Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-starship-pilot — Starship pilot who’s between ships at the moment
“Whatcha doin’, Toasty?”
“Oh, hey,” Toasty says, hastily taking her boots off the pilot’s console and flashing a bashful smile at Mission Specialist Morgan. “Nothin’, nothin’. Clear black skies from here to sensor horizon, autopilot’s movin’ her slick like a skink in Astroglide. I’m just a regulation ass in a seat unless an alarm goes.”
“Yeah, I know,” Morgan says with an amused grin. “Not my first rodeo, hotshot. We’re on an autopilot leg from A to B, boring as hell — so I’m wondering, right: what are you doin’. Because pilots are always doin’ something for fun.”
“Oh, well, hey,” Toasty says, blushing a little and scrunching down in her chair. “No, of course, didn’t mean to make out like you’re, y’know, green or nothin’. Mostly I watch TV up here, you know?”
“Whatcha watchin’?”
“Well I was watchin’ this historical M-drama — I don’t speak much Martian past y’know où est l’oubliette? phrasebook shit, but I don’t mind the subtitles? But then it got six seasons deep and they, y’know, the showrunners torpedoed it by crowbarring in comphet love interests for everyone with chemistry, and I watched like the first five eps of that new mindjacking procedural but I dunno, it doesn’t grab me, I gotta have some....” She makes little grabby hands. “Interpersonal, you know? Some of that tension. Some of the will they won’t they c’mon gimme. Some pining. You know?”
“Toasty,” Morgan says, smile growing wider and wider as the pilot rambles. “Are you writin’ fanfic up here?”
“Uh,” Toasty says, looking all wide-eyed and caught. “…No?”
“Toasty,” Morgan says, smiling even wider, “are you all writin’ smutty fanfic all up on the bridge?”
Toasty covers her red cheeks with her hands, as if she can hide the evidence. “No?”
“No?” Morgan says, looking hugely amused.
“Uh-uh,” Toasty says.
”…Are you readin’ smutty fanfic, Toasty?” Morgan says, lowering her voice a little, arching a brow.
“I plead the, uh, Geneva Convention?” Toasty says weakly. “You can’t make me answer that.”
Morgan chuckles in a way dangerous to Toasty’s fluttering heart. “Well, lemme know if you find something worth watchin’,” she says, and winks. “Everybody needs a good shipping buddy, right?”
