There are three mech pilots round a folding table in the repair bay already when Beans walks in. Wooden and the rookie are shooting the shit, and Infodump is endlessly shuffling the thin wooden card-tiles from a Warchest set.
Beans struts in, dressed in patched-up old fatigues and a pair of boots with a shine higher than new on them. Two paces behind her, gaze glued to a smartphone game, is — somebody else, in a stretchy little skirt and fishnets, heels — not high high heels, but a damn sight higher than these decks usually see — and a slouchy off-shoulder billow of a blouse that simultaneously shows off a strip of midriff, and drapes low enough to do more than merely hint that her bra is white lace.
The rookie takes a good look.
"Beans. Loadout," Infodump says, not raising her eyes from her shuffling.
"Howdy," Beans says. Loadout, behind her, gives a little wave, not looking up from her phone.
"Hello," the rookie says, not pretending for an instant she includes Beans at all. "We dealing you in, there, pretty thing?"
"I don't play..." Loadout says, still not looking up — "cards."
Beans sits down at the table. Loadout perches on a crate a little way behind her.
Infodump deals.
Several beers and games in, Wooden waggles her eyebrows, leers, and suggests they make the next one interesting.
"Y'always do this," Beans says agreeably. "Think you're gonna get a glimpse of tits if we play strip Warchest, then you lose a couple hands because you can't play for shit when you're wasted, get worried everyone's gonna get eyes on your strategic objective and try to scuttle off saying you're tired."
"I am a master at Warchest when I'm wasted," Wooden says, scowling.
"Ain't what you'll be singing when your shirt's off." Beans grins. Deals.
"Dang," Beans says lazily. "Guess luck ain't with me on that hand." She pushes her revealed tiles back into a neat pile, then leans back and clicks her tongue twice, like someone calling a dog.
On the crate behind her, Loadout immediately puts her phone down by her side and slowly draws one fishnet-clad knee up to her chest, coyly tilted across the other thigh to draw attention to the fact that it (only kinda) hides anything that might or might not be going on under the skirt as it rides up. When it's all the way up, she rests her chin on the knee, blinks big mascara-and-eyelinered eyes at the table, unbuckles one high heel, and lets it drop to the floor.
It hits the deck, in the silence, like an artillery strike. The rookie's mouth is hanging open a sliver.
"Well, nobody wants to see these tits," Beans says, sly and cheery, adonis-bodied. "Your deal, Wooden."
Wooden's game goes to shit when she's down to undervest and skivvies, and like clockwork, she attempts to weasel out — "I've got patrol tomorrow," "I'm tiiiired," Beans and Infodump chorus mockingly at her until she sulkily says she'll stick around, drink water while she sits a hand out. The rookie, eyes gleaming, starts to display a distinctly cardshark streak; Loadout's other heel hits the deck, then she stands and languidly stretches, the billowy top over her head and fluttering to the floor; Infodump narrowly beats her out on the next hand, and then the rookie, confidently slouching in her undervest, wins off Loadout's skirt. Then her fishnets. She's sitting there in just lace-trimmed white scraps, top and bottom, still looking at her phone but — less convincingly, shivering under leers and comments.
"You're Grain Belt originally, by the accent," the rookie says to Beans, shuffling. "I never knew a Belter to play Warchest back home; where'd you pick it up?"
"Naw, they don't," Beans says, easy and rangy and grinning. "But there's other games use the same pieces; the old boys usedta sit on porches and play something called Ninepins, for pennies or rounds down the local, and back in the kitchens the aunties'd be playing Mam'zelle for toothpicks and gossip. Swear the kitchen games were the most fuckin' cutthroat thing y'ever saw; my aunt Kit won a Perfect Flush the day before Cassidy Janssen got married, and there were nearly shotguns over the pot roast. Cassidy's man cheated on her with a shipping secretary in the train company a couple years later, and I swear she blamed aunt Kit's Perfect Flush for jinxing her."
"Well," the rookie says, "you picked it up pretty good." She quirks her own smile up at the corner. "Y'wanna make it interesting?"
"What, you're bored?" Beans says.
"It ain't boring," the rookie says, looking past her. "But how about you put up your stake, there?"
Infodump looks at the one of them, the other, and sucks her teeth. "I'm gonna drink water and sit and just watch this one with Wooden," she says wryly.
"I gotta ask what you think you're puttin' up," Beans says, without a trace of rancor, smiling. "Also, no offense, think I wanna go best of three for that, not the drop of a single card."
"We'll work something out," the rookie says, holding her eyes. "Don't blame you; best of three it is."
Rookie shuffles; Beans cuts; rookie deals. Loadout puts her phone down next to her and watches the game. Rookie wins the first one, and flashes her a filthy grin. Loadout bites her lip.
"Pretty good yourself," Beans says unconcernedly, and wins the second hand.
"All on the last one," the rookie smirks, looking Loadout over, slow and hot. Loadout's looking a little flushed and fidgety.
"Yep," Beans says.
Partway through, there's a little whimpering noise from over behind Beans, sprawled boneless and fearless in her chair, and the rookie looks over.
Loadout looks real nervous, colour high in her cheeks, lashes a little wet; she has a hand clamped between her thighs but visibly moving just a tiny little. She sneakingly meets the rookie's glance.
The rookie's poker face, and game, goes to shit; Beans takes her to the cleaners.
"Good game," Beans says, and shakes the rookie's hand.
"Yeah," the rookie says, dry-throated. "Next time, maybe," and watches Beans stroll out; Loadout — her heels, but only her heels, back on, rest of her clothes laid neatly across Beans's arm — two paces behind her, phone clutched to her chest, lip bitten and eyes downcast, hips swaying.
"Rookie," Infodump says kindly, "Loadout's a scoutmech pilot. Deep high-risk territory, high ambient chance for having to bail out of a damaged machine — she don't wear anything that might be a snag or degloving risk in an ejection, right?"
"Right," the rookie says, staring at the door where the other two pilots disappeared.
"What I'm saying," Infodump says, "is no wedding ring or collar. Got her vows tattooed."
"I didn't see any tattoos," the rookie says, and licks her lip.
"Yeah, really narrowed down what parts of her you ain't seen," Infodump says dryly. "Think about that, and let me give you some advice: you ain't gonna see it. They're married, kid. They like to show off, once in a blue moon they like to share — if they trust you — but she's called Loadout because she's attached at the hardpoint."
"But they let me bet," the rookie says, verging on plaintive.
"Yeah," Infodump says. "And if you'd won, Beans'd have punched your fucking lights out."
"Aw," the rookie says faintly. "...Dang."
