#everduo

"They need to build a whole new mental hospital and name it after you,” Shelby tells him.

"Okay, but I'm still talking.”

Shelby, kind and patient and friendly witch that she is, beckons Joe to walk with her. “And the idea is that I’m gonna keep walking, and we’re gonna go into the ancient city I haven’t raided yet, and we’re both gonna be forced to shut up. But mostly you!”

“Can I finish my monologue on the way there?”

Shelby squints up at the trees, then takes a step back. “Well… The hope is that you won’t be able to. But you crush my hopes every day, so there’s no surprises there.”

“You’re so mean to me!” Joe gasps, watching as Shelby twirls her broom in her hand, then swings a leg over it. He’s smart enough, and takes the cue for what it is. His fins - ones that he tells her have the look and feel of a flying fish’s fins - are fluttering and ready to take off.

“And you’re mean to me back, so we’re even.” Shelby is aware she’s more clipped than usual today, but she’s also aware she’s going to die several times before the day is over, so the whole thing is souring her mood. “By the way,” she adds. “If you spawn a warden on me, I reserve the right to kill you and make off with your loot.”

“Make out?”

“What?”

“You said make out.”

“I said make off.”

“Oh. I did think it was a little more on the weird side than you usually are to want to… make out with my loot.”

“Joe. If you ever say another word to me, it’ll be too soon.” And then Shelby kicks off, and her broom begins thrumming with magic as it propels her through the sky.

Joe, a second later, twirls into the air beside her. His wings, or fins, or whatever, are spread out to catch the wind, and Shelby can’t help her interest in watching the way they move to keep steady in the ever changing environment that is the sky.

“Like what you see?” Joe calls over the rushing wind.

“Just thinking about how weird it is that a pirate is flying in the sky instead of taking a boat across a river or whatever.” Shelby wasn’t, actually, thinking about that. But she prides herself on being unknowable, so it’s all good.

Joe’s eyes widen a comical amount, and he searches the land for any path of water he might have been able to take. It’s impressive though, because even through his surprise, he’s still managed to put together a half decent explanation. “Listen,” he says. “When you’re raised by parrots, you learn how to fly pretty well. I’m a parrotfish out of water, Shelby, let me have this!” He has a whine to his voice, and Shelby carefully does not laugh.

“You’re not related to Pete, then, are you?” The question is a joke, but-

“He’s my adoptive cousin,” Joe says, and Shelby dips way too fast.

Joe dips with her, losing a fair bit of altitude in a half second. “Are we at the cave yet?” He asks.

“Yeah,” comes Shelby’s dazed answer. “I’ve been making fun of you to the face of your cousin?”

“Yeah. It’s okay though. He doesn’t care. He likes his books more than me. Nerd.” The word is said with fondness, so Shelby supposes he and Pete don’t have too bad of a relationship.

“Huh. Um. Should I start being nicer to you in front of your crew?” Shelby dips again, but this time because she sees the ravine that spirals all the way down to an ancient city.

Joe follows. “Please don’t. They like you fairly well already and I think if you started being polite suddenly, they’d call possession and uh-“ He pauses here. “I am noticing that rituals that pirates are willing to do might sound really weird to outside ears.”

“Wow!” Shelby gasps, putting as much sarcasm into the word as she can give. “Is that so?”

“Other than the stealing.”

“Slightly more surprised ‘is that so,’ but there’s still a lot of sarcasm in there,” Shelby reports.

The skulk is visible to them now. “Okay wait, Joe, I’m gonna need you to be quiet, alright?”

“Uh,” Joe says, and he’s whispering, thank the magic below. “On it, boss.”

Skulk sensors litter the area they stand by, and Shelby squints into the darkness, wand held out for light. “I’m pretty sure we can get ready over here. No shriekers nearby.”

Joe sets down a shulker, and then another two, and begins putting his good tools away. “The other two shulkers is for stuff we get. Um.” Joe squints into the darkness. “Have fun!”

Shelby can hear him muttering about “goodie goodie gumdrops,” as he leaves, so she figures she may as well start looking for stuff before a Warden spawns.

Fifteen minutes later and three shriekers set off by Joe alone finds the both of them running down the woollen paths and hoping they won’t die.

“You know!” Joe yells, which, by the way, activates another shrieker. “This wouldn’t have happened if you just had let me monologue!”

Shelby gulps in a desperate gasp of air. “This is legitimately more preferable than that!” She tells him. “I know far too much about a skeleton pirate captain than I want to as it is! If you need someone to edit your monologue script, please go to someone who’s-“

Shelby squeals, losing her footing for a half second, then scrambling back up.

“Go to someone who cares and take a left, quick, quick, quick!”

They both turn, and the shriek of the Warden rings in their ears, but not enough that it causes them proper pain.

“Shelby,” Joe whispers between laboured breaths. “If I promise you to never ask you to rate my monologues… will you promise not to bring me on deathly trips with you?”

Shelby hits her forehead against his shoulder. “Yeah, Joe. That’s a fair deal.” She holds her hand out. “Shake on it.”

Joe grabs her hand, then lets go immediately afterward. “Ew! What is that??”

It’s spider web.

“It’s spider web.” Shelby smacks Joe lightly in the face with it. “Deal’s still on, by the way. I just won it, is all.”

Joe squints at her. “This doesn’t feel fair, I think.”

"Okay," Pirate Joe says. "You don't have to be."

And that's the start of it.

Shelby looks over to where Joe is squeezing the water from his hair onto the grass. He'd taken a dip in her pond, and ended up dropping little amethyst crystals that had chipped off onto their picnic blanket. Still, he was dripping wet, and she wasn't allowing him to stink up her blanket with wet fish stink.

"What?" Shelby asks.

"What. You don't want to be a girl? Don't be. It's no biggie, really." Joe shakes his head wildly, water spraying in every direction.

"Joe!" Shelby reprimands.

"Just let me on the blanket! I won't stink it up, you know I won't! The cove smells the way it does because fish is some of our exports."

"Hm." Shelby says. "Tell me more about this 'just don't be a girl' thing while we get you a towel."

Joe groans. "Or we could be comfy on the blanket! We both know I'm going back in anyway! Shelby, pleaaaaseeeee," he whines.

Shelby beckons him to her house, and he hangs his head as he follows. He's nice enough to drop the act about halfway there, rolling his shoulders back and no longer dragging his feet. He still rolls his eyes at her when she glances at him though.

"It's just what it says on the tin, Shelby. Don't wanna be a girl? Don't do it. Wanna be a boy? Go right ahead. Don't wanna be a boy either? Don't be a boy then. That's what I did." He straightens even further as Shelby opens her front door and starts rummaging through her closet for the box she knows has towels in it. Magic above, below and throughout, she needs to clean up a little better.

"That's what you did?" Shelby repeats.

"Yup!" Shelby can see him slap his chest. "Self made, honey."

Shelby turns to him fully, and blinks at his bare chest. "Uh. How?" Oh and- ah! A towel!

"Fish are very genderfluid animals. It comes with living in the water. I'm amphibious though, so I'm more solid about it. And my gender is solidly boy."

"I don't think that's how it works."

"And who's the fish here, Witch Girl?"

Shelby frowns at him, but, well. He's right. He's annoying when he's right. She throws the towel at him.

Joe sputters into the towel, then pulls it off his face and inspects it. "Oh. Thank you. Conversation over now? You're not a girl anymore and I get snacks?"

"I'm not a girl anymore?"

"I thought- I thought that was the point of this. You don't want to be a girl. You don't have to be a girl. Done, finished, I get food now?" Joe looks legitimately confused, as if their five minute conversation had revealed every mystery of the world in a digestible manner.

"Well, I mean- what can I be? What do I get to choose?"

Joe pouts at her. "Get with it, Shelby! Anything. Boy, girl, something else, something between, nothing at all, something up in the end! Something down in the nether. I don't know. Picnic basket time, what did you make to eat?"

Shelby doesn't really think about how she's moving back to the basket, mostly just contemplating the idea of being anything she wants as she stares into Joe's back. He's bouncing off to get food, because he's a hungry little fish. She hopes he finds the little jar of fish food she put in there to make fun of him.

By the time she's made her slow, slow way to the blanket, he's pulled out a plate for himself and has put a bunch of sweets and a slice of pie onto it. He's snacking on a cookie.

"Screw you, by the way," Joe says, shaking the jar of fish food at her.

"No thank you," Shelby tells him, pulling out her own plate. "Not into that sorta thing. Anyway, what if I wanted to be nothing. Neither of them. None of them. The genders, I mean. None of the genders."

"Okay," Joe says, as if it's the simplest thing in the world. "Are you changing any pronouns, or is that like, not it for you."

"My pronouns? Oh, uh, is this a thing I have to think about?"

"Not really. If you like being called she and her, then you're good with it. If you like any others, go for that too. Or instead of she and her." He shoves a whole sweet berry into his mouth, chews it almost thoughtfully, then swallows. "Shelby, I need you to know that my advice on this is that none of it matters. You do what you want. I'm a boy. I wanna be a boy. I just became a boy when I figured out I was a boy. It took, like, a month and a half, because biology exists, but it happened. You're not a girl. You don't want to be any of it. That works too. You're not any of it. If you figure out something else later, that's okay too. Then you're whatever you want to be then."

"Oh." Shelby looks down at her own sweet berry. "Okay. Then, yeah, I want to be none of them and, um... I think I like the pronouns I have."

"Awesome. If I go back into the pond, are you going to kill me for getting all wet again?"

Shelby laughs. "I'll kill you when you deserve it. Go. I'll judge the dive."

Joe is speed incarnate as he stands and backs up to get a good running start. He squints at the pond, glances at Shelby, then grins. He takes a skip step, cartwheels, lands mostly on his feet, sprints, and then-

"JOE!" Shelby yells as he cannonballs into pool and splashes her. He surfaces, just up to his nose, so that she can only barely see the grin on his lips. "NO POINTS! NO POINTS. THAT WASN'T A DIVE. YOU PRICK!"

There's a bubbling from under the water that Shelby recognizes as laughter, and she glares, pressing the smile on her face down. Shelby considers how soaked she is [pretty soaked, actually], then tugs her boots and socks off.

"Alright, fishy boy. If that's how you're gonna play-" Shelby sprints and jumps into the pond, grabbing onto Joe as she hits the water, laughter pouring out of her mouth as bubbles.

Later, when she's drying her hair and kicking at Joe as he shakes his hair out, she notes that not much about her has changed. There's one thing though, something that she knows, and Joe knows, and that's enough for her. She's not a girl. And there's some sort of warm glee in her chest at the idea. She's not a girl. Not a boy. She is neither and nothing and that is all that she wants to be.

“Yeah,” Joey replies, just as the tower comes crashing down.

“Not Katherine, I mean,” Shelby clarifies.

“Yeah,” Joey agrees.

Shelby squints at him. “Or Jimmy,” she adds.

Joey makes a face from where he’s taking apart his spare gun for the fourth time. “… You can’t keep adding people,” he tells her.

“That’s a no,” Shelby recognizes. “That’s fine. I’ve never kissed anyone.”

Joey’s head snaps up to look at her. “For real?

“Yeah. Not a lot of people to kiss when you get bullied a lot. And then if I wasn’t sucking at school, I was trying really hard to not suck at school. Busy life for a hot witch like me.” She huffed, then waved her wand again, piling cards up, bit by bit.

“I mean, Shelby, not to imply anything-“

“Isn’t that all you’re good for?”

“-but, you objectively are really hot.”

“I get to call myself hot,” Shelby tells him. “You gotta find some other words, fishboy.”

“You’re pretty. You’re strong. Golden eyes are pretty fuckin’ cool, girl. And you’re telling me no one ever wanted to kiss you?”

The card tower falls again and Shelby falls back onto her bed. “Yeah, Joe! That’s what I’m saying! Can I make fun of you now?”

“I’m not making fun, Shelby, I’m just… Do you want your first kiss?”

Shelby sits up to glare at him. A card rises from its spot on the floor and smacks him flat in the face. “Not with you, that’s for sure.”

“Cheers to that!” Joey agrees raising his lukewarm fruit punch. “I don’t want to kiss you either. I was more talking about getting Katherine? She kisses me for funzies all the time, I bet she’d be willing to give you a smooch.”

Shelby’s face turns bright red. “Oh, I don’t know if I can do that… I still have a crush on her, you know.”

“I do know! Actually!” Joey tells her. “We talk about it all the time!”

Another card in his face.

“Stop that. Anyway, doesn’t having a crush on her make it even better? Like! Your first kiss is with a girl you like! That’s great!”

Shelby presses her hands to her cheeks. “But what if I like it too much! She’s never gonna like me back…”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I don’t know why we’re bringing the whole ‘she won’t like you back,’ into it. I know she won’t. You know she won’t. Apparently you can’t just stop having feelings for her - that still sounds fake, by the way-“ Joey rolls his eyes, as if he thinks she’s been lying to him about it for the past month, “-So why not just go about life as normal?”

“And normal life includes asking her to kiss me?”

“When you’re me, it does!”

Shelby scrunches up her face. “You’re weird.”

“You’re weird!” Joey shoots back.

“Weaaakk,” Shelby sings, and then starts cackling when Joey leaps onto the bed to wrestle with her.

Five minutes later, they’re giggling and only a little bit bruised. Joey does that big sigh that means he’s done laughing and wants to say something, so Shelby quiets to listen.

“Tomorrow morning we’re gonna go ask Katherine to kiss you,” he says.

Shelby smacks him lightly. “I really wanna throw you in the pond. Can I throw you in the pond?”

“Is that a yes?”

“I’m gonna throw you in the pond.”

Shelby rolls over and stands, then throws him over her shoulders and starts down the ladder. It’s a game they’ve perfected over many sleepovers, and in less than a minute, he’s splashing around the amethyst pond, fins fluttering in excitement. Shelby dusts off her hands, and pretends to get spooked when he grabs at her ankle.

“Fish boy!” she yells as she dips a toe into the water and kicks.

“Witch!” Joey calls as he rears back to make as big a splash he can.

(They head back inside, soaking wet and amused. The next morning, they’ll go over to Katherine’s and Joey will tell Katherine that Shelby wants her first kiss to be from someone she trusts. And someone who isn’t Joey.

Katherine will oblige, a humoured smile on her lips, and Shelby will blink rapidly for a couple seconds after. “Thanks,” will be the stupid first word to come out of her mouth afterwards.

On the way to Eversea, Shelby will tell Joey that it didn’t actually feel like all that big of a deal. Joey will laugh, and tell her that it’s because it wasn’t that big of a deal. The only difference now is that she’s kissed someone. “Not that big of a difference overall, is it?” Joey will say.