Starship pilot who, unfortunately, had to do it to them.
"Everyone knows sex pollen's not fucking real," Yvrette snarls. "It's a stupid porn meme!"
""Look, I don't know what to tell you," Jenny says reasonably. "I can show you the medicomp readout? It doesn't call it sex pollen, but the description—"
"Why the fuck," Yvrette says, "am I still listed as her emergency contact."
"Well, I don't fucking know, do I?" Jenny crosses her arms. "Look, I'm supposed to handle this professionally, you know? Doctor-patient, and all that? But I can tell you she's not any happier than you. She's spent an hour trying to persuade me to seal her in emergency medical stasis until we're back somewhere with a hosital."
"Oh, for fuck's—" Yvrette bites it off, closes her eyes. The stasis cans are a corporate con; they start running up your medical bill from the second you pop them open, and Mercedes won't ever recover from running up a week-long stasis invoice, followed by corporate med care. And complaining about Merc trying to opt for that makes her a massive fucking hypocrite; either she's willing to lend a hand — so to speak — to her ex's treatment on board, for no cost except to everyone's dignity, or she has to be willing to stand back and watch Mercedes ruin herself.
The thing with the pink-haired twins on New Io isn't worth that, no matter how bitterly it hurt.
"Show me," she says, tone sizzling with controlled annoyance, "what the medicomp says."
The medicomp does not call it "sex pollen". The medicomp suggests at least three treatments, all of which are unavailable or ruinously expensive to a freelance shipping crew, before circumspectly mentioning anecdotal treatment via. Well.
"Like. What dosage are we talking? Do I have to get her off once, or—"
"I am qualified to run sickbay," Jenny says pointedly, "on the basis of an online multi-choice computer training module on operating the medicomp. What fucking orifice do you imagine I'm hiding a medical degree in?"
Yvrette closes the cabin door firmly, and leans back against it.
"Hi," she says.
Mercedes, shaking and draped in a blanket, sniffles loudly. "I told Jenny I'd go in a can," she says, not looking at her.
"Bébé," Yvrette says, and tries to shrug the tension out of her shoulders. "You cheated on me. I would push you in an ice-cold swimming pool in a second, if it was funny. Medical bankruptcy is not funny." She swallows. "Besides. We've done this before, yes? And it was good. We're good at it."
"Yeah," Mercedes says, and swipes the back of her hand over her forehead. Her hair is sticking to her, and her eyes are bright. "But we were — I was actually your bébé. And it wasn't medicinal."
"If it helps," Yvrette says, "sometimes when we go to bars as a crew, I still turn down drinks from pretty girls by saying I'm there with you."
"That doesn't help at all," Mercedes says huskily, and slumps over sideways with a groan. "That really doesn't help at all—"
"Well, maybe this is revenge. Remind you what you squandered." Yvrette reaches up slowly, pulls the ribbon out of her hair, and shakes it loose. Meets Mercedes' riveted gaze. "Would that help?"
The noise Mercedes makes suggests not.
"You can go in a can if you feel you have to," Yvrette says softly. "But you don't have to have to, bébé."
"You don't have to," Mercedes says, half of it lost by shoving her face into the pillow.
"Well, okay, nobody has to anything."
Mercedes' shoulders shake, and she turns her face back into view, breathlessly cackling. "Oh, I'm pretty sure I have to do something," she says. "I don't — I don't want to be an obligation."
"I could have said, 'Yes, Jenny, do what the patient asked you for and put her in a can already,'" Yvrette says, kicks off the door, and takes a long step that halves the distance between them. She takes her hand out of her pocket, and tosses something onto the bunk, right in front of Mercedes' eyes.
Mercedes exhales in a long, rattling convulsion, looking at the brand-new dispenser bulb of lube.
"Yes or no, bébé," Yvrette croons.
