Gunnie mumbles. “Thanks, Skipper.”

Norman resists the urge to pull his pistol, but only barely. “Everyone in places, I guess, just in case. When we get to the station I’m parking, and then we’re checking everyone again.”

Everyone starts to head out, except for Margaret and Nyne. Nyne waits at the door, as if ready to escort her; but Margaret makes a point to join Norman by the controls and speak quietly.

“Norman.”

“What?”

“Don’t open the ship when we get there.”

Norman glances up at her. Her face is severe and serious. He grimaces.

“You think he’s trying to get out of here too.”

“I do.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“If he’s hiding,” Margaret says quietly. “I mean, if he’s hiding. He can mess with memory, can’t he?”

“He messed with mine.”

“You know that was different.”

“Well—yeah,” he concedes, rubbing his forehead. “No, no, I know what you mean. I think the answer is yes. Most slug hosts don’t know—if they get locked down, you know—I’m not sure. I don’t know.”

“So he’s probably in some Jib-Jobber,” Margaret concludes, frowning deeper. “And—”

“Marge.”

She glances at him. “Hm?”

Norman makes a face, tilting his head back. “…the Princeps. Can we do anything to check them to see if—I mean, nobody was in here, right? And Zortch was with us, but if they—I mean, Skip is resourceful. Maybe he found a way to—double up on the mind’s usage. You know what I mean?”

Margaret takes a moment to sigh slowly, then nods. “…you make a good point. Damn. And I thought we were being so clever—”

“We are,” Norman says. “That was a good call. And I still want to have them check the inhabitants again when we get there, but—”

“—but we also need to check them. Is there a way if he doesn’t make himself known?”

Norman touches the back of his head again, hyper-aware of Nyne’s gaze from behind him. “Physically, yes, unless the Princeps has a different skeletal makeup.”

“I don’t think they do, but—”

“Don’t mention it yet,” he says suddenly. “Not till we have enough people to surround them.”

Margaret is silent for a moment, then sighs. “I don’t like how good you are at knowing how to successfully ambush the crew.”

“Happened to me more than once,” Norman admits, sinking further down in his seat. “Before this crew. And it was gonna happen again before Skip showed up and—made everything better. Or whatever he did.”

“…I know it’s not a great time—”

“I’m not doing this with you right now.”

“We need to discuss you and Skip when we find him.”

“At this point,” Norman says hotly, his voice rising, “if Skip comes back, the first thing I’m doing is strangling him, got it?”

“That’s going to make him come back so much faster.”

“If he’s loose on the ship, he can’t hear me,” Norman spits. “And if he’s in one of you two, then make sure to let him know he can go fuck himself, big time, for putting us through all of this.”

Margaret sighs heavily, then steps off the platform. “For the love of—alright, Norman. Get us there safe.”

“No, I was thinking about crashing,” he mumbles sarcastically, glad when he hears the door close without another reply.

He takes them to the furthest parking spot, but by the time he gets down to the door it’s already open and Jib-Jobbers have started funneling off. Norman sees red, but Margaret puts a hand out before he can say anything.

“It was a misunderstanding,” she says pointedly, typing something. “We didn’t loop Raymond in, so I’m having him tell everyone to come back.”

“He’s probably already out there!” Norman insists. At the entrance with him is only Margaret, Gunnie and Zortch. He looks around, breathing hard— “Where the hell is everyone else?” he demands. “All he needed was one moment of freedom and he could slide wherever the hell he wants for the rest of time, hitch a ride with one of those randos—where is everyone?”

“I think,” Zortch says slowly, “the Barry’s and Sid went to go wrangle everyone?”

“Yes,” Margaret confirms. “And I’m circling around with them too.”

As she says that, the comm on Norman’s hip clicks loudly, and he brings it up to hear even clearer.

“Ah, we might—have a problem, Captain and Miss Margaret?”

“Sidney,” he says, his grip so tight on the microphone it nearly cracks. “What is it?”

“Your favorite chaser is here,” an unfamiliar voice says. Everyone goes rigid. “Hello, Norman.”

“Fav,” he hisses, shutting his eyes. “What the fuck do you—”

“Your little friend,” Fav muses aloud. “Is he with you?”

“Little friend. Who?”

“Skipper.”

Something strange roils in his chest—not anger, nor jealousy, but—fear, perhaps. “No,” Norman replies, his voice short. “We’re looking for him.”

“How interesting,” Fav replies. “Well, you certainly have yourself in quite a pickle, hm?”

“You’re not getting the tech,” Norman hisses. “Go fuck yourself.”

“I was simply offering a mutual agreement—but fine, fine, if you aren’t interested—”

“Agreement?” Margaret says, interest piqued, and Norman passes the microphone over. “What kind of agreement?”

“I can use the tech to find your friend.”

“In exchange for you keeping it,” Margaret assumes.

“Smart woman.”

“Do it,” Norman hisses immediately, smacking Margaret’s arm. “We have to find—”

“No,” Margaret says, not looking at him and instead gazing outside the ship. “You won’t be receiving it at any point. Thank you for the offer, though.”

“Then I suppose I go back to the old bargain, hm? I have your pretty, pretty boys here. Would you like them back?”

“Give us a ribec,” Norman says pointedly, taking the microphone away from Margaret and glaring at her. “We are making a deal to find Skip!”

“No,” Margaret snaps back. “We are not! Unfortunately, if Skip wants to leave, he’s a grown slug—”

“He is part of this crew,” Norman spits. “He is your captain, more than I am, and he is family, and if he doesn’t come back then what the hell am I supposed to do?” He squares his shoulders. “Huh?”

“Live on,” Margaret deadpans.

“I’d rather kill myself,” Norman replies, stealing the microphone back. “Fav. You have yourself a deal.”

“Do I? How interesting. Very well. I’ll send my team to meet you.”

“Norman!”

“I am getting Skip back,” Norman hisses, storming into the ship again to go find the tech. “If it kills me.” He throws his hands up. “And they have everyone else too, so good fucking job, Captain Margaret.”

(Something echoes—something like regret at the words—but it’s not his own, and it doesn’t come from anywhere except the hollow place at the back of his skull where something familiar used to rest, and Norman feels sick down to his bones.

But he presses on.)

(Gunnie joins him pretty quickly, offering to do something to render it mostly useless after one test—Norman asks for two, just in case they use it for something else first before they use it to find Skip, and Gunnie smiles at him so proudly that Norman finally remembers how to breathe.)

Nyne doesn’t like that the androids with Fav are gripping Syx so tightly—they’re probably gripping him the same way, he reasons, but he kind of doesn’t care, because they’re holding Syx like that.

Syx is staring at him with the same expression. Maybe he should be worried about how they’re holding both of them.

Sidney they’ve managed to render completely useless. She’s still able to talk, but her body is locked down, and she can’t even turn her damn head. Nyne keeps trying to jerk away or trip some of the androids only for Syx to clear his throat in warning.

“Look,” Syx says quietly. “If we’re good hostages, they won’t hurt her more. We have a lot more to lose if we don’t play nice.”

“That’s bullshit,” Nyne grumbles, but he does settle.

(Mostly.)

(There’s still an itch he wants to scratch, one begging him to break away from all of these androids and Fav, to run straight back to the ship—he can’t really place why, but it’s not going away with logic or reasoning, so. It’s as if the thought belongs to someone else, and he wonders if maybe it’s some leftover instinct from Prilbus that makes him want to go absolutely batshit and lose his shit on all of their captors.)

(Nyne swallows it as best as he can—that is to say, not very well at all.)

The rest of their crew meets them in the middle of the lunch court on one of the lower levels. Gunnie and Norman are carting the tech, much to Margaret’s visible annoyance; Zortch and Lucienne are armed, which Nyne is sure cannot be a good idea, but he doesn’t think they had another choice.

“Fav,” Norman calls. He hasn’t carried himself so upright since—

(Since before Skip left, he thinks, and the world swims for a moment.)

His brain redirects the focus though, until he’s staring at Norman’s pants and thinking instead about what set of underwear he’s probably wearing instead. Nyne feels dizzy again for a whole different reason, and it’s much harder to break out of as he starts reliving the touches. What started as a distraction from thinking about a little lost slug morphs into a full replay of their night together, and Nyne wouldn’t know if combat was happening around him or not, unfortunately.

He’s never had visions so…intense before, though. It’s as though he can physically feel the sensations, heightened because he’s a Barry, and he’s pretty sure whoever is standing next to him is going to kill him when they realize he’s not locked into anything, and even more specifically completely locked out of combat mode at the moment.

People are talking and moving in front of him, and all Nyne can think about is Norman Takamori.

This gets broken finally—not very well, of course, because it still takes him a moment to get his bearings once he’s free—by the androids shoving him forward. Syx gets tossed too, onto his hands and knees on the ground, but Nyne keeps his upright position—his brain shifts focuses—

Oh, he thinks, they’re stupid.

Fav isn’t touching the tech. Neither is anyone else. He clearly still wants it, but it’s just sitting in between them all, so Nyne—with Syx behind him grabbing Sidney—sidesteps out of his path, grabs the tech, and grins at Fav as he starts backing away.

“Thanks for the hospitality,” he says, then he’s shoved to the ground from behind as Norman launches over him with guns already blazing.

“Nice move!” Gunnie shouts, grabbing Nyne by the shoulder and tugging. “Go, go, go—”

The tech is hard to move, if he’s being honest, and awkward to grip, but it’s much easier when Gunnie takes the front end and starts jet-packing backwards. Nyne can keep up running, thank god.

Norman flies past them as they lug it onto the ship. Sidney isn’t quite online yet, but she’s at least able to be roller-skated forward, and Nyne makes sure the tech is in the cockpit with Norman and Margaret before he starts trying to head to the gunner seat—

Trying being the key word.

His legs lock up as he approaches the door and Nyne struggles for a ribec, unsure—what the hell is happening?

And then.

And then.

A familiar sensation, creeping up the back of his spine, something that echoes in pain that he’s not feeling and words he isn’t thinking and a voice he cannot use.

Sorry, a voice says gently to him. I really, really am.

Nyne thinks he’d be sick if he had the control over his body, but he doesn’t. His eyes blink on their own and someone else moves his body backwards towards the captain’s chair. Gunnie is talking frantically on the radio while Norman flips switch after switch and keeps pressing buttons—

Nyne speaks. It isn’t him.

“Norman.”

Norman glances at him, and his face softens. “You good, Nyne?”

“We need to talk after this.”

“Unless it’s about Skip—”

“It is,” Nyne says quickly. “About me, I mean.”

“I said Skip,” Norman snips.

“And I said yes,” Skip says, the words sitting strangely in Nyne’s mouth. “It’s about me. Skipper, you’re not stupid.”

Norman freezes, glancing at him. “…Skip?”

“Look, I may have—I did some bad shit,” Skip says quickly. “And Nyne’s gonna be pissed at me, and I’ve gotta—”

“If that’s really you,” Norman interrupts, then holds his hand out. There’s something strange in his expression—something like concern, or want or something—anyway, Norman holds his hand as if he’s expecting Skip to jump into it—

And maybe he wants to, but Nyne wouldn’t be breathing right now if it weren’t for Skip’s interference.

“I’m commandeering Nyne,” Skip says slowly. “He’s not gonna be any good if I jump now, and Sidney’s still out of commission, so just—after this, okay?”

“Why in the hell did you take Nyne—” Norman demands, but the radio crackles.

“Captain Dad! We’re ready!”

Norman curses, hesitating, then waves Skip off. “Okay,” he says pointedly. “Go. Go, we’ll talk after—”

“Love you!” Skip shouts, taking Nyne and throwing them through across the room and sliding into the gunner seat just as the ship really starts to take off. Syx is on comms already, talking about some kind of plan—

Nyne can barely hear any of it. His hands are moving on their own, and it’s as if he can feel Skip playing puppets with his nerves to move everything.

Sorry, Skip says quietly. I don’t know how to use your guns. If I take out the anxiety for a bit, can you run them?

Nyne doesn’t even know where to begin with that, so he doesn’t respond. Skip wiggles—

Skip wiggles, and if Nyne had his full facilities, Skip would be squished so fast.

I really am sorry, Skip insists, trying to figure out how to shoot while listening and responding to Syx too. I didn’t want to—but I was scared, and—you have every right to hate me, but I promise that you can hate me after, okay?

The longer they’re talking, the less Nyne feels like he’s going to throw up. It’s…strange, having two voices in his head and two consciousnesses seeing out of his eyes, but it’s not wholly unwelcome. It’s better than him getting sequestered away and used like a puppet without being there. He might be okay with this, he thinks, if he really worked on it.

The key words being worked on, which he does not have time to do. Skip shoots something until it careens away, untouched.

Norman comes over the comms for a ribec, and Nyne’s body reacts without permission (his permission, because it all comes from Skip, the rush of delight, the loss of breath—all Skip’s).

“I am damn tired of running from this sack of bolts,” he hisses. “Somebody shoot him until there ain’t no part of him left, got it?”

“On it, Skipper!” That’s Syx—that’s his brother, Nyne forces himself to remember, and he really, really hopes that when Syx finds out about the Skip thing he won’t be upset. It’s just—Nyne, and a slug?

Nyne and a slug he didn’t agree to?

Nyne and a slug he didn’t agree to that had also fucked with his brother’s memory?

The panic swells again until something pushes it down. He considers feeling grateful to Skip, but—what’s the point, in case that’s artificial too?

Nyne, I know you’re upset, but I could really use some help here if you can spare it!

Do it yourself, Nyne replies slowly.

He feels Skip’s disappointment in a wave. I don’t want to do that.

Then why…? He can’t finish thinking the words, but he knows Skip knows what he means.

I knew you were going to rat me out. I needed a way out of here.

You took my brother. Nyne is trying to latch onto that feeling of defiance he used to have—didn’t he have it? Where did it go? Not happy about that. That made it worse. But—this? I would have helped.

I didn’t want to run the risk of— The next shot Skip takes misses by a mile and he uses Nyne’s voice to groan. Damn it—

Aren’t you supposed to be a good shot?

Hey, Skip complains. I’m great with a pistol!

Then you should have joined up with the Skipper again.

“Barry Nyne, what the hell are you doing?” comes a voice over the comms. “Come on!”

“Hey, don’t yell at my brother like that!”

“Sorry,” Skip says, trying to pull the gun back into position. “I’m working on it—”

Hesitantly, Nyne makes a bid for control over his hands—and Skip grants it gratefully.

Don’t ever borrow me again, Nyne thinks pointedly. Skip lets go of everything until Nyne snaps back into place.

Heard. Sorry.

“Back in business,” he announces, taking another shot that almost lands. “And as soon as we’re clear someone is getting Skip out of my head and away from me before I shoot him.”

“Sorry, what?”

“On your four,” he calls, twisting the gun again. “Barry!”

“I see it, Barry!” The littler ship dives out of the way and vanishes out of sight, but more keep coming. “How does Fav have this many ships?”

Nyne shifts his grip tighter, feeling the ship lurch to the side to duck out of the way.

“Captain Dad, what’s the plan?”

“I’m getting us out of range of the Rec Station tractor beam,” Norman says sharply. “Fuckers got smart.”

“It’s probably our fault,” Margaret says. “I’m gonna hack the comms and see if I can distract them.”

“Shields are holding steady!”

Nyne grimaces. Skip had pulled all the way back, but he’s slowly plugging in again, and it’s nearly enough to make his joints seize up—

I just want to see, Skip promises quickly. Just visuals. Nothing else.

“Better not be anything else,” Nyne grumbles, taking another pop-shot at a ship trying to fall in line with them. It doesn’t land, but there’s something funny about it anyway. “God damn, is that—”

“Barry?”

“Barry,” Nyne replies quickly. “Something’s wrong with these ships.”

The Wurst lurches again, up this time, then veering to the right.

“Wrong with the ships?” Syx clarifies. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t land the shots,” Nyne says. “And I don’t think it’s because Skip’s a bad shot.”

I am not a bad shot!

“You’re a bad shot,” Nyne deadpans. “Look at the ships, Barry.”

“No, dude, you’re spot fucking on. Cap!”

“What?”

“I’m pretty sure these aren’t real ships!”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

Nyne tries taking another shot, and he knows it was a good one, but it passes straight through.

“Norm,” Nyne says. “Are you sure that’s a tractor beam and not just holograms?”

“You’re a genius, Barry,” Margaret replies immediately, and he hears something surge on her side before the ships flying around the Wurst fizzle and vanish. “No tractor beam. Are we—”

“FTL calcs are ready, Captain Dad!”

“Everybody hang onto your hats,” Norman says. The Wurst hums loudly. “It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”

Nyne’s face splits into a smile against his will; Skip starts wiggling, then seems to realize that’s a bad idea and pulls back again. Sorry! Sorry, sorry, that was—god, that was so hot—

Nyne collapses back into the chair and runs a hand down his face, then grabs the comm again. “We’re clear?”

“All clear,” Syx replies.

“Somebody come get this damn fucking slug out of my face.”

Frankly, Norman’s not in the mood to deal with a sensitive slug that doesn’t know how to communicate, but he’s also pretty sure Skip isn’t in the mood to deal with a human who doesn’t know how to communicate, so. It’s really the least he could possibly do to take it out of the hands of everyone else.

Syx is holding Nyne’s hand so tight it looks like it’s going to break—or maybe it’s the other way around. Nyne is grimacing and making these little whimpering noises that Norman keeps filing away as pathetic, though not in a bad way. It’s almost hot. Almost being the key word, of course, because he’s pretty sure if Skip hops back into his head and is met with Norman thirsting over Nyne he really is going to jump ship and never come back again. They’re sitting on the couch, and Norman is standing in front of Nyne with his hand extended.

“I hate this,” Nyne mumbles, his head jerking back. “Fucking—“

“You’re okay, Barry,” Syx says. His voice is thick as if he’s about to cry. “Don’t worry. It’s just Skip.”

“I’m grounding him,” Margaret says. She’s joined them, pacing impatiently behind the couch and occasionally looking over to see if Skip has jumped out yet or not. “Just so we’re all clear, he’s in so much trouble.”

Norman doesn’t say anything, but his hand twitches. Nyne’s head jerks back further, then forward, his eyes flying open, flashing green—

And then something expels itself from his nostril and into Norman’s hand with a wet plop.

As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, relief bubbles through him, and he steps away from the three of them and turns his back so he can inspect Skip more closely. Not that Skip can see him, of course, nor hear him, but—Norman hasn’t ever really looked at him, and for the first time, he thinks he might understand some of Skip’s weirder urges.

The soap, for one. It looks like Skip is covered in it. (He refuses to entertain the idea that it’s Nyne’s snot.)

Skip wiggles a little, a green blob of what looks like shaving cream with the density of fruitcake, and his antennae wiggle a few times as he tries to figure out where he’s going.

“Fucking idiot,” Norman mumbles, then he holds Skip up to his face. Skip hesitates, then slides in with a much less violent movement than ever before. It’s more like toothpaste sliding up a tube than it is a real intrusion, and he wonders if Skip is being intentionally more gentle this time on purpose or if he’s exhausted—or worse, hurt, but he doesn’t think so. He hopes not, anyway. Maybe Skip is just…being nice.

(Or he’s scared.)

Norman reaches back to help guide Skip into his spot properly, pressing against the lump until it’s where he used to sit. When Skip finally attaches—

It’s not relief. Not entirely. But it’s familiarity, and it’s comfort, and Norman relaxes just as much as Skip does under his fingers.

Hiya, Skipper, Skip says gently.

Skip, he greets, rough around the edges again, before turning back to the Barry’s and Margaret. “I’m gonna go talk to him.”

Margaret looks unimpressed; the clones, of course, both seem vaguely distraught, and Norman can already tell how much work he and Skip both are going to have to put in to make this better.

Just me.

“Don’t do that,” Norman says sharply, reaching back to touch Skip again and looking away from everyone else briefly. “Don’t fucking—don’t do that.”

“What is it?” Nyne asks, sounding…more than vaguely distraught, actually.

Norman appraises him for a moment, his face falling. Nyne looks back with the same kind of expression.

“Nothing bad,” he answers finally. “He just…he’s feeling bad. About what he did.”

“Yeah,” Margaret says. “He should.”

“He feels bad enough already,” Norman corrects her sharply. “You don’t need to make him feel worse.”

“He stole my brother,” Syx reminds them, standing with fists curled. “And Skip was like, tight as hell, but then he took my brother and now?” He holds his two index fingers together, then pulls them away sharply. “Now, he’s not tight. He’s loose.”

“He’s the new Loose Duke,” Margaret agrees.

“Stop it,” Norman spits, his hand flying to his blaster. All three of them pause. “He’s already feeling bad enough, and he’s gonna apologize but we have to get settled first.”

I owe you an apology first.

“Damn straight you owe me an apology,” he hisses. “Fucking scared me, you jackass—” Norman waves everyone else off. “I’m taking him.”

“Okay,” Margaret says. “Where will we find you?”

“Bridge, I guess.”

“I’ll give you a few marbecs.”

They’re going to kick me out.

Norman starts towards the bridge, reaching up to feel Skip again. No, he says, making sure it’s internal this time. They’re not. They love you.

I turned into my dad.

That, Norman doesn’t have a response to immediately, and he feels Skip start to wiggle so much that on instinct he plugs his nose to keep Skip from escaping.

Stop that—

You’re not leaving. Not when you just got home. Can we talk first at least?

Skip sends a response, but it’s indecipherable—it’s not like him, because Norman knows how clear Skip usually is.

Skip, Norman says, much more carefully this time. Please. Let’s talk.

Norman Takamori, saying please? Skip tries to tease. It doesn’t quite work. There’s a little too much anxiety for it to really have any heat. Are you sure I’m in the right brain?

Yes. Welcome home, Skip, now just fucking—stay.

Skip doesn’t say anything until the door to the bridge opens, and then—it’s like he’s not sure what he’s allowed anymore, because Norman feels him tug at the controls in a question. Norman pauses, relinquishing it—and Skip takes them right up to the glass, staring out of it at the stars as they fly by, something close to contentment radiating from him. Norman does his best to reply with something similar, though he isn’t sure how well it works.

But it’s enough to get Skip to finally settle back in the way he’s supposed to, and in tandem they take a sigh of relief.

He doesn’t know what to do now that he’s got Skip back but he thinks a good place to start is just…opening the floodgates a little. Not quite opening up all the way, and by no means shoving everything he’s felt the past rigon or so onto Skip, but…like opening a box and inviting Skip to shuffle through it. Which he does, though it feels less like he’s just checking the box and instead looking for something specific.

A few somethings, he finds out.

The first thing Skip touches is their fight. Not the initial one, or any of the little ones, but—looking out from Barry Syx and seeing Norman debauched by Nyne, the way they’d both snapped in front of everyone like high schoolers, and—

Norman realizes a moment too late why Skip really shouldn’t look too closely at that moment. Skip is too fast, though, and instead he finds the thought Norman wishes he’d hidden better and shoves it directly up to the front, making them both stare at it—

He doesn’t need me anymore, and neither does anyone else. Maybe I oughta put this blaster to good use.

Immediately, Norman is trying to shove it back into the vault with all the rest of his not-socially-acceptable-thoughts while Skip starts wiggling in panic.

Norman—?

Stop it!

What was that? Were you going to—?

No! That was never on the table!

Skip rifles through, pulling up flash after flash from his darkest crevice of his mind—night with Nyne, the anger he’d felt, every time he’d been sure everyone was going to kick him off or leave him to rot on some Rec Station, the temptation of the fucking airlock and how easy it would be to claim an accident—

Norman, Skip says, and he’s not using their voice but his words shake anyway. What’s going on?

Norman has gone stiff, eyes unseeing though they’re still pointed at the stars. None of that is new.

I wasn’t here for any of it.

That doesn’t make it new.

Skip roils once, fattening around Norman’s brainstem before he wraps around it more securely, as if he can hug Norman this way. Norman almost wishes he could bat him away, but—

Unfortunately, it’s nice, so. He just sits with the uncomfortable feeling.

I didn’t know.

For a reason. I don’t talk to people about it.

Skip throws up an image of Nyne’s face and Norman twists his head away, as if that will make the mental image disappear.

He doesn’t count. I was drunk.

Did he take advantage of you?

Norman snorts. No. If anything, it’s the other way around. I was the one who passed him the whole ass bottle of cryo whiskey.

Skip swells again and Norman goes dizzy at the feeling. Bottle of what?

“Come on,” Norman grumbles aloud, reaching back to rub Skip as if that will make him calm down. “Would you quit doing that?”

Cryo whiskey? What the hell is that?

Something I got gifted then couldn’t touch while you were here. Norman pauses as Skip wiggles, then settles again. For the record, it was shit anyway. I gave it mostly to Nyne.

Hurt flashes, but not from him—from Skip. You slept with him.

I did.

Why?

Why the hell do you think? I thought you were off finding some girl to tentacle fuck or something.

Skip goes quiet for a ribec, then rifles through the open communication until he finds what he’s looking for—the plant. The plant planet, the one that had kicked their fight off in the first place, and Norman shuts their eyes entirely.

You didn’t accept my apology, Norman thinks finally. I thought you hated me. And then you left.

Apology?

Yes. It’s clumsy—he doesn’t have the same kind of finesse with his mind that Skip does, but he manages to find the words he’d said after he’d taken over and before he fell asleep.

“Skip? If…alright, if you don’t wanna talk, that’s fine, I guess. I…shouldn’t have been so harsh. You know I don’t think you’re dumb, right? … Nothing? Really? … Skip? … Oh, for the love of—I’m sorry, Skip. It wasn’t bad. And you’re allowed to be—you can pout all you want. Look, there’s…there’s toys, and stuff, if you really want—I’m not sure how much I’m going to enjoy it, but I bet we could find something. Or an excess amount of lube, if you want to try that. … Okay. You’re asleep, I guess. We can…talk in the morning. Damn slug, got me talking to myself…”

Skip swells again, but this time he adjusts so he’s more firmly inside Norman’s skull. It sends another wave of dizziness that Norman has to steady himself against, leaning with his back to the window and his head tilted back—it puts a little more pressure on Skip, but he doesn’t seem to mind it.

I didn’t hear that, Skip says slowly.

Fucking clearly.

I’m sorry.

Alright. Well, if you’d listened, none of this would have ever—

Something strange happens then—the way his brain makes weird associations, several images flash across the front of his mind when he tries to tell Skip off, and one of them causes his stomach to twist in heat—Steve, or whatever his name is. The summer soldier.

Skip latches onto it so fast, replaying the whole thing from Norman’s point of view. The strong arms. The knowledge that someone who cared was trying to catch him, and the way he’d looked halfway to feral in the middle of the Rec Station and it had made Norman seize and forget himself—

Oh, Skip says, then suddenly he’s searching again, so fast and looking through so many things that Norman has to slide down until he’s on the floor to keep himself from falling over.

“Skip—” he tries to gasp out, but Skip ignores him until he finds the thread amongst all of it—in everything, everything, there had been an undercurrent of I miss Skip, and Skip finds it and latches on and tugs it all the way to the front—

Norman is only a man, at the end of the malton unit, so when he feels the corner of his eyes prickle he can’t even be surprised. After all, he hasn’t let himself feel it yet, has he?

Skip, on the other hand, is surprised. Skipper?

Shut up.

You’re crying?

I said, shut up.

Over me?

I said shut up.

No. Skip moves again, around his brainstem, corkscrewing around it and putting pressure, up and down—up and down—like he’s trying to give a hug or rub Norman’s back—

And it would be nice, he thinks, if his brain wasn’t so fucked up.

He makes a noise he definitely should not make aloud, and he’s still crying, and Norman feels weird in a way he doesn’t know how to describe.

Skipper, listen, I’m sorry—

Will you stop that?

Skip goes still; Norman struggles for a ribec, then manages a deep breath. He can feel Skip waiting, cautious, expectant—

Norman plugs his nose, just to be safe.

Felt…weird, he says finally. Not…bad. Uncomfortable.

Skip gently presses forward the image of the plant again. Same feeling?

Will you cut that out? Marge is gonna be here any martron.

Same feeling? Skip asks insistently, doing the movement again.

Norman is pretty sure he’s seeing stars, and he’s not even staring out at the sky anymore. Stop that—

Why?

We need to talk—

Then talk.

You’re being distracting on purpose, you stupid—

He does not finish the thought, but Skip seems to know, hear the unspoken stupid slug that nearly slips through, and Norman is hit with a wave of guilt so strong he really does almost hurl that time.

I didn’t mean that.

Skip doesn’t even have to search. Immediately he sends a wave of understanding. I know. But—I mean, it’s not like you’re wrong right now.

Don’t do that.

No, I was trying to—I don’t do well. With the hard conversations. And I know you don’t either. Isn’t it human nature to just…? Skip swells again, but not as intensely this time. Norman halfheartedly swats at him. No, no, that was a serious question!

Norman sits for a moment without a response, then sighs. …I missed you.

Skip, who was clearly gearing up for a different conversation, goes quiet. Norman feels him shift a bit, then take a few controls slowly—the left hand, primarily, so he can take Norman’s right hand and rub the thumb over the knuckles slowly. Norman watches, vaguely interested.

The hell are you doing that for?

I missed you too. I should have talked to you before I left.

Yeah, you fucking should have. Do you know how shitty it was to wake up and— Norman cuts himself off, looking away as though that means the conversation will pause, but Skip tugs their head back to their hands again.

I’m sorry.

Sharp words fester, but he doesn’t think them through—not until Skip pulls them up, though, pulling intentionally: I thought I hated you for it.

You’d have every right to.

Norman doesn’t reply to that either, but for a different reason; he hears the bridge door slide open and their head snaps up.

“Captain?”

Oh. Shit, Norman thinks, scrambling to his feet—he knew he was being stupid, getting involved with a Jib-Jobber—

His eyes land on Livvy, though, and a strange rush of heat flows through him—doubly as strong as he was expecting.

Half of it came from Skip.

He’s sure they look strange and half-feral, sort of crouched and using the wall as support, probably with those fluorescent green eyes Skip likes to make him sport.

“Hello,” he says awkwardly. Skip is wiggling, panicking—though he doesn’t know why. “Can I—help? You?”

“I wanted to make sure you were alright,” Livvy says, approaching. Her hair is still in her standard high ponytail, and she still looks like Natalie, and Norman’s heart is thumping strangely. “I heard rumors that something had gone wrong earlier. The FTL jump and all.”

“We’re fine,” Skip says quickly. “You can go.”

“Oh—” She looks surprised. “Skip?”

Something sort of strange happens then, where Norman tries to speak and Skip interrupts—

“Do you two kno-nooo, we do not, thank you—”

Livvy blinks at them slowly, her smile fading. “…I…are you two alright?”

“Yes!” Skip says brightly, and Norman has never felt Skip truly shove him to the back like this before during symbiosis but for a moment—he can feel them speaking, though he can’t hear the conversation, and it’s not until Livvy is leaving that Skip releases his hold again. Norman sags back onto the floor, feeling his chest about to crack open. “Christ. Sorry, Skipper.”

Norman doesn’t respond for a moment. Skip turns internal, then, rolling along the brainstem again.

Skipper?

The hell was that for?

He’s not being nice anymore. There’s a defensiveness—a kind of spike, an armor to his words—that makes Skip shy away a little, unwinding from the stem so he’s stretched out the way he used to be.

I needed to talk to her.

You two know each other?

…something like that.

Yeah, well, I know her too, and I wanted to—

I know.

The fuck do you mean you know?

I was there.

You most certainly were not.

Yes, Norman, Skip says gently. I was.

How the hell—?

Skip presses gently on their connection, and memories that are not Norman’s—it’s strange, because Skip can’t transplant memories exactly. Even the one with Syx earlier was more just feelings. But he pulls the nerves and recreates an image for Norman—of him, sitting at the other end of an Amercadian bar, nursing a drink while Skip watches from behind Livvy as she types numbers onto her laptop.

“She didn’t have the…” Norman says. He doesn’t know why he’s speaking—perhaps, he thinks, because he doesn’t want to disturb the beautiful scene Skip is creating for him. “…I checked. I looked. You were with—”

Another false memory, but this time words from Margaret.

I need—someone has to keep an eye on him, okay?

The beginnings of betrayal spark. Norman doesn’t know what to do with it; he would be used to the feeling from anyone else, but…not from being betrayed by Skip.

(Is it betrayal? It feels worse than that, swirling and spinning and tossing over itself until it takes up his whole chest and starts to overflow. Maybe it’s not betrayal, but he doesn’t know what it is, only that he wishes he would never have been put in a position where he had to feel this way.)

“You lied to me,” he whispers.

Not—not technically! You never asked!

“That’s such fucking bullshit—”

Okay—alright, I should have said something, and I’m sorry I didn’t, Norman, but I was scared you didn’t want to—and it’s not like I was there for all of it! I told her to leave me out of it!

“And did she?” he asks. His voice is breaking.

Now this, he knows Skip doesn’t mean to send, because he tries to take it back as soon as it breeches across their connection, but Norman’s gotten pretty good at playing tug of war with thoughts seeing how he spends more than enough time doing it with Skip anyway, so he pulls it all the way to the front and forces Skip to show him—

Livvy’s body reacting, reaching fingers and panting, being told off for marks and helping Norman get off in a way he always hated when Skip tried—

He was there, Norman realizes numbly, and he’s not sure if that makes it better or worse.

Just the end, Skip promises. Not the actual sex. I didn’t even know you two were—I popped in after and she asked me to stick around, and I—I’m sorry. I lost my temper a bit and put her back so I could—I missed you, Skipper, you don’t have any idea how much. I know it was—selfish. Stupid. I get it. And—

“You lied to me,” Norman says, because it’s the only part he knows he has a right to complain about.

(Something is sparking his own memories, through the drunken haze that surrounds them, of seeing Livvy’s eyes flash green and stay that way, and Norman hadn’t asked. He hadn’t said anything at all. It could have been anyone—it could have been another slug, or some kind of strange possession, or someone tricking him to try to get to Skip, and he was going to let it happen. But what he wanted more than anything was for it to be Skip, and he ignored the waving red flags.

He can’t be mad that Skip had commandeered someone to give them what they both wanted and needed. But he can be mad that he’d spent several malton units convincing himself he’d never have to let Skip find out.)

“You should have just said something—”

I was scared you would hurt me! Or—or Livvy! She just wanted to help you out with human connection, and I was the one who—

“You should have said something,” Norman repeats stubbornly, shaking his head to disorient Skip for a moment. “I’m not—we can—later. Marge is gonna be here soon, and—”

I don’t want to talk to her, Skip replies, his voice weaker now, as if their connection got knocked. Norman grimaces, pushing to his feet unsteadily.

“You don’t get a damn choice. You ran, you fucked shit up—you stole one of the Barry’s, Skip. And I’m not protecting you from that.”

So where are you sending me now? This time, his voice has shrunken even further, until Norman can almost barely understand him. It’s funny, struggling to hear something inside his own mind.

“Nowhere. If you try to leave me again,” Norman says sharply, “I’m killing myself. You get that?”

Skip’s panic spikes and they double over; Norman grabs the nearest wall to keep himself upright, but Skip is wiggling and shifting their connection and—maybe biting him. He can’t tell. All he knows is that things are really, really bad, and he ends up on his knees again with a splitting headache before he can finally understand Skip again.

You can’t—Norman, absolutely not, you’re not allowed—you can’t—

Oh, fucking hell, Skip, stop it—don’t go anywhere and I won’t have to—

You can’t!

Then I won’t! Cut it out!

Skip finally lets up on the panic, but Norman can feel the way he’s still wiggling, constricting around his brainstem in several different ways now, and that combined with the memories of the night with Livvy and the fringe knowledge of what he’d done with Nyne—

Well, Norman is only a man, and he doesn’t know what the fuck this means for his psyche, but he wrenches the controls back from Skip as best as he can to push them to their feet.

Norman—?

Come on, he says, stumbling his way out of the bridge. Skip is baffled enough that he just watches along, and though his grip is no longer moving it’s still tight around the base of his brain, and Norman wonders if Skip might cause actual brain damage if he does it too much—

It would be worth it, he thinks.

He throws open the door to the lavatory, then slams it shut behind him and locks it with hands as unsteady as his breathing. Norman hunches them over the sink for a moment, letting his eyes shut.

Then he looks up to see a single green eye staring back. Skip is waiting, confused, impatient—

Do that again, Norman says slowly.

Do…what? Skip sounds scared now, as if he hasn’t been paying attention, as if he doesn’t know exactly what Norman is asking for.

So. Norman can’t control Skip’s actual body, just his attention, but he does his best to send back the feeling of Skip swelling, constricting, massaging the brain stem, until Skip finally gets it. Hesitantly, he swells, corkscrewing his way around the stem—

Norman replies by letting a very shaky breath escape past his lips, pressing his hips forward against the counter’s edge. It sends a wave of heat through his body, and finally, finally Skip catches on.

Oh, he says quietly. I didn’t…

More.

Skip hesitates again, but when he moves finally it’s stronger. Tighter. It makes Norman’s vision swim and every part of him light up, like a kid running their hands over the control panel and hitting every button they can reach, and Norman doesn’t mean to moan out loud but he does as his knees start to buckle. Skip grabs control of their legs and pulls Norman against the door so he can lean against something better—

Touch, Skip tells him, and Norman is at the mercy of the slug inside his skull, so he shoves his hand down his pants and does as he’s told.

He doesn’t know how long it takes. He thinks he might pass out a few times, which is something he’s never thought he was interested in during any kind of sexual encounter, but he’s well and truly under Skip’s control this time as he jacks himself off—too tight, and too fast, and the movement burns a bit, and Skip doesn’t let him stop when his orgasm starts to crest—in fact, Skip doesn’t let them stop until a second orgasm hits, and then he lets go of control over Norman so suddenly that he drops like a sack of rocks and collapses on the ground.

Norman?

He can’t respond with full thoughts, so instead he sends back a full wave of pleasure, one that he can feel makes Skip wiggle in delight.

Holy shit. Holy shit. Are you okay? Was that too much?

“Tonight,” Norman rasps, pulling his eyes open so he can at least try to get his bearings, “we’re exploring that. More.”

There’s hardly any boundary now, so he’s sure Skip watches the images flit past his mind of—him letting Skip guide him onto something that definitely should not go up his ass, or sticking his hand in some hand soap and using that as lube, or even Skip out of his head and rubbing around Norman’s dick from the outside—lots of thoughts, and all of them are making him twitch again, though he’s too spent to do anything about them.

Oh, Void, Skip thinks, pressing something soothing all across their skin. Okay. Alright. Point made. Fucking hell, Skipper.

Norman lets out a shaking breath of relief. “Yeah.”

We have to—talk to Marge. Are you good?

Norman groans a little, sitting forward. He’s covered in cum, unfortunately, because he hadn’t been aiming well and it got all over his hand and his hand had been wandering too—anyway, he’s not really in a place where he looks acceptable.

“I’ll cut you a deal,” Norman mumbles. Skip slides into his normal spot, flat against the back of his skull, and Norman feels their attachment strengthen. “I’ll clean us up.”

Okay.

“You deal with Marge.”

She’ll want to—

“Skip,” he sighs. “I’m—you know I’m not young. I need a nap after that. She can talk to me a different time. I’m tapping out once we stop looking like a whore.”

Skip roils a little. For a moment, Norman is sure Skip is biting him, which makes a noise escape from the back of his throat—and then the feeling vanishes.

We’ll talk tonight, Skip replies, stilted. Clean, if you must.

Norman pushes to his feet. “Can’t even be surprised you’re a fuckin’ voyeur. Bet you woulda loved sitting backseat the whole time, huh?” He grabs a napkin and wets it, trying to start cleaning some of the more egregious stains.

With who? Skip doesn’t sound happy—he doesn’t sound upset, either, but he really doesn’t sound happy. Curious, on the verge of annoyed.

“Dunno. Guess it depends.”

On?

“You wanna see me top or bottom?” Norman asks dryly, glancing up at the green eye in the mirror.

He watches something strange happen on their face then. Norman isn’t the one doing it—he’s hard pressed to think Skip would do this on purpose, but stranger things have happened, he thinks—anyway, his face drops into what Norman can only assume is supposed to be pleasure, his eyes fluttering and his mouth falling open—

Yes, Skip replies. Both.

Shoulda stuck around with Livvy, Norman replies, too focused on his face to make it move.

Skip pushes something forward then—some question he’s been holding onto, apparently—of Norman’s fingers, buried deep in something slick, and just how much he’d enjoyed it—

He pulls his face back under control, though in his half-undone pants his dick is starting to twitch again weakly. “So what?” he answers, breathless. “Tight and hot and wet, just how I like it—”

Plants, Skip insists, his words short now. There’s a humming in his brain. Soap. It’s all stuff you hate. Not with her.

“Don’t hate it,” Norman replies, looking back down as he tries to finish cleaning up. “Was just…never thought of it like that. Will you stop—”

It’s as though he can feel the soap sliding over his hand, much the way Skip had felt in his grip earlier. But he’s getting distracted—and Norman needs, so desperately, for them to not be found this debauched, so he tries to shove it back—

Skip, slimy and warm and wiggling, in his hand, and Norman’s spare hand moving over his little green body with the intensity he’d used on his dick just a bit ago—

“For the love of—” Norman mumbles, but it’s too late, because Skip has grabbed their hand and is starting to tug over the sensitive skin of his cock all over again. “Skip—fuck, fucking—Skip—”

It’s a moan that time. Skip jolts in excitement and tugs even harder until Norman’s vision goes completely white.

When he comes to, Skip is finishing up cleaning, and Norman can tell he’s turned off a lot of receptors. It’s probably for the best.

Skip is for sure in front, though, because both eyes are green when he looks up and smiles at the reflection.

“I kept getting distracted,” he announces. “Sorry.”

Okay. Norman settles back a little. You got it from here?

“Sure do. I can wake you up in a bit.”

Skip.

“Yes?”

Let me get some sleep tonight. The body, I mean. Norman sends Skip only half of the exhaustion he’s feeling and he watches how their body bends under it immediately. Why don’t we talk tomorrow? You can get sleep and get comfy again, and I’ll wake you up after I talk to Marge.

“You wanna talk to her in the morning?”

Yes.

“Okay,” Skip says gently. “Get some good rest, Skipper. You want me to set some alarms?”

Sure. For whenever Marge is willing tomorrow.

“Alright. And uh, Skipper?”

Yes?

Skip smiles at them gently. It’s a strange expression to see on his still-fucked-out face.

“Thank you,” Skip says quietly. “For letting me come home.”

Yeah, well— Norman grabs their hands pointedly and plugs their nose. You’re not leaving again, so get used to it.

Skip laughs. He’s really not sure they’ve ever sounded so carefree, but it’s a nice sound. A very, very nice sound.

The bridge is empty when Nyne, Syx, and Margaret arrive. Syx hasn’t let go of his hand since Norman had taken Skip and left; they’d sat on the couch for a while, trying to remind each other to breathe, trying to promise each other it was alright—

Nyne had nearly upchucked four times before Syx had been the one to actually do it.

(Margaret gave them space, but not much. Enough. On the other side of the Jib-Job area, anyway, but she’d been watching them the whole time, and at that point—well, what was the point of it anyway if she was just going to keep staring?

Syx was the one who insisted they not invite her back over.

“I don’t want—” Syx mumbled, turning so his face was nearly hidden in Nyne’s shoulder. “—she’s a lot. Sometimes. And I love it. You know I love it. But…”

“We got slugged,” Nyne said slowly, and that was the second time Syx had thrown up.)

Anyway. Norman is nowhere to be seen, which makes something in Nyne’s chest pulse with concern.

“Norm?” he calls.

“Skip?” Syx tries.

Nothing.

“Oh, for the love of—” Margaret grumbles, storming up to check the seat and leaving the Barry’s at the door.

Syx leans into Nyne, his face furrowed in concern. “You think something went wrong?”

Nyne sighs deeply. “…I mean, I hope not. Maybe they really are just talking.”

“But they said they’d be here.”

“Unless Skip—well, I don’t know him,” Nyne confesses. “Not well. But you know, what if he was embarrassed about someone walking in on their talk?”

“Sounds like more of a Norman response,” Syx says slowly. “But maybe. So where’d they go?”

“Well, they’re not here,” Margaret announces, coming around the other side of the drivers seat in frustration. “Damn it—”

They all would have missed it, Nyne thinks, except he glances at just the right time and sees a shadow pass in front of one of the side doors. He zeroes his eyes in, then takes a long, slow sniff—

Oh, Void, he thinks slowly.

“Uh,” Nyne says, clearing his throat. “I, uh, think they stepped out.”

Syx gives him a strange look, then takes in a matching sniff before Nyne can stop him. He recoils immediately.

“Dude, is that—?”

“Yeah,” Nyne says, his voice dropping. Syx looks even more concerned. “They, uh…”

“They what?”

“I think they worked out their problems,” Syx says awkwardly, not looking at Margaret. “Do we need to interrupt them?”

Nyne raises one eyebrow at his brother; Syx mirrors it, then gestures for Nyne to go ahead, so he does. Both of them squeeze their hands, then Nyne disengages and heads for the door.

It’s a good thing he’s the one that slides it open, because at least he’s seen Norman looking like this before, though never before with such startling green eyes or a manic smile.

“Nyne,” Skip says, fumbling over himself as he tries to pull Norman’s body back to standing and his hands away from the front of his pants. Nyne lets his eyes linger on the bulge there for a moment, then crosses his arms and stares at Skip—well, Norman’s face, but Skip in front—anyway, it doesn’t matter who it is, because Norman’s face scowls as he stands on their feet properly. “Hey, my eyes are up here.”

“You put on a show, I’d like to at least see what the damage is,” Nyne says slowly, tilting his head to the side a little. He’s trying not to breathe so heavily because the scent is thick—but it’s kind of hard, and it’s making other parts of him hard in response. “Marge is here, so…”

“Great,” Skip says through gritted teeth. “I’ll be there in a ribec.”

“Where’s Norman?”

“Always about Norman with you,” Skip grumbles, trying to shove past Nyne. Nyne stands directly in the center of the doorway and does not move, meaning Skip is still trapped there. “Will you get out of the way?”

“Is he okay?” Nyne says, dropping his voice. “And are you?”

“We’re fine. Move.”

Nyne steps out of the way slowly, frowning after Skip. Skip throws a glare at him over Norman’s shoulder. It’s not promising, and he kind of hates it, actually, because—

Well. Nyne had gotten a little used to Norman, as bad of an idea as it was. But at least it seems like they’re working things out. He catches Syx’s eye; Syx makes a face like he’s going to gag as Skip storms closer to him and Margaret, and Nyne laughs silently, his shoulders shaking.

One eyebrow hitches and stays in question. Syx replies with a twitch of his own eyebrow, but then it furrows as his gaze snaps to Skip. Back to Nyne, then—and Nyne rubs his nose with his knuckle. Syx gives an imperceptible nod.

Ah, the gift of clones. A whole conversation in ribecs and no one is the wiser—especially not Margaret or Skip, who are already hissing under their breaths at each other as they fight.

“Marge,” Syx says suddenly, clapping Margaret’s shoulder. She turns to glare at him.

“What?”

“You good if Barry and I…?”

“He owes you an apology,” Margaret says stiffly.

“And I will apologize,” Skip insists, tossing his head back. He’s much more languid than Norman ever was, and Nyne—he’s not sure how he feels about it, frankly. He cuts his eyes to Syx as he approaches, twitching the ear closest to Skip and twitching his eyebrow in question one more time. Syx responds with pursed lips, but Skip distracts them both. “Look, do I have to do this right now? Norman and I are having a breakthrough, and—well, yeah, Norman, I’m telling them about it.” Skip rolls his eyes, then unfocuses them as he chats back to Norman.

(Nyne’s stomach starts to churn again, because it doesn’t make it easier to know they’re friends or lovers or whatever they are. It’s unsettling at best to watch someone have their body commandeered by an external force when it brings back such vivid, straight memories of the sheer pain he’d felt the first time around—murky darkness, and the equivalent of a cement block over his consciousness keeping him under, down, submissive, unable to do anything but hope to Mother Void it was all just a horrible, horrible nightmare—

And Skip didn’t really do that to him—there was no pain, and much less showing off horrible things he was doing, but Nyne still lost control of his body all the same and even now, he’s sure something is wriggling in the back of his skull, taking root, ready to make him take aim at his brother again—)

“—Norman, I’m not about to sit here and whip your dick out in front of them,” Skip is saying, creasing Norman’s face. “I have some class.”

“Debatable,” Margaret teases.

But it’s all easy for them. Nyne is sure he’s pale now, and he has to stare down at his shoes with his arms crossed tightly over his chest so none of them ask.

(A knuckle rubs his shoulder blade questioningly. Nyne does his best not to jump at the contact, but he turns his head just a little towards Syx in acknowledgement. Another rub—this time, a little circle. Nyne presses his lips together tightly. The knuckle lingers, then drops.)

“Look, Skip,” Syx says loudly. “We’re happy for you. Come find us for a real apology later. We gotta go fuck some shit up in the gym.”

Margaret’s head snaps to Syx. “If you break the equipment—”

“—we’ll fix it,” Syx snips. Nyne swallows hard; he’s pretty sure that’s the first time Syx and Margaret haven’t immediately been in sync about something like this. “We’re leaving. And Skip?”

“Yeah, what?” Skip blinks back into focus, looking baffled.

(Nyne chances a look down and watches the front of Norman’s pants twitch.)

“You’re a fucking dick,” Syx says plainly. “So you’d better have a really damn good apology when you do find us.” He pushes on Nyne’s bicep to turn him, and then they walk out—Syx in front of Nyne, the way it’s always supposed to be in order—and they don’t look back.

Norman isn’t good with conversations. Skip knows this as fact; he’s known it since day one, and it’s something that’s been both frustrating and fascinating the entire time.

But it’s a lot easier for both of them when they don’t have to talk.

Norman has apparently given up. He keeps dragging Skip up to double front more often than not, lets Skip lean into his whimseys and strange insistences, his kinks and his desires—hell, they’re all around one of the tables in the mess hall one night, and in front of the entire crew Norman lets Skip fill a bowl with whipped cream and start eating it with his fingers.

Across the table, Lucienne blinks at him. “…Skip?”

Skip’s got their fingers nearly touching the back of their throat. He looks up, eyes wide, gagging just a little before he pulls the fingers out with a little pop. “Huh?”

“Did…you want…a spoon?”

“No,” Skip replies simply, and Norman chuckles as Skip scoops another massive handful and shoves it inside.

He does apologize. For whatever that’s worth, Skip makes sure to talk to Margaret personally, then the Barry’s together, then the Barry’s individually. The only one Norman seems to have an opinion on is Barry Nyne, but Skip is reluctant to let Norman control the conversation—

I need to talk to him too, Norman reminds him, a flash of pleasurepainfuckfuckfuck drifting across the back of their mind.

Skip seizes Norman’s brainstem so tightly when he recognizes it that Norman faceplants, convulsing on the ground until Skip finally lets up.

Not like that, Skip says pointedly, and Norman sags against the floor sadly in agreement.

Okay.

Syx and Nyne are in the gym today. Skip doesn’t normally bring them here unless specifically invited; back before he left the first time, he’d caught Norman taking a few jogs on the treadmill when he couldn’t sleep, but they haven’t been back in a while. Nyne has his hands wrapped in athletic tape and is throwing a few light punches at the sandbag in the corner; Syx is doing pull-ups not too far away, lifting himself with ease. They both pause when Skip walks in, staring at him with matching frowns.

“Skip,” Syx greets.

“Norman?” Nyne asks.

Inside their head, Skip feels Norman sort of swell, then back off. You apologize first. I can talk to him later.

“Okay,” Skip replies aloud, clearing his throat. “Sorry, I needed to—Nyne. On the list.”

“Oh,” Syx says, letting himself drop and glancing at Nyne. “You want me to stick around?”

“Skip,” Nyne realizes, stepping away from the sandbag. “Right, it’s—no, Barry, I’m good.”

“Alright, Barry. I’m gonna hit the showers.”

“Right on.”

Skip approaches slowly. Nyne starts unwrapping his hands, not quite looking up, but he’s clearly listening.

“Hi,” Skip says gently.

“Hello.”

“Uh, I—I know I fucked up.”

“Huh,” Nyne replies, balling the first set of tape up and setting it on the closest piece of equipment. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Skip continues. “I already talked to Syx about it—”

“He told me.”

“—but I owe an apology to you about it too, because I know that was—”

“You know what your dad liked to tell me?”

Skip stops short, staring at Nyne in a kind of horror. Nyne seems so casual about it, his face twitching into an almost grimace several times, though he keeps pulling it back out.

“No,” Skip whispers. “What?”

“Prilbus told me,” Nyne says slowly. “Your dad, you know—he told me that it was the greatest honor for beings like us to be hosts for a family like his.”

“And he was wrong,” Skip tries to protest. Norman has gone wholly silent, horrified. Skip’s not faring much better. Their heart is starting to stutter uncomfortably.

Nyne just gives a wry smile, pulling at a particularly stubborn piece of tape. “He told me all the time. ‘Listen, kid, you’re going to be used for one of the greatest cultural advancements our kind has ever seen. You may not know it now, but you will go down in history, and I will remember your name’.”

Skip’s mouth is dry now. “That was probably a lie.”

“Oh, I know it was,” Nyne agrees. “It was a big, fat lie, just like everything else he ever promised me. You know he convinced me Syx was the one who killed the Battalion, right?”

“My dad sucked,” Skip whispers. “I know.”

“Do you know?” Nyne asks, finally looking up with one quirked eyebrow. “Cause it seems to me like you don’t know, on account of how you pulled the same shit he did.”

Even Norman winces at that, but Skip is too shell shocked to reply. Nyne doesn’t need a reply, clearly.

“The difference between you and your dad was that you didn’t want to destroy the universe,” Nyne says. He’s not smiling anymore. “You didn’t think you were better than life forms like us. But that doesn’t mean you’re completely different.”

“I am not my father,” Skip says weakly. His eyes are starting to get misty.

“You fucked with Syx’s memories,” Nyne reminds him, pointing in the direction of the showers. “You ruined his brain for a bit there, and I had to pick up the damn pieces—Skip, do you understand how serious this is for me? I don’t even—it sucks that you used me too. It sucks that I had to walk around with a slug and not know about it, until I lost all control over my body again to play puppet to you—”

“I’m sorry,” Skip insists.

“I’m not done!” Nyne shouts, and Skip falls wholly silent. He takes a moment to compose himself before he continues. “It’s one thing for you to hide. Or jump. Or whatever the hell it is you do. But you fucked with his memories, and you fucked a little with mine, and you don’t come back from that. Not with me.” Nyne snatches a towel and starts storming off, then turns back around to put a finger in Skip’s chest. “You know what the fucking worst part is, actually? You’re supposed to be one of Syx’s best friends, and you betrayed his trust—not fucking cool, Skip, or—Valdrinor—whatever the fuck your name is. You fucked up. Syx may have forgiven you, and you may be back on Norman’s good side, but I hope for your sake that you recognize how fucking lucky you have it.”

Skip is barely breathing. Norman sits just behind the eyes, staring sadly.

“I hope you know how damn lucky you are,” Nyne hisses pointedly. “That you have a really, really incredible person who is vouching for you all the damn time. Cause I think we both know you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Norman.”

“Nobody liked him anyway,” Skip whispers before he can stop himself.

(Slowly, Norman slides further back.)

“And if nobody liked him, you think you’d still be here after all the shit you pulled?” Nyne insists.

“I didn’t do anything—”

“You are a cerebroslug,” Nyne says sharply. “You crawl inside people’s heads, and you lock into everything about them, and you slowly start dismantling it one by one by one. Even when you’re trying to symbiosis, Norman has to bend over backwards to appeal to you, no matter what it is. You understand that, right? Just because people like you, you aren’t absolved of the fucked up shit you pulled.”

“Like what?”

“You sent the ship into lockdown,” Nyne lists, starting to count on his fingers. “You told me, to my face, that you wanted to stay in Syx forever. You fucked with his memory and gaslit him into making him feel like an awful person, then you attacked me and fucked with my head to make me forget it too. You lied. You stole me—”

Skip has been staring at Nyne’s face unblinking the whole conversation, so he watches the tears building up in Nyne’s eyes finally start to spill over at the last admission. He takes a moment, looking away, then shakes his head and turns back with a sharp shift.

“You knew going in,” Nyne says lowly, “that I don’t fuck with you like that, and you took me anyway, and you almost got us killed the second we stepped foot off this ship, and then you did it again by distracting me during what could have been a really, really bad fight. I know you don’t want to hear this, because you’re everyone’s hero, but if you ever, ever lay a single fucking slime trail on me again I swear to god I’m gonna salt you and turn you into escargot. And then—”

Skip flinches as Nyne throws his hands up.

“—and then, on top of all of that, you’ve broken Norman!”

“He’s fine,” Skip says, because it’s the only thing he knows for sure. “What are you talking about? Norm is—he’s fine.”

“How many concessions has he had to make because of you?” Nyne spits. Skip doesn’t reply. “After you so graciously let him come back, he built the entire rest of his life around making sure you were happy and you were comfortable. Have you ever even asked what he wanted? What does Norman like? Is it the whipped cream? Is that him? Is it the running into doorways, or losing half his life to the whim of some entitled, snobby little slug prince that never learned that no is a complete sentence that can be directed at him?”

(Skip reaches. He tugs on Norman, for the first time reversing their positions, asking him to come up front—or if he won’t, to at least let him know that he can tell Nyne how wrong he is—

The only response he gets from Norman is a very dull ping of oh, he’s seen it too?

Skip is going to be sick.)

“Stop it,” Skip whispers. “I get it, okay? I—”

“Do you?” Nyne demands. “Or are you just tired of the conversation?” He doesn’t wait for a reply that time. “Norman is great. I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks of him. He’s wonderful, and he’s a good friend—better than any of you stupid fuckers give him credit for—and I hope you know that. If you want to apologize to me you’re gonna have to do way better than that, because you’re still fucking around with pretending you don’t have any damn responsibility in the whole thing.”

Skip yanks at Norman again, but now Norman has gone dark, and Skip is starting to realize how much it sucks when he refuses to bail Norman out of situations when he begs for the help.

“Okay,” Skip whispers, looking away—towards the mirror on the far wall—even from here, he can see the bright green reflecting in their eyes, and it makes him nauseous.

“Okay?” Nyne echoes. “What the fuck do you mean, okay?”

“You’re right,” Skip says, shutting their eyes. “Look, I’m not—I can just—”

“If you think that offering to leave Norman again is the solution, you’re stupider than I thought,” Nyne says sharply. “You saw what leaving did in the first place.”

“Okay,” Skip repeats. His voice is nearly non-existent now. “Okay.”

Nyne doesn’t walk away the way Skip expects him to. Slowly Skip pries open one eye, his gaze landing on Nyne’s sneakers.

“But,” Nyne says after a minute, slowly—quietly. “I mean—look, I appreciate your apology. I don’t accept it, but I see the fact that you’re acknowledging you need to. That counts for something.”

Not enough, sits unspoken, but Skip hears it anyway.

“I’m not gonna hop again,” Skip promises. “I don’t want to. Things are good.”

“You two talked?”

Skip grimaces, looking in the other direction this time. Nyne scoffs.

“Of fucking course. Alright, well—is he—can I talk to him?”

That’s what gets him to finally look up, holding his hands up so Nyne can tell he’s—what, submissive or something? Whatever it is, he’s trying to prove he’s not a threat. “Let me see.”

Nyne shifts, crossing his arms as he stares down at Skip, and Skip shuts their eyes and jumps as far back into the recesses of their mind as he can to find Norman. He’s there—he knows he’s there, but for some reason he’s steadfastly refusing to come back out, even when Skip offers Nyne, offers to detach himself, threatens to detach himself—Norman stays back, his feelings unreadable, and that means when Skip reopens their eyes to the same bright green as before Nyne scowls even deeper.

“I’m trying,” Skip whispers. “I promise I’m trying. I don’t know why he—I’m sorry. I’m trying.”

Nyne sighs, grabbing his trash. He isn’t looking at Skip anymore. “Well, let him know he can come find me whenever he’s ready.”

And then Skip is alone, staring at the door to the showers. Norman is still silent; he might not have even been paying attention.

At least Skip’s got things to think about now.

Something snaps. It doesn’t click the way it used to, and Norman knows it’s going to take more than just the sex to fix it, but—

Well. He’s only a man.

Skip has found out that if he slides halfway back through Norman’s sinuses, he can nearly slide down his throat, and when he does that it makes Norman feel as though he’s choking on a particularly large cock. It’s not a feeling he ever thought he’d crave, but it seems like he’s the one who asks for it most nights now anyway, along with sticking his hand in a bowl of hand soap and swishing his hand around so fast and so hard it creates bubbles.

Tonight, he’s half curious, and he waits until Skip is focused on the front again for a check in before he offers a new idea gently.

At the mental image of taking the soap and using it as lube to jack off, Skip swells so much Norman can’t breathe, and that seems to be that.

But neither of their hearts seem in it right now. He keeps trying to make noises that will make Skip say something, but Skip stays resolutely silent except for waves of pleasure (smaller than usual).

He’s letting Norman have control of their body this time, so Norman’s allowed to slow the touches down until he’s barely moving at all except squeezing the tip of his dick a few times.

That gets Skip’s attention. What’s wrong?

Are things okay?

Skip flattens a little, a sign he’s locking into mental processes and not just physical feelings. What do you mean?

I mean with us. Are things okay?

Are…do you not think they are?

Nyne, Norman offers gently, and it’s as if Skip sucks up all the moisture and decides they’re completely done. He takes his hand off his dick sadly. I didn’t pay that close attention—

Am I a bad person?

Norman has to really fight back the urge to reply that Skip isn’t really a person at all and that’s why he likes him. No.

Skip doesn’t respond for a minute, and Norman busies himself with cleaning up while he waits. When he starts washing his hands, Skip finally speaks up again, and Norman glances at the mirror so he can feel like he’s talking to someone instead of himself.

Do you like this?

Like…what?

Symbiosis. Me.

Norman makes a face. I mean, it’s not like you’re going anywhere. We both know it.

That isn’t what I asked.

Skip, you told me to my face you were gonna live my life better than me, and then you went around and dragged me up front and are making me deal with the consequences of shit I may or may not have done on my own. Norman leans over the sink, his brows furrowed. I hadn’t asked for symbiosis, but I’m not gonna pull away from it. And you leaving ends up…kind of disastrous. I think that much is clear.

So you hate this.

I hate change, Norman counters. It ain’t got much to do with you.

Norman, I’d like an actual answer.

I don’t know if I can give you one, Norman answers honestly. With love, Skip, I ain’t gonna be able to tell you one way or the other because I don’t wanna risk you leaving again.

Skip goes quiet finally. It’s strange to feel so divided after being so interconnected, then separated, for so long. Now, it’s like Skip has put up a wall, and Norman thinks he hates it.

Skip, he presses carefully. Don’t do this. Don’t leave when you just got back.

Maybe Barry Nyne was right.

Cut that out.

Maybe he was. Look, Norm, maybe me leaving was a sign—

What did I tell you? Norman insists. I’ll kill myself if you go anywhere. You want that to happen? Live on your slug conscience?

Skip wiggles awkwardly, wrapping around his brainstem slowly. No. Don’t do that. Don’t threaten that. That’s scary, Skipper.

At least he’s Skipper again, Norman thinks, his shoulders dropping. I’m gonna be fine so long as you don’t go nowhere, Skip. You hear me? Just…stay. What’re you flipping shit for anyway? Cause some dumb clone said something?

He’s not dumb, Skip protests weakly. He had a point. I did fucked up shit, and I couldn’t even—you’re making concessions because of me. Aren’t you?

Norman blinks away from the mirror slowly, considering, then looks back up more pointedly. If we’re ever doing something I don’t wanna do, I can stop it, he points out. I can tell you.

Okay. So. What don’t you like?

He tilts their head back, trying to find an honest answer. …don’t like when you talk about leaving.

Other than that, Skipper.

Christ, Skip, I don’t know. I—I know I like when you’re a little bit rougher. Don’t like you keeping the pain receptors off all the damn time. Don’t like, uh, you pushing the plant thing all the time.

You never explained why the plant thing was such a big deal.

Norman cringes, turning away from the mirror entirely now. It’s…I mean, where I grew up, that shit wasn’t exactly…I don’t know, Skip. I always got made to feel like a fuckin’ dumbass when I thought shit other than the girls I went to school with were hot.

Skip brightens, suddenly latching onto that, and Norman scrambles to pull away except that he can’t.

You like the weird— He presses the slime feeling forward again, and Norman feels his dick twitch traitorously. And— This time, Skip starts jacking off his brainstem again, and Norman’s vision doubles as his knees go weak. You—you like that?

Norman lets out a shaking breath. …not just that, he admits finally, shaking his head. I can’t—don’t make me do this right now. Let me—I can’t, uh, control dreams, but I know you can sort of—

Yeah, Skip says immediately. Yeah, I can. You tell me what you wanna see tonight, and I’m down.

“Christ,” Norman mumbles out loud, adjusting his pants so maybe it’s not quite as obvious that he didn’t get to finish. “You’re a sick little slug, you know that?”

Skip gives the equivalent of a child’s toothy smile in reply, laying down firmly along the base of Norman’s skull.

They go to dinner not too long later, and Norman makes a point to find himself next to Barry Nyne. Both the Barry’s stare at him in confusion and concern, but when Norman just gives them a curt nod instead of Skip’s customary smile he watches both of them relax—Nyne more than Syx.

“Hey,” Nyne says. “How are things?”

Norman shrugs, inspecting the dinner options. “Not bad,” he admits. “I, uh, finally talked. To him. Skip.”

“Great,” Syx says immediately. “How’d it go?”

“Well, I hope,” Nyne says, though he still sounds concerned. Norman nudges his arm with his elbow.

“It went well,” he confirms. “I think maybe we just needed to get knocked around a little. Have some, um.” He clears his throat. “Weird sex together.”

Both the Barry’s stop, turning to him in surprise. Norman decidedly doesn’t look at either of them as he grabs a roll and sets the plate down, deciding he’s not very hungry.

“So be, y’know. Kind. He’s still relearning how to, uh, do the symbiosis thing. Is all.” Norman takes a bite of the roll slowly. “And I’m learning shit too.”

“Oh,” Nyne says slowly. “I…guess you heard.”

“A little,” Norman admits. “And I get it. And we talked about it, and this is where we’re at.”

“Right.”

He feels Skip poke cautiously, so Norman gestures, and they’re both up front for a moment.

“We’re gonna try a roommate thing instead of being one and the same,” Skip explains. Norman makes them look to see both the Barry’s when he speaks, so he sees Syx nod slowly without understanding and Nyne nod intentionally with understanding. “If that’s, y’know. Okay.”

“Right,” Nyne says finally. “Got it.”

Norman clears their throat. “And the long and short of it is, uh, Nyne, if you ever—want to have, uh, relations that aren’t so revenge based, you know where my room is.” His face is bright pink and he knows it, but Skip encourages him to keep looking so they can see how Nyne’s cheeks dust rosy too.

“Oh,” Nyne says, slightly strangled now. “Got it.”

“What about me?” Barry Syx asks, frowning.

“I mean, I’m down,” Skip answers.

And then Norman quirks the corner of their mouth into a little smile. “Both at once, maybe, if that ever becomes appealing.”

Skip reacts violently to that, pinging off several sensors, so Norman nods curtly and books it across the room to the door so he doesn’t have to see what the Barry’s reactions are.

Norman?

Youuuu shut the fuck up, Norman thinks back hastily. Shut up, shut up—

Both at once?

Norman can’t stop the vision of Skip sliding down his throat again and he feels Skip rip them into a little closet off one of the hallways near the Jib-Jobber space to shove their hand down their pants.

Holy shit fuck, Norman Takamori, you little whore freak—

Norman groans, throwing his head back. Told you to shut up, Skip—

So. Anyway. They figure out the symbiosis thing pretty fast.

It takes a few more conversations, but everything finally ends up back on track. Skip apologizes enough, and properly, and Norman…well, he ends up with a boyfriend. Or three. It’s kind of unclear who’s dating who, but Skip is allowed to reap most of the benefits from them, so he’s pretty happy.

And he keeps up with his friends off the crew too, much to Norman’s chagrin.

(But not Livvy. She’s off limits, pretty reasonably.)

Tonight they’re back near a nebula, and Norman has requested to spend the night solo with Skip, so Barry Syx smacks Norman on the ass as a goodbye and Barry Nyne gives Norman a kiss that’s…uncharacteristically soft. Norman stares after them for a while, then turns back to the stars, and Skip settles in comfortably around his brainstem like he can give Norman a real hug.

Norman reaches back and runs his fingers along the ridge that is Skip very gently, slouching in his seat and staring straight ahead with a tiny smile he reserves just for Skip.

Skip has friends. None of them are anything like Norman. Norman is rough around the edges; he does not cry, and he does not punch things, but he represses every soft human instinct he has until he can’t ever be construed as weak, except to Skip. Skip turns their eyes to the window in front of them and watches as stars drift past slowly.

He’s missed the view from the captain’s seat, he thinks, and he missed having someone he could cohabitate a brain with that reminded him that being foreign was weird, but sometimes a gift, and he missed slender hands and too-long nails and having to duck under some doorways, and he missed his friend, Norman Takamori, who missed him just as much, if not more.

They miss dinner. It’s a price they’re both willing to pay.