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"Maybe it's still a good thing that it just makes dick statues. Maybe you can just leave a trail of dick statues wherever you go."
It's quieter at sea than it is on land, especially at this time of night, when the moon is high and barely visible behind thin sheets of purple clouds. The sound of the waves pulling the Squall-Eater are all that's left aside from the two of them, the acting crew down to the barest of bones just to make sure disaster doesn't strike while everyone sleeps. The night air is chill and moisture clings to any exposed skin, the taste of salt in the back of their throats.
One could argue that a gunner and a carpenter (-in-training, the both of them) aren't exactly necessary crew to keep the ship sailing past midnight, but Nott and Jester volunteered when they opted to stay up late together, corralling themselves away on the deck behind equipment and cargo and giggling over the Marvelous Pigments their piracy had awarded Jester with.
So far, Jester's painted the initial dick (of course), a hamster unicorn, a very cool but impractical sword, a huge diamond, and, after getting a bit frustrated, a plate of snickerdoodles. She's now sitting cross-legged on the floor and chomping away at the cookies, brow furrowed in an annoyed pout. Nott sits across from her, paint already smudged on the bandages over her fingers.
"Well," Jester sighs, around a mouthful of cookie, "I guess so. Dick statues are pretty cool. But none of the things I want to make real work! Except for these cookies."
She's right. The hamster unicorn was equally made of stone, the sword didn't really do anything besides look sort of menacing and arbitrarily spiky, and the diamond turned out to be made of glass. Which they had to find out the hard way. Someone will probably clean up those glass shards, Nott figures, when they move around the crates and barrels and such and discover them hiding underneath. They buried their shame, and now it's someone else's problem.
"The cookies are very good, though. May I have another?" Jester nods and Nott takes a small one from the side of the little cookie tower. Nott had heard of snickerdoodles before, but they didn't seem to be widespread beyond the Menagerie Coast, where they favor cinnamon in their baking. She's not quite used to the taste of the spice, but it's not so jarring that it makes it taste bad.
"Think about it, though," Nott continues, "you could run some pretty amazing cons with this stuff. If you made a bunch of small fake diamonds, they wouldn't break as easily, and you could sell them. You could run the cup game and have someone drawing little holes beneath the ball in the cup and then covering them back up. Or you could deface the Platinum Dragon statue with just... monstrously huge genitalia."
Jester giggles a little. "That's a pretty good idea. Maybe not the one in Zadash, though. That was really crazy."
"Yeah." Nott can't help but smile thinking back on their nigh-disastrous run-in with the followers of Bahamut in Zadash, something that could have very nearly ended with them both locked up for good. Which would be pretty bad for either of them, being a tiefling and a goblin to boot. But now, it's easier to look back on and laugh at how ridiculous it was, even if at the time it was mostly terrifying.
Silence stretches the next moments after the memory fades from her mind, and instead it is replaced by thoughts of how they ended up here so soon after all of that. Their last week in Zadash was sort of a blur, everyone in a sort of melancholy haze they were all trying to fight off with activities and errands and large amounts of day drinking. They're so far from the Empire, now. They're not even really on the Coast anymore, even if this may still be considered part of it on a map. Nott feels uniquely trapped on this ship, surrounded on all sides by something vast and endless and unknown. Water is a terrifying beast, but the ocean is its arcane god. She's always felt small navigating the world, but here she feels like the waves are threatening to swallow her up until it was like she never existed at all.
Add to that the fact that Fjord's need to understand what is happening to him has culminated in them being conscripted into a group of the worst of the very worst pirates, and now they're in bed with someone even those terrible pirates thinks is liable to turn on them at any moment. Avantika has been pulling the strings since they boarded the Myst. That much is clear. But Fjord is too blinded by the need to understand himself that he can't seem to bring himself to care.
Nott doesn't really blame Fjord. She'd do this for any one of them. But there's still that thought in the back of her mind, like maybe, just maybe they are setting something in motion so much bigger than themselves...
"Boop." A cold, wet feeling gathers on the end of Nott's nose. Nott blinks herself out of her anxieties and, rather than dark, black water stretching out before her, she sees a flash of blue. Jester's smirking face is hovering so close to hers, and Nott—a little belatedly—jerks her head back in surprise and embarrassment. She reaches up to rub her nose, and when she pulls her hand away, it's smudged with cerulean.
Jester wiggles the offending paintbrush in the air, still looking sly, and Nott's hand shoots out towards hers to grab hold of the brush. Jester holds it high above Nott's smaller form, but since they're sitting, Nott charges forward and clambers up until she's half on top of Jester's shoulder. There's a yelp and there's a battle cry and, within seconds, the two are a blur of limbs and shrieks as they wrestle on the wooden planks of the Squall-Eater's deck.
"Ha HA!" Eventually, Nott grabs hold of the paintbrush, but Jester's grip is too strong, and the victor emerges, struggling to her feet and holding her prize high above her head, where no goblins may ever hope to reach. "Now I'm going to paint a dick on your forehead as punishment!"
"Noooo!" Nott squeals, already exhausted from the wrestling match. She's barely able to kick her foot ineffectually towards her triumphant opponent in a half-hearted attempt to knock Jester back down to where Nott now lies alone, prone on the wooden floor. She has to take a minute to catch her breath.
But Jester won't let her have that chance. Before she can blink twice, Jester now hovers over her, pinning one of her arms down with her free hand and paintbrush bearing down on Nott's face in the other. Nott's remaining arm crashes into Jester's to try to grab it, but the exhaustion leaves her at a disadvantage. Jester easily snaps up that arm, too.
They are at an impasse. Jester can hold Nott's arms down over her head on the floor, but without one hand she can't paint her punishment on Nott's face.
Jester, though, isn't bothered. She looks down at Nott's wide, catlike eyes with a look of pure glee. Jester is completely draped over her, holding her down, and looking at her like a particularly tasty cinnamon-dusted cookie. A few moments pass while Nott can feel sweat gathering at the nape of her neck, but she doesn't move to wriggle free. She almost feels lightheaded. Maybe she's more tired out than she thought.
"Are you..." Nott finally croaks, "going to stay like that forever?"
"Maaaaybe," Jester says, drawing out the word and puffing out her cheeks. "Well, no, I guess I'll have to let us both eat someday so we don't starve."
"Sounds fair."
Nott feels almost feverish. Shit. Maybe she's getting sick.
"You remember what you said about that boy you kissed?" Jester suddenly whispers. It's not a gentle whisper, more like a stage whisper, but it still makes Nott's throat feel dry.
"You mean..." Nott begins, but she thinks better of it than to guess at what Jester's referring to. "Yes. Yes, I remember."
"You were saying like, you'll remember it foreeever, but you don't really care about him, and it was just a game with kids, and it doesn't really matter?" Jester leans a little closer. Nott's stomach does a flip. She smells like salt and cinnamon sugar.
"Y-Yeah, I said those things."
Jester keeps leaning closer. Nott can taste the salt in the air almost all over again. Jester lowers down, past Nott's cheek, and murmurs into her ear.
"Your whole face is flushed. You look really funny."
If Nott's face was dark green with the blood rushing to her head before, then it was twice as green now. Jester pulls away giggling, letting go of Nott's arms and instead starts to put away her Marvelous Pigments, swishing the paintbrush to and fro in the water cup beside the array of paint tubes. Nott is almost dizzy as she pulls herself back up to a seat, leaning back on her hands and breathing hard. She looks back at Jester finally while the latter is quietly rubbing any dried remnants of acrylic off the bristles of the brush.
"Jester, I lied to you about that," Nott says before she can think better of it.
"I know. I'm not dumb." Jester flicks water at Nott, but her face is still turned away. "And you're a bad liar."
Nott thumbs her nose ring, fiddling with it. "It was a boy I liked. And I still remember him. But he thought I was... you know. Stupid and ugly and lame. Not excited enough to set fire to helpless animals in the back of the wagon. Kid stuff." Kid goblin stuff, to be exact.
"Nott," Jester casts a look over the freshly capped tube of paint in her hands. "You're smart, you're cute, you're fun... And I like that you aren't mean to helpless things."
"I'm still pretty mean to helpless things sometimes," Nott says with a nervous laugh in her voice. "Remember that manticore baby? Good times..." She scratches the back of her head, looking away, freshly embarrassed.
"The point is!" Jester commands Nott's attention, and there's no arguing with a determined Jester. "I think you're really sweet." She sets down the (mostly) cleaned up paints, leaving the spills and splashes from their roughhousing to be someone else's problem on some other day. She pulls herself over from her seated position, closer to Nott again. When Nott thinks she's finished moving over, Jester scoots two more steps nearer, until their legs are flush against one another. Nott forces herself not to hide her face instinctually as Jester looks very seriously into her eyes, but she doesn't know where to rest her gaze. She darts back between Jester's warm pink eyes, the dusting of dark blue freckles spread like stars across her round cheeks, the smudge of yellow paint on her chin, even once daring to flicker down and focus for a millisecond on her lips, chapped and bitten.
When Jester doesn't say anything immediately, Nott just gives a jerky nod and instinctually covers her mouth with a nervous hand.
"I don't think..." Nott murmurs, "I mean, I'm alright."
"But do you think," Jester says almost conspiratorially, a glint in her eye and her tail swishing to and fro behind her head, "if I kissed you now, would you remember it forever even though it's not your first one?"
Nott's throat entirely clamps shut. This isn't happening to her. Someone else deserves this. Someone cuter, someone smarter, someone who's worth Jester's time. Maybe Beau? Or Caleb? Mr. Clay, even? What about Fjord? She's just... Nott. And she's had people look at her a lot of ways before, but she's never had someone look at her the way Jester is looking at her right now.
Something in Nott's mind snaps, and everything goes blank. Something happens before she knows what. Her fingers are curled around Jester's flowing sleeve. There's something soft pressed against her lips, and she hastily reminds herself to keep her mess of teeth in check. There's a click of fang against fang regardless, and she startles, but before she can think anything of it she presses further against the soft pressure on her mouth. At some point, she squeezed her eyes shut, but she thinks she knows what's going on and she threatens herself in her head not to dare open them yet.
She's kissing Jester. At some point, Nott leaned in and just went for it rather than waiting for Jester to follow through on her promise, anxieties be damned. There's a fear pounding in her chest, trying to pull her little goblin heart out of her, but she ignores that and pulls herself closer, her thin legs curling over Jester's larger thighs. She needs to breathe, but she's so afraid of chickening out that she kisses even deeper. Jester's hand curls up at the back of Nott's head, and at some point, her hood must have fallen, but she's glad for it because she can feel Jester's fingers gently entwine themselves in Nott's long stringy hair. At the same time, there's the telling pressure Jester's tail curling itself around Nott's back as if it's trying to press her in closer.
Finally, when Nott thinks she's going to suffocate herself on the saltwater taste of Jester's ocean-kissed lips, Jester lets out a surprised sound and pulls away. Not too far away, to Nott's confused relief. While Nott gasps for air, Jester leans her forehead against hers and rubs a thumb over her own bottom lip, pulling it away to check for blood.
"...My teeth," Nott sighs out, voice shaky. She ruined it. She made Jester regret asking. She taught Jester that kissing her is the stupidest thing you could ever do. She's too gross. Too clumsy. Her lips are probably dry. She's not the sort of person you're meant to do things like this with.
Nott opens her mouth to apologize, to tell her to forget it ever happened, and Jester catches the words before they can be spoken in another kiss. This one is smaller, gentler. The brush of softness at the edge of Nott's lips and the comforting touch of Jester's hand on her collarbone tell her Jester doesn't care. Nott can breathe through this one, and she takes a shuddering breath against Jester's mouth.
With a playful, tiny peck to punctuate it, Jester pulls away. Nott stares up at her. She's half in Jester's lap, now, and she doesn't know what to say. She's surprised at herself for being so gutsy to take the first plunge, she's surprised at Jester for even suggesting it, she's surprised that she could ever be in this situation with anyone, let alone someone so...
"Well? That was only my second kiss, you know. What do you think?" Jester grins ear to ear, and if Nott didn't know her better she'd think Jester was planning to kill her with how devious she looks.
"I don't know," Nott says, unsure if it's a lie or not. Maybe that proves it true. "Was it... okay? Did I hurt you?"
"Only a little poke. I didn't even bleed all over you!" Jester brings up a hand to play with a long strand of Nott's somewhat uneven and unkempt hair. She still manages to look really offended when she grumbles, "So you don't even know if you liked it or not?"
"Uh—!" Nott, for a moment, is horrified that Jester would think Nott didn't enjoy it, didn't already miss it. She starts to stutter something to assure her, but then... thinks better of it. "Well... It was kind of... damp. Like, really moist. Maybe even... sweaty."
"What!!" Jester gasps, hands coming up to her face in horror.
"Yeah, kind of like... kissing a fish... or the Gentleman..." Nott can't help but let the smirk break through her facade, and it's at that exact moment that Jester shoves her playfully, and she's too weak and dizzy from the earlier scuffle and her confused bliss to fight back. She just collapses off of Jester's lap and onto her side like a discarded towel, trying and failing to fight back giggles.
"Seriously, though!" The two of them are facing each other now, Nott with the side of her head against the floor looking up at Jester, who is looking down at the smooth surface of the deck with a knit brow, on her side and propping up her head with an arm. With her free hand, she traces the patterns in the wood with the long claw of a finger. "You know, this time I wanted to try doing it myself, but you did it before I could... But I was totally conscious the whole time, so it was really different... And it didn't involve drowning at all..."
"Yeah, that was pretty bad."
Jester shoots Nott a look, and Nott understands that to mean that she should be more serious now.
"Well, what I mean is... was that bad?"
Jester isn't looking at Nott, save for the occasional, almost nervous glance. This whole time, it felt like Jester was sure of herself, like she had the upper hand, like Nott was just coming along for the ride, but maybe Jester is just as confused. It's... true that they have about the same amount of experience. Two first kisses that neither were sure counted. But Jester is a unique, brilliantly blue and confident tiefling. She's vibrant and full of energy and spontaneity, bringing Nott along for the craziest adventures of her life. She's empathetic and always knows what to say to make Nott smile. Being with her isn't for the best just because she can heal Nott's wounds, but also because Jester being herself could make any kind of pain or worry lessen.
Nott isn't eloquent enough to put together any words like that. She just smiles through what she's sure is still a deep blush and says in a small voice, "I liked it."
Jester's face softens and she brings her finger to her lips, as if in thought.
Nott, before she can think better of it, then asks, "Are we ever... going to do it again?"
"Mmm," Jester hums, almost lost in thought. "I think so. It was pretty good. Wait! But isn't it like, crazy bad for detective partners to become," she gasps, "something more??"
Nott squints a little at her. "Why?"
"Like! What if the bad guy kidnaps me to get to you!? And he's all, you know, using me as a shield on a clifftop, and you're like, oh no, I can't shoot him without hitting Jester, and then he throws me off the edge of the cliff and I scream and you scream too, and then I guess we both die??" Jester looks appropriately horrified at the end of all her grand gesturing, and it's one of those times that Nott isn't entirely sure whether Jester is being serious or not. She thinks not. She usually guesses right.
"Well then," Nott says evenly, "that could potentially happen. You could get kidnapped a second time and then we could both die. So." Nott rolls over onto her back, staring up at the sky instead. She'd hoped to look at the stars, but even with how thin the veneer of clouds is, she can barely make out any of them. "I guess there's nothing to do about it."
"...So?"
"So, since we're probably going to die now that this train's a-rollin' anyway, we should probably do it about two hundred percent more often, just in case it crashes and burns tomorrow." Nott pauses for a moment to let that sink in, then continues, "Because it probably will, Avantika's going to sink this pleasure cruise if it makes her big snake god come back faster. And for all we know, it would."
Jester rolls her eyes dramatically in the corner of Nott's periphery at the mention of Avantika, but she crawls over anyway. Nott... wasn't sure exactly what effect her challenge was going to produce, but when the familiar sensation of Jester pinning her arms down on the deck comes to her, she swallows hard and bites her lip as she stares up at Jester's cheeky grin. It's not as scary this time. Not unknown and arcane like the ocean around them. She doesn't know how it happened even still, but Jester looks at her like that, and she feels like she could dive into the water and learn to swim if it meant Jester would cross that distance. If it meant Jester would just lean down... and come in close... and...
Nott blinks up at her, but Jester isn't moving. "Are you going to stay like that forever?"
"I like looking at you waiting like you're gonna get kissed," Jester says, accent lingering on each word, grin absolutely diabolical. "You were doing it before, too. You get this cute look on your face... and your lips pucker up a little bit... and you're like, mmph—!"
Without the use of her arms, Nott crashes her lips into Jester's just to get her to shut up.