Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-starship-pilot — Starship pilot with the worst callsign you have ever heard
"Got a problem with my callsign, rookie?"
Aha. Ahahaha. You stand to attention and glare at the bulkhead.
"Asked you a question, rookie. Do — you — have — a problem — with my callsign?"
Well, if she's gonna back you into a corner and make it go this way — "Sir, yes, sir!"
She leans in. "What's your fucking problem?" she growls.
"Sir!" You're standing so straight you think you might pull something. You put every cringing, withering microsecond of mortification under the diamond press of your resentment at being put here, on this spot, wriggling for a senior's cheap authoritarian sadism, and make it come out sounding like hate. It hurts your own ears. She could probably have you dismissed on the spot, just for taking this fucking tone. "If I have to call you 'Mommy', I'm scared I might cream in my cockpit, sir!"
And she falters.
You see her face crack, her moment of surprise, the fleeting thought that purses her mouth to say what, seriously? because she assumed you were just being a weird insubordinate dirtbag about it but she suddenly thinks that maybe...not...the kind she thought. You see the racing thought catch up that if she asks that, you might have to tell her, and neither of you can un-ask it, afterwards.
"Rookie," she says, less drill sergeant, quieter, and you meet her eyes with a searing glare: dare you dare you fucking dare you—
She doesn't flinch, but her voice gets more careful. "Go on, get out of here," she says.
Next thing you know, your callsign's Orphan, and everyone's quietly aware they're not allowed to give you shit for calling her McKinley. Because she's the squadron fucking Mom friend, and she found an excuse for you to get away scot-free with being the kind of weirdo piece of shit you actually are. Took care of you.
Orphan. Like that's not somehow crueller than taking a branding iron to you.