Levi, better known as Leviathan to those that rightly feared him, kicked at the metal thing that was fixed into the wall. He knew it was important, knew he was supposed to be turning dials and pressing buttons on it in order to make the stupid ship do something, anything, but for some reason, even though he had been given careful instructions and followed them to the letter, the stupid ship was not listening. He looked at the bright blue and green buttons on it, each paired with their own levers and little descriptions on what they did. Supposedly he was supposed to be making the engine room cooler for Atherius, so he didn’t sweat to death making sure that the ship stayed flying. Because sinking like they had last week, was, apparently, bad. He cursed and kicked the machine harder.
“If you kick it really hard, it just might break so bad that it works,” he heard an amused voice from behind him.
The very man that Levi was supposed to be fixing this stupid thing for was standing right behind him. The boy walked up and around, ignoring Levi’s bone chilling growl and twisted a few nobs, pushed one button and flipped its lever. Levi heard the whir of machinery as the thing came to life. The guy with black and orange hair turned around and beamed at Levi. Levi saw the casual flicker as Atherius looked him up and down and stifled a groan. He knew the boy had some infatuation with him. He recognized the want in his eyes the few times he had seen Levi walk around without a shirt. Levi just preferred to ignore it. He didn’t need something worthless without any kind of fight in him whatsoever to just tag along filled with all of this puppy love. All Levi wanted was to catch up to the next merchant plane and tear out some throats. Really, was that too much to ask?
Apparently, the answer was yes. Even though Levi ignored all of Atherius’s endeavors, here stood the boy that followed him around with dogged persistence and that insane smile. It was all Levi could do not to punch the boy right in his stupid, smiling face. He had to admit, though, there was something about that persistence that helped him hold back his fists. Not much, just… something.
“I was fixing that,” the fighter growled. This statement only made the boy’s smile grow larger.
“As much as I appreciate that, us fix-it folks actually fixing important stuff, were dying down there in the heat.” The boy gave a good natured wink.
It was then that Levi noticed the boy was topless and sweaty. He growled, this one without an explainable emotion attached. Even though the boy wasn’t known for his strength as much as his intelligence, Levi had to remember that fixing things on this ship required lifting heavy pieces of engine and other metal things. He turned around and began to stalk off. On his way, he bit out a chunk of a door frame. He could hear Atherius chuckle behind him.
---
The next day, Levi heard, as he did every morning, the tap of knuckles on his door. As first mate, he had his own room. It wasn’t near as posh as the captain’s, but it was nice to have a room of his own. It had somewhere between ten and twenty sharp pointy weapons shoved into the wall and a gun rack with a variety of guns that he often fired into his walls, much to the disgruntlement of the other first mate, a female so that she didn’t think the captain was sexist. Though the captain usually didn’t care one way or the other what people thought about him, the ship did have a good number of rather strong females that had a tendency to threaten mutiny when they didn’t get what they wanted, and the captain liked his ship in one piece. Levi didn’t blame him. She was one beaut of a flying hunk of metal.
The tapping continued, louder this time. Levi threw a very solid pillow over his shoulder at the door. He heard Atherius chuckle. God, that sound annoyed him. The door opened with a slight creak. He felt a pressure on his bed and smelled the coffee that everyone else called sludge.
“Good morning sleeping beauty, long day ahead of us, now let’s get up and-“
Atherius had been starting his usual good morning speech when Levi interrupted. Usually it was sweet and sugary and made Levi’s overly sharp teeth ache. Atherius never got acknowledgement from Levi for this speech; he never got much of anything from Levi anyways. This time, Levi couldn’t help interrupting.
“Why do you give me this stupid ******** speech every ******** morning? It’s always “Good morning sleeping beauty” sugary sweet and dripping with ******** pathetic emotions. Don’t you get it? I don’t give a damn about you. I don’t need puppy love following me around. You wanna ********? Fine, we can get down and dirty right here. There is no way I’m ever going to care about someone that doesn’t fight his own battles.” His voice was grating and he watched the kid’s reaction out of the corner of his eye, just barely pushed up from his facedown position on the bed.
He watched the kid’s face go from its normal blinding smile to a shattered version of the same smile. It was the fakest smile Levi had ever seen. It was a smile that didn’t belong on Atherius’s face.
“Well you know, I’m not exactly prince charming so I never did expect sleeping beauty to fall for me, ya know?” The bad attempt of a joke at his own expense fell flat. They both felt Levi’s growl rumble through the bed sheets. The younger man stood up quickly, sloshing coffee over himself and the floor. Laughing nervously, he left the room, two cups of coffee in his hands. Levi grumbled and shoved his face in the pillow left on his bed. He preferred not to hurt his own crew members, but when they got in the way, casualties of war. He stood and got dressed.
- - -
The pirates, well the fighting ones, had gathered on deck. They had been flagged down by another pirate ship. Because of the recent movements to band the sky pirates together, they became friendlier and friendlier. That is to say, they had all decided that they could talk without killing each other as long as they all followed the rules. Each pirate had a section of sky that their ships were supposed to stick to. The Captain and the girl in charge of the other ship were in the process of arguing over who was in who’s sky line. Levi was picking his teeth with a dagger, a rather large gun hoisted over shoulder. His Captain had agreed to hold the meeting onboard his own ship, a decision that Levi very much approved of: when things went wrong, he could just bite the heads off of the other ships crew. The ones nearest him were eyeing him suspiciously and, more often, fearfully. He gave them a cruel grin and winked, pretending to draw his dagger across his own throat. He saw quite a few turn a shade paler. Then one of the little grease monkeys that worked in the engine room with Atherius ran up onto the deck.
“They’re trying to take the engine room. Atherius is down there…”
Silence fell on the deck. Levi could hear the boss tsking right before he drew a gun and shot the other captain in the stomach.
“Give ‘em hell boys,” he called, winking in a general direction towards his crew.
Levi didn’t even blink as his teeth sank into the nearest person that he didn’t recognize right before he snapped his neck back to toss the man over his shoulder. A chunk of meat came off in his mouth. He spit it out. He turned his gun so it pointed at someone advancing on him with a rather nasty looking grenade. Apparently Levi had become threat number one. He pulled the trigger and watched the man sail across the ship and over the edge to fall screaming, through clouds. Levis chuckle was half growl. He made his way through the crowd and soon found himself at the stairs leading to the engine room. He hadn’t even realized he had been heading that.
“Way to go, Levi. You go secure the engine room and I’ll finish up here,” the captain was standing next to Levi at the stairs, pointing a gun with each robotic arm at the pirates advancing on them.
Levi nodded as if it was his idea in the first place and ran down the stairs. A man was at the bottom with a primitive sword held in front of him. The man swung it. Levi caught it in his teeth and shot under his attackers arm, forgetting to let go of the sword before shooting. Most of the man flew across the room. His hand stayed attached to the sword from the wrist up and the sword stayed in Levi’s mouth. He could taste blood and realized the sword had cut the corner of his mouth. He spit the metal out and continued running, expecting to find a slaughtered Atherius at the end of the hallway. A figure blocked the door, pointing a gun into the engine room at Atherius who was lying on the ground. With a loud growl that mixed with a roar, Levi tackled the man and pressed his gun into his belly. Levi pulled the trigger and closed his eyes to avoid getting intestine in them. He rolled off of the gasping body beneath him and stood, leaving his large gun on the ground. He drew a smaller gun and pointed it in a circle around the room, looking for someone else to shoot. He saw dead bodies piled around the floor, many with smashed in heads, a few with badly burned body parts. He heard a groan behind him and turned to see Atherius using a gigantic hammer to help himself up. He watched the boy hold the hammer up and swing it into the face of the man Levi had just killed. He stared, stunned, at the boy he had always assumed was weak. He watched Atherius raise a beaten bruised face to look at him through his one non swelled eye, that stupid grin slowly spreading across the boy’s face even though it obviously pained him.
“Can to… fight my own battles,” he said.
Levi dropped his gun and walked across the room to the boy, pulling him into his arms and kissing him, ignoring the pain it caused both of them. He heard the sound of the hammer dropping and felt the boys arms wrap around his neck. When the exhaustion got to the boy and he collapsed, Levi picked the boy up and held him in his arms. He might eventually get used to this. After all, the boy was tough enough and stubborn enough to last this long.
