Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Lizzie was not what acquaintances would describe as non confrontational. In fact, if you asked most people that weren’t used to her, she might be described as intense. Good. Lizzie wanted to be intense. She saw no point in avoiding the problems. She was a captain, and a captain faced issues head on, whether that be with her sword or her words or a careful plan. Confrontation came easy to her. Except for when it came to confronting her feelings about Jay Ferin. 

Jay Fucking Ferin. Jay former-Navy-current-’pirate’ Ferin, who was currently busy at work trying to repair a splinter on the deck of the Albatross. Her fiery red hair was tied up in a bun, with frizzy curls spilling down from hours of labor and cascading onto her toned shoulders. There was an intense focus in her expression, brows furrowed and lips pursed into a line. Lizzie pointedly avoided staring at her lips for too long. Jay’s face was red enough to match her hair, a shine of sweat making her soft cheekbones glow in the midday light and highlighting her toned forearms. Lizzie’s gaze lingered for a moment on her biceps, forcing herself to tear her gaze away when Jay turned to offer a friendly wave. Lizzie aimed her eyes forward, praying that Jay would assume she simply hadn’t seen her. Caspian had asked to talk to her and Chip, anyways, and she didn’t have the time to get distracted just because Jay happened to look really pretty when she was working. 

Lizzie had come to terms with her attraction to Jay. She’d known she liked women for a while and once she got over her initial suspicion of  her, it was kind of inevitable that she was going to feel something for her. That didn’t mean she had to act on it, though. She could feel her feelings, she was just going to feel them by herself. Privately. Specifically unbeknownst to the target of her affection. 

She headed below deck, spotting the two men discussing and making her way over to them. Positioning herself in between them at the cartography table, she tried to discern exactly what they were looking at. There were various charcoal lines from their relative position to various islands. “Everything good?” She asked, peering between the two of them.

“Yeah,” Chip replied, working hard to calculate some sort of distance as he talked, tongue sticking out of his mouth in thought. “The last stop we made for supplies, some guy warned Caspian of a crew that had been circling the nearby seas and attacking ships.” He gestured with his index finger towards one of the circles on the map. “And because things can’t be easy, they’re right on our trajectory.”

“We wanted to talk to you about charting a safer course around them. It’s going to add a couple days to our expected arrival, but given that we just stocked up, I don’t believe that it will be an issue,” Caspian interjected calmly. He began explaining the possible routes and Lizzie tried her best to pay attention to them. She trusted the two of them with this. Caspian was an expert navigator who knew the seas like the back of his hand and even Chip occasionally had something intelligent to add to the conversation. 

The rest of the discussion went relatively well. They figured out a route that, even if a little inconvenient, was definitely safer and only minorly out of the way. As her and Caspian were getting ready to head back to the Crescent Moon, Lizzie turned towards Chip. The image of Jay working away on the ship flashed back into her mind. “You know, I always see Jay fixing up stuff on your ship. Have you thought about giving her a break?”

Chip gave her a puzzled look. “Huh? Jay chooses to do that. And besides, it’s not like Gill and I aren’t doing the same amount of work as her.” He snorted. “You just look at her more than us. Makes sense that you’d be into buff women, I guess.”

“No I don’t!” Lizzie replied quickly. Shit. She could feel her face warming up as a silence grew between the trio. Before either of them had a chance to respond, or, hopefully, even process her outburst, she fixed her coat and started heading towards the door. Looking back at Caspian and Chip, she swiftly realized it was too late. They had already exchanged looks, both of them turning back towards her with different expressions. Caspian, one of amused familiarity, and Chip with the look of a child who had just figured out a dirty secret. 

“Lizzie, I was joking,” Chip explained, doing a piss-poor job of hiding the smirk on his lips. She let out a sigh of relief. The looks meant nothing. She was just overthinking it. She went to leave before he cut her off again. “At first.”

Damnit. Damnit, damnit, damnit. Why couldn’t she have had that slipup around someone besides the two people who knew her best? Someone who would have taken her quick answer at surface value and not seen beneath it.  “I- She’s always working whenever I’m on your ship. I’m...sure you and Gillion do as much work as she does,” She replied through gritted teeth, fidgeting with the buttons on her coat. “So if you don’t mind, I’m going to get going--”

“You know, there’s no shame in it,” Caspian cut in with his irritatingly smooth tone. “I’ve known you for long enough to read between the lines when you say things.”

“Yeah, Lizzie,” Chip added. She took note of the taunt in his voice with passive irritation. “No shame if you’ve got the hots for Jay, I say--”

“I don’t have the hots for her!” She insisted. So much for the whole...feeling her feelings in solitude thing. “Would you like it if I brung up Gillion in this conversation?” The hush that fell over her fellow captain was enough of a win for her. Getting Chip to shut up was a rare feat that she prided herself in her ability to accomplish. “No, right? Even if I have feelings for her, I’m not going to act on it, so don’t, Chip. Because we both know you’d be a hypocrite to say anything.” With that final punctuation, she turned on her heels and headed back to her own ship. Fuck the both of them and their exchanged glances and smug attempts at reassurance and… well, she couldn’t really think of anything else to be angry at them for, but still. Fuck them. She didn’t need them to reassure her that it was okay to be attracted to Jay. She knew that. It was also okay if she decided to just bury them and not make things more complicated than they were. That could maybe count as confronting the problem. By Ignoring it.

She arrived back to her quarters, slamming the door shut and sinking against it. Caspian and John knew not to bother her when the door was closed. Caspian would likely be course correcting, anyways, and she had seen John with a book and a cup of tea, which meant he would be safely out of the way for a few hours. All of that said, because Lizzie had the worst luck of any person ever on Mana in existence, there was a gentle knock at the door.

Chapter Text

    “I’m busy,” Lizzie called out with a sigh, getting up from the door and sliding the hatch to lock the door.

    “Chip and Caspian said you wanted to talk to me?” A voice rang out from behind the door. A familiar voice. A voice careful and laced with confusion. A voice that belonged to none other than Jay Ferin.

 “They’re bastards. Ignore them,” Lizzie insisted, catching her reflection in the mirror and fixing her appearance before she realized what she was doing. “They’re just trying to fuck with me.”

“Fuck with you… Lizzie, what?” Jay let out a soft laugh, trying the handle. “Are you okay?”

“I’m going to ask you to leave.” The words came out measured, almost strained.

“Okay, you’re actually concerning me. Seriously, are you good?” Jay tried the handle again. “Why is the door locked?” The handle jiggled once more.

Damnit. Jay was actually starting to get concerned. Running a hand through her curls, Lizzie took a moment to process her options. Option number one: Convince Jay to go away, through force, if necessary. It would temporarily put an end to the problem, but wouldn’t help the concern at all. Option number two: Make a break for it. No real pros to this one, admittedly, but it would definitely get her away. Option number three. The one that was increasingly seeming like her only option. Let Jay in. If she can convince her that everything is just fine , then maybe Lizzie can go back to avoiding her without any suspicion. Simple as that. There were a few moments of rustling before the lock clicked and the door slid open. She held a hand to gesture Jay inside. “If I let you in, will you leave me alone? I promise I’m fine.”

Jay cautiously stepped through the door frame, shutting the dark, wooden door behind her with a soft click. Lizzie became acutely aware of how messy her quarters were once Jay was inside. Her intricately carved wooden desk had various coffee and tea stains on it and there was an empty bottle of alcohol strewn on the floor next to it. A corset laid haphazardly on the corner of her bed, leather worn and wrinkled from years of use. Her own wanted poster was hung on the wall with a knife through it. It was, admittedly, a good - if rather dramatic - storage of her knife. 

Just as Lizzie opened her mouth to speak, she heard muffled giggling outside of the door. Meeting Jay’s gaze, she went to investigate. As soon as she made it to the door, she heard the sound of something being slammed against it. She tried to open it. Nothing. The door jiggled, but refused to open. It had been jammed. Instantly, she knew who had done this. “Chip!” She bellowed out, banging on the door.

“You two have fun in there,” He called from outside the door, the heavy sounds of his escape echoing on the wooden floorboards of the ship. There was a long moment before Lizzie turned back to face Jay, who looked properly confused.

“Do you want to tell me what this is all about?” She asked, arms folded across her chest. “Because this is all starting to feel really suspicious, Lizzie.” 

Lizzie edged away from the door, trying to get to the other side of the room and put distance between her and the incredulous Jay that was staring daggers at her. “There’s nothing to explain. They’re just...playing a prank.”

“Chip roped Caspian into a prank?” A beat. Jay took another step towards her. Lizzie took a step back. This was a dangerous dance that the two of them were engaging in, waltzing on the precipice of something Lizzie wouldn’t dare to say. “And also, what even is the prank? I don’t understand how getting me to talk to you and then locking us in a room has any significance to either of us. It certainly doesn’t to me.” She raised her eyebrows pointedly at the captain who was still slinking away at the moment.

Lizzie’s eyes caught on Jay’s face. The red had faded from her skin since when she was working, but that pretty shine still rested. It had settled into a duller glow in the oil lamp of Lizzie’s quarters, but it still looked...radiant. Her eyes were narrowed, a sharpshooter’s gaze. She certainly felt pierced by them. Lizzie’s gaze continued down her face, almost moving of its own volition. Freckles dotted her tanned cheeks and the bridge of her nose. And her lips. They were curved into an almost smile, amused by whatever it was that Lizzie was refusing to say. Her lips looked soft. Pink. A funny contrast to the lean muscle and hardened expressions of the archer. 

Jay cleared her throat, pulling Lizzie out of her haze and pulling her focus up from her lips. Shit. Had she been staring? “I know you’ve been avoiding me, you know,” Jay started, passively inspecting the knifed up wanted poster on the wall. It was a welcome reprieve from the perceptive gaze on her instead and Lizzie took the moment to edge closer towards the far wall of her quarters. “I wasn’t going to say about it, but I’m not dumb. I see the way you look away anytime I try to talk to you.”

“Listen, I--”

“No, I think I understand.” Jay turned back towards her, taking a few swift paces towards her. “See, you avoiding me always struck me as odd. You’re not the kind of person to back away if you simply didn’t like me. I’ve been on the brunt of you not liking me. I know you’re not just going to avoid me if you have an issue.” Another few steps. Jay was only getting closer and there was nowhere to go but the wall behind Lizzie. She swallowed gently, trying to ignore the way Jay’s eyes followed the movement of her throat. 

“What are you implying?” Lizzie took another step back, hitting the wall exactly as predicted. Jay stood a foot and a half away from her, piercing gaze and amused smile playing at her lips. She was a good half foot taller than Lizzie, looking down at her gently. It would be intimidating if it didn’t feel so...playful. Despite being backed to the wall, she didn’t feel like she was in danger.

“I’m implying that there’s a reason you’ve been avoiding me. And it isn’t that you don’t like me, so there’s something else.” Jay took another step forward, the smug look on her face only growing as Lizzie’s cheeks flushed a shade darker, visible even in the dim light of the cabin. “Listen, I’m not here to judge you. Really. But I’m not an idiot and I’m not exactly…” She laughed gently. “I’m not exactly inexperienced.”

Staring up at her, Lizzie felt her gaze shift down to Jay’s lips again. Her smile was every ounce cocky as it was genuine. Jay reached a hand out, pressing it firmly against Lizzie’s cheek. “You’re burning up. That’s gotta be unhealthy.” She leaned closer, pretending to inspect the captain’s face. That, Lizzie thought mournfully, was definitely not helping the flush. “You’re staring at my lips again, you know. I don’t think you realize that you’re doing that, but you are.”

Their eyes met. Lizzie’s narrowed, in frustration or in some simulacrum of affection, she didn’t know. And then they were kissing. Lizzie’s hands found their way to Jay’s jaw, holding her and pulling her close. She found herself crowded further against the wall, a hand carding its way through her thick curls. Jay pulled away from the kiss, trailing pecks across her jaw and down her neck.

“You are being so smug about this,” Lizzie hissed out, tilting her head back to allow Jay more access to her neck anyways. 

“I don’t see you complaining,” Jay said in a retort. She was swiftly cut off by a hand balling in her shirt, pulling her back up into a kiss. 

Lizzie had wanted this for...how long? Months, at least. She had wanted Jay like this for months and all it took was Chip being a bastard and Jay being far too perceptive for her to end up crowded against the wall, lips pressed against Jay’s. Fuck the regret. She pulled Jay into a deeper kiss, relishing the fact that this was real and happening and she was able to do this and, willing that everything went right, she would be able to keep doing exactly this for as long as she wanted to.

The irony was not lost on her, that the non confrontational person was the first one to make the move against the, perhaps infamously, confrontational Captain Lizzie. Whatever. There were other things to worry about at the moment, and those things were kissing her hard enough to serve as good enough of a distraction as any.