Penelope drops a second cocktail napkin, rather more deliberately than she'd dropped the first one, and Gordon seems to remember—abruptly and just in time to avoid engaging in any kind of serious conversation—that this is actually a secret signal, and that he's supposed to flit immediately across the room to Penelope's elbow and find out just what she wants.

So Scott's been left hanging with a "hold that thought, bro" and now he has to watch Gordon go right into devoted-suitor mode, all easy and comfortable and confident as he scampers across the dance floor and leans up against the bar next to her. He says something that makes Penelope and Jane laugh and Scott can't help his irritation.

But then there's a pang of guilt, because it's not like it's Gordon's fault, not like it's anything that deserves irritation. Maybe it's for the best that Scott hasn't gotten to really grill his brother for advice, because maybe there's no way to ask for this kind of advice in a way that isn't insulting. It's just, on the face of it, Scott's never been clear on just how his younger brother's managed to land himself in a successful, committed, year-long-and-going-strong relationship with someone so obviously out of his league—

—and the same way the second napkin drops, Scott realizes that he'd been about to ask advice of the wrong member of said relationship.

As bolts from the blue go, this one is a hell of a relief. Don't ask Gordon, ask Penelope. Obviously.

This line of thought means his next course of action is to get over to the bar and try and fumble through pretending he doesn't notice just how out of place Jane is, and what anidiot he is for not realizing that their last date was your standard dinner-and-a-movie, and that he's ramped everything up from zero to five thousand real quick.

There's a joke to be made about hands on throttles and how Scott always seems to go just a little too fast, but its tasteless, and he's really trying to keep this whole thing pretty classy. Jane's looking at him over the rim of her glass, and he takes advantage of the fact that she's taking a drink to make his move.

"Penelope, can I borrow you for a minute? Only I dropped your name towards the other end of the boat earlier in the evening, and I should probably go make good on the promise of an introduction before I forget."

Penelope's probably rumbled him as soon as he says it, given the way her eyes flick between Scott and Jane, but she smiles and inclines her head graciously. "Oh, of course. I could do to stretch my legs. Upon whom am I meant to be making an impression?"

Scott shrugs, invents someone important sounding out of whole cloth, "Dunno, someone with a crown." Immediately he kicks himself, because Jane's eyes widen visibly. It's entirely probable that there's royalty of some stripe aboard somewhere, but Scott hasn't checked. Doesn't really care. Certainly no one so obviously adorned, but now Scott imagines that the good Captain will be keeping her eyes peeled for royal headgear. "Or, I mean, uh. I guess a tiara."

"Oh, heavens," Penelope answers, though her tone has grown just slightly bland, and Scott knows he's been caught in a lie. "Well, off we go then." Gordon's already held a hand out to help her down off her barstool, automatic, reflexive, like it's second nature. Scott has to remind himself to turn back to his own date and excuse himself, apologize for pawning her off on Gordon.

Scott's got good instincts. One of his hands goes affectionately to the small of her back, he smiles at her. "Jane, you don't mind keeping Gordon on a short leash for a few minutes?"

"Sure." Jane's hand squeezes his arm, companionable. She leans over to rest an elbow on the bar as Gordon hops up onto Penelope's recently vacated seat. "Shots?" she prompts, gleam in her eye.

"Shots!" Gordon agrees immediately, and beams. He leans conspiratorially back in his seat, back of his hand pretending to hide his comment to his brother as he whispers loudly, "I like your girlfriend."

Jane just laughs and Penelope smiles. "Do go easy," she cautions blithely as she takes Scott's arm, "He talks a good game but he's an absolute lightweight." And she whisks Scott away before Gordon can make a grand and theatrical show of protest. It's true, anyway.

It's not the sort of party that's crowded. It's the sort of party that's perfectly proportioned to the scale of its setting, and it just seems natural to migrate one set of stairs lower, and start to amble along a relatively empty lower deck, running the length of the yacht. Scott waits for some signal that they're safely out of earshot. It's easiest to trust Penelope's judgement as far as these things sorts of things are concerned.

True to form, the lady leads the conversation, and sets the pace of their leisurely walk down the length of the ship, such that they'll have plenty of time to talk. "She's quite charming," Penelope says, and looks up at Scott with a smile. "You're an utter cad for not telling her we'd be flying out for an evening among multi-billionaires on a yacht that's probably worth more than her company makes in a decade, and further you're a fool for not letting me lend her a dress. Honestly, what did you say?"

Scott groans, though he's been giving himself the same internal lecture ever since they landed aboard said yacht. "I don't know. It was Gordon's idea! 'Me and Penny are going yachting in Croatia, bring Jane'. I didn't—I mean, I should've—hell. No, you know what, Penelope? I don't know what the hell I should've done. Pretend like I think twice about yachting with multi-billionaires? Because obviously I don't, or I would've blown Gordon off and just asked her if she wanted…to….to go bowling or something."

None of the blond members of their informal quartet are actually dumb, but sometimes Scott thinks the blonds have cooked up some sort of secret arrangement where they all play at it, because Penelope tilts her head and crinkles up her nose. "Bowling?"

"People go bowling. Hell, we used to go bowling. Grandma bowls like she was in a league for it, because she was."

Penelope drifts to the railing and peers out and downward, surveying the lower part of the ship. "I think there might be bowling…lane? A bowling court."

Scott scoffs at this, wonders if it's an affectation, if the Lady is poking ironical fun at him. "Alley."

"Really? What an utterly ridiculous choice of term. A bowling alley, then, somewhere in the belly of this beastly thing, if it really takes your fancy." Penelope says this as though she knows it absolutely does not, because her blue eyes looking up at him in the next moment are sharp and insightful, "But it sounds as though this is a symptom of a rather more severe affliction."

It's the prompt he's been waiting for and he leans moodily against the railing beside her, "She hates this and she's going to hate me, because I'm a dumbass. It has to seem like…like I'm trying to ramp things up. That I'm trying to set a new tone, trying to show her what she's got to expect, going out with me."

"And of course, these are all things you know because you've actually spoken to her, and not just made wild assumptions about the way Jane feels about the fact that you're a multi-billionaire." Penelope's cool, effortless condescension is actually a welcome relief, when Scott imagines what he would've got from Gordon—sunshiney Everything Is Awesome style platitudes, bubbles of iridescent positivity with no actual substance.

Scott's not actually hopeless, as far as relationships go. He's had a few of major note, though things have been a little dry ever since—well, ever since Dad's been taken out of the picture and IR has taken up the focus. Before Jane, his standard fare had been a bit more in the nature of keeping careful contact with one or two girls he'd known in college, the sort of relentlessly independent women who never had and never would want to do something as ridiculous as actually date him, but with whom drinks and dinner and uncomplicated, no-strings encounters were absolutely on the table. This is different. And he's rusty and knows it.

Still, he has the basics. "I do know I have to talk to her."

"Do you know what about?"

Well, yes.

And then again no, because it's not something Scott's ever been great at articulating. "Kinda. Maybe."

Penelope nudges her elbow lightly against his, leaning side-by-side on the railing. "Consider this a test run," she suggests. "No judgment, I'll just listen."

"Yeah. Lemme… I have to figure out how I wanna say this…"

"Well, you've got one up on Gordon, in that regard. Take your time."

Scott does. He takes a good solid minute, and finds himself thinking about Gordon. The whole idea is esoteric, but maybe Gordon is as good a point to anchor it to as any. He can explain this as something that's true about Gordon the same way he's starting to think it might be true about Jane. "… Have you been out to California, yet? You and Gordon?"

"Haven't had the pleasure, no."

"Go, sometime. Make a point of it. If there's ever a moment in time when you think you might have doubts about Gordon—if the fun ever starts to stop, if you ever start to get sick of him, if you're ever worried about the spark—get out to the West Coast. Because you don't actually know Gordon until you've known what he's like in California."

Penelope's listening, intent. Scott wonders if she's ever thought about doubts, and what she'd do if she caught herself starting to have them. Probably. She's a woman who makes plans, and backups for those plans. Scott likes to think of this as an exchange of intelligence, advice for advice. He continues, starts to hit his stride. "There's this thing I think about, sometimes. Generally at altitude, right around Mach 7, when the world's going by so fast it feels like the surface should be peeling off it. About places and people and people as places, and where the truest version of a person comes from. Gordon is California. A 100‰ raw, unfiltered product of the golden state, with the beach boy hair and the surfer bod and the way he unironically uses the term 'bro'. That sounds insincere. But I mean it, though, and there's more than that, it's just hard to put it into words. There's this thing that happens with Gordon and Cali. Hit the tarmac in LA and something just changes about him. Something gets easier, something makes more sense. I don't know if I'm explaining it, but I could say it to Virg or Johnny or Alan, they'd all know exactly what I mean."

It's not clear if Penelope knows exactly what he means. But she's still rapt with attention and man, maybe it's just possible that there's something really, actually solid about the year and change between the pair of them, Gordon and Penelope, because maybe this is what Penelope looks like when she's a little bit in love. "Go on." She pauses and needs to remind herself to add, "And what's the bearing on our dear Captain Carter?"

Maybe Scott imagines the note of regret at the change of subject, grins to himself. Can't help but lay a bit more of the groundwork. "Right. So Gordon's California. Virgil's Colorado–hah, all hemmed in by mountains, somehow capable of dealing with every flavour and configuration of natural disaster at once—yeah, that's Virg. John's Low Earth Orbit, or if that doesn't count, then he's New England, all that pure intellectualism by association. Take the boy out of MIT, can't take the MIT outta the boy. Allie's Cape Canaveral. Dad was the Island."

"You've thought about this a lot."

Scott shrugs, feels his cheeks get a little bit warm. "Yeah, well. Gets a bit monotonous at thirty-thousand feet, and generally I've got my brothers on the brain."

"And Captain Carter? Where does she fit, beneath your grand old flag?"

Well. This is the heart of the problem. He catches himself hedging, making excuses, dancing around the thing that's so easy to explain about the people he loves—but maybe that's the reason. Maybe he gets a little edgy when the L-word creeps into a conversation. "God. I am going to sound like an absolute sap, Penelope, and I don't even have Gordon's featherweight tolerance to blame for it. Good ol' one-shot-wonder—"

"Jane, Scott."

Summer sunshine and that hot, dusty smell of dirt roads when it hasn't rained in a week—or that electric charge in the air, that deep, primitive fear of a sky that towers, dark and black and foreboding, wind waiting to tear the world to pieces. Tornado shelters. Blue skies and wheat fields. Aureate hills. Crop dusting. Pell Grants and KSU. Hard work. Calloused palms. Denim overalls with the knees blown out, gingham shirts and fishtail french braids. Scott's in Armani that costs a cool ten grand, and on the deck above doing shots with his little brother, she's in a dress she could've worn to her high school prom, and somehow that's just so impossibly, perfectly endearing, he's selfish enough not to care if she thinks she's made a fool of herself.

"She's Kansas."