you play the victim with your finger on the trigger

VESPER

Vesper takes the chair across from him and drapes his jacket over the back of it in precisely the same way Jack had, before taking a seat and leaning back, pale eyes lifting as the shutter drops inside his father’s mind and the shape of Hak Etme opens where words would have been clumsier. He lets his magic move carefully through what Jack has chosen to leave available, not prying so much as accepting the offered angle of the thing. The port assembles itself in heat and dust and broken ambition, ramshackle and hungry, and then Thalassa appears amid it all, which draws an unimpressed little sound from somewhere low in his throat. Not Colt, at least. That’s the first useful mercy of the evening, and Vesper doesn’t dress the relief up as anything nobler before letting the thought slide back behind his teeth. "Looks rough as hell. Good thing the Ark doesn't have to anchor in that mess."

When the server comes near, he glances up and nods for her to double Jack's order before his attention returns fully to his father, the question waiting there with more care in it than Vesper might have expected, though he doesn’t let surprise make anything obvious of itself. It only pulls a slow breath into his lungs as he reaches into his pocket and draws out a card, spinning it idly between his fingers while he considers the shape of the answer. Business is business. Wanting something to sting less has never made it worth less, and he’s Jack’s son in enough ways to know better than to mistake pain for principle or to let a particular sort of soreness in his chest ruin a good business deal.

So, Vesper exhales smoothly, lips pursing for a moment before he gives his head a slight shake. "Sounds like a smart play," he says at last, dry and even, the card flashing once between his fingers. For both of you sits beneath it, unspoken but not hidden, close enough to the surface that Jack can have it if he wants it while Vesper’s shields remain lowered by that same careful fraction. His expression barely changes around the thought, though his gaze holds steady across the table, cool and pale and not quite indifferent enough to be believed. "Let me know if you need anythin' done."

And it's all my fault that I'm still the one you want
So what are you after? Some kind of disaster?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

"Mm, apparently it's still bein' worked on, so we'll see how it looks come Flowerbirth." But Jack hasn't got high hopes given how welcoming the flora, fauna and Thalassas are, though he fully accepts the fact that he might have been the exception to the rule when it comes to that sort of thing. (Not many people roll out the welcome wagon for Jack Barclay).

He pauses only long enough for the server to approach to set two glasses of whiskey down before them, Jack frosting the glasses with a flick of his fingers before lifting his own to his lips. "Mm, it is," he agrees of the smart play, though his blue eyes are curious as he regards the young demigod across from him, the way his indifference threatens to choke him with the insincerity of it.

"Let me know if you want me to need anythin' done," he fires back, raising his glass in a half toast. "You're wearin' nonchalance like shirt that's too big. She still under your skin after all these seasons?"

you are a quiet god
and your hunger is cavernous

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

VESPER

Vesper’s eyebrows lift a fraction because whatever Hak Etme is meant to become by Flowerbirth, the version he’s seen through his father’s eyes looks like it needs more than time and optimism to make it habitable. "Looks like it needs a divine helpin’ hand," he says, short exhale brushing almost into a laugh before he shakes his head. "I’ve been up there when it ain’t Deepfrost, and—" Whatever precise assessment waits at the end of that sentence isn’t worth the effort of polishing. The desert had been brutal enough in the comparative cold; the thought of it under full heat makes him exhale again, quiet and flat, as if the air alone can finish the insult for him.

He nods his thanks when Jack frosts the glasses, the card between his fingers disappearing with a clean flick before his hand closes around the whiskey instead. The cold bites nicely against his palm at first, sharp enough to give his attention somewhere to settle, and he has just lifted the glass when Jack opens him up as neatly as any knife.

His first reaction is not pretty, with his shadows shifting, drawing in around his chair in a low, restless sweep as Vesper straightens, pale eyes sharpening across the table. There’s an answer waiting on his tongue, something narrow and cruel enough to leave a mark if he lets it loose, but the shape of it catches against his teeth before it gets any farther. That alone says enough, and as Vesper forces out a slow breath, his shadows ease back by degrees until he's settled back into his chair again, though his fingers stay wrapped around the glass until the frost begins to burn cold into his skin. He watches Jack over the rim of it, expression composed now in the deliberate way that admits, if only by omission, how recently it hadn’t been.

"Ain’t much else to do with it," he says of the nonchalance, and tips the whiskey to his lips for a swallow generous enough to sting. The glass returns to the table, though his hand doesn’t quite leave it. "I keep expectin’ her to channel me outta the blue," he adds, voice lower now, stripped of the sharper edges without being softened. "She’s done it before." His mouth tightens faintly, not enough to become a smile. "And I can’t figure out if I’m hopin’ she will, or that she won’t."

Because if Colt pulls him through the bond again, at least the waiting stops. At least the thing fraying between them is no longer only his to hold, no longer something he has to carry around with all that careful indifference while it cuts deeper than it has any right to. But if she does channel him, then there she’ll be, immediate and real and close enough to make all his careful distance useless. And if she doesn’t, there’s no mercy in that either. It only means she has already set it down, and he’s the fool still standing there with his hands full.

And it's all my fault that I'm still the one you want
So what are you after? Some kind of disaster?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

Thoughts about Hak Etme and whatever divine assistance it might need vanish from Jack's mind the moment Vesper's shadows spring to his defence, the Captain watching them with neat precision and a healthy dose of respect. He's trained enough times with Vesper now to know that even warning shots can still flay you to the bone; he knows, because he'd had a hand in teaching him as much.

His eyebrows raise over his glass as he lifts it slowly to his lips, asking a dozen silent questions and expecting no answers, but when the boy decides against cheap shots and easy insults, he swallows his sip of whiskey and sets the drink back down to listen instead. And at the mention of channelling, Jack's lip curls in distaste. He'd never considered that element of it, that Colt could decide at least once a season to bring Vesper unwillingly back into her life - not just to see him, but to put him to work - and though it might only be for a few seconds, that's still long enough to bruise.

"You still got shit left unsaid between you?" It's phrased as a question, though in reality it's nothing of the sort - the distance between them is screaming loud enough to be heard from Hak Etme down to King's End, and Jack sighs. "Would it be easier if I gave you opportunities to be in her way on purpose? Or to tell her that channellin' you has consequences?" He doesn't know what kind yet because he hasn't fully considered it, but Jack happens to be very creative when it comes to that sort of thing.

you are a quiet god
and your hunger is cavernous

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

VESPER

Vesper’s eyebrow lifts, exasperation cutting cleanly through the careful arrangement of his face before he exhales a huff and lets his gaze drop to the whiskey between his fingers. Dropping his shields a measured fraction that Jack might be able to catch the proper shape of his thoughts rather than just the texture of them, he sighs. How could there not be, when I couldn’t ever tell her the real reason it wasn’t ever gonna work? The thought comes through with more shape than sound, edged in the private bitterness of a truth that’s had too long to sharpen itself. When I couldn’t tell her why I ended shit the way I did?

He shakes his head, indecision flickering through the motion before he buries it beneath a shrug that doesn’t quite convince either of them. "It ain’t like I actually don’t give a shit about her," he says aloud, the words rougher for being plain, "even if that’s the impression I left. So if I start showin’ up on errands from you, imagine what that’ll sound like." He drinks again, letting the whiskey do what composure can’t without looking like it’s trying too hard. Colt would hold her tongue if she saw him, probably. She had pride enough for silence and teeth enough to make it convincing, but thoughts were another matter, and gods, Vesper knows better than most that she’d still have a stampede of them, sharp-hooved and furious, whether she let a single word loose or not.

As for channelling, his head gives another uncertain shake, slower this time. "Well," he says, eyes fixed briefly on the frost at the edge of his glass, "guess it ain’t like I’m the only demigod she could call on if she needed help." His expression sours before he can stop it, mouth tightening into something close to a sneer as the thought turns traitor beneath his skin. She had the likes of Sunjata to help with her tasks, help with the things beneath her sheets and whatever else she'd once called on him for. He has no right to resent it, which does absolutely nothing to keep the resentment from moving through him anyway, quick and ugly and jealous as a knife slipped between ribs. "Maybe that's why she ain't called." Which, if it was the case, also meant that his pining and his bullshit was so much piss in the breeze, anyway.

And it's all my fault that I'm still the one you want
So what are you after? Some kind of disaster?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

There's no flicker in Jack's expression as Vesper's mental voice reaches out to him, the Captain quietly running a finger across the condensation beading around his glass, but when he responds in kind, his voice is perhaps uncharacteristically warm. An' you think there'd be less to say between you if you did tell her? he ventures, raising his glass now as if to watch the light stream through the amber liquid. I thought the point of you endin' shit the way you did was that there'd be no reason to tell her why. You know, because it would have ended.

Vesper makes a good point about the errands and so Jack leaves that thread alone without tugging it any further. If things change he can make it so that those circumstances also change, but for now his association with Colt and her potentially lucrative Dreamdust shipments will continue without the young demigod's involvement. The channelling, though, that's different.

"No," Jack agrees, "you ain't. An' if she ain't callin' you, that means what you chose to do worked an' she's movin' on." Which, hate it though Vesper might, was the whole point. "Have you considered doin' the same?"

you are a quiet god
and your hunger is cavernous

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

VESPER

Vesper isn’t nearly so good as Jack was at looking elsewhere while the real conversation happens underneath. His attention drops to the table almost at once, a small sound leaving him through his nose as his head tilts. It bein’ a terrible idea don’t make it any less unsaid between us, he sends back, the thought quieter than the words would’ve been aloud and no cleaner for it. There’s no argument in him that telling Colt would fix anything, no convenient belief that honesty would have made a better ending out of what had always been doomed to tear somewhere. The reasons haven’t changed. Her reaction, if she knew the truth of it, would be catastrophic in exactly the ways he’d counted on when he’d kept it from her. None of that makes the words any lighter where they sit, still heavy across his back, still waiting for a mouth he has no intention of giving them.

When he lifts his eyes again, the look he gives Jack is sharp enough to be unfair and informed enough that it knows it. "Right," he says, voice low, the drawl dragging rough over the edge of it. " 'Cause that’s so fuckin’ easy to do?" His eyebrow rises with the question, and though he doesn’t put the rest into words, it isn’t subtle. Not with Jack sitting across from him, not with the long shadow of the Captain's own wreckage behind him, not when moving on has never looked simple from either side of the bloodline.

Vesper lets the barb hang there for less than a breath before the edge of it catches up with him. His mouth tightens, and an apologetic sigh leaves him as he reaches for his glass again, taking another hard swallow of whiskey and hissing softly around the burn as it goes down.

And it's all my fault that I'm still the one you want
So what are you after? Some kind of disaster?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

Taking a slow and considered sip of his drink, Jack is careful not to react in a way that might pour more fuel on the fire he knows he's just stoked in Vesper, doing little more than glancing across the table at him to hold his gaze. "I didn't realise she was such a deep splinter in your palm," he says, the edge of something - the cousin of apologetic - in his tone as he sets his glass back down.

But Vesper is already backtracking, blunting the edge of his words and his mood with whiskey, and Jack slouches back in his seat to consider the bar around them while his thoughts and the vast bulk of his interest remains on the demigod opposite. "It'd be messy but you could backtrack, if that's what you wanted. Try'n fix shit with her. Commit to the terrible idea."

Sure, telling her might confirm all of the monsters Vesper has made in his head about her reactions. But if it does, then he's free to leave having set that fire with nothing left unsaid, and if it doesn't... well, then it doesn't. "I ain't gonna tell you what to do - you only gotta look at my last few seasons to know one way shit like this could end. But Colt ain't Flora and you ain't me."

you are a quiet god
and your hunger is cavernous

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

VESPER

Vesper raises his eyebrows and says nothing, which is perhaps the closest he can get to agreeing without handing the thing over where Jack can see all its teeth. The expression carries a touch of petulance, badly hidden and badly timed, though mostly it’s there to hold something older in place; because yes, Colt is a splinter in his palm, and beneath that she’s the whole ache of a hand that still wants to close around something it knows better than to reach for.

He waves Jack’s suggestion away at first, the motion loose and dismissive, as if trying again is no more substantial than dust lifted off the table. His head has already started to shake when the Captain keeps speaking, and that’s what stops him, not because the comparison is wrong but because it isn’t clean enough to be useful. Colt isn’t Flora, no, and Vesper isn’t Jack, but that doesn’t tell him whether the odds are any kinder for being arranged in a different shape. Jack must have been a different man around Flora than he is around anyone else, or perhaps only a less defended one, and Vesper can’t decide whether that makes the comparison weaker or worse.

The questions gather without finding anywhere sensible to go. Is he better than Jack at this, or worse? Is Colt more likely than Flora to understand, or only likely to be wounded in different places? Does telling someone that telepathy has sat between every touch, every argument, every shared bed and private thought make the truth easier to bear just because the person hearing it isn’t the same woman who broke Jack open? There’s no neat answer, only the ugly, restless buzz of it filling the upper layer of Vesper’s mind where his lowered shields leave enough room for Jack to feel the shape of his indecision.

At last Vesper shrugs, the motion small and a little defeated, his fingers tightening once around the chilled glass before he loosens them again. "Seems like movin’ on ended up bein’ way better for you than tryin’ again," he says with a sigh.

And it's all my fault that I'm still the one you want
So what are you after? Some kind of disaster?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

Shame we can only read minds and not the future. Jack's mental voice cuts smoothly through the tangle of indecision and questions that tie knots in Vesper's already muddled thoughts, his lips twitching into a quick smile that he covers by shooting back the rest of his drink, setting the empty glass aside. "We had quite a similar conversation to this 'bout a year ago, if you remember. Just after you did what you did to end shit with Colt."

He doesn't say it to brandish it in Vesper's face, to tread the same ground like a weapon; on the contrary, in fact. "It's been seasons since then an' you ain't done much movin' on," he points out. "So however it ended up for me, maybe shit's meant to be different for you."

Either maybe Vesper isn't interested in moving on, or he just isn't as finished with Colt as he keeps trying to be. "I reckon it is, actually," he says suddenly, raising a hand for another round whether or not the demigod is finished with his first drink. Meant to be different, I mean. Your mother's a goddess, for a start, and your sisters know what you can do. And it goes without saying, too, that Jack did not have a more experienced telepath to rely upon when he was trying to figure out the dos and don'ts of his magic in relation to other people.

"Guess what I'm tryin' to say that if it goes tits up - with Colt or with anyone else - it ain't gonna break what you already got goin' for you." He shrugs.

you are a quiet god
and your hunger is cavernous

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

VESPER

Vesper huffs out a dry sound that comes close enough to agreement to save him from having to say it aloud, because if either of them could read the future, half the damage in their lives would’ve been cleaner or else twice as ugly for having been seen coming, but undoubtably they'd both have preferred to know about it one way or another. 

At the mention of that conversation aboard The Ark, one brow lifts. He remembers it well enough such that his first instinct is to reach for a metaphorical calendar and start counting how many days Jack had spent sour over Flora, just to see how the numbers compare, but the thought doesn’t get far before Jack’s words take a different shape than the one Vesper had braced for, such that he goes quiet instead, because Jack is right, damn him, or close enough to it that arguing would only make Vesper look like he’s got less sense than pride. His education in telepathy has been easier by every measure that matters, no matter how ugly parts of it have been, and he hasn’t had to build every wall alone in the dark with nothing but hunger and fear to teach him where the locks should go.

Maybe it isn’t as sink or swim for him, then. Maybe if it goes badly with Colt, it won’t tear through the rest of his life the way Jack and Flora had torn through each other’s. But maybe is a miserable little word, in the end, for how much help it is.

Vesper lifts his whiskey and drains what’s left of it, setting the empty glass near the edge for the server to collect whenever the next round arrives. Leaning forward as if he means to lower his voice, he doesn’t speak aloud at all, his pale eyes cutting back to Jack with more left open in them than he usually permits. I just… I dunno how to tell if it’s worth it. His jaw feathers once as he gives his head a small shake, the thought coming through clearer than he’d like and less polished than he’d manage with his mouth. For as much as this shit’s still on my mind, it’s nothin’ compared to what it’d feel like talkin’ to her again and havin’ it go bad. Sure, maybe it wouldn’t, but I’m not sure the odds are good enough to risk havin’ it feel like that all fresh again.

In short, I'm tired grandpa and this shit hurts.

And it's all my fault that I'm still the one you want
So what are you after? Some kind of disaster?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

Jack lets Vesper take his time chewing over what he's said, the Captain drumming out a slow beat on the edge of the table with his finger. His gaze casts a line across the tavern again as if to make a show of checking they haven't gotten more attention than intended, even if he already knows the truth of it from his magic. They are flying just as under the radar as every other suspicious type here, and the fact that it's so early means most of the troublemakers are still sleeping off last night's bad decisions.

Only when Vesper sets down his empty glass and leans forward a bit does Jack bring his attention back, his fingers ending their steady rhythm to give space for words, however unspoken they are. It was worth it when I did it, he says, able to say as much now when he'd been unable to the last time they spoke. Else I wouldn't have kept on chasin' it. Wouldn't have been the one left waitin' up in Stormbreak for somethin' that wasn't comin' back. Wouldn't have gone to Rae about The Ark.

But again, Vesper isn't Jack. It's with that in mind that he inhales a slow breath and lets it out again, leaning back in his chair.

Want me to do it for you? he offers. I ain't gonna promise it'll go well, but at least it won't be you holdin' a lit firework for that knee-jerk reaction.

you are a quiet god
and your hunger is cavernous

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

VESPER

Whatever Vesper had expected Jack to send back across the narrow space between their minds, it wasn't that. His brows lift before he can stop them, surprise cutting too cleanly through his expression to be mistaken for anything else, and he turns it into a cough a heartbeat later, knuckles brushing briefly against his mouth as if the whiskey has caught wrong in his throat. No one is looking their way, he knows that well enough, and Jack knows it better, but the habit remains useful.

For all the vitriol Jack has always carried around Flora, Vesper had assumed the lesson sitting at the centre of it was regret. Not just pain, not just anger, but the kind of backwards-looking certainty that says he should’ve done it differently, should’ve left sooner, should’ve kept his mouth shut, should’ve spared himself the pleasure of being known if the cost was going to be that high. Hearing otherwise sits strangely beneath Vesper’s ribs, not soft enough to comfort and not sharp enough to reject. He bites at the inside of his cheek, still too caught on it to form anything worth sending back, and when the server arrives with the second round, he reaches for his glass with fingers just a little too quick to make the distraction look casual, but it gives him something clean to hold while the rest of him tries to work around the shape of what Jack has offered.

His eyes stay on the whiskey for another moment, though surprise sparks bright through the thoughts he hasn’t quite drawn fully behind his shields. When he finally glances across the table, the look he gives Jack is careful, edged with disbelief and something almost amused despite the subject of it. What, you’d go say, hey, so my kid’s a telepath, that’s why he broke up with you, try to keep your mouth shut about it?

And it's all my fault that I'm still the one you want
So what are you after? Some kind of disaster?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!