sinking

JACK

hellraiser
risk taker

"Oh, fuck off," Jack says quickly, surprising himself with the heat in his words. "When didn't I care? When I peeled you out of the fountain and stayed with you all night? When I let you drag me all over The Climb for the hell of it? When I'd have killed that lanky Ancient if you hadn't turned up in the Labyrinth?" He raises his eyebrows. It can absolutely be argued that Jack hasn't always cared - because he hasn't - but certainly in recent seasons, the ability to keep Flora safely at arm's length has eroded until he finds her, as she is right now, pressed right against his heart.

And yet, considering he can literally read minds, once again the captain finds himself blinking in the dazzle of incomprehension as he tries to make sense of her thoughts. "What does havin' me mean to you?" he asks, a mix of exasperated and attempting patience, only for her laughter to cut through it entirely.

He nearly shakes her, as if that might loose the rising hysteria from her mind like shaking spare change out of a discarded pair of pants. Nearly - but he doesn't. "They're just words," he reminds her. The things he'd said to Safrin, things she really ought never have had to witness. Not knowing whether to release her and let her whirl away across the coast like a brewing storm or to keep hold of her and risk whatever other wrath that might provoke, Jack eventually forces out a long breath and reaches out to tilt her chin back up towards him.

"I'm gonna kiss you now, and I really don't want you to slap me for it. Okay?"

full speed ahead
'til i'm dead

flora

Blinking, Flora's eyes flit back and forth between Jack's, shocked not by his sudden outburst, but by the insinuation that maybe he did care. It had her wanted to pull out of his arms, to submerge herself in the waves once more where she could lessen the way he so easily played with her emotions. "So you showing you care is by making me feel bad for asking you to come with me places? To going around killing the people who've hurt me instead of asking if I'm doing alright?" On some level she did think that was his way of showing he cared, but as he'd pointed out, he'd shown her more; she knew he was capable of more than that.

"It means..." Suddenly tongue-tied, the queen's thoughts are a bright tangled mess of golden and red strings hopelessly knotted together in an effort to conceal a single word hidden far beneath. "..that you'd do things with me without me having to bargain with you for it. That...I don't know, that maybe you like being around me, and don't consider it being dragged all around the Climb." She shivers despite the heat. "And yeah, the night at the fountain was...you were really great." Flora all but whispers. Well, actually he'd been an asshole but then he'd been really great. Too great, actually. For how much joy she'd felt the following morning to know that he was still there, had cared enough to stick around, that it had taken something as fucked up as having her shoulder nearly torn off and her heart stomped on for him to show her any amount of intimacy, only for it to all to just all be swept by the wayside afterward, had hurt more than Asta's teeth ever had.

"It doesn't matter anyway. I'm not playing this game with you." Once, he'd told her that his end of their arrangement was that he'd just do the things she told him to, and gods but the thought of it just made her feel sick now.

"Mm. I bet a lot of things are just words." She sasses back, feeling like her cheeks were suddenly on fire. Wanting to toss her head as his fingers directed her chin back toward him, his words had that heat traitorously descending down her neck and toward her belly.

I want to be when you fall on me like night
I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!