Vespa doesn’t talk with Ransom much. They have… clashing personalities. Buddy says they’re too similar, which is just more of her ‘family bonding’ bullshit. There’s nothing similar about them. Yes, they both carry knives, but lots of people carry knives. Ransom’s mysterious and closed off and obnoxiously in love with Juno and gets defensive too quickly and-
Yes, they’re nothing alike. And she wants nothing to do with him.
Unfortunately, things Vespa wants nothing to do with seem to have their ways of always finding her, and they haven’t been on the ship two weeks before Ransom makes his way to her sickbay.
It wasn’t even a mission that did it. They’ve been confined to the ship for four days now, and even Ransom would be hard-pressed to injure himself in that time. Despite this, he knocks at Vespa’s door around midday, looking pale and panicked and a whole slew of other things she wouldn’t typically ascribe to him.
“Miss Vespa, I-”
“Don’t call me that,” she snaps, pulling him inside and closing the door. “What do you want?”
Peter stands just inside the door, shifting nervously from foot to foot. “Well, you see, it’s a rather complicated matter, and…” He trails off, seemingly lost to something inside his head. Vespa puts a hand on her hip. “It’s sort of… It’s very… I’m not sure how I should go about-”
“Oh, for the love of fuck, Ransom, spit it out!”
Ransom cringes, looking down at the floor, cheeks flushed. “There is a cyst of some sort on my… personal area… that wasn’t there two days ago,” he manages, voice cracking all over the place.
Vespa deflates. Oh. Oh. See, this, she gets. She can do medicine. She can do dysphoria. She can do the existential terror and skin-crawling discomfort of a body part you aren’t even supposed to have malfunctioning. She drops her hands to her sides. “Ransom, are you trying to tell me that there’s a lump on your vagina?”
Ransom squeezes his eyes shut. “Unfortunately, yes. I’m sorry to bother you with this, doctor, but I’d rather it not develop into something that could hold me back from my top performance.”
Vespa sighs, rolling her eyes. “I’m your doctor. This is a medical issue. Buddy already told you to tell me about any medical issues and, frankly, I’m pissed that you waited two days before coming to me.”
Ransom bristles. “Well, I assumed it would take care of itself and saw no reason to raise unnecessary alarm,” he protests.
“More like, ‘saw no reason to cause unnecessary dysphoria,’” she grumbles, rifling through a drawer for her medscanner. “Sit down on the goddamn bed.”
Ransom perches himself on the edge of the nearest cot, crossing and uncrossing his ankles as he watches Vespa approach with the scanner. “What would you have me do, Doctor?”
Vespa recognizes the wild fear in his eyes. A cornered animal. “Just lie flat on your back. I’m going to run the scanner over your pubic area. Hopefully, it’ll pick up whatever’s going on down there. This part doesn’t involve any touching, by the way. I just hold it above you.” Ransom relaxes visibly, shoulders falling, and he goes over easy, lying back with his long legs hanging over the end of the cot.
“Give me a quick rundown of what you found down there,” she says as she turns on the scanner and brings up the proper settings.
“One lump roughly the size of a fingernail under the skin of the right side of my labia minora,” Ransom rattles off. “Minimal pain, but some discomfort.”
“Any idea what it looks like? It’s probably just an ingrown hair and you put me through all of this for nothing,” she tells him.
“I’m afraid I… didn’t look,” Ransom admits, staring determinedly at the ceiling. “Didn’t do much feeling, either.”
Vespa nods. Once, before her medical transition had been well and truly underway, she’d caught a knife across her chest. Bud’d had to stitch it. She’d also had to clean it every day for the three weeks Vespa couldn’t bear to look at it. Just this once, she can extend Ransom that sympathy. Just once. Just because they’re both trans. Not because they have anything else in common.
“That’ll have to work, then,” she says, holding the device over his hips. “Like I said, it’s probably nothing. It’ll show up here and I’ll give you a steroid cream or something.” The machine beeps and she moves it to the next spot.
The next five minutes are filled only with the scanner’s soft noises and Ransom’s softer, shaky breathing. Then, the scan’s done.
Vespa examines the screen, checking the outline for any deviations from the norm. Sure enough, there’s a mass of the size he indicated in the place he indicated. Unfortunately, that’s all she can tell about it. It’s just… a lump. No detail. No alert from the machine, which means no cancerous growth or serious infection, but no detail.
“Bad news, Ransom,” she says.
He raises an eyebrow, doing his level best not to look worried. Snake. “What’s the matter, Doctor?”
“Well, you’re not dying of cancer and you don’t have a weird infection.”
“I fail to see how that’s-”
“I’m gonna have to take a look in person.”
Vespa can feel the way Ransom’s stomach drops.
“Ransom, you ready? I’m coming in.” Vespa knocks at the door and opens it when she hears a small, tremulous, “yes,” from inside.
Unfortunately for both parties involved, Vespa is about to get up close and personal with Ransom’s dick. Whatever lump he’s got going on down there (her money’s on ingrown hair or cyst) isn’t giving up the game easily, and she’d rather bite the bullet now than have to deal with something painful and dangerous later.
Ransom’s perched on the edge of the bed again, pants off and lower half covered in the blanket Vespa gave him. He’s got his arms crossed over his shoulders and she swears he’s managed to sink further into his button-down. His dress pants sit in a neatly folded pile on the chair next to the bed.
She comes to a stop in front of him, raising her eyebrows and staring until he meets her eyes. “Are you sure I’m the one you want to be doing this?” she asks. “I could get someone else to describe it to me.” She could. It wouldn’t be nearly as accurate, but it might be more comfortable for Ransom.
“I’m sure,” he says. “You’re my doctor. I trust that.” Not you, that.
She nods. “Alright. When was the last time you saw a gynecologist?” Things are easier now that she has a patient and an objective. This isn’t the man she picks fights with over breakfast, he’s just a patient with a problem and she’s here to solve it. Simple.
Then Ransom starts avoiding her eyes again.
“Ransom?”
“Hmm?”
“When was the last time you had a checkup?” She smiles tightly. Never mind, he’s getting on her nerves again.
“Oh, I’m afraid I don’t remember. Forgive me, you know how it is.” His hand flutters anxiously through the air.
“Bullshit.”
Ransom’s mouth tightens down to a thin, bloodless line. “My last checkup was just before my top surgery.” His hands tighten around each other in his lap. “Which would make it about fifteen years ago.”
Vespa chokes on air. “ What? Ransom, you can’t just-”
“Doctor, I would expect you of all people to understand how time can get away from a person. Please do not lecture me on the past,” Ransom snaps, arms wrapping around his middle again. “I’m sure you know what I mean when I say that appointments such as this are unsettling for me.”
Vespa looks at Ransom for a moment, taking everything in. She tries to see past the obvious con, the danger, the attitude, everything that jumps out at her and screams, ‘Stab this one and run!” He’s bouncing his leg near-frantically and his eyes won’t land on one spot. He’s sweating. Ransom is nervous and, if her experience is anything to go by, he’s afraid of her.
“Alright, Ransom,” she sighs, pulling a chair up to the end of the bed. “Let’s get on with it, then. Lie back.”
Ransom does just that, holding the sheet over his legs with white knuckles. He’s shaking, she realizes.
“I’m going to tell you everything I do before I do it. Tell me if anything gets to be too much for you.” Ransom hums in affirmation and she continues. “This should be short. I’m not going to give you a full exam and what I’m looking for is external, so there won’t be anything but my hands down here.” She sits, careful not to brush against Ransom’s legs as she gets comfortable. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
One cyst discovery and one minor surgery later, Ransom is running off to his room with his tail between his legs, woozy from the anesthesia and shaky from the dysphoria. Whatever. Vespa’ll get someone else to check on him if he doesn’t show in a few hours. God knows she’s spent her fair share of bad days curled up under her bed with the lights off.
Not that she and Ransom have anything in common.
Vespa updates Buddy on Ransom’s condition (sore but ready for action in a day or two) and puts the whole thing from her mind. Seeing any man’s dick, let alone Ransom’s, has never been on her to-do list, and she highly doubts that having a woman touch him is something Ransom planned on, either. Growing up in the Outer Rim leaves its scars, after all. Not every planet is as kind as Mars.
That night, Rita manages to convince Buddy that they need to have Family Bonding Time. They’re watching a stream. All of them. In the lounge.
By the time Vespa comes in, tired and warm and forcing Buddy to drag her like a child, Jet, Rita, and Steel are already settled in. A menu screen bearing the title Hyperspeed Squirrel Mania flashes across the screen and Vespa groans, burying her face in Buddy’s shoulder as soon as they sit down.
A cool hand makes its way into her hair. “Oh, stop being so dramatic, dear. You’ll live. Or you’ll sleep through it.” Then, to Juno, “Darling, have you seen Ransom?”
Juno frowns. “Not since earlier. He said he’d be out, though.”
Like a demon summoned from hell, Ransom chooses that moment to appear in the doorway, pale and tired and wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, something she’s never seen him in. He glances around like he might say something, but ultimately makes a beeline for Juno, settling on the floor beside him and crossing his legs.
Ransom doesn’t say a word all night, but Vespa watches as he tentatively lays his head on Juno’s knee. When Juno doesn’t move, he makes himself more comfortable. Before Vespa knows it, Peter’s half-asleep with Juno’s hand in his hair and a blissed-out look on his face. Vespa rolls her eyes and turns her face further into Buddy’s hand, prompting her to scratch harder.
Imagine thinking Vespa and Ransom have anything in common. What a load of bullshit.