It's a womans job

The next few days are uneventful. You get up, make your “Pony Express happy meal,” as Daisuke had called it once, and continue with your rounds. To be honest, the meals provided were vile, but you always had a special way of making them taste a little better. There were no added ingredients, just rearranging the cooking order or adding less water than what the packaging said. It’s not a big difference, but it makes it a little easier to get the food down.

Once your “eggs” and toast are done you make your way to the dining table. Sitting across from Anya you shoot her a small smile before sitting down and digging in. She’s still as reserved as before and you really thought you'd had a breaking point at the last game night. No matter what your mama used to say some things just need a little more work or time. Taking a big swallow you direct your attention back to Anya.

“Sooo Anya you got any big plans today?” She looks away from her oatmeal with a perplexed look before clearing her throat.

“Y/N your psyche eval is today, did you forget?” Trying not to confirm her suspicion you give her a tight-lipped smile that may seem a little forced.

“Noooo of course not. I was just… curious to see if you maybe had anything else going on.” You totally forgot. If your body language and hesitation were anything to go by, but she didn’t say anything if she caught on.

“Oh well, I have the other's evals but other than that I’m free. Why do you ask?” Her voice has a light and airy sense to it as if she’s talking in a hushed tone.

“No reason! Well, actually I’ll be stopping by later to take some stock on any supplies that may have been used and refill them. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be interrupting your work.” Now this gets a little reaction out of her. Not huge but more than what you’ve gotten for far. She tilts her head to the side and places a hand underneath her chin.

“Take stock? I’m confused we’ve never done that before on any of our other routes?” You swallow another chunk of your eggs before explaining.

“Yeah it’s a new policy that’s being enforced. On my last route we had a couple issues with the drugs being misused and our captain had overdosed. With the limited stock now in medical I’ll have to refill it every week or so.” With this news her eyebrows shoot up a tad and her mouth slightly opens.

“Oh wow, I had no idea. I’m sorry you had to go through that.” Her face now looks a little too sad for your liking, fuck and you were just trying to make conversation.

“It’s ok really, I was able to make a U-turn back to earth with no further issues besides a pay-dock for not completing the delivery.” She goes in for another bite of her oatmeal before responding. The others still seem to be struggling in the kitchen on making their food.

“That sounds like a really stressful situation, I didn’t know you were co-captain on your last route Y/N.” With that Curly and Jimmy finally make an appearance. You notice Anya visibly shrink at the sight of them but choose to ignore it.

“Y/N wasn’t co-captain? She’s always been a coder/ mechanic, where’d you get that idea Anya?” Curly chimes in to the conversation sitting next to her while Jimmy takes a seat by you.

“Really? But you said you flew the ship?” Her full attention is back on you with her voice sounding a little quieter than before, it makes you feel a bit flushed by how her eyes are solely focused on you.

“I uhh did, but yeah, I wasn’t co-captain, just a coder with half an idea how to fly the thing.” You shrug your shoulders at her question, not wanting to think about the stress that trip gave you.

“She’s just lucky she didn’t crash that test dummy of a ship,” Jimmy says with an indifferent tone mostly just focused on whatever sludge he’s eating. But he’s right, not long after that ship was labeled too dangerous for space travel and was quickly scrapped.

“But wait, what about the actual co-captain?” Anya speaks up again, her mouth now full of her remaining oatmeal, as her eyebrows pinch up in confusion. She looks so cute, with her cheeks full of food and those droopy eyes.

“Ah well, it wasn’t as long as a trip as we’re on now and lord only knows how Pony Express loves to cut corners so they didn’t assign us one.” Anya’s eyes look away from you and down to her empty bowl.

“Still that’s pretty impressive, especially if you had no training.” You raise a hand to your face and let out a slight chuckle.

“Awww shucks now you’re just stroking my ego.” Suddenly a loud bang occurs down the hall followed by a “gawd damnit” that turns everyone's heads.

“Ah, I better go check on that. See you guys around.” You quickly get up, discard your trash, and make your way over to where the bang came from.

It doesn’t take long to find or see where the issue is. Swansea, in half his glory, is lying down with his upper half wedged in a vent while Daisuke leers over him with a worried expression.

“Hey guys, I heard a loud noise, What’s going on?” You stop right in front of Daisuke now also standing over Swansea. The older man lets out a huge huff before inching his way out of the vent.

“There’s some fried wires way back in this vent and I can’t get far enough in it to reach 'em. There’s also no way I’m letting this dingbat near them either.” He jutts a thumb in Daisuke’s direction who then avoids any and all eye contact.

“You think you could maybe squeeze in there and fix it Y/N? I think you’re probably the only person on this ship capable.” You follow Swansea’s frame as he begins to stand up off the ground. Ducking down you peer into said vent.

“Yeah I can shimmy in there, is it urgent or do you think I’ll be able to do it later? I got a couple of things I got to do today.” Straightening your back you look back to Swansea.

“It can be a later issue. Just needs to get done at some point.” With that he walks off waving Daisuke to follow him as they head in the direction of Utility. You give them a small wave before heading to the control room.

Curly said there was a small bug in the navigation system that he wanted you to look at. Upon entering you see there’s still no one in there. Walking up to the control panel you knell down near its center and start fiddling with a panel underneath trying to get closer to a circuit board, after a bit of struggle it finally pops off with a small clink noise. Discarding it to the side you finally get to work on what could be the issue. Curly described it as “not being a big deal”, something with the autopilot changing course randomly throughout the day.

Which in your opinion seems like a pretty big fucking deal. I mean we can’t complete the delivery if we’re not going in the right direction. After tweaking a few bugs and messing around with the coding a bit everything seemed to be in order. Right as you were about to put the board away Jimmy had walked in. Turning your head towards him you shoot him a small smile.

“Hey Jimmy, don’t mind me I’m just finishing up here.” He let out a small eh sound before walking over to his co-pilot seat.

“Actually Jimmy, if you don’t mind, I’d like to run a diagnostic. Could you maybe pull up the autopilot? I just want to make sure everything is running how it should.” With slumped shoulders, he redirects his saunter to you.

“Yeah whatever.” Leaning over the board he presses a few buttons before the screen changes to a map. Typing a couple things on your keyboard you get the verification that everythings functioning properly.

“It looks like we’re on course.” His voice sounds gruff and disinterested like he’d rather be doing anything else but talk to you right now.

“Well ok, looks like my job is done.” Crouching back down you reattach the panel before making your way to the door.

“See ya around Jimmy.”