Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who will not permit anyone to post “sad or wistful shit” while on deployment
Some planet's staggering its way through a couple decades of teetering postwar provisional governments and coalitions of factions willing to literally murder each other and things pretty regularly going south.
Y'know, the repeat customer type.
The outfit's not, thank goodness, here as election observers or on-the-street peacekeepers. The latest fleeting El Presidente just really wants to make sure he gets from A to B, during the elections, without his own escort driving him off the road somewhere, sticking him in a shallow grave, and going, "Aha! See, now we have a solid reason to massacre those conspicuously-ethnically-correlated regional rebels!"
Repeat; not necessarily good.
Serval Unit are escorting the El Prez limo from the El Prez tackily gilded palace to an airfield outside town, while Manul and Gecko likewise escort decoys.
At the airfield, Pigeon sits in the pilot seat of Dropbird Bravo, feet on the dash, with the latest quarterly print edition of MechMerc Magazine.
"Dear MechMerc," her copilot, Lowball, sing-songs from the cockpit doorway, a fresh coffee in hand. "I never thought it would happen to me—"
"Readin' it for the articles," Pigeon says, conspicuously opening up the centrefold and squinting at an alleged mech pilot dressed exclusively in boots, glistening sunscreen, and stragetic dabs of grease.
"Sure are some articles on that one!"
"Real editorial voice goin' on."
"Sure you don't want a coffee while I'm up?"
Pigeon turns in her seat enough to give him a look, and Lowball gives her one right back.
Serval Unit's Kelpie had been a mistake. A mezcal-blitzed armful of mistake that poured itself into Pigeon's lap one shore leave and slurred that she didn't do feelings, she didn't do relationships, but how'd Pigeon like her to do Pigeon? which Pigeon had figured sounded like fun.
And it was fun, and then Kelpie seemed to have maybe freaked out a little bit when she sobered up, and massively overcompensated. The third time that Kelpie reminded her, unprompted, that Kelpie doesn't do relationships, Pigeon said, "Well, show me who's asking," just a little bit mean.
Apparently that wasn't the way to deal with her, because now she's some kind of scab on Kelpie's feelings, and Kelpie can't get within a certain distance without coming back to pick at it.
It wouldn't be so bad if Kelpie could just stop insisting that Pigeon's got feels for her, and she's Just Reminding Her how Kelpie's not in the market for that. Or even if Kelpie's way of Just Reminding Her wasn't so fucking Shitty Preteen Boy Wants Girl To Notice Him.
"We could lock the cockpit door when Serval get here," Lowball says.
"Oh, yeah, because I want to fly El Prez all the way there with Kelpie hammering on it like the world's most ineffectual hijacker, yelling that moping about her ain't healthy."
"Well," Lowball says, grinning, "if you were, I'd worry about you."
Pigeon makes a grumpy noise in her throat.
"Hey hey," Kelpie says, clanging against the cockpit doorframe.
"Ain't you late?" Lowball says, as Pigeon tries to ignore them both while she gets the bird in the air. The schedule has enough elastic in it, but they definitely got El Prez to the airfield toward the later end of the envelope.
"Detoured because the road was mined," Kelpie says easily. "How's Miz Wistful over there?"
Pigeon bares her teeth, unseen.
"Kelpie," Lowball says, amused and reluctant and dragging it out into a drawl.
"What," Kelpie says. "Can't have it. Wistful's bad for morale. Gotta snap her out of her pining—"
"You touch that airhorn in your pocket," Pigeon says, "in my cockpit, on my bird, in the air, while transporting a client, and I swear you're going up in front of the Cap."
Her tone kills the banter. Lowball coughs, after a minute.
"Kelpie," he says, "why don't you go strap in somewhere."
There's a pause, and then Kelpie slowly, silently clomps away.
Pigeon gets the bird up to cruising altitude, puts her on autopilot, and says, "You fly her."
"Pigeon—"
"Five minutes," Pigeon says, and cuts him another look from angry eyes.
"If this just makes her worse—"
"—Then tell me you told me so. Five minutes." She muscles out to where Kelpie's perched in the tiny bucket seat next to the cramped incline of the map table, where the coffee maker is wedged into the small gap on the shelf next to the bank of radio gear.
"Hey—" Kelpie starts, and mumbles into silence with a firm hand gripping her jaw and encouraging it shut.
"Look me in the eye," Pigeon says dangerously, and after a long moment looking anywhere else possible, Kelpie reluctantly does. "Do I look pining, Kelpie?"
Kelpie hesitates, then attempts to both shrink into the seat and shake her head, as much she can with her face in vise.
"Do I look moping?"
Kelpie hums out an approximate no.
"Is there any problem here with me being sad?"
Another, softer hum. Pigeon lets go of her jaw with a little shake.
"Am I the one with a problem here, Kelpie?"
Kelpie clears her throat a couple of times, head down. Her lashes glitter wetly.
"No," she says finally.
"Look at me."
Kelpie's gaze wanders around the floor, hovers around Pigeon's knee level, skitters in the space to either side of her, and finally lands unhappily in the region of her face.
"Sort yourself out, Kelpie," Pigeon says.
"Yeah," Kelpie whispers, and Pigeon leans in a bit, lips pressing into a hard little line.
"You're looking a little bit wistful," she says meanly, and goes back to the cockpit to do her damn job.