The Cap's drumming up fresh contracts at an arms fair, and the rank and file have settled in to take up half of a bar. The outfit's sky pilots and armour pilots have naturally settled into two distinct groups, the mechies annoying the room with control of the jukebox, the birdcrew hogging the pool table.
"Hey, Pigeon." It's Fletch from Dingo, lean and easygoing, beer in hand and hip propped next to the centre pocket.
"Hey." Pigeon's eyes flick over to the bar and back. It's not lost on Fletch.
"Kelpie's been agonising for the last hour whether you'll let her buy you a drink to apologise," xie says.
Pigeon snorts. Full of feels, and making it insufferable; "Sounds like Kelpie."
Fletch looks at her, head on one side a bit, like xie's thinking. "Take the drink or shoot her down," xie says amiably, like it's a friendly suggestion without any particular weight, one way or the other, and ambles off to cozy up to Beeper.
"That's a thing you could do," Lowball says.
"Do you see your business anywhere here?" Pigeon tells him, making a show of looking around herself and in her pockets. "No?"
"You could at least get a drink out of her for the hassle."
"Do I look too cheap to buy myself a drink?" Pigeon says coolly, and waits until he goes to the bathroom, chewing it over, to stalk to the bar. Dodger sees her coming and peels off, hastily finding a conversation he's interested in joining.
"I'll have another of these," Pigeon says shortly, at Kelpie's shoulder; drains her beer and sets the empty at the mech pilot's elbow. And then, when the mech pilot reaches for it, pins it in place with a finger on the bottle's lip. "If," she adds, "you own up to what crawled up your ass, Kelpie."
Kelpie sits stiff and looks at the bottle for long enough that Pigeon nearly just takes off, and then mutters something Pigeon doesn't catch. She's midway through leaning down and starting to say so, when Kelpie abruptly turns, grabs her shoulder, and stretches up to say it again, no louder but closer.
"...Thought," Kelpie says, rapid and embarrassed and clipped, "I was straight."
Pigeon blinks. "You climbed in my lap," she says, and pauses. "You took me back to your bunk."
"I don't come out of this looking smart," Kelpie says, and hunches back onto her barstool.
Pigeon looks at the back of her head for a few seconds, then wordlessly nudges the bottle into her elbow, and Kelpie flags down the bartender, equally wordlessly shows it to them and holds up two fingers; shoves one of the resulting drinks a little to the side for Pigeon to take.
Pigeon take a swallow, then deliberately wraps her free hand round the back of Kelpie's neck and gives her a light squeeze, feeling her shiver; lets her fingertips graze Kelpie's back as she drops the hand.
Heads back to the pool table.