"You've got to be kidding me," said Meryl, looking down at the uniform she was expected to wear.
"Just put it on," ordered the matron, scowling. She turned away and started barking orders at anyone not already occupied, and Meryl was glad to be out of the line of fire.
"Here?" Milly asked Meryl, glancing uncertainly around the busy laundry.
"No, we'll change on the upper decks," Meryl told her. "Before we get to the snack bar." She sure as hell wasn't going to leave her cloak and derringers anywhere out of her sight. Not ever again.
Carrying the uniform clenched in one fist, Meryl led Milly up through the steamer, taking a labyrinthine path of back hallways and narrow stairways without meeting anyone else. After a few minutes, though, she was forced to turn onto one of the main thoroughfares through the steamer, a wide staircase that held crew and passengers alike, and Meryl sighed as they entered the flow of hurried bodies all trying to take the stairs at different paces.
Meryl never looked back to see if Milly was keeping up; she just always did. It was one of a hundred little things Meryl had come to appreciate about the younger woman in their travels together. So when she ducked suddenly into a narrow hall off to one side of the stairway, she knew not to wait.
"Ma'am, aren't we going to the main deck?" Milly asked a moment later, sounding puzzled.
"Yes, but there's no crew facilities on the three main passenger decks," explained Meryl, opening an unmarked door halfway down the hall. "We have to use the crew bathrooms down here."
"Well that's just silly," said Milly, shaking her head with an exasperated sigh as she followed Meryl inside.
Meryl felt around in the dark for the switch and moments later fluorescent lights flickered to life overhead. It was a tiny space, smaller even than she remembered, just large enough for a single toilet and sink and a full length mirror against the door. With Milly's height and broad shoulders it was almost too tight a squeeze for the both of them but it was, thankfully, immaculately clean.
Milly set her stun-gun down in the corner behind the sink as Meryl shook out both uniform pieces in turn (each was still somewhat damp, as she had suspected): the top was a faded yellow blouse with a pressed collar and long sleeves, and the bottom...
"I can't wear this," Meryl said, shaking her head.
"It is a bit... short," admitted Milly. She held the uniform skirt flat against her legs and peered down at it.
"It's a bandage with pleats," said Meryl, grimacing.
Suddenly she shivered, unexpectedly cold, feeling a small gust of frigid air from nowhere. Meryl looked around curiously, and then glanced up to see a ceiling panel out of alignment. Meryl frowned up at it and noticed a small triangular gap where the panel should have fallen into its place.
"Hey, Milly," she said, tugging at the younger woman's sleeve (Milly had already donned the faded yellow blouse). "Can you fix that for me?" Meryl pointed upward and Milly's eyes followed.
"What, the ceiling?" Milly asked, confused.
"Just that panel," Meryl specified, standing on her toes now to be a few iches closer. "See how it doesn't lay properly on the frame? It's supposed to be flush with the rest of the ceiling."
"Ohh, I see," said Milly. She didn't even need to stretch to reach the panel, gently maneuvering it into place with the fingers of one hand. "My goodness, that's cold," she said, blowing warm air on her fingers once she had drawn them away again.
"They pump all the cold air up to the first-class passenger decks, to keep the rich folk comfortable," Meryl said. Then she muttered, "That's why it's so damn hot in crew quarters."
"Ah," said Milly, buttoning the cuffs on her blouse. "Well, there's something to look forward to." Meryl looked at the younger woman, surprised. It was the first time, or so she could remember, that she had ever heard Milly use sarcasm.
There was another loud blast from the steamer whistle, and Meryl winced; it must be just above them, with how it made the whole room vibrate. She had to wait for her vision to clear again after seeing everything go blurry for a moment.
"Quick," said Meryl, shucking her tunic. "That's last call for boarding. We should be up there already." Her own blouse came off next, and when she put on that of the uniform she was infuriated to find that it only buttoned up to the middle of her chest, leaving an absurd amount of skin and (admittedly, fairly modest) cleavage visible. She snarled and pulled the maroon skirt on over her indigo leggings, and, after an uncomfortable moment remembering what had happened with the last skirt, decided to leave them on, despite the severe disparity in color schemes.
Milly frowned down at Meryl's leggings as she pulled on her own skirt, but said nothing.
"I'll freeze without them!" snapped Meryl. She knew she was being overly hostile, but she also knew she'd never tell Milly why she was really unwilling to part with the leggings. She just felt too... vulnerable. And she never wanted to feel that way again.
Wrapping her blouse, tunic and cloak into a tightly folded bundle she could fit under one arm, Meryl led Milly out of the crew bathrooms and up three more flights of stairs to the main deck.
She had to ask two different stewards to point them in the right direction (and both of them frowned openly at her leggings), but when Meryl saw the snack bar kiosk she let out an almost manic giggle of relief; two maroon aprons were hanging side by side behind the counter.
"Oh thank god," she said, hurrying into the kiosk. Meryl tucked the bundle of blouse, tunic and cloak under the counter and then seized an apron. She threw it over her head and settled it across her body, reaching for the ties behind her. "At least this will cover—" She stopped abruptly as she looked down at it properly. "Are you kidding me?" Meryl practically shrieked. The apron fell even shorter than the skirt; she had basically just fastened a halter top over the blouse she already wore.
Meryl thought the grinding of her teeth must certainly be audible at this point and was unsurprised when Milly's hand fell to smooth out her hair once the younger woman had fastened her own "apron" (Meryl used the term loosely, now) around her waist.
"It's not so bad, Ma'am," sighed Milly, tugging at her own apron, clearly aware of what was bothering Meryl. "At least we're behind the counter. Oh look!"
Milly bent down and retrieved something from one of the shelves behind the counter. When she stood upright again she offered Meryl one of two folded paper hats; maroon to match the apron, with pale trim that almost matched the color of their faded yellow blouses.
"No thanks," said Meryl vehemently, but Milly was already pulling the paper hat open and had it settled over Meryl's hair in a matter of moments. Meryl just sighed heavily and tried not to fuss too much, feeling the paper hat jostling and slipping every time she moved. Milly seemed to have fastened hers on with some kind of girl-magic Meryl had never learned, and now she could probably face gale-force winds and walk away looking entirely unruffled.
Meryl grimaced. Her hat slipped off.
Their first customers arrived as Meryl stooped to retrieve the hat and she forced a smile as she faced an elderly man wearing a bowler hat.
"Can I help you?" asked Milly, smiling brightly.
"Could I have two bags of chips and some milk?" asked the man. Milly went to the ice box to retrieve the milk and the man turned to Meryl, pulling out his wallet.
"Oh, uh," said Meryl, realizing she didn't actually know what to do. There was an old wooden till to the left of the counter and she stood before it, fingers hovering uncertainly over the keys. Then she noticed a piece of paper taped to the till's cash drawer with prices carefully written in now-faded blue ink, and searched for the items she needed: $$2.00 for a carton of milk; $$1.25 for a bag of potato chips. Meryl punched the numbers into the till's keys, just like she would into the typewriter's (with the same annoying tendency to get her fingers stuck), and the drawer popped open with a bell chime as a total price appeared on the till's face.
"$$4.50!" Milly told the man, brightly. She handed over the milk and potato chips as Meryl accepted a five double-dollar bill. Meryl reached into the till for the half-double-dollar difference, but the old man just smiled and winked at her.
"Keep the change."
Meryl stood stunned for a moment as the man retreated, but Milly took the coin from her hand and put it in a small, empty pickle jar at the side of the till, labeled, "TIPS." Meryl looked up to the next person in line, a middle-aged woman with flaming red hair.
"Can I help you?" Milly asked, but the woman just laughed and shook her head, pointing down.
Two small hands appeared over the edge of the counter in front of Meryl and she leaned forward to peer down past them. A little girl in pigtails and denim overalls stood there, barely able to touch the counter top but clearly excited to reach even that far.
"Ice cream!" she ordered, grinning up at Meryl and bouncing on her toes. Then she added, "Please?" as though only then remembering her manners.
Meryl laughed, and asked, "What flavor?" She glanced back to the ice box, reading the labels. "We have—"
"CHOCOLATE!"
The whole line of people behind the girl laughed at her enthusiasm, and Meryl nodded as Milly retrieved the ice cream for her, saying, "Here you go!" The girl stood on her tip-toes to take the cone carefully in one hand, treating it with almost reverent care as she fell back on her heels again. She dug her other hand into the pocket of her overalls and reached up to empty a fistful of coins on the counter. Meryl slapped her palm down on a half-double-dollar that rolled toward escape on the opposite edge of the snack bar.
"Thanks!" called the girl, racing away.
"Wait," said Milly, worriedly, "is this enough...?"
Meryl scanned the spread of coins quickly before dipping into the tip jar to retrieve the half-double-dollar the man had left them and pouring the whole lot into the till. "Would you really have minded?" she asked, smiling. Milly just beamed back at her.
"Good morning ladies and gentlemen," boomed a deep voice, emanating unexpectedly from the wall speakers scattered throughout the deck. Meryl felt Milly give a start next to her. "Welcome aboard the S.S. Flourish. It's a quick trip to our next stop, a transfer station about a day and a half west of here, but we'll be going through Lottenburg Canyon, and that can get a little bumpy—" here the man gave a little chuckle as he went on, saying, "—but hopefully you'll sleep right through it. We're about to get under way here within the next few minutes, so have a seat while we get up to speed. And as always, don't hesitate to ask our service staff for anything to make your passage with us more comfortable."
Meryl grimaced inwardly at that last comment. They really did mean anything.
The man signed off with a loud beeeeep from the intercom system, and Meryl watched the line before the kiosk evaporate as everyone hurried away from the deck's main floor toward the many seating areas along the bulkheads.
The floor beneath Meryl's feet began to vibrate in anticipation as the engines came to life a dozen decks below; she could feel it, even so far away from the fires and gears and pistons that would push the steamer forward. Soon the power of the engines would be greater even than weight of the steamer and it would send the huge ship lurching into motion. Somehow, even now, it was still an exciting feeling.
In old habits easily remembered, Meryl settled herself into a wide stance with all her weight forward on one foot slightly ahead of the other. When it came, the initial lurch of the steamer pushed her back onto the rear foot without unbalancing her.
Milly, on the other hand, went sprawling with an undignified squawk.
"Golly," she said, sitting up on her elbows with a frown.
"Are you alright?" Meryl asked, trying not to laugh at the younger woman's look of utter bewilderment. She knelt at Milly's side and helped her up to her feet again, watching the girl steady herself on the edge of the counter as the steamer kept accelerating.
Meryl noted, with a twinge of annoyance, that the paper hat was still perched pristinely on Milly's head.
"Why didn't you sit down like the captain said?" Meryl asked.
"Well, you didn't," said Milly, defensively.
"Yeah, but I—wait, is this your first time on a steamer?" asked Meryl, surprised. Milly was blushing as she clung to the snack bar counter.
"Yes," she admitted, still looking embarrassed. "I didn't expect... the oomph."
Meryl couldn't help smiling.
"Yeah, well," said Meryl. "I've had a lot of practice."
"How long did you work on steamers?" asked Milly, and Meryl thought she could hear a hint of hesitation, though the younger woman didn't show it in her expression. Meryl wondered if Milly was testing the waters now, finding out just how much she could ask about this aspect of Meryl's past, at least.
"Just a year," said Meryl eventually, not meeting Milly's eye. "Though it felt like a lifetime," she murmured, staring into the middle distance for a moment as old memories came unwillingly to mind.
When Meryl finally glanced away from her past and back up at Milly, the younger woman looked troubled and Meryl gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
"But that was a lifetime ago," said Meryl, shrugging. "I was just a kid—it was a phase, I grew out of it." Her smile tightened. She had done a lot of growing up that year. Fifteen, going on world-weary...
"What did you do?" asked Milly, apparently a little braver in her questioning, following Meryl's answer. "Where did you work?"
"I worked... below-decks," Meryl replied, keeping things vague as ever. She wasn't sure why she was hiding things from Milly. It was an easy excuse to say that actually talking about her past would bring up bad memories, but she was thinking about the past plenty, even without telling Milly anything. But she kept avoiding the subject anyway.
"In the laundry?" asked Milly, curiously. "Housekeeping? No, wait!" she looked excited, grabbing Meryl's elbow. "In the kitchens! That's where you learned to cook so well!" Milly beamed, certain of her guesswork.
Meryl opened her mouth to answer—though to answer what, she didn't know—but the captain's voice boomed over the loudspeaker once more to announce that the steamer was up to speed, and that the passengers were free to move about the deck again. The line for the snack bar reformed almost immediately and soon Milly was too busy running back and forth ferrying items from the shelves to the customers to ask Meryl anything at all.
Meryl found she liked working the till, which surprised her, given the obvious similarities to the typewriter. But she liked the little bell-chime whenever the cash drawer opened, and it was satisfying to see the double-dollar bills piling up as the morning went on.
There was finally a lull in traffic in the early afternoon, after everyone was full from lunch and had no need of snacks. Meryl sighed, standing on one foot and rolling her other around until the ankle popped loudly. She sighed and repeated the action for the other ankle. Then she popped her neck (which made Milly wince), then cracked every knuckle in each hand, in turn, until Milly looked like she was ready to put her in a headlock just to make her stop. Milly's hands actually jerked forward as Meryl stretched her arms behind her to pop her spine, but the movement made Meryl's hat fall off again and she ducked out of range to retrieve it.
When Meryl stood again, jamming the hat onto her head so forcefully she felt it rip somewhere, she found herself face to face with Vash. She saw her own surprise mirrored in his eyes as they both took a startled step backward, away from each other.
"You—" Vash spluttered, seemingly at a loss for words. Meryl recognized anxiety in his expression, and she realized that Vash honestly didn't expect to find her on the steamer. He didn't want to find her on the steamer.
For some reason, that thought made her guts twist up a little. She stared at him, wanting to say something, but then Milly hailed him—("Mr. Vash!")—and his face split in a wide, Idiot grin as he turned to greet the younger woman.
"Insurance Girls!" he said, sounding just as enthusiastic as Milly. "What are you two doing here?"
"We're broke!" explained Milly, laughing. "We're working our fare."
"Ahh," said Vash, nodding wisely. "Here's some work for you, then: " He scanned the shelves behind where Meryl and Milly stood, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips, stroking his chin as if he had a beard, clearly giving some serious thought to his order. "Two bacon-lettuce dogs, two cartons of milk, four bags of pretzels, and one pack of raisins," he said, finally. He looked at Meryl and raised an eyebrow. "You got all that?"
Meryl glared at him and tried not to make it too obvious that she still needed to use the cheat-sheet of prices taped to the register's cash drawer. Behind her, Milly moved with practiced efficiency, gathering all the desired items from the shelves in a single trip.
"$$12.50," Meryl told Vash, when the total appeared on the till's face. She eyed the pile of snacks and drinks Milly was now loading into a paper sack. "Seems like an awful lot," she noted, suspiciously.
"I'm hungry," Vash said, defensively, hugging the bag to his chest as he handed Meryl the money—in all coins.
"You've got to be—" Meryl cut off with a growl. Vash might be able to hold 25 half-double-dollars in one hand but Meryl sure couldn't, and she had to struggle to catch them as Vash let the coins fall.
"Have a nice day, Mr. Vash!" Milly said, beaming.
"Thanks!" he said, waving as he turned to walk away. "Oh, and," Vash added, looking back over his shoulder at Meryl. His eyes flicked up to the area above her head for a moment and he gave her a lop-sided grin: "Nice hat."
Meryl scowled and poured the coins he'd given her into the till, slamming the drawer shut and startling the next customer in line.
"Um," said the man. He looked at Meryl in some trepidation. "Just an orange soda, please." Milly retrieved it as Meryl rang him up.
"Two double-dollars..." Meryl trailed off. Over the man's shoulder she had noticed Vash turning the corner toward the first-class passenger cabins.
What the hell...?
"Milly, hold the fort for a minute," she said, discarding her paper hat as she stepped out from behind the counter.
"Ma'am, wait—what?" But Meryl was following Vash at a half-jog, and she was out of earshot before Milly could say anything else. She hugged the wall, trying not to look too conspicuous (in a bandage with pleats and mis-matched leggings), and turned the corner where Vash had disappeared. He was already letting himself into the room at the very end of the hall by the time Meryl caught up to him.
"What are you doing here?" Meryl hissed. Vash jumped and nearly lost half the contents of his bag as he turned to Meryl, eyes wide in surprise. "These are the first-class cabins," she went on, tersely. "You can't possibly afford this!"
The initial startled look at her arrival dissolved into a grin as Vash looked down at her, shrugging.
"I'm working my fare, same as you," he said.
For a ridiculous moment, Meryl let herself imagine that Vash was "working his fare" in the—hm—traditional sense. She smirked, but then immediately sobered as she had an unsettling thought: what if he was? That was easily enough food for two, after all, and there was definitely no way he could afford this kind of room on his own...
"Whose room is this?" Meryl demanded.
"What?" asked Vash, looking confused. Then, defiantly, "It's mine!" The door was only open a few iches but he was pulling it shut again behind him. Meryl narrowed her eyes and jammed her foot in the door before he could close it.
"Who's in there?" She tried to push her way into the room but Vash blocked her path—and her view—and kept the paper bag of snacks between them as a buffer.
"Nobody!" he said, looking at her like she was crazy. "Leave me alone! Don't you have a job to do?"
As if cued by these words, Milly appeared at Meryl's shoulder.
"Ma'am!" said Milly reprovingly. She actually shook her finger at Meryl, and then took her by the elbow, saying, "You can't just run off like that!" Then Milly beamed at Vash as she pulled Meryl protesting down the hall. "Sorry, Mr. Vash, but we have to get back to work. We'll talk to you later!"
"Uh—yeah!" said Vash, waving after them. Meryl last saw him grinning, but when they turned the corner, she was pretty sure she heard Vash mutter, "...great."
There was a little sign propped up on the counter when they returned to the kiosk, with the words, "will return in five minutes" printed in bright blue letters above a clock face, with little red paper hour- and minute-hands pointing to—well, to now, actually.
Thankfully there wasn't much of a line by the time Meryl and Milly had resumed their places behind the counter; there was only a trio of teenage girls, standing a little ways off, and they didn't seem to have decided what they wanted yet. It looked like they were pooling their money, trying to find out exactly how much money they could afford to spend between the three of them.
Finally, after a lot of quiet, giggled arguing, one of the girls came up to the snack bar counter.
"Can I get a fifth of rum, please?" she asked.
Milly turned toward the liquor cabinet but Meryl caught her wrist without even looking.
"Sorry, honey," said Meryl. "I'm not selling to minors."
The girl tried to look insulted and managed to at least seem upset.
"What," she said, giving Meryl an incredulous look. "I'm nineteen."
"Uh-huh," replied Meryl, leaning her elbows on the counter. "When's your birthday?"
The girl's mouth opened in surprise, but no answer came out. Meryl smirked.
"Grow up, or get sneakier," Meryl told the girl. She pulled a root beer from the ice box and tossed it to her. "On me," she said.
Once the girls had gone (all three of them looking sheepish), there was no line at the kiosk and Meryl found herself bored. Night was falling outside the tiny porthole windows of the steamer and Meryl wondered how much longer she and Milly would have to stay at the snack bar, standing uselessly, growing more tired and more—in her case, anyway—cranky. Surely the leisure decks couldn't stay open that much longer. The casinos would have to shut down eventually.
Meryl rubbed her hand over her face tiredly, and eventually found herself dwelling on thoughts of Vash, and that first-class cabin, and the amount of food he had bought...
Then she scowled.
What did she care if Vash was "paying his way" in some rich woman's bed?
Not one bit, that's what. Not one goddamn bit.
Meryl realized she had crossed her arms so tightly across her chest that she was almost suffocating herself, not letting her ribcage expand enough to take breath. She let her hands fall stiffly to her sides and took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly through her nose.
Not one goddamn bit.
The paper hat slipped off her hair again and Meryl caught it as it fell, fighting the urge to just growl and shred it to bits with her teeth. Milly seemed to have noticed that Meryl was at the very end of her already limited patience and took pity on her.
"Here, Ma'am," said Milly gently, plucking the hat from Meryl's fingers. "I'll pin it in place for you."
"Pins?" squeaked Meryl, her anger gone instantly in the face of alarm. She ducked out of range as Milly approached her.
"Bobby pins," Milly said, shaking her head in exasperation. "Honestly, didn't your mother ever do this with your hair when you were little?"
"My mother never did anything with m—my hair," said Meryl, stumbling over something else. At the abashed look Milly gave her, Meryl wished she'd just kept her mouth shut.
"Oh—I," spluttered Milly, going pink. "I'm sorry, Ma'am—I didn't mean to—"
Meryl hadn't meant to fluster the younger woman, but it was clear Milly thought she had come too close this time to the subject of Meryl's past. She back-pedaled quickly, smiling again as she held a small metal object the size of a toothpick out for Meryl to see.
"It's not really a pin," explained Milly, "like the pointy kind, or anything. More like a clip, to keep your hair—"
"Oh is that what those are for?" Meryl said, suddenly recognizing the shape. She pulled the bobby pin from Milly's fingers and bent it partly open—much to Milly's dismay ("Oh—oh, dear...")—to a more recognizable configuration, biting off the resin caps that blunted the ends and making a sharp, right-angle about half an ich from one end. Meryl smiled to herself, twirling this new shape between thumb and forefinger.
"What is... what did you think...?" Milly tried, and failed. "What did you use them for?" she asked, managing to sound politely interested, rather than upset that Meryl had just ruined one of her belongings.
"We'd find them on the floors up here and then make these, it's how we'd uhhhh—" Meryl stalled in mid-sentence, realizing it was her turn to back-pedal now. "—it's just a tool," she finished, trying to sound casual. "Y'know, useful. Lots of little things." She cleared her throat with a forced cough and, for lack of pockets (blasted skirt), tucked the bent bobby pin behind her ear.
Milly still looked puzzled, almost distrustful, but she produced another few bobby pins and fastened the paper hat solidly into Meryl's hair, humming as she did so. Meryl wondered if Milly was actively trying not to ask any more questions.
Thankfully it wasn't too long before someone appeared at the kiosk counter, and Meryl welcomed the distraction.
The man who stood there was dressed like a steward, and though the uniform fit him perfectly, he was much too burly to actually be a steward. Meryl guessed that he must be working as a bouncer for one of the lounge casinos, and hoped that his being out of the casino meant that things were wrapping up for the evening.
She was delighted to hear the man say, "Shift's over." His voice seemed as big as his body, and Meryl felt again like she had when the steamer whistle blew, the sound resonating through everything around her. "We're closing up," said the man. "Time to go, ladies."
Meryl unceremoniously plucked the hat (which Milly had so painstakingly pinned in place) from her hair and pulled the apron over her head, discarding both items on a shelf behind the kiosk. She retrieved her cloak and real clothes from the cubby under the kiosk counter and urged Milly to hurry as she stepped out from behind the snack bar and made an immediate bee-line toward the first-class cabins and (supposedly) Vash's room. She wanted to know what the hell he was doing there, and she wanted to know now.
Before she could make her way more than a few yarz, someone seized Meryl's elbow.
"Whoa, hold on," said the man holding her. Here was another beefy steward-bouncer, coming from the opposite direction. "Where do you think you're going? Crew has to clear out of the passenger decks for the night."
"I need to find someone," Meryl said, trying to peel the man's fingers away from her elbow.
"It can wait," said the man, securing his grip again.
"I just need to talk to somebody," argued Meryl, still fighting the man's hold.
"Yeah, okay, just wait," he said, giving her a very pointed look. Meryl suddenly realized the man was telling her to mind that unwritten rule, to wait that hour it took to be sure the steamer's main decks were cleared out entirely, to wait that hour before she could sneak back up here again in the dark for the (not strictly sanctioned) "after hours" shift.
She gritted her teeth and tried not to growl as she said, "Fine." She yanked her arm free and glared so fiercely at the man that it actually hurt her forehead to scowl with such intensity.
"Is everything alright, Ma'am?" asked Milly, glancing uncertainly at the pair of steward-bouncers as Meryl stomped away in the opposite direction.
"Fine," she repeated.