ᴄʟᴏɴᴇ ᴏɴᴇ ꜱʜᴏᴛꜱ

Stop Talking (Tech x Reader)

  Tech is busy making repairs on the ship. Y/N comes by and starts talking to him, flustering him to no avail.

——

"Good news!" Tech exclaimed, holding tightly to the steering wheel. "We'll be landing on this planet a lot sooner than we'd thought."

Y/N strapped into the passenger seat, taking up her mantle while looking over the various alerts on the dash with concern lacing her eyes. She glanced over at Tech, "And the bad news?"

"We're crash landing."

As if on queue, the engines stalled. Y/N took the time to cuss at Tech, who rolled his eyes dramatically. "Engage the aft emergency thrusters—our main thrusters are failing."

"Our thrusters?" Y/N retorted, obliging his command. "Our thrusters, Tech? They're not ours when they're failing, darling!"

"They don't get to be mine when they work, love. I think at the very least, we can share custody if they're combusting." He jerked the wheel to the left, nearly sending Y/N into the wall.

"Watch it, sweetheart, or you won't have anyone to share the ship with."

He groaned, "Maybe then I can share it with three other people who are a lot less snippy."

This playful banter would seem distracting to an outsider, but truthfully, it was grounding for Y/N. She'd been in several serious crashes, so not only was she accustomed to the view of a planet's surface barreling towards the cockpit, she had also come to grow a serious anxiety around turbulence and crash landings. It didn't help that many of the times she'd been in a crash, the regs with her died horrible deaths. She'd held many dying hands because of those incidences.

Tech knew a little bit of this history, which was why, when Y/N shot a snarky comment his way, he didn't ignore it. He'd try to keep her mind focusing on a come back instead of possible death. He needed her functioning, especially in an emergency. As he tried desperately to get the engines back online, he let the back of his mind come up with more quips to keep Y/N from panicking.

"Landing gear can stay up. I'd much rather replace the paneling than purchase new landing gear—again," he flipped another switch and the lights flickered on. With a shout of triumph, he yanked back the wheel and engaged the main thruster, slowing their decent drastically—though not enough.

"Darling, as much as I enjoy going fast with you, this is a bit much—"

"Really? I pegged you for the rough and dirty type, Y/N."

He glanced over to catch her eye roll before she reached up to disengage the emergency thrusts. The engine roared with excess power, trying hard to come to a stand-still, but the planet's gravity and the ship's inertia yanked it downward.

"Ten hundred meters," she counted down, "nine hundred... eight hundred. Tech, we aren't slowing fast enough!"

"I'm giving it all she's got!"

"Well, give it more," she hissed, "all the gabagoo!"

"The kriff is gabagoo?"

"Whatever it is, we need more of it!" She turned to the wall of controls, "I'm going to disengage every ulterior power source except for what we need to land in one piece."

"Sounds good," he replied, doing what he could to help.

The lights and air conditioning hummed, dying, soon followed by other non-vital systems. "That should do it—"