The hangover was an absolute bitch.

He was sure he had an understanding with his body about intoxicants. Over 15 years of regular use did that to you. And yet, it wasn’t the case today. He skipped breakfast because thinking about food made him sick, and moving his head even a little bit caused the world to tilt as if gravitation malfunctioned. He reached the cockpit by some miracle, positioned himself as straight as he could in the Chief Pilot seat and let the rest of the crew do their jobs while he acted as an observer. If someone screwed up, he would probably not catch it.

He could’ve dropped by a doctor’s office to get painkillers. If he lucked out to find Batt there, she would chew him out thoroughly before providing a blocker, but Paolo had no patience for her moralising today. Plus, judging by his physical state, luck would not be on Paolo’s side, and instead he would find Bhagooli in the office.

And that motherfucker could go bite one. 

Not only would he try to psychoanalyse Paolo, he would pity him, which Paolo hated so much, he couldn’t guarantee not punching the old man in the mouth. And with a splitting headache like this, he had very weak self-control. Punching a doctor would be brought to Nikolai, which would sadden him. Paolo hated Nikolai’s sad face; it was almost the only thing that made him feel truly ashamed of himself.

“Tell me it’s just lighting and you don’t actually look that green.” Ha-neul chuckled in their private comm chat. She was clearly looking at the main board, where all the department Chiefs and the captain were shown, and that was open for viewing to anyone willing. So the whole ship could see his miserable state.

Miguel chimed in a moment later: “Has to be lighting. I don’t think people can have this shade of skin. And I’ve been informed humans can’t interbreed with Gemi.”

“Shut up, both of you.” Paolo mumbled, wishing to have his implants operational again. Those would allow him to speak on comm without opening his mouth. Then again, if he had them online, he could suppress the headache and wouldn’t need to worry about speaking on comm.

They would also give him seizures because of the outdated software, but whatever.

Miguel clearly didn’t want to shut up. “So, last night didn’t go that well?” Being a cargo engineer, they didn’t need to worry about anything before the ship touched the ground. Lucky bastard. But Paolo would have his laugh after he got a shore leave and Miguel didn’t. Though, he would probably spend this leave catching up on sleep.

“Went alright,” Paolo grumbled and was annoyed with himself for the defensiveness in his voice. “If you keep distracting me, we will crash.”

“U-huh.” Ha-neul said evenly. “I can see you being soooo busy.”

Paolo really wanted to flip her an obscene gesture, but everyone else would also see it, including Nikolai. (Which would mean a sad face and yadda-yadda.) But also she would shut up soon enough anyway, when the ship returned to normal space. So he just needed to be patient about it. 

And brace himself for leaving subspace so as to not empty his stomach.

Oddi half turned in her seat towards him. “The coordinates are confirmed and uploaded. Drop prepared.”

“Acknowledged.” Paolo rasped and sent his authorisation. 

“Drop in 3-35.” Thoresson’s voice felt even louder and more annoying than usual.

“Giving control to the Second.” Richard, much quieter and neutral. Though, a bit raspy. Was he sick? They didn’t need another cold epidemic in the cockpit. (They were approaching 3 clean years. It was a miracle nothing spread when Richard joined. Usually, every new pilot brought some kind of bug in.)

“Acknowledged. Drop in 3-25.” Did Thoresson have to shout so loud?! They did this regularly, no one cared about how clear his speech was.

“Subspace Engines under the Second. Authorised.” Koulibaly acted as the head of Engineering today. Hoffman was still there, by her side, but she had been his second for so long, he trusted her enough to almost never correct her.

“Acknowledged. Drop in 2-45.” Shut up, no one cares.

“The general warning has been sent out. Passengers and crew out of the corridors. Authorised.” Paolo hoped his face didn’t change when Seidel spoke on comm. He still wasn’t sure about how he felt about yesterday. Maybe it was the hangover, but he couldn’t switch his brain into ‘I don’t care anymore’ mode. He would have to eventually face her again and figure out some kind of new working relationship.

“Acknowledged. Drop in 1-05.” Paolo had a fight reflex which he suppressed at the last moment. Wow, he needed to focus on something else.

“Drop authorised.” Nikolai sounded horrible, as if someone was trying to smother him. He has been seriously sick for almost a week now, and they cancelled two operational meetings already. Hoffman was the only one who stayed by his side. Paolo wished he could punch the bacteria or a virus or whatever was causing the captain so much trouble with breathing. Unfortunately, that was not how medicine worked.

“Drop in four.” Thoresson didn’t need to count out loud, everyone saw the numbers on their interfaces.

“Three.” For fuck’s sake, quieter.

“Two.” Shut up!

“One.” Paolo started looking for a thing to use as a projectile without realising it.

And then the subspace engines powered down and they returned to normal space.

“Coordinates confirmed. Values within error margins.” Oyun took over as the main navigator.

Being back in normal space cleared Paolo’s mind. The world was not tilting anymore and the pain was much more bearable. He straightened and swiped away two warnings on his interface.

“Giving control to the Third.” Thoresson was no longer insufferable. This also marked the point where he would shut up.

Despite that, the cockpit got much noisier. Alparov was contacting the Inner Ring Approach Control and confirming they didn’t miss their approved arrival time. (It didn’t matter how good human technologies got, subspace was still a big black box. Most of the time, it followed known patterns, which could be adjusted to. But then something unexpected would happen, and a ship would appear a day or two later (or earlier) than expected.) Ng was next to him, contacting the Bogota spaceport. She was the newest addition to the cockpit crew, having been a substitute for when Alparov went on an extended leave. When he returned, no one asked Ng to leave, of course, and now the third shift had their own comms operator.

This was the main reason why they had so many crew members: no one asked them to leave.

Ha-neul muted herself on their private channel, but Paolo could hear an echo of her voice on Koulibaly’s comm. Miguel was still here and free, unfortunately. 

“So I was thinking.” They started, and Paolo had to suppress an eyeroll. “There is an easy explanation for why you are such a disaster in relationships.”

Paolo decided to ignore this. He wasn’t a disaster in relationships because he didn’t try to build any relationships. It wasn’t his fault that people kept expecting that from him. A couple of people on the ship understood him: they could contact each other and ask if they were up for sex, not feel offended on a refusal, and have a quick one without any unnecessary pillow talk. They didn’t try to dig in his soul or ‘better’ him or any other stuff that led to fights. Ha-neul used to be one of them until she finally admitted that identifying as bisexual was her trying to hold onto a myth of heterosexuality, and she actually was desperately and undeniably gay.

“I turned the speech-to-text recording on, because I need to hear it!” Ha-neul typed in chat.

“See? You better be sure of what you're gonna say, Miguel. Because tomorrow it will end up on all the public crew boards.” Paolo grumbled, trying to move his lips as little as possible.

Miguel giggled in a way that always meant they expected Paolo to get angry. So that’s what he did.

“The allotted corridor reached. Following the active vector.” Today, Richard acted as the main pilot on approach. The three of them took turns doing that, but Richard was the lead for three landings now. Partially, it was to get experience; if either Thoresson or Paolo wanted to take a proper leave, the other two would need to work harder. The other reason was that Richard was hoping to get a qualification upgrade.

He was the most qualified pilot in the cockpit. Neither Thoresson, nor Paolo had a chance to graduate from a flight academy, be it civilian or military; they both got kicked out and stamped due to snitches. On the other hand, Richard had a diploma and an impressive stack of licences, which allowed Hopestar to take faster and more dangerous routes (only the first hop was a disaster). But, technically, he wasn’t qualified to fly ships as large as Hopestar. Practising departures and approaches would allow him to file these hours as training. He would not receive an actual SOI diploma, but it would be marked in Hopestar logs, and could be used on mixed colonies or in Gemi space as a viable document.

“Your main problem is that you are constantly looking for a comfort lover.” Miguel started in a fake serious tone.

Paolo’s right eye twitched. “The fuck are you talking about, isn’t everyone doing that?”

“Yes, but most of the people are happy to compromise. And you don’t. You think you know everything, and everyone should adjust to accommodate you.”

“I am going to feed your interface to you.”

“But then you find this accommodating person and it turns out they are a boring log that you have no interest in.”

Paolo tried to keep the fury out of his expression. He stared at the back of Richard’s chair and followed the lines of the Hopestar logo with his eyes. Miguel was just trying to get under his skin, because they were not next to each other and they were not in danger of having their teeth kicked out.

“What you really need,” they continued, “is someone who will subdue you.”

“Fuck. Off.”

“I am serious! Someone, who can tell you to cut off your shit. Who can call you out and put you in your place. Properly.” 

He started counting the number of rows Richard’s braid had just to ignore the sudden hum of anger taking over his brain.

“And then you’ll be able to submit to such a person because what you really want is to be a good boy. But everyone expects you to be an asshole.”

Twelve. There were twelve rows on the braid.

Suddenly, it wasn’t in his line of sight anymore. Richard turned around, the familiar frown on his face; the expression that said ‘everything was going fine but I just remembered we hate each other’. The exasperation, the disappointment, the annoyance. “Sir. Your authorization.” 

Paolo blinked and straightened in his seat and looked to the interface. Fuck. Miguel managed to completely distract him. “Authorised.” He muttered, unsure what exactly he was authorising but trusting that the rest of the cockpit crew would not allow anything contentious to go through.

Richard sighed and turned back to his station. A shiver ran up Paolo’s thigh at this sigh. Not only was Richard the sole person of a lower rank than him who ever dared to speak out against the way Paolo treated him, he also regularly questioned the Chief Pilot’s judgements on technical matters. Or was passive aggressive mirroring the way Paolo was passive aggressive at others.

And Paolo was enjoying this. It added thrill to the boring routine of living on a space liner. 

“You know I am right.”

“Shut up, Miguel.” Paolo hissed and disconnected from the channel.

He needed to think in silence.