Title: Near Miss
Fandom: Silk (TV)
Length: 500 words
Rating: G
Characters: Martha Costello, Captain Cassidy
Content notes: no warnings apply
Author note: This one is for Owl_by_Night; spoilers for Silk s2 ep2
Summary: He makes you think you have a shot, but you don't, not really.



He’s a terrible flirt, Captain Cassidy. A really terrible flirt, and completely shameless about it. Teasing Martha that she’s very good at drinking, saying “Bet that you look good on the dance floor.” God. Thought that chat-up routine went out with the Ark. His dancing’s practically out of the Ark, too, the sort of ballroom dancing her grandad tried to teach her when she was a kid. Cassidy waltzes her around, twirls her and dips her, laughing, apparently not caring how ridiculous he looks, they look, and she doesn’t care either. “Close your eyes,” he says, “and this could be Saigon – or Singapore – or Dar es Salaam.” She doesn’t close her eyes. Why should she? The officers’ mess is exotic enough for her.

He’s easy on the eye, Captain Cassidy, and doesn’t he know it? He’s got that look down pat, the one that says This isn’t a game any more, this could be real if you want it to. And Christ, she’s tempted: as unprofessional as that would be, she’s seriously thinking about it, and he knows that too. Wooing her with secrets, her grandad’s file. Making her feel like she’s the one in control. Telling her where his room is, just down the corridor from hers, an invitation they both know she shouldn’t accept, both know she wants to.

It’s sexy, all that shared knowledge. Intimate. And it’s a bloody lie. Because when she gives in, when she goes to take what he’s been promising her all evening, there’s someone else there with him. Crying, and being comforted. His best friend, the man she’s there to defend. That’s what it’s all been about, and so she tells him, next day.

Except there’s a look in his eyes that’s not put on, or she doesn’t think it is. When he asks “Why were you outside my room?” The moment when the penny drops, when he understands there could have been something between them. Something that wasn’t about the court-martial. But it’s gone, that chance: the only way she’ll get to see him without his uniform is when she barges in on him getting dressed and they argue, and he won’t look her in the eye.

Honourable behaviour. Loyalty. Comradeship. “I love my men,” Captain Ryan tells the court. Cassidy would say the same, no doubt. They’re like a different species, these men, uptight and buttoned-up and falling apart inside. You’d think she’d be used to it, after the Bar, but this is something else again.

He takes rejection well, Captain Cassidy. Squares his shoulders, gives her a nod so slight it’s barely visible, and turns on his heel without a word. What was that in his eyes: disappointment, or relief? Maybe both. If they’d met some other way, would he have given her a second glance? Would she have let herself be charmed, let herself fall a little? It doesn’t matter now. She’s done her job, and it’s time to go back to her own world, her own kind.