Chapter Text
The Sulaco always held some sort of ambient noise in its ribcage. It was calming some nights, unsettling on others. Tonight it felt like the ship was moving with you, an internal system mirroring internal organs. Something poetic like that, some thrum of automated energy stitched to your pulse.
Someone had killed the overhead fluorescents in the common room and left only the low strip-lights and a couple of jury-rigged inspection lamps clipped to conduit. The light came out soft and yellow instead of harsh ship-white, honeying the metal into something almost warm and throwing long ribs of shadow across the deck. A definitive collection of butt rock crackled from a battered field speaker in the corner, tape hiss and static chewing at the twang until it sounded like it’d been broadcast through a dust storm. You thought the texture rather suited the dulcet tones of Buckcherry’s ‘Say Fuck It’.
The air in your chosen haunt held the lingering scent of half-devoured cake and the clean chemical bite of the scrubbers, a totally appetizing combo that absolutely did not make your stomach feel any particular way. Bottles and ration packs sprawled over the table like wreckage after a storm. Labels half-peeled, condensation rings bleeding into scuffed metal, foil torn back to expose the pale brick of calories no one would admit to liking. The Sulaco’s bones clicked and settled around you, content as any great machine at idle.
Hudson was in the middle of it all, of course. Birthday boy. Loud, laughing, already halfway drunk.
“I’m just saying!” He announced, words a little fuzzy round the edges. “If I die out there, I want it on record that I died tragically young and incredibly hot —”
“Shut up, Hudson.” Vasquez said without looking up from the deck of cards she was shuffling. “You were old the day you were born.”
The table erupted. Even Ripley smiled, a thin, reluctant curve of her mouth as she nursed her drink. She sat a little apart, shoulders curled in, as if she didn’t quite trust the furniture not to vanish from under her.
You were two seats down from her, shouldered in among the marines with a bottle of something not-quite-legal cooling your fingers, condensation beading under your thumb. Interim lab technician. Temporary assignment. The velcro on your borrowed name tag still rasped when you moved too quickly, the cuffs a hair too long, the boots not yet broken to your gait. The uniform didn’t feel entirely like yours. It was on loan from a better, louder life. You felt if you blinked too hard you’d be back on some clean civilian vessel where birthdays meant sanctioned cookies in the mess ( “Enjoy Responsibly!” in the standard Wey-Yu font printed with icing on each) and a manager’s auto-signed well-wishes.
Instead, you had Hudson doing a slurred impression of Apone while Apone himself smirked into a dented metal cup of whatever Dietrich had liberated from stores and cut with something brown. Drake was halfway through teaching Wierzbowski a game that involved more noise than rules, slapping a fistful of washers and a spent casing onto the tabletop like they were sacred pieces, daring anyone to question the scoring system he was clearly inventing as he went. Laughter spiked and fell, cards snapped like dry leaves, someone’s elbow knocked yours, and you felt the drink start to work its magic.
You took another swallow. It burned, cheap and sharp, but there was a pleasant edge to it now. Your cheeks felt warm. Your thoughts were soft around the edges. The ambient noise of the metal shell you were inside had dropped back, like a cat settling.
“Hey, hey, techie.” Hudson smirked, catching your sleeve with a loose hand. “What’s your official assessment of my birthday so far? On a scale from ‘boring’ to ‘best thing that’s ever happened on this bucket’.”
You tilted the bottle, squinting in mock consideration. “Mmm. I’d say… dangerously close to a court-martial.”
“Ha!” He slapped the table. “Heard that, Sarge?”
“I heard.” Apone said dryly. “And if you puke in my common room, I’ll have your ass scraping it until we hit retirement.”
“Oh, we love it when you talk like that.” Hudson slurred, leaning dramatically across the table. “Don’t we, guys?”
“Jesus.” Vasquez snorted, but there was something like fondness in it.
At some point, somebody got the bright idea to muscle the central table back. Chair legs shrieked against the deck, boots scuffed against each other, a cascade of bottle-necks chimed and then settled. You wound up shoulder-to-shoulder with marines as they cleared a rough conversation-pit style circle. For a minute the common room could’ve been a bar planetside. Laughter rolled and broke, the kind that loosens bolts, and you felt the whole place tilt toward mischief.
“Okay!” Hudson said suddenly, clapping his hands once, the sound too loud in the close space. “Okay, no, listen, we gotta kick this up a notch. You guys are boring me.”
“Uh oh.” Drake dragged a hand down his face. “Here we go.”
Hudson looked around, wild and pleased. His gaze snagged on an empty bottle rolling near your foot, caught by a bump in the deck. You felt the very instant he had the idea.
“Oh hell no.” Vasquez said, already seeing it coming.
“Oh hell yes.” Hudson swooped down, scooped up the bottle in a triumphant flourish, and thumped it onto the cleared patch in the middle of the floor. “Ladies, gentlemen, and science nerds: we are playing spin the bottle.”
There was a current of reaction including some groans, drunk laughter, a little mock outrage.
“You’re not in high school anymore, Hudson.” Dietrich tutted, but she sounded amused.
“Yeah, and? That just means I’m old enough to make my own bad decisions.” He waggled the bottle. “C’mon. It’s my birthday. You gotta indulge the birthday boy.”
Your head was pleasantly light. You watched the bottle’s empty throat catching the low light and thought, dizzy, that it looked like the open mouth of some small, gentle beast. You’d done this once, maybe twice, years ago. On a station where everyone had way too much free time and nobody carried pulse rifles.
“Spin the bottle is kids’ stuff.” Vasquez pursed her lips, leaning back in her chair. “You want something worth watching, we play seven minutes in heaven.”
Someone whistled. Hudson’s eyes got very round.
“Oh, now we’re talking.” He crowed. “You hear that, Sarge? That’s the sound of team-building.”
“What the hell is seven minutes in heaven?” Drake asked.
“You really were raised in a barn.” Vasquez rolled her eyes. She jerked her chin toward the storage closet off the common room. It so happened to be the one you’d visited earlier that day to count inventory. It was unique in that it had one door opening to this room, and another leading out into the short hallway that fed past med-lab and further downship.
“You spin, it lands, you and whoever it picks go in there for seven minutes.” Vasquez explained. “Door shut. What happens inside is between you and the man upstairs.”
Apone groaned theatrically and tipped his head back, as if praying to the ceiling. “You people are gonna shorten my life.”
“Live a little, Sarge!” Hudson smirked wolfishly. “Or at least let me live a little. You’re the one who signed off on the whiskey, man.”
Apone clicked his tongue. “I signed off on nothing. I just didn’t see it. That’s different.”
Ripley rubbed her hand over her face, laughing under her breath. She’d had enough to drink that her cheeks were flushed, her eyes softer. When she caught you looking, she tipped her cup in your direction, a slanted little toast, like you were both in on a private joke: what the hell are we doing, out here, with these lunatics?
Seven minutes in heaven, apparently.
You swallowed another mouthful of your drink. It sat heavy in your stomach, burning. There was a buzzing in your ears now that wasn’t all to do with the ship.
“Okay, okay.” Apone said finally, throwing up a hand. “You clowns keep it PG-13, you hear me? Nobody’s losing any clothing. And if I see so much as one hand out of place, I swear I’ll—”
“Copy that, Sarge!” Hudson was already moving to sit cross-legged on the deck. He set the bottle down before him with great ceremony. “Consent is sexy, people. We can all agree on that, right?”
There was scattered laughter. Someone shouted: “Just spin the damn thing, Hudson.”
The first few rounds were more comedy than anything else. The bottle wobbled and rolled, clinking against the deck, pointing at one marine after another. Drake went in with Vasquez and came out again with their hair mussed and laughing, both denying everything. Hicks got saddled with Hudson and shoved him into the closet by his collar to general applause. When they emerged seven minutes later, Hudson’s hair stuck up in five different directions and he was loudly insisting that nothing had happened, which absolutely nobody believed.
“Door on the far side’s for an easy escape.” Hicks jerked his thumb toward the hallway entrance when he sat back down. “If you see it open while you’re waiting your turn, that means your ass is not worth seven minutes.”
“Rude.” Hudson said. “So rude.”
“You love me.” The corner of Hicks’ mouth curled.
It went on like that. The room got louder, edges blurring. You clapped, you hooted, you hid your face in your hands when the bottle pointed at you and then stuttered past at the last moment.
Your sense of time dissolved. At some point, you realized you were leaning more of your weight on one side than you’d meant to. Your body was pleasantly heavy, your thoughts lagged by half a second behind your tongue.
Then someone spun again. You watched it move, glass flashing in the low light, your vision stuttering in little jumps as the room tilted.
It slowed.
Stuttered.
Stopped. Pointing directly at you.
A chorus went up. “Oohhh —”
You blinked down at it. For a moment your brain refused to connect the dots. Then Hudson whooped, pointing.
“Science! Get in there!”
“Oh, come on.” You started laughing, heat rushing up your throat. “Who even spun it this time…?”
When you looked around, it seemed like everyone had gotten so sloshed they couldn’t recall.
“Fate spun it, babe!” Hudson smirked like he was in on some big secret. “And fate wants you in the closet.”
“Don’t call them babe.” Vasquez said, but she was grinning.
Your pulse trip-hammered. Not entirely from the alcohol. You pushed yourself upright, steadying a hand on the table as the room slid sideways and then re-anchored. The deck had tilted, or you had. Somebody clapped you on the back; somebody else made a show of whistling.
“C’moooon.” Hudson urged. “You’re not gonna punk out on my birthday, are you?”
You looked around, cheeks singing. The marines’ faces wobbled together, a blurry collage of expectation and amusement. Ripley met your gaze across the table, her expression unreadable for a beat — and then she smiled, small and encouraging.
It made something in your chest ease.
“All right, all right.” You wobbled a little on your feet. “I’ll go.”
The storage closet loomed a few steps away, door currently ajar and dark inside. You crossed the distance on careful feet, each bootstep loud in your ear. The air felt suddenly too warm, too thick. Seven minutes, you told yourself. You could survive seven minutes of awkwardness. You’d been through worse on crew evaluations.
You reached the door, put your hand on the metal, and turned back to the room with a sloppy half-bow. Laughter rippled through the crowd.
“Remember!” Apone called. “You break anything in there, you fix it.”
You gave him a loose salute and stepped inside.
The door shut behind you with a soft hiss of air, cutting off most of the noise. It went dim at once. The only illumination came from the thin emergency strip on the floor, low and blue-white, and a narrow band of light at the base of the door. The smell hit you immediately: machine oil, plastics, rusted metal. Boxes stacked along the walls threw squat shadows. The familiar noise of interior fans came through the plating, close and intimate.
You leaned back against a crate, exhaled, tried to slow your pulse. Your head was spinning just enough that every breath felt about a half second behind the last.
Okay. So. You were in. Whoever the bottle chose would follow in a second, or however this game worked now that everyone was too out of it to care.
Unless they chickened out, said a traitorous little voice. Maybe you’d be standing in here alone for seven minutes with nothing but a box of catalogued spare parts as your date.
You snorted softly. The sound bounced back at you in the close space.
On the other side of the door, muffled voices rose and fell. You couldn’t make out the words, just the cadence: laughter, mock outrage, someone chanting something. You imagined them spinning the bottle again for whoever would join you, rules of the game forgotten under the haze of booze.
You let your head rest back against the crate and shut your eyes. The alcohol sloshed slow and warm through your veins. Your skin buzzed.
There was a soft click, metal on metal.
You opened your eyes.
The main door, the one that opened into the common room, was still closed. Its seam glowed faintly. The sound had come from behind you— no, from your right.
From the hallway door.
You turned just as it slid inward, letting in a spear of harsher corridor light. A silhouette filled the threshold for a moment: smallish, narrow, squared shoulders. You had a half-second impression of someone in standard-issue coveralls before the door shut again, cutting off the glare and plunging you back into dimness.
“Took you long enough.” You giggled, drunk courage putting a grin in your voice. Your heart hopped against your ribs like it was trying to escape. You pushed yourself off the crate, grounding yourself on the emergency strip’s pale line.
“Ah—” The figure shifted, a clear, careful voice forming the start of words. “I wasn’t aware—”
You didn’t really hear the rest. Your nerves had wound themselves so tight that the sudden need to move, to do what everyone else had been laughing about for the last half hour, overwhelmed your good sense. You crossed the gap in two slightly staggered steps, reached, and found the front of a jumpsuit under your hands. Warm. Solid.
“Hi there.” You said softly, which wasn’t really what you’d meant to say at all.
Then you kissed them.
It was clumsy at first. Your aim was off in the dark, your nose bumping theirs, teeth nearly clicking. You found the corner of a mouth, corrected, pressed your lips to theirs properly. They were softer than you’d expected, cool compared to your too-warm face.
The figure went absolutely still.
For a heartbeat, you thought they’d push you away. Panic fluttered in your chest, sudden and sharp. But you were already in motion, hands sliding up instinctively to frame their jaw, thumbs finding the hinge of bone, fingers curling behind their neck. You rose on your toes to chase the contact.
They made a small, startled noise low in their throat.
“Wait…” They tried again, words brushing your mouth. “You’re— this may not be—”
“Shh.” You giggled loosely again, not quite forming any particular word. The alcohol smeared your consonants. Your brain felt gloriously, recklessly empty. This was what the game was, right? This was what everyone had been going in here to do. Heat and contact and seven minutes with the volume turned down on the rest of the universe.
Their hands came up — not to shove you away, but to steady you. Careful palms settled at your upper arms, fingers spread, firm enough to brace you without pinching. Their mouth went still under yours, but there was something there in the angle, the give. The way you inhaled against their lower lip when they shifted incrementally, and you leant in closer.
The crate pressed cold against your shoulder blades as you pulled them back. They followed without ever actually crowding you. The metal edge dug into your spine. You didn’t care. Your hands had migrated of their own accord: one in their hair, fingers sliding through strands that felt softer than they looked under the meager lighting; the other fisting loosely in the front of their suit.
They didn’t taste like whiskey or beer. No alcohol on their breath at all. Something clean instead, neutral, like the recirculated air in the lab, like ship-standard soap and the faintest metallic tang. It should have made a small, sober part of you wonder, should have sent bruised neurons firing toward a recognition you weren’t quite making.
Bishop, that same buried part of you suggested slowly. This is —
But the thought dissolved when you adjusted the angle again and the kiss deepened by a fraction, their lower lip catching yours. Heat rolled down your spine. Your pulse climbed up into your throat and stayed there, a hitching, ridiculous thing. A faint sound leaked out of you, surprised and breathless.
Their fingers flexed on your arms as if in response. Even now, even with you hanging onto them, there was nothing rough in the way they touched you. Every point of contact felt… measured. As if they were constantly readjusting to keep pressure in a safe range, to hold you up without bruising.
“This is… highly irregular.” They said quietly between your kisses, voice sounding faintly bewildered and a little hoarse, like they were trying to process something and failing. “You’ve consumed significant alcohol. Your motor functions —”
“I’m fiiine.” You insisted against their mouth, which was a lie, but it was a nice lie. The room swayed pleasantly around you. You shifted closer, closing the last sliver of space between your bodies. The front of their uniform was solid against your chest, unyielding in a way that made you feel startlingly grounded.
Your hand slipped from their front to the unzipped edge of their collar, fingertips brushing skin. It was cool, almost room-temperature, startling against the heat of your own fingers. You felt the fine, unreal smoothness of it, the lack of stubble, the precise slope of an artificial throat.
Bishop, your brain whispered again, a little more insistently. That’s Bishop.
It should have absolutely floored you, the mere thought of it. The Sulaco’s assigned synthetic. Your very direct coworker. More importantly, the one person on ship you’d been thinking very specific thoughts about for months now. All of that, ruined, in one stupid drunken act. You were too gone to realize the implications of this, of course. The ways this might make him think you’re so stupid, immature, disgusting, weird…
“You’re… good at this.” You laughed softly, a foolish and giddy sound, alcohol knocking the filter out of your voice. “Didn’t know… you’d… come to play.”
There was the tiniest pause, as if he were trying to decide which part of that sentence to address first.
“I am attempting to respond appropriately.” He said at last, carefully. His lips brushed yours with each word. “But I believe there has been a… misunderstanding.”
“Mm?” You were already starting to drift. The world had pulled back further, sounds from the common room reduced to distant, oceanic noise through the wall. The closet was your entire universe: dark, close, pulsing in time with your heartbeat.
“I entered to retrieve inventory.” He explained, still in that low, patient tone he used when explaining systems failures. “I was unaware there was a game in progress.”
You should have been mortified. On any other night, that line of data would have knifed through the fog of your brain and planted itself like a flare: wrong person, wrong situation, abort. But the alcohol had melted your embarrassment into something syrupy and slow. The words reached you and then slid away, leaving only his familiar, careful voice and the feel of his hands steady on your arms.
“’S fine…” You slurred thickly. “You’re here now.”
You tried to kiss him again. The motion tipped you slightly off-balance. The room swayed harder, a lazy pendulum of movement that your inner ear didn’t quite track. You felt your knees soften in a slow collapse.
He caught you before you could sag all the way down. His hands tightened fractionally, one moving from your arm to the small of your back with impossible quickness, redistributing your weight across stronger supports. To you, it felt like the deck rising unexpectedly to meet you, a smooth reorientation of gravity.
“Careful.” There was a new edge to his voice now, concern knitting through it. “You’re about to lose postural stability.”
“Already did.” You mumbled against his shoulder, which was suddenly right in front of your face. Your cheek pressed to the stiff fabric of his jumpsuit. The emergency strip’s glow had become a white blur near the floor.
“You need to sit down.”
“M’fine here.” You protested, though you couldn’t quite feel where ‘here’ was. Your fingers were still curled loosely in his collar, but your grip was slackening. Darkness pressed in from the edges of your vision like someone slowly dimming the lights.
He adjusted his hold again, one arm bracing around your back, the other coming up to cradle the base of your skull with almost ridiculous care, as if you were something irreplaceable and fragile.
“I don’t believe you are.” His breath brushed your temple. “You’re experiencing acute alcohol intoxication. Your heart rate is elevated. I need to get you to med-lab.”
You made a noise that might have been agreement and might have been nothing at all. Your body felt far away, a puppet whose strings had been cut. The only real things left were his hands, cool, precise, unwavering… and the faint, antiseptic-clean smell of him, nothing like the sharp tang of whiskey filling the common room outside.
“Bishop?” You tried, not sure if you were speaking aloud or just thinking at him. The name tasted strange and right on your tongue.
“Yes.” He replied immediately, voice very close to your ear now. “I am here.”
That felt important. You clung to it as the dark rolled in, as your eyelids slid shut. The closet tilted one last time, slowly, and then the motion evened out, like a ship easing onto a stable trajectory.
You let go, finally.
The last thing you registered was the sensation of being lifted (effortlessly, like you weighed nothing at all) and the faint vibration of his chest against your cheek as he turned toward the hall door, his voice coming from somewhere above you now, calm and unruffled, addressing someone you couldn’t see.
Then even that blurred, and the Sulaco swallowed the rest.