<snip>

“You expecting someone else this afternoon, Dad?” Thomas asked, taking his father’s frown at the interruption for a ‘no,’ before the older McGregor even said it.

“No,” Conor said anyway, rising and moving behind the bar. Thomas wasn’t exactly surprised to see that his father had a link the the home’s security system there, but was surprised to see him hurry towards the door after a mere glance at it.

“It’s your sister, and she looks upset,” Conor explained. That got Thomas to drop his beer to the table as well, and hurry after him.

COS

Thomas hung towards the back once they reached the entryway, as Conor opened the door to admit a sobbing Josephina McGregor.

“Ach, me bairn, what’s wrong?” Conor asked, Scottish accent coming out.

“I-I b-b-blew an-no-nother one, Daddy!” Josephina said, with what Thomas thought was an uncharacteristic amount of wailing from her.

“It’s 1740, Josie,” Conor said, somewhat confused. “Unless, wait, where was this date?”

Thomas screwed up his face. Josie was this upset over a date? How bad could it have gone?

“Tokyo! I beamed straight over, I was so embarrassed, Daddy!” Josie exclaimed. “It started fine, a couple sake bombs before sushi, but I must have eaten it wrong, or I reacted to something in it, and I puked all over him!”

Thomas couldn’t help it, the mental image was hilarious. He let out a snort of laughter, which was loud enough to be heard by Josie and his father.

“Who was that?” she asked. “That sounded familiar. Who else is here at twenty to six on a Thursday?” she asked, tears forgotten in the presence of a sudden mystery to solve.

‘Well, nothing else for it,’ Thomas decided, stepping out into his sister’s line of sight and sparing his father from trying to make an excuse. “Hey, Josie.”

“TOMMY!” She wormed her way out of her father’s embrace, and sprinted across the entryway to tackle Thomas into the wall. “You utter jerk, when did you get back? What are you doing here and not on a starship in the middle of nowhere? You didn’t blow up this one too, did you?”

“Hey!” Thomas exclaimed, once he could breathe again. “I didn’t blow up the last one, I crashed it into another spaceship. And then it blew up. But I didn’t blow anything up, I just took some leave to talk some things over with Dad.”

“And punch me in the face, you did that too,” Conor piped up, very unhelpfully in Thomas’ opinion, eliciting a gasp from Josie.

“Yes, and punching you in the face, which you’re not exactly dissuading me from doing again. You know how she gets when she’s in an interrogatory mood!” he said with a glare, indicating the 5‘6” missile of curiosity that was currently pinning him to a wall.

“We were just doing a little day drinking before you showed up. C’mon, we’ll get you a ginger ale to settle your stomach and you can join the improptu therapy session,” Thomas said.

“Don’t think you’re getting out of answering my questions that easy, Tommy,” Josie said, loosening her grip slightly. “I want to know exactly what brought you home after three Gods-damned years, and not just flippant quips!”

“Gods above, I’ve missed you,” Thomas said fondly, pushing away from the wall and guiding her back the way he’d came. “Good to know I’m not the only one in this family who can’t find a life partner.”

“Watch it, mister,” Josie said, punching him in the arm.

COS

“So, Tokyo, huh?” Thomas asked once they’d returned to the home minibar and gotten a drink for Josephina. “What was this one’s name, where’d you meet him, and why’d you agree to go out with him in the first place?”

“Sato Kaiichi, he’s a structural engineer I met at a conference last month. We hit it off at a pre-conference social mixer, talking about the new Rigellian consulate in Paris and the way they’ve blended Rigellian glass and transparent aluminum into the facade of the building, he offered to take me out for a night on the town in Tokyo and, well, that ended in a bloody failure,” Josie said with a grimace, before taking a deep drink from her glass.

“Strange that you reacted like that,” Conor mused. “You’re certainly not allergic to fish, and I know you can hold your liquor better than that.”

“I think it was the wasabi,” Josie said. “It burned something fierce going down, and worse coming back up thirty seconds later.”

Thomas winced. He’d had wasabi once, at the Academy, and it had ended almost as badly for him. His puke hadn’t landed on any person, but he had been banned from that particular sushi bar. Not that he had any intention of ever patronising it again, after that, but he supposed it was the principle of the thing for the proprietor.

“I would believe that,” he told his sister. “Same thing happened to me sophomore year at the Academy, basically.”

“Really?” Josie asked. “That’s a relief, and interesting to know that you puked on a boy you were interested in too,” she said in a teasing tone.

Thomas still flushed. “Shut up, that’s not what I meant. I didn’t puke on anybody, just a bonsai at our table.”

“Oh, come on, I know you, Tommy,” Josie said. “Half the people in that bar probably wanted to bang you even after you emptied your guts on the shrubbery, but you’d be about as interested in accepting those offers as this barstool I’m sitting on.” She paused and took another drink. “What do you even do on shore leave, if you’re not bouncing from bed to bed and sowing your wild oats?”

“I’m a department head, Josie, I catch up on my paperwork,” Thomas said flatly. “I try not to let it accumulate, but there’s only so many hours in a day a man can devote to reading overall shift reports and specific incident reports before he wants to airlock himself, and unfortunately, that number is only about half of the hours that would be required to get through it all. Not to mention, I can’t just spend my entire shift in my office reading reports, I have to get out and do some rounds of my own, plus training on my own and with my staff. It’s a wonder I even manage four hours of sleep some nights, much less six to eight.”

“So boring,” Josie said, frowning as Thomas described his shipboard life. “At least tell me something interesting that’s happened while your crew enjoyed shore leave.”

It didn’t take long for Thomas to dredge up a particularly interesting memory. “Alright, this was right before we were about to set out on the new ship, with the expanded crew. The Captain had thrown a ‘meet your new shipmates’ event on the starbase, and some of the new crew and some of the returning crew got together like a house on fire. So much so, in fact, that I got called at 0600 the next morning to the ship’s crew lounge, where I found six crewmen, three ensigns and a junior lieutenant in a big jumble of naked limbs.”

Conor laughed. “I bet that was fun to sort out with no brig available. How’d you handle it?”

“Had the lounge staff that called it in spray them down with the hose behind the bar they use to rinse out glassware that’s not constantly recycled in the replicator, then issued them all a public indecency citation and restricted them to quarters for three days once they were awake and mostly cognizant of the mess they were in. Also made the crewmen and the ensigns clean up the lounge. The lieutenant was actually one of mine, so I sent him to get dressed and then report to my office for a more in depth bollocking.”

COS

After finishing her first drink, Josie excused herself to the bathroom, “To wash my face and make myself look like I haven’t spent most of the past hour sobbing myself to dehydration,” as she put it, leaving Thomas and Conor alone once again.

“You know, the way she greeted you is probably the calmest reaction you’re going to get from your siblings, right?” his father asked.

Thomas blinked, because he felt Josie’s “greeting” had actually bordered on assault and battery. “What?” he asked. The idea of Anthony doing something like that was ludicrous, though he supposed he could see Garrett getting physical beyond a handshake and half-hug.

Conor smirked. “Oh, I think even Tony is likely as not to hit you at this point, for up and basically vanishing into the ether for three years,” he said. “Garrett, well, he’s done quite a bit of growing up since you last saw him. He’s taken up kickboxing, that’s where he met his boyfriend. I hope you’ve kept up your martial arts skills better than you have your boxing, or else your face might change colors for reasons other than embarrassment.”

Thomas rolled his eyes. “Funny. Which one of us currently has a black eye and a bruised jaw?” he asked. “Because I think that demonstrates that my boxing skills are still just fine, and you’ll have to take me for my word that my martial arts skills are as good or better. Most likely better, because they’re considerably easier to practice on my own. Punching a heavy bag or a speed bag is all well and good, but it’s not the same as matching up against a thinking opponent.”

“Well, you know, if you ever left the ship for shore leave, it wouldn’t be hard to track down a fight club and get a few matches in,” Conor said. “Every port has them, some reputable, some… less than. As long as you left the uniform behind, you wouldn’t have any difficulty getting in, either.”

Thomas scoffed. “Sure, and then get to have fun later that night explaining exactly why I need an in-depth session with the vascular and osteo regenerators to the Sickbay staff. Hard pass on that,” he said.

“Hard pass on what? Getting the stuffing knocked out of you like you deserve?” Josie asked, re-entering the room with a smirk on her face that Thomas was instantly suspicious of.

“If I just want that, I could ask my CO or XO,” Thomas said. “One’s a Marine, the other I strongly suspect of involvement in Black Ops. Either could ‘knock the stuffing’ out of me, though I’d like to think I’d give either and or both a good fight first. Now what have you done?”

“Me? I just freshened up my look, dear brother,” Josie said with an innocent expression that neither Thomas nor Conor bought. “Daddy, can you start dinner? I didn’t get to finish eating in Tokyo, and I’m still hungry.”

“Sure, honey,” Conor said. “Your favorites?” he asked, and Josie nodded her head exactly three times.

Thomas frowned, the deliberate way she’d nodded was highly suspicious, combined with the length of time she’d been out of the room. She was up to something, he just knew it, and he highly doubted he was going to like the result.

COS