Fic: Good Ship Tomorrow 'verse: John Malone+Henrietta "Really Call Me That And I'll Hit You" Scott.
Fun Fact: The character of John Malone is named after the village of Malone, New York which has a sign at the back of their high school auditorium facing the stage that used to say "PROJECT AND SMILE" but now has missing letters and reads "PR J CT ND SM LE". This is relevant to his personality.
Fun Fact #2: Henrietta Scott is named after this song by the Fratellis. This is not at all relevant to her personality.
Have a drawn-out, oddly paced backstory piece: part of the very beginning to John and Henry's friendship.
Hull
john+henry, pg
Heny arches an eyebrow, looking at him as if he's suddenly sprouted a second head and begun to sing the Aherre Anthem in two-part harmony. "Let me see if I have this right. You expect me to take you on your word that we have mutual acquaintances and on the basis of that I am supposed to agree to crew for you on a ship I've neither seen nor heard of?"
John grins, reaching across the distance between them to tap the hard brim of her cap. "Sounds about right, actually. Except we would be business partners. And maybe except you'd need to build the ship first.
"You're insane." She straightens her hat with a hard glare.
"Been called that before, yeah." He seems entirely too pleased with himself; Henry wants to slap him. She does when he brushes at a smudge of grease on her cheek with his thumb.
"Touch me again," she says, "and I will stab you with the first thing in my tool belt that I can get my hands on."
John rubs at his stinging cheek and eyes the leather belt slung around her thin hips, weighted down at odd angles by wrenches and screwdrivers and gadgets he can't identify. "Not everything in there is sharp."
The expression in her eyes is dangerous when he looks back up at her face. "I know," she says simply.
He laughs. "Mabel told me you were feisty!"
Henry studies his face for a moment, still glaring. Thinking. A stirring of the wind blows a lock of her chin-length hair from behind her ear and she sees his hand twitch at his side.
"Did you not understand what I just said?" she asks.
He just keeps grinning cockily, practically oozing with overconfidence. "Nope," he answers, popping the P.
She marches back into her workplace with an angry huff, the workplace he only a few minutes ago dragged her out of, sliding beneath the giant suspended skyship engine before he can say anything else, glad the workshop is bare of witnesses to that infuriating conversation.
Immediately, as if the gods hearing her thoughts are in a bad mood, there is the sound of approaching footfalls.
"John Malone?" she hears her boss call out. She winces.
"Gerald MacIver!" John says in return, followed by noises of enthusiastic man-hugs: too macho and full of back slapping to convey any real emotion. "It's been far too long. You working in this place?"
Gerald laughs, full of just enough jolly humor to make Henry's day just that much worse. "Work here? I own it! What can we do for you? Fix an engine? Order you some parts?" Good old Gerald, always trying to make a deal exactly when Henry would rather he not even if it means a temporary cut in her pay.
"I came here to offer your mechanic a business proposition."
She hears Gerald gently slap something the way he does when he's amused. His knee, maybe, or John's back. "That so?"
Henry snorts. "Business proposition my ass," she mutters before shouting from where she is, five feet away and beneath the massive engine: "He wants me to build him a ship!"
A loosened bolt falls onto her head and she interprets it as a sign of what would happen to any ship she would ever help him build.
Gerald either doesn't hear the venom in her tone or chooses to ignore it. Henry would bet on the latter. "Does he?" he asks. "I can offer a nice deal on some parts, you know..."
Whatever else the two men are saying gets lost in the noise of a steam-bike pulling up out front.
She expects to never see John Malone again after turning him down that day, and it's a genuine shock when he shows up during lunch hours the next day. And the next. And the one after that.
"Why can't you find someone else?" she eventually asks him, roughly taking a bite out of her sandwich.
He shrugs, hands firmly in his pockets. He learned on his second visit that her threats with her wrenches weren't empty after all.
"I don't know," he eventually replies, turning the full force of his charming grin on her. "Why not?"
Like the ends of all their previous meetings, she finishes her lunch and slides beneath the engine, proceeding to pretend that she's ignoring him. She isn't exactly sure what will happen if he keeps coming when the engine is finished.
He does keep coming, every day telling her about all the adventures they could have with their shipping company if she would just say yes.
"Believe in fate," she recalls her mother once telling her. "Nothing is so small as to be beyond the gods' notice." Mabe John visiting her like this, his insistence, is part of what fate has planned for her. She still doesn't say yes.
"Come look at a boat with me," he requests, three weeks to the day after he first showed up.
"Not having me build you one anymore?" Her reply isn't as caustic as it would have been that first day, but she still intends it to sting a bit.
Keeping with the tradition they've established he completely ignores her tone.
"The engine is a wreck and the rest of the insides aren't much better, but the hull is intact and beautiful."
It turns out the hull was both and an eyesore and very much not intact at all. She signs the purchase papers with him anyway, struggling not to frown too hard at the wrinkled man selling it to them as he eyes her suggestively.
"I still don't like you," she says.
He just beams at her, the sun glinting off his too-white teeth. "But you like the ship!"
"But I like the ship."
When Henry gives Gerald her resignation he just smiles and winks at her. "What's her name?" he asks, and she knows he means the ship.
She shrugs. "She doesn't have one. Came to them already half-scrapped. No sense keeping a name for a vessel that's just a rotted hull and rusted engine."
"Be sure to think up a good one, then."
Two days later, Henry finds herself wishing she had asked for suggestions. She's crouched in a scrapyard beside a derelict engine, trying to see if any of it is still usable as John shifts restlessly beside her, firing off ideas on how to name their ship.
"We are not naming her after an article of clothing, Malone."
"That's 'Captain Malone'," John says, putting stress on his new title. "And you really don't think 'The Good Ship Tophat' has a good ring to it?"
She doesn't dignify that with an answer.
The engine in front of her is half-gone with rust-- more like 3/4ths gone if she's being honest with herself-- but some of the valves still look like they might be useful. She sets to work prying one apart with her screwdriver.
He catches sight of what she's doing and she has the impression that he's about to be infuriatingly smug again. "Nice piece, yeah? I thought you'd like it," he says.
She's confused. "I found this on my own."
"Well..." John rubs the back of his head in a gesture designed to make him look self-conscius. He flashes his teeth at her in a widening of his grin.
She has a sinking feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach. Not the sort of 'we are all about to die very terrible deaths very soon' feeling that she's experienced a time or two. No, it's the 'I've been well and thoroughly played' feeling she's only slightly more familiar with.
She straightens, pointing a finger at him accusingly. "You've been leading me around, pointing me towards parts you've already picked out!" She doesn't phrase it like a question because it isn't one; she's certain that is the reason she's had a streak of finding usable parts all day when normally she's lucky if she comes away with one or two.
At least he has the grace to try and look sheepish. "I may have brought someone to look at this stuff before. But!" He holds up his hands in front of his chest, palms out, when it looks like she's going to start speaking again. "But!" he repeats, his grin breaking through the penitent expression he had been trying to keep.
The joy he takes in everything is infectuous and as angry as she is right now, Henry finds herself starting to smile back at him. She shakes her head, schooling her features back into a scowl.
"Speak quickly, Malone," she growls, reaching for a wrench from her tool belt.
"I tried to hire an engineer before I contacted you, but he didn't find the idea of building a ship from that hull-- What are you doing?" He looks a bit panicked now that he has finally seen the object in her hand.
She taps the wrench against her thigh again, testing the heft before lifting it level with her waist, poised to hit him with it. "Malone. You might want to run."
"Henrietta-- Henry! Listen to me--"
He sees the look in her eyes and takes off, dodging piles of scrap metal and spare parts, heavy boots occasionally sinking into the mud from last night's rain. She chases him for a handful of steps before turning back to the junk engine with a laugh.
Mistress Mabel had given her a warning when she asked about John Malone that she thinks of more as she grows to actually enjoy his company.
"Most people like him," she had said as they sat in the back room of her bar, sipping mugs of steaming tea.
Henry had rolled her eyes. "I can't believe that," had been her response.
Mabel had laughed, her full throaty chuckle causing the ringlets of her hair to bounce. "That's why I sent him to you, Etta darling. You don't take no lies."
Prying a valve out of the engine, Henrietta mumbles: "I don't take no lies, huh?" Her imitation of Mabel's thick accent is poor.
"'No lies'?" John asks from behind her, startling her and making her drop the tools in her hands onto the muddy ground at her feet.
"Some day you'll tell me how you sneak up on people like that," she grouses.
His smile is cheeky. When is it ever not cheeky when he's dealing with her? "Maybe someday."
She ignores that. He never will tell her anything about the secrets he uses to give himself an air of alluring mystery. Surprisingly, that's mostly okay with her. "This is all we're gonna get from this thing," she says by way of changing the subject, holding up three nondescript, grimy chunks of mostly-not-rusted metal for him to see.
"Since my secret is out, let me show you the way to the next piece of useful junk the old man mechanic showed me." He turns and walks away without waiting to see if she's following him. She is, of course.
"First he's an engineer, now he's a mechanic?"
She can hear the smile in his voice. "What makes you believe it was just the one man? Besides, can't be a bit of both? I mean, you are now." He half turns, still walking, and winks at her.
Fun Fact #2: Henrietta Scott is named after this song by the Fratellis. This is not at all relevant to her personality.
Have a drawn-out, oddly paced backstory piece: part of the very beginning to John and Henry's friendship.
Hull
john+henry, pg
Heny arches an eyebrow, looking at him as if he's suddenly sprouted a second head and begun to sing the Aherre Anthem in two-part harmony. "Let me see if I have this right. You expect me to take you on your word that we have mutual acquaintances and on the basis of that I am supposed to agree to crew for you on a ship I've neither seen nor heard of?"
John grins, reaching across the distance between them to tap the hard brim of her cap. "Sounds about right, actually. Except we would be business partners. And maybe except you'd need to build the ship first.
"You're insane." She straightens her hat with a hard glare.
"Been called that before, yeah." He seems entirely too pleased with himself; Henry wants to slap him. She does when he brushes at a smudge of grease on her cheek with his thumb.
"Touch me again," she says, "and I will stab you with the first thing in my tool belt that I can get my hands on."
John rubs at his stinging cheek and eyes the leather belt slung around her thin hips, weighted down at odd angles by wrenches and screwdrivers and gadgets he can't identify. "Not everything in there is sharp."
The expression in her eyes is dangerous when he looks back up at her face. "I know," she says simply.
He laughs. "Mabel told me you were feisty!"
Henry studies his face for a moment, still glaring. Thinking. A stirring of the wind blows a lock of her chin-length hair from behind her ear and she sees his hand twitch at his side.
"Did you not understand what I just said?" she asks.
He just keeps grinning cockily, practically oozing with overconfidence. "Nope," he answers, popping the P.
She marches back into her workplace with an angry huff, the workplace he only a few minutes ago dragged her out of, sliding beneath the giant suspended skyship engine before he can say anything else, glad the workshop is bare of witnesses to that infuriating conversation.
Immediately, as if the gods hearing her thoughts are in a bad mood, there is the sound of approaching footfalls.
"John Malone?" she hears her boss call out. She winces.
"Gerald MacIver!" John says in return, followed by noises of enthusiastic man-hugs: too macho and full of back slapping to convey any real emotion. "It's been far too long. You working in this place?"
Gerald laughs, full of just enough jolly humor to make Henry's day just that much worse. "Work here? I own it! What can we do for you? Fix an engine? Order you some parts?" Good old Gerald, always trying to make a deal exactly when Henry would rather he not even if it means a temporary cut in her pay.
"I came here to offer your mechanic a business proposition."
She hears Gerald gently slap something the way he does when he's amused. His knee, maybe, or John's back. "That so?"
Henry snorts. "Business proposition my ass," she mutters before shouting from where she is, five feet away and beneath the massive engine: "He wants me to build him a ship!"
A loosened bolt falls onto her head and she interprets it as a sign of what would happen to any ship she would ever help him build.
Gerald either doesn't hear the venom in her tone or chooses to ignore it. Henry would bet on the latter. "Does he?" he asks. "I can offer a nice deal on some parts, you know..."
Whatever else the two men are saying gets lost in the noise of a steam-bike pulling up out front.
She expects to never see John Malone again after turning him down that day, and it's a genuine shock when he shows up during lunch hours the next day. And the next. And the one after that.
"Why can't you find someone else?" she eventually asks him, roughly taking a bite out of her sandwich.
He shrugs, hands firmly in his pockets. He learned on his second visit that her threats with her wrenches weren't empty after all.
"I don't know," he eventually replies, turning the full force of his charming grin on her. "Why not?"
Like the ends of all their previous meetings, she finishes her lunch and slides beneath the engine, proceeding to pretend that she's ignoring him. She isn't exactly sure what will happen if he keeps coming when the engine is finished.
He does keep coming, every day telling her about all the adventures they could have with their shipping company if she would just say yes.
"Believe in fate," she recalls her mother once telling her. "Nothing is so small as to be beyond the gods' notice." Mabe John visiting her like this, his insistence, is part of what fate has planned for her. She still doesn't say yes.
"Come look at a boat with me," he requests, three weeks to the day after he first showed up.
"Not having me build you one anymore?" Her reply isn't as caustic as it would have been that first day, but she still intends it to sting a bit.
Keeping with the tradition they've established he completely ignores her tone.
"The engine is a wreck and the rest of the insides aren't much better, but the hull is intact and beautiful."
It turns out the hull was both and an eyesore and very much not intact at all. She signs the purchase papers with him anyway, struggling not to frown too hard at the wrinkled man selling it to them as he eyes her suggestively.
"I still don't like you," she says.
He just beams at her, the sun glinting off his too-white teeth. "But you like the ship!"
"But I like the ship."
When Henry gives Gerald her resignation he just smiles and winks at her. "What's her name?" he asks, and she knows he means the ship.
She shrugs. "She doesn't have one. Came to them already half-scrapped. No sense keeping a name for a vessel that's just a rotted hull and rusted engine."
"Be sure to think up a good one, then."
Two days later, Henry finds herself wishing she had asked for suggestions. She's crouched in a scrapyard beside a derelict engine, trying to see if any of it is still usable as John shifts restlessly beside her, firing off ideas on how to name their ship.
"We are not naming her after an article of clothing, Malone."
"That's 'Captain Malone'," John says, putting stress on his new title. "And you really don't think 'The Good Ship Tophat' has a good ring to it?"
She doesn't dignify that with an answer.
The engine in front of her is half-gone with rust-- more like 3/4ths gone if she's being honest with herself-- but some of the valves still look like they might be useful. She sets to work prying one apart with her screwdriver.
He catches sight of what she's doing and she has the impression that he's about to be infuriatingly smug again. "Nice piece, yeah? I thought you'd like it," he says.
She's confused. "I found this on my own."
"Well..." John rubs the back of his head in a gesture designed to make him look self-conscius. He flashes his teeth at her in a widening of his grin.
She has a sinking feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach. Not the sort of 'we are all about to die very terrible deaths very soon' feeling that she's experienced a time or two. No, it's the 'I've been well and thoroughly played' feeling she's only slightly more familiar with.
She straightens, pointing a finger at him accusingly. "You've been leading me around, pointing me towards parts you've already picked out!" She doesn't phrase it like a question because it isn't one; she's certain that is the reason she's had a streak of finding usable parts all day when normally she's lucky if she comes away with one or two.
At least he has the grace to try and look sheepish. "I may have brought someone to look at this stuff before. But!" He holds up his hands in front of his chest, palms out, when it looks like she's going to start speaking again. "But!" he repeats, his grin breaking through the penitent expression he had been trying to keep.
The joy he takes in everything is infectuous and as angry as she is right now, Henry finds herself starting to smile back at him. She shakes her head, schooling her features back into a scowl.
"Speak quickly, Malone," she growls, reaching for a wrench from her tool belt.
"I tried to hire an engineer before I contacted you, but he didn't find the idea of building a ship from that hull-- What are you doing?" He looks a bit panicked now that he has finally seen the object in her hand.
She taps the wrench against her thigh again, testing the heft before lifting it level with her waist, poised to hit him with it. "Malone. You might want to run."
"Henrietta-- Henry! Listen to me--"
He sees the look in her eyes and takes off, dodging piles of scrap metal and spare parts, heavy boots occasionally sinking into the mud from last night's rain. She chases him for a handful of steps before turning back to the junk engine with a laugh.
Mistress Mabel had given her a warning when she asked about John Malone that she thinks of more as she grows to actually enjoy his company.
"Most people like him," she had said as they sat in the back room of her bar, sipping mugs of steaming tea.
Henry had rolled her eyes. "I can't believe that," had been her response.
Mabel had laughed, her full throaty chuckle causing the ringlets of her hair to bounce. "That's why I sent him to you, Etta darling. You don't take no lies."
Prying a valve out of the engine, Henrietta mumbles: "I don't take no lies, huh?" Her imitation of Mabel's thick accent is poor.
"'No lies'?" John asks from behind her, startling her and making her drop the tools in her hands onto the muddy ground at her feet.
"Some day you'll tell me how you sneak up on people like that," she grouses.
His smile is cheeky. When is it ever not cheeky when he's dealing with her? "Maybe someday."
She ignores that. He never will tell her anything about the secrets he uses to give himself an air of alluring mystery. Surprisingly, that's mostly okay with her. "This is all we're gonna get from this thing," she says by way of changing the subject, holding up three nondescript, grimy chunks of mostly-not-rusted metal for him to see.
"Since my secret is out, let me show you the way to the next piece of useful junk the old man mechanic showed me." He turns and walks away without waiting to see if she's following him. She is, of course.
"First he's an engineer, now he's a mechanic?"
She can hear the smile in his voice. "What makes you believe it was just the one man? Besides, can't be a bit of both? I mean, you are now." He half turns, still walking, and winks at her.