[se] just a pinch

candlewax & polaroids on the hardwood floor

"So would dragon bones I imagine." Flora points out, holding onto her previous suggestion for no other reason than she was a twin and prone to bickering and was it a bit fun to get under Jack's skin, (especially given her ignorance about how dangerous of a man he was?), absolutely.

"Pfff, what are you, psychic?" She jests, and even if he was, Flora was doing a pretty good job of painting quite the scene in her mind even if it did come straight out of a romance novel.

"They might not be your thing, Jack, but you might find customers there. Customers who want more than just boring old herbs." Flora lectures as if she has any idea at all, while over stirring her batter.

JACK

"Sure, if you're a con artist. Aye, some powdered dragon bones'll surely get rid o'ye cock pox." The voice he puts on is absolutely rough and spiteful (and maybe it sounds a bit like his father? maybe Flora doesn't have the whole monopoly on #DaddyIssues here) and he scoffs out a laugh and shakes his head.

She won't see the glare he shoots over his shoulder, because psychic is a bit too close to home even if he can feel the twang of her humour like someone plucking a guitar string along his psyche. "Not quite, but you ain't gotta be psychic to know you're about to turn that batter into cement," he remarks.

He wonders what she'd make of some of the boring old herbs that are a bit more difficult to find (and cause sedation and hella fun hallucinations), but keeps it to himself, because fuck you Flora for having a good point. "Look who fancies herself a businesswoman," he drawls instead. "Oven's ready. Chuck 'em in."

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

candlewax & polaroids on the hardwood floor

"Have a lot of personal experience with cock pox, do you Jack?" Flora wonders with a flutter of eyelids. "Look at you with your business ethics." She adds,  finding the distinction between pirate and smuggler, and now con-artist and whatever standards Jack had, fairly hilarious.

'I'm...wh?' Frowning, Flora turns her aqua stare back to her bowl. The mixture is now the colour of a tired plum and has indeed gotten quite thick. Shrugging, Flora begins scooping them into the muffin tin while a few hels return to her windowsill to keep watch.

"What, like it's hard?" Flora wonders doing her best Elle Woods impression as she closes the over door. "Besides, I heard there's someone else in your line of work traveling around. Apparently, he's able to get all sorts of hard to get items." Grinning, Flora shrugs coyly. "I even reached out to him myself to see if he could give me a hand." She says, wanting to make Jack feel jealous that she hadn't gone to him first.

JACK

"Know the remedy off by heart. Why, you need it?" Jack says, raising an eyebrow over his shoulder at her. For a man who fucks whores on the regular and has been doing so since he was old enough to pay for it, why yes, he is quite familiar with cock pox. "An' look at you, with your buns ready for the oven," he retorts, though he half expects that one will go right over her little blonde head.

Straightening up and stepping over to join the hels at her window sill (at least if he's standing with them, she's less likely to be able to hit him with any burnt muffins, mainly because her aim is shit), he folds his arms across his chest. "Is that so? I s'pose I better shut up shop now, if there's some other prick with an agenda around. Woe is me." He smirks. "When he lets you down, you know where I am."

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

candlewax & polaroids on the hardwood floor

"Ewwwhhhh" Flora retorts as if she's just smelled something horrible. "Gross, Jack." Jokes were one thing, but now imagining the captain with a bunch of barnacles covering his dick had fully ruined the delightful and romantic tableau taking place in her thoughts.

'They're cupcakes.' Flora corrects (yep, right on over her head).

"Mhmmm. He's been pretty busy from what I hear. Doing deals all over Caido, whereas last time I checked, the Ark has been in the harbour for weeks." (Had she checked in hopes of trying to catch a glimpse of Jack? And because Melita was her new friend? Shh). "Well, as far as business models go, being able to tell people what sort of payment you require is a pretty good first step." Flora remarks, taking a bold and flirtatious step towards Jack before her eyes shift to his whiskey glass.

'Another?'

JACK

Because it's a bit of a givaway to snort with laughter at someone else's barnacle dick thoughts, Jack bites the inside of his cheek and directs his gaze out of the window. "I bet they really wanna be," he drawls at her insistence on the nightmare in the oven being cupcakes. "An' you've noticed, have you?" Raising his eyebrows, he gazes back at her and tilts his head.

"Go on, what else have you noticed? Any interestin' things movin' on an' off the ship? Any people snoopin' around, deals takin' place?" He grins. "Fuck, with my ship in the harbour for a few weeks I may as well toss out all my ledgers an' take up fishin'." All of that is to say, of course, a mixture of none of your business and you don't know shit.

But then Flora is being FLiRtaTiOUs and BoLD and Jack meets her aqua gaze while handing her his empty glass for another drink. "I only make it a habit of tellin' people my payment terms when I think they can afford it," he says. "An' I think I'm a little too expensive for you right now."

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

candlewax & polaroids on the hardwood floor

"Yep." Flora replies, defiantly, though suddenly quite unsure when this became an argument. Hadn't...everyone seen that the Ark had been moored? Surely everyone had. Was it invisible? Was she the only one that could see it? Why was he suddenly so cross?

"Actshully, Jack, I have noticed some things. I've noticed people lurking around that shrine on the docks but not actually praying, just leaving things there. And you would think they were offerings, only other people come and pick them up later. And I know that Queen Maeve doesn't know who put up that new shrine so clearly someone is doing things around her without being seen. Someone who isn't you." Flora tilts her chin up before lowering it slightly, worried that he might look up her nose instead of being intimidated by how clearly very clever she was.

'Guess that makes you a shitty psychic then.' She trills as she fills his glass. Spinning, she holds it out, before bringing it back to her lips and downing it in one gulp. Gods but it burns such that it takes nearly all of Flora's willpower to keep her teeth locked against the gag pushing up from the back of her throat. 'Or else you'd know all the things I have up my sleeve.' She finishes, her eyes growing slightly shiny from the burn of the liquor.

JACK

"Well goodie for you," Jack says, inflecting the pitch of his voice just so in imitation of Flora's mannerisms and patting his pockets for another cigarette. With this one, at least, he makes a very exaggerated point of smoking it out of the window, and this time both his eyes and his telepathy are on her in case she makes a beeline for him. Remi Taliesin won't murder him over self-defence, he thinks. (He's wrong, but hey).

"What shrine?" he drawls, huffing out a breath of smoke into the Torchline air outside before turning back to her, mischief glittering in his eyes. Of course he knows about the shrine - he's on qUeEn MaEvE'S council, after all - but he's dying to pull her leg a little. Only she manages it herself by downing the liquor, and Jack's chuckling to himself in honest amusement as he takes another drag off his smoke.

"Right now, th'only thing I reckon you've got up your sleeve is burnin' cupcakes." He nods to the oven.

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

candlewax & polaroids on the hardwood floor

Crinkling her nose but preferring Jack's company over nothing, Flora just huffs as he smokes OuT Of ThE WinDow. "You know." She answers sounding impatient. "The one to the Deepfrost deity or whatever. The whole reason it's so miserably cold when it should be bright and sunny."

"My...? Oh! Jack!." Swatting at his shoulder as if it was entirely his responsibility to have been watching the cupcakes, Flora grabs for some towels to protect her hands as she pulls the muffin pan out of the oven. These ones are even more burnt than the last, and having smelled both the charcoal muffins and Jack's smoke, the remaining Hels decide to try somewhere else for their lunch.

Dropping the tray onto the counter, Flora sighs. Outwardly she's just as dramatic and childish as always, but inwardly all her lusty thoughts of the captain have been replaced by ones of inattentive fathers and dead grandmothers. '...well, maybe I can just say they're chocolate.' She says dismally, glad that the whiskey-heat on her cheeks will hide her genuine flush of sadness.

JACK

There are very few people in Torchline who have heard the captain of the Ark let out a genuine laugh. And as it so happens, Flora is about to make that list - and all because of some mild(ish) bullying and charcoal cupcakes. He's still having a jolly old time - especially with the swat at his shoulder, because who the fuck would dare - as the hels take off and the kitchen fills with smoke, Jack flicking ash from his cigarette and stubbing it out on the window sill. "You are so shit at this," he says, brimming with amusement.

So why does she have to fucking ruin it by bringing the mood down? Groaning at the telltale signs of slumped shoulders and kicked-puppy-tones, the feelings are like nails down the chalkboard of his magic, and he runs a frustrated hand across his face. "Out of the way," he tells her, sidling up to the counter to take up the bowl again. "Throw those out and hand me that spoon."

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

candlewax & polaroids on the hardwood floor

Turning towards Jack Flora flashes the captain her best sneer — the sort that has her eyes sparkling and her lips and nose contorting like acrobats. “Okay well, it’s just that—“ i was like 6 five minutes ago, and my dad never taught me anything of value, my mom is off running a spa in halo, and my grandmother was mysteriously murdered and no one is doing anything about it. Of course she couldn’t say that (Flora’s life was a romcom, not a drama). ”— the oven, and you were being very distracting with your smoking.”

Raising an eyebrow but murmuring a rather compliant sound, Flora indeed gets out of the way. Reaching for the spoon with a grin, the girl looks as though she’s thinking about tapping him on the ass with it before thinking before of it. (Maybe it was because Jack had little ass to speak of with how wirey he was). Handing it to him, Flora naturally begins to take her frustrations out on the nearby Hels roosted outside of her window.

JACK

Jack holds a hand up at her as if to cut her off mid sentence, completing it with a childish, "Up-bup-bup-bup--" to prevent any of her words from actually making it through to him. Words or thoughts, as it happens, and he leaves her to hassle the Hels out the window while he throws together the ingredients for fresh cake batter. Flora receives only the slightest narrowing of his eyes for the spoon-ass-debacle, the captain snatching up the utensil to whip everything together.

The cupcakes won't be pretty, because he hasn't given a fuck about how he's dolloped them into the tray, but maybe they'll come across as rustic. Either way, he slams them into the oven and makes sure it's not going to overheat before turning back to her. "There," he announces. "You owe me more than a drink for this."

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

candlewax & polaroids on the hardwood floor

Watching Jack work with a mixture of awe, intrigue, and skepticism, Flora frets around the kitchen so as not to simply be some in-the-way girl-shaped statue in her own home. 'Oh, done already? That was fast.' Despite her eyebrow waggle the girl's thoughts very much contradict her suggestion that Jack would be fast at things like...baking...

"mmmm? Ohh? Like what? You've already said I'm not good enough to be a wench and I'm not much for manual labour." Flora's fingers, adorned in delicate rings with long and perfectly manicured nails, flutter in the air between them to demonstrate just how few strenuous activities they were suited for.

JACK

"Perfection doesn't take long when you do it right," Jack snarks right back, though rather than sweeping past her to sit back by the windowsill, this time he (perhaps wisely) lingers by the oven so they don't have to do this whole thing a fourth time. As for what she owes him, he scoffs out a laugh and shakes his head. "Well you ain't comin' to be the ship cook, put it that way," he mutters, before considering the idea in earnest.

"Get me one of your good ol' dad's feathers," he decides. "You never know when a bit of a demigod might come in handy, right?" Folding his arms across his chest, he seems pretty content with their favour, in fact. "Besides, families visit each other, or so I'm told. An' you ain't had many visitors." Of course he knows about the dark haired boy she'd gone to the Hanged Man with, but he's not about to say that. Not when he's trying to make fun of her. (Duh).

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes