There’s a mess of off-duty pilots having a cookout under the late summer sun, and Roscoe smiles and nods and eats a hotdog and drinks a beer and excuses herself to swing by the big cooler of bottled water and grab one, and keeps on going with it, off the open grass and into the trees that go all the way back to the base exterior fence. Just for a minute. Just to cool off.
She keeps going until the high-spirited yells are distantly muted, props herself against a tree, and puts the cold bottle to the back of her neck.
“Fuck,” she mumbles.
It’s not her fault, she swears. Specialist Messina is a fucking menace. Roscoe’s been doing her best to keep her shit together, but that fucking Handle ‘er joke won’t die, and neither will I’d sure like to make a Special Mess of her! and they’re both too true for Roscoe for her to join in without her voice cracking and giving her away.
Messina had been just a plughead, passing through, in a bar — she’d let Roscoe think she was. And then, the next morning, bright and sharp and smiling and dangerous, newly stationed here to teach dumb jocks new tricks, integrated tactics for brainwired squad overwatch, which puts her off limits and out of Roscoe’s league. Which is a problem for Roscoe’s chill, because she knows what Specialist Messina sounds like when she comes.
They fucked in Roscoe’s cockpit. She can’t sit in her mech without feeling insane about it. Like a seedling seeking light, she’s a bundle of impulses without thought, desperate to nose her way up the inside of Messina’s thigh and eat her like there’s no tomorrow. It is fucking with her piloting.
And now Messina shows up in a sundress. Roscoe’s cooked. The most-cooked thing at the cookout.
“You better not have heatstroke,” Messina says from five metres away, and Roscoe yells a little bit and drops the water, which bounces off her back, the tree, her elbow when she reflexively swivels to try to catch it, the tree again, and finally, bruisingly, her foot. Right in front of Messina. Who is wearing a sundress, and raising an eyebrow.
“Specialist,” Roscoe says, clutching her elbow, and clears her throat to sound try to sound like less of an embarrassed puppy-whine. “No, I — I’m fine.”
Messina’s still-raised eyebrow says bullshit. Her mouth says, “You’re about to head off on a week’s leave, right?”
Roscoe twitches. Here it comes: she’s doing well enough not to get chewed out — barely — but Messina clearly knows she should be piloting better than she is. A quiet, stern word, off the record. She picks up the water, to buy herself a second.
“Friend down the coast just got the official word,” she says. “Remission. We’re gonna go sightseeing, eat cake.”
Second remission. She tries not to think about the actual phone call; Roberta, exhausted and flat, saying When it comes back again—
If!
And a long pause, letting the disbelief sit heavy between them before Roberta picked up again without revisiting what either of them had said, letting the point speak for itself in the silence: I’m not doing a third round of treatment. I’d rather be dying than live through feeling like it all over again. I want you to know now, because when the time comes I need you in my corner when everyone else finds out. And because—
They’d been each others’ first girlfriend. Yeah, Roscoe acknowledged, painfully.
Messina is looking at her with eyes that feel as all-seeing as her brainwired battlefield presence. She cocks her head, just a little, so Roscoe gives her as much of a pasted-on grin as she can manage.
“I know you know how to keep your mouth shut,” Messina says, “so you can hear this early: we’re finally getting the rest of the plughead comms officers shipped in, while you’re gone.”
“Oh,” Roscoe says. Blinks. “Okay.”
Messina chews the inside of her mouth. Roscoe gets the impression she’s restraining herself from rolling her eyes; Roscoe gets that impression a lot.
“Means we’ll be reorganising into working groups with different instructors, instead of everyone getting a turn on me,” Messina says, and fuck Roscoe sideways, did she have to phrase it that way? “I’ve already been asked to provisionally divvy you up.”
“Oh,” Roscoe says, stomach already falling on principle.
“So you’ll be coming back to a different instructor,” Messina says.
Oh, Roscoe silently mouths. “I suck real bad, huh,” she says ruefully, fiddling with the water bottle in her hands.
“Crying out loud, Roscoe,” Messina snaps, snatching the bottle. Roscoe’s gaze snaps up in time to catch Messina actually rolling her eyes, this time. “It’s more than half my fault you can’t concentrate when I’m instructing, and the point is for you to learn, so of course I’m transferring you where you have a chance instead of blushing like a schoolgirl and forgetting how to fly whenever I look at you. I’m not punishing you.”
Roscoe, redder in the face than she ever remembers being, stammers.
“I won’t be directly responsible for your learning any more, pilot,” Messina spells out, loud and slow and clear, like shes explaining to a dim kid.
“Nope,” Roscoe manages, scrubbing a hand over her face. “No, I got that, I—”
Messina shoves her back against the tree with a hand on her shoulder. “How does a mech pilot have this little game,” she implores the sky. “Tractor drivers—”
Roscoe’s attempt to say something goes to whimpery shit when Messina hits her knees in the leaf litter. She grabs involuntarily at Messina’s shoulder, which the specialist tolerates for the precise time it takes to open Roscoe’s pants, then takes both of Roscoe’s wrists and holds them firmly at her sides.
“Hello, beautiful,” she croons to Roscoe’s helpless erection. “Yes, I remember you—”
Roscoe yelps as she does something wetter, hotter, and infinitely better than talking with her mouth, which — torturously — makes her take it away again.
“If your mama’s that loud,” Messina tells it sweetly, squeezing Roscoe’s wrists without once looking up at her — which does alarming things to her libido — “she’s gonna get found by someone coming to see what the noise is, with her pants round her knees and acting like a startled horny virgin.”
Roscoe wants to protest, at least the virgin part, and of course only succeeds in a high-pitched moan when Messina puts her mouth back; though she does eventually succeed in a variety of noises, including some indistinct swearing, leaning back hard into the tree trunk. Messina does not give her wrists back the entire time; Roscoe, whining through her teeth, nails biting into her own hands, comes on the specialist’s tongue.
“Have I successfully communicated the benefits of not being your instructor any more?” Messina says afterwards, still on her knees, expression angelic.
“Holy shit,” Roscoe says, indistinctly, and then, “uh. Can I — are you really going to keep calling me pilot? Like — while we—?” She licks her lips, stinging where she bit down to keep the worst of her noise muffled. “Is there something I can call you that’s not Specialist Messina—?”
“Awwww,” Messina says, still on her knees, and licks her own smiling lips, Roscoe’s length still right there next to her face. Roscoe thinks she might pass out. “What do you want to call me, Roscoe — Mommy?”
Roscoe chokes and hides her face in her elbow. Scratch passing out; she’s going to die.
“Just fucking with you,” Messina says after a pause; pats her hip soothingly. “Or I was until you reacted like that. Anyone ever call you a blushy little slut before?”
“No!” Roscoe squeaks, and Messina laughs evilly and plants a little kiss on her happy trail.
“See when you get back, pilot,” she says, getting back to her feet, brushing her knees off, and pushing Roscoe’s bottle of water back into her hand. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Roscoe says, and half-involuntarily — scared, horny, bashful — adds, “—Mommy?”
Messina closes her eyes, inhales, clasps her hands in front of her chest, and darkly mutters something — Roscoe thinks the word despoil is in the middle — before heading back in the direction of the crowd with a spring in her step. Roscoe watches her go, dazed, not even coordinated enough to hike her pants back up just yet. The words Special Mess float across her mind, and she giggles a little, breathless, incredulous. Ridiculous: she should have known that Messina could get on her knees and get back up again, immaculate.
And Roscoe still can’t tell anyone.
