#i remember reading up on the nausicaans and like

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Birthday prompt #6

Read on Ao3 Birthday prompts masterlist

@phenixy-dunnhart​

[Sinon, j'adore l'amitié juste excellent entre Rios et Raffi, si tu veux une variation (Cris qui se sacrifie pour protéger Raffi) -> Cris getting hurt protecting Raffi] 

Some time after leaving Coppelius to gallivant around the cosmos with their motley crew, Raffi collapsed in the ops seat next to Seven and Cris and loudly announced that they had to go out for drinks, and not replicated ones. They had to find a suitably shady Space Station, go out, find a bar, and get absolutely smashed.

“We’re tired, we have time on our hands, and your replicators can’t get Romulan ale right for some reason,” she told Cris as an explanation.

(It was true, he’d messed that up the one time he had drunkenly tried to disable the Hospitality Hologram’s ability to talk.)

The dark circles under her eyes alone would have convinced him anyway. The last week had been tiring. They had spent it avoiding uncharted asteroid belts that really had no business being so large (seriously, what the hell), fixing navigation issues that Enoch swore had nothing to do with the corrupted 23rd century holos he’d helped Soji illegally download for Elnor, and chasing around the four neutered tribble-rabbit hybrids the kids had smuggled aboard.

“Why just the three of us?” Seven asked with a raised eyebrow, legs propped up on the console and disinclined to move, even for drinks.

Raffi snorted.

“Well I wasn’t going to invite JL, obviously.”

That got Seven and Cris to roll their eyes in concert. Yeah, obviously. Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, retired, was too posh and too old to have any concept of fun – or, more specifically, to be able to understand the appeal of marinating your liver in real alcohol and crawl your way back to your quarters to pass out for a day straight.

“But what about Agnes and the kids?” Cris inquired, gracelessly sprawled on the Captain’s seat with a cigar in one hand and a book in another, feeling just as lazy as Seven.

“I asked, she offered to babysit,” Raffi replied. “I don’t want to be responsible for Elnor and Soji’s first hangover.”

“Not to mention that we’d have to keep an eye out for them,” Seven agreed with a nod. “Fair enough. Let’s go to DS 11.”

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Whoever had deemed synthehol an adequate substitute to good old ethanol was a complete fool with appalling taste. That was Raffi’s professional opinion, and she told Cris and Seven just that as she finished her third glass of that vibrant blue liquor that made green sparks when you shook it.

(What was it again? A Bajoran jungle beer?)

Cris snorted in his own glass, full of plain Earth liquor. Seven smirked as she gulped her cocktail down, an unholy mix that was part Klingon mead, part Romulan ale and part cranberry juice. The stuff of nightmares, honestly.

“I get drunk faster on synthehol,” Seven commented idly. “Don’t produce enough of the enzyme that breaks it down into smaller molecules. Hate the taste, though.”

“Yeah, because taste is clearly of capital importance to you,” Cris snorted again. “What’s in your glass right now? That’s toxic waste, that’s not a beverage.”

“Pssht,” she slurred. “First time I got drunk, it was after one flute of champagne. Forgive me for having learned to handle my drink.”

Raffi hazily smiled at her and got herself another drink, letting her head fall on Cris’ shoulder as she leaned against him for balance. She didn’t think she could sit up straight on her own anymore. Seven studied her intently, blinking in surprise when Cris showed no sign of discomfort and even shifted his posture so she’d be more comfortable. Noticing Seven’s stare, he gave her a wry look but made no complaint about his demotion to human pillow.

Seven was getting a bit intoxicated, so she watched them for a few more seconds and returned to her drink.

“You guys are cute,” she chuckled.

“Hmm,” Raffi mumbled in turn. “Cris is very sweet. Very very sweet. He’s the best.”

Rios was silently laughing, still nursing his aguardiente. “She gets sentimental,” he mouthed without making any actual sound, a smile in his normally dark eyes. Seven smiled too, because she was getting quite intoxicated. And also, they were very cute.

“Hey, how’d you two meet?”

The question had been on her mind for a while now, but aboard la Sirena, you didn’t ask about anyone’s past. They volunteered finite amounts of information, and you had to be content with that. But Cristóbal and Raffi had always felt like kindred spirits, despite knowing them for such a short time, far more than any of the others. Picard was an xB like her, sure, and he was also a damn idealist with a Messiah complex who understood very little about her. Soji had trouble with her humanity, yes, but she was also a kid and a synth, and she had siblings, and she was ultimately nothing like Seven. Agnes was tiny and mousy and probably no good in a fistfight, with just enough teeth to not get eaten, and eyes full of stars and a bleeding heart that hadn’t learned to put on a shell. Elnor was young and innocent and very dangerous, reminding her of the ‘Annika of old,’ someone long dead and buried.

But Raffi and Rios…

They were older, they were more jaded, they were disillusioned with a fleet, a Federation and a galaxy that had completely screwed them over – and they coped with it by helping, by drinking like idiots and smoking nasty stuff, and helping some more. They were both broken and aware of it, not like the shiny kids, and they never offered empty words of comfort or grand and hollow speeches about hope and love.

(And they were badass.)

(Like her.)

(Seven was getting very intoxicated.)

So she watched Raffi drunkenly lean on Rios and she asked, because while their friendship seemed self-evident, she wanted to know how they’d found each other. How it was that they each made the other a better person instead of dragging each other down. It tugged at her own soul, brought about some memories of Icheb, and Voyager, and of the Rangers before Bjayzl.

It made her smile.

Rios and Raffi exchanged puzzled glances. They were both too drunk to delve into her reasons for asking the question, and Raffi just pursed her lips, assuming that it came from finding their interactions cute.

“Don’t think I remember,” she told Seven blearily, still nestled against Cris. “It was a while ago. S- six? Seven? Six or seven years?”

“Eight,” Cris corrected. “I don’t really remember either. We must have met in a bar.”

Seven frowned, dimly disappointed. The feeling was too fuzzy to dwell on, but she still sniffed sadly.

“You don’t remember?” She asked mournfully. “I’d remember meeting my best friend.”

“We don’t,” Cris said, carefully shrugging the one shoulder that wasn’t supporting half of Raffi’s weight. “She hired me for a job or two, I think. Then we were mostly drinking buddies. It wasn’t spectacular or anything.”

“But something must have happened,” Seven pressed.

People didn’t just casually adopt each other. (Didn’t they? She wasn’t sure. She’d kind of casually adopted them, when she thought about it. Were giant galactic conspiracies, reclaimed broken Borg cubes and synthetic apocalypses casual? Seven was completely intoxicated.)

“Oh yeah,” Raffi mumbled. “Saved my life one time.”

“We were already friends though,” Cris elaborated, adding to Seven’s ever growing list of questions. “Got upgraded to honey and babe after that.”

“An’ you called me hermana,” Raffi sighed contently.

Seven looked back and forth between them.

“Okay, you have to tell me that story.”

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“Raf,” Cris complained as she ordered her eighth drink of the night, “slow down on the drinks. You said you wouldn’t need to spend the night on my ship.”

“Piss off,” Raffi grumbled. “Don’t need your stupid ship. Don’t need your stupid hovering.”

Cris, because he was wise, never argued with Raffi. He didn’t try this time either. Muttering Spanish profanities under his breath, he got up and paced a bit, before throwing a credit chip at the bartender.

“If she spends it all, the rest is on her,” he told the Andorian.

The guy gave a noncommittal grunt, and Cris made his way to the exit. He was two steps from the door when he head a crash, the sound of a glass being smashed to the ground. He whirled around out of instinct, his hand going for his phaser. His eyes widened as he realized where the sound had come from.

Raffi was staring down at a Nausicaan twice her size (how?), the guy who’d been sprawled on of one of the corner sofas with his buddies up until a few moments ago. She was snapping at him – about what, Cris didn’t know, didn’t care – and the man looked ready to turn her into Raffi juice.

Cris ran to them without a second’s hesitation, heart seizing painfully as frozen sludge trudged through his veins instead of blood. There were ice spikes in his throat too.

“Hey,” he yelled, getting the Nausicaan’s attention, but not Raf’s, “hey! What’s going on here?”

“Get lost,” the man growled.

“No no no,” Cris refused, words tumbling out without him even knowing whether he was speaking Standard or Spanish. “Not doing that.”

“She you friend?” The Nausicaan asked as two of his own buddies slowly got up and walked to them, ready for a fight.

Raffi finally registered that Cris had come back and blinked in surprise.

“Yeah,” Cris gritted out, looking straight into the man’s eyes. “Yeah, she’s my friend. What’s the problem?”

“She needs to learn some manners.”

“Old news,” Cris muttered under his breath, but his gaze hardened and his hand went for his phaser again. “It’s fine, we’re leaving.”

“No, you’re not,” the second Nausicaan snorted, and the third one crossed his arms and smiled with that messed-up mouth of his.

“Your friend here should apologize to ours,” he leered. “And considering how rude she was, it’d better be a nice apology.”

“I’m not kissing his freak face,” Raffi spluttered. “I already told him!”

Cris would have facepalmed, except there really wasn’t time. Grabbing Raffi by the arm, he threw her behind him and pointed his phaser at the first Nausicaan.

“It’s not on stun,” he warned.

The man snorted derisively.

“I don’t much care,” he said, tapping a finger to his thick skin and metal plated clothing. And then he cracked his knuckles. “If you want to leave, you’ll have to make me allow it.”

Cris considered the mountain of muscles, the two goons behind it and the drunk Raffi behind him.

“Yeah, fuck that,” he muttered.

Whipping around, he snatched Raffi, threw her bony frame on his shoulder despite her vehement protests, and dashed for the exit. The Nausicaans were slower to react, but Cris’ superior speed wasn’t much of an advantage in a crowded bar where nobody cared enough to pay attention to the fight or help in any way. They had almost caught up with his by the time he reached the entrance.

So naturally, Cris did the only reasonable thing he could think of. He tossed Raffi out of the bar – the bar that was shielded against transporters for security reasons, like most of the buildings in the planet’s capital city – and barked an order into his communicator for Ian. The holo had been online dealing with an issue in the antimatter ignition chamber. As luck would have it, he hadn’t powered off yet, and Cris was gratified to see Raffi dissolve away.

And then he was pulled back and forced to turned around, and he was met with three very angry Nausicaans and the naked blades of their sword-sized daggers.

“Mierda,” Cris sighed.

“Shouldn’t have done that,” one of the men growled, and Cris had no idea if he was the first, the second or the third Nausicaan, because they all looked so damn alike. “You’re toast.”

Two of them had his arm in a duranium grip, making any escape attempt impossible.

“I told you, she’s my friend,” he said with defiant glare. “Go ahead.”

He didn’t care. They could drag it out, make it painful, make it frightening, but at the end of the day death was just the one comfort he’d been desperately awaiting for over a year now. He wouldn’t dream anymore if they pummeled him to death, and that was quite a reward for saving the life of his only friend.

(Maybe she’s miss him though. He didn’t think so. He hoped not. Raffi was too messed up on her own to add him to it.)

(Would she care? Please, let her not care.)

(He’d cared.)

(He’d cared that he had P— that he had somebody’s death on his head.)

(Please let Raffi not care.)

(She would care.)

Mierda, I can’t die.

The first kick slammed the air out of his lungs, snapping two of his ribs like twigs under a standard issue boot. It felt like he’d blacked out, but he couldn’t have – he hadn’t seen any bloody bulkheads.

The second kick caught him in the stomach and made him retch.

The third kick never came, because the transporter beam got him first. It took just long enough spiriting him away for one of the Nausicaan to throw one of his daggers though, leaving a bloody slash across Cris’ shoulder.

Cris materialized on la Sirena’s transporter pad, hurt and very confused, and was greeted by Raffi’s panicked face.

“Cris!” She yelped, falling to her knees next to him. “Are you alright?”

He groaned and tried to sit up, but his ribs wouldn’t allow so much moving around.

“Activate EMH,” he sighed.

It really fucking hurt.

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“You didn’t say when you called her hermana,” Seven pointed out as Cris finished his slightly slurred tale. “Or when she called you honey.”

Raffi was half-asleep by that point, but she still somehow managed to retain enough coherence to mumble an answer. Cris heard it, and smiled at Seven.

“It was after. She was so upset over the whole thing that we both slept in her quarters. She got very fussy. Didn’t ever stop fussing after that.”

“And you called her hermana,” Seven insisted, because it was the best part.

“I was too tired to remember other words,” Cris said, sounding amused. “I think I was trying to say friend, or something like that. Y’know, to explain why I’d done it. But my Standard was all messed up.”

“You ever found out if she was the one who started the fight or if it was the horny Nausicaan?” Seven asked.

“Never,” he replied, finishing his last drink. “She couldn’t remember. I did bump into the same guy once after that. Used three phasers to stun his ass into a nice nap and dumped him at the local authorities’ doorstep for weapon trafficking.”

Seven smirked and raised her glass to that, the smirk turning into a fond look when Cris turned around to gather Raffi in his arms and gently lift her up her seat. As he carried her like that, Raffi’s head resting against his chest trustingly, Seven noticed how alike they looked.

“Space siblings,” she giggled.

(Seven was smashed.)

#my writing #birthday prompts #save tag #star trek: picard #star trek picard #cristobal rios #cris rios #raffi musiker #seven of nine