Note: And here is where the spoilers for Goliath begin.

I mean, right away. Lots of 'em.

In every story, pretty much, from here on out.

You have been warned!

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It takes the Leviathan two days to reach London from New York.

They're two of the best days of Deryn's life.

Of course she's sad to think her time as a middy is almost over. She'll miss the airbeast, miss being yelled at by Mr. Rigby, miss tying knots and scrambling up the ratlines, miss being dorsal on a clear day with the wind pushing hard against her and blue skies all around. She'll miss Newkirk, Dr. Busk's lectures, feeding the fléchette bats, and the potatoes that never quite get cooked through, even when they're half burnt to cinders. She'll miss the pocket of warm, quiet air next to the beastie's skin and the way the cilia ripple. She'll miss the smoke and rumble of the Clanker engines and the thick reek of the gastric channel.

She'll miss flying. She'll miss everything.

But for two more days, she still has it all –

- and now she has Alek, too.

Deryn tells the bosun she's right as rain, ignores the pain in her knee, and goes about her duties as always. It's just past midday on the second day when her prince finds her topside.

Alek, of course, is truly only a passenger now – but he has the run of the ship, which is something no other passenger could ever boast. He spent most of the day before on the bridge. ("Though I still don't understand great circle navigation," he'd confided to her at dinner.)

Today it seems he's playing messenger: "Dr. Barlow has requested your presence immediately, Mr. Sharp."

Deryn straightens and puts on her best scowl, pretending for the sake of Mr. Rigby that she's not happy to hear it - that her knee hasn't been aching fiercely for the better part of an hour. "Aye, and what's the lady boffin want this time – or are we not meant to know?"

Alek shrugs. "I assume it's regarding London."

They're due to arrive in London that night, and everyone's been getting an earful about tricky night landings from the officers. Deryn looks to the bosun – who dismisses her with a curt nod – and begins picking her way down the ratlines with her prince, complaining loudly: "She couldn't send a sodding lizard to tell me?"

"I volunteered," Alek says. Then, soft enough that the words will only be for her, he adds, "But I may have been mistaken. She may not have said immediately."

The words are perfectly innocent, but they send a shiver of excitement down her spine.

"Well, Clanker, that's why it's better to send a message lizard," Deryn says, keeping her voice matter-of-fact for the benefit of any riggers within earshot. "They don't make such a hash of it, normally."

They reach the gondola and clamber inside. "You are quite correct, Mr. Sharp," Alek says with a small bow.

" 'Course I am," she says, only to feel her knee buckle with the first step off the ladder. She puts out a hand for the wall, swearing, and Alek is beside her in an instant, taking the weight on her left side. "Sod it all! Why's it still doing that?"

"You need to rest it," he says.

"I need to be up there," she says, glancing upwards at the great airbeast she can't see through the gondola. "While I still can."

He doesn't say anything, but the hand on her waist tightens, and his eyes are worried.

Deryn sighs. Eases away from him – she's not going to limp through the corridors on his shoulder, especially not with Dr. Busk wandering about, just looking for reasons to keep her off the ratlines. "I'll rest it for a minute. Then we'll go see what the lady boffin wants, aye? Where's Bovril?"

"My stateroom." He smiles. "Napping."

They go to her cabin. She manages not to stumble or stagger or grab for the walls again along the way, but there's no denying her exhale of relief when she plunks herself down onto the bed and stuffs her pillow under her knee.

She ought to have taken off her flight suit first, seeing as how it's covered with grime and bat clart and who knows what else. To blazes with it, she decides; her knee hurts. She shifts around, back against the curving rail at the head, getting comfortable. "Barking spiders, that's better."

Alek carefully closes her cabin door. "Once we're in London, I think you should see another doctor. Perhaps Dr. Busk's treatment wasn't as effective as it might have been."

Deryn rolls her eyes. Just like him to forget: doctors cost money, which neither of them has. Then again, Dr. Barlow surely knows half the doctors in London; one of them must be willing to do the lady boffin a favor and look at an ex-middy's dodgy knee. "If I'd kept off it properly like he ordered, you mean?"

He nods.

She pretends to have a think on that. "They'll probably set me on bed rest."

"Most likely." He sits on the bed beside her, and she inches towards the wall so he'll have more room.

"That's pure dead boring, you know," she says, lacing their fingers together where their hands lay side-by-side.

He curls his fingers tight around hers. Smirks. "Indeed."

She grins at him. Sitting like this, they're eye-to-eye; and close as they are, she can see his dark green eyes just fine. Another shiver runs through her. "I'll need something to do while I'm laying about, then. Any ideas, your princeliness?"

"Perhaps a few," he says, and kisses her.

Deryn's half-ashamed to say she's lost count of their kisses already; there's been that many since they left New York. Every chance they get, it seems, they're sneaking off to a cabin or just to some dark corner.

It's not very soldierly, all this shirking and skylarking for the sake of kissing, but… barking spiders, with Alek, it's like flying while you're standing still. Pure dead exciting.

Her heart always pounds like mad, and her skin prickles all over, and there's a very pleasant warmth that loops and settles low in her guts. That last feeling she doesn't get from flying. Only Alek.

She closes her eyes, puts her arms around him, and pulls him closer.

The angle makes kissing a bit awkward, but it's not uncomfortable. Certainly it's not so uncomfortable that she feels inclined to stop. She leans into her friend, the warmth of him, the familiarity of him, feeling a hard, sharp burst of joy in her chest.

This kissing business is quite fun.

Or at least it is until someone raps on the cabin door.

Her eyes pop open and she pushes Alek away, hurriedly swinging her injured leg back atop the pillow and straightening her flight suit where it's been crushed between them. He stands (nearly falls, getting off the bed – maybe she shouldn't have pushed him so hard) and smoothes out his own clothes just as Dr. Barlow sweeps in.

The lady boffin pauses and glances between Alek and Deryn, who are doing their best not to look guilty or to look at one another. They're failing. Barking miserably.

"My," she says mildly. "It's like that already, is it?"

Deryn says, "I was resting my knee, ma'am, like Dr. Busk ordered. Alek was just making certain I had everything in place."

The lady boffin looks amused. "And he's to be commended for a most thorough examination, it seems."

Alek frowns. He's half scarlet, and his hair's mussed, but he frowns like a prince, and he draws himself up, and he says, "We aren't –"

Dr. Barlow waves him to silence. "It's simple biology; nothing to protest. Though I see the wisdom in knocking," she says to Deryn. "I shall endeavor to do so from now on."

Deryn swallows, thinking about what might've happened if the lady boffin hadn't knocked before she came barging in. Just because she's keen on kissing Alek doesn't mean she's keen on other people staring at them while she does so. "Aye, thanks, ma'am," she says, rubbing at her shoulder awkwardly.

"And you shall endeavor to stay apart until we are safely arrived and disembarked." Dr. Barlow looks between them again and tsks. "I won't have you being found out this close to the end, Mr. Sharp. I will be most cross if I cannot have two assistants merely because you allowed your biological urges to overpower you."

"Aye ma'am," Deryn mumbles, at the same time Alek says, "I haven't agreed to be your assistant."

Dr. Barlow raises an eyebrow. "No? You may wish to speak to your fencing tutor, Aleksandar. Plans have already been made on your behalf."

"Plotters," the loris on her shoulder says, giggling.

"Shush," the lady boffin tells it, though she doesn't seemed displeased with its assessment. She turns her attention back to Deryn and Alek. "Up and out, gentlemen. We shall continue this conversation in my cabin."

Deryn reluctantly leaves the bed, wincing when her bad knee takes her weight. Alek puts a hand on her back as they leave the cabin. It's a comfort rather than any real help, and he drops his hand as soon as they're out in the corridor. But she knows what he means by it.

We pick each other up, she thinks.

She won't be a midshipman much longer. He won't ever be an emperor. They'll leave the Leviathan behind and go onward, to adventures in other places, with people and beasties and machines they've never heard of. Someday they'll get up to more than just kissing; someday they'll be properly wed, and have children, and teach them to fence and tie knots - the daughters as well as the sons.

And they'll pick each other up when they fall. They'll save each other for the rest of their lives.

That sharp, hard happiness stays with her all the way to London.