[SE] walk right in the sight of a gun

JACK

It's a gift that, for once, Jack accepts without it feeling loaded with expectation; whether or not it's because it's reciprocation for something he'd done rather than freely presented, he relaxes into the calm of Flora's thoughts in a way that's so familiar as to be painful. Like diving into a still pool, the near silent calm of this little slice of peace smooths across the still rough edges of his magic, and it shows in the subtle release of tension in his back and shoulders, in the way his steps are just that little easier.

He glances over his shoulder as if expecting her to decline purely out of the audacity of his asking, and Flora's acceptance is as surprising to Jack as it is to the Doubletake. Nevertheless, he inclines his head and waits for her to fall into step beside him before they're setting off towards another too-familiar spot. If nothing else, at least the searing morning heat should distract them, Jack instinctively turning his head away from the beaming sunshine that cuts through the side of his sunglasses and into his eyes.

"Mm?" He glances to Flora automatically as she questions the thing with the rope, Jack scoffing despite himself. "You mean a rope coil?" he asks. "Easier to show you than to describe it. Y'want me to get Bassian to drop by and..." Jack pauses, as if catching himself, and bites at the inside of his cheek. "I was gonna say show you the ropes, but I ain't walkin' into that one."

Ducking into the shade of the little eatery, it's instinct that takes Jack to the table they've always used, tucked into the corner with a full view of the boardwalk; perfect for people watching and listening in.

sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Flora

Flora’s eyes lift dramatically toward the cloudless sky as Jack carefully sidesteps his own joke, her groan entirely theatrical, though she can’t quite hide the flash of real warmth in the amused curl of her lips. "Gods," she sighs playfully. "You’re telling dad jokes now?" She throws him a bright sidelong glance, her laughter lingering softly at the corners of her mouth. "But seriously, yeah—send Bassian my way. Promise not to wind him up too much before sending him back to you."

Stepping inside the little eatery is as natural as breathing, Flora sliding her sunglasses up onto her head as her eyes adjust easily to the softer, shaded interior. Without a second thought, her feet guide her to their usual booth in the corner, well-worn by countless breakfasts before this one. She slides comfortably onto the bench, one leg folding beneath her as she leans casually against the wall. Her order is quick and familiar—a smoothie thick with tropical fruit and a plate of toast absolutely drenched in butter and jam, the way she likes it.

Toying idly with the napkin in front of her, she searches for safe ground. "Oh—I finished my quest for Safrin," she says after a beat, casting a cautious, curious glance up at Jack. "The Sugartide can fly with two people now. I haven't actually flown with anyone yet, but I also haven’t crashed her yet, either, so there’s that."

I trace the evidence, make it make some sense
why the wound is still bleedin'

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

"It ain't a joke - let alone a dad joke - if I didn't know I was gonna say it until I started talkin'," Jack objects, sidling onto his bench on the other side of the table. "An' you say that, but he'll be plenty wound up 'fore he even gets to you, once he knows where he's goin'," he says, rolling his eyes behind sunglasses that he absolutely opts to keep on, given the way even the softer light threatens to sear through his skull if he's not careful.

Like the Doubletake, Jack's order is quick, though familiar only for bad days (i.e. days after migraines, hangovers, or on occasions like this) - a pot of black coffee and enough sugar to appease Ludo itself, a plate of bacon so crisp he can snap it between his fingers, and a bowl of diced mango.

"Yeah?" he says of her quest for Safrin. "Congratulations. You christened her yet? And by that I mean the whole smashin' a bottle of champagne against her bow an' whatnot." Not the other way. That's between Flora and whatever wet blanket she comes on to, these days. "You seem real keen to try'n crash into me," he hazards, not bothering to hide his smirk. "One day we ain't gonna see you an' it'll be a bad time for everyone."

sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Flora

Flora’s brows arch, her skeptical expression both teasing and playfully doubtful. "If you’re accidentally making dad jokes, then sorry—you’re just implicitly a dad now. I don’t make the rules." Her smile curls a little sharper as she says it, though her eyes are still laughing softly, quiet amusement brightening their depths even as her voice settles back into a gentler, easy rhythm.

Her thoughts soften as they brush across Bassian’s name—warm, bright, the sort of fondness usually reserved for a particularly energetic dog. "Well," she hums, tapping her fingertips lightly on the table, "maybe I’ll just have to tucker him out, then. You know—make sure he hits his helpfulness quota before I send him back." There’s a suggestive edge to the words that dissipates immediately; Flora sleeping with Bassian is about as likely as Jack joining a knitting circle, and they both know it. Still, the image is enough to draw a smirk to her lips.

The conversation floats forward, comfortably mundane. Flora wrinkles her nose at the idea of champagne sacrificed on the altar of good luck, her expression caught somewhere between amused and genuinely horrified. "Do people actually do that?" She shakes her head, hair slipping over her shoulder. "Listen, as a bar owner—former bar owner—that’s just wasteful. Feels more like a bad omen to me." And if there’s the faintest hint of fondness in her voice, of familiarity that slips past her careful walls, well...it’s probably just habit.

"And anyway," she continues breezily, leaning forward just enough to catch the sparkle of sunlight filtering through the restaurant window, "I was just making sure the crew’s still on their toes. Since I’m not on board to do it myself." It’s teasing, more affectionate than she intended, and her heart twists slightly at how easily the banter slips out. Flora clears her throat, trying to ignore the soft pang that echoes through her.

"You’re not wrong, though," she adds, a sly brightness back in her voice. "My next step’s definitely making the Sugar Tide invisible."

I trace the evidence, make it make some sense
why the wound is still bleedin'

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

"That so? I'll let the Marins know - I bet they'll be thrilled." One of them definitely would be at least - and Nova probably would have laughed at his joke, which Jack still isn't sure would make things better or worse. Still, he rewards her sly amusement with a flat look that she'll be all too used to, though luckily for them both, her thoughts soften to affection right at the time his pot of coffee arrives, Jack reaching for his cup on autopilot.

"Yeah? You gonna have him swab your deck, huh?" He hums with a filthy smirk, evidently more than used to this banter when it comes to Bassian. Both of them know it would never happen, and especially not now - where Flora had once been able to successfully fluster the big sailor with merely a look, now his affection for her is almost familial. Besides, he'd be too shit scared of the repercussions for fucking his captain's ex.

As for ships and their omens and traditions, Jack - stirring at least three times the sane amount of sugar into his coffee - stares at Flora indignantly. "Of course people actually do that. How else you gonna appease the sea gods?" he wants to know. "You leave an offerin' for Ludo, Frey an' Safrin, you christen your ship and you announce her name." Duh, Flora.

Sobering a little as the conversation turns to whatever shenanigans she pulls with his crew, Jack conjures a tiny breeze over his cup to cool the liquid down, shaking his head with wry acceptance. "Invisible? On your head be it. Crew's good, but they ain't that good."

sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Flora

Flora wrinkles her nose delicately, eyes narrowing playfully as Jack brings up the Marins. The memory of her recent party flickers in vivid, chaotic flashes—one of Jack’s kids pulling Mateo toward a convenient closet, another being thoroughly tasted by Kaisel up against the bar. Weird didn’t begin to cover hearing Jack reference them as his children; the juxtaposition was dizzying. She keeps those particular thoughts carefully submerged beneath the surface, wary of disrupting the fragile peace they’ve managed to cobble together out of popsicles and sunshine.

Instead, she focuses on Bassian, because it’s infinitely safer—and far easier—to laugh warmly at the familiar sailor’s expense. Flora’s brows bounce suggestively, her voice a velvety purr of scandalous mischief. "Oh, absolutely," she agrees with exaggerated emphasis. "He'll be expected to swab it thoroughly. No inch left untouched." Her grin curls sharper, utterly feline as she holds Jack’s gaze, the playful challenge glittering bright in her eyes.

Huffing softly at Jack’s very sensible (and infuriatingly accurate) explanation, Flora leans back slightly with an air of melodramatic resignation. "Fine, fine," she sighs, though her lips twitch with reluctant amusement. "I’m sure I can scare up something worth sacrificing. Gods forbid I make sailing even harder than it has to be."

Jack’s final quip has her gaze flickering briefly down to the mageglass rings adorning his hands, her expression shifting just enough to reveal the sly twist of her thoughts. She smirks, a silent ripple of mischief passing seamlessly from her mind to his, soft enough to remain hidden beneath the quiet murmur of conversation around them. Maybe it’ll keep the captain on his toes, too. The thought brushes softly against him, full of teasing warmth and delicate challenge, before Flora lifts her eyes again, her smile innocent as sunshine.

I trace the evidence, make it make some sense
why the wound is still bleedin'

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

"I don't know what you expected," Jack says, lifting the coffee cup to his lips with a smile he doesn't bother to try and hide. He refers, of course, to the tye-dye flashes of thought and memory that splash across Flora's mind, especially when it comes to the Marin triplets. "They're your age, after all. If it had been you, that would've been defence enough all by itself," he reminds her. Still, at least there doesn't seem to be any real animosity when it comes to his goddess-born children - or Bassian, for that matter.

Taking a long, slow drink of coffee and setting the cup down without letting it go, Jack narrows his eyes right back at her, playing the dutiful part of responsible captain to her siren's call. "Just don't tire him out too much," he tells her. "I still expect him to be able to swab my deck when he gets back aboard The Ark."

Leaving it there - a wise decision, probably, because their food arrives a moment later - Jack sits back with his coffee in hand to let the server set the plates down. "Maybe that's why you keep needin' to put up your mayday flags. You ain't made the right offerin's yet," he reasons, reaching out to snag a piece of bacon between his fingers. It's on its way to his lips when that sultry little thought slips between their minds, Jack pausing for only a fraction of a second - but long enough for someone like Flora to notice, certainly.

"You say that like you ain't always got me on my toes, love," he quips before he takes a bite, smirking.

sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Flora

It sneaks up on her: this rhythm, this ease. The way their conversation winds together without them having to try. Flora finds herself smiling before she realizes it, her eyes widening slightly as they catch on his face, as though she’s surprised by the affection curling in her chest at the sight of his smirk. She should have known better; she did know better.

But then he says it, and the way his voice slides around the word love like it used to, careless and fond, has the warmth she’s building inside her chest snuffed out like a candle in a storm. The sunlight in her mind vanishes as the waves still. What had been playful and teasing only moments ago—the floral tang of her thoughts laced with citrus, the fizz of soft laughter like sparkling water—flickers and dies, leaving something quieter. Dimmer. The shimmer of broken glass under moonlight. A pale tide retreating, leaving behind only salt.

Because they broke up. And not with the kind of casual, can-we-talk breakups that leave room for stitches. No, they broke like a hull split open against reef—sharp words, aching silences, the kind of damage you don’t come back from even when you both know why.

She swallows as she picks up her smoothie and looks out the window toward the boardwalk, letting the cold from the cup seep into her fingertips. She doesn’t want to make things worse for Jack just now, not when his mind clearly being held together with salt and string and that piece of bacon between his fingers.

"I think," she says gently, brushing her thumb against the condensation on the glass, "I might take mine to go." There's no bite to it, nor any accusation; just soft edges and the ghost of a smile as she reaches for her toast, tucking the corners of her pain neatly back into the place where she keeps all the other things she doesn’t say aloud. Not that it helps given her present company, which is precisely the point.

I trace the evidence, make it make some sense
why the wound is still bleedin'

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

It sneaks up on Jack as well - evident by the way their conversation has become easy without his noticing it, by the way her mind shines, cool and clear and welcoming like aloe on a sunburn. Content to bob along in the jetties and shallows of her thoughts as they discuss the Marins, Bassian, the way the sea definitely takes offence if the right respect isn't shown, the captain is only aware that he's drifted out too far when it all suddenly grows silent.

Like the ringing shock that follows a particularly sharp slap to the face, it isn't that shutters drag down around Flora, but rather that everything that made her thoughts dappled and golden simply withers. Nothing but weeds where once a garden had grown; nothing but stagnant drought water where a river had once flowed, bright and crisp.

Aware, only distantly, that the Doubletake is preparing to make herself scarce, Jack swallows his bite of bacon and tosses the rest onto the plate, forgotten. "I'm sorry," he says, setting down his coffee as well and letting out a deep, long sigh, the type that follows a revelation made far too late. "That I couldn't make peace with what happened."

sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Flora

Jack's words are simple, but they crack something open in Flora anyway. Not loud or dramatic the way her emotions normally tend to present. Just a quiet shatter—like frost blooming across glass, delicate and final. She doesn’t flinch from it; doesn’t blink way the tears that gather hot and shimmering at the corners of her eyes. Instead, she just smiles at him—soft and sad, like the kind of smile you give a memory. The kind you wear when you finally stop fighting the ache.

Her thoughts are tangled now. Still golden in places, but twisted, like ivy reclaiming the edges of something long-abandoned. A secret garden hidden behind glass. The gate is closed and locked, but gods, she still stands at it some days and imagines what it would be like to go inside again.

"I’m sorry too," she says, and her voice is steady, even though it feels like it shouldn’t be. "For hurting you. For putting you in danger and then acting like it wasn’t a big deal." She presses her lips together, then nods, slow and sure. "I never meant for it to come across that way, but...I get it now."

And she does, even if it fixes exactly nothing.

Her fingers curl around the edge of the plate she hadn’t touched. Around the smoothie cup growing warm in her hand. She breathes in the salt and the sugar in the air and wishes, for a moment, that they were somewhere else. That this didn’t feel like walking out of a place she’d wanted to stay in forever, that there wasn't a very real chance this would be their last conversation.

"I miss you," she whispers—not for sympathy or to make things worse, and while she knows he knows even if he can hear it without her saying it, some things deserve to be said anyway.

I trace the evidence, make it make some sense
why the wound is still bleedin'

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

Both still feeling hungry and also as though he wants to swat the food and drink from the table entirely, Jack doesn't know what he expects in response to his words. Of everything he might have guessed, though, Flora still manages to surprise him, and it's enough to have a whisper of frost sparkling around the rim of his coffee cup. He inhales, slowly and deliberately, and rubs at tired eyes, the ghost of a smile that's nothing but sad flickering across his face.

"Thanks," he says, a finger tapping slowly against the dark grain of the table. "...It wasn't about what you did, y'know. Not entirely. It was that you didn't trust me to know the plan. That you didn't think I could've helped. But I get it now, too." He might only be able to say it in times like this, when the world and his magic have left him bruised and remembering just how difficult it is to walk the path he does alone, but it doesn't make it any less true.

Reaching out to wipe away the frost from his cup as if to give his hand something to do, he feels the sting of Flora's words through her mind as well as in her expression. "Yeah," he mutters. "I know the feelin'." Not quite I miss you too - not here out in the open, but it's as much as he can offer.

sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Flora

"It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you." Her voice is gentle, even as she shakes her head. "I just...I thought I was being clever. I got so focused on pulling it off all on my own, that...I really didn't stop to think about much of anything."

Her fingers brush the condensation on her smoothie cup, swirling absent circles in the moisture as her thoughts ripple beneath the surface—soft, shimmering, and quietly breaking apart.

When he doesn’t say he misses her back, her shoulders sag just slightly, and her smile fades like sunlight slipping behind clouds. She knows he does, or at least is fairly sure he does, not that it ultimately matters. He'll never weild the silver in his tongue the way she wants him to, nor will she ever be able to temper her impulsiveness.

Flora sniffles and clears her throat, a little too loudly, as she pushes her chair back. The legs scrape gently against the floor, not quite a goodbye, but the shape of one all the same. Some cracks don’t close, and some splinters can’t be pulled out without tearing more skin and based on the look of Jack, it isn't as though he's got anything more left to give.

"Thanks," she murmurs, flicking a glance toward him that holds all the weight of everything they couldn’t be. "For the christening tip, I mean." Her voice is light again, but her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

And just like that, she turns to go, leaving behind toast, sunshine, and something that still aches like love.

I trace the evidence, make it make some sense
why the wound is still bleedin'

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

Jack can't help himself - he does scoff out a soft laugh at that, because they can both agree that it's the most Flora explanation of what had happened that she's given so far, however much it highlights the reason it had blown up in both of their faces. "Well, if I were anyone else involved, I'd have agreed that it was clever. Dangerous as all fuck, but... yeah. Clever," he concedes.

For a second he thinks he might be able to give her at least a fraction of what he knows she expects from him, but when it falls short - as it always does, ultimately - the captain looks away, his fist clenching on the table as if to stop the way his fingers keep trying to find things to do to ground him away from the conversation. "Sure," he mutters, feeling it rather than seeing as her shadow leaves the table, as she steps away and turns to leave.

"Wait," he makes himself say, tasting the words like blood on his tongue after a swing to the jaw. "Flora, wait." It's softer, Jack gesturing towards the bench she'd just left. "Don't go. I miss you too, and this is the best I've felt in days, 'cause you're here."

sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Flora

Her name stops her mid-step—soft, uncertain, like something breaking open rather than snapping shut. It wasn’t a trick this time; she hadn’t walked away to bait him into calling her back, hadn’t expected anything more than the ache of parting. So when Jack’s voice reaches for her, quiet and rough around the edges, Flora stills.

Her thoughts flutter open like a startled bird—uncertain wings beating hard against her ribs as she turns, slow and careful, and slips back into the booth across from him. Her expression is as unreadable as her thoughts are jumbled. Not because she’s intentionally trying to veil them from him, but because she doesn’t quite know what to do with this sudden shift. Like she’s stepped out onto ice that might hold, or might crack clean through.

So she does the only thing she can think of to keep the moment from collapsing. She thinks of oceans. Not metaphorical ones—real ones. She thinks of the shimmering green shallows off the coast of Apopo. The way the fog hung over the waves by the Boondocks. The brilliant indigo tide that gleamed beneath the Ark when they'd been moored in the Spillwave. She holds those thoughts like sea glass in her mind, polished and bright.

And then, very softly, she asks, "Do you remember when you took me up past the clouds to see the skywhales?"

I trace the evidence, make it make some sense
why the wound is still bleedin'

Code stolen from Queen Sky