Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-starship-pilot — Starship pilot who has a really nice hat. Like, a REALLY nice hat.
Hiding in the toilets, Hren does her best to steady her breathing, staring into the mirror and repeatedly adjusting the soft, fashionable, wide-brimmed fabric confection atop her head.
Nene finds her, of course; quietly enters and props her shoulder against a wall, for once prised out of her cockit sarong and coaxed into a tailored outfit. Brocade serpents coil up wide-legged trousers, and interlock on her snug waistcoat. The plain silk shirt beneath has short sleeves; Hren's eyes linger on the muscles of her arms, and then, stomach-swoopingly, on the betrothal sleeve woven around one of them.
The pilot is still wan and easily tired, and Tall Kettle forbids her, still, to snug into a mech, even for routine skills training.
("Be assured," the Captain had said to Hren and Two Marks, privately, "that there's no question of not keeping her on, no matter how her health goes. Third of all, she's our Redbat. Second of all, there's still that contract she wrote. Firstly, I'd lose a deepnavigator and an accountant along with her, and I've no intention of competing with the three of you in business for yourselves.")
"Hello, pretty girl," Nene says. "I like your hat."
"Hello, mech pilot," Hren plays along. "It's for a wedding."
"Oh, you want to be careful. I hear things happen at mech pilot weddings. Pirates. Dramatic weeping from spurned lovers." Nene pauses a beat, lips curving. "Aunts being debauched in bathrooms," and Hren shivers under her eyes.
"I don't believe I have any niblings," she says, voice coming out lower and smokier than she intended.
"Well, perhaps you're safe, then," Nene says, eyes hooded and fixed on the promise of Hren's plum-coloured lips.
"I spent an hour, before I married Two Marks," Hren blurts, and screws her eyes closed, "shut in one the shipself's storage cupboards, in — a terror, Nene, such a terror, and a shame, of what I was doing. And nobody noticed, because nobody was there to — to be there for me, and because you were so sad."
"I'm sorry," Nene says softly, and puts a hand on the small of Hren's back. "But have I told you? I think I actually quite like you and your wife," and she rests her chin on Hren's shoulder until Hren opens her eyes again and meets Nene's, in the mirror.
"Nene Red Bat," Hren says, choked.
"Hren Zo-Seven," Nene says back. "Come on, lovely. There's a girl waiting out there, and if we don't hurry and marry her, some devilish handsome Peninsular deepnavigator might steal her."
"We'd have to duel them," Hren says, leaning back into her. "It would be a shame to get blood on your clothes; you look very handsome."
"And you," Nene says, "are one of my binary suns; and I have gladly stared at you until my eyes are ruined for seeing anything else," and Hren takes a long, shuddering breath, and gently dislodges her by turning away from the mirror.
"Come with me," she says, tangling her fingers with Nene's and leading her out of the bathroom, toward Two Marks and the Captain's officiant authority and the shipself's gleefully terrible contributions to the occasion; "Come with me, Nene, because I need to marry you, right now."