Did you ever seen two starships mate?

"Did you ever seen two starships mate?", asked the guy next to me at the bar, leaning in my direction. I think he was trying to leer, but his eyes were swimming in alcohol already, so that did not work too well.

I wondered how that attempt at a joke would play out, so I gave him a straight answer. “Yes, I have.” From the way his face fell, it was not what he'd expected.

"Eh? What?"

"I’ve occasionally snatched a window seat in a café on the touristy side, with a view of the waiting cloud. Good place for watching starship behaviour." The station had seen an unexpected increase in traffic after the discovery of another wormhole nearby, and was still working on adding docking capacity.

"You’re having me on." He sagged a little, and pouted, of all things.

"No, really. If you did shipwatching daily, I’m sure you’d see it a lot."

"You really think starships breed?"

"No." I raised my hand to get the bartender’s attention, paid my short tab and slid off the stool before explaining. "They call it coupling or mating when two ships link airlocks. Have a nice end-of-shift."

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The title was a prompt by lilfluff (it's a line from the song Stuck Here by Stephen Savitzky)