Prompt: Wash and Maine are bros.
Maine had a habit of leaving sweatshirts on the floor.
Mostly the things he wore were these thick, white fleeces almost as heavy as his armor. Maine liked baggy clothes, or else just didn't care about his clothing and wanted to be as comfortable as possible outside the armor. He also liked leaving laundry all over the floor, which Wash had learned the first full day they roomed together. Maine was messy. Wash had never asked whether he was like that because no one ever checked the Freelancers' rooms, or whether his commanding officers in other companies just hadn't told him off enough.
Either way, Wash had to kick some of Maine's stuff aside as he walked toward his own impeccably made bed. Some lettering on one of the sweatshirts caught his eye. "Hey, Maine."
The big Freelancer was sitting on his bed holding a datapad. He looked up.
"Does this sweatshirt say 'Harvard'?"
"Rrrr."
Wash turned the shirt over with the toe of his boot. "Maine. Did you go to Harvard?"
Maine said, "My brother."
"Oh."
He pictured a whole family of Maine children sitting around a table, all of them bulky and in white-and-yellow helmets. Then he mentally edited the helmet part out and got down to trying to process this Maine sitting next to a brainiac kid, or maybe just a really businesslike one in a suit and tie. The older brother saying "Hey man, I'm going to school, see you later," and Maine, maybe just to shock them all, saying "I'm joining the army."
He wouldn't need his voice there, anyway.
Wash stayed in the room for a while, just getting things in order.
