Sussex Golden on the Rocks

"Remember Squad Oasis? When you hauled me out of that avalanche and gave me mouth-to-mouth?"

The question caused the soda fizz to fly into his nose. Patton coughed and sputtered, thumping at his chest with a gloved fist trying to get the liquid out of the wrong windpipe before turning incredulously to his Supreme Commander. "A-are... what... what brought that on? Out of all the random things..."

Rachel didn't seem embarrassed at all. Instead she took a sip of her drink like she was just talking about the non-existent weather on Moonbase than the time where he unnecessarily kissed her trying to put air into lungs that already had it. The aftermath was a memory he would be glad to get rid of on the day of his decommissioning.

She waited patiently for him to stop coughing before continuing. "Just girl things, I suppose. I can't help but hear what my operatives say."

He began to panic. "About the...?" There weren't any operatives around the darkened parlor, but it was instinct that made him look around before indulging in private information. "Listen, it happened, I freaked out, and I don't know why people are still talking about something that happened years ago!"

"Oh, no. They weren't talking about the incident," she smirked at him and played with her drink a bit. "They were talking about their first kisses. Did you know Numbuh 86 had her first kiss when she was six? Some boy kissed her on the swing so he could push her off and take it."

"Didn't know, but thanks for the mental image," Patton muttered bitterly. Fanny always gave him a hard time whenever he visited Moonbase. Said he 'coddled' their Supreme Leader too much, whatever that meant. How many times did he have the chance to leave his ice block of a base to share a soda with an old friend anyways?

Rachel placed her reddened cheek on the polished wood. She was such a lightweight depending on the soda. Kicking back pure Russian Seltzer she had no problem with but forget it if you give her something that actually tasted delicious. After that only Zero himself could pry her off of it.

He thought it was pretty cute when she got that way. It was a rare glimpse of her letting her hair down when she wasn't talking about embarrassing crud like kisses or whatever.

"Where was I?" she asked her reflection.

"I really don't want to remind you," he said with a grumble before returning to his Sussex Golden. "I know that 86 made out with that caveman of an operative with the girly hair. I'm just glad I wasn't there to see it."

Rachel smiled impishly. "Jealous?"

"Boy-haters aren't exactly my type. Comes with the territory of being a boy, I suppose," His drink was getting flat, so he ordered another one from the lone barkeeper that didn't stick his nose into anyone's business. One day he'll have to know the guy's story if he had any. "Can we talk about something boring? All this personal talk is giving me a rash."

"Typical boy," she teased, the heat of her breath fogging the polished surface. "I guess we can talk about the enlightening job of dividing the hamster pellet ledgers I've been filing all day..."

He picked up his new drink, paused, then sighed in defeat. "Right. You were talking about kisses?"

The tips of her fingers started to draw shapes from the fogged up surface, which mildly caught his attention before she spoke up. "So I'm sitting on my throne listening to my girls gossip-"

"Slow day, no doubt," he snorted.

"...and it got me thinking. Almost all of these girls were my age and they had some kind of meaningful first kiss. Does mouth-to-mouth count, I wondered while sitting on my high throne. Because the only time I could think of was during the avalanche."

Girls were weird, he decided. Even perfect Supreme Leaders like Rachel couldn't escape the female bug. He wasn't sure whether he could count that as a good or a bad thing. Maybe both.

The light blush on his face couldn't have been from the soda. He was only on his fourth glass. "I don't think that counts as a first kiss," he admitted, making it his own personal mission not to look her in the eye. "I thought you needed air that time."

"You're probably right," Her movement was sluggish when she righted herself up and stared at the taps. "I dunno. Maybe I'm too busy. It's always been KND first. I feel like... I'm missing out on things. I mean, even Numbuh 1 had the time to get a girlfriend! What's that say about me?"

"Just means you got your priorities right," he answered confidently. "I don't have time for things like that. Neither do you. I got the bottom base to take care of and you've got up top. Besides, KND relationships never last long. You either have to deal with choosing the mission over your partner or forgetting them when you're decommissioned. What kind of life is that anyways?"

Rachel sighed in defeat. "You're right. It wouldn't be fair to anyone. I'm just..." Lonely sometimes.

The silence stretched, but it was oddly comforting. He voiced what was on his mind the entire time. "I wouldn't want the memory of your first kiss to be on that day, Rachel. I don't want to remember that day at all."

"I know."

It had been a freak accident, one that came from youth and arrogance training his first set of cadets ever. His superior called it in; a rookie scientist accidentally caused an impending avalanche, but Patton had been confident that his cadets could outwit it as a training exercise.

The task had been too much for either of them and the snow kept rolling and rolling until the glacier it was falling from snapped from the weight. That was when he ordered an emergency retreat when snow, ice, and rock literally covered the sky.

He remembered them catching the tail end of the avalanche and little else. The first thing he remembered afterwards was digging out of the snow with his bare hands and inhaling the thick frozen air into his burning lungs. Most of his cadets ended up safely trenched beneath a sharp cliff face and missed most of the snow. Others weren't so lucky.

That was when he caught a glimpse of a stupid ugly boot sticking out of the stark snow that, if he didn't see it, Rachel wouldn't have ever been found.

He had panicked, dug her unconscious body out, and started to scream and freak out when he thought she was dead. All of his training to work cool under pressure was worth nothing when he had cost someone their life.

It was at that moment, when he instinctively pressed her bluish lips against his out of desperation to trade his own life back into his favorite cadet, did he truly grow up as a drill sergeant.

Rachel's whimsical words brought him out of the cold and back into The Mocktail Spritz where the temperature was comfortably neutral like the rest of Moonbase. "Imagine opening your eyes and finding your drill sergeant kissing you though. I couldn't look at you properly for weeks!"

"The feeling was mutual," he shook his head at the bartender when Rachel was pawing for another round. She had this habit of speaking gibberish after too much sugar. At least, at this point, he can understand her. "Stop that."

Rachel pouted, then saluted lazily, scooting over on her bar stool to lean against his side. "Aye aye, drill sergeant, sir."

Her head was starting to lull against his shoulder, but he was too busy dredging up the courage of his next words to pay attention. "If you wanted a proper first kiss, just ask next time."

She had already drifted off to sleep, unaware that she was the living breathing reason why he cared about all of his cadets; why to this very day, he went beyond the call of duty to protect them until they were ready to fly on their own.

Patton caught a glimpse of the palm tree Rachel had been drawing on the table before the fog evaporated. With a grim stare befitting a soldier, he wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders and waited for it to disappear along with the memory. It couldn't go fast enough.