Work Text:
“What are you doing after this?”
Fourteen Fifteen shoves an office desk against the doors behind them, wondering if they were the kind that opened both ways. Distantly, they can hear Signet hailing for their ride amidst the gentle background noise of two dozen alarms all going off at once.
“Huh?” says Fourteen, glancing around the darkened room for more promisingly stackable furniture.
“I said,” says Tender, as she overrides the security lock with someone’s mug of stale coffee, “What are you doing later? Like, after work?”
The air fills briefly with the smell of electric fires and coffee as the various lights around the doors flicker off and die. Fourteen realizes how silly they look holding an entire swivel chair in their arms, and they set it down (wheels side up) on the desk barricade they’d started earlier. Every bit, right?
“Oh,” they say. “Um, actually I’ve got another job up.”
Nervous—they know they sound nervous. They’re not sure why, because it’s not like their other job is a secret or anything. And they like talking to Tender.
Tender gives them a rueful little grin. “You’re always so busy. You know, I have a bar if you, like, ever need a place to chill—”
Glass breaks, sirens sound, the ground trembles. The doors swing open, and of course it’s the other way around.
“Next time!” Tender laughs, as Fourteen hauls her out of danger and into the waiting night.
&
It’s a lot of work, being a bounty hunter. You need to be careful, precise, and utterly focused, but adaptability is necessary too—it’s not a line of work for the faint-hearted. Fourteen knows they’ve had a few, ah, mishaps here and there, but they’re working on it. They’ll get there.
At the other end of the bar, Tender flits from person to person, pouring drinks and making conversation with such easy elegance that it makes the work look like play. Just the thought of having to do what she does makes Fourteen anxious. They stir the cherry in their drink, chin in hand. How did she do all of that?
“I wouldn’t know,” says Signet, squinting at the bar menu. “I’m not a bartender. Did you have a look at the schematics yet?”
“Hm?” says Fourteen.
“The schematics,” Signet repeats. “For our mission. Which is tonight.”
“Oh. Oh! Yes, I did.” They did, last night. They know how to prep. It’s going to be fine. “We’re all good.”
Signet fixes them with a look. Fourteen nods encouragingly, which does not seem to work.
“Uh-huh,” she says slowly, thoroughly unconvinced. They can’t imagine why. “Well, it’s almost time to leave. Let’s grab Tender in five, and then we can go.” She looks at the menu again. “Is your lemonade good? Should I get one?”
“It’s good,” says Fourteen, with great decisiveness. “It’s like, a sparkling drink thing. I think there’s mint?”
Tender catches their eye and waves. Fourteen brightens.
“Don’t worry about the plan,” they say, waving back. “It’s fine. We’re good.”
&
It is not good, actually, but the reasons are unrelated. It’s still fine. That’s what Plan B’s, C’s, and W’s are for.
Afterwards, when the Beloved Dust is variously sprawled in the shuttle back, scraped, lightly singed, beaten as a bowl of stiff meringue, and covered in numerous gels, packs, and good old-fashioned bandages for their troubles, Tender digs something out of a pocket and tosses it over to Fourteen.
They catch it in one, to absolutely everyone’s surprise, including their own. It’s a pair of sunglasses.
“You dropped this back there,” says Tender, yawning. She readjusts a med pack on her arm and tries to get comfortable. It’s going to be a long ride back.
Fourteen puts the glasses back on, the vivid fluorescence of the shuttle lights easing back into something more bearable.
“…Thanks.”
&
Fourteen presses Tender back against a wall, a gloved hand steadying on her arm. They’re close enough that Tender’s hair brushes their cheek. Her fingers twist in the silk of their dress, tense.
“I think we lost them,” Fourteen whispers.
“Oh,” says Tender.
A few more very long seconds pass.
“We should go,” says Fourteen, face warming.
Tender lets out a breath, low and shaky. “Right—okay, yeah.”
After a series of convoluted shortcuts, Tender and Fourteen end up in what seems to be a busy market street, full of little shops and sidewalk cafés and weekend stands. There’s a lot of foot traffic, which is good for hiding from, say, some cyber assassins that you’ve pissed off about half an hour ago.
“We could find somewhere to hide out until we can meet with Signet,” says Tender, “Or we can go pick her up. What do you think?”
Fourteen hums thoughtfully. “We should go. Sticking around might be a bad idea, given the…the tone of recent events.”
They start off in what Tender says is the right direction (so of course it’s right), doing their best to blend in with the weekend crowd. Fourteen buys a sunhat to aid with their disguise, which Tender tells them is very cute. When they offer Tender their arm, she takes it readily. It’s just good coworker etiquette, because it would be extremely rude and unsafe to lose each other in a crowd when there were maybe assassins still lurking around.
Their route ends up a little circuitous—there’s so much to see and hear, it’s almost overwhelming. Fourteen isn’t usually so distractible, but lately they just—they want to see. At least Tender seems to be enjoying it too; she’s told them about what it was like to live on the By-and-By. Maybe today is a good chance to savor things.
“Oh, wow!” they say, tugging excitedly at Tender’s arm. “Do you think we can go in there? Like, for a minute? If we get something for Signet, it’ll be okay, right?”
“The...bakery?”
“Yeah, did you see that bread in the window? It’s enormous.”
She laughs. “If you can wait, I know a place that does even bigger bread. It’s not far from where we’re going.”
Fourteen looks agog. “Really?”
“Guaranteed.” She grins at them, full of promise.
“Well…” Fourteen straightens their sunhat, all business. “Well, if you say that, then of course. Lead the way.”
&
The captain’s quarters on The World Without End are perfectly nice, but in terms of size, they would be more fittingly renamed in the singular: the captain’s quarter, perhaps. It feels like a half of a half cup measurement, architecturally. Which is alright. Fourteen Fifteen doesn’t need a lot of space. The Body Politic is pretty small, which is kind of nice actually, and currently very convenient.
Most of their room gets taken up by what they’ve brought from Moonlock: their old desk, piles of reference books bristling with bookmarks and folded edges, written notes stashed in binders and stapled piles and occasionally other books, some shelves they disassembled for the move and now can’t figure out how to reassemble. A rug that had looked pretty nice in their old office.
Fourteen looks at it all when they’re done unpacking, and isn’t really sure why they brought it to begin with. They used to travel much lighter. It’s not like they’ll be doing a lot of work as a lawyer while they’re here. It’s just—it feels strange to not have something. To not be doing something. Itchy. It’s not the same as being a bounty hunter. They felt useful there, and they feel useful being a lawyer, but—the feeling is different. They can’t say that frantically trying to learn literally every kind of law on their own is enjoyable, but it’s been…good. Taking the time has been good.
And suddenly, in no time at all, The World Without End is full of noise. No one wants to use any of the actual and normal bedroom areas, so every space on the ship takes on pieces of everyone else. Video-editing equipment, skeins of embroidery floss, dumbbell weights. A box of art supplies that someone refuses to unpack or move out of the way. Playing cards. A kitchen full of cooking tools that it has no space for. Three coffeemakers, all in the same room, which rotates and is never the kitchen. Everyone’s laundry, everywhere, always inextricably confused together. Just. A whole horse. Game consoles, bottles of nail polish, too many mugs. More books. Furniture that looks too good for the ship. A bumper crop of potted plants, beautiful and lush and strange, which admittedly impresses Fourteen quite a lot.
They wonder how anyone can have the time for so many things. It feels impossible.
Most of the time, it’ll be missions outside with barely enough breathing room in-between. Sometimes, it will be a night for scrawling notes across a page and trying to read five books on interplanetary law at once. Of course it’s incredibly twisty, but Fourteen realizes that it is something they want to figure out. There’s that old drive too, the nagging feeling that they have to put themselves to some kind of use, to keep going forward—but it’s not the only thing, anymore.
And there are other nights too.
Someone knocks on Fourteen’s door, and they look up from their desk, eyes a little fuzzy from reading. “Come in?”
“Hey!” Tender pokes her head through the doorway. “Wanna watch a movie? Morning’s Observation brought one over.” She wiggles her eyebrows enticingly. “We made a ton of toasted bean.”
Fourteen scrubs at their eyes under their glasses, and stretches. Too many bones pop.
“Sounds good. What movie?”
&
Broken fragments of terracotta scatter across the kitchen floor, skipping through a rich dark arc of spilled dirt. Fourteen Fifteen looks down at the mess and sighs.
There were probably lots of uses for beautiful, splendidly ornamented, and very big armor (slightly foxed). Combat, looking intimidating in front of locked doors, maybe certain kinds of…sports, and so on. Not so much paperwork and light gardening. Whoever had made Carcanet’s Ironclad hadn’t accounted for the need to hunch over a desk for hours, or being able to repot a promising new basil plant, or, really, navigating around most corners.
Delicate is a strange way to think of yourself when you’re covered head to toe in armor plating. It’s odd, having to be so careful with their body after running reckless with it for so long, but being careless just results in broken flower pots and dents in the furniture. And, well, they’ve gotten attached to things.
Fourteen sweeps up the dirt and the pottery shards with relatively little fuss. It takes a lighter touch to save the remnants of the tomato vine, but they’ve had the time to practice. This time, the only casualties are a few errant unripe tomatoes, which Fourteen consigns peacefully to the compost heap. (Something they picked up from one of Gig’s tutorial videos.)
Tomato extraction completed, Fourteen returns to the task at gauntleted hand: transplanting their newest batch of mostly seedlings. There are about twenty or so of them sitting patiently in a repurposed Calci-yummm crate on the kitchen counter, all housed in various cups and jars and boxes and things that Fourteen has vaguely acquired from somewhere, like lint. No two plants are alike—there’s an upstart of an onion, jelly flower, strawberries, Bigger Zucchini. Goosegrass that had eaten their wheat experiment and wouldn’t leave. What they’d thought was broccoli but was turning out to be some sort of square bean. Bluets and dandelion. Catmint. Something Fourteen is sure is actually seaweed, which, alright, what the hell. Why not.
They’re feeling pretty positive about the whole thing, all things considered.
Fourteen puts on their sunhat and gloves and variously pocketed apron, and carries the crate out to the garden, which is easy enough. That’s one nice thing about being big and metal. They set the plants down, settle themselves down (which takes a little more work), and wriggle a small shovel free from where they’d last stashed it (dirt). The morning ticks by, quiet and just a bit too warm.
Their pocket buzzes. Fourteen shakes off a glove and fishes their phone out.
They quickly pull off their other glove so they can text back. Tender!
With great care, Fourteen takes a picture of their morning’s work and sends it to Tender. The bean, they think, looks especially good.
Their conversation isn’t long—Excerpts are busy, and Tender, Tenderness—Tender is no exception. They leave each other messages throughout the day, but Fourteen likes to keep busy too, as a matter of habit. It’s a hard one to shake, even now.
Fourteen spends the afternoon with their gloved hands in the dirt, making gentle space for the young plants that they're still worried about crushing despite all their care. The sun glints off the gold of their arms and the chipped gemstones that line the beaten metal of their body, reflecting in warm, dappled color on the small leaves below.
When the very last seedling is safely planted, Fourteen's phone lights up with another message from Tender. It’s a picture of her smiling into the camera, pointing excitedly at the Steady’s new sign. She’s put a cat filter over herself.
Fourteen laughs, and thinks for a moment before tugging off their sunhat so they send her a picture too.
The filter has a hard time focusing on them, but it’s worth it for her reaction.
That night, Fourteen sits encircled by pale drifts of paperwork and aggressively dogeared reference books, sticky notes of all colors affixed to nearly every surface, themself included. It wasn’t good to work at their cramped office desk for so long, they’d thought, especially when the floor was so spacious and convenient.
Their attempts at writing in a careful, even hand fall periodically into the chicken-scratch that has followed them across three bodily iterations. Music floats out from wherever they’d left their phone, and Fourteen hums along with it, with just a touch of operatic flourish.
What kind of music has Tender put on at the Steady tonight? they think. Something slow and easy? Something to dance to? Did she like dancing? Did they ever ask her? Or was that too—
Fourteen blinks, trying to focus on the notes before them. Whatever song they'd been listening to has finished.
It’s not until much later, when their work has been haphazardly filed away, that they notice the text from Tender. Sent three hours ago, so technically yesterday. Another picture, this time of the Steady's new drinks—what do you think? Too much apricot glitter? The tenor of the message implies that "yes" is not the right answer. A quiet laugh flutters out of Fourteen, and all they can possibly say to Tender is I think you should put more actually.
Their phone lights up again, instant.
It's absolutely too late for Tender to be up, but Fourteen can't quite bring themself to tell her that. Their heart wouldn't be in it anyway.
&
It’s a terrible thing to be suddenly gripped by the fear of an unknown future. Fourteen Fifteen thought they’d largely come to terms with it all as a concept, but clearly that is not wholly applicable. For the third time in as many minutes, they hazard a peek inside of the crinkly gift bag they’re holding before immediately trying to ignore the existence of said bag and contents entirely. Maybe they should’ve picked something different…they’d been so sure this morning—
Fourteen huffs, squaring their shoulders with great resolution. This was no time for waffling.
They take a decisive step forwards, and, in about five minutes, are absolutely lost. Well, they don’t go through the Splice often enough to know their way around quite yet—I could, they think, maybe I—but the geography certainly isn’t the worst geography that’s ever happened to Fourteen. The maps are very well-designed and easily situated, which is no surprise given their maker. It takes only a little time to find who they’re looking for.
Today, the Steady’s theme seems to be underwater western, and it’s as busy as ever under the rippling aqua-blue sunset lights. Fourteen has the advantage of height now, but they’ve never really needed it for—
Someone laughs at the bar, neon catching in her hair. Fourteen perks up as Tender looks their way.
“Fourteen!”
Tender comes around the bar to meet them. She grins up at Fourteen, all delight, and every single thought in their head melts away completely.
“Hello.” Fourteen’s internal fans skip when Tender tugs them down to kiss their cheek. They have to lean over a bit—a lot more now. Her lipstick leaves a mark, a little bow of dark color pressed to gold.
“You caught me just in time,” she says. There’s a hint of incisor, cheeky and familiar. “I was just about to head out.”
“Lucky me,” says Fourteen, not bothering to pull away. Tender is—is just as lovely as always, all smiles and velvet and pointy heels, but Fourteen doesn’t miss the shadows under her eyes, which are bright and restless in a way they know too well.
“Do you wanna sit down?” It comes out more worried than they mean it to, before they can think it through.
Tender makes a face at them. “Who’s the hostess around here?” she retorts, but pulls Fourteen along anyway over to the nearest booth.
She crosses her arms and says, “You look nervous.”
“I look inscrutable and armored.”
“And nervous.” Tender tilts her head to the side, curious. “What’s in the bag?”
One of Fourteen’s processors kicks in, an anxious little hum in their chest. They push the bag across the table, sheepish. “It’s yours.”
“For—” Tender’s eyes light up, and Fourteen can’t help the quiet rush of joy it elicits in them. “Oh, Fourteen.”
She lifts out the potted plant with careful hands, a few stray petals drifting down. Scent and color fills the space between them.
“It’s,” Fourteen says, and tries again—“It’s lavender, and violets, and Star of Hariolate, and a miniature cultivar of some sort of squash—that’s the biggest flower—and chive blossoms, eventide rose, monarda, and dust-in-the-sky—”
Tender touches a petal, smiling hopelessly. Fourteen’s words leave them all at once.
“It’s very purple,” she says.
Like velvet, and the color of dusk in the Mirage, and one particular silhouette. Like lipstick on gold.
“It reminds me of you,” they say, at last.
She blushes warmly, her breath leaving her in a soft and sudden laugh. “A mess?” she says, teasing and flustered all at once.
“Lots of good things altogether,” says Fourteen. They pause. “But I probably shouldn’t have stuck them all in one pot. Did you know they’re all edible?”
“You gave me a beautiful salad.” This time, Tender’s laugh is lighter, easier. “I’ll take good care of it.”
“Or a beautiful tea blend. Onion-y tea.” Fourteen’s own laugh is gentle. “It’s not meant to be work. I suspect in the Mesh, it’ll take care of itself with you around. I know you’re busy a lot, and it helps to have something that isn’t busy.” They should know, after all.
Fourteen flicks at a petal on the table, idle. Tender doesn’t speak, but they hear her let out a little sigh, the sound of a thousand late nights and a head full of ceaseless spinning thoughts.
“I—thanks.” Her hand reaches over to cover Fourteen’s. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Are you going soon?” they ask, turning their palm up and reveling quietly at her hand in theirs.
Tender glances across. “…No. Not yet.”
And she leans in, speaking low, just that bit closer.