bottom line, we made it out the first time still in love and half alive
The Ark feels the subtle shift of Jack's weight in the cabin, the quiet pause at the door, the measured tread of his boots crossing her deck. She is bent over one knee, unlacing her new boots when that awareness moves through her, and by the time he reaches the bow she has slipped free of them and risen barefoot to face him. There is no turning away, no dramatics, no withholding of her gaze or leaping off the side of the ship as if to reprimand him for the time it took him to cool off. When he comes to stand beside her, he'll find her already watching him, red hair lifting in the wind behind her.
As he speaks of the tailor, she listens without interrupting, though at first she is not certain why the man matters. The trembling hands, the stuttering voice, the fevered pulse in his thoughts, all of that feels distant compared to the fire that had ignited in her own belly. She follows Jack’s explanation carefully, weighing it as she might the balance of wind against sail. The tailor had felt like that, he says. The heat. The wanting. The sharp impossibility of having what he desired. She turns the comparison over in her mind. It is new information that what she'd felt and what she'd forced into the tailor was the same, yes, but not quite the revelation he seems to intend. Unless he means to say that what she felt had been one-sided—that he had only provoked it in her without burning in return the way she'd done in the shop—she cannot see the equivalence fully.
Still, she inclines her head in acknowledgment, accepting the shape of what he offers even if its depth eludes her. "Of course he couldn't have it," she answers. Her bare toes curl slightly against her own boards as she studies his face, not wounded and not defensive, but intent, searching for the part of this that explains the hollow place the heat left behind and why Jack seemed so reluctant to explain it to her.
As he speaks of the tailor, she listens without interrupting, though at first she is not certain why the man matters. The trembling hands, the stuttering voice, the fevered pulse in his thoughts, all of that feels distant compared to the fire that had ignited in her own belly. She follows Jack’s explanation carefully, weighing it as she might the balance of wind against sail. The tailor had felt like that, he says. The heat. The wanting. The sharp impossibility of having what he desired. She turns the comparison over in her mind. It is new information that what she'd felt and what she'd forced into the tailor was the same, yes, but not quite the revelation he seems to intend. Unless he means to say that what she felt had been one-sided—that he had only provoked it in her without burning in return the way she'd done in the shop—she cannot see the equivalence fully.
Still, she inclines her head in acknowledgment, accepting the shape of what he offers even if its depth eludes her. "Of course he couldn't have it," she answers. Her bare toes curl slightly against her own boards as she studies his face, not wounded and not defensive, but intent, searching for the part of this that explains the hollow place the heat left behind and why Jack seemed so reluctant to explain it to her.
we didn't die, but no guarantees this time, but fuck it lets do it again
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
