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Van Chapman was pretty sure she had the Gotch kid figured out.
From the second he stepped onto the ship behind Cadswitch, it was clear that he had a bigger stick up his arse than any eight-year-old rightfully should.
Van wasn’t great with kids—a fact borne from her sailor’s mouth, a lack of experience, and some healthy fear. Her brother had a little girl now, which Van thought was great, but the last time she had seen them was only long enough for her brother to shove a squalling, fragile, red lump of baby in her bulky, clumsy arms, and Van instantly thought Nope, not for me.
She was much safer bossing around her very adult crew and hauling barrels than holding something so precious.
Still, she wasn’t a complete arsehole, so she still tried. Offered the kid a chance to come up the rigging—kids liked that kind of shit, right?---and brushed it off when he stiffly declined. No sweat off her back.
In the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a glint of something in the kid’s eye—some sort of hunger, sharp and hidden. But she pushed the thought away with her next breath. Not her fucking kid, after all.
That was the last she thought of the younger Gotch for a long, long while.
Even after all the hustle and bustle of leaving the Nut, coming back to her ship, after hearing that she was right and that it was real and that Van was finally going to be back in the sky, lovey in tow, she still didn’t spare Maxwell much of a thought.
Olethra was interesting—Comfrey’s granddaughter, and so much like her that it hurt , all curiosity and open eyes, dragging a dead mech behind her—but Maxwell was more or less the same as he was when he was eight. Stick up his arse, fancy clothes, and an air of superiority that was distinctly out of place on an airship. He was more of a condescending dick as an adult, as most people are, and was definitely lying about sponsoring the trip, and kept putting off his responsibilities onto his pasty older brother.
Still that same hunger, though, only now it was wrapped up in the pristine white gloves that he kept fiddling with. Even if he was an annoying git, Van figured, she might be able to whip him into shape by the time they found Zood.
And then they were attacked by those Imperial bastards, and Van lost herself once again the whirl of shouting orders, punching cronies, and protecting Marya. Just like old times.
She whirled around after breaking some henchman’s arm and scanned the ship, trying to see if anyone was dead or dying or if she needed to start blowing shit up, and then—
And then the Gotch kid flew past her as he launched himself off of the ship .
And then, after punching two pilots out of the sky, jumped back as if nothing had happened, as if he wasn’t covered in blood, and as if his gloves were bitten off to reveal heavily scarred knuckles.
Van Chapman prided herself on not being easily shaken, and she wasn’t. It was just— surprising .
She didn’t really know this kid at all.
Van Chapman was…well.
Maxwell didn’t know if he would go so far as to call any of the original Zephyr crew irritating . They were still his childhood heroes, after all, even if he adamantly tried to pretend like he had left his awe squarely behind in his youth, and they were clearly just as capable as they were twenty years ago. So no, it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to say that Van was being a nuisance.
Wealwell might say it, though.
It wasn’t that she was doing anything irritating, per se. In fact, it was that she wasn’t doing anything at all. She just kept… glaring at him.
Which Maxwell figured he could bear, if he had to. It wasn’t all that different an experience than growing up in the Gotch manor. He had hoped, perhaps naively, to leave that scorn behind, to find some sort of magical freedom and acceptance with the Windriders like he had always read about, but he should’ve realized that those were just the paltry fantasies of a child. The real world, and the real ship, and the real mission, were about practicality. Prudence. Profit, loathe as he was to admit it.
Still, it stung, just a little, to see the whole crew gathered around, Olethra instantly accepted into the fold, reminiscing and dreaming about Zood, Maxwell sharply on the outside. And just as he began to consider gathering his courage and trying to join in—
Van would look up at him, and her sharp sailor eyes would narrow, and Maxwell would suddenly feel like a bug under a microscope, and all sense of bravery drained from his chest.
He just didn’t know why. Why did she seem to have such a specific distaste for him? Pappy with Wealwell he understood. Solid as he was, his older brother had a way of inspiring rage in even the best of people. But Maxwell had been nothing but proper and professional since stepping on board, one or two moments of rowdiness aside.
Maybe that was it. Maybe Van thought he was too explosive, too untoward, too rowdy . Maybe she, like his father, thought that Maxwell was not fit for polite society.
But no, that didn’t make any sense, because from what he had seen so far, Van was just as rowdy if not more than him. Why would she engage in such debauchery herself but then look down on him for the very same actions?
The only possible explanation was that it wasn’t Maxwell’s rowdiness that Van thought so little of. It was just…him. But why? What had he done to–
“Oi! Gotch!”
His spiraling was cut off by its very subject.
Maxwell squinted up against the bright noon sun to see Chapman towering over him, hands on her hips, and a grin on her face that reminded him of a wolf tracking its prey.
“You’ve got some balls on you.” She said without preamble.
“Er—thank you?”
“Jumping off the ship like that was one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever seen.” Maxwell felt his heart sink below his knees, and he stiffened up in response.
“It was also one of the coolest.”
She clapped him on the shoulder. “Where’d you get moves like that?”
“In the dueling halls, at Revington.” Maxwell responded automatically, head spinning a bit. Was this an attack or a celebration? “I’ve been studying the art of gentlemen fisting—”
Van scoffed. “Nah, you don’t learn things like that in fancy-schmancy schools like Revington. Where’d you really learn ‘em?”
Maxwell bristled almost instantly at the slight to his alma mater. His hands flexed of their own accord, and he felt the familiar longing to rip his damn gloves off.
The second he moved, Van’s gaze snapped to his fingers.
Ah.
This wasn’t an attack. It was a reconnaissance mission.
Maybe it was counterintuitive, but Maxwell felt his shoulders relax ever so slightly. The danger and threats surrounding Van were still present, but at least some of the uncertainty was gone. Maxwell would be the first to admit that he was a bit—socially obtuse, occasionally, perhaps. The complexities of friendships were lost to him. But fighting?
The rules of fighting were clear as day, both in the physical and social sense. They were the same no matter where in Gath you went or who you talked to. And right now, Maxwell knew exactly what Van was doing because he himself had been doing it since he stepped onto the ship; she was sizing him up, evaluating him, and categorizing him as either threat or boon.
Thank god someone understood the language of fists here.
He met her gaze evenly.
“As I said,” he repeated, “the dueling halls of Revington provided me a more than adequate education.”
The corner of Van’s mouth lifted. Max wasn’t sure if it was a smile or a sneer.
“Well, let’s go see what you got, then.” She said. Max blinked.
“What?”
Van rolled her eyes. “Cut to the chase, Gotch. You wanna fight. I wanna see what those puny arms of yours can do. So let’s have at it, eh?”
“What, right now?”
“Well, if you’d prefer to wait until more WASPS try to shoot us down, be my guest.” Van stuck her metal hand out to haul him up.
Maxwell stared at it, mind spinning. It wasn’t that he was having reservations about fighting a woman, because he was pretty sure Van would kill him if the thought entered his mind. He was having slight doubts about fighting one of his now-aged childhood heroes.
Still, when would he get this chance again?
He grabbed Van’s wrist, heart pumping, and made to spring to his feet.
No sooner had his fingers touched metal, however, than his world suddenly blurred and twisted, and Maxwell found himself thrown over a shoulder and landing flat on his back.
All the air left his lungs in a very undignified gasp. He stared up at the wide blue sky, dazed, and for a split second, wondered Is this what death feels like?
Then Van’s guffawing face entered his view, and the thought vanished.
“They didn’t teach you that at Revington, did they?” She crowed, laughing like it was the funniest joke in the world.
Like Maxwell was a joke.
Shame and humiliation curdled in his gut, sour and sinister. He should’ve known. He should’ve guessed that this was Van’s goal all along–to make a mockery out of him in front of the entire crew, to show him that he could never truly belong here.
Anger pulsed behind his eyes as humiliation slowly turned to rage, to words that he knew he would regret, and his entire body itched with the need to move, to fight, to hit—
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry. Bad manners to start a fight too early. Let’s have a proper go of it, yeah?”
Maxwell blinked.
Van was sorry ?
He cast his memory back as far it could go, past decades of aggravating brothers and contemptuous classmates and his father’s ever-present distaste.
He could hardly remember the last time somebody actually apologized for upsetting him.
The rage disappeared as quickly as it came, like washing out with the tide. Maxwell pushed himself to his feet again, trying to suck air back in his lungs. He chanced a look at Van’s face.
The glee at his expense that he expected to see just…wasn’t there.
In fact, if anything, Van looked…concerned?
Maxwell didn’t understand these Windriders, these wild, free people, the ease with which they interacted with each other, or the emotions they wore on their faces for all to see. He didn’t understand how he was ever supposed to make his mark with them.
But he understood one thing very well, which was why he swung a fist into Van’s gut before she could finish talking, and used the momentum to kick her legs out from behind her. Van hit the deck with a thump and a roar.
Maxwell grinned. “I suppose you’d like to know where I learned that as well?”
Now it was Van’s turn to blink up at him, stunned. She furrowed her brow like she had just learned something very important, then grinned, slowly, dangerously.
“Oh, you’re in for it now, Gotch.”
Those were the last words they exchanged for a while, as Van sprang up, fists outstretched, and the universal dance continued once more.
It was too beautiful a night to be in such a bad fucking mood.
Van sighed.
She was exactly where she wanted to be, doing exactly what she was meant to do, with the exact people she loved most in the world, and instead of sleeping, she was out on the deck with a screwdriver and old scars.
She looked down without thinking, and saw only the pulsating, inky mass of ocean roiling underneath the Zephyr as far as the eye could see. Instantly, her throat began to close up, and her lungs tightened with memories of ice-cold water choking out all her air.
Stupid fucking ocean.
Stupid fucking scars.
Stupid fucking ghosts, and curses, and more than anything else, stupid fucking arm .
Van’s temper flared and she smacked her prosthesis down onto the Zephyr’s railing hard enough that the dials spun like Marya’s yo-yos.
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
She whirled around. “Jesus, fuck, Gotch!”
Sure enough, the Gotch kid was standing right behind her, posture still picture-perfect. He was still dressed, Van noted, but had lost his vest and suit for a slightly looser, more worn shirt. It made her slightly uncomfortable, which was saying something, since she hadn’t been in the best of spirits to start with.
She turned around brusquely. “Don’t you have a brother to pick up after somewhere?”
Normally, the bite in her voice would be enough to signal to her crew that she was not in a talking mood. She hoped the kid was smart enough to pick up on it first try.
And of course, Maxwell wasn’t.
“Wealwell’s asleep, I think. He’s just in the corner of the bunks on one leg, but I think that’s just how he rests. It’s quite unnerving.” Maxwell joined her at the railing and handed her back the screwdriver she hadn’t realized she had dropped.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Maxwell continued. Van heaved a sigh. So much for a quiet night.
“No, it doesn’t hurt, and yes, I know what the dials mean.” She didn’t. She really, really fucking didn’t, and some days it was all she could think about.
(How could Comfrey—how could her friend —put something on her body and not even tell her what it was?)
“Ah.” Maxwell was quiet for a second. Then, “Can I ask—”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”
Van groaned. “It’s the same bleedin’ question everyone else asks. You’re not special, Gotch, no matter how much you think you are.”
“I think that’s highly presumptuous.”
Van’s indignation flared again, and she turned to him with a snarl. “Look, it doesn’t matter what happened or how I got it. It’s my arm, it’s part of me, and that means it’s my business, alright? If you need to stick your nose in someone else’s life so badly, go ask Pappy. Maybe we’ll all get lucky and he’ll cut your tongue out.”
She turned back, ignoring the part of her that twinged in guilt, that suggested that she was just lashing out at Gotch because he was the closest one around, and because she just wanted everyone to leave her alone.
It was better this way, anyway. Van was the strong one. The bosun. The scrapper, the sky pirate, the sea-wolf. She needed space to lick her wounds in the dark so she could go back to doing her job. It didn’t matter if she pushed her crew away, or if someone got their feelings hurt in the process. This was just how life was, and the sooner Maxwell learned that, the better.
“I was going to ask if the metal affects how you distribute your weight when you fight.”
Van started. The kid was still here?
She turned, slightly, and saw Maxwell still holding the same position, as if nothing had happened. In fact, he just looked curious.
“It does.” She said slowly, suspiciously. “Why’d you wanna know?”
If this was his way of trying to figure out her weaknesses, he was doing a piss poor job of it. Rule number one of evaluating your enemy: never let them know that you’re ever evaluating.
Maxwell shifted, and looked out over the ocean. It made something dark and jealous twist inside of Van to see the ease with which he did so.
“I noticed it when we were sparring.” He said. “You lean on your right foot whenever you’re about to throw a punch. It’d be a lot harder to predict your next move if you didn’t.”
Van squinted at him. “So, what? You came out here just to tell me I’m shit at my job? You think you’re that much better than me?”
Gotch sputtered. “I don’t—I wasn’t trying to—”
His face got all twisted up like he smelled something foul, or like he was constipated. Maybe both. “I was thinking about what you said, at the South Pole.”
It was a shitty apology so far, but Van was willing to see if it went somewhere. “When I threatened to kill you?”
“Before that.”
“Mmm.”
“About being cursed.”
“ Mmm .”
“Not that I’m cursed, obviously, because I’m not—”
“Oh, of course.”
“But I was thinking —” Maxwell sighed. “Look, every opponent’s strengths are a possible weakness, right?”
So he had learned something at that prissy school of his. Van didn’t give him the pleasure of validation, though, just a curt nod.
“That’s how I noticed your lean. Your arm is incredible, but it adds an extra weight.”
Wasn’t that the fucking truth.
She was about two seconds away from telling him to fuck off when he continued. “But if that’s true, then every weakness must also be a strength, somehow. And if you’re cursed, then maybe something good can come out of it. Like how you were able to tell that those missiles were headed our way.”
Huh. She had never thought of it like that.
“And I suppose, hypothetically, if I were somehow a teensy bit cursed, it would make me feel better to know that you are too. Hypothetically.”
Fucking kid. Van couldn’t help but snort.
“Yeah, well, hypothetically—”
She looked down at her arm and paused mid-sentence. Two of the dials had slipped back into the green.
Damn.
“---hypothetically, if all that were true, I’d say thanks, kid.”
“Oh.” He looked surprised. “Oh–well, you’re welcome.”
“Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically.”
Van felt a smile tug at her lips, and she quickly swatted Maxwell on the back of the head to cover it up. “All right, get outta here, Gotch. Go get your beauty rest while I fix this hunk of junk.”
Maxwell squawked and hustled away, grumbling about unfairness and grumpy old pirates. For his sake, Van pretended not to hear.
It was too nice a night to get into a bad fucking mood, after all.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Maxwell’s feet pounded against the creaking floorboards of the Zephyr’s hull.
One. Two. Three. Four.
The belowdecks were cramped, a fact only exacerbated by the stacks of provisions and barrels of food. It left Maxwell with a space large enough for only four paces, which only furthered his feeling like a dog in a cage.
One. Two. Three. Four.
One comment. It was just one measly comment that sent him over the edge. One slight comment too many from Wealwell about how Maxwell was surely disowned, and all of the sudden his shoulders were by his ears, and the skin on the back of his knuckles started to itch, and his mind was forgoing all rational thought and zeroing in on fury.
Or maybe it wasn’t one comment. Maybe it was an entire journey’s worth of slights, of strange glances, of new dangers and new experiences and new failures, over and over and over, until all Max could hear was his father’s voice ringing in his ears, and Wealwell’s ill-timed observation lit the fuse of his inevitable explosion.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Maxwell had banished himself down here the second he felt—well, rowdy. Much as he longed for a fight, he wouldn’t take it out on Wealwell, or on this crew. Besides, it wasn’t proper. There was no battle to be had. No danger to blame the adrenaline on. He was just out of control for no good reason, desperately trying to calm himself.
One. Two. Three. Four.
One. Two. Three. Four.
One–
“Gotch.”
Maxwell sucked in a sharp breath. Of course Chapman would find him now.
Maybe if he pretended like he hadn’t heard, she would leave.
“Oi, Gotch.”
Damn.
He wheeled around, seething and trying not to show it. “What?”
Chapman stood at the bottom of the stairs, seemingly completely unfazed by Maxwell’s frantic pacing and huffing. She leaned against an oddly shaped object that Maxwell didn’t recognize.
“Gimme your gloves.” She said in lieu of a greeting.
Maxwell was so confused that it momentarily stunned him out of his anger.
“What are you talking about?” He said before he could stop himself.
Van took a step closer, dragging the object with her. As she came further into the swinging lantern light, Maxwell could see that it was a stack of old crates with what looked like flour bags nailed on.
This did absolutely nothing to allay his confusion.
“Marya rigged this up for me back in the old days.” V an said. “Saw me losing me fucking mind after a while with no scraps and told me I needed something to put my anger in.”
“That’s nice.” Maxwell said, and even he could tell it sounded like he didn’t think it was nice at all. “But what does that have to do—”
“Mate, you’ve been on edge for days. You’ve been snapping at everyone, your eyes are all shifty, and now you’re pacing around my ship like you wanna wear a hole in the bottom.” Van hesitated, slightly, then continued, a bit stiffly. “Look, it’s a small ship. Tensions build quick, and for folks like you and me, we gotta do something to let the energy out that doesn’t involve screamin’ at people. So stop pretending you’re not upset, gimme your glove, and hit the bag.”
Of course not, Maxwell’s brain wanted him to say. How undignified.
His hands weren’t listening to his brain, however, because before Maxwell even realized what was happening, he had ripped his gloves off, shoved them at Van, and whirled around to plant a fist solidly in the middle of a bag of flour.
It landed with a heavy thud. The wooden crates behind the bags creaked. Maxwell stared.
That felt good.
He did it again. And again. And again, and again, and again, until a wave of anger drowned out all the other noise in his head and all he could feel was the dull, repetitive, pain in his knuckles. He could tell that his shoulders were clenched and his feet were in terrible form, but it didn’t even matter.
Maxwell lost track of time. He lost track of whether or not he was alone in the small room, or if he was making too much noise. He slammed into the crates over and over, losing himself in rowdy and cursed son and worthless and wrong until slowly, gradually, the emotions began to drain.
Maxwell stopped, panting, sweating hard. His mind felt peacefully blank for the first time in days.
“Better?”
He blinked. He had completely forgotten that Van was there.
He had assumed, subconsciously, that she would leave him to his tantrum in peace, give him the privacy to break down before pretending like it had never happened. Not so, apparently.
Although, what real reason did he have to lie now? If Van hadn’t thrown him overboard yet, she probably wasn’t likely to now.
“Better.” Maxwell answered truthfully. He turned to face Van, wiping sweat from his brow. “Thank you. I apologize for—”
“Nah, don’t worry about it.” Van shifted, only now looking slightly uncomfortable. “Do you…wanna talk about it?”
Maxwell thought for a second. Then, “No.”
Van visibly relaxed. She reached out and clapped him on the shoulder affably.
“Wanna drink?”
“God, yes.”
Van laughed and chucked Maxwell’s gloves back to him. He caught them in midair. Suddenly, they didn’t feel quite so restrictive anymore.
“Well, c’mon then! Day’s a-wasting!”
She ambled upwards. Maxwell watched for a second, smiling slightly, before glancing over his shoulder at the makeshift punching bag.
Maybe Chapman had a trick or two up her sleeve yet.
The kid was stumbling.
Not surprising, given the day they had had. Van herself was feeling its aftereffects in just about every joint she had. She couldn’t wait to get back on the Zephyr with her lovey and start fiddling with her prosthesis.
No, what was surprising was that she hadn’t noticed anything until now. The sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon, sending radioactive streaks of green and purple through the sky, and above them, thousands of tiny pinprick stars were lighting up one by one. The day was coming to a close.
A full day in Zood.
Van had been so enraptured by everything—and in her defense, there was a lot of rapturous stuff around—that she had almost forgotten the feeling of being slammed into the blood-soaked dirt of a fighting pit. Furthermore, she had forgotten that Maxwell had been hit just as hard.
Fighting a fucking dinosaur will do that. Kinda takes precedence over everything else in your memory.
The adrenaline was fully tapered off now, though, and Van felt every bone in her body groaning and aching like the worn-out machine she was. The others had sprinted off somewhere, after that bloody cocksucker Murdershire, in an effort to find more clues. Monty took one look at her and Maxwell and told them to stay back in case someone with information came looking for Haunch.
A phony suggestion if she had ever heard one, but Van wasn’t inclined to mind. She was more than happy to drop her tired old bones on a stoop and wait for someone to tell her what to fight next.
“The Max” didn’t have any of the same self-preservation, apparently. He had argued with Monty, and then Olethra, and then Daisuke, and even Wealwell, until finally Marya pulled a gun on him and told him to stay back and catch his breath or she would “bring him to the god of his choice”, at which point he scowled and relented.
He stayed stubbornly up on his feet, however, which was how Van finally noticed the limp in his step as he paced back and forth around Haunch’s drab apartment.
Well, that just wouldn’t do, would it?
“Gotch!” She bellowed.
Maxwell jumped a foot in the air, and Van smirked. Still got it.
“Yes?” He asked, trying to act like he hadn’t just nearly shit himself. Van squinted at his face carefully.
Even his mustache looked droopy.
Van patted the stoop next to her. “C’mere.”
Maxwell just stared at her. “...Why?”
Fucking of course the kid couldn’t just do what was asked. “Because I wanna hear more of your sparkling conversational skills.”
“Really?”
“No, you bloody berk! I have a medicine kit and you look like you’re two steps away from faceplanting in dinosaur shit, so come over here and lemme look at that leg of yours.”
Van thought it was a pretty good argument, all things considered, but Maxwell still bristled.
“Excuse you, my leg is fine. I am perfectly capable of—”
“Who said anything about being capable?”
“Well, clearly, the rest of our—the crew, since they left us behind to go search for a ne’er do well!”
Van noted the slip, how he stumbled over the words our crew , and tucked it away for later. She had a more pressing issue now, and that was the way Maxwell’s bulky frame was trembling with exhaustion.
She put on her most intimidating, glowering, Van-Chapman-Legendary-Sky-Pirate-Once-Ate-One-Of-Her-Own-Toes-On-A-Dare face, and slowly pushed herself up to standing.
“You saying I’m not capable of handling a fight?”
The kid stopped in his tracks, mouth opening and closing like a stuck fish. Clearly, whatever he was going to say, he thought better of it. “Well—well, no, but, I mean—”
“Right. Listen, mate, you can either come over here and sit down yourself, or I’ll drag you over by the mustache.” Van shrugged. “Your choice.”
There was a long second of silence as Maxwell stared at her, obviously trying to see if she was serious. Lucky for him, she was.
Finally, he huffed and limped over to where Van was waiting, scowling all the way.
She had a sudden flashback to that tightass eight-year-old, stubbornly sticking his nose in the air at every suggestion, and had to bite back a grin.
“Good lad!” She bellowed again as he sat down, and couldn’t resist punching him in the shoulder.
“Ow!” Maxwell twisted away from her and rubbed his shoulder balefully. “What was that for?”
She snorted. “Oh, c’mon, kid, you can fight a dinosaur but you can’t take a little wallop?”
“We didn’t actually fight the dinosaur.” he corrected, ever pedantic. “Besides, it’s…different, when I’m in a match.”
Wasn’t that the fucking truth. Van thought back to the look in Max’s eyes as they approached the pit, heard the screams, smelled the sweat and blood. It was the same look she glimpsed when he threw himself overboard and onto the wasp.
It was a look Van knew all too well from her own face. It was one of thrill, of adrenaline, of pure, sheer physicality, and any pain sustained only served to fuel that fire.
The comedown was a bitch , though.
“Yeah, alright,” Was all she said, however, as she began pulling out gauze and salve. Gotch didn’t need an old fuck like her lamenting about the aftereffects of decades of brawling. He’d come to find out soon enough, and Van wasn’t gonna be able to stop him.
She could try and keep his stubborn arse alive until then, though.
“You had some good moves at the end there, The Max .” Van teased. Maxwell flushed a bright pink, and she used the distraction to yank his pants leg up and upend a bottle of alcohol onto his knee.
“Mother fucker !” He squawked, and it was only Van’s iron prosthesis grip on his leg that kept him from shooting upwards. “What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Oh, calm down, you big baby.” she muttered as she scrubbed at the bloody joint with the end of her shirt. “Last thing we need is you getting an infection when we’re in a different fucking world.”
He grumbled petulantly, but settled back down. “I don’t see anybody dousing your open wounds in rum.”
Van didn’t look up from where she was now splinting his leg. “Monty’ll do it for me when we’re back on the ship.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, always does.” Van patted Maxwell’s knee. “It’s what crew does for each other.”
“Oh.” Maxwell said, dumbly. Then, “ Oh . Oh, so—crew.”
She looked up, and was taken aback by the look in Maxwell’s eyes. The anger and superiority was gone, and in its place was something—something confused, and hungry, and longing.
She blinked. Did he really think—
“You bloody knobhead.” She muttered, both to herself and to Maxwell, then grabbed a handful of the back of his shirt and yanked him into the biggest, tightest hug she could muster. She squeezed until she heard him wheeze as his ribs constricted, until some of the tension melted out of his shoulders and he tentatively brought his hands up to her back.
“Yeah, Gotch. Crew. Now gimme your knuckles so I can clean them too.”
Maxwell screeched like a goddamn monkey and fucking catapulted away from Van.
Well, if that’s how he wanted to do it—
When the others came back, it was to the sight of the legendary Van Chapman pinning the esteemed seventh Gotch son to the ground, both swearing and kicking up a storm as she manhandled a bandage around his wrist and a flask of aoli down his throat.
Monty raised an eyebrow. So he’s ours now?
Van grinned, sea-wolf teeth bared and deadly. Ours.