#loving reminder that water is not as kind a god as wind

[jonathanstims]

I wade through the falling clouds and decide I no longer wish to fly.

There are no fish in this river–the splashes are just water jumping out at me as it hurdles over the rocks. The wind tugs sharply at the rod as I whip it backwards, the hook immediately snagging on the bushes. I scramble up the steep riverbed’s running mud with my one free hand to pull the hook from the drowning sage. The ozone is so thick it feels like a sour-sweet gel on my tongue as I pick my way back down to the choking frigidity of the river. I slide my old, fraying Tevas across the algae-slick bottom, hoping the cold numbs me enough that I don’t feel the pebbles crushed between the rubber and my heels. It’s only when the water froths at my shaking knees that I realize I’ve shuffled too deep. My legs are already eaten up and invisible, joints numb and useless–one shift, one quiver, and the river will swallow the rest of me. The foam is rabid, stinking and freezing. There are no fish in this river because its thick hunger is impossible to ignore. I whip my rod back, gripping it with both hands. This time, the hook doesn’t catch on the bushes lining the river. The line and rod get pulled into the wind, yanking roughly downriver, and suddenly the worn-soft rubber on my feet doesn’t have enough grip to stay trapped between the hills of algae. My hand flies out like a trout darting for the hidden hook, discovering the terror of being eaten as it takes its first bite. Just as the wind swallows my desperate scream, my fingers snag on the wet leaves of a willow bush jutting from the bank. The water dashes up my legs, but my feet are under me again. I have to drag myself out with one hand and mud-brown sandals, my bones brittle and muscles sore with the cold. The river lets me go with my empty rod, but there’s no escape from the rain.

[if-loves]

reverence

// Yandere Capitano

sum: when a man stands in front of an altar, is it a god he prays to?

wc: 822

warnings: probably OOC capitano

a/n: capitano + worship is everything to me / also i didn’t really go so hard on the yan i think?? maybe it’s been too long or maybe idk what im talking about

likes & reblogs are appreciated :)

Capitano has never been one to pray. He respects the Tsaritsa, he is thankful to her even, but he is merely not the kind of man to worship, to pray. He is a righteous man, yes, and he does not need to rely on a higher being to be that.

Capitano has seen war. He knows war, far better than most, but he has never found the need to make desperate pleas to a god, an archon that can do nothing. He’s far more content in placing those bets on himself.

Yet he finds himself in a dilapidated church, hidden deep in the woods, the cold Snezhnayan wind seeping through the cracks and holes of the building, the ends of his coat fluttering along with it. With calm steps, he walks towards the crumbling statue on the broken altar, noting the vague resemblance to the Tsaritsa.

With a gentleness unbefitting of him, he closes his eyes and kneels with his head lowered, a hand on his heart. He does not know how to pray, so he hopes this will suffice.

Capitano rarely kneels, for there are very few he deems worthy of his respect. But when he kneels in front of this altar, he does not kneel only to show respect; he kneels to worship, to adore, and most importantly, to love, and none of it is for the Tsaritsa or anyone else for that matter - because in his heart, there is only room for you.

In his mind, thoughts of you never cease, not even for a moment. They always exist, whether in the front or back of his mind, like a stream of water. He wishes, silently, that you would never have to part from him, that he could bring you along to all his expeditions. He wants so desperately for you to always be by his side, to always be able to hold you in his arms, but he of all people knows that there is no point. He is lovesick, yes, but he is not so mad as to place your life in danger when the safer, safest, option is right in front of him.

And so, when Capitano prays, he prays not to a god nor an archon, but to you. He has no need nor desire to pray to superficial beings who do not care for a human like him. You, you, on the other hand?

You need him, and he needs you. You are the blood that flows through his veins, the air he breathes, the heart that pumps in his chest and most of all, his soul. You are his savior, the singular person in this harsh world that deserves his utmost devotion; if it would please you, if it would satisfy you, he would single-handedly raze Teyvat into cinders, and bring you the ashes.

Capitano doesn’t know how long he’s stayed kneeling, a gloved hand on his heart, eyes shut. Perhaps it has been minutes, maybe even hours, but the wind outside has calmed. When he rises, the metal of his chains screech against the floor, and it reminds him of war. Taking a deep breath, he opens his eyes and turns his back against the altar and its statue.

Perhaps he should build a shrine for you at home. A glorious statue of you, sculpted by only the finest of sculptors, with every single detail no matter how big or small engraved into it. It will have only the things you enjoy, whether it be food or candles or flowers, no demand of yours unmet, lest it be leaving the estate; if there is one wish he cannot grant, it is that.

The wind softly blows his hair and the fur of his coat as he makes his way back to the estate. It is late, he muses. The sun has set.

He wonders if you’ve already fallen asleep, if you dream of him. He wanted to surprise you with his return, purposely telling you in his letter that the journey would take a week longer than expected. He wonders if you’ll be happy to see him, if you will leap with joy or hug him with longing. He imagines each potential reaction with fondness, until the mansion is in sight, guards stationed at every corner, bowing their heads at his arrival.

It is silent, eerily so, when he walks in. Without conscious effort, he finds himself on the way to your shared bedroom, his heart pounding in his chest. Gently, he opens the door, a small streak of moonlight his guide.

There you lay, ethereally so, asleep in the warmth of the covers. Upon reaching your sleeping self, he kneels once again, taking your hand in his. Once more, he prays.

“I love you.” He murmurs, the warmth of your palm against his cheek. Perhaps what he loves most about you is the humanity you make him feel. “I love you.”

[fire-lizard-ro]

Woo~ Hope you're ready to read Mr. Sunday taking you…

Up the ass- Psych, mfs-

Bet you didn't expect that one from me, huh? I know I normally don't write bottom character, but... I felt like it? I want to see this man wrecked.

I'm writing for both bottom Sunday and top Sunday on this glorious- checks time moonlit (I haven't checked outside and idk what day it is today) night. A little birdy told me she wanted to see bottom Sunday first. Call yourself out if you wanna. 😂

CW: COCK JUMPSCARE- (jk), anal (I mean- come on you knew this), choking (+a little breath play y'all please be sure to make this distinction when talking about it ijsige-), edging, overstimulation, discussion of safe-wording, dom/sub stuff, mention of subspace, spanking, toys (there's an anal plug and cock ring), degradation (+praise), nipple play, harness???, bondage, collaring, slight public play, some subbing from Sunday and some power bottoming (but we'll be focusing on him subbing- it's only really mentioned), prone bone+cat position(that's what it's called, right???)+mating press, some namecalling (ex: praising - good boy, degrading - slut, etc., etc.), crying during sex (the good kind), marking, begging, dumbification, mention of being ashamed but liking it, belly bulge, slight cumflation/excessive cum, excessive lube, objectification(I think???), talk of his cock being useless (it's sex talk I swear reader doesn't mean it-), ever so slight gaping, cumming dry

Reader gender: Gender neutral, but you can envision what you want. Reader has a dick/strap and the cum can be uhhh- Lube? Is that what people put in squirting straps-

If I forgot to add anything to the CW or made any typos- Whoops. You can let me know if you wanna~

Personally, I think Sunday would be a switch. How he leans is up to you. But when he's topping, I see him being more prone to domming. Opposite can be said of when he's bottoming. More likely to sub, but does have his moments when he wants to take control again.

While I do love a good "turnabout is fair play", I think that considering Sunday's need to be in control (…the leaks told me so-), he needs a clean cut decision on what you'd be doing that night. If you've decided together that he'd be topping and domming, don't try to take over please- It'd probably fray his nerves and make him upset. This is because for him, I imagine that he'd need to mentally prepare himself and get in the mindset to sub. He loves giving up the control he holds onto so tightly, but he needs to remind himself that it's okay. That he can trust you and that you'll make him feel so, so good for his concession.

But by god is he a vision when he does slip into that submissive mindset.

It'd start with you two showering together after a long day of Sunday upholding the harmony of Penacony and dealing with any issues that arose to threaten that peace. It's both a way to wind down and to ease him into letting you take care of him and allowing him to slowly loosen his grasp on his control.

Soft touches and soothing words whispered in his ears between the sounds of water with gentle hands petting his wings has him melting into you. The stiff set of his shoulders, imperceptible to all but you, relaxes and the tension drains from his body along with the water as it swirls down the drain.

It is also now that you take out the plug he'd been wearing today while he was away from home. The night before, he'd just finished with you when you two took to the shower and you helped him clean up before stretching his pretty hole with lubed, insistent but gentle fingers. The plug went in nicely after that, the little jeweled heart of the plug's flared base in your color marking him as yours.

He hides behind his wings as you pull at the plug, the toy tugging at his rim that you trace with a playful finger. But of course you nose at them until he lets you in to kiss him soothingly, his wings then pressed to your cheeks to hide you both from the spray of the shower head and the rest of the world. It's just you two here and now. He would gasp a little as the plug slid out to the widest part of the toy. Thin and perfectly groomed eyebrows would furrow while you play with him a little. Push it back in carefully before slowly pulling it back to the wide part again a few times before finally bringing it out fully, rewarding him with "good boy" and "thank you for indulging me" and more kisses.

Once you both are finally in bed, that's when the fun begins.

You both go over the rules again. What to do if he ever wants to stop, reminding him that ultimately he is still in control because he controls if they stop or not. He's the efficient and straightforward type. Traffic light system along with three firm taps if he couldn't talk was enough for him. (Let it be known that when you started dating him, he was not at all aware of these things. I think he'd have been inexperienced to sex beyond vanilla beforehand.)

Tonight, you two were going to use a lot of implements (?). You laid them out, making sure that they were the same as the ones you discussed using prior (yes I think Sunday needs for you two to explicitly discuss beforehand and honestly I agree with him unless you like spontaneity) and going over what you'd do with them to recheck with him that he was okay with it. Consent is sexy, folks.

You then kiss him while fixing the collar on him, checking that it wasn't too tight. He liked using a collar when subbing because it helped him reach subspace and was something the two of you trained him to relax more with when subbing. Helps calm his constantly racing thoughts. The next step is the harness. It's a pretty pale blue-grey that matches his soft hair and is worn with his legs through it and over his hips. They're there for easier handling on your part. The fact that they accentuate his soft, shapely ass and strong thighs is a very welcome bonus. When you put it on for him, please make sure to kiss up his legs all the way to his hipbones while you pull up the harness you helped him step into. Nibble on said hipbones a bit and kiss his navel, near dangerously close to his neglected cock that twitched cutely at your proximity to it. Once that's done you can lube up his hard-on with one cursory tug in order to slip on the cock ring. He won't be getting any more than that for most of the night.

You then have him on him hands and knees so you can get him in position and bind him. Tonight would be a simple set of padded cuffs. You would push between his shoulder blades to guide him to press his chest to the bed, leaning down to kiss down his spine while pulling his hands gently pull his hands behind his back to put the cuffs on. Be sure to praise him for being a good boy, for doing so well for you as you prepared him for the night.

Once that's done, press one more kiss to his body. This time on the top curve of his soft ass before lubing him up some more. It's never bad to be safe about things and there's more than enough chance that he needs more as it dried throughout the day.

Tease him by purposefully tapping on his prostate softly while making sure he's stretched enough and wet with lube coating his inner walls that clenched around your skilled fingers.

Keep going until he finally asks you in a small voice to get on with it. "Hm? What was that?" "You heard me-" "Only good boys get what they want and good boys ask for what they want." You aren't going to make him beg for it (yet), but you'll still make him ask for it like the good, polite boy you know he is.

(Okay we're switching styles here, folks.)

"F-fine… Please fuck me," Sunday said, words trailing of into a mumble. You knew what he was saying, but you didn't really hear it. "What was that? Couldn't hear you, baby." "I-" he angled his head to glare back at you with traces of a pout tugging at his lips. He then turned again to avoid your eyes that took in his face, pressed to the bed and needy. "…please fuck me." "Was that so hard, pretty boy? Since you asked…" You slipped your fingers out slow, letting him feel the drag of them against his sensitive walls as he gave a shuddering sigh. Sunday had attempted to keep it under wraps, but it still slipped out.

Your chuckle caused him to flush more, a wing attempting to hide his face despite you being unable to see it from this spot behind him.

As you slicked up your cock, you watched his hole twitch and cock sway as he unconsciously sunk his hips back more as if to ask you for your thick length in his hungry, empty hole. "Aeons you have the prettiest ass, you know that?" You then finally line yourself up, the head of your dick pressing to the still tight but prepped hole's rim as you slide your hands down the man's sides to grasp his hips before sliding fingers into the straps of the harness that cradled his slim hips.

The angelic man beneath you held his breath in anticipation for a moment. "Breathe, baby." And then you were pushing in, slowly spearing open that wet warmth. He gasped and jolted, but your hand was quick to hold him down by the back of his neck while the other kept an iron grip on the harness to keep his hips steady. A whine escaped Sunday as he attempted to close his legs at the delicious sensation of your cock sliding deep into him- Up to the hilt. Once you bottomed out, he was already panting like he was in heat and his wings that had flared and flexed while you had been pushing inside drooped to rest on the bed.

Your cock was so big- So deep in him he swore he could feel it in the back of his throat, his own cock drooling messily onto previously clean sheets where it hung between his legs. It throbbed as he finally had a clear enough mind to remember the cock ring you'd fastened onto his needy dick. "Such a good slut for me, taking everything." He felt a bold of shame, yet it made his cheeks redden with more than shame. Arousal. As he felt mixed feelings of pleasure and shame swirling in his gut, he also then felt something else in there- Your cock grinding heavily, steadily into him with hips rubbing against his plush ass.

Sunday allowed himself to lean into the pleasure you provided, hips moving back into your slow but strong humps forward. Your cock was sliding over his prostate so nicely and it had him closing his eyes to focus in on it. The arch of his back deepened, emphasizing the lean musculature of his back and bringing out the little dimples above his ass as you leaned forward to put more your weight into your grinding. The pressure inside him and on his neck had his eyes fluttering along with his wings. A moan startled out of him when you proceeded to nibble on said wings, teeth gently nibbling along the fragile bone in the first bend of the feathery appendage. Your hand moved from its spot holding the back of Sunday's neck to press him face first into the bedding moved to instead wrap around his throat, turning him towards you so you could steal a sloppy kiss from him. It was filthy and wet, the sounds of it joining the wet squelch and the slight sound of skin on skin as you began to thrust. His whine was swallowed up by your mouth and when you pulled back he looked a bit dazed, uncomprehending eyes looking at the string of saliva between your lips and his that was promptly licked away by your sinful tongue.

"So good- Such a good boy, yeah? You're all mine aren't you?" He was deep enough in that he just nodded at he tried to rearrange his thoughts. That idea was de-railed when you thrust hard and spanked his ass with the hand not holding his throat, grip tightening enough to make him a bit lightheaded. "Words, harlot. Tell me how you're mine- How good I make you feel." The name made him feel deliciously ashamed of how he was really letting someone push him down and fuck him like a whore. But aeons did he love it. He managed to get out in between panting breaths a, "So good so good please- 'M all yours-" "That's a good cockslut. But just for me right?" "Just for you-"

You rewarded him by speeding up your thrusts, slowly ramping up how hard you fucked into his clenching heat that pushed out lube with every push in- You had made sure to use a lot so he would have to hear the obscene sound of your fucking him and dominating him. His moans became louder along with it, a whimper escaping him when your thrusts forced his hips to the bed. His once neglected cock now lay trapped between him and then bed as yours wrecked him and claimed him. He began babbling about how it felt, how it was like you were in his belly how it was too much not enough please please- Sunday was begging, now, with his drooling mouth, hole, and cock.

"I didn't know toys were supposed to speak- Especially when not spoken to." Your hand tightened around his neck again, this time pressing so it made it a bit harder for him to breathe. "Shhhh- Just be quiet and take it, pretty baby. I'll make you feel good. Make you forget all those troublesome thoughts. Don't you wanna be my dumb little slut? Only focus on taking my cock?" Yeah… he did. He wanted to let go of all the thoughts making his head hurt and give in, even if just for a little while. You'd taken care of him before. Now wasn't any different.

Even through the grip on his throat, he still let out little "ah- ah- ah-" sounds to the rhythm of your hips slapping into his ass, pushing your cock into his deepest parts. Yet you made it feel so good- It didn't hurt at all. All he could think about was how filthy he was and how pleasurable it was. Sunday must have tried to wheeze something out despite everything because you said, "Yeah? You like being dirty for me? A filthy slut for be behind closed doors while in public you act like such a proper leader? What would your dear people think of you if they knew you got fucked like a used prostitute- a mere toy?" You then let go of his throat to let him speak, the air rushing into his lungs making his head spin. "I- I love it! Love it so much please please lemme cum lemme cum on your cock-!"

Another spank to his ass had his hole tightening around you, a cry being startled out of him and tears beading at his lash line. "Good boy-" You then slowed a bit, causing him to whine despite how he had been held on edge for a while, now. Still wanting the bright hot pleasure despite the agony of being denied his release. "Color, baby?" "Mmmf- Green-" "Good boy-" A kiss was pressed to a wing before you harshly thrusted in and went back to pounding him within an inch of his life. Every thrust forced his body up and down the bed, cock an angry red and leaking profusely. Sunday buried his face into the pillow, tears staining them as they came faster. "Please- Let me cum, please! I'll do anything!" "Anything?"

Maybe that was a mistake.

One that had you yanking your dick out of his hole, the greedy thing clenching around nothing as if missing your cock in it. He whined pitifully, tears staining his face as he sobbed into the bedding. Fuck did he sound good. You uncuffed him to flip him over, tossing the things somewhere to the side of the bed. He was unable to keep up with the sudden changes and before he knew it, you were pressing his thighs to his chest in a mating press, cock sliding up and down his own teasingly. "Such a big cock and yet you don't even know how to use it. It's just a big, dumb, useless thing hanging between your legs. All you need is this slutty hole of yours, right?" Your thumb came down to rub at the slightly gaped hole, smearing the lube even more over his sloppy pucker that twitched at your touch.

He hid his face with his wings, flushed and crying as you belittled his cock. He was only good as an anal slut for you. But his wings flared open as he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. You had sunk your teeth into the spot in reprimand and to mark your toy as yours. "What did I say about that? No hiding." He whimpered and nodded- A spank. "Words." "I won't hide anymore!" "Good toy."

Once you slid in, his mind went blank again. Though somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he noted- Oh. You were in his belly. There on the otherwise flat surface that scrunched up from his position, was the slight bulge of your cock in his guts. "Look at you- So pretty." You pressed on it, making him toss his head back with a pitchy moan, hips jerking under you and insides clenching wetly at the dick they were sucking on while his hands flew up to claw at your back desperately. As you leaned over him to lick into his mouth, you then reached one hand between you to slip off the cockring. "You wanted to cum- So cum." You immediately began a brutal pace that had him screaming as he finally was able to find his release, hurtling off that cliff and vision going white as he emptied his cum onto his stomach and yours, the pressure of having held it in so long and the angle of your mating press- The jerking of his hips from you shoving your deliciously big dick into his hungry little hole forcing his cum to splatter over his chest and on his neck and even wings. It was like a sinful angel was laying beneath you.

You slowed, then, and he let his breathing begin to even out. But it was an act of deception because you transferred his legs from your hold to over your shoulders and grabbed hold of his softened cock that laid on his cum covered belly to begin fucking him hard. He screamed and whimpered at the onslaught of now almost painful pleasure. "Wait no no no- Can't- Too much! Stop please I can't cum again-" "I know you can. You've done it before. Come on- Give me another one. Haven't even filled you up, yet."

He began crying even harder, tears blurring his vision as he panted and whimpered while his thoughts slipped away. Even as his mind went blank, his body still responded with his hips jerkily trying to meet your thrusts even as the twitched in overstimulation. Later he would glare at you with tears in his eyes and a pout while declaring that he would be in charge the next time he bottomed and would hold you down, instead, to take what he wanted. But for now, he could only let his hole be used as a warm, wet little cock sleeve. He choked on his drool as you bent him further so you could lean down to tongue his sensitive nipples, sucking bruises and hickeys into his chest and even right around his nipples- Going as far as to nibble on them.

It felt like hours of cumming and cumming and cumming and losing his mind as you fucked him and wrung out every drop of his spend and pleasure as you could along with the tears that still poured from his puffy eyes. It didn't help that he could feel the way you were filling him up with your own cum, having only orgasmed the second time he did. He was cumming dry when you finally slowed, kissing him gently and rubbing at his slightly distended belly that was full of your cum sloshing inside.

"Did so good for me, baby. I love you so much- Such a good boy for me." You helped him slowly come back down, helping to ground him as the high faded. You had slowly lowered his legs from your shoulders. This was why you always ended facing each other. So he could have that intimacy towards the end of seeing you and being able to kiss you. And so you could help him return to earth Penacony after you were done milking the cum and pleasure and pesky thoughts out of him.

Once he was back with you, you made sure to praise him more and kiss him all over his face before finally coming back to his lips to kiss him slow and deep. "Come on. Gotta drink water, birdie." You always made sure to help him up, let him lean against you as you began aftercare. "I love you," you would remind him at the end of it all. "I love you, too darling," he would always reply back, sealing it with a kiss.

Ah yes. Another round of: Roro writes entirely to much and with far too much detail. I made this one even longer and more detailed as well as included a bunch of writing in more story format rather than headcanon-ish form like I normally do. Because I'm back in business!!! (To write smut about hot characters I like-)

Hope you enjoyed~

-Roro, your friendly neighborhood degenerate

[yeyinde]

SEA FEVER | Sailor!John Price x Reader

When he invited you to see his ship, half of it was—admittedly—a euphemism. A thinly veiled come-on. A facsimile of romance. Who wouldn't, after all, want to drift out to the open ocean, making love—or some sad version of it—under the stars on a clear night? And he thinks that might be fine. Maybe it's all you want from him, anyway—just a night. A moment. A memory to keep.  But John's always been greedy. The kind that wants, and wants. Once would never be enough, and he knows that if he sunk his teeth into you, a bite would never satiate his rapacious appetite, never quench the hunger.  And since he can't make a meal out of a morsel, he'd rather starve. 

tags: fluff, angst, unapologetic pining, obsession at first sight (but then love follows), blink and you'll miss it awful coping mechanisms (self-isolation, self-exile) and brief allusions to trauma (unresolved because this is about fucking the physical manifestation of the ocean, lads; it ain't about healing), egregious sea themes, a Newfie and his Newfie-isms, whirlwind romance; questionable sailing choices warnings: 18+ | allusions to smut but everything is brief and vague and more about the Feelings™ than the act, explicit male solo though but also very brief and about the Pining™. word count: 25k notes: unconventional leading man (haggard sea boy) romances local travesty (ambiguous, wishy-washy bartender) in a love affair no one asked for. That's what this is. Enjoy. 

*Suggestive themes are signified by a sailor's knot above the paragraph for those who want to read this, but don't care much for smut. SFW will begin with an anchor and wave divider above it. NSFW & SFW shown below:

—PRICE

The storm off the coast of Newfoundland is stronger than he'd anticipated. 

What starts as a bleak looking cloud on the horizon quickly churns the waters into a rough, sickly looking grey that rocks against his vessel without any respite. The cabin is in utter disarray within seconds of being battered by waves that seem to grow in size with each harrowing shade of charcoal blue the sky turns. 

A few warnings from local trawlers in the area, ones quickly turning into the nearby harbour, and a firm reprimand by the Canadian Coast Guard when he radioed back and asked if anchoring was a feasible option (oh, sure, b'y, the man said, his thick Maritime twang hiding none of his derisive scorn. If ye wan'na meet y'r mak'r, it's a safe place to capsize, luh. We'll risk our arses in the morn' when y'need savin', we do. If there's anythin' left of ya that needs savin', anyhoo), he's quick to follow their example. 

But, unfortunately, not quick enough. 

The sudden squall tears through his hull with a vengeance, ripping the sails from their perch with a gust of wind that seems determined to play chicken with the efficiency of his ballast tanks (a pyrrhic victory for Captain and her unquenchable bloodlust for trying herself on just how far she can list before rocketing back upright). He knows with full certainty, and innate experience traversing through the Gulf Stream when he was younger and much more foolish, that the damage is nearly catastrophic. Nearly, of course, because while it clipped his sails, he has engines to bring him back, limping, to the coast the Guard directs him to. 

"See there, y'er ten clicks away, b'y. Sending coordinates in a minute, now."

He's reminded of the warnings given by gnarled, old sailors who told him about the dangers of solo-sailing as he tries to be everything all at once to get his ship to the harbour they directed him to. Asking him, how can you be the captain, the navigator, and the watch all at the same time? When do you sleep? The answer, of course, is barely, but Price likes the freedom of being on his own. The isolation at sea isn't for everyone, but he takes to it with an ease that seems to defy all the gods of the ocean until he stands triumphant in his own domain, on his own ship. 

Until now, that is. 

Until he's battling with a handicap in the ocean. 

But somehow—luck, maybe—he limps his way to the port where he finds fishermen helping latch the vessels to the marina in the harbour. 

Shaded in a dreary grey, the port looks grimy and desolate from his cabin's porthole. A few wooden shacks on the beach are painted in faded primary colours and bear the quintessential marks of a seaside town—seashells, sailors knots (Carrick bend and Ashley stoppers), seahorses, and anchors. Without the dour grey of the downpour, he thinks it might be charming in a way. Quaint. There's a market to the west of him where stacks of lobster cages sit. Men in wellies and rubber dungarees shout orders amid the chaos of the storm, and he takes a moment to gather his things in a rucksack before he joins them on the deck. 

This late at night, there isn't much anyone can do but hunker down and hope for the best. The men point him in the direction of the closest inn—the only one, another jokes—and he tries not to think about how badly damaged Captain will be in the morning. His own stupidity, of course; he knew there was a storm coming but he underestimated how vicious it would be. 

With a nod of thanks, he sets off. 

Brushing against the Eastern coast of Canada was meant to just be a simple drive-by back to Liverpool. Barely a stop, really. Just a scenic route so he could spend his thirty-ninth birthday over the sunken wreck of the Titanic before continuing on the nearly week-long journey across the Atlantic. 

But instead, he celebrates it with a bottle of rum, and a ship on the verge of sinking—stuck, now, in Nova Scotia until he can find a mechanic to patch her up before he sets sail again. 

He sends a quick text to Soap about the delay—stuck in Canada, fuckin' hurricanes—and tries not to dwell on the sudden ease in his guts at the prospect of not going home anytime soon. 

(There are worse places he could be for his birthday, he thinks. Like Liverpool.)

The port he anchored his vessel to is a bottleneck between the last stretch of land for some hundreds of kilometres and the vast, ungiving ocean.

It isn't much to look at—just an empty boardwalk shaped like a horseshoe with most of the shops closed down for the season (or permanently, if the ramshackle state of them is anything to by), save for a grocer, an inn that takes up most of the middle section of the pier, a fisherman's village on the inlet with locals buying the wares from the lush waters filled to the brim with lobster and Atlantic salmon, a seafood restaurant, a cafe that moonlights as a pizza parlour in the evenings, and a pub—but it's enough for now. It's quaint, he thinks, even in its seasonal destitution. 

The buildings are all painted in faded primary colours that are washed out in the heavy rain that falls from some coastal hurricane just touching down in Labrador. 

It's one of those small seaside harbours that have seen better days. One with an economy wholly dependent on passing sailors just to survive, and he feels the despondency in the air like a thick, humid fog clinging to the skin of his neck. Fading signs. Peeling paint. There's damage to some of the buildings from a hurricane that must have swept through some several seasons ago, but the funds to repair are almost nonexistent, and so it sits. Festers. A broken reminder of how deadly the sea can be, even on land. 

The herringbone pier creaks under his weight as he walks the sandy trek from the marina beside the village to the inn (no vacancy, it reads, with middle letters flickering ominously), and he grapples with the unease that fills him at being on solid land for the first time in months. A strange, unshaky gait, as if the cartilage in his aching knees turned to liquid while he was at sea. 

It doesn't bother him too much—by the time he recalibrates to the weight of land pressing down on his soles, it'll be time to leave. 

Maybe. 

("It'll pass," the innkeeper sniffs when he asks about how long these things usually last. "Give 'er a week or so, and she'll blow right by. Might cause some floodin' in Halifax, but we're on the opposite end of 'er. Should be fine.")

It smells like rotten fish, blooming algae, and old frying oil—a typical thoroughfare for most of the harbours he's saddled up to in the years he's been traversing the open ocean. He breathes it in and finds himself already missing the potent loam that brims from the seawater at night. Salt, humus, brine, eelgrass; the ocean smells distinct in its rot. This, then, is a pale ersatz. 

He's been here for a short, few hours already, and still can't seem to adjust to life on land. To the smells, the sounds, the people—not that there's too many of them around here. Price would be surprised if this town's population was higher than three hundred. 

But it's stifling all the same. 

And cold. 

Being at the very tip of the Atlantic ocean, the weather is a near constant gloom. Grey, lacklustre skies smeared with thick, black clouds looming in the horizon like an omen. Salt-saturated air. It's a strange amalgamation between a chilling breeze from the sea and a dense wall of humidity even this late in September. It's uncomfortably thick under the veiled sun—a pale yellow hidden behind streaks of grey cloud cover. 

The best description for this little place is dreary. 

One he thinks might still be true even without the hurricane looming in the distance; a constant, inescapable chokehold within reach. 

In the interior of the small fishing village, people chatter aimlessly about everything except the hurricane (but he supposes that with the frequency of them happening, there isn't much else to say about them except, ah, fuck, again?). He finds a modicum of comfort in their strange twang—a mangled bastardisation of Irish, Scottish, and something unique to the barren, eastern coast of Canada. It almost feels like home, strangely. Like someone dropped him in the Canadian version of Cork, Ireland. 

The people he meets in passing as he drifts aimlessly between the shops, picking up something for dinner and a set of clean clothes, are friendly in an almost aggressive way. 

Then, of course, there's you. 

You weren't expected. A catastrophe in the making, one that he can see coming from a mile away. It's something he has a keen intuition for—being able to sense the kind of trouble that will make leaving harder than it has to be—and he knows better than to entertain this little fantasy, but there's something about you that makes him keep coming back. 

Maybe it's the booze you ply him with; top of the shelf despite adding it to his tab under a bottom barrel price tag. Or the fact that no one has been able to replicate the perfect whisky sour he had down in Barbados, but—goddamn—you come very close. 

Or maybe it's just exactly what it is:

Loneliness. Distraction. 

He's a man always on the move. One who hasn't kissed land in months. And you're—

Well. 

You're the prettiest thing he'd seen since a rainbow cast a glimmering ring on the horizon eighteen kilometres off the coast of the Philippines. 

He isn't old. Not in the way that matters, but the sea has a way of chipping people apart; ageing them in ways that land just can't replicate. He's not yet forty, but sometimes he wakes up after barely missing a brutal storm in the middle of the ocean, and he feels like he's almost sixty. Battered body, bruised and broken; sunscorched. Salt-weathered. 

You, though, make him feel his actual age. As if he's some young, dumb lad who ought to know better but doesn't care. Flippant in the way only the people in Liverpool can be. Young of heart. Dumb of mind. 

And fuck—

Thinking about that place, those goddamn idiots in the pub who didn't know what quiet meant, makes him realise just how much he misses it. Not home. Never home. Home is the sea. The ocean. Home is this little place between land. A wild, untamed beast. The place where, when he was eighteen and smitten, he threw his heart down to the bottom of that unending chasm of midnight blue. 

But you make him homesick, and he thinks he ought to resent you a little bit for it.

(He doesn't, of course; doesn't think he could ever hate you for making him feel even though he should because you make leaving harder than it's ever been, and he doesn't know what to do about that.)

It starts over a glass of whisky. 

He's no stranger to being the foreigner, the tourist. Price is a tall man with broad shoulders and a permanent smear of sunburn across the bridge of his nose, no matter the season. With his unkempt beard of wry umber curls, his deep timbre that sounds more like the battered engine of a classic, American muscle car, a sea-weathered gaze, and his penchant for a stiff drink and an unfiltered cigar, he has a tendency to stand out. 

(Or so he's been told.)

So, when you round the corner of the bar, brow ticking up in intrigue as he wanders in, sun-beaten and salt-slicked, he isn't surprised to hear you murmur:

"Not from around here, are you?"

Still. It makes him huff. "How'd you guess?"

Your other brow joins the first. "This town has a permanent population of maybe sixty people. I like to think I know every single one of them. You, however, I don't know."

"That so?"

You nod. "Yes, sir—"

And fuck. The way you speak, softly but with a rawness in your tone that's completely void of any false pleasantry, seems to notch somewhere in his ribcage, however dusted it is with barren white cobwebs.

"No. No sirs here," he finds himself saying, unprompted, and a little adrift from his usual character. He likes the importance that comes with being known as an authority figure; respected—the responsibility gives him something to do, and John has never really known how to be anything other than a leader, even when he shouldn't be. 

(Especially when he shouldn't be.)

"Then what should I call you, stranger?"

He shrugs one shoulder in a lofty reply, but doesn't give you his name. Not right away, anyway—he also thinks he likes the mystery of being a stranger in a strange land—but you don't press. Your hands lift, palms facing him, in a mockery of surrender. 

"Okay, stranger. What can I get for you?"

"Whisky," he says, a touch gruffer than he should be considering how nice you're being, but he's also never been the sort to care much about social niceties. "Neat. Bottle of spring water on the side."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees you mouth the words back to yourself, a little smile clipping the corner of your lips. Bottle of water. It makes him huff again. 

"Good business to mock your guests, is it?" 

It's your turn to shrug. "Only when they don't give me their name."

You're quick in a way he doesn't expect. Snappy. Unpolished. But considering the way you walk around the bar, snatching up a bottle, and then a glass without even sparing a glance to see what's in your hands, it tells him you're familiar with this place. I know everyone, it screams. 

It's an inference—but he's always been rather good at those as well—that you've been here a while. Maybe this place is home to you. Maybe it has always been. 

Growing up in a dilapidated port town must have rubbed off on you in all the wrong ways. Waspish but still deferential to your elders. Quick with your words. Taking everything to the chin without a flinch. 

You grew up around sailors. Around men who can't seem to stand still on land long enough to call any place home. And he almost pities you for it. Almost. 

But he doesn't know you well enough to care. 

So, he doesn't. 

Motions, instead, to the cigar case he lays flat on the table after fishing it out of his front pocket with a small murmur to see if it's alright if he smokes inside. Places like these are so far behind on bylaws, he doubts anyone would blink if he smoked indoors, but it's better to be safe, he reasons, than to find himself on the curb nursing bloodied knuckles and a black eye. 

(One too many nights down in Manila taught him well enough.)

You nod, then look around the empty pub. "Go ahead. I don't think anyone here will mind."

It makes bark out something that sounds too shorn around the edges, too frayed and unevenly cut, to be a laugh, but it still makes your lips quiver, pulling up in a smile. 

"Glad you've got my back." 

He leaves it open. An empty space for you to fill in, give him your name. A proper introduction. 

Price isn't too surprised when you don't, and instead use two, well-practised fingers to slide his drink over to him, not spilling a drop. There's a flash of teeth. A mockery of a smile. 

And then: "drink up. First one is on the house."

"Well, aren't you charming."

"It's just good business," you quip with a little more teeth. "Gotta stay above the competition."

It pulls another bark from his chest. The second in less than ten minutes. He can't remember the last time he laughed this much, however lumpish and unrefined it might be. 

"It's working," he adds, tipping the glass in your direction. "Might come back for a round yet." 

"Just don't be a stranger." 

He should have been. 

Living a large majority of his life floating aimlessly in the vast expanse of the open sea has given him several insights into who he is as a person, as a man, and what makes him tick. The situations he was forced into, almost all of them being life or death, make him acutely aware of himself in a way that only those who have trust pushed past the limits of their mettle know. 

Price is good at spotting danger. Looming storms. Rogue waves. Reefs jutting out in the middle of the ocean.

And everything about you is dangerous.

He knows himself well enough to know that you're his kryptonite. His weakness. That those glossy eyes, your stubborn pride, your spitfire mouth, are all things pitted against him. All designed to make him suffer as much as possible. 

You're more dangerous than running out of fuel near Australia. Almost getting capsized off the coast of Sri Lanka. Surviving a sudden hurricane in the waters around Mexico. 

You—

You make him yearn. You make him want. 

You make him think about things he swore off of when he was eighteen and set sail around the world all on his own. 

For the first time since he left Liverpool in a boat he named Captain, Price thinks about home. Solid land beneath his feet. 

Dangerous, indeed. 

And despite everything warning him away, he goes back. 

Blames it on a litany of things—all half-truths that are only marginally easy to swallow. Things like: it's been ages since he had a stiff drink, and this is the only pub in some ten kilometres, or so. The only licence he cared enough to renew is his boating permit, and he isn't even sure if his driver's licence from Hereford is valid anymore. Never bothered much to check. 

He needs to get out, anyway. Has to find someone to fix the leak he'd sprung crossing the Labrador Strait. Needs to get more fuel. Enough to last him until he can get to Maine. 

And where else is he going to find anyone in this town to do all of that if not at the pub?

It's practical. A necessity. 

(And if he wears his nicest shirt that only barely smells sunbleached, then no one has to know.)

No one. Except you, that is. 

You wave to him in what's quickly becoming known as your usual greeting. A slight widening of your eyes, as if you're surprised to see him. Then a small quirk of your lips that always accompanies the briefest flash of teeth. If you're not busy making a drink, you lift your hand up, fingers loosely curled over your palm. A lazy wave. 

He echoes it all back with a sharp nod as he takes his seat at the bar. His usual, too, because despite having not been a marine since he was twenty-six, he still has the training he picked up ingrained in his marrow. Back to the corner. Exits in his periphery. 

(Old habits die hard, he thinks, and feels his heart leap to the base of his throat when you grin at him from over the counter, wide and infectious—)

He needs a smoke. A stiff drink.

There's an ashtray laid out on the table in front of him, a coaster with an empty glass. You're quick to rectify that, sidling up to his spot with a bottle of whisky tucked between your palm and thumb, a bottle of water secured in your grasp by just your pinky looped around the nozzle. 

"You should try my whisky sour," you murmur conversationally—like this is normal. Commonplace. 

It is in a way, he notes. But there's something much too domestic about the way you take him in. Fluffing pillows. Resting a cool hand against a warm forehead. Sweetness bleeds into his teeth, makes them ache. He needs to rinse it away before he gets a cavity. 

"Mm," he mumbles, fingers curling around the glass. The whisky is only slightly chilled—the way he mentioned he liked days ago—and he wonders if you took it out of the cool, let it sit on the shelf, waiting for him. He doesn't know how he feels about the idea of that. Of being waited for. Expected. "Not a fan of that nonsense."

Your head tilts to the side. Narrowed eyes reading him. Trying to sear through the layers that accumulated over the years, thick growths. Barnacles bunched around his body from stagnancy. He wonders what you think you see when you look at him. 

Wonders, then, why he cares so much about what the answer might be. 

John hides it all in a swallow. A gulp of whisky that never stops burning no matter how many times he washes his blues away with a swig of it. Lights a fire in his throat that catches and spreads through his chest, all the way down to his belly. Smoky. Ashes. He wheezes through the burn of it. Let it strip his insides, taking all the pollutants with it. The ones that build up whenever he catches sight of soft, coy smiles, and warm eyes. 

Dangerous if left unchecked. 

"You never know," you say, and he's already forgotten what you were talking about originally. Too many dips into the margins. Too much reading between the lines. "You might like it if you try."

And he knows, immediately, that he would. That he'd order whatever fancy drink you whipped up for him tonight with lemon and liquid cane sugar and a pinch of salt to cut the sweetness (your secret ingredient), and would do it for the rest of his life if he could. Would drink himself into cirrhosis just to see the way you smiled when you made it.  

He swallows it. Chases it down with water. He's always been rather good at that—running. Avoiding the things that make his heart thud, and the back of his neck prickle. 

So, he says: "nah, m'set in my ways." 

And you smile, let him flee. "If you say so." Then, with eyes that drop to the three wrinkles in his collar, and the ambiguous stain on the breast pocket of his shirt, you add: "don't you look nice tonight. Who're you trying to impress?" 

There's an itch under his skin. He paws at his pocket for his cigars. You meet him in the middle with a lighter in your hand, held out to him when he jabs the butt of one between his teeth. He needs the distraction. Needs nicotine to quell his nerves. Smoke-stained apathy. Just enough to soften the urge to do something ill-advised. To say something uncharacteristically flirty, like—

You. If you'll have me. 

(And then desperately. With a quiver in his voice, and blood in his throat; if you'll let me. I'll be so good to you, so, so good—)

"Mechanic," he rumbles, words muffled and gruff from around the end of his cigar. The way the flames catch the softness around the ring of your irises makes him ache in all the wrong ways. "Boat mechanic, specifically. To help fix up Captain."

"Captain?" You echo, brows rising. He leans forward, pushes the tip into the fire; inhales to let it catch. 

"M'ship," he rolls the word around a mouthful of smoke. "My first love."

"Ah," you say with a smile that tugs on the corners of your eyes. "She must be a thing of beauty, then." 

His mouth is already forming the affirmation—yes, she is—and the question—why do you think that?—but you beat him to it with a softness that hints at more, that lays itself bare on the grimy, acetone bleached tabletop:

"To make a man like you so smitten."

And Jesus Christ. 

What is he meant to say to that? How is supposed to respond with his heart in his throat, and pulse in his ears? 

He's too old for this shite, he thinks. Then, not old enough. Not nearly old enough—

"Right," he grumbles, gruff and unfriendly, and everything that's meant to make you stay away for good, to look at him like the sorry sap of an empty man he is. But there's a tint in his words. A blood-drenched fluster. 

You catch pieces of it, and smile behind the counter as you pour another drink. 

"Anyway," he's grasping at anything with knotted hands, something to take the edge off of his nerves. To put distance between this, you and him, and all the things that will eventually come after it. "This mechanic. Know where I can find one?"

The derision that dances across your pretty face has heat blooming in his chest. 

"Look around. This is basically a town hall meeting tonight."

He likes the way you ride sarcasm and sincerity so finely that he always seems to oscillate between believing your words or wondering if you're making a mockery of him. Most of the time, you seem to be—if only to get a rise out of him. To draw out his sense of humour, mordant and drier than a desert. One that pairs quite nicely with your own. 

(Another tip to the scale he tries not to think about.)

So he doesn't. He huffs instead as he ashes his cigar, and reaches for the glass with his other hand. 

"Well, ain't you funny." 

You are, of course. Of course. He thinks about the things you say to him when he comes down for breakfast at noon and dinner well after the sun has set beyond the horizon, making a meal out of the lobster rolls you make for him in the kitchen, the tuna sandwiches. The garlic shrimp. The salmon and rice. Idle comments about the locals—or lack thereof—and their spotty reputation. The history of the town. Of your Province. 

"You love it."

And God help him, he does. He does. He likes the way you drag snorts out from the depths of his chest, clearing out empty cobwebs, and filling the barren space with warmth. Or something like it. Everyone he's met so far always seems to want something from him, but you don't. You don't even make him pay for the extra heaping of lobster you pile on his plate even though he's heard you say it was an extra five dollars to a passing sailor. 

He seems to be your exception, and he doesn't know why. 

(Or maybe he does, but looking at it too closely fills him with dread. The kind he only feels when he finds out a storm cell is headed toward him. When he has to anchor down in a bay and settle the sickness in his guts as Captain is viciously thrown from side to side.

The morning after when he has to clean up the broken pieces and examine the extent of the damage, it's always filled with a sense of moroseness. Uncomfortable, in a way, like the aftermath of a vitriolic row, a devastating argument when he emerges with a sense of uncertainty, no longer quite sure he was justified in the things he said, the anger he felt. But too prideful to apologise. The awkwardness of navigating the ruins of calamity with a sense of regret that blooms alongside his lingering anger.)

So, he does what he does best:

"Not in your lifetime, love." 

He runs. 

Because lying has always come easier to him, hasn't it?

The mechanic is an old man with an accent thicker than his own. 

He speaks entirely in regional colloquialisms that Price can't make sense of. Even when he makes it known that he has no idea what the fuck the man is on about, he just breathes out his nose, as if to say, what can't ye understand about me words? and continues in the same mishmash of something that might be English, but honestly—John doubts it very much. 

Still. He's quick. He checks the hull, the mast. The engine. Checks off a list as he goes, muttering to himself (himself, because John stopped listening after the third, what? Come again? I can't understand you, mate that went entirely ignored save for a few, luh, buddy, I knows yer not stun but yer gettin' me right rotted, ye'are), and then slaps the side of Captain, nodding to himself. 

Three weeks, he says, words stretched out and stressed, like he was speaking to a child. 'ave 'er all fix'd up in t'ree weeks, b'y. 

Three weeks. 

It's in line with the seasons, too. If he times it all just right, he could be eating jerk chicken, curry, and oxtail soup in Jamaica soon enough. It would be stupid to go against the Gulf Stream (something he knows from experience when he was younger and dumber and thought he knew better), but a short stint across the Atlantic to Bermuda would suffice. Then once he's finished, he could set sail to the Azores, and then to Gibraltar, or Portugal, back up to the UK. 

Well, then. 

It's set. 

He hands the man a deposit, and tries not to think about the hourglass looming in the distance. 

Or you. 

(He always has to leave eventually. This, he knows, is no different.)

A routine forms. It's not terrible—not at first. Just an itch in the back of his head, talons raking across the inside of his skull, right behind his eyes. 

It's fine, he reasons, taking his spot at the bar while you bat away grabbing hands reaching for free beer, more booze. In three weeks, this place will be a memory replayed in his mind when the stretch of ocean idles, and loneliness sets in. A soft comfort for him to break into pieces, into regrets and spots of unhinged laughter when the isolation in a wet, unfathomable desert sinks its maw into his psyche. 

He'll resent himself, he's sure; curse the winds and the squalls that threaten to tear his boat into pieces. The idle sense of listlessness that comes with seafaring long distances. 

He's done it enough times to know that between the inexorable sense of freedom and insignificance in the gaping maw of an untamable beast, he always hates himself a little bit for not taking someone with him. 

Solo-sailing is ill-advised, but he's always been a stubborn bastard. Too prickly to be good company, too gruff to care. 

Maybe he'll ring Gaz when gets close to Europe to see if he's up for a stint jaunting through the ocean to see the Caribbean with him. Or Soap if Gaz is still hunkering away with the military. 

(You—

He doesn't think about that. Carves the thought out of his hand as quickly as it forms.)

But even so—

You're a constant on his mind. The first solid presence he's had in months, too. 

Despite his cantankerous disposition—sometimes he finds himself snarling more than conversing; sometimes he has this urge in his blood to lash out, to push things away just to see how far they go—you navigate his mercurial temperament with ease. His shorn, gruff words bounce off of your skin and fall to the countertop where you pick them up between delicate fingers and throw them right back at him—all with a smile. 

See, you seem to say. Nothing you can do will push me away so just shut up already and drink your fucking whisky, old man. 

He doesn't know if he believes you. Or the phantom echo in his head. 

"You're shedding," you murmur, drawing his attention back to you. At his raised brow, you lift your hand up in front of him, thumb and forefinger pinched together. 

It's only when his vision steadies that he sees the single strand of hair wisping up from between the tips of your fingers. A coarse hair of dark brown with lightened tips. 

His hand lifts to his beard, roaming over the wry curls peppered, unkempt, around the bottom half of his face. His moustache is overgrown, eclipsing the entirety of his lips. He feels the wetness from his whisky staining the ends.

You laugh when he pats along his cheek and jaw, as if he could find the missing follicle amid an unruly basin of knotting hair. 

"Ah," he rasps. "Guess I'm in need of a shave."

It's not a priority anymore. Hasn't been since he left the Navy, or when he realised how troublesome it was to try and shave his face while crossing the Atlantic. It just stopped being something he cared much about. 

But he feels the long ends catching on the rough patch of skin around his knuckles. Straggly and whitening at the tips. 

"Maybe," you quip with a shrug, and he can't really place the note in your tone that tries to linger between feigned indifference, but misses the mark entirely. 

You don't say anything else as you drop the fallen strand into the bin behind the counter, but as the night progresses, he catches your eyes straying toward him more often than usual, lingering on the expanse of his covered jaw. Something flashes in those depths—intrigue, maybe; curiosity—and John tries to convince himself it doesn't matter even as he pulls out money from his wallet at the crux of the evening when everyone has gone home, save for himself and you. The only two left in an empty pub. 

It shakes him, somewhat. As if he's only realising just now how normal this has become. For him to wait for you. To walk you to the edge of the boardwalk, where a little cottage sits across a sandy embankment. Home, you told him once. The first night he kept pace with you just to keep the conversation going. 

Never been anywhere else but here, you said, a touch wistful. Must be amazing, then. Going anywhere you like. Always at sea. 

He swallows down something bitter at the memory. Something aching and acrid. Yeah, he murmured when the silence stretched on for too long and he saw the apology forming on your lips. Nice. It's—it's good, yeah.

The years have muted the resentment he felt toward his home. His father, in particular. He doesn't think he's ready to step back into Hereford—maybe not ever—but he might be ready to see the old bastard's grave. Drop a couple of flowers down. 

The memories he has are embedded in thrown cast iron pots. Fist-sized holes in the wall. Sealed with bitterness, resentment.

He didn't know how to summarise all of that into something digestible for you. So, he didn't. Doesn't. 

(Can't, maybe. Won't.)

You'd stopped aiming for personal and instead focused your attention on the things that made him snort. Made him laugh. He can't remember the last time he had a moment to breathe. Land makes him feel claustrophobic. Itches under his skin in a way that drums up the instinct to flee. Or fight. 

But with you—

It's easy. 

It awakens something in him, too. Something that has been there all along, maybe. Lingering on the periphery. One he tried hard to ignore as it raked down his skull, leaving false starts in his bones. 

There's an attraction there, seeding in the gaps between your bodies. One that becomes harder to ignore as the days pass. And how could there not be, when you're pretty in a way that makes him flounder. That makes him want to bend you over the counter just to see what expressions he could pull out of you with a mere touch. The sounds—

Fuck. You'd sound so pretty, he thinks. Has thought. Many times in the sanctuary of his hotel room that stunk of algae and smoke. Images of you splayed out on the sheets, begging him for more—

His hand goes back to his jaw. Feeling the years of accumulated indifference beneath his fingers, and needing something—anything—to take the heat in his belly, the tremble of his hand, away. To keep the thoughts of you at bay, locked up tight for no one else to see. To know. 

John doesn't walk you home that night, opting instead to duck into a drug mart beside the inn, hands burrowed in his pockets, eyes lidded. Narrowed, almost, as he takes in the rows of cheap plastic he'll inevitably find at sea. 

He stands in the aisle for a moment, taking in the mix of English and French on the boxes, and trying to come up with reasons for why this is a good idea—outside of the way it felt to have you look at him with lowered lashes, flickering from his chin, to his jaw, to his cheek: imagining what might be under the bushel of thick, unruly hair. 

It doesn't surprise him that he comes up empty. That his head is filled with nothing but the illicit image of you leaning over him—

Stupid. 

He grabs the first box he sees, crumpling the cardboard from how tight he's clenching his fist. 

It isn't the first time he's thought of you like that, but it is in your presence. With you staring at him, filling in the blanks his uninspired memory couldn't conjure up. Talking to him, too—bloody fucking hell. 

All frayed whispers of: you alright, John? You sure? Well, if you say so. 

There's anger writ across his brow, more so at himself for thinking these things, for feeling them in the first place, but as he stalks toward the counter, frown buried behind a mess of overgrown, unkempt hair, and eyes narrowed into pinched lines, he's sure he makes quite the sight. Must, if the little jump the skittish man behind the register gives when he drops the box with a growled how much? is to go by. 

John's never been good at handling his anger. Trickle-down toxicity, maybe. He's sure some fancy therapist would be overjoyed to tell him all about it—about how he's never had a good role model when it comes to biting his tongue. Never had to, when his last name is enough to pass tests, climb ranks. 

Mean and drunk, his dad was.

And Price—

Well. Sometimes he feels himself getting there, too.

But this. This. It feels different. 

He's not nearly as angry as he is flustered, and like anything he isn't used to, he lashes out. 

John is sure they don't tip at drug stores, but he conveniently forgets his change in place of an apology when he storms out of the shop, ignoring the hesitantly called, uh, sir…? as he goes. 

It's fine, he thinks and tries not to let his mind wander into uncharted territory, musing about what you might have said. Might have done. 

Swatted at him, undoubtedly. Said something scathing about him being a prick for no reason. Put him in his place, kept him there. 

But he doesn't think about that at all. 

John stands in front of the grimy mirror in his hotel room with a brand new razor in hand, staring at himself, and wonders if you'd shave it for him if he asked. If you'd keep him in line during the long stretch of the ocean where everything is an endless crawl of muted grey-green, and take him down to the bathroom in the boat, one that's barely big enough for himself to fit comfortably, and perch him on the toilet while you tended to the too-long wisps of curls growing over his cheeks. 

The thought is an algae bloom in his chest. Ethereal, beautiful. But beneath the marvel of nature's potent splendour lurks a deadly danger—one toxic in its domesticity. 

Still. He latches onto it. Curls his worn fingers around the edges, clinging to rotting driftwood. 

He likes the way it fits in his chest. The shape of you moulding along the barren brackets of his ribs; slotting in like a puzzle piece. It's winsome. Dangerous. But he's always like a challenge. 

Always liked the way some things were meant to hurt. 

(And you—you look like you were made to ruin.)

Hair rains into the stained basin with each cut. Filling the chips in the porcelain, built up from years of carelessness and indelicate hands, until a light dust of burnt umber sits like a layer of snow across the surface, hiding the blemishes below. 

Each inch shorn off seems to regress him in age until he's less an unkempt seafarer, a wild man who feasts on tuna and loses his mind in the middle of the sea, and more like the thirty-something-year-old who still has decades ahead of him to try and regain his footing. 

The contrast is jarring. 

He runs the back of his hand across clean skin and nearly startles at the feeling of something touching that part of his face that was hidden for so long. 

He's reminded about something his dad used to say—nothing like a shave to make a man feel new again—and isn't sure how he likes the sour twist in his gut when he feels the truth in those words, however hollow and artificial they might be. 

The face that stares back at him is different from the one who wore a military uniform all those years ago. Cheeks sunken in. Hollow. Thinner from months at sea. His complexion is darker, sunkissed and tinged slightly red. A permanent sunburn, maybe. He thinks about the woman from Ghana who warned him with a finger pressed softly against the apple of his full cheek about skin cancer. Melanoma. 

Wear sunscreen, she stressed with a shake of her head that sent gorgeous locks of midnight black spilling over her bare shoulders. It reminded him of the deepest parts of the ocean that he crossed. Endless puddles that looked like little jars of ink across the vast expanse of the sea. You're too pale not to be wearing some every day. 

(After he left—twinned hearts torn asunder—he found a bottle of sunscreen stuffed inside his rucksack. It was the only time he can remember crying in some twenty-odd years—)

That man feels almost as distant as the sea is to him now. A memory. A moment when he was willing to carve off the best parts of himself just to make room for the loneliness; the self-flagellation in the form of isolation. What he'd thought he deserved. Maybe still does. 

He isn't sure what thoughts were rattling around inside his head at the time to make him leave the best pieces of himself with a woman who seemed too good to be true, but still wanted him, of all people, by her side. Those, too, feel far too distant to grasp. 

His hand is worn down. Knuckles more scar tissue than skin. Welts lined the inside of his palms—thickened flesh made from grabbing the ends of rope too many times to count as it reeled out of his grasp, cutting deep and cauterising the wound all at the same time. He should have known better, maybe. But when his anchor was tumbling down into an abyss, unattached to its cleat in the middle of the ocean, time for thinking was negligible. Nonexistent, almost. 

The accumulated scars—some from land, most from sea—discolour his skin until it's patches of ivory, pale pink, and mounted brown, all slightly hidden under a thin crop of wry topaz hair. 

His nails are short and lined with boat oil. Dirt. The beds are yellowing from nicotine. 

He scratches the rosy skin of his upper cheek where it meets the cut of patchwork mutton chops. His signature style when he was Captain. When he was responsible for more life than he knew what to do with or knew how to protect. 

(The men he couldn't save always seem to stack higher than the ones he did.)

John sees fragments of his old self in the mirror. Pieces of an incomplete puzzle he thought he left scattered on the battlefield, and then tucked inside a box when he handed in his medals for a trawler (a trawler for a sailboat). The fit is tight. It sits uncomfortably over his new skin—scarred and sunkissed—and he gives himself a moment to wonder about where he'd be in life now had he stayed behind. 

But a moment feels too long. Not long enough. 

He brings the razor up to his cheek and cuts the rest of that man away. 

He isn't him. Not anymore. 

(Hasn't been for a long time.)

The skin of his cheeks sting from the bitter evening winds billowing off the icy Atlantic and he's reminded why he kept his beard overgrown and thick when he was out at sea. 

November is a cruel month, he always found. Cold. Desolate. This close to the ocean, and he feels the chill deep in his bones, even though several layers of leather and fur. It's enough to make his teeth chatter. 

The fur lining the collar of his Levi's jacket does little to stem the vicious onslaught, but he makes a point to bunch his shoulders closer to the bottom of his earlobes in an effort to salvage some heat. Not that there's much to spare. 

But the walk from the inn to the pub is blessedly short, and the brief cold gives him enough time to clear his head. To think about turning back. Stopping whatever it is he thinks he's doing. 

He isn't a young lad. Not anymore. 

He knows this, of course. Knows it enough to feel the ache in his joints. In the raw scar tissue that is always a little tender in colder weather. Still. It wasn't enough to stop him from washing his clothes in the coin laundry of the inn. Buying fabric softener and forest-scented detergent from the grocer. A beanie (toque, he supposes, though he's never heard anyone out East use that word), some cologne—the expensive kind. Tom Ford, the lady at the cosmetic counter said. You look like you'd like this one best. 

He didn't ask why. She didn't tell him. 

It smells good, though. Like new leather, vanilla, and tobacco—a strange concept considering most of the time people couldn't stand the smell whenever he smoked, but maybe that's only in cigars and cigarettes. 

There was a moment when he stood in the washroom, buttoning up his freshly laundered (and newly purchased) shirt when he felt like a fraud. A goddamn muppet. 

This isn't him. He reeks of smoke, salt, and sun-dried sweat. He scrubs his clothes clean with extra shampoo inside the shower on his boat when they start to smell a little too pungent, even for him. He doesn't shave. Barely showers—

Who needs it when he can just anchor on a reef, or a distant, uninhabited island and take a dip in crystalline waters for a few hours? 

He feels—

Stupid. 

But he can't deny there's something a little invigorating about slipping a clean body inside clean clothes. Dressing up like some young lad taking his girl out to see a film, grab a burger to eat. Maybe bum around Liverpool until he had to go back to the barracks. 

He bit his tongue until he tasted iron and slipped on his jacket. Pulled the beanie over his head. Sprayed some cologne on the sleeves. And then kept his head low to avoid anyone's eyes, even though no one in this town has really bothered to get to know him like you had. 

John just feels a bit like a swindler. This isn't him. 

Fancy shirts. Clean jeans. Boots. A new leather jacket. Cologne. Barefaced. It all feels like a hollow pastiche of some clichè role he's trying to fill. Leading man, or something stupid like that Soap might jostle him about. 

Who're ye tryin'ta be, Cap? Tom Hardy, aye?

Fuck. Fuck. He should leave, just go back to his inn—

But the door is already opening. You're looking up, taking him in, and then—

Nothing. You offer a slight nod. No smile. No wave. And then you're looking away, eyes dropping back to the tabletop you're always cleaning despite the stains and the stickiness never going away. 

He expected worse, maybe. His hand reaches up as he steps inside, feeling the uneven skin beneath his palm. Rugged craters. Knicks from the blade when he got too close to his skin. Scars, maybe. Patches of hair he missed. 

He wonders what you thought when you saw it. Chiefly disappointed, perhaps, that whatever image you had in your head of him, all clean-shaven and dressed up, wasn't quite the same as reality. There's a sinking sense of disappointment in his guts, but it's almost minuscule compared to the relief of knowing that you don't care. Maybe it'll be enough to quash whatever has been rotting in the crevasse between you. Crush whatever idealistic notions of him you have in your head. 

John would rather you were bitterly disappointed now than realise it after. Regret. A mistake. It's good. Fine. 

It's only when he takes his usual seat does your head pops up again, eyes cutting across the counter to stare at him. 

And—

Shit. 

The way you look at him knocks the air from his lungs. The deep appraisal, the shock, the curiosity, and the—

"Wow," you whisper, eyes widening. He isn't sure what you think, but he knows that look in your eye; a keenness. Sees it sometime staring back at him in a cup of amber when you don't notice him looking. Shit. Shit.  

He clears his throat, uncomfortable under the intensity of your stare, and tries to soothe his nerves as quickly as he can, patting down for his cigars left somewhere in his pocket. In one of his pockets. Fuck—

"Well," you breathe, and he dreads your words immediately, not quite ready to hear them without something in his veins to dull the pinballing emotions in his chest. "Don't you clean up nice. Didn't recognise you at first."

He grunts. "Yeah, yeah. Talkin' nonsense now, aren't you?"

"Nonsense?" You echo, tone subdued, now. Soft. Too soft. He hates the way it makes his chest feel like it's caving in. "What? A handsome man like you can't take a compliment? That's a surprise."

Handsome. 

He feels his pulse in his throat. Heat under his collar. Something spreads across his skin at words, glueing itself down, uncomfortably tight—constricting, smothering—and he fights the urge to reach up to his neck, clawing at it until it's all gone. Peeled off in strips, taking with it jagged swaths of too-hot flesh. 

Your words are painted with too much sincerity, and it drips over his skin—thick and oily—until he's stained in the offering they make. Drenched in the sudden realisation that this is far too much than he can handle. 

That he needs. 

The way you're looking at him—bare-faced honesty, scoured of anything other than a genuity that trickles into the gaps in his crumbling chest, sticky filament made of saccharine promises and a dizzying sense of open affection—makes him heave; chokes him on the embers of that tantalising what if you let echo in the recess of words. 

It isn't grabbing, or taking what he wants. This is you lying flat on the table. His choice to reach for it. To curl his fingers around the bulk of it, feeling the heat in the palm of his hand. 

And he wants. Oh, how he wants—

But it feels a little bit like a betrayal. Self-sabotage from within as his body turns against him. Feelings conspiring with his whims, the ones that force out their pleads between bloodied teeth; yearning as they rattle the cages of this forced prison. Lost in absentia. 

He can't make sense of the tremors that follow, roaring through his chest in a deluge of innominated emotions that seem to shake the foundation he stands on. He reaches, but can't seem to grasp them. Temporal feelings without cause. Intangible. They slip through the gaps in his fingers. Slide off of his flesh as he was trying to catch mercury in the oil-slick palm of his hand. 

John can't make sense of it. Why him? What's drawing you to him outside of carnal attraction? It's always been there—that magnetic pull: his marrow to yours. 

But for the first time since he traded in medals for oars, he feels the pull back to shore. That unquenchable urge to dip his toes into the sand. To keep his feet firm on dry land. 

The feeling of it itches in the palm of his hand. 

And like most things, he doesn't understand, doesn't agree with, he feels the unrelenting urge to lash out against it. Push back. Carve out some semblance of distance between the thing he doesn't understand, and what it's making him feel.

And then he snaps. Bites back against the headiness admixing in the back of his head; noxious, dangerous. It's a discomfort. A slash of clarity that makes him all too aware of himself. Of you. This. Everything. It's too much. 

So easily swayed by a pretty word. What a damn fool. 

The snort he gives in response is a gnarled mess in his throat, all mangled up and shredded on the barbs of his sudden vexation. "Flatter all the poor sods like this, do you?"

It crackles in his chest. Smouldering embers. Dampened by the blood filling his lungs, choking him on what spills out of the shattered levee. 

This isn't—

Isn't him. It isn't you. 

He feels claws raking across the inside of his skull. Sharpened talons digging vengefully into the back of his sockets until it aches. Forcing him, maybe, to see the aftermath of his anger. 

"No," you say, pulling back. Stepping away from him. Giving him space. Not enough, and entirely too much. A sad echo snakes through the crevasse. Glass breaking. Shattering. He thinks of self-sabotage. Tastes it in the back of his throat. "Just you."

It's mean, awful, when he huffs, asks: "yeah? Why bother?" 

"Why not?" You volley back, and he can't quite place the look in your eye. Disappointment, maybe. Something tinged in regret. "Maybe I want to. Maybe I—"

You don't finish. 

Good, he thinks. Good. Stay away. Far away. 

And softer. Softer still—

It's for your own good. Better off this way. Don't turn around. You'll only end up hating what you see. Regretting what you find—

"Don't know what you're getting yourself into." His words are stagnant. Hollow. The consistency of ash between dry palms. He tries to swallow, but can't. Can't. Gives up instead, adds: "won't like what you find, either." 

You hum and it hurts. "Maybe I might. Can't be all bad under there." 

They're sharpened with an edge of sincerity he can't bring himself to acknowledge, not now; not yet, so he huffs instead, and brings a cigar to his lips just so he doesn't have to respond. Doesn't have to engage again. Can't, he thinks, with a cigar between his lips, stuffing his mouth full. 

A pathetic escape. He's never been the type of man to retreat when it isn't the best option strategically. Or when he has no other choice, and too many men on the line. 

But he can't—

(Knife to his chest, you walk away. 

Blade against his tongue, he says nothing to call you back.)

A fissure sits at the zenith that once was a sense of ease, comfort. It leaks a coldness that shakes him to the core when it drifts over gaping wounds and milky-white bones.  

(All of his own making, of course.)

In the midst of it all, he tries to convince himself that this is the right thing to do despite never being a man of altruism in his life, and the lie pools in his empty gut where it sloshes around in the shots of whisky you still pour for him even though he can he see the cruel lashes of his words striking over your expression when you look at him when you think he isn't watching you back. 

Better this way, and he downs a shot just to ignore the merciless echo that asks, for who?

Both of you. Both. 

Because despite what you might think, or whatever little fantasies you made up inside your head about him, he knows they aren't true. They aren't him. 

A man who climbed ranks on the back of his last name. A borrowed legacy with no honour of his own. One who had no qualms about crossing lines that others couldn't until they blurred, until his morality was a sickly grey. 

Until a prison cell in Siberia rewired the fibres in his head, and he was forced to reconcile the unignorable truth that stripped of his rank and the protection he offers there is barely any discernible difference between him and them. The enemy. 

He thinks of Gaz, and the words he uttered become a portend for the calamity of a man who always seemed overly keen to take things too far. 

It's them or us, he used to say. Them or us—even as he tossed an innocent man over the ledge to fall to his death. As he let a child watch him emasculate his father when he knew pride was all they had left, doing nothing in the end but creating another monster for him to hunt down at a later date. Threatened families. Threatened men. Women, children. 

His punishment was nonexistent. Self-flagellation in the form of exile. He cast himself out to sea and pretended it was enough. 

How is he supposed to pretend who is he isn't? How is he meant to touch you with blood writ in the lines of his palm? 

Selfish. Mean. Cruel. 

So, he lets it rot—just as he does with everything else.

There have been others, of course; but Price has always been attracted to older women. Laugh lines and crows feet; swatches of grey kissing their temples. A certain coldness to their touch. An unspoken understanding that everything that is, and will ever be, between them is temporal. Love was just a crutch. A fallacy uttered in the dark to soothe the rugged parts of themselves that worried they might never be enough. 

He can handle women like that. Prefers them. 

The youngest he's ever dated was a woman his own age, and he realised soon after that there was a disparity between he couldn't placate. One that left scars. 

He's a mangled soul in a young man's body. Rough and callous and unwilling to compromise. He's more scar tissue than man, and what can he offer someone idealistic with inexperience and youth except a bitter tangle of hurt that cuts deep. 

But you're an outlier, he finds. Only shades younger than himself, really, but it's not so much your age, but the way you carry yourself. Heart on your sleeve. Aching for love. 

He can't give that to you. 

The last time he tried, he ended up sneaking out on a woman in Ghana, leaving the pieces of him behind that dared to even try. 

He can't offer you anything that isn't temporary. 

And he thinks that might be fine. Maybe it's all you want from him, anyway—just a night. A moment. A memory to keep. 

But John's always been greedy. The kind that wants, and wants. Once would never be enough, and he knows that if he sunk his teeth into you, a bite would never satiate his rapacious appetite, never quench the hunger. 

And since he can't make a meal out of a morsel, he'd rather starve. 

He thinks about leaving six times in three hours, but you carry on as if nothing has happened even though he catches weariness in your gaze whenever you look at him. His glass is filled but the conversations are bereft of their usual cheekiness. The gaps between are no longer filled with his scored laughter or your amused hums. 

You spend more time away from him than you have since he first sat down. The deviation away from what quickly became a bruised touchstone, laden with clumsy fingerprints is jarring, but he can't claim to be upset by your distance when he was the one who caused the rift in the first place. 

So, he drinks. He smokes his cigar. Tries to not think about why his hand itches in a way that he knows can only be sated by sliding his knuckles across the worn wood of the table, linking his fingers with yours. It's a stupid whim. He swallows it down with a shot of whisky that makes his stomach curdle. Seals it with an inhale of his cigar. Forgotten, now. Covered in ethanol and smoke.  

But even with the crowbar in his hand, he can't stop himself from watching you. Eyes trailing along the paths you carve between old wooden chairs, and scowling men waving their hands at the staticky television set, upset by yet another bad call by the referee. 

(He's always thought it was stereotypical to equate Canada with hockey, moose, bears, geese, and maple syrup but so far, he's seen nothing else play inside the pub—aside from a polar bear warning being issued out for northern Newfoundland—but sometimes, the shoe just fits.)

You sift through the throng carrying drinks in your hand and impish grin at the men you recognise. Words he can't hear, ones he isn't privy to, are spoken softly and reinforced with a small grin. Seeing it on your face, pointed away from him; meant only for another, is a white-hot dagger to guts, scraping across his delicate insides. 

The flashes of anger are directed inward. Each stab is a reminder that they once were for him. That had he not gone and ruined a good thing, dangerous though it might be, you'd have been standing in front of him, curbing nonsensical requests over the bulk of his shoulder, unwilling to leave from your perch across from where he sat. 

(Hindsight is a brutal, bitter mistress, but it has nothing at all on pride.) 

He swallows it. Smokes. Pretends he's interested in the game that plays but it's just flashing colour on an oversaturated screen. A foreign language to his ears despite the words on the chyron flickering past in his mother tongue. 

John thinks about packing it in for the night. Heading back to his empty hotel so he can think about you in peace—in vivid, fantastical images of equilibrium; comfort—and finds that might be for the best. For both of you. Some distance to soothe the ache he caused. To reacclimate back to strangers in a dilapidated pub. A sailor and bartender: ephemeral, the way it ought to be. The way it must. 

With his dwindling pack of cigars slipped into his breast pocket beside the lighter he nicked from you ("people always seem to leave them behind in bars," you'd winked, handing him an ugly lighter in the shape of a bear with a pipe in his plastic mouth. "I picked out the one that made me think of you."), he finds himself at a loss for a reason to stay. All packed up. Ready to leave. 

He raps his scarred knuckles on the table, a final farewell that he can feel heavily in his bones, filled with iron as they may be. Still. Still. It's for the best.

Whose, he still doesn't know. His own, undoubtedly, in that selfish sort of way that makes it feel selfless. Like it's the right thing to do even though he bloody well knows it isn't. Won't be. That he'll think about this moment in time when he's all alone at sea and cuss himself out as he readies for a squall. 

John means to leave, but a man gets to you first. 

The man makes a noise in the back of his throat. A complaint, maybe, but it's swallowed by the creak of the floorboards when he sways on his feet. 

"Listen t'me, you—"

But you're not. You make a move to turn around, and he seems to realise you're not paying him any attention. Anger flickers over his slack face, and he's reaching for you with a clumsy paw before John has time to move. The moment he makes contact, fingers skating off the sleeve of your shirt, he's out of his chair, letting it clatter to the ground. The noise is swallowed by all the chaos. Murmurs, shouts. The music feels so out of place in this moment when he can feel his blood run hot, turning molten in his veins. 

"Hey—!"

But your hand is gripping his wrist, pulling him off of you, before John can finish. Eyes narrowed, jaw set, you shake your head once before pointing to the door with your free hand. 

"It's time for you to leave." 

He pitches a fit. Petulant whinging that cuts through the noise. Vague insults hurtled at you, words of complaint that barely make you flinch. 

John's rushing over before he can even think—thoughts all asunder, bouncing around his head in an unrefined mess of shorn noises and fervent anger—but you stop him with a jerk of your head. No, it says. I don't need you. 

And you don't.

The swelling chaos dims and in the aftermath, he realises he's the only one standing. The only one hovering in your periphery as you shove a man twice your size away from the counter when he tries to swipe a bottle as he leaves. 

Everyone is watching, wary, but there's an unspoken sense of understanding amongst them that makes him feel decidedly like an outsider, and wholly out of the loop. 

Where he's from, if you see someone being harassed, you step in. 

Things, apparently, are very different here. 

He catches your eye when you turn back toward the interior after slamming the door shut, and there's a moment where he almost rushes to your side, checking you over for any marks that man might have left behind, but you're shaking your head before he can even lift his foot from the floorboards. As if you know. And maybe you do. Maybe you know him more than he knows himself. Maybe, maybe—

You give him another shake. No, it says, and the soft quirk of your lip echoes in his head, a soft: down boy that makes him bristle. 

It's telling, of course, that he still heeds your wordless command. Hackles lowering, muscles unfurling from their rigid coil. 

Your nod, then, is a soft purr that rolls through his guts like a marble. Good boy. 

John feels leashed when he settles back into his chair. Anchored. All it takes is a nonverbal cue from you, and suddenly, he's tempered. Tamed. 

As if to reinforce the thought, his hand strays to his chin, feeling the scarred, bare skin under his palm. All done because of a simple glance, a fleeting moment of curiosity from you. 

He isn't sure how he likes the fit of it around his neck. Too tight, maybe. Dangerously claustrophobic. But it sits there, untouched. He has no desire to pull it off. To divorce the collar from his neck. 

(Maybe, maybe, he thinks he could get used to the way it feels.)

As he settles in his chair, his eyes never stray from you, standing lax and unphased against the door, chatting idly to the patrons who murmur in tones too low for him to pick up over the rhythmic echo of the sea shanty and the slew of voices in the background, cheers from the hockey game that hasn't quite held his interest long enough for him to know the score. Nothing is amiss, it seems. As if bullying out men twice your size was a regular occurrence—not even newsworthy enough to pull gazes glued to the flashing television, or stop the minutiae of mindless conversations from happening in sparse passels around the pub. 

But it changed something for him. He feels it in his chest, his guts. Something dislodged from the cornice, falling down inside of him in an endless spiral. A sudden freefall. 

He comes to the startling realisation when you look up at him as you pat someone on the shoulder, smiling softly—all forgiven in an instant, the crevasse sealed over in a thick bed of cobwebs—that he wants. Has wanted since he first lumbered into the pub and was met with a raised brow, and a cheeky wink. Not from around here, are you? and he was gone. 

Lost in the swell of you. 

Your mouth moulds around the words, pleading with him over the heads of everyone else, wait for me.

But John had no plans to go anywhere else. 

"I'm okay," you tell him hours later, hands buried in your pockets, eyes gazing up at the midnight blue sky. "Seriously."

There's a multitude of things he wants to say. All threads of lingering, unresolved anger brought on by that man who put his hands on you. Who thought he could. 

Maybe a little bit of it is directed at you, too, for not letting him rip that man into pieces even though he knows it's not your fault. Leashed, he thinks, and rubs absently at his bare neck. 

"Yeah?" He murmurs, voice raw. Eroded down to bare scraps, scorched and pulsing with the poison of anger. He tries to clear it. Swallows down the acrid tang that coats the back of his throat even still, hours later. 

Your head rolls toward him slowly, chin still held loftily up to the sky, and when your eyes meet, he thinks of rogue waves. Capsizing in the middle of endless azure, exposed to elements and predators. To the murky depths below in burnt sapphire.

He swallows again, but it's hard to get anything down when his heart is in the way. 

"Yeah, John. I'm good."

Your words take the shape of a breath, gently ghosting over a scraped knee. It's not meant to convince, but rather soothe, and something about that, about the softness in your eyes and way you speak tenderly, cautiously, as if he might startle, makes him feel hot beneath his collar. Flustered. Foolish. A litany of things he ought not to feel, but does because it's you. 

(Because it's always been you.)

"Right," he grouses, and tries to find his way out of the canyons inside your eyes. 

It's hard to escape when everything looks the same, when it all beckons him deeper. Stay, stay, it whispers over artfully crafted gorges and deep ravines, a stunning beauty that makes nature feel like a paltry imitation of the carvings in your irises. 

In the sandy shores of a small inlet nearly eclipsed by the sea, you turn to him fully, eyes smouldering embers catching in the flush of the full moon, and say, thank you, John. 

He scratches at the collar around his neck, and thinks about throwing away the key.

"What for?" He says instead, brows knitted together—a perfect pastiche of a fisherman's knot. It's rough: words scraped from the thick of his throat, raw and pulsing and dusted in smoke, but you don't baulk at the artificial ire that oozes between his nicotine-stained teeth. No. You lean into it with a smile. 

"Defending me. Trying to, anyway," you tack on with a small huff at his expense, a finger poking at his inflated pride. In jest, of course, but it still makes him frown. "I guess I just got so used to sticking up for myself that I forgot how nice it was to know someone is looking out for me, you know?" 

"Should be expected." 

There's a heat simmering beneath his tone. An underlying sense of anger that hadn't abated entirely yet, just began slumbering. Dormant, but still burning. Still hot enough to hurt. 

"Maybe," you hum, and the blitheness in your tone makes him bristle. Hackles raising. "But it's probably for the best."

"Tell me how none of those fuckin'—" There's a snarl in the back of his throat. He swallows. "None of them standin' up for you is for the best, 'cause it looked pretty fuckin' cowardly to me."

"If they defend me every time something like that happens, then it'll only be worse when they're not around. Most nights, it's just me working. I gotta know how to take care of myself just fine—"

"—shouldn't bloody 'ave to—!"

"—and I need them to know it, too. That if they try anything like that, I'll kick them out. I won't go screaming for help just because they're being rude. I'll handle it on my own because I have to."

It quiets him. Not enough to quell the anger burning in his chest, or the urge to tear them into pieces for sitting back, watching you get disrespected while they throw peanuts at the television screen, and jeer about something as arbitrary as a fucking game, but he finds something akin to understanding. Common ground. 

It makes sense, suddenly, even though it sets his teeth on edge and makes his knuckles itch. 

"No one else will do it for me, y'know?"

"I will."

The words tumble out before he can make sense of them in his head. A disconnect between his mouth and his thoughts, eroded by the smoke leaking into his throat. The fire in his chest. 

A mistake, maybe, because they're futile. Pointless. More so a whim of pride, a flash of possessiveness just to stroke the smouldering embers of the ego you bruised earlier with the tip of your finger. 

(Or maybe they're the afterbirth of his righteousness; that insatiable beast he conceived into the world he swore he'd save—no matter what—only to realise somewhere after leaking madness into the fibres that he was making more monsters than he was culling. 

A lingering remnant of when he bore the burden of the world on his shoulders during a botched pantomime of Atlas.)

You know it, too. "You won't be around all the time, John."

He tastes salt in the back of his throat. It burns when he swallows. When the words that tore through the seam of his lips dissolve into ash, into smoke. 

Your hand on his shoulder is meant to be placating but it feels like a dagger to his gut. 

"I can take care of myself. Been doin' it all my life, anyway."

He can't make sense of it. Can't understand how your words fill the hollow crevasses inside of him until he feels more like a mortal man than an untouchable mountain. 

You bring him back down to the solidness of land, of the earth. An anchor. 

John touches his neck again. "Yeah," he rasps. "I get it. Now, let's get you home."

He thinks about you. 

A lot would be an understatement considering how many times he's taken you to bed, pulled you down into the sheets with him. Tangled limbs. Rushed breath. He thinks of you now, too, with heavy eyes and a little smile, beckoning him forward. 

His own illicit sanctuary. A place in his head where he ruins you over, and over, and over again until there's a permanent stain on the tips of his fingers, the back of his throat. A constant reminder of you—the way you smell, sound, taste—

It's been a while since he had a moment like this, when he could relax, feel himself—already half-hard when he palms himself through his boxers—and just—

Lose himself. Body melting into the sheets. Tension bleeding together into one mass that pools in his lower belly, coalescing into a tight knot in his groin. It spools, pulls taut, when he runs the flat of his palm down the length of himself until he meets the soft flesh of his perineum. 

It's easy to tilt his chin up, eyes gazing at the seashell colouring of the popcorn ceiling, stroking himself in slow, unhurried rolls of his hand, and thinking of you. Your hand on him. Your breath tickling his ear, spurring him on. 

"Come on, John," you'd say in that voice made to bring him to his knees. "You can go faster than that, can't you?"

He responds instantly to the faint echo in his head, grunting at the pleasure that races down his spine. Tugging on that tightly wound knot until it trembles. 

His hand around the length of him is replaced with yours. Tentative, exploratory strokes from frenulum to his thickened base; up, up, a teasing swipe of your thumb across his weeping slit but only enough to make his hips arch off the bed, and then you pull away, down. Down. Over and over again. He thinks of the way your breath would feel ghosting over his temple. The press of your chest when you leave over his shoulder. 

John rocks into it, hips undulating with each pass of the hand that is too gnarled, too scarred to be yours; lost in the fantasy of your presence around him, on him, in him. 

Maybe your other arm would be tucked under the nape of his neck, bracketing him into your body. A safety net. A security blanket. You'd toy with his cheek—twee and gentle; a ginger touch to offset the illicit press of your thumb into his frenulum. Lean over, too, perhaps, and press those inviting lips to his. A soft kiss. Barely a whisper. A brush.

His tongue rolls over his bottom lip, chasing the phantom taste of you that isn't there. He imagines you'd taste like the sea. Briny, but mild. Salted winter melon. A sweetness, too, beneath the tart tang of iodine, but one that was metallic—copper. Iron. 

Pleasure knots in his groin—tighter, tighter, tighter—and even with each stroke a pale imitation of your warm flesh on him, he finds the spooling coil building in a quick crescendo of bliss to be somehow more potent than it ever was. A feverish heat at the mere thought of you. 

It builds. Builds. And breaks—

Your name is a broken snarl in the back of his throat as he spills over himself in thick, molten ropes. Each pulse of his heart floods more liquid heat onto his hand (hot enough, maybe, to burn), and he leans into the sudden deluge of a chemical frenzy ripping through his synopses—all liquid euphoria, static endorphins, and a heady rush of dopamine that makes the edges of his vision blur just a touch when he blinks his tired, heavy, eyes open, staring back up at the off-white ceiling. 

The surge and plummet of adrenaline leaves him feeling fatigued. A bone-deep torpor that comes swiftly in the simmering aftershocks of his pleasure. 

He could close his eyes now and sleep—even with the mess on his hand, come cooling against his heated flesh, growing tacky and uncomfortably wet as it sat there. The idea is more appealing than standing up and washing himself down, and in his sudden languor, he haphazardly lifts his hand away from his still-throbbing cock softening against his damp thigh, and pats the mess on his hand against the extra pillow he doesn't use. It's hardly the cleanup he needs, and he knows washing the dry come from the coarse hair on his thighs and groin is going be a nuisance in the morning, but he can't muster the energy to open his lids past half-mast let alone stand and hobble his way into the washroom. 

(And maybe he doesn't want to see himself in the mirror right now. Doesn't want to contend with the same routine of thinking of you, getting off to the thought alone, and then slinking into the tub for a quick rinse of his regrets. Not tonight, anyway—)

So, he stays in bed, laying there in his own filth, and still thinks of you. With his eyes closed tight, he doesn't have to face the reality of your absence. Of his dirty whim that sullied you in his head (over and over and over again—). His loneliness. 

And it's nice to bask in the glow. To imagine you beside him still. 

John's never been as delusional as now when he can taste the Caribbean sun on his tongue. Feel the salt on his skin. He smells sand. Feels it under his back as he lays down with you curled over him, hand tucked against his chest where it belongs. Dosing under the shaded pyre. You'll catch fish in the morning. He'll take you out to places you'd never been, all of them. Every single one. Until the world is shaded with your fingerprints. 

He's never been much into lyricism, but you make him contemplate the dividing line between prose and poetry, and where he fits between the two. The bridge, he thinks. The gaps between words, the space between letters: heart and soul (and the tangibility of them both). 

He wants to go there with you. 

The vision of you laying with him in sand embeds itself in the weakened link of his splintering resolve, eroding the chain away until it breaks, and the next night finds him sitting in the same spot, drinking the same whiskey, but his thoughts are subsumed by you. 

Without it keeping him at bay, he makes a terrible decision—one he wishes he could blame on whisky, but he's sober in a way he hasn't been in years—but when he looks up at you, twenty minutes past closing after everyone has stumbled out of the pub, something blooms in his veins. 

It's white-hot—hotter than the sensation of being shot in the thigh by a stray bullet when he was still figuring himself out in a battlefield—and dredges up dormant feelings he hasn't made room for since he was twenty-seven and fell in love in Ghana. 

It's cacoëthes. 

(But maybe it's been heading forward this all along. Ever since he saw you tug around a man twice your size, and wanted to bruise his knuckles on this stranger's enamel. The one who dared touch you. Disrespect you.)

John makes the awful choice to kiss you.

It starts with a look. 

The night ends later than usual—a hockey game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Ottawa Senators draws a big, rowdy crowd of nearly fifteen people ("truly record-breaking numbers," you quip with a grin) that bemusingly celebrate the Senators' victory and mourn the Penguin's loss at the same time ("it's a cultural thing—Sydney Crosby plays for the Penguin's," you tell him as if it explains everything)—and when he finally pockets his cigars, the sky outside is already dusted with crops of mauve as the hazy sun tries to blink through the thick clouds of gunmetal and charcoal. 

You wave to the fishermen on the boardwalk as they prepare their empty lobster cages for the morning haul, and he tries to think of every reason why he shouldn't be standing with you right now, puffing away on one of his last few cigars. 

There are multitudes, of course, all of them eagerly buoying to the surface, and just as viable as the last. Just as concrete. But that's the thing about desire, isn't it? Reasoning is skewed. Malleable. For each con that is squashed by the claws of fatigue, a pro subsumes in its stead. They add up. The scales tip. And all at once, he's no longer oscillating between no and here's why, but how come. 

How come he can't give in, if only just once? 

But once will never be enough. He knows this. He knows it, and yet—

When John happens to glance at you from the corner of his eye, he finds you turned to him already. Watching him. 

Despite what the furious stutter in his chest at this bare appraisal would lead him to believe, this isn't anything new. 

(Neither is his reaction. The blood rushing in his ears. The hiccup of his heartbeat.)

You've always unabashedly worn your curiosity like this. Open, bare. Letting it moulder on the very ledge of a cornice for all to see when they looked into your eyes. Liquid gems, molten coins. They've always gleamed with a sense of misplaced curiosity whenever they rested on him; seemingly lost in the labyrinth of your thoughts as you tried to unravel the reef knot that is John Price. 

He supposes it's the novelty of a man washing up on shore in the middle of what's meant to be the most boring season of the year—your words, naturally. Nothing ever happens during hurricane season, you mentioned to him once. The maritime is quickly forgotten about until summer when stupid tourists head to Halifax or Peggy's Cove in droves. 

Until him, that is. 

(Until you, as well.)

But the look you grace him with right now is somehow on the precipice of being both foreign and familiar at the same time. A muddled sense of jamais vu that seems to wrap itself around his throat, pressing taut to his pulse. Mocking him. Confusing him. It's all a muddled mess of known and unknown and—

Want to know. Need to.

He knows this look. Knows it as intimately as he knows the hand he used to stroke himself, pretending it was you. Your touch. It's want. It's—

Desire. 

Intrigue. 

You stare at him—unabashedly, as always; lost in your perplexing keenness for him, for the man he is (and the one he definitely isn't)—and John sees that same, misplaced rapaciousness in the shaded valleys and unfathomably deep ravines. It's an almost visceral hunger that seems to eclipse everything else; colouring the topography of your gaze in its wake. The glittering scales of a meandering coelacanth. 

Getting caught looking at him in such a way does little to embarrass you. If anything, having his eyes meet yours seems to subsume want with need, merging the two until all that gazes back at him from that prismatic abyss is desire crushed into diamonds from the absolute pressure that leaks from the black holes in the centre. 

He's been warned before about sirens and sea monsters, but standing in front of him with the raging ocean as your backdrop, he finds he cares very little for portends after all. 

John gives you every chance to pull away, to tell him this is a mistake, that you don't feel the same way, that you couldn't possibly do this, but you ignore all of them. Every single one until his hand is around your waist, the other cupping your jaw, and your breath is on his tongue. 

You make the first move. He doesn't know why that surprises him—you have this way about you that reminds him of rogue waves: an untameable suddenness, brash in everything you do; untempered by man and their flimsy metal cups in the ocean—but when you curl your fingers into the Sherpa lapels of his jacket, and wrench him into your sphere, tidally locked in your pull, he finds himself adrift. Lost. The only thing keeping him steady is you. Your touch. 

Your lips are searing when they bite into his, bruising and all-consuming. He likes the burn of it.

It's a kiss just as much as it is a slap to the mouth. A reprimand. How dare you keep me waiting? And somewhere deep in his chest, something unfurls. Something comes loose. Wants to apologise, wants to beg forgiveness, but the words are stifled by your lips sliding against his, your fingers touching the parts of his cheeks that haven't known the feeling of another since he was twenty and grew it out as long as he could get away with it in the military. You hold him. Anchor him in place as you take, as you badger his body into yours, trying to syphon all of the air from his feeble lungs. 

He lets you, rocking with your demands the same way he would a sudden squall, his body a ship in the vast clutch of your ocean. 

The tip of your nose slots into the corner of his own when you tilt your head into the kiss, tongue sliding, liquid, molten, against the seam of his mouth. Humid breath paints the skin under his eye until it's tacky with condensation, and he wants to feel your breath on him everywhere. Wants to touch the places your breath ghosted over with bare fingers to feel the remnants of what you left behind. 

(He wants it to stain him. Leave a permanent mark for all to see. A sailor claimed by the sea, by rogue waves, and the embodiment of a pelagic calamity in the shape of you.)

His lips part just enough to let the tip of your tongue slide in, to touch his in a gentle kiss. A perfunctory greeting for what will, hopefully, become routine because he knows what you taste like now—seagrass, fennel and yew arils—and doesn't think he has the strength to let it go. A new addiction forms somewhere in the catastrophe of his hindbrain, the same place that yearns for nicotine and alcohol to blur the rugged edges of a childhood he can't quite manage to let go of. One that bled putrid blood into his adolescence, his adulthood. That makes running his first thought in the face of anything that has the capacity to heal. Or sacrifice himself for some greater good he could never really bring himself to believe in, despite the words he preached like a scratched record—we dirty our hands so theirs stays clean. A fallacy, of course, like many things in his life. A broken, fractured homunculi trying to navigate a world it wasn't made for. 

But you soothe those parts, don't you? Palliative comfort in the shape of something that has the measure to hurt, to ruin. 

—and fuck, does he want to be ruined by you—

You pull away from him as if you can taste his debauchery, his need, on your tongue and want to skewer him through the heart with it. The distance feels vacant and endless: a devastating bergschrund.   

You blink at him, eyes heavy and full of promises, of wants. The sight of your red tongue brushing over your wet bottom lip nearly makes him ascend to some spectral plane of existence where nothing but the alluring sight of you lives in his consciousness, and it's only your hushed words—raw and tempered—that reign him in. 

"Come back to my house, John."

It's not a question. He knows it in his bones. Just like he knows it could never be one—never—because doesn't have the willpower to say no. And you know this, of course. Have known it from the beginning when you peeled back the rotting layers, flaying his walls from his skin just to learn his name. 

("It's Price," he growled out, words masticating between clenched teeth. "John Price.")

He wears his want in cinder and ash. Feels the fever under his skin.  "Fuck—," he rasps, throat scorched. Brittle charcoal. The words taste like wood chips on his tongue. "What are we waitin' for then, love?"

The billowing sea breeze howls outside of your small house on the mouth of the inlet, an enchanting soundscape that seems to amplify the soft noises that spill from your lips at his touch. 

You burn like the sun bearing down on the desert of the ocean, and he feels your scorching presence between the split of his shoulder blades, liquifying the knobs of his spine until it pools in the clefts of his back. 

Boneless, broken, he loses all sense of himself as he ruts into you like a man who's never been touched before in his life—clumsy, selfish, and unpractised. Your pleasure is the equinox in the centre of his head, a reachable goal he strives for, but each shudder that leaves the column of your throat seems to shatter him into fragments. He wants, wants, wants: there's a war in his head, in his touch. Greedily, he learns your topography until it's ingrained in his marrow. Until he knows where each dip and fold, every scar and blemish, on your skin sits, waiting for the worship of his touch. 

He yields to you. Offers himself up at your altar—yours for the taking—until his sacrifice is met in seasalt and bliss. It's by this flickering dawn that spills into your bedroom window, the one that faces parallel to the sea—always there, in the corner of his eye—where his resolve is laid to rest on a bier. 

It burns on the pyre when your fingers thread through his hair, gripping tight as he falls into pieces in your arms, buried as deep inside of you as he can get. And it's here, safe in the bracket of your legs, spread wide to accommodate the staggering bulk of his body, he finds both nirvana and damnation—his own personal hell nestled in the crux of your thighs.

"Stay the night," you whisper to him, the command slurred on the tobacco that leaks from the burning tip of his cigar. 

One down, he counts; two more to go. The sight of the dwindling pack seems to notch inside his aching ribs, bruised with the cuts you made into his marrow until a scar in the shape of your name formed, seems like a portend. 

He stares at the brittle pieces of the tobacco leaves in the metal tin like they might divine the ancient wisdom of augers and the seers who gleaned hidden truths and hindsight in a teacup, but all he gets is the heady scent of nicotine for his search. 

"Mm." 

Your hands press against his naked back, feeling the taut muscles flex under your touch before they move around his midsection, fingers digging into the plush flesh of his belly—too much lobster rolls, he'd snarked when your teeth sunk into the softness put there by you; a fullness he hasn't felt since he was eighteen. You knead his skin, thumbing over the indents of your teeth, a perfect tattoo, before you hum in satisfaction, the sound of a cat eating its catch, that makes his spine thrum. 

"Good," you husk into his shoulder blade, teeth peppering nips across his sun scorched skin. "'cause I'm not done with you yet, John."

He shudders. "Fuck, love—gonna send me into an early grave."

It draws a simmering chuckle from deep within your chest. Sparking embers. The heat thrills him. 

"A lovely way to go," you murmur, hands drawing intricate webs over his torso, tangling through the coarse hair that gathers in dark swaths of brown across his body. "And I'll even give you a proper sea burial."

The thought alone strips his soul from this prison of bone and flesh. To be known so innately is a dangerous thing, he finds; so deceptively addicting, so achingly good, and he wants to run from it just as much as he wants to bask in the feeling. 

His soul is hungering for something he's never tasted before—until now, until you—and that unquenchable devotion glues to the very essence of him; a tick burrowing into his skin until it rots. 

He fucks you against the window running parallel to the sea instead. Unmaking himself in the clutch of you until your fingers thread him back into some semblance of a man with a soul made for the sea. 

(A place he wants to go with you.)

The unread tobacco leaves in bone china end up spelling out the end in a red flash on his phone. 

A voicemail is a cruel reminder of the looming deadline on the horizon. 

Fixed 'er up fer ya, b'y. She'll be ready in a night or two. Right time for lobster, too, yeah? Anyhoo, call me when you get this. 

What was once anticipatory now feels too much like being caught under a guillotine. He pretends his hands are not shaking when he calls the man back.

The man meets him by the harbour. 

"Should take 'er out," he says, wiggling a tooth pick between his teeth. "You know 'er be'er than I do. Make sure she's good t'go, ya'know?"

He hums something that might sound like an assent to unpractised ears, but the false starts in his rib cage flares up, a deep ache that rattles through the scarred brackets and leaves the seam of his mouth in a muted snarl of discontent.

Ready to go, he thinks a touch cruelly in a shorn off form of self-harm. Just to make it hurt. Just to feel it agony ripping through the gaps between his bones. 

Right. Right. 

How is he supposed to leave when he left so much of himself inside of you?

"Come with me tomorrow. Want to show you something."

"Oh, yeah?" You murmur, brows bunching together in a way that makes his teeth ache. "And what's that?"

His thumb brushes your pulse. "Mm, 'bout time you met Captain."

Newfoundland lingers in the backdrop for most of the day, rising above the waters in a rocky formation of evergreen against dark blue. 

You spend most of it leaning against the port, eyes wide in wonder at the absence of land, a mere pinprick in the vast sea, and he wonders if anyone has ever taken you out this far. Showed you something this haunting, this mesmerising. 

(Selfishly, stupidly, he hopes he's the first.)

The sea is calm. Almost eerily so, but he basks in the gentle rolls of the waves, the serene waters. It's picturesque in a way, the sight of an old postcard with a basin of pure azure and molten yellow sun, haloed in soft rings of ocean. 

As you fawn at the beauty around you, quiet in your musings, he grabs his fishing pole and sets out to catch dinner. John hasn't looked too deep into coastal fishing laws, but from your soft snort, he thinks it might just be on the side of illegal. Still. The coast guard isn't around, and he doesn't think you'll tell on him—at least not if he catches you a salmon and makes you an accomplice. 

The day dwadles, sun fading into a stunning sunset. 

He catches Atlantic Salmon, and spots a commercial lobster trawler in the distance. When he radios over, they offer a trade. Salmon for lobster. You laugh as the men toss over a cooler full of fat lobster for a wriggling salmon that nearly slips from his grasp. 

It's in this exchange—and a day on the water—that he realises just how much he missed this. This. Being on the water. Dependant on no one but his own knowledge, his foresight. Always just on the side of illegal in coastal waters. Making trades, and bartering for dinner. It's peace. Or as close of an approximation a man like him might deserve. 

A tried and true native of the land, raised on fish and crustaceans, you teach him the proper way to prepare lobster and Atlantic Salmon, sucking your teeth at his lack of spices in his threadbare cupboards. You make do, and he can't remember the last time he had something this good. 

"Just wait," you huff. "When I have a full kitchen with proper seasonings, I'll make you something even better."

There's a tightness in his chest at the prospect of next time. "Can't wait." 

It's a lie. Barefaced and ugly. 

He offers beer instead. Brings out some of his hidden whisky. 

"Not gonna be too drunk to get us back home, are you?"

Home. He is home. Has been since he kicked off from the marina, his hands curled around the leather steering wheel. The bumps of the waves against the hill. 

He wonders what you think about all of this; his kingdom at sea is nothing special. Modest, in many ways. Sometimes the toilet in the washroom leaks. He only really has warm water on Tuesdays. Something with the tides, probably. Spiders have taken a permanent refuge in the closet adjacent to the kitchenette. He thinks he might have some exotic stowaway lurking somewhere, too. A mouse of some kind, maybe, from when he was in Madagascar for a brief interlude. 

The boat is never still, always rolling with the waves. Rocking. He's grown used to the feeling of it. Much too accustomed to always moving, never being still, to ever feel any modicum of comfort on land. 

Thinking about it, about returning back to the inn tonight when the water is this serene, and the moon is this sull, pitches something ugly in his chest. Reluctance. And maybe the urge to show off. To share. 

"Want to spend the night?" 

You make a comical picture with your fingers tugging desperately on the cork of a wine bottle you found under the sink, blinking at him owlishly as you process his request, and he smothers a laugh in his chest at the sight. He knows if he lets it out he'll never look at wine or owls without thinking about you, but maybe you're already ingrained in his head. Stuck there in places he can't reach, can't scrape out. 

"What?" You ask, lightly. "Out here?"

"Why not? We're close to the Labrador Strait, too. Could drop anchor now. Head back in the morning."

"Is it—?" You stop yourself from finishing with a shake of your head, and a sheepish smile. "Nevermind. Yeah, um. Yeah, I'd—I'd really like that, actually."

Is it safe, he knows you were going to ask. The question would have made him roll his eyes, and bark out something that could have been a snort of derision or a condescending laugh. He was a bloody marine, he'd have griped. I know these waters better'n I know Liverpool.

But you didn't. You didn't ask. 

The harshness of the nevermind sounded like a self-admonishment for even asking such a thing. It's possible he's reading too much between the lines, but he likes the implicit trust that bleeds through—a touch of hesitation stifled by the immediate certainty that John will keep you safe. 

He likes the fit of it. The way it curls around his pride. 

"C'mon," he murmurs. "I'll show you around."

"It's small," he grouses, a touch uncomfortable as you patter around the bedroom that's barely bigger than a linen closet. It smells like him, he reckons. All smoke, tobacco, and stale sweat. Nothing pretty—not like your sheets that smell of fresh pine resin, or your room the scent of cornflower. 

The ship itself is considered a luxury on the ocean—old, but meticulously maintained—and its age bleeds through the panelled walls, and the clumsy decor. Built largely for dedicated seafarers, the cabin boasts two bedrooms (the captain's quarters being the largest, and the crewmates dorms still stained with rust from where the nails keeping the bunk beds in place during listing started to erode), a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a small space inside the helm that could be considered a small living room—squinting, of course, required. Still. It's home. It's—

The manifestation of his pride. His loneliness. His wants. 

(The walls are drenched in his madness. Do you see his ghosts when you look around—)

"It's cosy," you volley back, barely paying him much attention as you prod at his bare-bones; his sanctuary. He pretends the words don't stroke his ego in the perfect way. "It must be quite the sight to wake up to a sunrise on the sea." 

"Mm, it is."

It's unlike anything he'd ever seen before. A nearly endless roll of cerulean in all directions that almost blends seamlessly with the cyanic sky. Plumes of sea clouds. Birds swooping overhead. 

Often, he finds curious sea creatures coming up from the depths to investigate his boat. Pods of playful dolphins arching through the waves. A mother whale and her calf, nearly the length of his sixty-foot sailer. Rays. The occasional shark when he's fishing, lured in by the struggles and the flash of blood in the water. The feeder fish congregate beneath his boat, picking at the barnacles growing or the smaller fish gathering there for safety. It becomes its own ecosystem after a while, drawing in Remoras, various sharks, tropical fish, and barracuda. 

He mostly gets avian visitors resting on his hull. Great Albatrosses and Cormorants. The odd Pelican closer to shore. Mollymawks, Northern fulmar. 

The open ocean is a vast desert. Sometimes he goes days without seeing any signs of life. It comes with a sense of peace that is indescribable—an awe deep-rooted in his bones, one tinged with fear of the yawning abyss that rolls out in all directions as he knows, without a doubt, that he is less than a mere pinprick in the sea. Humbling. Awe-inspiring. It all coalesces into an experience he can't put into words. One that he yearns for when he's on dry land. 

One that he wants to show you. To share with you. 

A silly whim, of course. Strangers don't traverse the pelagic zone together. 

He shakes it off. Recalibrates. Tries to centre himself, and shuck the thoughts of waking up to a perpetual sunrise with you. The ochre crest of it illuminates a deep blue sea for miles and miles; bare from pollutants that seep into the aether near the coast. Lights that dim the coruscating beauty above. 

But as much as he thinks sunrises and sunsets are a thing of beauty, he knows there's something else you'll like much more. 

"C'mon," he rasps, words sticking to his dry throat. "Wanna show you somethin'."

You don't hesitate this time. "Lead the way, captain."

(And oh, how the coy honorific rumbles through his marrow.)

That something is the reason he became so addicted to the sea. It's a darkness unlike anything else he'd ever experienced before—a complete absence of light that usually pollutes the sky in the cities, one that people often think is escapable in the countryside away from bustling metropolises. 

That has nothing on the ocean after dusk. 

To describe the sensation would be pitch blackness. A black hole. Everything is swallowed up by it—complete antimatter—until the horizon and ocean merge together in an unfathomable pit of tenebrousness. It looks like spilled ink across a page, everywhere the eye turns is shrouded. Indescribable. 

When he's in an inlet, or off the coast of an inhabited island, he used to turn the floodlights of his ship off just to see what he couldn't see, and it was endless. A vacuum. Terror drenched over him in almost equal measure to the absolute awe that rolled through his chest like a tsunami. 

It was the infinite darkness of space mirrored on earth. An uncanny image. Pure nothingness.

There was more light when he closed his eyes than when he had them wide open. Phosphenes brighter than the world around him. 

A harrowing, everpresent experience that notched false starts into the parentheses of his ribs, and made him ache when he wasn't surrounded by water. 

He keeps only the navigation lights on when he leads you to the deck, and the sharp gasp he hears makes him burn, knowing exactly what you must be seeing. Feeling. 

Even at the very tip of the ocean, barely with your toes in the vast abyss, the absence of light pollution gives way to a stunning artefact in the ancient sky. Nebulae clouds. Gleaming stars. In the distance, he spots the coruscating light of Mars, visible to the naked eye. 

The moon sits in the equinox, casting out a blanket of light over the rhythmic swell of the still-black water. It paints the surface lily white. 

He stands beside you, eyes greedily taking in every flickering emotion across your awe-slacked face. Each expression categorised and filed away. A preview to the experience going inside you as you gaze up at the night sky. 

"John…" it's a hushed whisper, drenched in a reverence so thick, so palpable, he thinks he can reach out and catch the ghosts of your wonder on the tips of his fingers. "It's…"

You trail off, but he knows. He knows. 

His hand brushes yours. "Beautiful, ain't it?"

Wordless, and maybe a little bit speechless, you nod, eyes still fixed on the indistinguishable horizon as your hands slip into his. 

The stars are still caught in your eyes even after he leads you to a small sitting area with steps leading into the water. He warns you about sea lamprey and cookie cutter sharks when you try to dip your feet into the basin, laughing at the small squeak you give when you wrench your toes out of the water, drawing your knees tight to your chest. 

Sharks hunt at night, he reminds you with the same cadence as a conman. 

The sideward glance you give in response to his mirth spumes a strange effervescent feeling in the pit of his chest. Humour for the sake of it. He can easily imagine many nights like this with you, basking in the bloom of the ocean, the splashes in the distance, the steady rock of waves licking against the boat, and it's something that seems to syphon the breath from his lungs, knocking him offkilter for a moment. Skewing his perspective. 

It's odd, he finds, to be so attune with someone so fast. To connect on a level that feels deeper than what it is. It jars him as it shatters through that ironclad resolve he wore around his heart.

"Why the sea?" You ask after a moment, thumb skating through the pebbles of condensation that gathers around your bottle. 

The sight of your wet finger shouldn't be as enticing as it is, but the way you stroke the nozzle makes his stomach burn with a heat he hasn't felt in a while. It's gentle. Soft. He wonders if you'd be that tender with him—

The thought is shattered when you glance at him, eyes searching for an answer hidden in blooming blue. There's muted curiosity eked into the divot between your brow—unconsciously done—and he forces himself to turn away lest he reach out and soothe the wrinkle for you. 

(You never know how much you furrow your brow around him. Price isn't sure if that's a portend, some archaic warning of the inevitable frustration you'll feel toward when all of this is over. When the hurricane season passes, and the waters are once again chartable—

Another thing he doesn't want to think about.)

He chews on the question for a moment, making a show of reaching for the—nearly empty—carton of cigars from his breast pocket (another run to Cuba is imminent, he reasons, and tries to convince himself he's not stalling). Deft, practised fingers pull one out, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger as he measures just how much of himself he wants to give away to you. 

(All of it. Every part—)

The paper absorbs the whisky staining his lips when he skewers it between his teeth, a futile effort to keep the hollowness between his lungs and ribs from aching. He thinks about blaming the curdling weight in his stomach on the thought of a ruined cigar—soaked tobacco won't draw as good as dry—but he knows himself better than that. 

It's the suddenness of your query, maybe, but a part of him had been waiting for this very question from the onset of—this. You, him. Together. It seems to be one of those things that just comes up, doesn't it? An unavoidable collision into abject disappointment. 

In all his past flings—calling any of them relationships feels juvenile for what it was: quick, ephemeral pleasure in a foreign land, always lasting just long enough to patch up his boat; he won't disrespect the partners he had by giving it more potency than it deserved—this had been the epoch. The moment when they realised he was never really in it. That his foot was already slipping over the ledge of his boat, head full of the places he'd go next. Always alone. Without company. 

Some take it in stride. They know not to expect much in terms of commitment, or loyalty, from a man who reeks of the sea, and wobbles on land. They don't begrudge him the briefness of the affair, or the lack of a promise to write, or call, or see them again, some other time. When you pass through here next… always seems to be the sentiment at the cronis. The end of them. It never goes anywhere, but it's never finished, either—because it never really began, did it?

He rarely goes to the same place twice unless he needs to (Barbadian whisky, Cuban cigars, fish and chips in Liverpool for the holidays notwithstanding). 

And despite how many times he's been asked this very same question, usually with less clothes on, he never really has an answer. Not one that's enough. 

"Where else would I be?" He muses instead, blinking up at the indigo sky. It's an unforgiving nothingness up there, too, isn't it? "Workin' some job in an office? Military? Nah, would bore me too much. M'better off at sea."

"All alone?" You fill the gap he didn't realise he left empty. "Isn't that—"

He doesn't think he can bear to hear you say it—

"Yeah." 

—so he doesn't let you. 

His cigar tastes stale. Wet tobacco. Ashes. He draws in a deep hit on the next inhale but it curdles in his mouth, leaks poison into his bloodstream. He feels dizzy with it. Offkilter. 

When he invited you to see his ship, half of it was—admittedly—a euphemism. A thinly veiled come on. A facsimile of romance. Who wouldn't, afterall, want to drift out to the open ocean, making love—or some sad version of it—under the stars on a clear night. 

He'd take you to the spot where land was swallowed wholly by the horizon, until all you could see was the midnight blue ocean pressing down on all sides. Gentle waves rocking the ship. The stars coruscating in the indigo sky like glittering diamonds held up to the light. The murky haze of Juniper in the distance. A splash from a whale breaching the surface. 

It would have been a nice evening. He'd have drinked whisky with you—smuggled out from his secret stash of the best kind you could find in the Caribbean—and taught you how to smoke a cigar. 

You'd have laid down beneath the stars, head swimming with the buzz of alcohol. John would have leaned over you, charting the open awe in your gaze as you stared up at the heavens. 

Maybe you would have tried to ask a question, or marvel at the wonders of the world that might have only ever been seen by you. The first person to take in this view in all of history. Considering the vastitude of the ocean, it would be a real possibility. The very first. He'd give that to you. The first, the last, the only. All yours. 

In return, he'd steal a kiss. Swallowing the question from your lips with a slow, sensual roll of his tongue grazing yours. All coy and soft. Saccharine. You'd taste of whisky. He'd drink you down in several mouthfuls, unable to get enough, until you were keening into the night, begging for more. More, John, more. 

It blankets his thoughts, and the regret he feels at the loss is potent. Fragments of a good night flash before him—your fingers curling around the quilt he laid out on the deck, digging those talons into the meat of his shoulder until it breaks skin: a permanent scar. A jagged, silver meteor across milky flesh; he'd catch a glimpse in the mirror and think of you. Whisper-soft kisses. Your body opening up for him, eager and needy, calling out in a siren's song for more. 

(Who is he to deny you when you beg so prettily?)

Instead it metastasises inside of him. Malignant and pestiferous. Leaks rot into his bloodstream until all he can taste is the petrified residuum of regret, bitter and acrid. 

Some selfish part wanted something nice for himself. A respite from the eventual end careening toward him at a speed he can't avoid. 

The ruined tatters of it simmers in the air. A noxious miasma that seems to shake something inside of you loose. Maybe you see it, too. The loss. The end. The eventuality of a bitter, and quick, conclusion. 

You're quiet even as realisation darkens across your brow. Flattens the awe in your eyes with the cold douse of water to a burning flame. Clumped ash piles around a damp campfire. 

The flames were not smothered slowly, gently, like they should have been, like he wanted them to. No. No. They were snuffed out in a quick end. Brutal and unforgivable. 

And you say: "oh." 

As if you get it, but you don't. You don't because you think about forever when you look at him. It's not your fault, though—never. Because he hasn't said a word about leaving even though it stuck to his teeth, tarry and vile. A resinous stain he chews everyday, blackening his teeth until they rot. 

But he's a coward. A fool. The taste of you is sweet enough to drown out the bitterness on his tongue, and maybe he's using your kindness a bit too much—no. No. Not maybe. Certainly. Definitely. He's using the cloying taste of you as a buffer to everything weeping from the cesspit inside of his chest. 

Then: "oh."

It's almost prophetic in a way. Cyclical in its heartache. 

He wants to apologise, but he isn't sure where to start. How does he say sorry for something of this magnitude? 

He doesn't. He can't.

John lets it necrotise instead. 

"Well," you say after a moment of silence. "When are you—?"

You don't finish. Can't, maybe, and he doesn't begrudge you the inability to utter that succinct finality. Not when he doesn't think he could, either. 

So, he says, "soon."

But you ask: "how soon?"

And he's reminded, quite vividly, of packing his things in the back of his nineteen ninety-five forest green Tata Estate when he was just shy of eighteen. His dad fuming on the porch. 

You're nothing without me, he'd spat. 

He was right, of course. Despite everything he tried, the only place that ever gave him a chance was the military solely for the thinly concealed awe that leaked in whenever he uttered his last name. 

But there was freedom in leaving. In skirting around the army for a place in the Royal British Navy—separate from the shadow of his father, his grandfather, but still riding on their coattails. John quickly found sanctuary at sea. At the unignorable distance put between himself and all the terrible memories in Hereford. 

In the middle of the ocean, that bastard's shadow couldn't reach him. 

And now—

Nothing does. 

How soon, you ask, but the real question should be: how dare you. 

"Mm, a day, maybe—if the weather holds." 

And it will. He's checked the forecast meticulously. Radioed in and asked about that pesky hurricane that seemed to fizzle out without much fanfare afterall. All the answers he got were the same. Perfect window, they say, is between dawn and mid-morning. There's gonna be some heavy winds on the coast, but if you set sail early enough, you'll miss it entirely. 

"Ah," you murmur, and there's just the faintest echo of your realisation at uncovering yet another one of his half-truths. You know he'll be gone the moment he drops you off on the harbour. "Okay."

John doesn't mean to put all of this on you so quickly. Everything just spiralled, spun, until it was a big, tangled mess beneath his feet. Time a mere whisper in the wind. His absence is a glaring black hole that you can't avoid. 

It's all pithy excuses that do little to assuage the weight of everything he'd done, but you take it right on the chin like he knew you would. A sharp nod. The barest hint of a frown. 

That is the only thing you can do, isn't it? Swallow it whole and try not to choke on it because no promises have ever been uttered between him or you. Nothing to substantiate this growing, cancerous lump of emotions that feel too fast and too slow, and too—

Dangerous. Perfect.

In his silence, a crater forms again, and he's reminded how much he prefers the sea to people; gyres to love. The brittle embrace of his cabin to the warm arms of a lover. 

He was made for the ocean. Meant to sink into algae blooms, and discover reefs untouched. To battle waves bigger, more meaningful than himself, and find sustenance on crated bartletts and scored tuna. 

But—

But. 

His hands curl around your waist, pulling you back into the broad expanse of his sun warmed chest. The heat of him liquifies your spine, and you melt, readily, into him with what might be a sigh. 

It's all so quick, isn't it? And yet, he can think of nothing else except the almost perfect torture of waking up beside you each morning. Of suffusing his atoms to yours. 

"Come with me," he murmurs into your hairline, breathing in the scent of you. Loam. Pine resin. Soft and earthy. And that's what you are, aren't you? Made for the land. The earth. Gaia. Terra. Can he really take you from this place and expect you to live like him on the sea? 

You don't answer. He feels the disappointment like a searing knife to his gut, but he understands. Gets it. This isn't the sort of proposal a sane person would make to someone they've known for only a few, short months. 

He wonders if you think he's only saying it to get into your pants. He probably isn't the first—and definitely wouldn't be the last—to make a litany of false promises just to taste you on his tongue, but he means it. Means it with every fibre of his body. Captain is roomy. Has always been too big for one person—too lonely. But it's a heavy question. A big ask. One that he selfishly presses into your hands as he litters your neck with kisses sharpened with the edge of his teeth. Leaving his mark on your skin. A semi-permanent stain only he knows is there. 

It's easy to pretend this won't be the last time when he lays you out on the sheets, fingers digging into your skin as if he was trying to crawl inside of you—and maybe he is. Maybe he wants to. Maybe he could stay suffused to your ribcage for the rest of his life, waking up and falling asleep to the sound of your beating heart, and die a happy man. For once in his life, something that belongs to him that isn't shadowed by ghosts or regret. 

(Something he will never, could never, deserve.)

There's something heart achingly desperate about the way he clings to you. Folds himself over you, murmuring promises and pleas into the bruised skin of your neck. Soft murmurations easily swallowed by the sounds you make as he ruts into you at a maddening pace. All clumsy and unrefined because he refuses to let go of you. Refuses to unglue his skin from yours, his teeth from your neck. 

He's never had it like this—drenched in sweat, pinned in place over top of you like a weighted blanket; sloppy, messy—but he feels the curl of addiction setting in when he feels the hiccups you make when he pushes in just so. When your flesh dents under the tips of his fingers, and he feels your bones in his grip. Each moan, every tremble and quiver somehow magnified in the small cabin that's much too big for one person. 

John wants to take you to this reef he stumbled onto off the Azores. Wants to walk on the sandy atoll, and fuck you under the stars. The first—and only—people on earth to feel the white sand under their skin, to whisper into the inky black of night. 

You'd like it there, he thinks. This lonely, isolated patch of land just barely rising out above the ocean. Filled to the brim with tropical fish, and hammerheads. Sea turtles. Orcas chasing seals in the distance. 

He presses his lips to your hairline, and breathes life into this little picture of you on the shore, whispering promises wrapped in desperation, devotion, into your skin. 

"John," you gasp, and he's not sure if it's a reprimand—please, please, please shut up, stop talking about that because you know I can't, I can't—or a plea—take me, bring me there, please—but he doesn't stop. Can't. He's too invested in this picturesque fantasy, the same one he dreamed about when he fucked his fist to the thought of you. "John, please—"

His veins are filled with blood-red wine. A sudden potent cocktail that makes him dizzy. Drunk on the wisps of ethanol that burrow deeper into his body until it floods his atrium. 

John wants to lean into it. Relish in the white-hot heat of it all. Wants to drag you down into the sand, into the unending sea, and stay there forever, just at the cusp of where land meets water. Your own kingdom in the domain of Poseidon. Children of Phorcys. Pontus. 

You grip him tight, and he thinks like this he could pretend it's not the last time. That when your body shudders beneath him, it's not out of sorrow or finality. 

"John," you say, but he can't bear it. He kisses you instead. Drows in the taste of you until his head spins. Spins, spins—

He wakes up in a tangle of limbs. Your arm strewn across his broad chest, anchoring him to the bed below. Your head nestled in the crux of his armpit, nose pressed tight to the swell of his ribcage. Mouth open, he notes, drooling into wry curls that blanket his torso in swaths of dark umber. 

With you very much cocooned to his side, thigh trapping his pelvis down, he feels the sharp sting of claustrophobia raking talons over the bone encasing his eyes. He's buried under you—your body the soft swell of tumulus—and for a moment he nearly forgets himself. Nearly bolts from the bed, your arms. The room. Running, running—it reminds him too much of being a captive. Tied down. Restrained. Unable to move of his own free will—

But you mumble something in your sleep, the words lost to the blood rushing in his ears, and he finds the pieces of himself he'd lost. Lulled, almost to the point of complacency, by your breaths ghosting across the thick, coarse hair on his chest. Rhythmic. Calming. 

He leans into it. Buries himself deeper. 

You smell of sweat, sex. Fennel. He burrows his nose into your crown, breathes in the scent of you until his lungs burn. He wants them to scar over with just the thick scent of you. To leave a mark so deep, so permanent, that each time he inhales, all he can taste in the back of his throat is the lingering residuum of you. 

There's this earthiness to you that feels like digging his feet into sand, and he wants to slink deeper into the embrace, into you, but there's a lingering forethought in his head that he ought to get up. That this moment of brief comfort will come at a cost, with its teeth bared and wrapped around his bones, and it's a price he can't afford to pay. 

There's an almost cognitive dissonance between what his body wants, and what he needs to do. 

It takes most of his willpower to divorce himself from your clutch, but he does. Slowly. Reluctantly. With his fingers leadened with torpor. 

Regret is the feeling of cold wood under his feet. His arms relieved from the weight of you. Fix it, something inside his chest screams, but he can't. Can't. 

He doesn't look back when he leaves the small bedroom that smells of you. Not that it matters. 

In the separation, he finds he cut a little too much off from himself, leaving more of himself with you than he intended. 

John doesn't expect much. Hasn't, really, since he set sail with his compass pointed away from home, and threw each sorrowful piece of himself into the reefs he encountered along the way. 

It's the same when he gathers everything together in the morning, running through a mental checklist of what needs to be done before he sets off into the mid-Atlantic, hopeful to reach Bermuda within four, maybe five days. From there, it would be nearly fifteen days before he reached the Azores, some nine thousand and twenty nautical miles between the destinations. 

He expects the winds this time of year to be between zero to twenty three knots. Waves, at most, around four to nine metres. He can keep up with it all, he's sure, but he's feeling less inclined to make the trip solo, and thinks, as he trawls back to shore with you sleeping in the cabin still, if he might pick up a small crew in Carolina before setting off. Or maybe he'll take solitude until he heads into the Azores. He isn't sure. The only thing he is certain of is that, for the first time in years, he doesn't want to be alone at sea. 

An oddity, of course. John always wants to be alone. 

(Until you—)

The notion is tucked away into the space inside his head where all the things he doesn't want to think about go to moulder. To rot. The idea that he's more gangrenous parts than man sits idly behind his teeth, a fleeting whim, but that, too, is shoved aside. Buried. 

—like the weight of you on him. His own personal grave, a tumulus—

Another limb severed at artery. Left to bleed. To rot. He considers leaving it out, making it hurt. Salt to the wound he has no intention of healing. 

He cauterises it instead, and uses the flame to spark up his last cigar for the occasion. 

(There's nothing worth celebrating, but he thinks he's due a belated birthday gift to himself.)

The brackish waters in the inlet are muddied with loess, and he considers taking the longer arc into the harbour to avoid the sudden swelling of waves lapping at the sides of his vessel. Pure pride, of course. He's not a captain of a dirty ship—an oxymoron at best and a idling thought that takes the shape of stalling for time—but he trudges forward in spite of the twitch in his knuckles, the urge to notch his wheel just everso slightly to the right. 

It passes, and Newfoundland curves out of the waters in a splotch of green against dour grey. Another overcast morning. The inlet, he'd heard on the radio, is dense with fog trickling down from the rolling hills in the background of this rugged landscape. 

Fog on the ocean isn't rare. With a simple flip of a switch, he changes his visualisation from naked sight to sonar, and leans back on the balls of his feet, blinking restlessly into the thick plumes of smokey-white. 

The cabin door rattles when you open it—the only indicator that you're awake—and the sound sits heavy across his shoulders. A noise he thinks he could get used to hearing. 

"Give'er a shake," he calls, voice ashen, thick from sleep. He hasn't spoken a word since he radioed in to let them know he was moving down the channel. That was nearly two hours ago. 

You appear in his periphery, wrapped up in a shawl he keeps at the end of the bed. One he thinks he picked up when he was working on a shipping vessel in Pacific, just after he'd split from the navy, and was docked for a week in Taiwan because of bad weather. 

It looks good on you. The colours accentuate your features in a way that makes it difficult to focus on the black screen of the sonar, but you make it easier for him when you pad closer to where he stands, yawning around a good morning as you fic yourself to his side, reaching for him. 

You curl against him as he steers into the estuary, one arm tucked around the small of his back, and the other above his groin in a sideways hug. A small shiver wracks through your frame when the chill from the frigid waters sneaks in through the open companionway of the helm, and you burrow deeper into his side, nose nuzzling against his bicep to keep warm. The weight of you is comforting. Steady. 

It's a clumsy dance to free his arm, but he does it somehow without dislodging you in the process, and lifts his arm, steering with one hand through the maw of the Labrador Strait, before he quickly loops it around your neck, keeping you tight to his side. You fall into him in a hurry—maybe from desperation to keep the bitter cold at bay or for some strained, final moments of closeness before he leaves the docks, and you. 

The silence is heavy. A potent cocktail of shaky uncertainty admixing with all the regret he feels for not acting on his impulsive feelings sooner. It sits low, thick, in his guts, and vacillates between mocking him for what could have been weeks of satiating himself on the fill of you, and taunting him for starting this in the first place. 

Especially when he knew exactly how it was always meant to end. 

And in a rather vicious moment of cruelty, that particular ending bobs up from the brackish waters with its stark brown oak pillars cutting through the dense fog. He doesn't need sonar to see the pier in the distance. Three clicks to the west. 

His throat pinches tight at the sight of it—rather irritatingly unassuming in its lacklustre beginnings, but a garish knife to chest all the same. It constricts. He tries to swallow but can't get the weight around his neck to receed. 

He takes his hand off the wheel, scratching at the raw skin along the column of his neck. 

His jostling seems to wake you from your sleepy stare out the window. You clear your throat. He tenses. Guts wringings themselves into a frenzied coil. Don't, he wants to say. Don't speak. Don't say anything—

"Listen, Price," you start clumsily, cautiously. And despite knowing where this is going—some apology for why you can't go with him, for why you're saying no—he makes a noise to dissuade you from continuing. He gets it. He does. It's a big ask to have someone give up several months of their life to traverse the open ocean with a stranger. 

"I know. S'alright, love. I'll—" the words are bitten through when he realises where they're headed. The offer to call. Or write. Things he knows he won't ever get around to doing, but the loose attempt to placate is better than hearing whatever you might say. A selfish need to keep the silence. 

"No, listen," you stress with a huff. He hears the eye roll in your tone, and fights back a scoff at the image. "You're stubborn, you know?"

It's nothing he's never heard before but it still makes him laugh—some broken, ugly thing in the base of his throat. Clawing up his oesophagus. 

After a moment of silence, you nuzzle your cheek against his peck, pressing a soft kiss to the edge of his heart. 

"I'm not a sailor, and this is probably the craziest thing I've ever done in my whole life, but—" his heart leaps, banging against the cage of his ribs, still scarred with your name. 

"—love—"

"—I don't want to just write you. Or—or wait for a phone call. I don't want to—" 

He hears the click in your throat when you swallow. Feels the herringbone floor open up beneath his feet, plunging his aching heart into the empty maw of his stomach. Still. Through the blooming sense of hope tangling vines around his falling heart, he reaches for the water bottle on the console, wordlessly passing it to you to drink. 

You sniff, and it's an ugly, wet noise that sends a shudder through his being. A sound he could hear, happily, for the rest of his life. 

(Sappy, tragic fool—)

"How long do I have to pack?"

If he'd been a lesser man—or maybe a better one; a good one—he would have crumbled. But he's too grizzled to take his eyes off the shoreline, and maybe—just maybe—too fucking scared to. He doesn't want to look down and find this whole thing has been some horrific joke. Doesn't want to see the derision in your eyes as you ask him why you'd ever pick him, a stranger, over the sanctuary of land. Your home, even. 

But he doesn't doubt you. 

It's an odd juxtaposition, John finds, but he's always been the sort to work in strings of abstract hypocrisy, hadn't he? Implicit trust in the men around him, but not enough to ever let go of the urge so just do everything on his own. To shoulder the burdens a man like him was seemingly built to carry. 

(And made to crack under the weight of them; a thousand fissures that were small enough to go unnoticed—until Gaz grabbed him by the lapels, shoving him against an iron door just to keep him from throwing an innocent man to his death for no other reason than his notched sense of safety—but big enough to leak a caustic ugliness into the word that threatened make the men around him bonesick.)

But he isn't thinking about that right now. Or, rather, he shouldn't be—

Because he believes you. He just believes in himself less. 

So, he has to ask. Has to. "Are you sure? Hard to change your mind when you're in the middle of the bloody ocean, love." 

The exasperated huff let out into his bicep seems to be the only answer he'll get from you on that particular topic, but it's not enough. Despite the miffed squeeze you give when he pulls his arm back, resting his hand against your cheek to pull your face back far enough to peer into your eyes, you go along with his demands, soft as they are. Maybe the way his thumb brushes along the curve of your cheekbone quells the stubbornness that brims at having your choice picked apart until it was nothing but bones. All just to satisfy his own internal dilemma. 

Or a mockery of one, anyway. 

"You gotta be sure," he says, and winces when it comes out rougher than he intended. "This is a big leap. It isn't go to fuckin' Tesco's on a Sunday—"

"First of all," you mumble, eyes narrowing up at him. "We don't even have Tesco's in Canada so that comparison is useless to me. Second of all—" and suddenly, all of that bravado falters. Shakes. You glance away from him—in askance, maybe, at your stutter, at his inability to take something someone tells him at face value. 

"Love—"

There's a fire in your eyes when you turn back to him. A defiant tilt to your chin when it lifts. Sure, and firm, and a little bit proud—drenched in the same shade of stubbornness as himself—and the sight is an electrical shock to his system. A jolt to his chest. One that hangs, heavy, around the nape of his neck, the drape of his shoulders. 

"I'm sure," is all you say. 

And it's enough. Inexplicably, overwhelmingly—enough. 

"Now, how long until we set off? I just need to get some stuff in order before we leave, but I can hurry it as much as—"

It goes against every rule in the book to take his eyes off the horizon and his hands off the wheel, especially this close to shore, but he needs—he needs to touch you. To know. To feel the commitment under your skin like an electric hum. 

"However long you need, love, fuck—" his lips are on yours, stifling the rest of what he meant to say in the taste of you. "Whatever you want, whatever you need—" he makes promises he might not be able to keep, but he thinks if he could, he'd steal the stars and the moon, and let you wear them like pretty gems. 

It'll never come to fruition because all he can really give you is a boat and a broken man who is only good at sailing the seas to escape everything that might get too close. None of it seems to matter. Not to you. Never to you. Every wall he's thrown up has been meticulously chipped down, and this, he finds, is no different. 

You lean into him, heedless of the war in his mind, and breathe in deep. Inhaling the scent of stale tobacco, sex, and sour sweat. There's something facetious about the way you hum into the kiss, nails scratching along his crown, as if you're not committing nearly a year of your life to a man you watched crumble at the altar of your feet just for a sip of you. 

"I've always wanted to go to Spain."

He groans a little into the kiss. Can't help the noises that spill out when you start mapping whimsical plans into something concrete. Something tangible. 

(Permanent, if you'll let him.)

"We'll go. Spain, Portugal, Liverpool, Italy, Cuba, Jamaica, Fiji—" he names each place between a searing kiss and keeps one eye open, listed toward the horizon. He says it all in a hush, caught on the tendrils of desperation. Urgency. There's a quiver in his voice. Blood in his throat. "I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Just name it, love."

And you just smile like you know he will. That those words, caked in some amalgamation of earnestness and madness, are a promise. An oath. 

"Anywhere," he swears again, brassbound in certainty, tangled in seagrass. 

Your name scars the brackets of his breastbone. Notched into marrow. He feels it heavy in his ribs when he pulls you closer, wanting nothing more than to sink into you until your veins are filled with him. 

Anywhere, he thinks, hushed in its reverence as the levee keeping everything he let rot cracks in your hands. Always. 

YOU—

There's a certain dreariness that comes from living by the ocean, one that's often difficult to put into words or explain to someone who hasn't spent their entire youth being told, never turn your back on it. Never trust it. 

(It, of course, because somewhere along the line, the sea stops being a place, a thing, an artefact, and becomes an entity all on its own. A living, breathing manifestation with its primordial history, its own mythology, all so distinct from anything someone on land could ever dream up.)

Because despite what you might wish, the sea will never be your friend. It's incapable of distinguishing the difference between affection and malice, and shows its love by dragging you to the darkest depths imaginable until your lungs fill with its briny breath and your drops to the floor, a human-sized whalefall. 

The ocean loves you in the worst way. 

It wants to make a tomb of you. A graveyard of algae covered bones. Bloated and unrecognisable. Picked apart until nothing remains but the ghost of you treading its pool. 

In spite of this, the ocean doesn't scare you as much as it should. It's a constant in your life. Permanent. Careless guard your iron shackles. 

(And maybe it's a little bit deeper than that because you never really understood the difference between obsession, devotion, and fear when they all make you feel the same.)

And being so far out from the rest of the people who live along the very same coast—well. That, too, is hard to simplify. 

Life by an unpopular harbour isn't as busy as someone might assume. With its deadened boardwalks, gimmicky shops, and lack of personality to draw a crowd or any would-be tourists, it stagnantes. The place begins to look like a tchotchke. A painting on a faded, sunbleached postcard rather than a cohesive ecosystem. The cogs are rusted and broken, and the delineation between them and the people begins to blur. 

And maybe that's because time feels slower in this liminal space perched between the sea and the swell of a bucolic dreamland, as if it's drenched in molasses. Bound with a ball and chain. Boring simplicity, perhaps. 

Sloughing along is the most apt descriptor you think of to describe how your tarry-thick time is spent. 

Work life balance loses its meaning when you feel the same at home as you do behind a counter. Listless. Lacklustre. It's hard to find inspiration when you've been to every nook and cranny in the valley. When all secrets have been exposed thrice over, and gossip is as stale as the bread Lucy always brings to the potluck each year.

It's fine, of course. 

Work. Home. Work. Sometimes, you'll drive down to Halifax. Maybe stop at Shoppers Drug Mart and squint at the overpriced brands on the too-white walls. But something brand name at Marshalls for more than you can afford to placate that gnawing sense of unease that comes with realising your life can be summed up in three paragraphs or less. 

Age does that, you find. Because when you're stuck in a place that never changes, when the ghost of your childhood runs along the same trails you take as an adult and feels more bitter than nostalgic, growing older starts to feel like a taunt. A jeer. 

Burdened by the encompassing emptiness of time. 

Somewhere along the line—or maybe from the very beginning—you start to stagnante, too. The overwhelming, unignorable feeling of growth weighing you down forms; barnacles clinging to your skin, softening your flesh as they burrow deep, deep, until striking bone. 

You're fine, you think.

Until him. 

Until a man shows up, hiding kindness behind a surly disposition, and offers you nothing but gruff company. Terrible jokes. Cloying sweetness drenched in nicotine and dusted in ash. 

John Price makes you consider your love of the ocean in a new, tangible way. 

There have been others, of course. People before John who have offered to pull you away from this anaemic corner of the world, making promises of taking you somewhere else. Or ones who offered to stay. To join you in this dreary town. An accumulation of hydrozoan floating aimlessly down this solitary stretch of ocean. 

They've all come and gone, and your answer has remained unchanged. Fixed. No. And if you're being kind—no, thank you. 

Because, really—

When you can't tell the difference between fear and devotion, how are you supposed to know if the ocean fills you with reverence or dread?

So, you stay.  

This place might be drenched in tar, forgotten by the masses in favour of the bigger, prettier cities that share the same oceanic view, but it's home. And your roots run deep (but your shackles are even deeper). 

It's odd, too, isn't it? That home feels less like a sanctuary and more like an obligation. A pact you have to keep. So, you do. And maybe you resent this place a little bit each year, but it's easy to forget all about that when John fits inside the spaces of your ribs that you didn't know were empty to begin with. 

It's good. Good—

—but this is better:

You wake up to the sound of the naked ocean, unencumbered by the shore. It's quieter than you expected it to be, but you suppose without land to get in its way, there's little reason to roar. 

The change in noise—and sometimes, the absolute absence of any at all—is the biggest shift you have to adjust to, but four days into your journey traversing the untamable Atlantic, the sea teaches you things you didn't know about yourself. That maybe there's a certain sort of madness that comes from being so far away from anything remotely resembling land. And a lethargy that's hard to tie down into something concrete. An abstract sense of disillusion, maybe. Bone-deep torpor. 

Something, too, that feels a bit like an atavistic fear of the yawning abyss that never seems to end. It's one thing to stand on land, solid ground, and admire it from afar, or to hug the coast on a cruise ship. Seeing it like this, in all its pelagic glory, is somehow sickening in its terrifying splendour and incredible enough to snake existential dread along the curve of your fragile insides. 

There's awe, as well, but in more muted shades of tyrrhenian. 

Still. You take to the barren sea like a once captive orca who forgot what freedom tastes like beneath its curled dorsal fin. It's exhilarating. And in equal measures, a true shove against your mettle. Your resolve. There's no help so far out to sea. No one to depend on but yourself and this enigmatic man who brushes his lips across your forehead when he thinks you're asleep, and then snarls at the ocean in the morning about not having any cigars as if he knows nothing at all about tenderness. 

It's a comfort you cling to. Embrace until your fingers ache. 

John mutters something under his breath about needing sleep. Whisky. A cigar. A good fuck in a better goddamn bed—and in no particular order, he gripes when you poke his back with your index finger. 

"Thank fuck," he rasps around a cigarette—a shitty fuckin' imitation—and pinches your side when he draws you close. Payback for the jab but it just makes you giggle. "Bermuda is only nine hours away."

"Nine hours," you breathe, surprised. Nine hours. It feels inconsequential. Brief. And maybe that's because time feels different out here. Inconsequential outside of where the sun sat. The only thing that matters about it is its position, and your internal clock begins to shift, turning into a sundial. To hear a length of time outside of morning, midday, noon, afternoon, evening, and night is strange. 

John's gaze flickers over to you hiding something that feels a bit like an appraisal as those burning sapphires run over the length of your expression, catching every twitch. 

His chest rumbles under your hand after a moment. "Excited for land, then?" 

Land. You consider it—his question, and, of course, the weight of it. The way it feels. Tastes. 

It's only been a sliver into your journey, barely anything at all in comparison to the kilometres left to go, but the sea feels as comforting as it does terrifying. The darker patches of blue signifying a depth so unfathomable that you feel breathless thinking about it. About the unquantifiable pressure, some metric tonnes of atmosphere pressing down on those pretty pools of navy. 

In comparison, Captain feels fragile. Delicate. Brittle bones of wood and plastic and foam contending with the vastitude of the sea that sprawls out in every direction. On a map right now, you'd be invisible. The tip of a pen would be too wide to accurately pinpoint your exact location. That massive gap, bigger than the whole of your country, sometimes gives you nightmares. And some nights, the boat lists as it bobs with the rolling waves that never end, dipping down much too low for your mind to ever feel comfortable with. 

The terror is almost equally as present as the awe. Both one-in-the same, almost. And it reminds you of your love for the sea. Where the lines between fear and devotion blur. It doesn't surprise you, then, that some mornings you wake up with something that curls around your head, and feels like divine euphoria, and others—

You can't stop thinking about every shipwreck movie you'd ever seen, especially when you know you'd passed over the same channel the Titanic sank in, that your bare feet stood right over top of a graveyard at a depth that hurts your head a little bit to even think about. 

But—

Land. 

John said you'd be missing it in due time the first hour into your trip, when you were still buzzing with the adrenaline of cacoëthes and watched the shoreline get swallowed whole by blue. 

In fact, he'd expected it. Seemed to keep himself at a measurable distance, as if waiting for you to turn to him and command that he bring you back home. 

A silly thought, in hindsight. 

You're shackled to the sea just as much as you are to him—maybe with a bit more willingness added in. The sea feels like home in spite of the endless dreams of capsizing in the frigid waters. 

And really. 

You can't imagine being anywhere else but here. With him. 

"I'm excited to see Bermuda," you confess, nuzzling your cheek into the warm Sherpa of his jacket. "But more so because I've never been anywhere outside of my own Country. But I like this better. I like being on Captain with you. It's—"

There's a weight in your chest. One that's almost equally composited into the ashen blue of his eyes when they flicker to you, clinging to each word. Each sentiment that spills from your sun chapped lips. 

"It's home, y'know?"

John goes quiet for a moment. Far quieter than you ever expected a man like him to be capable of—someone who got road rage out in the middle of an empty sea, and screamed himself hoarse whenever he had to talk to the absolute fuckin' muppets of the coast guard or passing ships your eyes weren't good enough to see through Fata Morgana—and it almost humbles you in a strange way. Makes you consider the stunning realisation that you've only chipped the surface of his rough, wonderful, insufferable man. In that, a keen sense of wonder brims, bringing with it an insatiable curiosity. You want to strip him down to nothing but bones, and crack them open like the claws of Snow Crab, sipping from the nectar that is his marrow. His essence. You want to map him out in greater depths than you ever dream of doing to the sea. 

His fingers spasm on your hip in a strange clench and release rhythm that makes you wonder if he's holding himself back for some reason you can't ascertain, but eventually, he breaks. His hand tightens, and pulls you closer to him. You feel his nose press against your hairline. Hear the sharp inhale as he breathes you in until his chest expands under your hand. Wide and broad, and filled with the scent of you. 

"Yeah," he rasps, humid breath fluttering across your skin. "It is. For however long you want it—"

"Forever." You catch smouldering blue just before it's eclipsed by endless black. "If you'll let me."

"Fuckin'—Christ—" 

With his words mangled in his throat, they sound more like an animalistic snarl than anything that resembles something human. The force of it seems to rattle through your flesh, dredging against bone like an anchor on the muddy sea floor until it catches. 

"Forever it is, then." It's a promise. An oath. And maybe a little bit of a threat, too, in the way only John can make something so romantic sound so gruff, and when he speaks again, you smell cinder and taste the ash in the back of his throat. Sealed in charcoal and salt. 

"I guess you're stuck with me, then," you tease, smiling when he huffs in a facsimile of exasperation, but you catch the softening in the corners of his eyes, and the low purr of happiness that rumbles out from his broad chest. 

"Can think of worse places to be."

"Like London?" You quip, echoing his words, and there's something heavy in his eyes, something that blankets around the unease that never really goes away even as you acclimate to the sensation of being landless. Adrift. It's something deeper than devotion. A black hole you could fall into.

"Yeah, exactly." He murmurs. You taste salt on his tongue when he kisses you, and wonder how you could ever dream of being anywhere else that wasn't with him.

Home, you find, is where his heart beats next to yours.

[junosmindpalace]

Kento needs something good in his life.

For most of it he was fairly indifferent to a lot of things, his face often, if not always, chilled or some kind of annoyed. This seemed to be on the surface, perhaps, but Kento found pleasure within and among many things. Sakura trees, baked goods, the feeling of warm sand beneath his feet and cool ocean water washing it away.

They're the little things, even just thoughts of them, that keep Kento moving through this god awful world. As he gets older, goodness is found in even more trivial things, because with age also comes additional burden and various disappointment. Restock of a favorite product. Flowers in bloom. Small things that bring colour into a life that very frequently threatens to drain it all until he only knows to identify shades of grey and black.

The withering of leaves and flowers hanging onto dying branches amidst chilling winds, threatening to leave them completely bare, is when Kento is reminded more than ever that he needs you. He needs something good, something to work toward. Something to come home to. Something pleasant to fall asleep to. Something beyond material means to motivate him.

His work, in theory, serves him well enough. Pays him well enough if he sacrifices enough of his physical and mental strength to commit to working with difficult people and staring at a blue light that drains his energy almost as much as the routine of it all itself. In the end, he gets a paycheck, and that's what matters.

But truly, it makes Kento a little sick when he thinks that just can't be all life is. Meant to constantly choose which is the more daunting path. Meant to rot at some miserable desk around miserable people in a world that thrives off misery. When the leaves wither and gain spots, when the baked goods don't taste right, when even the thought of a satisfying future isn't enough to push out the nauseating images of curses, he needs something constant. He needs a good thing. He needs you.

You need something good in your life.

Beyond academics, beyond a 9/5, beyond completely busy and hectic days where, by the end, you struggle to remember half of it. Something besides validation from others, besides the constant need to catch up.

A rest would be good, perhaps. A rest from your responsibilities, a rest from the nonsense and vileness that spouts out of people's mouths on the daily, from the streets to your work to the bubbles on your phone. A rest to remind you that in this world, there was still something worth going on for. Something that made all the work worth it. That there was still time to do you, to be with someone who appreciated you. You need something good in your life.

And you've had something good, both of you: you've had each other. For quite some time.

Neither of you would've been able to predict that your futures would intertwine in such a personal and intimate way. Neither of you would've been able to predict from your high school years that you'd steadily fall in love with each other over trauma bonds and shop run-ins and whatever else there was. Neither of you would've fathomed sharing a home together, a small one, but yours, nonetheless.

Never would you both think that the good thing would consist of each other.

But it's been good. It's been grounding, it's helped you retain some semblance of identity and hope in a world that seems adamant on stripping it from you. Besides late-night conversations about bad memories and the heaviness of the world, there were joint cooking sessions. There were silly debates about nonsensical topics. There was reading together. There was indulging in each other's hobbies, when time made room for them. There were attempts at movie marathons: such as the one you were attempting tonight.

It usually never worked out because often you and Kento both came home exhausted from work, but sometimes a shower, a light dinner and a change of comfortable clothes was enough to wake you both just enough to want to spend the remainder of your energy together. So, you agree on trying a movie you've wanted to see for a while, making yourselves comfortable with blankets and pillows.

Your legs are sprawled over his lap, hugging a cushion pillow close to you as the arm of the couch supports your back. Nanami's slouched and still with his arms crossed over his chest. They'll occasionally come down to settle on your knees. It's a little after midnight, the only light resonating throughout your living room being the blue light from the television. The more time that passes, the more Kento becomes aware of the power it has over his senses, lulling him in and out of sleep. When he tilts his head against the cushion toward you, he can see from the crescents in your eyes that the effect was the same.

"Hey," he mutters quietly, gently nudging your side. "Don't doze off on me, now."

You object with a groan as you sit up against the cushion, lulling your head to look up at him. "M'not."

"Didn't look like it."

"Oh, don't start. I saw your eyes close."

"And you thought that'd save you?"

"Maybe."

Kento has never, but especially not since high school, believed that anything has any real permanence to it, besides maybe death. Everything is fleeting. Life is fleeting, he sees it in the shrivelled lines and drained colored from plants through the changing seasons as well as in the creases of skin and unusual paleness of corpses from the morgue. Routine is not always consistent, it's reminded when he's forced to work overtime, to take a detour to a location, when he falls behind some sort of schedule.

But when he looks over at you, takes in the small smile on your lips, the glow on your skin from the TV lights, he thinks of how badly he wants this good thing to last. Even though it's selfish, even though there was no guarantee that it would no matter the thought of a ring on your finger, there was something in him that wanted it anyway.

The only thing that holds him back from letting the question fall from his lips is the guilt he’d feel for not being more thoughtful in the gesture. No ring, no nice day spent together. Truly, he’d resent himself if he were to propose to you in such an undeserving, unaffectionate and unromantic way. But when he watches you with his head lolled to the side, your own eyes cheerfully boring into his as you sit in the dead of the night trying to enjoy some semblance of peace in your togetherness, he wants so badly to just say it:

Marry me. Let’s have something good.

You know, for good.

He holds his tongue though, and instead gives you a smile of his own, a small but meaningful curve of his lips. The TV light illuminates the sides of your faces, and soon enough the blue light and dialogue will lull you to sleep, and you’ll both abandon your movie session in favor of some much-needed rest. So he stands up from the couch before it could get to that point, letting your legs gently swing to the side to accommodates the sit up. He turns toward you, and offers both of his hands out. "Come on. Let's go to bed."

You whine in protest. "But the movie..."

"We'll finish it another time, promise. I have a day off, soon."

"Really?" A quiet gasp escapes you, and your smile gradually widens as you take hold of his hands as he aids in pulling you up and leading you down the hall.

"Next week, I'm pretty sure. We can do something."

"Not spending the whole day in bed."

"Awfully tempting."

He has a good thing, Kento thinks as you swat his chest, but he doesn't move his hand from your lower back to block at all. He has a goddamn good thing, he thinks when your chuckles break the silence within your home, and through the good, bad, and ugliness of it all, it'll be something that keeps some order and hope in his life.

[mochiwrites]

gentle touch of morning

( a small scarian epic au piece <3 reblogs do more than likes! )

It’s funny. 

Over the twelve long years Scar spent fighting, leading his men into battle, the thought that kept him going was his eventual homecoming. Every waking thought was of his husband and son, and Scar’s reason for living, for breathing, was his family. As he sailed rocky waters, faced monsters and gods alike, lost men after men, Scar wished for nothing more than to be home, to awake with his husband sleeping beside him. 

But as he stands in his home, the one he most intimately knows, Scar feels… wrong. Out of place. He’d woken up early, savoring the sight of Grian’s sleeping face (he could never get tired of it), and felt so restless that staying in bed for any longer seemed impossible. So Scar took to walking around his home. 

He and Grian built this place up, together. The memories are some that Scar looks back on fondly. He could never forget it, no matter how much time he spent away from it. Scar only fears that it has forgotten him. 

Scar takes easy steps, walking and reacquainting himself. He notes the pictures, most of them being of his son. He hardly sees Grian in any of them, perhaps one or two, less than a handful. And the ones that Grian is in, his smile doesn’t light up his face. It makes Scar frown. 

He wanders for a bit, traversing each winding hallway with careful movements. It’s as if he fears the house may collapse at any moment, or some attacker may jump from the shadows, perhaps a god will catch him off guard and finish him off. Not even in his home does he feel the full safety he’s supposed to. These walls feel foreign, unfamiliar. Even if he can picture everything clearly in his mind, knows this place like the back of his hand. Scar still feels like a stranger. 

Eventually, he finds himself in the kitchen. He pauses in the doorway, catching sight of another person. 

His son. 

His little Pitta. 

Well, not as little anymore, as a young boy at fourteen. But to Scar it still feels like he’s just an infant that he could cradle in his arms. Another thing time robbed him of. So many missed moments, opportunities, to watch his son grow. And while Scar knows that there are still many years to come, to see, a piece of him mourns the time he lost.

For a moment, Scar keeps quiet. He watches his son, taking in his dark brown hair and hazel colored eyes. He’s the striking image of both Scar and Grian somehow, even if they aren’t related to him. But Scar loves him all the same; would move mountains to give him whatever he needed. He can’t help but wonder what kind of person his son is, what he likes and dislikes. Does he resent Scar for leaving? Does he consider Scar his father, or a stranger who left a loving husband alone for years on end? He doesn’t want to find out. Not now. 

Scar stands there until he can’t anymore, finding hazel eyes landing on him. He watches the way in which Pitta’s eyes light up, turning all shiny and bright when he notices his father. He turns away from the counter, abandoning the slices of bread he had taken out. He smiles, and gods, does his smile look like Grian’s. “Papa!” Pitta greets, the timbre of his voice cheerful and soft. 

“Hey, Pitta,” Scar returns, heart melting each time he’s reminded that he’s finally returned home. He never thought it would happen, that maybe it’d take him longer, or maybe something would strike him down on the way back. But against all odds, fourteen years, and Scar is home. His son stands in front of him. 

“What’re you doing awake? Is dad up too?” Pitta questions, raising a brow at him. 

“Uh…” Scar blanks, unsure of what to say. It’s not like he’s going to tell the truth, Pitta shouldn’t have to worry about him. Scar has already caused him enough pain, there’s no need to cause more now that he’s actually here. “Gria— your dad’s still asleep,” he stammers. The words feel awkward on his tongue, like they shouldn’t be there. This life of domesticity… he doesn’t know how to go about it. It isn’t just some enemy he can cut down. 

The very thought makes him nauseous. 

“Oh!” Pitta blinks at the response. “Well, that’s… good.” He nods to himself awkwardly, and Scar hides a grimace. 

He… really doesn’t know how to interact with his son. 

There’s this dark curdling of doubt in his mind that begins to creep up, settling over him. He’s afraid. Worried that this is one thing he’ll never overcome. It’s a familiar feeling, an old friend, a once enemy turned begrudging shadow. It’s a feeling he experienced in battle, traversing home, taking his castle back from scoundrels that dare to stain it. But there is a new fear that joins it, overwhelming like a tidal wave. 

Does he even know how to be a father? 

Scar feels his breath sharpen just a tad, skipping a beat and hastening. He can feel hands curling around his throat, beginning to press into his skin. He feels it tightening on him, the grip firm. The pressure starts off as something light, until the fingers of Fear dig deeper with each shakingly quiet breath. It gets stronger and stronger, straining his lungs until he can feel his throat being squeezed, choked. 

“Papa?” Pitta’s voice breaks him from the spiraling thoughts, from the overwhelming fear sneaking in. 

The hands around his neck relax, and the terror recedes, sinking back into the depths of his mind momentarily. He allows himself a moment to breathe, a chance to suck in a soft breath and recenter. His vision clears, and he becomes aware of the way his heartbeat pounds in his ears, loud like a drum. 

He manages a smile, “I’m uh, gonna go check and see if our Sleeping Beauty is awake.” Keeping his eyes trained on his son, Scar tries to maintain his light smile. He takes a few small steps back, slipping into a casual mask. He’s gotten quite good at it over the years of putting on a brave face. “Be right back.”

Pitta watches him, brows creasing in concern as he goes. “Oh… okay,” he answers, sounding resigned as Scar retreats. 

Scar turns around, and brings himself back to the beautiful olive tree where his Grian is fast asleep. The sun shines down on him, cutting through the green leaves. The light spills into their bed, painting a halo in the soft yet sandy blond locks of Grian’s hair. He rests in their bed, eyes shut and face relaxed. His body is curled somewhat, the blanket tucked just over his shoulders. 

Staring at him, taking in the near angelic sight, Scar takes a few breaths to calm himself. He walks over to their bed, sitting down on the edge, right beside Grian. He contents himself with just sitting there, watching the rise and fall of Grian’s chest. It feels a little easier to breathe, with the love of his life right here, peaceful. Scar can almost allow himself to pretend he lives in a world where he never went to war, where he never had to leave his family behind. He can almost allow himself to pretend he was the husband and father he should have been. 

Chest aching and overflowing with doubt and regret, Scar reaches out. Tenderly, Scar brushes some of Grian’s hair away from his face. He ever so softly tangles his fingers in the silky strands as he rhythmically cards through his hair. Scar’s expression softens, chest swelling with love for the man before him. He drags the pads of his fingertips along Grian’s head, feeling the soft locks under his touch. 

He can’t imagine what it was like, doing so much alone for so long. Scar has always believed Grian to be strong, the strongest person he knows. But this? Scar doesn’t think anyone could compare, not even the gods. 

Not in the way it matters, at least. 

His thumb idly strokes Grian’s cheekbone, loving and sweet. “I’d be lost without you, my light,” he murmurs. Because it’s true. Scar would’ve given up a long, long time ago if he didn’t have Grian and Pitta to come home to. Grian is his rock, his eye of the storm, his compass. Scar is caught within Grian’s orbit, forever wrapped up in him. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for this man. Grian kept their home in one piece. He raised their son. He handled whatever it was that Scar couldn’t in his time away. Grian held out hope for fourteen years that Scar would come back to him. 

Scar owes him everything and more. But most importantly, Scar owes him his love. And by the gods will he offer every last ounce of it, every drop. Scar is a man. No general, and certainly no hero. He is just a man who wants to pour his heart and soul out for his spouse. Scar is just a man in love. 

Beneath his touch, Grian’s face twitches, and he begins to stir. “Mmm… Scar?” he mumbles, still groggy and waking up. 

“Good morning, my love.” Scar smiles at him, brushing away a particular curl of hair before stroking his cheek. “Sleep well?”

“‘ink so, yes. It was warm with you,” Grian answers, leaning into the hand on his cheek. “What’re you awake for?” 

Scar pauses, if only briefly. “Uh, well, y’know. Just admiring my pretty husband while I have the chance,” he answers, which isn’t entirely a lie. 

Grian looks at him with clear suspicion, but doesn’t push. Instead, he sighs quietly as pushes himself to sit up. “You can do that when I’m awake too,” he teases, leaning to press their lips together. Scar is more than happy to sink into it, using the hand on Grian’s cheek to angle his head slightly, deepening it. The kiss is sweet, loving. It’s slow and patient, carrying the patience of fourteen years within it.

When they pull away, Scar rests their foreheads together. “I guess I can, yeah,” he agrees softly. “Mind if I take a few more minutes to admire him?” 

Grian smiles, kissing the corner of his mouth in return. “I suppose.”  Scar simply smiles, and gods is he happy to be home. No amount of fear could ever leave him unhappy to be back with the loves of his life. Never. 

[ladykailitha]

The Hellfire Exotic Club Part 1

September was way too far away for the release of this story. It was just becoming too fun not let you see it. So here's a sneaky peek before my hiatus on the 18th.

Rated M This story is not for the under 18 set. Like this whole story deals with sex and nudity. Might even make it a hard E to be on the safe side.

Summary: The Hellfire Exotic Club was the hottest ticket around. The best male and female exotic dancers in the whole god damn state with each night a deadly sin. When owner, Eddie loses his Envy because the guy fucked the wrong person, he has a week to find a replacement. But when Steve auditions with Julia Michael's Heaven, it turns the entire club on its head.

Now Eddie must deal with the usual nut jobs trying to close him down, dancers not liking the new changes, and his former Envy causing trouble, all this on top of having budding feelings for Steve.

But if Eddie is anything, he's resilient and stubborn. Come hell or high water, him and his club is going to come out of this just fine.

~

The Hellfire Erotic Club was the hottest ticket in town. Known for two things. It’s hellish theme and its eccentric owner and lead dancer Eddie Munson. It was mainly a burlesque club with some stripping involved. But that’s not why people came in droves. Eddie was Lucifer, king of hell and his dancers all had demon names: Lilith, Astraroth, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, Leviathan just to name a few.

There were women dancers, but the main draw was men in shapes and sizes, dancing. Each night was a deadly sin. With Lucifer on Saturday night as Pride. The only colors allowed seemed to be red or black with little variation, but what they lacked in originality they made up for in style.

Their outfits were always the titillation of the crowd even before they came off. Not that they always did. It was entirely up to the dancer. One of everyone’s favorite nights was Mammon the demon of gluttony. He was a heavy set man who could out spin anyone on the pole and always stayed dressed for the whole show. Except on his nights when he was bathed in an glittering yellow glow, he would get as far as just his pants on. Regardless of what did or didn’t take off, Mammon attracted quite the crowd every Tuesday night.

Eddie loved what he did. His demons were the talk of the town and everyone who was anyone came through his doors. But he had a problem. His demon of Envy Billy Hargrove got caught with the daughter of the mayor. The very married daughter of the mayor. By her husband on what was supposed to be their wedding anniversary.

And while Eddie liked to court controversy, not that kind. It was bad for business if people thought they could get into the g-strings of his dancers. It set a far too dangerous precedent that he really didn’t want to set.

Billy got nasty when Eddie decided to let him go, which only further cemented his decision to do so.

So now he was down a deadly sin and only three days to fill it. To say that he was sweating bullets would be an understatement. He was on his thirteenth audition in as many days and his head was pounding. This was the last one of the day and then he could go home and wallow in his misery.

Then the first notes of Heaven by Julia Michaels filled the air and Eddie looked up. The dancer was gorgeous. He was fit in a way that reminded him of classical ballet dancers. Thin and yet strength showing in every step.The way he moved was like wind on the water. Each move, each step was sensual and sexy as hell.

Eddie scrambled to find the guy’s application. Steve Harrington. And yep, three years of classical ballet at the local dance company, two years on the pole at strip club. And...oh that was interesting. A year teaching pole dancing at a local fitness club to rich bitches.

The song ended and the guy cracked a wide grin at him, nearly ending Eddie’s life. He was elbowed in the ribs by his choreographer and partner in crime, Chrissy Cunningham.

“What made you decide to try out for this position?” Eddie asked, still looking at the application.

“You’ll probably laugh,” Steve said with a disarming smile, “but me and my best friend have always worked together and she recently got a job here as a waitress, so I thought why the hell not, and decided to audition after I saw the flier when I dropped her for her first day of work last night.”

“Robin Buckley is your best friend?” Chrissy asked, her eyes wide.

This time it was Eddie’s turn to elbow his best friend. She already had a crush on the new waitress.

“I have to say,” Chrissy said, leaning on the table with her elbows, “the size of your balls of bringing a song titled ‘Heaven’ to club known for its Satan iconography must be really off the charts.”

Steve threw his head back and laughed. “Did it work?”

Chrissy and Eddie shared a glance. And then Eddie leaned forward next to her, mirroring her pose.

“Yes,” he said with a matching grin, “You’re hired.”

~

To say Eddie was impressed with Steve’s dancing would have been an understatement. The guy had moves that he had created himself. Hell he had an entire routine on a chair that made the “Flashdance” one look tame in comparison.

Fuck, even Chrissy was super close in asking him to teach her some things, because on top of dancing like a sex god, he had the patience of a saint when it came to teaching.

Eddie had fifteen dancers, well technically fourteen because he was one of the dancers. But he had seven principle dancers (again including himself) and eight backup dancers. All named after demons and evil gods. Beings that belonged to hell.

But they were having a hard time figuring out what to name Steve. Billy had gone by Asmodeus even though he had been Envy and not Lust. Envy because he wanted the job of Lust soooo badly.

Steve was okay with taking up the position of Envy. He was the new guy after all and beggars couldn’t be choosers.

But there was something about Steve that made it hard to pick a name for him. So he went hunting down demon and devil names. He already had quite the roster of best Hell had to offer with his backup dancers.

Like his Seven Deadly Sins they were all shapes and sizes, not being able to get work anywhere else because they weren’t the ‘ideal’ body type for dancers.

Fuck, three of his Sins weren’t even ‘thin’ or ‘built’ by any stretch of the imagination. Mammon, Lamia, and Rosier all had body types that would have made other erotic clubs balk.

Mammon, his Greed was more like the comic book character The Kingpin. He was built like a tank and was fucking sexy for it. His curly hair was styled 1920s chic and it made for a rare week day being popular.

Lamia, his Wrath was voluptuous and curvy. She wasn’t ‘fat’ or whatever, but she wasn’t dancer sleek either. Her dusky skin tone and long black hair made her exotic and interesting. On the nights it wasn’t her Sin, she did belly dancing and she was enchanting.

And finally Rosier, his Lust. This is where Eddie courted controversy in the best ways. People could get behind Wrath or Greed not being conventionally attractive, but Lust? That was different. Rosier was a black man who was built, but not in a Chippin’ Dales or Magic Mike kind of way, more in a boxer kind of way. He was barrel-chested with thick thighs. But there was no doubt Rosier was the it guy for all the bachelorette and even a couple of bachelor parties.

Yeah, sure, Gluttony, Sloth, and now Envy were all dancer builds, but the fact that the other half wasn’t? That’s what made The Hellfire Exotic Club so special. That’s what got people through the door every night.

While Hellfire was open every night, Eddie was the only dancer who was there all week. He was the owner and had to be there, but he always made sure each dancer had one night if not two a week they had off.

That was another thing that they were having trouble finding for Steve, what he could do on the nights he wasn’t Envy. Because everyone had something. Stella, his Lamia belly danced; Jeff, his Lust, sang; and even his Sloth, Gareth, played piano.

It wasn’t until Chrissy suggested that the two of them, her and Steve, dancing together as angels on their off days, did it all click.

Steve would dance Monday through Saturday as Samael and then “fall” during his final dance with Chrissy on Saturday to dance Sunday as the envious Satan.

Plus it gave the club a chance to shake up the program in a way that Eddie would have never thought of before hiring Steve.

“And five, six, seven, eight!” Chrissy called out time as Steve hurried to learn a new a dance in three days.

He stumbled and the whole dance crew gasped.

“Hey, Dingus!” Robin called from behind the bar were she was learning the different drinks for Wrath Thursday. “Don’t break a leg, this isn’t theater and they really don’t want to have to hire someone else. Plus, I’d kill you.”

Eddie and Chrissy gave each other concerned glances before Steve burst out laughing.

“If you think this is so easy, bitch,” Steve sassed back, “you get up here and shake your ass and I’ll do the waiting table bit!”

Robin gasped in outrage. “How dare you presume that I couldn’t!”

“Robs,” he said with a sneer, “you have all the coordination of a three hour old baby giraffe and the spots to match!”

She threw down her towel and chased him around the stage, both of them giggling like children.

“Cher,” Eddie said to Chrissy, “how’s that crush coming now?”

Chrissy hit his arm. “Oh yeah, it was bad enough when she was just a cute waiter, but now she’s got this weird sibling relationship with the hottest dancer you’ve ever hired, this is way worse.”

“Glad you made the distinction about hired dancer,” he huffed. “If I‘m not the fairest of them all, I start throwing apples.”

Chrissy’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, we should have a fairy tale night where everyone dances to different fairy tales. With your looks you’d be perfect for Snow White. The pale skin, the dark hair, just add the red lips and it would be perfect.”

Eddie rubbed his chin. “We could even do it on a Sunday, because most of the fairy tales are about envy right? Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, even Hansel and Gretel. Start coming up with fairy tales you’d want to do and we start practicing for it.”

“You’ve got it, babe!” Chrissy said with a kiss on his cheek. She turned back to the stage. “Hey Robin! You can’t murder the talent.”

Robin stopped in her tracks and turned slowly toward the front where Eddie, Chrissy and the rest of the dancers were watching their antics with varying degrees of amusement and shock.

“Shit.” She turned back to Steve. “You live today, dingus. But I’m watching you.”

Steve laughed out loud, his head thrown back, his eyes crinkled, his nose scrunched up, and his mouth wide open as his body just shook with the mirth. “You love me!”

Robin put one hand on her hip and tapped her lips thoughtfully. “Yeah, I suppose.” She went over and kissed his cheek before hopping off the stage and trotting back to the bar to finish being trained.

Chrissy blinked at Steve for a moment before shaking herself off. “Starting at the top?”

“Sure thing!” he chirped happily and got back into starting position.

“Hey, Chris,” one of the backup dancers said shyly.

“Oh hey, Stolas,” she greeted him by his demon name. “What’s up?”

Stolas chewed on his lip and twisted his fingers together. “This might be out of line, but I think I know why he keeps flubbing up at the turn on the second chorus.”

The whole place went dead silent. Eddie opened his mouth to tell him to keep to his place when Steve spoke up.

“Why’s that?” he asked jutting his chin up.

“He’s trying to do the turn as he would in ballet and pirouette,” Stolas said meekly. “But it’s coming off too weak for the move, so he keeps falling.”

Chrissy and Eddie’s jaws dropped. They weren’t the type to see a ballet much less having danced it. Chrissy had a background in cheer and gymnastics, while Eddie had always done burlesque. Eddie knew what to look for when interviewing dancers, of course. There was a certain style and strength that came from doing ballet. Hell, Steve wasn’t his only former ballet dancer. Stolas was one. Leviathan was another. He even had a couple others that started in ballet but moved to other styles of dance.

But Eddie wouldn’t have known why Steve kept fumbling that part.

“Can you show him how to do the turn?” he asked.

Stolas nodded. Eddie waved his arm in the direction of the stage and Stolas hopped up to the stage.

“All right, Stolas,” Steve said with a grin. “Show me what you’ve got.”

And fucking hell, the instant Stolas got into position Eddie could immediately tell the difference between Steve’s and Stolas’ stances. Stolas planted his feet differently.

Eddie watched as Stolas and Chrissy worked together to help Steve get the dance down.

God, he loved his people.

On nowhere else could he have found such a great combination of dancers and good people. Yeah, he got to dance with his best friends, play his guitar, operate a club that was world renown, but knowing that he attracted good people, too? Yeah, that was what made Hellfire so special.

And Steve was going to fit right in.

~

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Tag List: TEN SLOTS REMAINING

1-@mira-jadeamethyst @rozzieroos @itsall-taken @redfreckledwolf @zerokrox-blog

2- @gregre369 ​@a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson @messrs-weasley @cryptid-system

3- @maya-custodios-dionach @goodolefashionedloverboi @val-from-lawrence @carlyv @wonderland-girl143-blog

4- @justforthedead89 @irregular-child @bookbinderbitch @bookworm0690 @forgottenkanji

5- @anne-bennett-cosplayer @yikes-a-bee @awkwardgravity1 @littlewildflowerkitten @genderless-spoon

6- @dragonmama76 @ellietheasexylibrarian @thedragonsaunt @useless-nb-bisexual @disrespectedgoatman

7- @counting-dollars-counting-stars @tinyplanet95 @ravenfrog @swimmingbirdrunningrock @lingeringmirth

8- @gutterflower77 @a-lovely-craziness @just-a-tiny-void @w1ll0wtr33 @beelze-the-bubkiss

[aintnowaybruhgtfo]

PASSENGER PRINCESS C.S

inspired by nessa barrett's song "passenger princess"

WARNING ⚠️ SMUT⚠️ p in v. riding. making out. mentions of handjob and blow job. no actual handjobs or blowjobs tho. pet names ex: baby, ma

a/n: yes i know chris doesn't have his license just bare with me i listened to this song and i needed to write about it. this is my first writing piece so lmk if i should do more. my grammar is prob bad also.

your pink.

chris is orange.

It was a late night after a party. Matt and Nick left earlier than us. chris was wearing a white wife beater and white dress pants with a black tie, his hair is a little damp from the sweat due to being in a house filled with dancing bodies. i wore a tight dark red dress with black heals with statement jewelry. we walk down a few blocks with our hands interlocked. giggling down the street as we get to the car

y/n: chris i reallllyyy can't drive. i know you dont like to drive but please i know you didn't drink. Or at least as much as me.

chris: of course baby. here i'll get you situated.

chris was always the sweetest. he always had a helping hand to anyone, but especially me. he carried me into the passenger seat and took off my heals. he handed me a bottle of water and gave me his jacket.

we got on the road. i rolled all the windows down. i stick my head out of the passenger window and lay head down out of the window vibing to the music. chris was staring at me while i was leaning out of the window. roads were pretty empty and chris was speeding.

the alcohol took over and i'm crying for chris

y/n: please i just want yourr kisses!!

chris: y/n i'm kind of driving but i promise once we get home i'll give you double the amount of kisses you want

y/n: that doesn't matter to me i just want you noww!

chris: alright fine.

your words were so slurred, feeling almost fully taken over by the drinks. it definitely was insanely dangerous but that didn't stop me and my intoxicated mind. i was making out with chris forcing him to keep his eyes on me. he was still impressively driving very well while his eyes were locked on mine. grinding on his lap the whole time we made out. i felt a poking on my leg. i pull away for a minute and giggle.

y/n: chris.

chris: yeah ma?

y/n: i feel your dick

chris: shit... i'm sorry baby, ill fix it once i get home

y/n: no need to wait...

i pull my black lace panties down and throw them in the back seat. i reach over to his belt and quickly un buckle as he laughs so focused on the road. i think he was expecting a blowjob and hand job or something but i was feeling insane. i pulled my dress up a bit and sit on his dick that was hitting his stomach. we both moan at the feeling. the wind blowing our hair added a whole lot to the feeling. i rode him. i felt the speed of the car increase as we got close to our climaxes. he took one hand off the steering wheel and placed his hand on my ass as he kissed down my neck.

chris: holy shit y/n, i'm almost there

y/n: hold on a minute so am i! holy shit don't stop there. perfect baby. oh my god!

that sent us both over the edge. we both came and grew sweatier. he doesn't pull out yet. we pull up to our house as he turns off the car. we stay in the car though. he pulls me in and touches me all over. i'm a moaning mess

chris: keep this shit up and you will wake up all of our neighbors.

he says as he placed a free hand on my mouth. i try to shut up my shoving my face in the crook of his neck. he ends by grabbing my ass and pulling me in for a long sweet kiss as he carries me and all of our belongings inside. he lays me down on our bed. he takes off my dress and puts on his boxers and a big shirt on me. he knows how much i love wearing his clothes especially his pajamas. He grabs the makeup wipes and wipe my makeup off. he tucks me into bed and gets himself ready for bed. he lays next to me and immediately wraps his arms around me.

chris: remind me to drive more. that was so fuckin fun.

y/n i love you so much

chris: i love you more.

[nebbyy]

 Leo Valdez x Child of Aphrodite!reader

A/N: I haven’t got much to say this time, just a reminder that requests are open and will remain this way for some weeks at the very least:))

Warning: absolutely none (maybe some swearing? But like, two bad words), just pure fluff. Also, reader uses female pronouns

It was kind of against your destiny to fall in love: Aphrodite is bound to never return Hephaestus’ love, so that they’re stuck in a loveless marriage. With the two of you, it’s the total opposite

The exact same MOMENT you see the boy in camp, disheveled look, face covered in machine oil and dust, you’re, absolutely smitten

It’s the classical “she fell first, he fell harder” type of trope

He notices you pretty early on too, but he doesn’t even try to approach you at first

I mean, no way that the prettiest child of Aphrodite could ever even look into his direction, you’re wayyyy over his league

It takes Piper’s help to start things up, when she accidentally stumbles upon Leo while she was taking a walk around camp. “Oh how rude of me. Y/N, this is my best friend, Leo”

It would be embarrassing to write down just how much he’s stumbled on his words the first time the two of you talked, just because of how he was absolutely captured by your godly beauty

He comes to find that you’re also a lot more than you’re looks: you’re funny, smart, clever, strong as fuck, and one of the best friends Leo has ever known

It doesn’t take long for him to realize that he’s completely and irrevocably in love with you, but oh boy how long does it take him to confess it to you

He had prepared this big, fancy plan to take you by the beach, with candles all around, a circle of rose petals and in the center of it a picnic filled with all of your favorite foods waiting to be devoured

Too bad he didn’t check the weather that morning, or he would’ve seen that a storm was expected right on that evening. He might’ve asked for Percy’s or Jason’s help too, maybe they could’ve done some big-god shit to prevent the rain

Nevertheless, you both found yourself soaked wet, standing by a line of extinguished candles, the petals long gone with the wind, and the food watered down to a soup

He wanted to drown himself in the sea right then and there, but he was quickly stopped by your laugh coming from behind him

Oh gods, where you making fun of him? Did you figure out what his intentions were? It must’ve been it, I mean, how could you ever want to have anything to do with him other than simple friendship, he’s been so stupid so reckles-

His track of thoughts was interrupted by your hands grabbing the collar of his shirt and pulling him in for a loving kiss, your skilled lips so soft and comforting against his much inexperienced ones

“You could’ve just told me you liked me at Camp, you know.”

“Wait, was it that simple?”

You laughed again shaking your head at his cluelessness, and he swore the sound of your laugh could’ve been the only thing he needed to live from that moment on

Okay no maybe food too, but you get the idea

You spend most of the time chilling in cabin 9 while he works on his projects, chilling in his bed or peaking at what he was doing

He definitely calls you dove for obvious reasons

Best believe that as soon as you guys are a thing all his flirting with every girl that moves is OVER my boy does not come from the streets he’s a loyal mf

After the curfew you usually sneak out to chill in some secluded area in the forest, and cuddle for hours in the moonlight

And whenever it rains, you waste no time to go at the beach and dance in the rain, reminiscing about the day you two got together

Oh, and get ready to see Leo as an emotional wreck anytime one of you is on a quest, when he’s unable to text you or hear anything from you for days or even WEEKS

He’s sure that’s worse than Prometheus’ destiny

Overall it’s like a golden retriever - siamese cat relationship, 10/10 would recommend

[posebean]

fantasys your alkaloid‼️ ‼️ ‼️ ‼️ ‼️ ‼️ ‼️  ref sheet of alkaloid for my alkakurei fantasy au that i totally didnt abandon crazy:B here (notes abt world+magic system and other stuff on that post)

stuff abt their outfits and etc under read more

hiiro is fresh from his village baby boy left to go find his nii-san with only his clothes and a trusty satchel at his side- he just goes around looking for his nii-san and etcetc idk how long the gap is but he finds tatsumi and mayo and stays with them for some time and during that time tatsun gets him a coat because baby boy literally only has those and hes just been doing work for some guild (idk how to explain bc guilds require education but i guess tatsun pulled strings for him) so he has money to live while also looking for his nii-san and sometimes he has to go to cold places and one time he comes home after a job in a cold place and hes sick and tatsun is like hiiro-san please take this jacket with you :..) so now hiiro has a coat custom-made for him :3! he's good with elemental magic (the 5 core elements water wind fire earth plant) very versatile and a skilled little guy (not as talented as his nii-san but no one is as talented as nii-san!) anyways yadda yadda he gets a message or smth and is preparing to leave tatsun and mayo but (spoilers for meru fic) meru points him towards the town where everyone else is and yea he goes and finds his nii-san and now his goal has changed from find nii-san to convince nii-san to go back home but he befriends everyone else too and i think they do eventually go on some kind of adventure together maybe more the three younger ppl aira hiiro and kohaku

aira is a little silly fellow he dresses nicely (very inspired by fs2 but i cant stop looking at it and thinking damn he french colored......) and loves magic so much he admires all the grand mages and everyone in the upper echelons and loves watching other people cast spells and such unfortunately for him while he has a decently high innate talent, his control is God Awful which results in magic never going well for him- with no control at all, literally negative control, he can try to cast one spell and something completely different will be cast instead- and the skill level varies too it's literally just a roll of a dice for him if he tries to cast a simple flame spell he might end up flooding the room with a wall of water, it's that bad kkshfkj also he acts like he doesn't like it but he actually loves rabuhan-junior so much he secretly spoils the hamster named after him and rabuhan junior loves him back rabuhan-junior likes to sleep in his hat or on aira's head whenever kohaku goes out and leaves rabu-han junior with aira tatsun has very normal clothes bro dresses like a dad (did you know both of his fs have the same color palettes i didnt but using them as reference made me realize, anyways-) his clothes are very comfortable and easy to move around in, especially given his injury from [spoiler event here ]. he also has a cane and his injured leg has pain suppressor sigils and bandages wrapped all over it his leg isn't completely unusable like its not broken or anything its more like. a kind of necrosis like if you unwrapped it there would be a dark mark thats like icky and sometimes it flares up and hurts tatsun so much that he falls over and :( he found the cane one day in the catacomb (wonder who put it there) he added the begonia himself as a reminder of his sin... shiro is his little mouse familiar that he conjured with the help of kaname! she's a sweet little thing, often found sleeping on an open book on tatsumi's desk. she has the tatsumi-colored ears and legs because she was conjured up rather than a pact familiar. regarding magic tatsun is pretty average on both control and power, but that doesnt really matter because most of the spells he uses are passive spells more used for healing/doing work. he likes to garden and has a beautiful garden of all kinds of flowers at the chapel :) he just doesn't dare touch the flowers in the catacomb, because he knows someone else already takes care of those also that purple gem hanging around his neck is a gift from mayomayo it doesn't do anything and has no magic but tatsun still likes it :) mayomayo dresses in all dark colors because he believes that if he always dresses in dark colors no one will ever have to be bothered by seeing his existence he comes from a lineage that practices forbidden magic, not necessarily all dark but some of the more ... interesting spells . something happens in his past and he ends up leaving, taking with him his tome and well. proceeding to get chased by all kinds of monsters out in the wild because for some reason he just attracts all kinds of beasts poor guy magic-wise he does have the forbidden magic from his family but he more specializes in healing and curse removal- he doesn't dare do anything else for fear of (redacted). besides, maybe he'll one day be able to actually save somebody instead of hurting them, maybe his existence would be worth it some day. the ribbon in his hair (the green/teal one) is from tatsun :) he said mayo would look good in brighter colors and mayo disagreed so tatsun gave it to him and now its become part of his outfit and (i combust into a thousand bits ) also because of that mayo feels like he has to give tatsun something back so thats why he gives tatsumi a purple gem he had that used to hang from his spell tome anyways i still love this au very much and i hope you enjoyed now i will proceed to forget about it again /j i still really wanna write kohaku's fic and then maybe one last one for rinne-kun or smth because aghghj there's still so much that's not developed yet but (explodes)

[quitealotofsodapop]

[The ones who manage to unearth their version of Luzhen clutch the newborn Stone Monkey tight, sobbing at the joy of finding another of their kind.]

That’s those that do have them. Their universes aren’t identical, so there is likely some that don’t have a Luzhen because their moms mate did perish in the flood: like, say, TMKATI-verse.

Mostly because I was looking through the old posts and one way for Luzhen to be born was somebody locking Peach into the furnace, but not turning it on and that counting to start the process. Obvs different rules now, but variety, you know?

That and the rest of the SWKs can quickly learn why Stone Eggs are a last resort kind of deal, with Peach nearly croaking during birth. Like, ‘Damn, there is a way for us to die, even with all these immortalities’, you know?

Also: [Cherry, holding his little bro up like Simba: PEEEEEBBBBBLLLEEEE!!!!!!!]

If none of the modern kids do the Circle of Life, I will be disappointed.

Recall that back then also were going by the thought of Nuwa having a hand in SWKs creation? Well, thought here: she’s responsible for Reborn-Luzhens creation. Don’t know, just had the idea of a small undefined soul causing some havoc near Nuwa – because it wants a family, it was promised a family, why won’t it be getting its family anymore – reminding her of the Havoc and she ends up making a little clay monkey for the soul to inhabit.

Kinda like TMKATI, just less pregnancy and more clay.

Then she drops the little troublemaker off at Smokey’s, “He really wanted to be born” she shrugs and peace’s out.

Smokey, who was doing his best to suppress his grief at the apparent fact that his dad had died in his world, just now has waterfall levels of water coming out of his eyes. His little brother harassed a god to ensure his own birth! Truly, they are related.

[The knowledge that he might be considered divine royalty under Celestial Law would be a bit much for him right now.]

Honest question: what do the rest of the SWKs think about that? Like, that has to knock the wind out them, for sure.

referencing the Wukongverse learning about Stone Matriarch au + our older post about Nuwa and Houtu making Luzhen on accident + Furnace - Fire = Stone Egg.

I should really do an updated TMKATI timeline post once my exams are over. Currently I'm thinking of altering it so that the twin boys of the Nodelets - Jidu and Luohou - are the ones created from one of the parents getting trapped in the Furance without the fire, likely from LBD stealing the Furance/capturing one of them. I'm thinking Luzhen (like possibly Canon!MK) would be created by Nuwa since TMKATI!MK got found by the Shadowpeach parents as a "broken" egg and they accidentally became his parents.

The Stone Matriarch au likely doesn't apply to many of the other universes since it is in of itself an Au. If any of the SWKs find an egg at the bottom of FFM/Mount Huaguo, it's like a million to one chance.

The one that does is super hyped/sad though. Not sure which.

-

I love the idea of Reborn!/Smokey's Luzhen getting created because Nuwa encountered a little chaotic soul wanting to be born + realising that she shoudl probably give him to someone with a similar origins.

And let's just say; what if... Reborn!Luzhen's soul was created as a reincarnation?

The Reincarnation of a *certain* Primordial Demon who has just died? And may need to be raised in tandem with it's Qi Energy counterpart in order to grow into a (mostly) balanced monkey?

>:3

-

As for the method in which: (Stone Monkey + Furnace) - Samadhi Fire (or they waiting too long) = Egg?

Most likely candidate would be Netflix!SWK/Cherry.

Because he's the exception of Monkey Kings who haven't been "furanced" yet.

I'm just imagining the next Wukongverse he pulls up looking SUPER rough.

Starfruit: "Wow, you look like Hell." Cherry, covered in burn scars: "Don't remind me. Ran into some jerks who stole a bunch of alchemy supplies from the immortals." Sugar: "Calabash?" Cherry: "No thanks I'm not hungry. Well anyway this guy working for Heaven thinks I'm too dangerous to be walking around, and he tosses me into this big pot. I run out of air and somebody turns the heat on! For like a month!" All the SWKs who Know: *winces of sympathy* Ace, jokingly nostalgic: "Ah the Trigram Furnace. Usually happens before the Buddha's hand though." Cherry: "Yeah don't remind me. Luckily my new friends got me out and woke me up." Dawn, suddenly pauses: "Wait. Woke you up?" Cherry: "Yeah I sorta passed out just before the worst of the fire started." Dawn, gettign concerned: "And were you asleep for that whole time?" Cherry, getting nervous: "Yeah??" Dawn: (*shares a look with the other monkeys. A bunch nod their heads with nervous expressions*) Cherry: "Why, what's the problem? Did you guys not fall asleep?!" Smokey: "How could we? The flames of Samadhi nearly turned me to ash. Only way me or any of us survived it is because the Wind corner has a higher pressure." Cherry: "There was corners in there?" Dasheng: "You didn't train in alchemy under Subuhti as we did. The Trigram Furnace is made up of eight corners according to the major celestial elements, with each corner having the properties of that element. The Wind element feeds but also suffocates fire, so even True Fire weakens there." Cherry: "Oh. I think I survived cus I just went into a dissociative state and became a statue." Dawn, now convinced: "YOU PETRIFIED!?" Cherry, getting scared: "NOW I AM!?"

Cue the monkeys who know about how Stone Eggs are formed dragging Cherry to see Guanyin. The bodhisattva explains that; yes, Cherry is carrying a mini-him all wrapped in a stone casing, all because the lack of air in the Furnace caused his body to believe that it was time to bud off into a new monkey. Cherry faints. Joyfully.

Cherry, rambling excitedly: "A mini-king! No! A Prince! NO! A PEBBLE! And he'll be *just* like me!" Dawn, stressing: "Aren't you worried that it could kill you!?" Cherry, brushing him off: "Pff! I'm immortal. Can't die. If I was really worried - I'd just grab a few more pills or peaches." Dawn: (*grabs Cherry by the collar of his armor and pulls him closer. eyes glowing red*) Dawn: "I have over twenty times the amount of immortality you have, and I almost f*cking died. The only reason I'm here today is because Guanyin, the goddess of safe birth, was at my side. And because my Macaque would have dragged me back from Diyu if I had. So. Be. Worried." Cherry, nods fearfully: "Y-yes sir."

But the young Monkey King is still super jazzed about his upcoming mini-him. Even if he's now looking up other ways him can become immortal so that he can meet his little pebble and give him the hugs he himself was denied as a baby.

-

Lastly this part might need to be it's own post due to the amount of thoughts I has.

[The knowledge that he might be considered divine royalty under Celestial Law would be a bit much for him right now.] Honest question: what do the rest of the SWKs think about that? Like, that has to knock the wind out them, for sure.

Send in more of your thoughts :3

[jayweek]

'Just the Two of Us' - where two best friends who secretly have feelings for each other go camping, but they didn’t expect to fall under the effect of a rare spell.

Just for entertainment. It’s a totally fictional universe. Thank you! Have fun! Stream xo! <3

genre: fluff, friends to lovers. sunghoon ff. words in this chapter: 1.4k.

Welcome! You are on the final chapter! First chapter here 💌

© jayweek on tumblr

Part 2: The Spell.

7:30 PM.

"Shall we put on some music?" Sunghoon said.

"Sure! How about 'Pompeii'?"

"Our song!" - they are both much happy about it!

"Sure! Between us 'nothing changed at all'!"

"I’m very happy with that, Y/N! We’ve always been by each other’s side through all our phases since we met."

"Really!" - she smiled. It's like she is on cloud 9 right now. Sunghoon is always caring but words like that are light for the heart.

The wind blew gently. Y/N and Sunghoon sat in front of the now lit campfire, trying to keep the fire alive despite the wind and occasional dust coming from the ground road they took to get to the plain. Away from the city lights, the stars shine like never before.

____________

Y/N pov.

The stars remind me of your eyes... If only he knew how safe I feel beside him. His voice, his kindness, his care... One day I’ll have to confess.

__________

The friends spent more time star-gazing, enjoying the snacks, and listening to the playlists chosen for the camping trip.

"Stitches" started playing, and Sunghoon couldn’t control the blush on his face. He couldn’t stop and didn’t quite understand why he was so red at the moment. Maybe it was this closeness to Y/N. How had he never thought of this before? Could he be... in love?

7:58 PM

They both heard a strange noise. It was two dogs. Destroying one of the tents!!!

They were so distracted that they forgot to look up at the tents.

"Oh my God! Let’s go before they take the other one!" - Sunghoon jumped up.

____

8:00 pm - The Spell Begins

“Damn! What now?” Y/N was shocked. “Where are we going to sleep?”

“Oh, I don’t mind sleeping in the tent with you.” 💭 Oh my God, what did I just say???

“I-I said that out loud, Y/N, I’m so sorry, I-I don’t know why I said that…” He started stammering, trying to explain.

“It’s okay, Sung! I don’t want to leave you out in the cold either.”

Y/N’s smile calmed the moment. Sunghoon wasn’t the type to say things impulsively, and this really scared him because he had said out loud exactly what he was thinking at the moment. He simply couldn’t control it, and that was very strange. It was as if someone made him say it…

Little did he know that it was all part of a very old love spell that he had activated by spinning so many times around that tent stake. Ah, the full moon and its charms!

The spell was prepared by a very powerful witch and could only be activated with the correct movements and a heart ardently in love. The spell was divided into two moments: one for a softer effect, but potentially revealing – because the couple’s thoughts could come out loud. After that, the spell would pause. And then, in the other moment, nothing would be the same as before.

_________

Y/N’s POV

Okay? What did he mean by that? Anyway… I hope my thoughts don’t come out of my mouth like that too!

“What did you say?”

💭 Sunghoon heard me???

“Huh? Uh?” I tried to play dumb.

“Oh! I thought you said something. We can go back home if you want…”

“NO! No need.” I put my hands over my mouth. 💭 Why did I have to shout??

“Sorry for shouting, Sung.”

“It’s okay, silly silly! Shall we go see the lagoon then?”

8:11 pm – Spell Pause

“Let’s go!”

_________

The crystal-clear water was really beautiful and reflected the light of the full moon, also presenting the reflection of the two of them. There was no more sign of the dogs that ran off with the tent.

“Well, maybe the dogs needed the tent more than we did!” - said Y/N.

The two laughed a little nervously at the incident and they didn’t know what was stranger – the tent being taken by the dogs or the thoughts that came so out loud. That really don't happen every day.

“Are you crazy, Y/N? We’re going to end up out in the open, I’m telling you. We left the remaining tent there. The next one to take the tent will be the bear!”

He imitated a strong and violent bear to make Y/N laugh at the events. He is like a huge bear going to attack his prey (or tent!).

“I don’t doubt it! This is some kind of magic!”

“Nonsense! You’ve always been unlucky anyway!” He laughed, friendly and playful.

S/N started rubbing her hands from the cold, so they decided to go back near the campfire. It would also be good to return to keep an eye on the tent that was still left for them.

9:00 pm

“Shall we play ‘truth or dare?’”

“Let’s! It’s just going to be a little weird because it’s just the two of us, so the questions or dares will always be for one of us.” Sunghoon said that, sweating cold inside, he was always skeptical of these kinds of games, but it could be fun as long as he didn’t expose himself too much like he did the moment the tent was taken by the two mischievous dogs.

They gathered by the campfire, and Y/N turned on the flashlight, pointing the light at her face, trying to scare her best friend with a spooky story vibe:

“Scared?”

“Not at all!” - he giggled.

They laughed and started the game.

_______

Sunghoon’s POV

“So, truth or dare?” I started.

“Truth!”

“With whom was your first kiss?” - I can't believe I had the courage to say that.

“My first kiss… was a bit of a tragic story… it was with Lucas, from our class, remember him? He went to kiss me when he said he liked me. We went on a few dates, but things didn’t work out between us, and we went our separate ways.”

“Wow… I didn’t know…”

That made me tremble with rage. Just thinking about a guy being so close to S/N… I don’t want to lose her, I can’t lose her… How did I not realize that Lucas liked her? I thought my enemy all this time was Jake for living so close to her. He’s always walking his little dog around the neighborhood shirtless.

“But do you still like him?” - Please, I need to know.

“No, no, Sung. It really stayed in the past.

Your turn. Truth or dare?” she said calmly, which relieved me a lot because of the truth in her voice.

“Truth.”

“What makes you fall in love with someone? You always reject everyone.”

Y/N seemed concerned with her own question, she laughed awkwardly, so I thought: it’s time to be honest.

I moved closer to her, sitting in a way that allowed us to face each other near the campfire. I just wanted to see her reaction. I looked into her eyes and saw everything I had always wanted in life. I could see my life as a movie; everything we went through together as best friends was so wonderful.

Y/N, I realize I love you so much… more than as a best friend…

“Y/N, do you see me as a man?”

“A-as a man? What do you mean?”

I lost all my shyness and gathered all my courage:

“I always rejected everyone because I only have eyes for you, my silly. I didn’t know when we were younger, but when I look at you now, I’m sure I love you, Y/N. I love you. Truly. Not just as a best friend but also as someone who wants to be and love you as the man of your life. Please, tell me if you feel something for me too.”

“Sung… I love you so much! I always knew I loved you! I just didn’t think I was your type, haha!”

“But you’re so silly! I love you so much!”

With the moonlight and the flames crackling in an intense dance, I found love. I moved in closer, and when she placed her hand on my chest, my heart raced. Her soft lips touched mine, and I didn’t know how much I wanted this.

__________

S/N's POV

I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it! I must be dreaming! How can he love me the same way too? Sung, I loved you first! I love you so much!

“I could kiss you all night while counting the stars, my beautiful silly!”

“Dummy! I liked you first, you know!”

“Lies!” Sunghoon laughed. “Hey, I’m so grateful for you.”

“I’m also very grateful for you, my love! I love you so much!”

“I love you so much, my beautiful!”

At midnight, the spell would return to complete its final moment: they would declare their feelings for each other involuntarily, as happened before with the thoughts that were spoken out loud. But they didn’t need that — just a little, let’s say, push.

The End. ❤❤❤

[aaasdgnklm]

hey hye wanna hear my epic rant too bad ur gonna anyways

spoiler warning for epic: the musical, the thunder saga

Ok so the thunder saga. genuinely I’ve been shaking so much every time I’ve heard it. I’m gonna go song by song and this is a rant so theres gonna be a shitton of tangents sorry

1. suffering

this title scared me SO MUCH when I heard it cause like oh fuck my poor little guy(hes a king and has fought multiple wars and killed thousands of people) doesnt need more shit happening to him like leave him alone and then the melody was so upbeat and I was like huh?? and then ‘penelope’ starts talking and I’m like. pardon. what. sorry?? I was confused as shit, mostly at how nonchalant ODYSSEUS was. my first assumption was its gotta be one of the gods fucking w/ him but then why is he so casual? so I thought it was a dream. but then there were little things, penelope’s asking him to get in the water(which. reminds me of. someone HAHSBHADBH), and then he says hes scared of the water and I’m like. my guy I hope youre not afraid of the water youre a captain on a ship. but then I realized theres no way odys afraid of the water unless its bcuz of posideon, and penelope WOULDNT KNOW ABOUT THAT so he wouldnt say “you know I’m afraid of the water”. and then ofc shes like “daughter” and I’m like nope. this aint penelope and its not a dream cause then it would be odysseus’ mind making her up and hed never think daughter. And then odysseus asks how to get home and at this point I’m like hm. ok. so this is some kind of water based monster trying to pretend to be penelope to lure him in, right? (ALSO the fact that the only time in the song odysseus drops the act is when he says “but scylla has a cost” is so mmmmmm)and then. and then.

2. different beast

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT THIS IS WHERE THINGS GOT GOOD. like I love suffering but different beast scratches my brain SO GOOD and the rest of the saga was uphill from there I ahhhhhhhh. initial reaction: odysseus’ explanation that he knew what had been happening the whole time was SO GOOD and had my mouth hanging open the whole time. and then when he says “cut their tails off, we’re ending this now. throw their bodies back in the water. let them drown.” ohhhhhhhhhh my god holy fuck this was when it kinda hit for me- odysseus was not fucking around in monster hes actually BRUTAL in the thunder saga and I honestly hope it continues cause fuck yeah character development. also there were SO MANY lines in this that are just SO GOOD. “youve been tryna take my life this whole time” “I know exactly what you are, youre a siren.” “my real wife knows I’m not scared of the water, and my real wife knows I dont have a daughter.” “we found a ship with no crew” “sirens know about every route and horizon now I know how to get back to my island!” “so you can kill the next group of sailors in this part of the sea? nah, you wouldnt have spared me. I made a mistake like this once it almost cost my life, I cant take more risks of not seeing my wife. cut off their tails!” “kill them all!” and then the “odysseus” at the end I’m like why does that sound familiar? MFER ITS CAUSE ITS IN THE “You dont think I know my own palace? I built it.” SOUND CLIP IM

3. scylla

silly little sounds. silly little men. silly little deaths. ok so I watched the livestream so I saw the anamatic and holy SHIT the moment that eurylochus realized why odysseus had him light six torches was BRUTAL. also eurylochus’ confession that he opened the wind bag? ohhhhhhh ok MOTHER FUCKING SON OF A BITCH also when odysseus said “not much to say” god he sounds so tortured I cant with this. and scyllas voice in general is so ahhhhhh ESPECIALLY the “Hello.” and DROWN IN YOUR SORROW AND FEARS. CHOKE ON YOUR BLOOD AND YOUR TEARS. BLEED TILL YOU RUN OUT OF YEARS. WE MUST DO WHAT IT TAKES TO SURVIVE. GIVE UP YOUR HONOR AND FAITH. LIVE UP YOUR LIFE AS A WRAITH. DIE IN THE BLOOD WHERE YOU BATHE. WE MUST DO WHAT IT TAKES TO SURVIVE. with the fucking crunching and screaming in the background lik e ok. I needed this in my life.

4. mutiny

THIS IS MY FAVORITE. eurolychus’ confrontation with begging odysseus to tell him hes misinterpreted the situation, comparing odysseus’ past actions and fights to how he dealt with scylla, finally ending with him yelling at odysseus to “SAY SOMETHING!”, odysseus’ “I CANT.” and the looong pause before the boss battle starts. odysseus and eurolychus’ fight, both of them clearly not wanting to but knowing they have to. the chanting their name in the background. and then when odysseus says “I am not letting you get in my way!” and the sound of a stab- I was so scared hed actually killed eurolychus(yes I knew he dies I watched the overly sarcastic productions video on the odyssey too) and then ODYSSEYUS’ labored breathing and asking “why?” like I’m sorry jorge DID THEY STAB YOU TO GET THIS LYRIC WHY DOES HIS PHYSICAL PAIN SOUND SO GENUINE and then the. the fucking. the fucking luck runs out reprise. the MOMENT I realized it was the melody from luck runs out this is when I started crying.(dw past me it gets worse) the way that the crew is basically like “yeah remember when we asked what would happen if you fucked up? well you fucked up. and now youre finding out.” plus the fact that they are so clearly driving home we dont trust you. you failed to keep us safe. basically telling him ‘youre a bad leader’. that must have HURT. and then the fact that eurolychus bandaged him up and was waiting for him to wake up ough my heart. but also the fact that hes tied to helios’ statue? like. um. buddy. looking an awful lot like a sacrafice there. hahahahahah I’m loosing it. anyways, the luck runs out reprise hitting hard once again. like HARD. holy shit, odysseus’ “please don’t tell me you’re about to do what i think you’ll do” when that was what eurylochus said to him and then EURYLOCHUS CALLED HIM “ODY” I CANT and the eurylochus clearly being fed up(but not fed) while odysseus is actually begging him to please please think about this you can HEAR the desperation the need to get home and knowing if eurylochus kills the cow they probably wont? and then odysseus’ scream of “euRYLOCHUS NO!” cut short by the sound of eurylochus killing the cattle. and then the instant ‘oh no.’ like just INSTANTLY knowing they’re fucked and eurylochus STILL LOOKING TOWARD ODYSSEUS FOR GUIDENCE EVEN THO HE LITERALLY MUTINIED AGAINST HIM LIKE A DAY AGO AND HAS ODYSSEUS TIED UP AND AT HIS MIRCY AND HE STILL DEFAULTS TOWARDS ODYSSEUS FOR LEADERSHIP CAUSE HE STILL TRUSTS HIM and odysseus IMMEDIATELY taking charge and trying to get them out. the rushed full speed ahead melody, the boom of thunder and odysseus’ dread-filled “we’re too late.”

5. thunder bringer

IT LIVED UP TO THE HYPE GUYS!! sure enough the teasers we’ve seen are FUCKING AMAZING in the context of the song, zeus having an inflated as shit ego and taking up SO MUCH space, just like constantly talking about himself even tho IT AINT ABT HIM its so in character for what a massive dick he usually is in the greek mythos. and zeus deadass saying “if i were to make you choose, the lives of your men and crew or your own why do I think theyd loose?” right before MAKING ODYSSEUS CHOOSE. I’m. also odysseus sounds so.. small in this song. I dont know if its the fact hes literally having a mental breakdown or that zeus needs to be the biggest cock in any room he walks into but odysseus’ little “choose?” and him asking “please dont make me do this” JUST LIKE WHEN HIM AND ZEUS FIRST MET, the when does a man become a monster melody playing as odysseus tries to decide with penelopes voice asking him to come home pushing him over the edge wow. just wow. and the the conversation between odysseus and eurylochus? “captain?” “I have to see her.” “…but we’ll die.” “i know” I’m SORRY I CANT FUCKING DO THIS WHY DOES HE SOUND SO BROKEN AND REGRETFUL AND SAD AND OH MY GOD. AND THEN THE FUCKING ANIMATIC SHOWN IN THE TRAILER THE WAY HE JUST POINTS TOWARDS HIS CREW AND THEY ALL LOOK SO BETRAYED AND LOST BEFORE THEY START ATTACKING HIM AND THE LAST SHOT OF HIM CLOSING HIS EYES AS THEY PIN HIM TO THE MAST BY THE NECK WITH THEIR SWORDS AND THEN LIGHTNING STRIKES THE SHIP HOLY. also if you think about it this choice was kind of the final stress test for odysseus, because this is the ultimate decision: should he be a good king, captain, and friend or should he take the small chance to see his wife again? cause its not just about who lives and dies, its about who gets to keep going, who gets to see home, who gets a chance and who looses right now. and how could he choose the people who just stabbed him in the back and have doomed them multiple times over seeing his wife whom he loves and would do anything for? honestly, with what I know about how odysseus is, I wouldnt be very surprised if he was weighing the choice both from the emotional (seeing his wife or saving his crew) and factual (hes probably the strongest and most fit leader among them, they might not do too well on their own, ithaca needs a king and he doesnt know if telemachus can be that, one person has a higher chance of surviving than a large group in a journey(ingreekmythologyanyway), and they did just make a really dumb mistake that odysseus wouldnt have made himself and yeah ok maybe hes a little salty but still.)

genuinly the whole saga is so amazing and I’m so looking forward to the wisdom, vengence, and ESPECIALLY ithaca saga. by the way I could actually do this for every song in the musical/every saga tbh

thanks for coming to my tedtalk, I fucking love epic: the musical

[sleuth-draws]

LOVESICK (part 4) - Close to You < prev | next >

Vitani has been acting strange.

Well, she always acts strange; that's kind of her thing sometimes. But stranger than usual.

Kiara has noticed that her friend can't quite keep eye contact anymore, often darting away quickly. When Kiara comes close to nuzzle her, groom her, even just to chat, she's been insistent on keeping more distance than usual, scooching away with an awkward and very unsubtle clearing her throat. On top of that, she's being leaving the den at night more and more to pace and grumble. Vitani might think she's being discrete but Kiara knows her enough to be able to tell when something's wrong. She's started to worry that her dear friend has started to lose sleep.

She's more than familiar with the old Vitani -- the quiet broody lioness who most times couldn't stand to stick around the pride, more out of habit than preference. She's reminded now of that Vitani.

There's no one she's enjoyed seeing come out of her shell more than Vitani. Except Kovu, of course. But she loves getting Vitani to crack that crooked smile of hers, getting her to loosen up and see that there's no immediate threat to look out for anymore. Kiara never bore witness to the atrocities Scar inflicted upon the Pridelands but she thinks witnessing how her new friends have been affected by Zira's tyrannical reign is the closest thing to it. The lack of food, the lack of support, the lack of love. She can't imagine what that's like.

Kiara does realize her privileged position; she's the Princess of the Pridelands for gods' sake. She knows she could never come close to knowing what it's like to suffer this greatly or to feel the after-effects of cruelty. But it's all she can do to check in on those who have.

So when her training lets out at the first sign of sunset, she spares Kovu a halfhearted nuzzle before going off in search of Vitani as she always does.

She's not at the watering hole, nor the fields, nor in the shady spot where they play-fought just a few days ago.

Hm. The Guard must have finished late today.

Kiara heads back to the Rock to visit the lair and approaches just in time to see Vitani exit with Imara at her side. The two are speaking with hushed tones and standing rather close. Vitani ducks her head in laughter and Imara nuzzles her side.

A pit forms in Kiara's gut. Huh. She must be hungrier than she thought. Yeah. That must be it.

Before she knows it, she's trotting towards them, calling, "Hey, Vitani!"

Her friend perks up instantly, those big ears of hers at attention. She looks hesitant but smiles at her nonetheless. Kiara grins as she makes her way over.

Imara nudges Vitani with her shoulder almost smugly, before bidding her goodbye and offering a respectful nod in Kiara's direction just as she comes face-to-face.

"Hi," Kiara breathes, only a little winded from her hurried journey over.

"Hi," Vitani breathes back, though she doesn't look tired at all.

Kiara tilts her head at her tall friend. "How was patrolling today?"

"Eh, it was fine. Imara just left to report to your old man. Had to chase off some mangy rogue who thought he could flirt with me and the Guard. Unfortunately, he was stubborn enough to let things get violent."

"Ugh, he sounds awful."

"Oh, he was," Vitani barks out an amused laugh, "But I knocked him flat and he ran away scared."

"Ha! You sure showed him," Kiara chuckles, finding herself circling around Vitani. She does things like this sometimes, stalking around Vitani as if hunting -- and at one point, Kovu as well -- and she doesn't quite know why. At this point, she's reasoned it's simply a natural habit. "How lucky we are to have you to protect us." She leans in to brush their sides together, nuzzling her cheek to Vitani's. "I missed you, y'know."

Vitani tenses but that's never been atypical. Touch has always been something her friend found hard to get used. "Oh, I, uh --" She clears her throat, thrown off her game. "I-I missed you too." She shakes her head. "But you just saw me yesterday, Princess!"

"I can still miss you!"

A snort. "Yeah, right."

Kiara is about to shoot a retort back when her nose starts to itch and a loud sneeze interrupts her, startling them both.

"Yeegh," Kiara exclaims, shaking her head and licking her nose, "Vitani!"

"What?"

"There's so much dust in your fur! No doubt from that fight. You seriously need a bath."

Vitani bristles. "Ugh, no way." She shakes herself out, ears flapping almost aggressively. "Look, I'm totally fi--" When she takes a step forward, her foreleg buckles and she stumbles, catching herself with the other foreleg.

"Vitani!" Immediately, Kiara is moving in to assist her.

"I'm fine, Kiara." Vitani grits. "It's just a sprain, nothin' I can't handle."

Kiara looks back towards the fields. Her mother won't be back with food a little while. "Come follow me."

"But --"

"Don't argue with me. Come on." Kiara headbutts Vitani's shoulder and though Vitani grumbles the whole way, they walk up Pride Rock together. There, several lionesses are resting out at the entrance of the den, grooming themselves and each other and sunbathing while they still have a sun to bathe in.

There's a round of greetings when the pair ascend, including Tiifu, Zuri and, surprisingly, Kasi, who are dozing in a pile together. Vitani stares as they pass; Kasi looks away in slight embarrassment.

They find a spot somewhere nearby, still warm from the sun, and Kiara gives a look that makes Vitani sigh loudly and plop down. Kiara settles in beside her.

"Hmph, good. Now..." Kiara leans in and starts grooming the fur on Vitani's neck; immediately Vitani jerks away. "Oh, come on, Vitani."

"I-I-I really think I can do this myself!" Vitani stutters.

"Don't be ridiculous," Kiara huffs. "You couldn't reach that neck of yours if you tried!" She leans in again and when Vitani dodges once more, she reaches with both paws to ensnare her head and hold it securely to her. Vitani struggles but doesn't go so far as to kick at her with her hind legs -- a great sign. "Ha. Good girl."

Vitani goes ramrod straight. Kiara pays her no mind and starts to groom the tuft on her head. Slowly, her friend starts to relax, though she maintains the tension in her shoulders, claws digging into the dirt. Eventually, that too leaves her, pressure rolling off her shoulders till even her claws, trained to be out at all times in attack position, start to sheathe themselves. She breathes a sigh and closes her eyes.

Delight fills Kiara's chest. There's something precious about this. Being able to just lie here in peace with someone once considered her enemy and relax together. To see her realize there's nothing to fear, at long last. Vitani has been scared for so long. She might not like to admit, but Kiara knows. Kovu has told her the hardships they all had to face at Zira's paws, Vitani in particular. He'd been blind to it, at first, giving in to Zira's hate-filled rhetoric and training. But the months after the war had allowed the siblings to open up to one another, where they'd previously been emotionally standoffish.

Vitani was the one keeping their family together. Her closeness to their older brother as both of Zira's neglected children and her admittedly enforced love for Kovu was bridged by her need to do right by her mother. She amplified the admiration for her younger brother among the Outsiders, she kept her older brother in line, and, greatest of all, she was the perfect soldier. Savage and wild and bloodthirsty, eager to fight and, lucky for Zira, eager to please. Because, however small, that was the closest she would get to actual love from Zira.

A transactional, militaristic relationship.

And when at last she defied her mother, she was quickly cast aside.

Where Vitani had loved Kovu superficially, as taught by Zira, there was also the real love of being the only sibling who truly cared for him. They're twins, after all, as easy it is to forget, uniquely linked. That love was smaller, unfostered, buried away, but it was there. Her betraying Zira was what made Kovu realize there was more that needed to be talked about. How could they leave things the way they were? After they'd lost their only mother and Nuka, after not even knowing their supposedly shared father, how could they go on not truly knowing one another?

The months of healing did them well. While Vitani had been reclusive at first, there were times where she was seen with Kovu and she looked truly happy. Now, they're closer than they'd ever been, and Kovu happily recounts their visits together to Kiara.

It makes Kiara wonder: does Vitani fear being cast out again? Is that why she's been so aloof? Is she afraid that the peace is delicate, that it'll all fall apart one day and her value will be reduced to nothing once again?

Kiara will do anything to keep her from feeling that way.

An easy rumble in Vitani's throat draws her from her thoughts. She's nearly clean now, her usually unruly tuft smoothed into a funny-looking cowlick, but Kiara is reluctant to let her go.

"Something's been bugging you lately, hasn't it?"

Vitani's eyes open and, regrettably, a small amount of tension comes back to her. She's quiet for a long time, as if calculating her response.

"It's nothing you gotta worry about, Princess. I'll be fine."

Perfectly calculated, in fact. Something that says she shouldn't press or pry, even jokingly. Something Vitani wants to sort out herself. And as much as Kiara wants to help with this, to get her sleep and ease again, she has to respect it.

"Okay," Kiara settles on, "But if you want to talk, or need help in any way, you know I'm here for you, right? I always will be."

Vitani tilts her head and looks earnestly at her. Her violet eyes are soft, softer than she's ever seen them. A thumping erupts in Kiara's chest.

"Yeah. I know, Ki."

"I-I really care about you," Kiara finds herself blurting, "You're my best friend."

"What? But I thought Tiifu and Zuri were your best friends," Vitani says, surprised, "Or, Kovu? I can never keep track."

"No -- I mean, well, yes, they are -- but I can have multiple!" Kiara sputters, suddenly nervous and not knowing why. "The point is, I...I feel so close to you. I couldn't stand it if you were hurting a-and there was something I could do to help you."

The whole exchange gives Vitani pause and she's quiet for a long moment.

Then, miraculously, terrifically, magnificently, Vitani allows herself to nuzzle the side of her face into Kiara's chest.

"You're my best friend too, Kiara." Vitani smiles that lovely, crooked smile. "I...really care about you too."

It feels as though a storm cracks through her.

She's shaken, almost vibrating in her pelt. Her fur is warm, her mouth is dry -- what is this? She prays -- oh gods, she prays -- that Vitani can't hear her thunderous heartbeat. It would be awful of her to ruin this moment.

But what is it that's afflicted her?

And where did the air in her lungs go?

[blueraineshadows]

Heya! 💖

So first of all...I FUCKING LOVE YOUR STUFF!

God, you're a godsend and I really love all your writing. It's all so well written and I can't get enough of it!

So, I dunno if you take any requests, but after hearing this audio (and I think you know exactly what I mean 😏), I can't help but wonder if you'd write a short little FF of Leander and Sebastian getting really drunk or something and they hate-fuck each other, but it's a one time thing and they swear to never talk about it. 🥵

This has been stuck in my head for quite a while and I would love to read it in your style! 💖💖💖

Thank you 💖

Sorry it took a while to get round to it, and I hope this is alright. 🍆🔥🫠 Ao3 link

Sebastian Sallow x Leander Prewett NSFW 🔞

My Secret Desire - Part One

As the last of the customers in the Three Broomsticks began to filter out of the pub, Leander put down his empty mug and yawned, rubbing his face with his hand. His eyes felt blurry, and the alcohol thrummed through his veins. He wasn't usually in the habit of drinking alone, but Garreth was on a date, and Leander was hoping that the dorm would be empty when he got back, Garreth making his moves elsewhere. It was just a reminder of his own failed love life.

It was a long walk back to the castle, and he figured he might sober up on the way rather than take the Floo. As he turned from the bar and made his way to the doors, he almost walked right into someone else and came to a sudden stop, his eyes clashing with a familiar pair of scowling brown eyes. Leander's mouth twisted sourly. "Sallow," he muttered.

He was not in the mood to pick a fight with Sebastian tonight, and made to pass by him, but Sebastian grabbed at his arm, his face leering in close, the stench of whiskey on his breath as he spoke.

"Got a problem, Prewett?" He slurred.

Leander frowned, glancing down at the hand clutching his sleeve and shrugged himself free of Sebastian's grip, an odd shiver going up his back as he did so. "You're drunk, Sallow," he said. He shook his head at him. "You should head back before you get into trouble."

Sebastian narrowed his eyes. "Didn't know you cared," he mumbled. He pushed his hand through his hair, swaying a little on his feet.

Leander watched Sebastian for a moment, his head clear enough to ponder over his fellow classmate. Sebastian hadn't been the same since his twin had left school, and then he had got caught up with the new 5th year student. While the facts weren't widely known, Leander was sure they had gotten themselves into some kind of trouble. Sebastian had been bitter and mean ever since then, but grief did strange things to people, and it was well known that Sebastian's guardian had died.

With the end of 7th year fast approaching, Leander doubted he would see Sebastian again once they parted ways to begin their new lives. Why should he even care? Though, it would be odd not bickering with him in the halls or winding him up in classes. While Sebastian had become a rival of sorts, it would be odd not to see him skulking about. Dare he admit that he would miss their banter.

Leander sighed and got a hold on Sebastian's elbow. "Come on, you can walk back with me."

Sebastian grunted and yanked his arm free of Leander's grip, his cheeks flushing red as he glared at him. "Don't fucking touch me," he hissed. "I don't need your help!"

"Fine," Leander bit out. Frustration tightened his face as he stared at Sebastian, and then he shook his head again. The bloke was like an irritating itch that you couldn't reach. "Suit yourself."

The chilly night air bit into Leander's face as he walked down the cobbled street towards the main path back to Hogwarts. The sky was clear and full of stars, and Leander pulled his collar up a little, a puff of white leaving his lips as he sighed. Some people just didn't or couldn't accept help.

The path was mostly deserted, but Leander still kept a wary eye as he walked, the moonlight glittering on the lake water, the breeze ruffling through the bare trees. Spring was a long time showing its face, and he was looking forward to warmer days.

The soft sound of gravel shifting on the path behind Leander made him tilt his head. He kept moving, and he didn't look back, but his ears pricked up to listen out for more. Perhaps he should have Apparated, or used the Floo, but he was no coward, and he kept a steady pace as he walked.

The old ruin came up on his right, the broken edges of the brick appearing pale as the moonlight reflected off the dilapidated structure. The sound of feet came again from behind him, and this time Leander turned, his fingers gripping the handle of his wand. His eyes scanned the path, but there was no sign of anyone, the walkway empty, the only shadows were those of the trees as they shifted in the breeze.

As Leander turned back, movement to his right caught his eye, a shimmer of a spell hiding a figure in the grass at the edge of the path. With a quick flick of his wand, he cast to his right, hitting the glamour with a quick stun. A grunt sounded, the glamour disappeared, and a figure dressed in black fell into the grass. Leander stood for a moment, puzzled and unsure. He could have sworn... No, why would he?

Leander grit his teeth and stalked through the grass to look closer at the figure sprawled out on the ground, his wand aimed. A sigh left his lips when he saw the mop of brown hair and disgruntled face as Sebastian struggled to sit up.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Leander frowned. "Were you following me?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Prewett," Sebastian groused. He shifted to his knees and planted a boot to leverage himself up. A chuckle slipped from his lips. "Did I scare you?"

Leander rolled his eyes. "Idiot," he muttered. Again, he didn't have the inclination to deal with this crap, and he turned away.

He yelped in surprise as Sebastian grabbed his arm, pulling him roughly back around. "Don't turn your back on me," Sebastian snarled.

Leander shoved him, making him stumble, but Sebastian whipped out his wand, throwing a quick cast. The drink made him sloppy, however, and Leander blocked it with ease. They began to cast at each other, throwing spells through the chilly darkness, moving in a constant circle as they dodged and parried.

Leander was growing tired of this bullshit and was beginning to regret his slight sympathy for Sallow earlier. He threw a spell out and caught Sebastian with it, just wanting this to be over so he could return to the castle in peace. Sebastian stumbled and hit an old barrel that was lying in the grass near the old ruin. He swore as he hit the ground, rolling over with a groan.

Leander stood there, debating going over against just leaving the prick to lie there, a drunken fool. He screwed his nose up, his upbringing winning out as he sighed and marched over to help Sebastian to his feet. He held out his hand, and Sebastian stilled, staring at it.

A war of expressions washed over Sebastian's face as he stared at Leander's hand. Leander felt warmth creep up his neck, the moonlight making Sebastian's freckled face pale, his full lips parted slightly as he breathed quickly. Then, Sebastian lifted his gaze to Leander's face, his eyes glittering in the dark. He reached up and took hold of Leander's hand, a smirk twisting those full lips.

Leander swallowed, the contact felt charged, different, and he almost yanked his hand away. This was too much eye contact. It made him feel strange, hot, as though his clothes were too tight all of a sudden. Sebastian adjusted his grip, fingertips grazing slightly against Leander's wrist, and Leander actually gasped.

Sebastian's eyes widened, only slightly, but enough for Leander to notice, and his cheeks grew very warm, very quickly.

A sharp tug was all it took. Sebastian pulled at Leander's hand, and he stumbled forward, the momentum making him fall to the ground. He collided with Sebastian, both of them grunting at the impact as their legs entangled. Sebastian was as quick as a snake, grabbing hold of Leander and throwing him back into the grass, pinning him down.

"What...?" Leander gasped. But his words were cut off into a strangled, muffled groan as Sebastian's mouth pressed down viciously onto his lips.

Shocked, Leander made to shove back, his hands slapping into Sebastian's chest, but the bloke was surprisingly strong. Their mouths ripped apart as they struggled, Sebastian using his knee to pin Leander down even harder.

"Don't fight it," Sebastian growled through gritted teeth.

Something like terror shot through Leander as his skin ignited into fizzing sparks, Sebastian was writhing against him, trying to pin his arms down, and Leander was growing dizzy with shock. Not at what Sebastian was doing, but at how his body was reacting. Leander lifted his head, his eyes wide and staring as he looked down to where Sebastian's hips were mashed against his, grinding against him.

Leander groaned, the fight going out of him as his cock began to twitch and swell. "Fuck," he hissed.

Sebastian met his eyes, the intensity of that stare making Leander forget he had lungs for a moment. And then Sebastian was kissing him again, hard kisses that made Leander open his mouth and take the thrust of a hot tongue, the taste of Firewhiskey and Sebastian heady and thick.

As Sebastian moved his lips over his jaw and down to his neck, Leander sucked in a much needed breath and then moaned as Sebastian bit him, teeth grazing his flesh with a sting that made his balls ache and his cock throb.

What the fuck were they doing? Leander went still, laying in the grass as Sebastian kissed and sucked at his neck, his hips grinding against his cock. His mind screamed at him to push Sebastian off, this was crazy, it was fucked up, they hated each other. Right?

He sucked in another harsh breath as Sebastian pulled at his belt, the buckle clinking in the darkness, the buttons popping open. Leander groaned, his hips flexing as Sebastian shoved his hand deep inside his pants, fingers curling over his erection in strokes that had Leander almost choking with lust.

"Seb...Sebastian..." The words were mumbled, almost incoherent as heat pulsed between his thighs at Sebastian's firm pumps.

"That's it," Sebastian said darkly. "You want it. You want me to touch you."

Leander fisted the front of Sebastian's jumper, forcing him a little closer so he could look at him. "Why?" It was meant to be a demand, but it was a strangled plea, his throat working hard as Sebastian tormented him with clever strokes.

Sebastian smirked and chuckled, rolling his bottom lip between his teeth as he pumped his fist faster. Leander stared and groaned, his head falling back, but his eyes still locked on Sebastian. Why was this so fucking hot?

Leander gave up trying to question it, his mind spinning out as lust took over. He relaxed back into the grass, soft moans leaving him as Sebastian shifted downwards, pulling Leander's trousers with him so that the chilly night air hit his hot flesh. Leander shivered and then cried out as he felt soft, full lips take his head in a gentle suck.

Leander had to look, he had to see this, leaning up on his elbows as Sebastian took his cock deeper into his mouth, that messy mop of hair just begging to be pulled as Sebastian fucked him with his mouth. A vibration shuddered through him as Sebastian moaned, his fingers cupping Leander's balls as he spread his tongue along the shaft, swirling over the tip to gather up the seeping pre cum.

Sebastian sucked his fingers and then began to stroke Leander's hole, teasing it gently, and Leander flexed his hips, eyes closing in bliss at the way he touched him.

"Oh fuck," Leander said. He grabbed Sebastian's hair and pulled, and Sebastian almost growled, sucking him even deeper and harder. The intrusion of a finger, slow and teasing, was tipping Leander over the edge, but he didn't want it to stop. Leander's thighs trembled, his breathless moans sounding filthy to his own ears as his hips bucked, thrusting himself deeper into Sebastian's throat.

"I'm going to cum," he whimpered. Sebastian grabbed his arse cheek and squeezed, taking him deep into his throat, and Leander felt the clench, his cock throbbing in the restricted cavern of Sebastian's throat as thick pulses of cum shot blissfully from his tip, his hole clenching around Sebastian's finger.

Leander was panting, jerking with over sensitivity as Sebastian's tongue lapped at his cock. He collapsed against the ground staring up at the starlit sky. He didn't know what to expect next, but it was not having his thighs spread wider. He looked down and gasped as Sebastian bent forward, a harsh sound coming from his throat before he spat messily against Leander's arse.

Leander had never seen anything so filthy in all his life. Cum dribbled from Sebastian's lips as he worked his mouth to spit again, spraying all the release he had caught onto Leander's hole. Sebastian was already sliding his fingers through it, his smirk positively wicked. Leander was speechless, his thoughts crashing into each other as he fantasised about licking the slick from Sebastian's chin.

"You ever been fucked before, Prewett?"

Leander shook his head. "N..no..."

Sebastian chuckled. "Don't worry, mate. I'll be gentle."

Leander hissed air through his teeth as Sebastian slid a finger deep into his hole, the squelch of his own cum and Sebastian's spit making his cheeks flood with crimson. He panted, still twitching from his orgasm as Sebastian worked at him, slipping another finger in.

"You're tight, Prewett," Sebastian said. His gaze was intense, almost feral as he glared at Leander. "I can't wait to get balls deep in there. Roll over for me like a good bitch."

Leander gulped and nodded, shifting to roll over on the grass, and Sebastian pulled his hips up. Leander felt rather exposed, arse up in the air, the cold air feeling strange against his intimate parts. But as Sebastian began to thrust with his fingers again, Leander forgot about the cold, concentrating only on the feel of Sebastian, the burn, and the tingle of each delicious invasion. His cheeks burned at the degradation, it shouldn't feel this good to let Sallow call him a bitch, but it made his cock begin to twitch again, his breath come in pants.

Sebastian shifted, and Leander heard the rustle of clothing, anticipation made his tongue thick in his mouth as he felt the silken hardness of Sebastian brush against his inner thigh. He trembled as he felt the press of a thick head against his hole. A stinging slap to his arse cheek made him squeal, the sound of it loud in the night.

Sebastian edged his way into Leander's arse, a deep groan coming from his mouth that sent shivers down Leander's spine. Leander gaped at the slow, torturous push of Sebastian's cock, stretching him out. His fingers gripped at the blades of grass, his nails digging into the dirt as Sebastian pulled back and then pushed deeper.

"Fucking hell," Leander groaned. He felt his muscles contract around that thick length, and Sebastian's fingers pinched viciously at his hips.

"Such a good bitch," Sebastian muttered. He began to thrust, lazy, teasing thrusts, and Leander closed his eyes, moaning and rocking his hips at the utter bliss of it.

It didn't stay that way for long. Sebastian began to grunt and pant, his hands gripping tightly as he began to fuck harder, his skin slapping against Leander's arse, the noise erotic and loud in the open space.

Leander's eyes rolled, filthy moans leaving his own lips as his cock hardened painfully. He reached down and grasped it, wanking himself in time to Sebastian's violent pounding. His knees scraped the dirt, his mind was spinning, but he was begging, the words pouring from his lips to be fucked harder.

A quick glance back showed Sebastian's face gleaming with sweat in the moonlight, his hair damp at the edges, and in disarray. He was like an animal, his mouth open and harsh sounds coming from his throat, a gleam of saliva dripping from his lower lip. Leander squeezed his own cock and groaned, hips bucking up to meet angry thrusts as he spurted a second load out onto the grass.

As his muscles clenched and contracted, Sebastian threw his head back, a feral sound leaving his mouth as he slammed in deep, grinding himself into Leander's arse cheeks as he found his own release.

Leander shuddered at the pulse of it deep inside of him, leaning forward to press his flushed face against the coolness of the grass, the musky scent of sex mingling with the smell of dirt.

Sebastian slid from him, the heat of him disappearing to be replaced with a chill against his soaked hole. Leander rolled over, panting, stunned, hot juices squelching out onto his inner thigh.

Sebastian was sucking in his breaths, staring at Leander, a satisfied grin on his face. He clambered to his feet, fixing his clothing and pushing his hand through his hair. "You took that well, Prewett. I'm almost impressed."

"Almost," Leander muttered. He began to straighten his own clothes. His legs shook as he stood, and he grit his teeth, not wanting to stumble in front of Sebastian. His arse felt strange, violated, but also tingled with something else. Something he never expected to associate with the irritating Slytherin before him. Pleasure.

Sebastian moved close and Leander tensed. Sebastian grabbed his jaw, having to look up at Leander due to their height difference, but the look on Sebastian's face was pure dominance.

"Open your mouth and say one word about this to anyone, and I will kill you," he said bluntly. There was no humour in that look, just pure command.

"Why the fuck would I tell anyone?" Leander frowned.

Sebastian patted his cheek. "Good boy," he purred.

Leander tried to suppress the way that soft praise made his insides twist pleasantly. He nodded and turned away, fixing his hair a little as he thought about making his move to leave. This could get awkward real fast.

Sebastian chuckled in the dark behind him as he began to walk. Leander didn't look back.

"See you tomorrow, Prewett," Sebastian taunted.

Leander shivered. He wasn't sure if he was meant to be terrified or turned on. The way he was blushing told him it was both.

Part 2

[l3st1b0urn3s-707]

I'm watching all of the Studio Ghibli movies starting with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, so let's talk about it!

This film was released a year before the studio was created, but it's often considered part of its catalogue. It's based on a manga of the same name by Hayao Miyazaki, who's also its director.

It's a post-apocalyptic film about a world that's mostly covered by the toxic jungle, a poisonous forest, result of a huge war that happened on Earth arroud a thousand years before the story takes place, and it's filled with mutant insects. Nausicaä is a princess from one of the few human enclosures that still exist at the time, and she likes invesigating about the toxic jungle and its creatures. One day, an army from a neighbouring kingdom invades the Valley of the Wind, the place where she lives. They are determined to destroy the toxic jungle, and they want to use a Giant Warrior, one of the old gods that destroyed the world in the previously mentioned war, to complete this task. Nausicaä will try to free her people and stop this army from potentially ending the world.

I first watched this film in the cinema earlier this year on its 40th anniversary and I remember feeling furious throughout the whole film. Don't get me wrong, it's amazing, but seeing how this pacific people had war forced onto themselves made me feel a kind of rage that I can't really describe. It's sad because they didn't want anything to do with it. And it's also sad because it reminds me of current situations happening right now in the world, which sadly don't differ much from fiction.

The film has a clear pacifistic and ecologist message, both very common on Miyazaki's works. One thing I really like about this film is how it explains that every piece of an ecosystem is as important as the rest, even if you think it isn't helping. Humans die after breathing in the toxic jungle, but the trees that form it purify the water that people drink. If you mess it up, you'll die. Nausicaä is also a very strong heroin, guided by her ideas and her love for the people arroud her. Miyazaki's films also tend to have feminist topics.

Even if this film isn't my favourite from the studio catalogue, I think it's very, very good. It really sets the themes for future Ghibli works, specially Miyazaki's. The soundtrack is also absolutely amazing. Joe Hisaishi is one of my favourite music artists, and the songs he composed for this film are definitely some of my favourites from his works.

I usually love stories that make me feel strong feelings and make me think a lot, and this one definitely did. I think this film is super cool and beutiful and really worth watching. And it's also the kind of film that I like to rewatch over and over again. So maybe, this post will encourage someone to discover it and have fun watching it :)