Chapter Text
“Hey, Luna!” Maya waved to her excitedly, as she walked by.
Surprised, Luna's head perked up with a smile and she stopped. “Hey!”
“The dress is new, isn’t it?”, asked Charlotte. She stood next to Maya, also smiling.
“Yeah, I made it completely myself! Finished it yesterday. Wanted to work on another dress today, but I can’t decide on the design. There are so many options… Oh! You wanna see it? I could use some help, but Max and Carlos are… well. Let’s just say their suggestions are not very helpful.”, she sighed with a crooked smile.
Charlotte laughed softly. “I can imagine.”
“We’d love to!”, Maya added and already turned to the direction of Luna's room. “So, what color are you going for?”
“Let me guess”, said Charlotte as she followed them, “it’s pink?”
“Uh, well, yeah. I love pink! Something wrong with that?”
Maya and Charlotte both broke into laughter at the statement. “We know, Luna, we know!”, Maya laughed and Charlotte gave her a reassuring smile. “Theres nothing wrong with it. It’s absolutely your color!”
With a shy grin Luna's gaze met Charlotte's. But when her eyes wandered to something behind Charlotte, the grin faded quickly. Like a distracted deer she stopped and for a second, she seemed like frozen in time. Only then, she headed for an open door that Charlotte had just passed.
Charlotte and Maya exchanged a confused look. Before they could ask what was bothering her, Luna quietly spoke: “Girls…? That doesn’t look normal.”
Immediately becoming serious, the older women stepped through the door as well and were faced with quite an unexpected sight.
“Xeno?”, Maya asked carefully.
The scientist was more hanging than sitting in a chair, his torso lying on the desk in a weird position. It looked anything but comfortable and like nothing a conscious person would endure voluntarily. When he didn’t respond, Charlotte approached him to get a closer look. His head rested between his arms on top of multiple pieces of paper with ink stains all over them.
“Xeno?”, Charlotte asked again and lightly shook his shoulder. And again, nothing happened.
Anxiously, Luna's gaze went to few liquid-filled beakers not far from his head. “Do you think he accidentally poisoned himself?”, she asked.
With a shake of her head Maya put her hands to her hips. “No. That’s not likely, he’s too clever for such a mistake.”
Observing him, Charlotte took her time to take in every detail of his appearence. The way the ink had smeared over the notes, his relaxed breathing and the peaceful expression on his face. Suddenly, a soft smile tugged at her lips. “I think he is only sleeping. Nothing to worry about. Didn’t Stanley once say he’s a night owl? He was probably up all night in the observatory.”
“Yeah, true! He did say that.”, Maya chuckled quietly, while Luna changed her voice to a gentle whisper. “Oh… and what do we do now?”
“Good question. If he was up all night, I say we shouldn’t wake him up, that would be kinda cruel.” Thinking for a moment, Maya tilted her head. “We could bring him upstairs.”
“We could…”, Charlotte whispered back. “But shouldn’t we get Stanley first?”
“Good call!” Luna nodded quicky.
“Then we do both!” Maya grinned, proud of her perfect idea. “I carry him upstairs, so he gets out of here and into his bed as soon as possible, and you get Stanley!”
While Luna didn’t look so certain about that plan, Charlotte nodded. “Yeah, sounds good, let’s do that.”
Without hesitation, Maya approached the sleeping scientist and gently picked him up into a bridal style carry. Compared to Maya, even someone as tall as Xeno looked almost small in her carry. Charlotte couldn’t help but chuckle quietly at the picture. Then she grabbed a radio from a nearby shelf and began to search for Stanley's frequency. Luckily, she knew Stanley always carried a radio around, to every single place he went. Only that most people didn’t know, that he did that for the only purpose of being available for Xeno at all times. Regardless of the reason, today was perfect proof of the great benefit of that little habit.
“Wait!”, Luna whisper-shouted before Maya could step through the door.
“Huh?”
Without answering, Luna ran to her side and carefully placed her hands under Xeno's head, to support the weight. It had hung loosely to the ground like a lifeless puppet. “He will strain his neck like this! And you nearly slammed him against the door frame.”
“Oh…” Maya gave her a thankful smile and continued her way more carefully, with Luna nervously supporting Xeno's head. They made their way to the stairs in silence, save for Charlotte quietly speaking into the headset, when she reached Stanley.
Speaking of the devil, Stanley was creepily fast and even reached the bottom of the stairs before them. Charlotte could only wonder if he had simply been nearby or had dropped everything to get here as fast as humanly possible. His face gave nothing away, but she thought for a moment she could sense his ribcage moving a tad faster than usual.
He certainly didn’t hesitate to approach Maya and as his gaze fell on Xeno, his face shifted into a soft smile. In the golden eyes danced a sparkle so warm, Charlotte had rarely seen before. “Idiot…”, he mumbled around his cigarette and brushed through Xeno's slightly messy hair. The scientist was still dead to the world, breathing calmly and didn’t have a clue of what was going on around him.
Grinning warmly, Maya held the sleeping form out for Stanley to take. “I think this belongs to you!”, she joked.
The golden eyes were glued to Xeno's face as he let her place him in his own arms. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Luna even shifted Xeno's head to lean comfortably against his shoulder and Stanley let her.
Unfortunately, the moment full of warm smiles was cut short.
“Ehw”, said a new voice from behind.
Every head except Xeno's turned to a soldier with a suspiciously deformed nose. Stanley's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, Luna's eyes widened, Maya tilted her head and Charlotte snorted. “What?”, she asked bluntly. “Is there anything interesting to see here?”
“I –“ The guy grimaced. “Never mind, I just don’t need to see… that.” He glanced at Stanley and Xeno as if deeply disgusted.
“And I thought you may have actually learned something when I broke that nose.”, Charlotte sighed and rolled her eyes. That fucking moron. No wait, moron sounded way to nice for that horrific creature of a man. Cunt. Motherfucking bastard. Yeah, that was better.
Meanwhile, Luna's eyes widened even further. Nervously, she couldn’t help but stare at the deformed nose and quietly mumbled: “Remind me never to upset you…”, while Maya gave an affirmative nod. “Good work on the nose.”
With a slight grin, Charlotte kept her eyes on the dumbass of a soldier, who’s temple twitched. “You seem to have a problem with ‘that’. How come?”
“No, I- I don’t, not really. I just… don’t wanna hang around people like that, is all.”
“Oh? Why not?” She smirked knowingly. “Are you afraid they could act around you, like you act around women?”
Seemingly out of words, the guy frowned. “What? I didn’t say that!” But the tenseness between his shoulders betrayed his words. “It’s just not normal. It’s- it’s against nature.”
Frowning too, Maya put her hands to her hips. “Actually, homosexual relationships can be seen quite often in nature. It’s nothing new, most animals do that.” Back in the day, she even read a theory about what important purpose those relationships had: to offer support. Raising children was a lot of work and keeping them alive wasn’t easy. So the childless individuals offered support for the others and in this, enhancing the groups chances of survival. Similar to how the childfree aunts and uncles in many human families helped parents out to watch the kids or offer them expensive gifts or needed supplies. It actually made quite a lot of sense, from an evolutionary perspective. But of course, this piece of information wasn’t relevant for certain people…
“Oh yeah? I’ve never seen it. They can’t reproduce like that, it’s bullshit. Fucking around with the same gender is just… wrong.” Again, he grimaced in a disgusted manner and shook his head.
“How interesting.”, Maya said calmly and tilted her head. “You know, I’ve been called a slut more than once in the past, for nothing more than admitting to have a sex life despite being single. Adding your logic to theirs, that means women sleeping with men are sluts, and men sleeping with men are disgusting. So sleeping with men in general is the problem? I guess we should all stop doing it then.”
“What the- I- Uh… I didn’t- Would you stop putting words in my mouth!?” As he searched for his next bullshit argument, his hands clenched into fists. “I only meant that… that we still need real, masculine men! To get the real work done and stuff. It’s biology, we’re supposed to be the strong ones. We’re the protectors and we have to act like it. We have to act like real men, not like weak little girls. Can’t all run around with painted faces, playing pretty princess.”
And the moment those words left his mouth all three women had their mouths dropping open. Every one of them was ready to protest, their faces giving away thoughts like ‘Did he just call STANLEY of all people a defenseless princess?’ or ‘How dare he call ME weak!?’ and ‘Who has the broken nose, huh?’.
Surprisingly, it was Luna who spoke up first. “I… have a hard time understanding that train of thoughts of yours.”, she said unexpected calm and tilted her head in confusion. “But anyway, didn’t you know that makeup is for everyone? I mean, aside from the fact that you just called everything resembling female energy a bad thing.” She averted her gaze and sighed. “You really have that hate for women deeply internalized, huh…”
For a second time in this conversation, the guy’s temple twitched. “Hate? I didn’t-“
“What did we even do to you, to justify all that hate? That’s something I never understood, whenever weird men couldn’t accept a no. In one second they called me a beautiful angel and no matter how friendly I declined, the next second I was a horrible bitch. And that’s still the luckiest case. When they only insult you and don’t… do worse.” The last words trailed off quietly. When her eyes came back up to meet his with unusual confidence, they carried the weight of deep resignation. Resignation that shouldn’t be so deep at her young age. Maya set a challenging glare on the soldier and Charlotte laid a comforting hand on Luna's shoulder. They knew exactly what she was talking about.
“Well, it’s not the men’s fault if-“
Before any more trash could come out of the douchebag’s mouth, Stanley cut in for the first time. “Bold of you, to assume I need makeup to be handsome.”, he said in the most unfazed tone. “Can’t everyone be a natural beauty.” Then he grinned slightly. “Jealous?”
“What!? No, I-“
This time he was cut off by a tired groan. “How about you stop giving me a headache? Not that I wouldn’t appreciate your ability to reach your full potential even in the easiest tasks of mental capacity, but none of us has the time, nor the colour pencils to explain the matter any further. So don’t waste your energy with this refreshingly unobtrusive cognitive performance and use your strength for actual muscle-for-brains-work. And while you’re on that, you’ll have plenty of time to think about your attitude, or this beauty of a sniper may wipe you out of existence someday.”
Yawning tiredly, Xeno barely even opened his eyes before adding: “Feminine, masculine, who cares… all just words with varying meaning. The only proven fact on the matter is: No one stands a chance against Stan; however you want to describe him is therefore completely irrelevant. Aside from the fact of course, that our private life is none of your business and not for you to judge.” Carelessly, he turned his face into Stanley's shoulder, apparently done with this conversation.
Stanley, Luna, Maya and Charlotte watched in surprised silence how the soldier looked at Xeno in nothing but sheer confusion before finally stammering a nervous “Uh- Of course, Sir, on it, Sir!”
Impressively fast, he was gone.
The girls stared at each other for a long moment. And when Maya's lips twitched first, they all broke into laughter.
Without another word, Stanley only raised a brow and turned away. As he went up the stairs, he let out an amused snort. “Well, calling me princess is a new one.”
“And yet here I am, still thinking being carried around means I was the princess all along…”, mumbled Xeno half-asleep into the fabric of Stanley's suit.
Stanley smirked.
“You always were and you always will be.”