This was the first time Lena found herself engaged in an intelligent conversation with someone ever since coming to space. Sure, she had conversations with Peter, but most of his knowledge was on a 'must know' basis.

This guy, on the other hand, was not only very smart, but he also didn't give off that 'I'll kill you if you piss me off' vibe that seemed to follow her wherever she went, which put him in the category of friendly acquaintances (he also had this affable and elderly thing going on for him, which helped). Of course, he wasn't exactly Mr. Nice Guy - he was some kind of technology dealer that Peter had just done a job for. After all the deals and payments were finished with surprisingly no complications, both her and Peter had been invited to join him for drinks in a decent-looking club. Peter accepted it readily, reassuring her that he'd done other jobs for this guy in the past and he was pretty decent, all things considered.

Somehow, that led to Lena sitting across from the guy (whose name she still wasn't sure of and at this point she was too afraid to ask) in a heated discussion about technology – he seemed especially fascinated by Terran technology and how primitive it all was. Lena couldn't help but defend her home planet – they were still in development, after all, and they hadn't even managed to master space travel yet (the fact that most people on Earth thought that there was no life in other planets thoroughly amused him).

All in all, there were much worse ways that this night could have gone.

"Do tell me more about this... Wi-Fi of your planet." He said, grinning.

"Wireless internet." Lena said. "Kind of recent—" She was interrupted by someone poking her shoulder. When she turned around, she saw that it was Peter – actually, now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen him in a while. Had he sneaked away sometime during the conversation? "What?" She snapped at him.

"I'm heading back to the ship." He said. "You just—take your time, no need to rush back or anything, 'kay?" He finished with a very suspicious grin.

She frowned at him. "You're not planning to take off without me, are you?"

His face sombered up a little as he spoke in a more serious tone. "No, no, I promise. I just have, ah, some things I need to take care of." Then he grinned and clapped her on the shoulder. "Just take your time!" He said and turned away.

Lena sighed, rolling her eyes as she turned back to the dealer guy – who was staring at her with an amused expression. "What?" She asked, suddenly self-conscious.

"You've got a funny look on your face." He said, pointing at her.

Torn between completely denying it and being very curious about what it was (she didn't know that she was even doing anything), she decided on the latter. "What kind of look?"

"I'm not sure… It's a mixture of fondness and familiar exasperation – I suppose you have to deal with him often?"

She snorted. "More than you think." She paused. "I'd go more with the exasperation part, though."

It was a while later that she decided to return to the ship. Dealer had excused himself to attend to other matters, so she took that as her cue to leave and head back, maybe to make sure the ship was still there.

(To be honest, she wasn't actually afraid of Peter leaving her behind anymore.)

Peter wasn't on the top deck when she stepped inside the Milano and didn't answer when she called his name, so she figured he was either asleep, or busy with the computer. She tried calling his name one more time, but still no answer. What Lena did spot was the open hatch that lead to the lower floor, so she decided to poke her head through it to see if Peter was even down there at all.

She regretted that decision.

Even from her upside down view of the lower floor, she still clearly saw something that she wished she hadn't and that was now probably (and regrettably) imprinted on her brain.

Because Peter wasn't alone, he had company – female company. And they were both half naked on his bunk (thankfully hers was untouched… as far as she could tell) and they were on a rather heavy making out session.

Well then.

I should have stayed in the club longer.

Lena considered yelling out his name but decided against interrupting whatever they were doing down there – she was already embarrassed enough, thank you very much. Silently, she closed the hatch and lifted herself up, slightly awkwardly fidgeting on the spot as she tried to figure out what to do next.

Lena ended up dozing off on the co-pilot seat using her recently bought jacket as a blanket – the tiredness from the day before caught up to her and she didn't even have the time to consider playing with the computer when her eyes suddenly started drooping.

She was later awakened by the sound of the hatch opening and voices drifting up from it. Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she turned to stare at the dark head of hair coming out of the hatch. And then she was staring at two dark eyes belonging to a purple-ish skinned woman that looked very bewildered in seeing Lena also.

"Uhm…" The woman spoke, stopping halfway out of the hatch as she stared at Lena in confusion.

From downstairs, she could hear Peter's muffled voice. "What is it?"

Lena only managed to keep blinking – turned out she had straight out fallen asleep on the seat, and was having trouble getting her brain to fully work.

The woman finished climbing up and Peter stepped out after her, eyes quickly widening as he saw Lena staring at them both with a blank expression on her face.

He thought it was kinda scary – why did it suddenly feel like she was going to scold him?

But mostly, Lena was still partly asleep.

"Who is this?" The woman asked, directing her question at Peter.

"Uh—" Peter stammered.

Lena finally managed to shake the sleep out of her mind and pushed herself out of the seat. "I'm his… co-pilot." Plastering a, somewhat fake, smile, she added. "Nice to meet you!"

The woman responded with a hesitant smile. Turning to Peter, she said, "I didn't know you had a… co-pilot."

"Well, I didn't know she'd be back so early." Peter shot Lena a tight smile.

Lena shot him one right back. "I didn't know you had company. Maybe put a sock on the door knob next time?"

The woman was still awkwardly standing next to Peter and he took it as his cue to show her out – this whole awkward atmosphere was not something he was used to dealing with and the faster he could get rid of it, the better.

They exchanged their goodbyes (at least this one wasn't expecting him to call back anytime soon) and as she was stepping out of the Milano, Lena called out after her, "Well, it was very nice to meet you!" Once she was out of sight, she turned to Peter. "What was her name again?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

Lena shot him a disbelieving look.

"What?" He said.

Lena stared at him for one long moment before sighing. "Somehow I feel I shouldn't be so surprised." Then she turned away and headed towards the open hatch. "Oh well, as long you didn't do anything on my bunk."

"Of course not." He paused. "Not today."

In her life, there were a couple of accidents involving her and computers that might not have been so accidental after all. Some of which included accessing one of her foster parents' computer remotely and deleting a handful of files, and bypassing the site blocks in computer lab in high school. Those might not have been as accidental as she'd claimed – once people found out about her explorations.

This situation, however, was completely accidental.

Okay, maybe not completely. She did use a public computer terminal to explore - ahem - more hidden files in the city network – but it was all part of her quest to learn more about alien computer languages and how their tech worked. What she hadn't meant to do was tap into confidential police files that she had no business seeing. And as she hadn't meant to do it, she hadn't been hiding her location properly.

And so she had been easily located by the police. Next thing she knew, Lena had a handful of angry alien cops running after her.

Luckily for her, their species were somewhat slower than herself, so with a few turns here and there she managed to lose them. For a little while.

Luckily for her, again, her legs had carried her to the place she was supposed to meet with Peter, and she quickly spotted the familiar red jacket in the crowd, sitting on a bench just as a native woman was getting up, making eyes at him.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she did a mental eye roll.

Thinking quickly, surprising herself at how fast the plan had come to her, she took off her hair band letting her hair go free and then took off her jacket, all the while still running (or actually fast walking, she didn't want to seem too suspicious) and then threw it into the bushes behind the bench Peter was on. She sat next to him quickly and fluffed up her hair to make her look as different as possible from the way she looked previously, and before Peter could properly process her state of disarray, Lena grabbed his face with both hands and brought him close. Close as in noses-touching, breath-on-your-face kind of close. Basically it looked like they were kissing.

She might have stolen that idea from a movie or another she'd watched on Earth. Except without any lip on lip action (kissing Peter wasn't really on her priorities list at the moment). Still, if she wasn't so preoccupied with the cops finding her, she would have found this situation very awkward.

"Lena, what-" He started, lightly trying to pull away.

She tightened her grip on his head. "Just stay still, go along with it." She urged and he complied. Albeit while shooting nervous glances all over her face.

From behind her she heard a commotion which drew Peter's gaze and realization seemingly dawned on him – he had many skills he took pride in, but two in special were his quick thinking and his ability to bullshit his way through things. Putting a hand on her side, he nudged her even closer to better hide her face and it was Lena's turn to start feeling awkward over the position they were in.

She started counting how many of his breaths she could feel on her face to distract her wandering mind (which actually didn't help at all), until the commotion behind them was gone and she took it as a sign that the cops had ran the other way.

"Okay, I think they're gone." He spoke, pulling away as she dropped her hands off his face. With their proximity gone, she could focus back on the situation at hand.

She shot a nervous look over her shoulder and nodded. "Good." She breathed deeply, relieved, and rubbed a hand over her face. This was definitely not on her list of things to do today.

"...So, what did you do?"

Lena glanced back at Peter. "I, uh- It was an accident."

"How do you get chased by the cops by accident?"

She raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, don't answer that. But what exactly did you do?"

"Well, I might have hacked into places I wasn't supposed to."

"As in?"

"As in... Confidential police files."

"How did you do that?" Peter asked, amused.

"By accident!"

Peter grinned, shaking his head. "Well okay, accidental master hacker, we should probably get back to the ship before anyone else comes looking for you."

It's been… two years? Oh wow, time flies fast. And I'm kinda embarrassed. A lot. Honestly, though, after I lost inspiration for this I went to focus on other projects which involved original stories of my own, so this story was put on the back burner. Fast forward two years and here we are? Well then.

I was still very fond of this story actually, and with the new GOTG movie coming out, inspiration strikes again! To be honest, I never thought this story with much of a plot, mostly they were interconnected snippets and situations that I thought up in my free time and trying to put it all together was actually pretty hard :c So I was thinking of doing something like that, much like this chapter is two separate situations that are connected nevertheless. Or maybe I won't do that. We'll see!

Anyways, I apologize for all the people I kept waiting all this time! Besides this chapter, I do have some more material so I might post something new very very soon (not two years this time, I promise!)