Fandom: Original: airship pirates
Genre: Fiction//Fantasy/Comedy/Romance
Notes: This is old.  Like, a year and a half at least old.  Like, written for jan_the_verse's birthday two years ago old.  Like, written and never given to her because I was going to revise it except that I haven't yet old.  And as it's still not getting revised, I promised I'd put it up for her when she completed her exams for the semester and post the edited version whenever the hell it gets edited.  So here it is.
*Note: the edited version will have additional scenes. (yay!)
**Double note: see the icon?  That is Lexis.
  To Bell the Cat

 

They took him on board in Taurin, not long after he’d sweet-talked the reigning family out of their entire treasury and just before the watchmen caught up with him for it.

Ivaldi personally didn’t have any real reason for joining them, other than his curiosity and insatiable restlessness and the fact that Captain Narrick was a very good sell.  It might have been the coat, really—Ivaldi had to believe anybody with a coat like that knew what he was talking about.  It looked like he’d stolen it off an Arigauldian military commander from the previous century.  It was bright blue and had fringed gold epaulets.

It perhaps might also have been the alternate prospective of jail that spurred him to join, but Ivaldi preferred to figure that as inconsequential.

Captain’s ridiculous coat aside, Narrick was a fine specimen of airship pirate.  A bit young for the role, perhaps, but from Ivaldi’s observations he had a sharp mind and a quick tongue and an eye for creative trouble that Ivaldi quite frankly couldn’t fault, since that was what had gotten him noticed in the first place.  So he accepted the proposition and entered Narrick’s crew with the pleasant impression that he had at last entered into the company of people like himself who appreciated the notion that his abundant intellect and expensive education be put to use for fun and profit (as opposed to, say, the betterment of society). 

The first thing Narrick did, once they were completely clear of Taurian airspace, was introduce Ivaldi to the crew.  As it turned out, there wasn’t much of it.

Leah was First Mate, and also apparently cook, strategian, former navigator, disciplinarian, resident mother figure and voice of reason.  She accepted him with a neutrality that said both that she looked forward to welcoming him into the family and that he’d earn his place in it or wouldn’t stay at all.  He offered his best gentleman’s smile and kissed her hand, and her nod told him he was off to a pretty good start. 

The mechanic was named Scrimshaw, and Scrimshaw was a scrawny, grimy, large-mouthed pre-pubescent boy.  He glared up at Ivaldi with all the indignance of a man whose property is being trespassed upon.  Ivaldi met his gaze, raised an eyebrow; grinned.  Scrimshaw grinned back in spite of himself, and then looked somewhat annoyed that he’d betrayed his intent so soon.  He brought back the glare with an extra dose of fire, but Ivaldi knew the boy had already been won.

“Don’t let this kid fool you,” said Narrick, ruffling Scrimshaw’s hair and ignoring the disgusted expression and the eye-roll that it earned him.  “He single-handedly keeps the whole ship afloat with his mechanical genius, but he still has to wash the floors.”

The deck was admittedly a lot cleaner than Scrimshaw himself.

The Captain turned to the third and final member of his crew, and gestured as though he were introducing a show.  “And this,” he said with the air of one who is certain of a reward, “is Lexis.”

Lexis was a tiny blonde creature, made even smaller by her slightly hunched, predatory posture, low to the ground like a cat about to strike.  She was even filthier than Scrimshaw, and she was equipped with more weapons than Ivaldi had ever seen a single person carry in his life.  Her blue eyes—the only part of her not covered in muck—seemed to glow in contrast to all the dirt, but it was just as easy to attribute that to something feral in their depths.  Lexis looked at Ivaldi as though it were the last thing she was inclined to do, gave him a critical once-over, then bared her teeth at him and hissed.

Ivaldi burst out laughing.

The punch to his jaw was powerful enough and unexpected enough to actually knock him to the ground.  He was amazed she could even reach that high.  Narrick and Scrimshaw were doubled over laughing at him a few feet away, but Ivaldi wasn’t inclined to blame them.  When he pushed himself onto his elbows to watch Lexis storm away, he was staring after her with a grin of unabashed admiration. 

 

Narrick was showing him around the airship a few hours later when she accosted them in the brig.  “Captain,” she spat at Narrick, and Ivaldi got the impression that this title was not being used for its respectful connotations, “Have you lost your fuckin’ mind?”

The Captain gave her a rather significant look.  “Quite possibly,” he drawled, “But that would have been some time ago.”

Lexis snarled.  “You’re not seriously letting some lying, cheating, two-faced stuck-up aristocrat Arigauldian scum on this ship.”  This was not a question, and she pointedly ignored the fact that said scum was standing right next to her.  “Y’can’t trust him just ‘cause he’s literate!  ‘Fact, y’can’t trust him ‘cause he’s literate!”

“This is true; your illiteracy is much more worthy of my faith,” Narrick conceded. 

If Lexis’ expression could have gotten any darker, Ivaldi thought her complexion might have rivaled his own.  “See if yer still laughing when he crosses you,” she hissed, “‘cause I will be.”  She vanished into the bowels of the ship as quickly as she’d appeared.

“Fascinating creature,” remarked Ivaldi.  “Where did you find that one?”

“Actually, she found us.  It was more a matter of not letting her abscond with our nicer pieces of weaponry.”

“And she sticks around for…?”

Narrick shrugged.  “The free food and the chance to kill things, I expect.”

Ivaldi nodded.  “Noble reasons, those.”

 

He didn’t see her again for several days—where she kept to on a ship that wasn’t honestly that big, he couldn’t begin to fathom.  His third day on board, she suddenly appeared for dinner, and attacked the dishes that Leah had made as though she’d only just remembered she was hungry.  She flipped off the Captain when he made a snide remark about her table manners, listened to Scrim babble excitedly about flywheels and then mocked him mercilessly, and abandoned all her dirty dishes on the table when she vanished again, leaving Ivaldi to contemplate whether this was standard Lexis behavior or if she’d be catching it from the Captain later.  Or the First Mate, perhaps—Narrick looked pretty amused.

Either way, Ivaldi saw no reason not to make it his business to find out.  They were all residents of this craft, after all, and it was important to know the social customs of one’s locale.

He discovered the first such custom when he stepped off the main deck into one of the side halls and a knife pressed into his neck.  “You been following me,” Lexis hissed.  She was upside-down from a ceiling beam, so that her voice was right in his ear.  A few strands of blonde fell across his shoulder, looking golden in the dark.

“Yes,” said Ivaldi, because he was.

“You’re some kinda spy, ain’tcha?  You’re a no-good lousy piece of aristocrat shit tryin’ to get us in trouble with one gover-mint or another.  You’re taking advantage of Narrick’s goodwill and general lack a’ sense most likely just ‘cause you think it’d be fun.  Gimme one good reason not to slit your throat right now.”

“Are you from Gelph?” Ivaldi asked conversationally.

The dagger pressed harder and she growled, “I will cut you—”

“Because your accent seems to be vaguely from that region, but I can’t place it exactly.  It’s most curious.  Then again, it might be your horrible mutilation of the Common language that’s throwing me off.” 

The angry hiss reached an inhuman pitch; Ivaldi was again reminded of large feral cats.  There was a definite trickle of blood running down his neck at this point, which he thought added a nice touch of color to his otherwise boring shirt, although the effect would be ruined if she didn’t ease up with the knife soon. 

Leah stepped into the hallway with an armload of dirty dishes.  “Lexis,” she said mildly as she passed them, “Are you threatening the new navigator?”

Lexis growled in his ear and the pressure at his neck disappeared, vanishing with her somewhere into the rafters. 

At least now he knew why she was so difficult to find.

 

She had Scrimshaw overboard, tied by an ankle from the deck railing.  The weather was clear and pleasant, the wind practically non-existent; so the mechanic had braced his free leg against the side of the ship and settled there, apparently resigned – if not comfortable – with his fate. 

Ivaldi took this all in when he came out on deck to charter their altitude and distance from land.  He looked from Scrim, to Lexis, to Scrim, up to the sky, and back to Lexis again.  “Lexis!  What a pleasant surprise!”

They stared at him like he’d grown a second head.  For Scrim, this involved craning his neck upwards from the side of the ship, but he managed it.

“Beautiful day, is it not?” Ivaldi continued, as though there were genuinely nothing wrong with having used the words ‘Lexis’ and ‘pleasant’ in conjunction with one another.  He gestured at the strung-up boy.  “This a hobby of yours?”

The grin was more a display of teeth than anything.  “He was invadin’ my space.”

Ivaldi chuckled.  “Bit young yet, aren’t you?” he called to Scrimshaw, who was ignoring him so pointedly that it was obvious he was listening, “You don’t want this one, anyway.  Hold out for some real ladies.”

Somehow the lady in question didn’t seem any more insulted by this than she was by his presence—which was still met by the warning exhibit of canines.  He suspected it would probably be worse to suggest that she was one worth pursuing.

He nodded at the rope again.  “Just a guess, but that’s probably not good for him.”

“Oh, he won’t die for ‘nother twenty minutes, at least.”

“Mm.”  Ivaldi looked down at the boy blandly, considering something.  “We do have an auxiliary mechanic, I presume?”

The look Lexis gave him was far from blank, but still managed to convey that she had no idea what he’d just said.

“A backup mechanic?”

She snorted at this, a noise distantly echoed by Scrim himself.  “Do it look like we does?”

“Mm,” Ivaldi said again, and tutted mildly.

His indifference seemed to irk her, for she snapped, “And I suppose you’re just the master of all things mechanic with that wondrous education.”

“Absolutely not,” he said, smiling broadly, “I readily admit to being completely shown up by a thirteen-year-old.  No idea what I’m doing.  Indeed, watching Scrim has proved highly educational.”

Lexis eyed him suspiciously.  “Better be careful you don’t learn somethin’ stupid.”

Ivaldi’s grin grew even wider.  “Indeed,” he said again, “Which is why, in fact, I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

From over the side, Scrimshaw started to laugh.

Ivaldi ignored him.  “You see, I have this knife that I was given by my grandfather; a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, apparently with quite a history.  However, my education was really so limited in such practical matters that I have very little idea how to use it, so I thought perchance–”

“The blade goes here,” she said, punching him in the gut, and left him doubled over on the deck as she walked away.

When he finally pulled himself back up enough to lean on the railing, Scrimshaw was looking up at him with an expression that was one part sympathy and two parts amused I-told-you-so.  Ivaldi favored him with a grin that was only slightly less enthused than his previous ones.  “Actually,” he wheezed, “I was going to ask if she wanted it.”

 

The next time he encountered Lexis, he didn’t bother beating around the bush since clearly she wouldn’t allow him to finish.  Perhaps the straightforward approach would be more effective.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful eyes?”

The punch was still fast, but at least this time Ivaldi wasn’t entirely unsuspecting.  Contrary to what he’d said before, his education had actually covered quite a bit of combat.  He managed to block the blow with his forearm, and then again the kick aimed at his kneecap.  “Probably not more than once, I take it.”

There’d been a brief pause where she’d almost appeared to be waiting for him to strike back, but when he merely stood there and made quips with that smirk on his face, any of her rage that hadn’t been apparent before became obvious now.  “Fuck you,” she snarled, and kneed him in the groin, not even looking satisfied as he went down.  Then she planted a boot on his chest and kicked him over.

“Aristocrats,” she hissed, standing with one foot on his stomach and placing more weight on it than was strictly necessary.  She crouched down to give him the full force of her sneer.  “Think you can have anything you want.  Too lazy to wipe your own ass, and then you still think you’re gonna get rewarded at the end of the day.  You’re all just a bunch a pansies—you can’t even fight a girl.”  She got right in his face, and even the sneer couldn’t contain her disgust as she growled, “I’d cut your fuckin’ throat right now if it di’n’t mean the Captain’d throw me off the ship.”

Ivaldi had never really had any use for social boundaries other than to gain boundless joy in violating them—nor, it should be noted, had he ever heeded what little intuitive sense of self-preservation he might possess.  Consequently, it is hardly surprising that at this point, without doubting in the slightest the validity of her threat—or indeed, perhaps inspired by it—it is at this point that he leaned up and kissed her.

His nose made an interesting crunch when she broke it, and Ivaldi thought Scrim was inordinately mad about the amount of blood that got all over the deck.

 

He caught her on the deck a week later and asked her to spar.

“You wanna get your nose broken in two places?” she sneered.

He raised an eyebrow.  “Surely you’re not afraid I’m going to beat you?”

She launched herself on him in a snarling twister of legs and teeth, but Ivaldi could fight dirty, too.  He dodged left and dropped down, ducking the fist that was heading for his jaw, and as her momentum carried her forward he heaved up, catching her in the stomach with his shoulder.  He lifted her clear off the ground and threw her—she skidded several feet on her back across the hardwood floor, and Ivaldi might have winced if not for her leather corset.  He couldn’t attest to the experience, but he suspected splinters in the back were not fun. 

When she bowed her back and launched to her feet using only her legs, the snarling anger was gone, replaced with a wild and toothy grin. 

Lexis struck low this time, feinting to the right and then going left, under the arm, and jabbing her elbow into his armpit as she went.  He grabbed at her arm and twisted, but she had tangled her other hand in his hair—foolishly left loose—and clawed at it like she was going to take it out in clumps.  Ivaldi twisted her arm harder and wondered if she’d let go before he dislocated her shoulder; she kicked him viciously in the back of the knee instead, and his leg buckled. 

And then she had a knife on him, a white line pressing into the back of his neck.  She jabbed until he let go of her arm, and then once more for good measure, and she gave his back a shove with her boot as she stood.  Ivaldi didn’t get up; just sat there and watched as she curled a lip at him and turned to clomp away.

Lexis was at the door when a blade thunked into the doorframe right next to her head.  She whirled around, glaring, but for once the expression seemed forced, as though to belie her actual thoughts.  “You lost, fucker,” she hissed at him, teeth bared like an angry cat.

He merely grinned at her.  “That’s all a matter of perspective.”

 

The next time he asked her to spar, she only made a passing insult about his mother before attacking.

The third time, she actually grinned.

The fourth time, when he found her out on the main deck railing, she almost appeared to have been waiting for him, but when he mentioned it she hissed and drop-kicked him in the stomach.

The eighth time, she jumped him in the hallway on the way to dinner, and they both arrived half an hour late so bloodied and sweaty that Leah kicked them out of the room and said they could go hunt for their food if they were so inclined to behave like animals.  Lexis had a split lip and a gash in her forehead that was bleeding all down her cheek, and Ivaldi had been hit with a blow to his left side that bloomed purple-yellow and hurt like a bitch for the next week, and neither was entirely sure who had won.

She was extremely annoyed about being deprived of dinner, and kicked him in the kneecap with a steel-toed boot for it.  Then she said something extremely rude about his parentage involving a goat and various disreputable members of the Arigauldian theology, and Ivaldi knew he was in love.

 

A month into their sparring matches, having proved that he was not, in fact, adverse to fighting a woman two-thirds his size, he gave her the knife he’d mentioned so many weeks ago.  It really was a beautiful piece, crafted with care and skill, and notably old.  The blade had gold-tinted etchings down both sides, and there was a gem the size and density of her fist in the pommel.

She barely spared it a glance.  “If you think you’re gonna get into my pants by giving me toys, you might as well go find yourself a whore right now ‘cause next I’ll be takin’ your balls with this knife.”

He grinned and pointed at the dagger.  “This is the blade that killed the crown prince of Rinnay and started the entire Southern Peninsula civil war.”

Her whole face lit up as she turned the weapon over reverently, and Ivaldi thought it was like watching the sun rise.

 

She was watching him translate a Dalnan list of merchant ship runs into Common, an intense audience of one from on top of the bookcase.  She’d come in because stupid aristocrats couldn’t be trusted to work without a dagger to the neck every second, she said, but hadn’t really done anything since.

“Teach me to read,” she said suddenly.

Ivaldi looked up, genuinely surprised for the first time since she’d slugged him on the day they met.  “Read?”

She scowled at him, the effect somewhat lost in the fact that it was one of her more common expressions.  “Reading’s too good for me, that it?  You gotta be of class to read.  Bastard.”  She slid off the bookcase and stomped over to the desk, planting her dirty hands all over his work.  He looked at the grit under her fingernails; wondered if any of it was his blood.  “Teach me the letters.  How d’you write my name?”

He turned over a scrapped piece of paper and penned ‘Lexis’ on it in large font, so she could see the individual letters.

Lexis curled a lip.  “It’s loopy,” she said with distaste.  “Why’s it loopy?”

He smiled at this, but kept it to himself.  “That’s my handwriting; here–”  He dipped his pen again and this time wrote ‘L E X I S’ in a bold scrawl, all lines and angles.  He handed her the page.  “That’s your name,” he said.

She examined it appraisingly.  “I like it,” she said.

 

She was in his room when he got back from breakfast the next morning, sitting in his chair with her boots up on the desk and trying to balance a dagger on her nose. 

“Tilt your head back more; your neck should be the center of balance,” he suggested.

She flipped him the finger and tipped the whole chair back on two legs.  “You’re teaching me t’be literate, ‘member?”  The jaw movement dislodged the knife; she caught it as it fell and planted it blade-first in the surface of Ivaldi’s desk.

“Of course.  What do you want to learn first?”

“Well,” she said, “I really like that cross symbol in the middle of my name, like they put over the doors of houses when somebody’s died.  What’s that one called?”

 

Then one morning, after two weeks of lessons, she failed to show.  He sat around pretending to work for twenty minutes before he realized he’d been stood up. 

He found her lurking in the foredeck hallway, outside the Captain’s chambers.  “I thought you wanted to learn to read,” he said, feeling strangely injured.  The question didn’t come out sounding as amused as he’d intended.

She flashed him her most ferocious grin, the one that always made his heart turn over.  “I learned,” she said.  Then she was stalking away, steel-toed boots clomping on the floorboards the way they always did on the rare occasion that she chose to use the floor.  Ivaldi watched her go, curious and bemused, then turned to the Captain’s quarters with the intent of asking if Narrick knew what she was up to.

There was an inscription painted in a nearly illegible scrawl all across the cherrywood paneling of Narrick’s door.  ‘Captin wil trayd Ship for sekshual favers,’ it read.

Ivaldi laughed all the way back to his quarters and was grinning for the rest of the day.

 

She never expressed any further interest in literacy, although poorly-spelled insults and choice vocabulary did appear in a variety of places about the ship for several weeks thereafter.  Once they docked at Theswood to discover that ‘IMPERIAL LOVESHIP’ had been crudely painted on the side of the hull using eight whole jars of Ivaldi’s writing ink.  Ivaldi didn’t think that particular contribution was hers, but suspected she’d probably had a hand in it somewhere along the line.

Two months after teaching Lexis to read; four months after giving her the knife; five months since they began to spar and nearly seven months since he first joined the crew, Ivaldi returned to his quarters to find a dead pigeon on his pillow.  It was arranged carefully, one broken wing spread out like a fan while the other was folded in, and its neck was twisted.  The slight spattering of blood and the halo of downy feathers that surrounded it led him to think that perhaps the neck had been an afterthought to prevent it from falling off the bed in a panicked frenzy as it bled to death.  There was only a semicircle of red puncture wounds in the breast, and they didn’t look deep enough for a quick kill.

It was the best gift he’d ever received.
 

ETA: Now with Bonus Porn Ficlet!

Their first time, to the casual observer, is no different from their many fights. They are both disheveled and sweaty, but this is only to be expected. The visible bite marks are not any more note-worthy than those they usually gain from a match (Lexis fights dirty, and Ivaldi long ago decided to just follow her lead). There are bruises and cuts and blood; all in all, it looks like they had a thoroughly vicious go at each other. But Lexis’ vambraces are missing and her corset is loose, and Ivaldi forgot to lace his trousers up properly. Narrick's back is to them when they come in and Scrim is just oblivious, but Leah simply says nothing and ladles the food onto their plates.