Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away
This year, to save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special
Last Christmas - George Michael
It was the worst day ever.
Ok, there hadn’t been a Mysteron threat and nobody had died, and she hadn’t got sacked or managed to send Colonel White to the Sickbay because she’d thrown coffee down him or something. So technically it could have been worse. But this was definitely in the top ten of rubbish days.
Lieutenant Flaxen drifted towards the Research Library on Cloudbase without any conscious aim in mind. It made sense though, because the Research Library was pretty much the last place on Cloudbase you’d find another person, and she wanted to avoid any further human interaction indefinitely. Taking a seat near the window Lieutenant Flaxen reflected on her actions and the resulting events of the previous evening. The only reasonable conclusion she could draw was that she’d been an absolute idiot.
See? There was a really good reason as to why you weren’t normally allowed to drink alcohol on Cloudbase. She’d only had a little bit at the official Cloudbase Christmas party, but it had been enough to make her think having another drink was a good idea, which led to thinking other things were a good idea. So, of course, she had made a complete fool of herself and in front of the very last person she’d ever want to know her full potential, where being a massive idiot was concerned.
It was completely agonisingly obvious to her now, that Captain Ochre was nice to her just because he was a naturally nice person. A nice person who was also funny, brave, thoughtful, completely gorgeous, and, rumour had it, was amazing in bed.
But that didn’t mean whatever she’d thought it would mean, when she walked right across the dancefloor to Captain Ochre, demanded a dance, to a slow song naturally, and used that as an excuse to back him into the slightly darkened corner by the punchbowl, and….
She folded herself in half, rested her head on the table, and gave a groan of residual shame.
“Flax, there you are.”
She didn’t look up, didn’t need to. She had already committed it all to memory: the strong jaw, brown eyes like something warm and sweet you could drown in, unruly coppery hair that just invited you to run fingers through it, that half-frown of concentration when he read, the way his smile felt like sunshine. There was also that time she’d gone to the Cloudbase pool and happen to see him in nothing but his swimming trunks. That had been nice.
She mumbled something, words to the effect of “leave me alone”… heard a chair scrape back across the floor and someone sit beside her.
“I’m really sorry, Audrey…”
She looked up then, surprised he would use her full first name, but then they were off duty and, of course, there was nobody else in the library.
“It just caught me on the hop, I guess, what you, uh, did last night,” Ochre added. “Not that I’m making excuses. I should definitely have handled it better.”
Flaxen wanted to scream at him to just bloody stop it: stop being there, stop looking like that, and stop being so sweet and sorry. If he wasn’t being lovely then she could write him off as a bastard. That would make it much easier to stop liking him so much that it hurt.
“It’s alright, I just… it’s my fault really, I should have known better.” She sighed, and dared to look up then.
Yup, there he was in his uniform sitting opposite her, being all concerned and thoughtful and trying so hard not to say the wrong thing.
The small, stupid part of her that did not learn (ok, not that small then) thought he was going to reach over and give her a cuddle, so she’d feel better. And she was fairly sure that she would indeed feel better because she knew what it felt like. It was the loveliest thing, being enfolded in those strong arms and knowing, if only for a moment, everything would be ok.
“It’s not your fault,” he insisted. “If I gave you the wrong impression…”
“I gave myself the wrong impression!”
Flax considered herself to be generally comfortably mid-table in most respects. She wasn’t hideous, probably, but, well, she was no Angel Pilot. Or even one of the Angels’ cabin stewards, who were almost as pretty, but definitely not nice or interesting people. But apparently, whether a woman was nice or interesting didn’t matter to the male lieutenants; seemingly you just needed big boobs and fake eyelashes, which were also things Audrey Geffen did not possess.
Ochre was looking at her, curiously. So she realised she was going to need to elaborate, and tried to find the words.
“You’re, well, really fit… and good looking blokes like you don’t fancy girls like me. Don’t argue. I can cite my sources. It was true in college, and obviously is still true, and no doubt will remain so until the day I die alone and leave my money to my sixteen cats.”
He gave the start of a laugh, then stopped, but she didn’t mind. Weirdly, she liked knowing she could still make him laugh.
“That’s not true. Any of it.” He sounded so convinced that she almost believed him. “You’re great, and you deserve to be happy. And I do like… I mean I’m very fond of you… but not, not in the way you were thinking it would be. You’re like uh...”
“Like a kid sister?” she finished for him. Somehow, it hurt just slightly less to say the words yourself rather than to hear them from someone else. With that as a framework suddenly everything else made more sense.
“I guess that’s not what you wanted to hear, huh?” He fidgeted in the chair, ran a hand through his hair. “But then, hell, I make people stinking miserable for years if I love them back, so you’ve dodged a bullet, really.”
He was bad at this, it hadn’t occurred to her that he would be. God, she’d need one of those massive external hard drives Captain Magenta kept on order for her to keep a complete list of the names of everyone (not just women) who fancied Rick Fraser. And, surely, he couldn’t fancy them all back. So, he must have had conversations like this before, and yet...
Flaxen noticed there was a metal cake tin on the table, with a faded tartan print and slightly dented in places. It was the very one she would see carried under his arm on Melody Angel’s and Captain Magenta’s respective birthdays.
“Help yourself.”
He moved it closer to her and tugged off the lid. Flaxen had picked up a cookie and taken a bite before even thinking it through. She was supposed to be on a diet, but then what was the point; obviously he wasn’t going to be eyeing her up in her swimming costume after all, and at that moment she didn’t care about anyone else’s opinion.
“Good, huh?”
She nodded, mouth full. They were just right; crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, and with as much chocolate per bite as was physically possible while it still counted as being an oatmeal cookie. There was something else, soft, chewy, and slightly sweet; raisins. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a chocolate chip and raisin cookie, but it couldn’t have been this nice.
“My mom used to make them, when I was a kid, it was my favourite.” Ochre shrugged, not a great one for talking about the past. “I found the recipe in all her stuff, she kept a notebook of all the ideas she had for her catering company.”
“Why?”
“ Uh, so she could remember them, I guess.”
“No, I mean, why do you have it? And, since when do you know how to bake? And, why would you even bother making biscuits and bringing them to me, especially when I was an absolute tit.”
Ochre smiled.
“Ok, from the top. A. I inherited all my mom’s stuff related to cooking and the business, my brother didn’t want it and he’s dead now anyway. B. Since Mrs Donaghue took pity on me and tried to share her accumulated wisdom. C. you’re not supposed to eat your feelings, but, it’s always made me feel better.”
Flaxen found herself smiling in return, even though she still felt rotten. Here he was, being so open with her, even though she’d… no, it was because she’d dared to be honest and vulnerable. He wasn’t going to be her boyfriend, but he was her friend.
She hoped they were friends.
He took a cookie for himself. “It’s not going to be like this forever, you know, feeling like you do and how much it sucks. It will stop one day.”
Flaxen nodded. She knew you couldn’t die from a broken heart, otherwise Captain Scarlet wouldn’t be the only person with retrometabolism. But the part between how she felt last night, when he’d turned away, and what he was promising, that was going to hurt.
“Can’t promise when, just that it will ... And when it does and you notice there are plenty of good looking people in the world, then you’ll find someone that likes you back.” He smiled at her, it was warming like winter sun.
He smiled at her and it felt like like the sun on a winter’s day: maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed. But he hadn’t finished his pep talk, “And, you’ll start to notice that there are plenty of decent people out there and that one of them feels about you the way you’ve felt about… other people before…” He gave a helpless shrug, having talked himself into a corner.
Amused despite herself, she didn’t question it, at least not out loud. Because she could tell he really believed that. Being in Spectrum was all about second chances, finding something you never expected to. They were both proof of that, in other ways.
“But, if they’re not good enough or ever treat you bad,” Ochre continued, “I’ll kick their ass… because that’s what big brothers do.”
THE END
Lieutenant Flaxen is the always delightful creation of Marion Woods. Thanks also to Marion for beta-reading the story.
This story was originally a scene in a longer unfinished story (that will probably never be finished). On reflection it stands alone; a short simple character developing piece. I didn’t really want it to get lost in a longer narrative.