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Uncharacteristically, Nodoze was sleeping when Gable found themselves on the midnight Barry run. They always slid in by the window frame at nights to avoid crashing through the door this late, which led them all the way up from the bunks to the foredeck and down the side, where the large open-air windows were shuttered against the wind. Gable always took care to wave to the crew on night watch and maybe keep an eye out for Travis when they made the nightly crossing, if they weren’t working themself. It was a little routine of theirs. Normal activities, just like their long and peaceful moments in the bathroom without Travis in there.
Perhaps it wasn’t so unusual. As a mortal man, Nodoze must sleep some nights. They were sure he catnapped during meals and the early evening, when most of the crew were out of the cabins. It must be his loner’s spirit. He could sleep, like he was doing tonight, but he didn’t like anyone to see him while he did it. Gable could understand. Their own life would have been much more pleasant if Travis never knew when or where they were sleeping.
There. That was a simple explanation. Gable had figured it out before they levered the shutters open and got at least one leg shoved in the generously-sized porthole. They had plenty of time in the soothing breeze trying to get the other leg through to come up with other theories. Maybe he was also a Luminary. Not likely. Gable didn’t think there was room for another entire entity aboard the ship. Not to mention there was something very mortal about Nodoze. So very fleshy. Delicate, like he might blow away on a particularly hard bank.
It occurred to them, once they’d dusted the splinters of windowframe off and inspected the red marks on their sides in the mirror, that they might be too right in thinking that. Wendell, good old Wendell still had his arm. That’d take anything you threw at him.
If Do-Good Derry, Barry’s cross-shift apprentice who had woken up too late after the musical to re-join the Glas, had anything to say about the extended ballad Gable requested them to fiddle that night, they were kind enough not to mention it. The playing was a tad bit rougher than Barry’s very smooth, contralto sounds, but it suited Gable’s mood. They felt restrained, not by force, but by the much worse feeling that there was no force that could restrain them but themself, and strained, not by the bathroom experience, but by the effort of maintaining their own restraints.
The Morning Star still was watching them from somewhere. They had an inexplicable affinity for that beacon when they first took to the air, more than just the airiners’ respect for their guide, an affinity which they felt soured once their memories returned. He’d really been a tool, Gable felt. It was hard to feel that way even now, knowing what he’d given them, which made them feel it even more. What’d he expect them to do! There was right, and there was wrong, and Gable tried very hard to do right. He didn’t seem to try at all. As much as the Sovereign, he directed his servants to do terrible, terrible wrongs…
The Sovereign had just sat there. Toppled over. They’d thought it would be harder.
Gable finally stood up in the stall when their legs started to tingle. As this form became more real, taking on the aspects of mortality, it was starting to give them a few problems. This must have been why Travis was so fixated on the time they spent in there. His thin bone-sticks for legs had to go numb after only a minute of pressure.
They washed their hands in cool water from the brass taps, flinching a bit. They’d had enough of drowning, but it just seemed to keep happening. Their sister had a mean streak.
A silhouette in the dim lamplight handed them a towel.
“Thank you, Derry.”
“Aw, ‘tis nothin’.”
Wiping their hands, Gable saw that the window had been safely bolted shut, metal bands screwed into the wood on either side of a few large cracks that spread out from the frame. Quick, efficient, well-serviced, it was Barry to a tee. This Derry girl was a real steal of a new hire.
“Say, Derry?”
“Yes’m?”
“If you were fighting somebody, why do you think they wouldn’t fight back?”
Derry looked quizzical, stepping aside as a few shards whizzed through from the balsa wood door. Another silhouette appeared.
“Aw, I don’t rightly know. Evenin’, Granny,” she said.
“Good evening, young miss,” Granny Softspot answered. She nodded to Gable, passing by to find her own stall for probably the third or fourth time tonight.
“I don’t either, that’s the problem,” Gable continued. “I suppose, if they knew they could beat me, they could choose when to step in.”
“Could just be chicken. They’d think you’ll give up easier if you feel bad, so they won’t put in the effort.”
“Hm. I don’t think that’s the case.”
Frowning, Gable tried to put the the pieces together while they were still relatively protected in the bathroom.
“How about, if someone believed that annihilation without was going to be the way things were going to go, and then give up? If they knew something that I didn’t,” Gable said.
“Oh yeah, if it’s you, that’s a completely different question. I’d be just about ready to give up. You’re a real ironside.” Derry punched them on the arm with a feel like the gentle tap of a falling leaf.
“So I’m just special?”
“You’re definitely one of a ship! I’m tellin’ you, I never saw no one who could challenge Cu until you came ‘round. Gave us all a real good laugh after we got over the shock,” Derry said with a grin.
Nodding slowly, Gable felt that sting a little. They were one of a kind. The Godkiller, and this girl thought they just came with a crew? They couldn’t deny that Cu was something…different. Like them? That was going too far.
“Well, thank you for the kind words. If you’ll take this, I think I’ll go out the door…”
Gable tried to hand over the customary tip, but Derry was already running for the stockpile.
“Just you wait a moment! I’ve got another one here!”
“That’s—it’s not—you don’t have to—"
…
Gable did break through the balsa wood door to show willing. That brought them back via the belowdecks, tiptoeing around all these sleepy sleepy orphans that were so small and slept so close together.
“Ow!” The edge of a beam drove a few more splinters into their face.
This was the other reason why they took the overboard route to the bathroom. They just made these holds too small! How the Captain fit in here, they never knew.
They flapped their hands out in front of them, managing to dodge a couple more supports as they wound their way back to the aviary. That’s it. They were going back above the moment they reached the stairs.
There was just a tiny drift of moonlight, starlight—morning starlight, Gable thought resentfully—showing them the way to go through the prisms. The hammocks around them gave way to the adults, all of them groaning worse than the last. Jonnit’s last bunk was somewhere around here on the bathroom route.
Limping a little bit from one stubbed toe, Gable gratefully reached out for the stair handrail. They took the last step toward them—
“Aaah!”
—recoiling when their hand brushed something soft. Ew, ew, ew, ew, what was that—
A body was slumped in of the hammock behind the stairs, leaning up against the rail for support. Gable had grabbed right on to Nodoze’s untied hair.
They looked around to see if their gasp had woken anyone up. The gusts of wind coming up the side of the ship covered most of the noise. All the hammocks swayed gently under the huge weight of the corsairs. Only a couple of them shifted.
Sighing, they went to climb the rest of the stairs—
“Fuck!”
—and did exactly the same thing again, because Nodoze had woken up and was now struggling out of his hammock with their huge hand pinning him to the railing. They snatched it out of the way immediately.
“Sorry, I’m, ah, I really am sorry.” They cringed.
“The apology is…something new,” Nodoze muttered. His eyes stayed on the ground as he picked himself up.
“Oh, don’t get up now,” they groaned. “I’m sorry, I’ll be out of here right away.”
“I had already…been awake,” Nodoze said impassively.
He stepped one foot up on the railing and hopped right up the stairs, passing Gable without so much as a by-your-leave. Well! That was a bit rude, wasn’t it?
They followed without looking back. He was supposed to be the one trailing them, after all.
When their head poked out of the trap door, they realized just how much the hold smelled compared to up here. They could swear that it smelled like…like fresh metal. That was Wasp’s trick, using steel to get rid of nasty smells. The stuffy feeling following them since they broke the door was cleared right out.
Nodoze was, of course, right there.
He took care not to face them, loitering off against the stairs to the rear deck with a face tilted to the open air. No smoking yet. He only had a few seconds’ head start.
Gable left the trap door open as they’d found it. That was an invitation, they decided.
“Want to use the bathroom too, eh?” they said cheerfully. “Let me tell you, Derry’s really doing well since we fixed up that misunderstanding about the tips.”
Nodoze didn’t even blink.
“No,” he said.
“Well.” Gable picked through things they could say next. It took a lot of time to find out that there was nothing that would work for the situation. “I did.”
“So…you’ve come up here to say…you wanted to you the bathroom.”
“Yes.”
“Which you’ve…already done,” he said. The holes of his eye sockets were so deep, Gable could see shadows even in the moonlight. Maybe that was just the shade of his eye bags.
They strolled around him, jumping up to the rear deck in one go. They leaned back at him over the railing, pretending to try and see what he was staring at.
“You know, Nodoze, you’re actually quite perceptive,” they joked.
“It’s…not a trait I would give up,” he said. Still watching blankly for a sign that he wasn’t going to see in a starless sky.
“Maybe it’s your eyes,” they went on automatically. “They’re always so large, so entrancing, I bet they’d—“
Gable’s mind caught up to their mouth in a big hurry.
“—see a lot of things. Since you don’t blink,”they finished matter-of-factly.
Nodoze’s head swivelled like an owl’s. What they had been about to guess was that his eyes might suck in all the sights there were in the world because it was so hard to look away from them, and that’s how he saw it all.
That wouldn’t do.
Gable slouched with both hands over the railing. Bits of straw and balsa wood scattered out over the sea where they were blown, emptying their hair of the night’s debris.
“You walked it back,” he said, straight through. “I thought I was clear I didn’t need such…treatment.”
He stayed on that lower level of the deck.
“I’ve been trying to be more responsible,” they said.
It was the wrong thing to say in the moment, but that was also why they had to say it.
“If you’ll allow me to speak freely…”
“I’d lov—that would be great.”
“This is…really weird.”
“Hm?”
“Mister Gable, I’d…far prefer you to say you’d like to…preserve my eyes in vinegar…to put in the Captain…or something of the sort.”
“Actually, that wasn’t what I was going to say,” they corrected.
“Still, you would have said…something discomfiting.”
“And you would be discomforted,” they answered.
“It’s…not entirely unpleasant.”
Gable sighed, sauntering back down the stairs.
“Look, I’ll admit, I enjoy it more than I should if I put you off. I am trying to get better about that.“
They put a hand on one of the guide ropes above Nodoze’s, where he’d grasped it.
“You think I…hadn’t noticed?”
Gable grinned despite themselves. “It’s your eyes, I told you. But, I’ve gotten too comfortable overstepping. I shouldn’t be putting you through the wringer because it’s funny.”
“But it is indeed…funny.”
“Not in that way,” they said. “I don’t know. I enjoy it, and it’s a bad habit.”
Nodoze sighed again, hovering where he was without leaning into them or away. “Please. Don’t start that.”
His eyes slid to the side. “I…would have expected some sort of consideration from the Lily. Not…yourself.”
“What?”
“There’s no challenge…to be had, if you hold back,” Nodoze murmured dully.
Gable froze.
“I can…see that I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’ll leave.”
“Don’t. I mean,” Gable course-corrected, “You don’t… have to. You don’t have to, which is what I was saying, because I am kind of uncomfortable, but I’m usually kind of uncomfortable, so that’s not saying anything, right?”
They noticed what Nodoze was doing a little too late.
“All right, Mister Gable.”
“Now you’re just teasing me. How rude.” They couldn’t help smiling, then smiling wider when Nodoze gave up a shy little smirk.
“It’s seems…you don’t mind.”
“Hm, I don’t think I do.”
“Nor do I.”
Nodoze stayed in their space, turning to the side.
They wished, so badly, that they could mess his hair up.