After a moment, though, he decided that he did want to sit and so turned toward the plush couch and took a step only to stop mid-stride when Mara plopped down. He managed to change the step into something of a jerky sidestep and only stumbled slightly as he made his way around the back and to the far side where he leaned against the back instead of sitting. He could feel his face reddening already and in an effort to hide this fact from Mara (and the others) he resumed his devout study of the floor.

Only when the cup shattered against the wall did Percy look up thankful (perhaps for the first time in his life) for Ransom and his distractions. It was not that he didn’t like Mara, quite the contrary. He would not go so far as to say that he had feelings for her but he was a man and she a woman and there was no stopping the ideas that thought created. Percy would never act on them of course, even if it weren’t for his inability to talk to women (and near enough anyone else) he was not looking for some fling, for him it had to be love.

Rawls said nothing that he hadn’t already told Davon and Percy so, while he remained standing where he was, he also remained silent. Anything that he’d had to say about the mission, or missions, had already been said and there was no need to bring it up again.

"Sorry, Mr. Dacres," he said, turning his attention back to Ryner, but not before lingering for a moment on Percy's painfully awkward sashay about the galley. He shook his head, grateful that Percy wasn't at all as clumsy at the controls as he was around women. "The Quelii Sector?" Rawls repeated, thinking to himself. He had a general idea where it was, although Davon would know for sure. He glanced back at his navigator, eager to distract him from his anger at Ransom. "That's not far, I don't think," he said to him, letting it linger as a question for a moment before turning back to Ryner. "I conjure it's not far out of the way to Garos, point of fact. We should be able to make it there all right. Depends where you're going though, 'course. Some of that Sector is a warzone, as I remember it. Empire and Drackmarians, sommat." He glanced about the galley in silence. "What?" he said, indignantly, "I do read the news now and then, yes."

"But," he said, nodding briefly to Percy and then glancing back to Ryner, "I figure we can make a detour to those parts and figure out the specifics in private, as you said." He would mind, ordinarily, except that Rawls needed to have a word with 'Dacres' in private anyway, and this was as good an excuse as any. He didn't figure the crew would feel left out—they knew that the Captain always told them what they needed to know. Well, except that time at the abandoned comsat. But that was just funny.

He stepped beside Davon, reached into the cupboard and produce a pair of glasses; he hoped it would be just him and Davon, not because he really had anything private to talk about but because it was clear that Rawls and Ryner would be otherwise occupied and that left only Ransom who was not what Percy really classed as the ideal drinking partner.

As he held the glasses out he nodded surreptitiously to the navigator sure that his nod would be understood as ‘we need to go prep for Quelli’. “So,” he said out loud. “Mara’s something else huh?” Not that he really wanted to discuss his feeling about their only female crew member; he just really had nothing else to say to Davon. He liked the kid (he thought of him that way even though he was only a few years older) plenty well but Percy really did not talk to many people other than Rawls, and even that was seldom about anything other than business.

Sometimes Windsor felt a bit sorry for himself when he though of how he really had no friends. Sure, he'd die for any of the crew and they for him; that was what family did, but Percy really had no genuine friends to speak of. Oft when he did start feeling a bit melancholy he had only to remind himself that it was, in fact, his fault.