Ames was finding life suddenly full of surprises. Most of them in form of Ktak, materializing out of nowhere for a quick makeout session in some far off corner of the ship. These were quite pleasant, but not as good as sneaking into her compartment to watch old earth movies almost every night and usually ending up falling a sleep there. He was getting very good at navigating between their compartments with only rest period lights on and without needing to use his own light.
Surprising was also the fact that nobody was curious any more who exactly was he dating. Sarah had pestered him a bit, as had his coworkers but had eventually had stoped. He did not realize when it stopped, just that it had. Nerdy as he was, he did not realize he had ended them himself with that punch.
The incident had occured in the break room. Ames was quietly enjoying his coffe, when he heard Tomas over at the card table cursing the command staff. Nothing unusal really. But when he called his Commander "that freakish giant dockwhore" something fliped. Tomas had to go to med bay to have his nose set and Ames spent the night in the brig calming down. Next day he applogized to Tomas, but warned him, that he had a short fuse about the woman who had saved his live. Tomas had nasally conceded, that he had said possibly too much and he hadn't actually meant it, but was just venting.
When Ktak asked about the incident, Ames insisted it was nothing she needed to worry about.
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Neither of the two realized this, but the human staff at least had already put two and two together. For Ames, who seemed to have no fuse at all, to blow up like that there had to be a reason. And his sneaking around in darkness did not pass entierly un-noticed either. Conclusions were drawn, those conclusions discussed on the grapewine and as commander was notably better liked than most Tamare despite the occasional cussing amongst humans and she was likely to get in trouble with the rest, and possibly removed from the ship, decision reached that nobody had seen nothing, for now. But everybody was quite curious where these two were going to end up and how long they would go un-noticed by the Tamare.
And being humans, there was betting going on on the outcome.
The highest odds option on the board was breakup on her part over a minor issue, ie Ames leaving his dirty socks on the floor.
Second highest was Ames cheating. Some female betters of this category had tried to influence the outcome in their favor. Ames of course was totally oblivious as to why suddently there was an uptick of scantly clad ladies needing his help fixing something in their compartments, rendering aid as asked and letting the rest of the hinting go totally unnoticed. Some of the ladies that had thought of their attraction to be quite high were gravely mortified by his lack of interest.
Third highest was Tamare catching them and putting an end to it, by stationing her somewhere else.
Fourth was them eloping. It had the lowest odds and best returns. And a sole better. The optimist was Sarah. She had bet a good chunk of her savings and would be getting the pot if this was to come to pass.