Cohost writing prompt: @spy-thief-assassin-who — Smuggler who always brings you something sweet
The ship is, in truth, autonomous, zigzagging slipspace with its great arrays unfurled, monitoring slip conditions. But there has to be a pilot, they say, for emergencies, and then if there's a pilot there has to be another one, for pilot emergencies.
Apparently that's sufficient; no need for triple pilot redundancy.
Tours on the weatherships are purgatories. A mile of starship, months of isolation, nothing to do. Libraries of art and film and literature, planets' worth of learn-a-language courses, gundam-in-a-bottle kits, day after textureless day of lifting weights and jogging laps.
After every leg they hit realspace, dock, cycle out and top up the life support loops, sit a multiple-choice automated figleaf of a psych eval to make sure they're not going space crazy and won't murder each other.
And, Delta's pretty sure, Polo trades her stash for a fuckton of whatever party drugs are hot and local, ideally walking away with a profit on it. Polo's been out here doing tours for years, porcelain pretty and wired to the eyes, never saying two words to a person if one will do, and not that many if none at all won't be actively disastrous. And she's evidently got the good-times arbitrage down to a science, because she always has walking-around money.
Delta's not too sure what goes on behind Polo's lenses. The other pilot won't come closer to her than half a room away, by choice, and sometimes goes entire days where she won't look at her. But every stop they make, Polo drops a few bucks on something for Delta; something that just turns up in her space without a word or any acknowledgement. And it's nominal amounts of money, nothing Delta couldn't do for herself, it's just — consistent. Bakery-fresh pastries or bubble tea. The small sealed sachets of room-scent lozenges. Ephemeral pleasures.
Delta watches Polo, in the bars and clubs of their station stops, sinking a hit of whatever's hot and new, chasing it with a couple of drinks, and then picking someone (some several, sometimes) up with clinical ruthless precision, and disappearing to fuck all through their docking cycle. She can see Polo cycling up to do it, now, an hour on station and her skin flushing as the smart-high kicks in.
"Prophet's carbide bones," Delta says, raising her eyebrows, and tilts a micro nod toward a girl, dancing in not very much of a dress and coils and coils of a rope of magnetite beads. "Pretty one, eh?"
She doesn't — involve herself, in Polo's business, much. But the occasional nod or nudge and cheery word of solidarity can't hurt, probably. And Polo gives the girl a long, considering look.
"Good taste," she says, and Delta half-grins, salutes with her glass, and downs what's left of her drink.
"Well, that's me," she says, easy and comfortably routine, heading back to bunk and book. "See you back on the ship when it's go time."
It's not even an hour later when Delta's door pings and she opens up to dancing girl in the corridor on the ship, in contrast to Polo's usual disappearance to hook up elsewhere, blushy and panting; Polo pressed tight up behind her, one hand snaked lightly round her throat, the other wandering under the dress.
For a second, Delta dizzily thinks of cats bringing in prey to share, and then Polo's nudging the girl forward into Delta's cabin, and Delta thinks of: pastries, perfumes. Ephemeral pleasures. Brought and deposited. And then Polo relentless presses the girl into Delta, soft and sweet and sighing.
Polo still won't come within half a room of her, after they undock and head back into slip for the next leg. But maybe, after you've had a girl sandwiched between you, and without the two of you exchanging a word you've held eye contact right past her through her hours of begging and sighing and broken moaning, there are things that doesn't mean.