I said I wouldn't update so quickly but I did because I'm a terrible terrible person and I write instead of sleep.

Thank you to my two lovely reviewers, as always, your comments brighten my day and make this worthwhile

Enjoy

Boston

So maybe they hadn't wanted to lose a day off for the sake of flying to Boston, but in actuality, they would be getting paid for it, and Deborah thought that in all, the day was going well.

She was beating Martin at Simon Says, which was something at least. Even better than winning, which wasn't a surprise if she was honest with herself, was the fact that Martin was taking it rather well.

He really was far easier to get along with when he wasn't picking on every little thing that she did that didn't correlate with his map of the world; he hadn't been doing that nearly as much as he used to, and she was actually enjoying his company.

True, the discovery that he wanted to desert them for the sake of Easy-jet put a dampener on her mood, but that didn't need thinking about.

Deborah was just eyeing the Captain deviously, awaiting his next move, taking in the strained thought on his flushed cheeks, when a shrill beeping filled the flight-deck. She moved swiftly, carrying out the checks that had been ingrained over the course of years in the air, even as Martin inquired.

"What is it?"

"Shall I tell you an interesting thing about this thin metal tube full of petrol we're flying hundreds of miles above the Atlantic Ocean?" Deborah remarked lightly; there was no threat really, just a false alarm.

That didn't mean she couldn't enjoy a little bit of fun at Martin's expense; it turned out, that when he wasn't being critical and nagging, a pinch of fluster added to his complexion could create quite a pleasing sight to watch.

"What?" Martin replied, peering at the controls, as if his eyes might see something that she had yet to report to him.

"It's on fire." She stated simply, turning her head to smile daintily at him, lest he get too scared; one never knew with Martin.

He could panic at the drop of a hat; quire often his hat, if someone were to sneak up behind him and flick the back of it in such a way that the cap soared from his head. He had been known to react terribly if someone did that.

"Deborah…" Martin scolded, his tone laced with despair not yet in the midst of true weariness; she supposed that it was better than being actually scolded, so conceded, smile morphing into a shattering smirk.

"Master Caution Fire, Captain. Smoke detector, passenger loo." She informed him, watching as his expression lightened with realisation, and he rolled his eyes.

"Ah." He stated simply.

Deborah watched Martin lean across to the intercom and click it on without another word.

"Carolyn, we've got a …"

"Yes, I know, I know. Keep your goggles on." Carolyn's voice filtered through the machine, and Deborah couldn't help but smile at the frustration that it held, even more so at the indignant huff that escaped Martin's lips; everything was happening just on the right side of well; today promised to get even better, "It's just stroppy Mr. Leeman in three-B. Hang on."

That seemed as if it might be the end of their problems, but ten minutes later, the flight-deck door burst open with its usual creak and swish, and Carolyn appeared in the flesh.

"Martin, give Deborah your hat." She instructed, without any preamble; when neither of the pilots moved, Carolyn added for emphasis, "Do it."

"You didn't say Simon Says." Martin replied in the most matter-of-fact, unassuming tone of voice that Deborah had heard anyone use.

She had remained silent because she had no clue what Carolyn was talking about, but she had to stifle a repressed laugh behind the back of her hand at the daring simplicity of the Captain's retort. That only enraged Carolyn further, and she pointedly ignored Deborah to bear down upon Martin, who Deborah couldn't be sure whether he was watching her or staring bemusedly at the other woman.

"I am not playing your game!" Carolyn growled, clenching her wrinkled yet still bonnily threatening hands at her sides, "The man in the loo refuses to come out, so give Deborah your hat."

Martin shot a sideways glance at Deborah, who merely shrugged; she had an idea as to what Carolyn was getting at, but Martin was handling things pretty well all things considered, and providing light entertainment while he was at it.

"I'm sure, to you, those two sentences follow another naturally, but I don't quite see the logic …" he remarked, shooting another sideways glance at his co-pilot.

He had seen her laugh, Deborah realised, and was trying to do it again, the bloody devil.

"I don't need you to see! I need you to give Deborah your hat." Carolyn interrupted, her rage mounting; her eyes were burning and she looked as if she might tear the hat from his head, had she the power to remove the earth from its gravitational circuit.

"I don't want to give her my hat." Martin replied indignantly, going so far as to reach up and place one hand protectively over the accessory.

Deborah decided that if she had to pick sides, she was feeling far more comfortable on Martin's side of the field; it wouldn't do to upset him when they had such a good streak going.

"If it helps, I don't want to take his hat." She interjected, doing her best to look sorry and guilty for Carolyn's sake. Martin nodded gratefully, but there was a layer of disgruntlement in his gaze that he didn't remove when he looked at her. Of course he would take this as a personal insult, Deborah thought distastefully; it wasn't her fault.

"Oh, for goodness' sake. Why don't people just blindly obey anymore?" Carolyn raised her hands as if communicating with deities that only she knew, "She needs your hat because I want the captain to go down there and strike terror into his heart."

"But I'm the captain." Martin insisted; he sounded so painfully insulted.

That was what triggered all of Martin's criticisms and putting downs, Deborah knew that; she had made special efforts not to imply that he wasn't the Captain in order to maintain a friendly atmosphere. Trust Carolyn to blow that up in her face.

"I am only too painfully aware that you are the captain, Martin, but Deborah actually sounds like a captain when she gets going. You weren't here, but the last time a passenger dared to slap her on the bum, he left the plane in tears he was so terrified." Carolyn explained her decision in a conspiratorial tone of voice; she glossed over her anecdote, and Deborah looked away to the control panel when Martin's eyes sought hers, unwilling to delve into it with as much pleasure as Carolyn was, "You're not going to strike terror into anyone's heart – unless you chat them up in a bar."

Deborah heard a huff from beside her, and glanced up just in time to see Martin rising raggedly to his feet, pushing his hat further onto his head.

"Right. Well, let's just see about that, shall we?"

oOoOoOo

The day did not redeem itself. In fact, it got worse.

Martin returned in tears from his confrontation with Mr Lehman, which dampened the mood. He then ordered Arthur to carry out actions that led to the untimely death of a passenger; never good for business. They had spent hours going back and forth before deciding upon their original route, all in the company of a corpse.

All in all, not a good day for MJN. In actuality, one of the strangest flights that Deborah had ever been on. She couldn't decide whether it was the passage of time allowing her to see more interesting things, or merely the fact that Martin seemed to attract the most miraculous brand of bad luck she had even seen.

To top it all off, she now found herself sitting in one of the passenger seats, watching Carolyn, Martin, and a stroppy woman in paramedic's gear arguing over a dead body; even Mr Lehman looked on in despair, and he was dead.

Deborah's interest perked up as Martin spoke up and made himself heard; her heart dropped as she realised that they were probably going to be on GERTI for hours as a result.

"And … and … I just saw him move." Martin remarked, with all the grace of someone who knew that they were doing wrong, and was mildly proud of their own genius.

Deborah's gaze fell onto his face, which was held stiffly and determinedly; it was only small indicators like the slight quiver of his lips and the widening of his eyes that told her he was lacking the confidence that he exuded.

Even so, she couldn't help but shake her head and hide her smirk behind the back of her hand. The sod…the devious, little shit. She really hoped that this worked, so she sat back and observed.

"No you didn't." the paramedic replied, hardly a fool. It wasn't a very good lie, anyone could see that.

"I absolutely did." Martin insisted dismissively; he dug his hands into his pockets, a move that on any other man would have projected the suavity of his confidence. On Martin, it hid the nervous clenching of his fingers as he swung them ever so slightly within his jacket.

"This man's been dead for some time, sir." The paramedic told him, shaking her head and holding back an irritable grimace.

"I don't think so. I am telling you: I just saw him move." Martin insisted airily; he was looking anywhere but at the paramedic. Deborah's smirk threatened to bubble into a smile and she pressed her hand a little more firmly over her lips.

"What movement did he make?" the paramedic demanded with a practiced calm.

"He did a little wave." Martin stated; a quick glance showed that Carolyn too was watching him with an unbidden look of surprise and uncertainty on her face.

"I don't think so." The paramedic continued to fight him, shaking her head with more vigour as her tone leeched into the antagonised.

"Well, I do think so, and I am an airline captain – the commander of this vessel, and I am willing to swear anywhere that he absolutely did." Martin replied smarmily; Deborah exhaled sharply at the Martin-ish impressing of his status, even then; of course he couldn't leave that out, "He gave me a little wave, and then he pointed at you, and then he tapped his watch as if to say, 'Why aren't I in the hospital already?' And then he relapsed into his unconscious state; so it seems to me you can either refuse to take him and I can while away the hours I spend waiting with him filing a complaint against you for negligence, which will tie us all up in endless red tape until I eventually agree that maybe what I saw was just rigor mortis; or you can take him with you now in your big empty ambulance to the hospital to which you are going anyway, and we can all hope and pray he doesn't die on the way."

There was a long pause, in which Martin's expression trembled on the precipice of someone who knew they were pushing their luck and might have to retract their statement, yet he remained determinedly frozen in place; frozen as was the paramedic.

Deborah was eyeing both of them eagerly, praying for the first time that Martin was successful in this one venture.

Then the tension broke, and the paramedic's shoulder's sagged as she called out.

"Okay; Lucas – patient seen exhibiting vital signs. Get him on the gurney!"

"Thank you so much." Martin replied; once the paramedic had walked away, he let out a shaking breath that lasted so long that he must have been holding it in.

Over the next few minutes, the paramedics bustled in and out, Carolyn on their heels making sure that they treated GERTI with a modicum of respect.

Martin turned to Deborah, who removed the hand from her lips, confident that she would not grin with hilarity or squeal with premature pride, and merely smirked a little too brightly and extended her hands to motion for his approach.

Martin's eyes lit up, and he settled into a relieved smile as he slouched over to take the seat in the opposite row, even going so far as to remove the hat from his head and place it on his knee. He kept meeting Deborah's gaze, and she struggled to keep it, overwhelmed as she was by the joy that Martin seemed to radiate.

"That went well?" he asked once the cabin quieted; Deborah realised that he was genuinely asking for her opinion, scared, as if he might have made a mistake that he wasn't aware of.

"Yes, Martin, that went very well." Deborah assured him, noting his relieved sigh, "You got rid of the body that you accidentally made."

Martin rolled his eyes and shook his head, lifting a hand to run exhaustedly over his face.

"That did go well, didn't it." This was more a confirmation than a question.

It occurred to Deborah only as they were exiting the plane that perhaps she had been a little too congratulatory. It wouldn't do to raise his ego too much; Martin already looked as if he would tell every third person he met about his heroic feat.

That was alright though…he couldn't do too much damage.

oOoOoOo

The quiet that stretched across the flight-deck wasn't uncomfortable, wasn't as forced as some that Deborah had endured in the time that she had worked with Martin; the engines still whirred rhythmically, GERTI still clattered every now and then, and it was easy for the two of them to rest within their own spheres of thought while keeping a shard of consciousness focused sharply upon the control panel.

Martin was still stewing over the Easy-jet interview that he was destined to miss, of that she was sure; if there was one thing that could be relied upon, it was the regimented predictability of their Captain.

Or so she had thought until recently; Martin, it seemed, had a secret, hidden fun side that was as devious as it was elusive. It was the sort of thing that made Deborah sit up and pay attention without her even realising until after the fact.

She would be lying if she said that she hadn't thoroughly enjoyed his manipulation of the paramedic. It was moments like that which gave her an inkling of why she made the effort to try and be friendly with the man.

With Martin; Deborah had to keep reminding herself not to create such a mental disassociation between them, in an attempt to perhaps ease their way in the real world.

Which is why upon leaving Boston, Martin was clenched in his seat, the lithe fingers of one hand tapping a disjointed tune onto the arm while the other hand supported his pinched and thoughtful face, thinking about his lost interview, and Deborah was folded neatly into her own seat, looking out at the sky while keeping one eye on the Captain, thinking about him thinking about the interview.

She was sorry, she supposed, that he had missed it; then again, it was his own fault, and no matter how disgruntled he looked, Martin was a big boy and could handle his own disappointments without pats on the back to make him feel less accountable.

On the other hand, Deborah couldn't help but be just a little bit pleased, which led to a surge of bitterness. She had thought that Martin was beginning to like working with them, beginning to become accustomed to MJN's wily ways. Apparently that was not the case.

Apparently his friendly demeanour with Arthur was just a mask for apathy. Apparently any disjointed camaraderie that he had built up with her was just filling the time before he moved on and left them to rot at the back of his mind in the same way that everyone else looked down their noses at their ramshackle company. Apparently her companionship was too distasteful for him to want to spend longer than necessary in her presence.

Deborah was the first to admit that they were barely a proper airline, but damn it, MJN mattered. They mattered, and if Martin wanted to use them to fill his time before moving on to the next proper job, then so be it, but she wasn't going to budge, and she wasn't going to try and talk him out of it.

"Deborah?"

Deborah turned towards the tentative voice, the subject of her musings wafting just below the surface as she took in the tense posture and sheepish blush to the Captain's cheeks.

"Yes, Martin?" she replied, neither positively nor negatively, allowing him to decide whether or not to proceed.

Martin clearly took the lack of sarcastic remark to mean that she was listening and rapt with attention, as though his eyes refused to meet her, he continued in a tone that tried to be jaunty but revealed all too much of his inner wonderings.

"I was just…I, uh, I really made a hash of things today didn't I?" he asked, finally looking up to meet her gaze with a self-deprecating flicker of a smile.

That was new.

"Well…yes and no." Deborah remarked, offering her own thin smile in recompense. It had been a long day, and she decided at the last minute that perhaps Martin's show of modesty earned him her kindness rather than the many jabs that she could have thrown at him had she wished to.

"Yes and no?" Martin repeated, eyebrows pinching in confusion; he dragged his bottom lip through his teeth and continued to hold her gaze as if for once he was actually willing to listen to what she had to say.

"Yes in the sense that you ordered MJN's first public execution and then got yourself arrested for an entirely fictitious crime," Deborah explained, nodding at the right moments to emphasise her words, enjoying the fleeting shock, followed by realisation, followed by accepting resignation that Martin exuded, "No in the sense that you outwitted that villainous paramedic and temporarily earned your stripes."

Martin sighed, and to Deborah's relief, nodded with an agreeable hum under his breath, closing his eyes momentarily as of to let the stresses of the day bleed away in the absence of light.

"That's what I mean." He stated, making a definitive motion with his hand; Deborah nodded imperceptibly and waited patiently for him to get his thoughts in order, knowing by then that even trying to help him to the mark would create more confusion than necessary, "It's…do you think-" Martin cut himself off and shook his head, pursing his lips in determination as his blue eyes met Deborah's own with a steely glint, "Do you think that if I'd just sat back and let you go talk to Mr Lehman, he would still be alive?"

Deborah was thrown for a fraction of a second, caught off guard by the raw openness that Martin was laying out on a metaphorical plate for her to pick at and provide with answers as she pleased. She knew that she was holding herself particularly stiffly, but she didn't want to make him feel as if she were mocking him by sprawling as she usually would.

"Oh, Martin…he had a heart defect, he was going to go sooner or later." She assured him; he didn't look convinced, so she continued hastily, "You merely facilitated the sooner."

"But maybe if you had talked to him, he might have done as he was told." Martin insisted, sounding nothing if not disappointed with himself.

"As charming as it is knowing that you hold me in such esteem, Martin," Deborah almost drawled; an uncertain fluttering took root in her chest, but it didn't quite eclipse the bitter churning in her gut, "I don't think that would have been the case." as, Martin opened his mouth to argue, Deborah carried on, raising a hand to silence him, grasping at the rarity of the situation to finally make him hear her, for once, "Look at it this way; what did he say to you?"

Martin made a face, shrugging dismissively and checking the dials as if subconsciously.

"He insulted my job, my uniform…everything!" he exclaimed, indignant to the last, "He showed me no respect whatsoever."

She had suspected as much, but Deborah needed the confirmation to add substance to her own point. Try as she might, she wasn't quite able to hold his gaze as she spoke.

"Mr Lehman was the kind of man that had no respect for those that he didn't feel needed respect." She explained in a measured tone, keeping her eyes down, "He had no respect for the Captain of an airline, the man who held his life in his hands, and he had no respect for the CEO of the entire company, who had the authority to remove him from the aircraft." Deborah inhaled and exhaled slowly before pushing on, "What makes you think that he would have any respect, any inclination to listen, to a woman in an even lesser position of authority? You did as good a job as could have been done given the circumstances."

When she looked up, Martin's face was contorted into a picture of disbelief, which she supposed was complimentary, and yet mournful, as he didn't understand at all.

"But it's you," he retorted, gesturing towards her in an all-encompassing movement, "All you'd have to do would be to go in there, have a few words, and then they'd do whatever you had told them to do – you're authoritarian, you don't even have to try, it practically radiates off of you."

Deborah sighed; she allowed her hands to drift toward her waist, and for her fingers to fiddle mindlessly with her epaulets. She shook her head drearily as she spoke.

"Martin, being respected is like being treated like a Captain, it's not about what you do, it's about how others perceive you…you are the most authoritarian person I know, the reason that nobody thinks that you are the Captain is that they don't perceive you to be so." She elucidated, sighing into her explanation with a weariness that she tried so hard to push away during the day, "You can make them see you as a Captain by altering the way that you appear, looking less eager; people will then see you as a Captain and treat you accordingly…unfortunately, no matter how much I alter my appearance, I will still be ultimately female…those that see me as such will continue to treat me as such…Mr Lehman wouldn't have listened to me, you did fine."

"But you being a woman doesn't make any difference!" Martin argued, then he looked at Deborah; he really looked at her, his eyes lingering on her face for longer than it had before; his features softened, and his eyes lost some of their heat as he looked genuinely upset, "It doesn't make a difference to me."

The flutter returned, and Deborah couldn't reply immediately, choked as she was by the gratefulness that threatened to leap into speech against her will. Her fingers tightened around the rough material of her sleeves, and she swallowed before replying.

"That's because, despite all your flaws Martin, and there are many, you remain, at heart, a decent bloke." She remarked, smirking without any real intention, so quickly that it disappeared before she was truly aware of it.

To her pleasure, she seemed to have caught him off guard, and he appeared unsure of how to respond to such words of kindness. Martin merely nodded, pushing a hand to his head, as if to run through his red hair, instead knocking his hat back and forcing himself to readjust it. After a muted, restrained smile that adorned his deliciously flushed cheeks, Martin's hand shot out to begin requesting a weather report, and Deborah began sifting through her mind for a suitable word game.

Anything to leave behind the serious talk and enter the controlled tedium.

I'm trying to move further away from the scripts with these, to fill in the gaps in the narrative - so I hope that's okay?

Any comments or criticisms, always welcome - thankyou for reading

Next time - Cremona!