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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Extension_Switch_823 on 2025-07-05 22:15:09+00:00.
Kib thought that the human of his ship was a loner, by all human metrics the man could go a frankly ridiculous amount of time without any meaningful social interaction and be completely fine.
She thought he’d be absolutely fine on his solo excursion.
By all reason and reasoning he should have had the most relaxing week of his life and yet…
Isaac practically stumbled out of his personal transport and hugged the first crewmember he could name… Which took some time and brought him into the bridge, where he held officer ‘Minty’ for about two minutes before walking away without a word.
She pondered and inquired for almost an hour wandering what the outburst of physical companionship was for and came up with practically nothing.
Another human had a contained habitat in a refinery base, with the industrial and natural segments both requiring regular maintenance. The base had adequate (even by human standards) defenses, solid infrastructure, a good bandwidth connection to the spark net, and existed in a fairly safe sector.
Several animal companions and a small ecosystem were contained within and above the main living space as well as the cleanest construction of centrifugal heavy ingester separators she’d ever seen. Everything was stacked up nicely, piped efficiently, easy to access and had proper readouts.
The reason he’d been summoned to look after the facility (which would have taken more than 6 of any other speicies) alone was that one of their team had been kidnapped while on leave. Isaac had been brought in to look after everything while it was on ‘sleep mode’ and make sure the animals stayed fed.
With their mission complete the crew of the station was on their way back and the human who’d looked after their stuff had returned to his own duties.
Or so she thought.
Kib was looking around her ship for Isaac for a long time, he wasn’t in any of his usual spots and instead only found him by happenstance. He was sitting on the very front most point of the vessel in his spacesuit, tethered properly, boots engaged, just standing.
She shrugged, assembled her suit and made her way out to join him, the passing scenery of the local gas giant and sun focusing megastructure was quite captivating.
“Welcome back Human Isaac, did you enjoy your staycation?” she attempted a greeting over coms, it made him flinch
“Boson Kib, its good to be back but it was no vacation out there.” he replied back, sounding a little sick.
“Oh? Did I misjudge the strain of maintaining the inactive facility?” again her words made him flinch, was her volume too loud?
“No Kib, there was more to it than just watering and feeding some things but it was training in a different way.” he patted the hull next to where he was sitting, a universal invitation to come sit with him.
She sat and he continued, “I was alone, I know I usually work in solitude but whole ship is around me full of people who will try to help if anything goes wrong. Sure sometimes one or two of you are annoying or have some weird conception of whats polite or not, but if I end up hurt you’d all help me and I’d help you.”
She felt felt the warm glow of gratitude in her chest and listened as he went on, “Out on that station there was no immediate danger, nothing to prepare for or stave off, all the hazards were marked and easy to avoid but for the first time in a long time I was alone.”
“If I needed help it would be hours away, maybe even days. If anything went wrong I’d have noone to call, noone to pull me out or away from whatever might be happening, nothing but a little blinky beacon everyone ignores because pirates are bastards.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“And I’m not use to feeling that helpless, it twists up everything inside and makes the dumbest things super hard to get done.” he finished with an odd tinge to his voice.
Kib leaned against him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders gently, squeezing to make sure he felt it.
“You’re not good with solitude.” she summed up, she couldn’t tell if he coughed or chuckled but he nodded and patted her arm.
“Humans are social creatures, even if we don’t always participate socially.”
She nodded in her helmet and started letting go slowly, “We’ll get Doc Binsly to fix you up nice and you’ll be back to your normal snarky self before the week is out!”
Isaac jolted a bit and swiped a hand playfully in her direction, “Can we leave Doc out of this please, i’m already getting an ear full from him about my ‘conduct in front of industrial hazards’” He mimed the Doctor’s serious posture with his impression as he picked himself up.
“Nope, that cough has me worried, besides, you said things get twisted up inside, we’ve got to have him take a look and see if things can be untwisted.” She declared as she rose up with him.
“This is the last thing I need,” he snarked as he followed her to the door, she could feel his heart wasn’t in it but she knew the effort was worth something.
(i wonder if i can link images in comments)