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Beau kicked the door in. She didn’t need to, but it felt right. The sound of the unlocked thing’s impact with whatever was on the other side was particularly brittle shattering.
“Congratulations! You broke the ugliest lamp I have literally ever seen.” Jester’s left hand was blue, her right hand was green, and the splotch of pastel pink on the tip of her nose was very nearly fetching.
Beau took a cautious step in. She couldn’t imagine there was much more havoc to be wrought on her casualty, but she figured it was only polite to not track ceramic shards into the penthouse. Fjord closed the door behind her.
“We wanted to give you a security deposit to remember. Not that you, uh, seem to need any help in that department.” He toed a paint can out of the way. “What’s the artist’s inspiration?”
Jester wiped her hands on her smock, adding no new color to the splotched fabric and detracting none from her fingers. The wall to her back, having turned to keep common courtesy and face her incoming guests, was sponged from top plate to wood floors. “You’ve gotta keep track of where you’ve been! I brought Xhorhas to us, and we’ll bring here to wherever we go next.” It would be a landscape, in approximately three more hours work. Her paintings started in broad swathes and contracted layer by layer into tiny detail.
“Speaking of,” Beau hung her jacket on the back of one chair and sat in another, “do I smell a change of plans? And, can I, sweep that up or something?”
“Yes, and no! Fjord can sweep, because we have work to do.” Jester dropped her brush into a little pool of orange and rubbed her hands together. “Oh boy, do we have work to do. Also, it’s mostly work for Fjord’s benefit anyways, so he can’t even be sad about being the maid.”
Fjord looked up from his phone. “You’ve got a lead?” The phone buzzed. His eyes stayed on Jester, his phone stayed in his hand.
“I maaay, or maaaay not, or most definitely did get a lead just before calling you over. Can you set up over there?” She gestured with her chin to the kitchen island. “It’s got a power bank in the center.”
“You, ma’am, are a gentleman and a saint.” Fjord looked down at his phone. “Show me, the, uh, cleaning supplies.” Fjord’s phone did not buzz, but he typed.
Beau got up, hefted her suitcase onto the butcher-block countertop, and started unloading. It’s difficult to overestimate the power in efficient packing. A small enough suitcase is an excellent disguise for up to three separate computers, at least four hard drives, a cooling rack, and a good headset. “Give it all to me babe, and I’ll get it all back to you. Bro, get your head in the game. Bro.”
Jester stepped out of the smock, leaving it with the rest of her supplies, and got three inches taller on the balls of her feet in front of Fjord. “Hey bro, your bro’s calling you.” She shifted her weight, trying for four. Fjord raised his phone higher.
“It’s important business night. I’m working on important business.” He bopped the top of Jester’s head with the phone. He stopped looking at it, looked at her and then at Beau, but didn’t put it in his pocket. “Why’re we all starin’ at me? Thought we were chasing some motherfuckers down.”
“Ostensibly,” Beau said, “we are.”
The penthouse was one very large open rectangle, with a square walled off in the northwest corner for a master bathroom. The bed made up a good percentage of available space, circular on a circular dais, and Fjord’s maps and satellite charts took up residence on the satin sheets. They left the curtains open while they worked, turning the east wall into a view of the city, close, and the ports, further out, and the ocean, furthest still, all glittering. Jester worked next to Beau, connecting and disconnecting little bits of machinery from her bank of humming technology, until all reasonable tinkering opportunities had run out. Beau worked until the program running on Computer #2 glitched and required upwards of an hour to get itself functional. It was only convenient that Fjord’s phone chose that moment of discovery to go off nine times in a row.
Jester got to him first. “How come you never told us you were so popular?” Fjord had been staring fixedly at a long table of numbers before the vibration, and she made a space on the cushions free of cartography.
Beau got to him second, pushing the rolling barstool precariously over to the edge of the step. “Might not be popular, could just be a stalker.”
“You two are the stalkers.” Fjord caught Jester’s wrist. It snaked its way towards his phone and inconveniently into his hand. He dropped his phone into his lap. Jester smiled at him, nose scrunched up, tongue between her teeth.
“It’s not just your safety, man, it’s ours. She could fuck our shit up.” Beau looked pointedly at Fjord’s groin.
“She’s not fucking anyone’s shit up. She’s..” Fjord trailed off, the phone blinking back on. He dropped Jester’s wrist and she held it out to Beau - “Kiss it better?”- “She’s talking about a malfunction they had.”
Jester knee-walked closer, leaned into his back, and hooked her chin over his collarbone. “She sent pictures! Was it a wardrobe malfunction?” Beau snorted. Fjord flipped the phone over. Jester sighed. “If you have a crush, you can tell us.”
“Yeah, you’re a romantic at heart. No one’s saying she’s not gorgeous. You can be gorgeous and completely batshit.”
Fjord moved his shoulders. Jester did not move, and his full range of movement did not return. He stretched sideways minutely, and she settled without jabbing any of her bones into his. “No one’s drunk enough to be doing this.”
Beau smiled at Jester. “These places come with minibars?”
Fjord flipped his phone over and over in his hand, absently, and stared at the data table. “Fuck it, maybe whiskey’s the key to this fucking cipher.”
Already at the fridge, Beau asked Jester to assure Fjord that it was okay to want to talk about his horrible and embarrassing crush, and he didn’t have to pretend it was because they had a moment of frustrating downtime. Jester didn’t frown, because she was not the sort of person to frown sincerely. She did pat Fjord’s arm comfortingly. “She is pretty.”
The first step to solidifying their partnership had been a drinking competition at a powder bar in Tanhaus. The cycle reasserted itself when alcohol emerged from that point forward. Beau and Fjord drank at the same time, same drink, accused the other of taking a smaller sip. Rinsed and repeated until they’d chugged the bottle to beat a time limit, since they couldn’t argue drink quantity. They relinquished their empties to Jester, who pulled a tiny paintbrush and palette out of the folds of her skirt and started doing their portraits on the hazy purple glass.
Beau, having migrated to the bed, found the orbital data sheet under her elbow and gestured to Fjord with it. “Ready to test your theory, cap’n?”
“Fuck no, hoss, ready to fix whatever bug crawled into your system?” Fjord took it, put it somewhere behind his head, and felt around for his phone.
Jester daubed in several large, crimson hearts around his head and turned it around to display. Beau nodded appreciatively and flicked the neck of the bottle in imitation of a cheers.
“Go ahead, ask me who I like first.”
Fjord scratched his neck and maneuvered one arm onto his stomach, moving slowly. Jester painted a tiny halo over Beau. “Who do you like?”
“No one. Your turn.” Beau held her hand out and Jester high-fived her.
“We’re just curious! It would be, like, the most love story thing. Love stories love pirates. It’s all very sexy.”
“Oh, yeah.” Beau rolled over onto her stomach and thanked whatever shady shit kept Jester flush enough to afford accommodations like this, with beds this big. “Eyepatches, parrots, peg legs.”
“Pegging’s very hot,” Jester offered, and started in on a macaw that took a nasty smear to the beak when Fjord coughed and jolted her hand. Jester pushed her lips out, one cheek puffed up, and drew a streak of paint down Fjord’s arm. “I’m making you a friend, be careful.”
“Yeah, dude, be more sex positive. You’re not gonna woo a lady like that by staying vanilla.”
Fjord looked at his phone. “Definitely won’t by forgetting to reply.” He clicked over to her server and covered the screen with his other hand.
“No trust in this crew, fuck.” Beau adjusted to get a better look at Jester’s work. “Is it nudes?” She looked back at Fjord. Fjord looked at his screen. They let a respectful amount of time pass before Jester prepped a new color, reached forward, and got the tip of his ear. He tilted his head away from them, smiling. “It’s definitely nudes.”
“If it’s nudes,” Jester wriggled closer, “I’ll do you my best body paint so you can return the favor.”
“Do you do face paint?” Beau brushed a strand of hair that had fallen out of her braid behind her ear. “I’m thinking saber-toothed tiger.”
The three of them were twisted into a spiral on the sheets, only touching in centimeters, an ankle to a shin, an elbow to a torso. Jester pulled Beau up to sitting and got to work. Fjord offered a steady stream of noise, words and fingers hitting the screen and new message chimes and the occasional rock-breaking laughter that still caught Jester off guard. He spread his arms out and offered them to her as soon as she finished with Beau.
“So, if they’re nudes, does that mean you fucked?” Beau asked, watching a tsunami trace the veins standing out on his forearms.
“Can’t say so. Nudes and we haven’t fucked.” Jester reached the inside of his elbow and he twitched. “Depends on your definition.”
“Was it just oral? Was it mutual masturbation? Did you just kiss? Fjord.” Jester sat up to look him in the eye. “Did you just have a life-changing kiss? Were there fireworks?”
“What’s the level of detail everyone needs here? Figure we all deserve forewarning if this is about to get pornographic.” Jester was back at eye level with his arm and a shark leapt out of the waters lapping at his bicep. “Gonna be enough room left over for the artist’s signature?”
Jester laid two fingers on his neck. “Yeah, duh. Right under the ear. That’s where everyone signs human masterpieces. Is she a good kisser?”
“Yeah, she’s a good kisser.” Fjord checked his phone. “Hold on.” Jester pulled the paintbrush out of his shot and he took a close-up of the shark’s teeth. “She’s uh… Beau, you remember Quartermaster Nyx?”
“Good with knots? That’s a joke, but also the only thing I remember about her. Can I sign too?”
“That’s the one. She’s in it.” Fjord flexed his arm experimentally. The little sea rippled with each muscle. “Thanks, Jessie. Is that your nickname? It’s terrible. Sorry Jez.” Beau had her mouth half open, her lids closing halfway over her iris. Appraising.
“So you’re saying,” she said, and the brush changed hands, “that she wants to be in it.” She said, and covered his adam’s apple in shaky white capitals, FJORD GETS PEGGED.