YAY NEW CHAPTER! Sorry it's been forever. I'll be faster at updating next time. As always, I look forward to your reviews and prompts are lovely :)

By popular demand I have added Newkirk to this chapter. r&r please!

After years of tutoring in multiple subjects, Alek could be considered an expert in countless areas. He could speak in half a dozen languages, pilot a stormwalker, fence better than most men twice his age and fix the engineering of Clanker and Darwinist aeronautics alike. Yet the one thing that his tutors had failed to instruct him in was the act of simple courting rituals. He had just begun a relationship with Deryn Sharp nearly two weeks ago, and it felt like he was jumping new hurdles he had never dreamed to exist.

For example, he assumed that women appreciated it when you brought them flowers. However, flowers were hard to come by on an airship so Alek replaced that idea with a bouquet of cauliflower flourettes.

"The cook was going to throw them away." He had explained to Deryn. "I thought it was sort of a waste so I brought them to you instead."

His effort had been awarded with a slammed door in the face and a cauliflower blossom shoved in his mouth.

Other attempts to acquire Deryn's affection had failed miserably. She hated poetry (well, at least the poetry he wrote), she despised jewelry because it was daft and girly, and when he had attempted to bring her Volger's imported French wine she had laughed at him. Everything he tried seemed to make it worse. Especially the cauliflower.

This time Alek had given up on gimmicks. He had decided to go to Deryn's room directly, skip the fancy gifts and apologize to her about his poor choice in flower arrangements.

It was later in the evening and he assumed she was getting ready for bed. Newkirk would be preparing for sleep as well so Alek would have to make the encounter brief. A short conversation would suffice enough until morning.

Of course his plan was much easier to think out than to perform. The journey from his cabin to the middies' quarters was short and painful. Too quickly he was in front of her bedroom door trying to swallow enough courage to knock. He never got a chance to since she opened the door a second later.

"Oh…Hello, Alek." She stammered when she realized he was there. "Wasn't expecting you. Something wrong?"

She looked honestly concerned, and probably for good reason. He was shaking and sweating with nerves.

"Nothing. Everything is perfectly fine. I just came….I came to speak with you." He mumbled to his feet.

She still looked worried though and quickly yanked him into the room, slamming the door loudly behind them.

"What happened?"

"As I said, nothing's wrong. I just needed to talk to you about…well….about the gifts I've been giving you."

She snorted and raised one eyebrow.

"You mean the vegetables and that hideous necklace you gave me?"

"For your information, I made that necklace!"

"Oh aye, out of barking machine parts and washers. The thing looked like the inside of a tackle box."

Alek's nerves quickly shifted to anger. He crossed his arms and scrunched up his forehead.

"That necklace took me almost five hours to make! You should have…."

But he had to stop speaking because she had started kissing him.

They had shared a few kisses since their first but no more than four or five. Alek didn't count the one in the rain as a full kiss since he had been practically unconscious at the time with a serious head wound. Their other encounters were always an innocent peck on the lips goodnight when they could steel the chance. But this time things were going much farther than before.

She had gently eased her hands down his back and then down a bit further and Alek couldn't help but let his own hands do some exploring. Soon she had pushed him onto her bed and pinned him down with her bodyweight. The kissing was getting deeper and his head was getting foggy before Alek could clearly figure out what had happened. He was kissing the girl he loved…..on a bed.

"GOD'S WOUNDS, STOP!"

She had the grace to blush but only while laughing at him.

"I'm sorry, but you're such a cutie when you get all mad like that."

"A cutie? Disgusting!" He pulled away from her. "Besides, you can't just grab me like that anytime the mood hits you. Give me some sort of warning next time! We don't have the privilege to be so…. bold! We could be seen!" The idea sent shivers through him and he suddenly remembered where he was: in Deryn's room. In Deryn's shared room.

A cough from the opposite side of the bedroom verified Alek's fears. Deryn's smirk transformed to a look of utter terror. Alek slowly pulled his eyes from her face and turned to direction of the cough.

Newkirk was in his bed, his covers pulled up to his chin and his eyes wide in disbelief. Alek watched as the boy's mouth opened and closed in the exact representation of a beached fish.

Thankfully, Deryn spoke first.

"Newkirk!" She said, finally pulling herself off of Alek and onto the floor. "Barking spiders, how long have you been there! Did you…."

"I saw everything." Newkirk responded in a whisper.

"But you….I thought you were going topside to help with the glowworm fiasco."

Alek remembered that all the glowworms topside had mysteriously stopped working yesterday and that the entire ship had been waiting till nightfall to investigate.

"Aye, like two hours ago!" Newkirk shouted. "I came back to go to bed early, but apparently I won't be getting any sleep thanks to you creeps!" He threw the blankets off of himself and dashed to the door.

"Wait, Newkirk, I can explain!" Deryn called after him but the middie had already left with a dramatic door slam and loud footfalls in the hallway.

She stared at the door sadly for a moment then dropped her head in her hand.

"Blisters, I could've sworn he was gone. He usually snores like a banshee when he's abed."

Alek shook his head and hopped off of the bed.

"What are you going to say to him?" He asked.

"I'll tell him the truth, I suppose. The poor bloke deserves that as much. We probably scared him off speaking to us forever though."

Alek sighed and put a hand on Deryn's shoulder.

"You think he'll tell anyone else what he saw?"

"Doubtful." She shrugged. "They would only call him sick minded and laugh at him. No one would believe that story." .

Alek sighed.

"Still, we need to be more cautious. As I said before, you need to give me a proper warning before you do any of that again."

"Aye?" She grinned at him mischievously. "And what would a warning look like?"

"Ummm… well, I hadn't thought about…."

She suddenly gave his rear end a smack.

"Is that warning enough, your highness?"

He would have shouted at her but he was suddenly too busy kissing her.