Being in charge of rounding up the crew after a shore leave sucked. If Devon could choose the part of his job he hated the most, it would be that. A big chunk of it involved running around the spaceport crew lounging area, identifying Hopestar pilots (everyone from the cockpit was called that, despite most of them not being actual pilots) and feeding them enough sobriety pills to make them fit for flying the ship an hour later. Once done, he had to do the same but with stewards (at least he knew them better).

Devon had this appointment today for two major reasons. 1) It was kind of his turn. The turn order was quite fluid, but it was decided long ago there shouldn’t be people completely free of it (unless for medical reasons); and 2) he didn’t have much of a personal attachment to Earth and no plans to visit any local places. For the same reason, he never rounded the crew on Kashi-Sulak, which was just two hops away, and he was really looking forward to three days on the station.

Those of the Hopestar crew, who wanted to visit places outside of Bogota spaceport, were travelling as a group led by Zulu, so Devon didn’t worry about them. She was one of the oldest stewards and had a heightened sense of responsibility, and the whole group showed up at the gate ten minutes before the deadline. He wished he had the talent for organising people this way. 

Now it was five minutes past the deadline and he still had two names missing on the list. He caught one of them (Mamani, mostly on cleaning duty) exiting the bathroom, where they apparently spent the last half an hour emptying their digestive system. Seeing the miserable state they were in, Devon didn’t even bother to scold. He offered pills, watched them pass the gate, and looked down at his interface with a sour expression.

Sharifa Binti Kamal. She was one hundred percent doing this on purpose to mess with him.

He ran another circle through the lounging area, which was much more annoying now, because a SpaceShuttle cruise liner landed and its crew filled half of the free space, and a good number of them spotted Devon’s uniform and joked to each other about him without caring if he could hear them or not.

He could hear them very well.

Sharifa and he were at odds with each other for a couple of months now. It started with a newcomer Shiloh Maru being introduced to the crew and assigned the same shift Devon worked at. Then Sharifa changed shifts to also work with her and carried on to make his life as difficult as possible. Which was really fucking stupid, because it was clear Shiloh had no fucking interest in Sharifa and would never fall for all the flirty tricks she was trying to pull off. Shiloh was smart enough to read through all these fake words and see the truth of mediocrity underneath.

Okay, so maybe Devon was really into Shiloh.

He wasn’t denying it. Everyone with eyes or ears liked Shiloh. She was beautiful and soft-spoken, she could recite poems in three different languages, and knew at least two ancient ritual dances from a culture that used to live in the city she was born in. She could support a conversation on almost any topic no matter with a passenger or a fellow steward. And she had a wonderful shy smile for when Devon tried to awkwardly flirt, which made him lie sleepless at rest periods and stare at the ceiling thinking of her.

But Sharifa really made it her business to insert herself in any conversation between Devon and Shiloh and try to make it about herself. He knew Shiloh was as annoyed as he was, but she was too nice to show it. 

He spotted Sharifa at the end of his hopeless circle, exiting one of the gendered changing rooms. Of course, that’s where she was hiding, knowing full well he would not enjoy looking in there. She wore fresh make-up, and now golden flakes shined in the lines and dots on her forehead. She also braided her hair to the side of her head and fixed the end with a string of beads. This made Devon aware that all this running meant he was sweaty and red in the face and his hair was probably a complete mess. Shiloh would see them return together, and notice what a disaster he was and how perfect Sharifa looked.

Fuck.

Sharifa spotted him across the corridor, looked theatrically at her interface, and mastered the fakest mask of surprise. “Oh, I guess I missed the notification.” She looked quite smug and not guilty at all.

Devon had absolutely no patience for these games. He walked over to her, lips pursed, and hissed. “I know what you’re playing at! If trying to get each other fired is how you want it to go on, you better be fucking ready!”

She rolled her eyes, smugness replaced with annoyance. “No one would fire you over being late, silly head, but it is fun that you cared enough to wind yourself up so much.”

He gritted his teeth. He got fired from many places before for smaller things than this, and despite Hopestar seemingly being a much more lenient employer, he didn’t want to risk it. He loved his job (except for rounding the crew up, as mentioned), and he wasn’t going to lose it over a stupid rivalry.

He wasn’t going to give up either.

“If you can’t make yourself interesting to Shiloh any other way but by making me look ridiculous, perhaps you should fix the issue of being a brainless bore!”

This got her. Sharifa’s eyes went wide then narrow; she leaned forward and down towards him (yes, he also hated that she was almost two heads taller than him) and pointed her finger (wait, did she also paint her nails fresh?) at him. “You little shit, you are the one who is constantly barging your way into our conversations-”

“Heeeeeey, girls!” an unsteady voice sounded from the direction of the lounging area. “Dooon’t fiiiight!”

Devon and Sharifa both turned and glared at the asshole in a SpaceShuttle jacket, now unbuttoned and revealing a sleeveless top with a print of what had to be the latest stupid yet popular show on official channels. 

He absolutely didn’t process their mood and carried on. “You are both so cute! How about you take off these ugly jackets and I’ll buy you a drink?”

“Fuck off,” Devon grumbled.

“Neither of us is a ‘girl’, dickhead. Go jerk off to the sight of your lovely unstamped ID,” Sharifa added and turned to head to the gate.

The asshole was too intoxicated to come up with any kind of response fast enough, so Devon followed Sharifa, then fastened his pace to be the first at the gate, where he removed her name from the list and entered the boarding tunnel.

They were silent through the decontamination and while the air pressure and gravity adjusted in the airlock, then entered the lift pod to the crew deck together. As the pod hummed to life, Sharifa finally spoke. “I don’t know what that moron was on, but nothing about you says you are anything but male.”

Devon blinked and looked up at her, but she was scrolling through messages on her interface. He didn’t expect her to try and comfort him, but then again if choosing between the most annoying members of the Hopestar crew and the rest of the world, he would choose the former too. “You said it yourself, I’m quite little.”

Sharifa huffed and looked down at him. “So what? Zamboni is even shorter than you, and no one would assume that he is ‘a girl’.”

“Yeah, but he has a beard.”

She snorted and looked over her shoulder as she stepped into the corridor. “You could also wear a beard.”

Devon shivered. “Ugh, I’d rather not, thanks.”

In the end, Shiloh didn’t see either of them because she was assigned to be in the greeting team and was already at the main airlock lobby. Sharifa was on a cleaning shift, which meant her nice hairdo and makeup were about to be destroyed, but Devon didn’t feel as smug  about it as he hoped to. He just felt exhausted. 

He returned to the third deck bar, which was almost empty at this transitional time between hops. Only a couple of passengers dropped in, those for whom Earth was not a final destination, and some were already preparing for the subspace jump by repressing their high brain functions as much as possible. He used to be like this, so joining the Hopestar crew was a huge leap. He went in for an interview ready to be denied (it’s not like he had much in terms of qualifications) and promised himself to not be upset about it. And then Seidel and he spent an hour talking about everything, but the actual job, and by the end of it he wanted nothing more than to be a part of this family. 

Seidel saw past his ID, because hers was just as wrong about who she was as his about him. 

The first jump was very stressful. Devon was yet to be assigned a shift and therefore was able to stay in his new cabin and use a jumpseat the way all the passengers are encouraged to. He even tightened all the harnesses and tried to assume the brace position. This didn’t stop his stomach revolting as the ship dove into subspace with a low hum and a jolt. Afterwards,when looking for cleaning tools, the first person he was able to find was Sharifa. Back then she wasn’t as insufferable, but she still smirked and patted him on the shoulder patronisingly: “Ah, congratulations on your initiation into the spacefarers, newbie.”

This time, as the announcement about the take-off sounded through comm, Devon just went to gather the glasses around the bar left by the passengers, all of whom had returned to their cabins. An hour later, at the subspace jump announcement, he sat in the chair behind the counter, turned it towards the bow and leaned back, eyes closed. Two minutes later, having suppressed most of the nausea, he got up and opened the drinks shelf again in preparation for new visitors.