They move Megan's stuff — such as it is — into Lifer's place on a Saturday, and Megan sprawls exhaustedly on Lifer's couch afterwards, despite how small her entire life packs up.
"So," she says. "Tomorrow you have your — weekly hookup? You need me to give you space afterwards? Before?"
"Cancelled this week," Lifer says, which seems fair enough.
It's a couple of months later that Megan's in a bar before a gig that Dinosaur Dave's friend's band is opening for. Josie had mentioned it, in a diffident not-outright-asking way, and things have been brittle between them; and it's not that Megan exactly misses her, and she hasn't for a moment contemplated apologising, but she misses the option to sometimes say hey in a particular voice and end up just a naked body in bed with another naked body. So she said sure, and now she's wondering how many drinks she should get in beforehand to numb her to Dinosaur Dave's friend's band, without making the night sad and shitty in itself.
She gets talking, as a friend-of-friend, to some other friend-of-different-friend whose name she didn't catch, and somewhere between doing shots, clocking each others' service slang and ribbing each other (both Navy; mech corps and space pilot), and preemptively trashing the band they're going to see, Megan pauses suddenly over something the other woman says.
"Hang on," she says, leaning in loud and sincere with the booze, "are you Lifer's weekly...professional hookup?"
"Oh, you know Lifer? 'Course you do. Mechies can't wipe their ass without squad support." The woman grins. "How is she, these days?"
"What do you mean? I thought she was—" Megan waggles an I don't know words for this, sorry? hand— "a regular."
"Used to be. She's skittish, you know?" And Megan files that one away as something that not many people would say about Lifer, no. "When we both got comfortable with each other, she was a weekly outcall. Then she just said one day that someone was staying with her in the room, and going back to hotel rooms would make her sad."
That feels like a lot to process after shots, so Megan sits with it, frowning at the wall a little in concentration, until things start to click. Lifer, with a spare room; no fucking in her own bed, too human; Lifer, sad in hotel rooms because — because she'd let someone in that far, allowed that much, and didn't want to lose anything. Lifer's spare—
"Oh my god," she says blankly at the wall, "I stole Lifer's fuck bed," and Lifer's fuck bed beneficiary chokes on tequila.
"Navy buddy," she says, after Megan's apologetically patted her on the back and wiped their surroundings down with paper napkins. "That makes so much sense — I thought she might have landed a girlfriend, but she seemed weird about it, for Lifer—" and she pauses. "Not a girlfriend?" she adds for clarification, re-sizing Megan up.
"Navy buddy," Megan says, still a bit blankly. "Jesus. I should talk to her. It sounded like your — thing, was good for her, I didn't know I was cockblocking, she didn't say anything—" and then she reins it in.
"You're a good friend," Lifer's formerly regular professional hookup appointment says approvingly.
"Not her friend," Megan says reflexively, in Lifer's intonation, and the other woman laughs loudly, then visibly re-re-evaluates her.
"You sure you're not the girlfriend?"" she says.
"Navy buddy," Megan says, and starts to say she warned me off early, starts to say by aggressively telling me that humans won't fuck her with the face on, halts even before she remembers she'd need to hastily mop up after saying that with but you did, and I know you're fine because she kept seeing you, and then she closes her mouth, pushes her shot glass around on the table with her finger, and decides to keep drinking until she can fall into bed after the gig without remembering, when she does, that it's Lifer's fuck bed.