“Mm,” The sound is involuntary, and the way his hand moves to swat the captain aside is as instinctive as the slight and strange way he cocked his hips so that he could arch his side out of easy reach. “Fuck off, you twat,” Falls from his lips before he even looks and realizes who it is, and it is decidedly not who he thought it was.
Which, admittedly, was about ninety percent of the crew. He had a good enough rapport with most of them that he knew the better majority of the lot would try it – some were too serious, others too respectful, and still others – smart enough to know Gates didn’t like them enough to let them get away with it.
Still left a pretty large majority though.
“What’s gotten into you?” He could not help but wonder – playfulness wasn’t really a public thing with the captain. “You’re not sick are you,” A tease to make up for the other response, his hand reaching over as if to check the man’s forehead – further indicating Hal wasn’t actually pissed, just startled.
Ocean Archive 