Bad Timing

Post your RP stories/character descriptions/other cool stuff here!

Moderator: Guild Officer

User avatar
Fells
Posts: 831
Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 10:16 am
Location: Keno

Re: Bad Timing

Postby Fells » Tue Jul 24, 2012 11:52 am

Image



It’d been two full days since the storm. Two days since she’d seen him at all, despite searching for him when she had to go below on Vane’s errands and looking up hopefully every time somebody came abovedecks. Zeve tended not to loiter around the others on a normal day, but she’d hoped so badly to have a chance to bump into him. Two long, dragging days her patience lasted. The third found her going belowdecks without the captain’s direction. Two days was too damn long.

Fells ducked into the crew’s regular quarters, eyeing the limp hammocks and carefully stowed cargo lining the walls. Besides finding Zeve, she had to keep her guard up in general. Cut-Up had been lying low, and Fells didn’t need to keep an eye out for him so much as a nose. Even amongst the crew, he seemed to take a singular glee in his filthiness. There was neither sight nor scent of him, though. Really, he hadn’t gone out of his way to be a threat since cornering her in the hold. He could be busy, or wary of harming the captain’s gopher. He could just be watching.

Fells shuddered to shake off her worries and nodded a quick hello to two of the crew who shouldered past her. She caught sight of him once they’d moved away. Zeve was far aft, tucked near the end of the row of hammocks where the hull sloped up towards the deck above. Zeve laid with his head tilted back and seemed to stare at nothing at all. One of his hands rested on the scabbard of the sword that was strapped to his waist.

One of the few benefits of being tossed back into her older self was that it wasn’t that difficult to watch him from behind a wooden pillar a hammock away. She wouldn’t get attached here. She wouldn’t. He wasn’t her Botch, the older one who smirked and called her Miss. This was a completely different person. She just had to remind herself of that and focus elsewhere, like on the sword he lightly drummed his fingers against. He’d never mentioned it.

She likely crept too close not to be unnerving when she made her presence known. “Are y’always down here?”

Zeve started out of his daze, grip tightening on the sword’s hilt. He relaxed when he saw that it was only Kendel Brackwell who stood over him. “Don’t rightly have elsewhere to be.” To his credit, he sounded more composed than he looked. “Night shift starts at nine bells.”

Night shift. He’d swapped shifts. No wonder she hadn’t seen him. Fells wrinkled her nose. “Smells like crotch and socks down here. Could be elsewhere what don’ stink.” Fells motioned over him to the sword. “Ain’t one’a the crew’s issue, issit.”

Zeve frowned, looking between her and the sword. “Captain tell you to ask that?”

“Didn’.” She cocked her head. There was definitely something up. “Why’re ya twitchy onnit?”

Her Botch loved her curious, nosy needling, even when it wrung answers from him almost against his will. She was very right: this was not her Botch, and his frown was severe. “What’s it you want.”

“I don’ want nothin’.” She itched to press the matter with a kiss or caress or joke at the worgen curse’s expense. “Truelike. Promise I won’ talk onnit, even?” Just as she would have back before the farm fell, she drew an X over her heart with all the solemnity she could muster.

“It’s mine,” he grunted. “Didn’t steal it, but it’s mine. And of course I’m twitchy. Not all of us sleep with the captain, figure.”

Fells went scarlet and almost barked a rebuttal before choking her indignation down, leaving her coughing into her fist. Right. The cabin boy was absolutely sleeping in the captain’s greatroom cabin. Not…not that other…no. No, just no. “S’nice, s’all,” she recovered, “nicer’n I ‘xpect outta folk like this.” She’d never seen it at home, so at some point he had to lose it, and it was clearly important to him. “Didja have it when y’came aboard?”

“Sure. This and a shirt, pants, and shoes too.” He slowly returned his attention to the ceiling. He was slighter than her Botch. With the information he’d given her about his time on the Card, this Zeve couldn’t have been gone from Gilneas for more than a year. His appearance was less that of a ruddy Gilnean boy and more of a young man gone too long without a good meal and regular sleep.

He was just another pirate. Just another pirate who made her chest ache when she thought about it too much. “Fergot unders an’ socks. Innerestin’ place y’come from.” Not that he would talk about that, if she guessed right. Without missing a beat she asked, “What was ya repeatin’ innat storm?”

Zeve smirked. It was her smirk, the one he gave when she’d been clever at his expense but appreciated it and loved her for it anyway. His hand fell away from the sword. “Never did explain why you came up after me.”

She’d respond as soon as she made sure that she was still composed. One smirk, and she’d nearly come undone. “Ayeh, but I asked first.”

“Already got two answers out of me, too. Three for you an’ none for me donesn’t seem any kind of fair.”

“World ain’t fair, ser.” She nudged his hammock, setting him swaying an inch more than the ship’s rocking already did. “C’mon, y’was sayin’…?”

Zeve shrugged and closed his eyes, silently enjoying the little bit of extra swing she’d given him. Hadn’t they talked about hanging a tire swing for the littles from her tree back home? She sucked in a brief breath. No, she couldn’t think about them for long at all. “R’peated it,” she prompted, nudging him swinging again. “Kinda like chantin’, only not. Like y'was tryin' t'summon up a worse storm'n we a'ready had. Coulda scuttled us."

“Oh, mayhap I was.” It was no proper answer to her question because, in this world or any other, he was still a stubborn ass. She couldn’t help grinning. “Yer holdin’ out on me.”

“Rightly unfair of me, isn’t it?” He opened his eyes and grinned right back.

He wasn’t walled up or suspicious. He was playing. Fells wanted so badly to know his side of the game and it showed. Well, something showed, and it was safest to assume it was curiosity. “Damn near cruel, c’mon! Were right there ‘side ya.”

“You were right there, aye. I’m pondering the why of that. Middle of a storm, why climb up into it?”

“Well. Mean.” Fells shifted where she stood. “Had ta…tell ya that there’s a storm comin’?”

“Knew there was.” Zeve’s voice went quiet. “Saw it coming and waited for it. Why’d you…” He blinked then sat up in his hammock, looking intently at her. “…was it…was it yours, too?”

She was certain that her heart skipped a beat. Was it what, her storm? He was hers. Or he would be. Another one of him would be. Fells dropped her voice. “Wassit my…?”

Zeve swallowed. His chin twitched, and he rubbed at his jaw to keep the corners of his mouth from betraying him. “Your first time. On the…decks, the…Bloodsails, I mean.”

Her first kill. Fells scrambled to take time shifts into consideration. If this version of herself had already left Elwynn… She dropped her gaze and shook her head mutely. No. She might be scrawny and too young, but no. They wouldn’t have been her first.

“Oh.” Confusion was clear in his voice and he leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees with his hands hanging loosely between them. “Why’d you come up, then?”

She swallowed hard and brought her gaze to his hesitantly. “Thoughtcha might git hurt. An’ I wanted t’see” what he’d meant when he’d told her about “how the storm was.”

A facsimile of Zeve’s smirk returned. “So, just crazy, then.”

She shrugged. “Been called worse. Y’weren’ up there ‘cause yer addled, though.”

“No. Don’t think I am, anyright.” He rubbed his face, then leaned our of his hammock to look down the length of the berth deck. For all intents and purposes, they were still alone. “Was seeing what would happen,” he said once he sat back. “If I’d stay up or fall…whichever. Tied myself to the nest, but I figured if I fell, mayhap…”

Mayhap he would have been flung into the ocean or splattered against the deck. “Gittin’ t’ya, ain’t it. The fellas.”

Zeve rubbed his nose just as he did at home when he was trying to hide his expression. As always, he failed. “I’m… M’not a coward. I’m not.” His tone and gaze both sharpened. “Mayhap I’m not a regular killer like some folks, but I’m not a coward.”

There were many things she would call her Botch. “Coward” didn’t come close to making the list. “It ain’t cowardly t’not wanna do whatcha did. Mean, still gits ta me. But…” She gestured to their surroundings, the trappings of piracy lashed down to every solid surface.

Zeve shook his head slowly, then with more vehemence. He dropped back into his hammock all at once. Fingers gripped the pommel until his knuckles were white. “Go away. Just go, alright?”

Maybe he didn’t want comfort from the cabin boy. Maybe he didn’t want to be told that it was all right to take two lives in cold blood, preservation, or some combination of the two. “Alright, ser,” Fells murmured. As an afterthought, she gave his hammock a gentle push before dragging her feet back abovedeck.

At home, she would have fretted herself sick. Here, well…they were trapped on a ship together. He knew where she’d be at almost any hour, and she knew he was safe. He’d talk to her again. It’d be fine. It had to be.
Image


Return to “Roleplay”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 50 guests