[se] love is ruthless

walk me home in the dead of night

As if wine spiders weren't enough, apparently the turn of the season had brought with it arachnids of another sort. Unbeknownst to Flora, the infestation would grow worse as the season gained momentum, but for now it was at a level which was annoying, but manageable. To that end, Spice was both using the strands of incredibly strong silk both as a trapeze artist might use a highline, and then when she grew bored of that she was practicing her aerial attacks on the unsuspecting spiders. This Flora watched with affection and amusement before pouring herself a relatively weak drink if only because the task at hand required the utmost focus.

Hunched over one of the tables, Flora had multiple letters scattered around her. She also had various pens and inks, papers of varying quality and thickness, and a number of botanicals that smelled primarily of juniper and copper.

JACK

Flora is plotting hard about something; Jack can sense that much the second she finds the periphery of his magic. Hard enough that even the good captain thinks twice before interrupting her. He still does, though, in the end, because what he needs continues to be a priority over others. And so, pushing open the door to the Hanged Man, he's a couple of steps in before a bit of webbing catches him right across the cheek, Jack hissing and stepping back.

"You plannin' on lettin' these things run riot in the bar?" he complains, reaching up to grasp the web, letting a blast of air magic rip it from where it's fastened to the walls. "One way to ruin business, I s'pose. I gotta use the back room." The back back room he means, of course.

you wanted perfect, you got your perfect
but now I'm too perfect for someone like you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

walk me home in the dead of night

Plotting, absolutely. Thinking? Not so much. Jack will pick up Flora's intense dedication to mirroring the looping ys and beautifully slanted Os of someone's handwriting. Her father's, he'll likely be able to suss out if he tries hard enough before he makes himself properly known.

As Jack bats away a bit of webbing, he'll hear a furious screech from above as Spice communicates in screams and trills that she had been planning on using it as a trampoline. "Meet Spice, our new bartender." Flora says a touch distractedly, though the mental content of her thoughts turns suddenly from scrawling as to pulses of affection for the little dragon.

Rather than discarding her work to pay attention to Jack as the Doubletake normally would, Flora merely waves him on with a disinterested mmmhmmm before immediately focusing back on whatever she was writing.

JACK

Wincing at the angry shrieks of a hatchling, it's only because Spice is apparently their new bartender (and clearly Flora's companion) that stops Jack from directing the harsh flow of air magic towards the noisy creature. "Mm," he grumbles automatically, swanning past Flora towards the back room and watching, for a moment, as she loops os and as and ys.

You know when you're a kid and your parents tell you to ignore any bullies in the playground, because they'll just get bored and go away? You know how it's actually bullshit and the bullies just try harder? Enter Jack, once he's finished with his guild business and Flora hasn't fallen over herself to pay attention to him yet.

"Any reason you're tryin' to forge a letter from good ol' dad?" he asks, plopping into a seat next to her with a double whiskey in hand.

you wanted perfect, you got your perfect
but now I'm too perfect for someone like you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

walk me home in the dead of night

Glancing up, though Flora isn't surprised at all to see that Jack has helped himself to a drink, she still shoots him an obligatory frown. "Uhm, rude." She huffs, pulling the papers toward herself and subsequently smearing some of the ink. Smart enough not to bother with a look what you made me do! lest Jack point out the obvious (that he hadn't done shit), the Doubletake just bites the inside of her cheek before rolling her shoulders in an attempt to dismiss some of the tension.

"Just seems like a good thing to be able to do, you know? Forgeries and whatnot." Flora half lies; being able to forge letters would be a good skill, after all. The answer was more or less clear in the girl's mind though. Certainly, it was ready for the picking, if not completely ripe. She was going to send a letter to Remi from himself, and this writing sample was important to put the origin of the letter at a certain time in the Lullaby's life.

Woooooooooshing clumsily from the rafters and landing on the parchment, Sugar spread her tiny wings and raaaaaaaaaaaaawred squeakily at Jack, before spewing a well-meant blast of frost at his drink.

JACK

"I supplied it," Jack shoots back about the whiskey; besides, it's not as if Flora's going to get up and pour him a drink if her bookworming is anything to go by. And last time he checked, dragons didn't have opposable thumbs. But they do have the ability to breathe ice, in this particular hatchling's case, and as Spice lands clumsily amid the papers, he has just enough time to pull his hand from the glass before it's frosted for him.

"A for effort," he tells the hatchling, tipping his glass to her gratefully and taking a sip of the freshly cooled whiskey. As for Flora and her just seems like a good thing, Jack tilts his head at her handwriting practice. "You need to write the letter you want first," he points out. "Then you can try'n copy it in the handwritin'. Words flow an' loop different when they're joined together."

you wanted perfect, you got your perfect
but now I'm too perfect for someone like you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

walk me home in the dead of night

Even if I supplied it means I took it from the backroom, Flora still isn't bothered. There were lines in the sand you drew with men like Jack, and this just wasn't one of them. Parting her jaws and crackling a sound that only Flora could properly read as sass (though once she did, Jack would be able to as well), the Doubletake just chuckles under her breath as Spice attempts to snark at the captain.

"That...is a really good idea." Flora murmurs, glancing up at Jack with a sly narrowing of her eyes. "I wouldn't have pegged you for a forgerer." And yes, the image of someone pegging the good captain fluttered briefly into her thoughts. "Seems a bit subtle for you."

Though Jack's idea was a good one, Flora hadn't quite thought of what she was going to write yet. Hi Remi, it's yourself from the future. Why didn't you leave this note with Ronin, or have it delivered sooner? Shh. Nevermind, you work in mysterious ways.

JACK

"I know it is," Jack says, dipping a finger into his whiskey and offering it out to Spice as if that would stop her sassing. "An' I'm a smuggler. Been forgin' fake documents for years to get past dockhands an' do-gooders. Not that it matters much in Torchline, but it's still a handy skill to have." He shrugs, offering Flora a wicked sort of smirk. "Makin' everyone believe you ain't subtle is another skill worth learnin'," he tells her. "Pretty sure you're halfway there with that one already."

The skill he means, of course. The letter sounds ridiculous to his telepathic mindset, but of course he hasn't yet parsed the full context of what Flora is attempting and why. "If you're strugglin', you can always just try practicin' words. That way you know how the letters join together." A beautifully curled y is nothing if it doesn't flow into a convincing word, after all.

you wanted perfect, you got your perfect
but now I'm too perfect for someone like you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

walk me home in the dead of night

"Ewwwuh." Flora scolds, flapping a hand at Jack's to stop him from getting her dragon drunk. At least not on his second-rate whiskey if he really did bring it himself. "I don't even want to think about where your fingers have been." She adds with a teenaged huff for good measure.

"MMmmk," Said exactly like the gif, Flora raises a brow. "But you could also just be saying that. Because if I were to ask you for an example of you being subtle, you could literally just make anything up and say the reason no one ever noticed was because of how subtle you were." He'd fucked her on a beach with people watching, after all. Gods that had been good.

"I think I'd rather go fully under the radar that just being subtle." So saying, with a twist of her ring Flora disappears entirely. The pen moves on the parchment, and though it isn't quite Remi's looping script, it's still beautifully written just the same: who says I'm struggling?

JACK

It is not second-rate, thank you very much, and Jack had supplied it to the entire tavern, though he supposes he'll forgive Flora this one for mistaking his supply crates for the others that arrive on the regular. Either way, he sucks the whiskey from his finger and raises his eyebrows at her s u b t l y; she can guess where his fingers have been, and where they might yet go if she's good.

"What kind've idiot would answer that sort of question in the first place? It becomes obvious if I tell you," he points out, taking another sip of whiskey and setting the glass down just as Flora promptly disappears. It's impressive, even the captain can admit that, and if the Doubletake wants subtle, it's in the very slight shift in his smile that indicates his pride in how far she's come.

Still, never one to let anyone wave their flag too high (unless it's his own), Jack reaches out to gently pinch at Flora's cheek. It could easily be attributed to guesswork, of course, from the placement of the pen in relation to everything else, but he's nonetheless confident about it.

you wanted perfect, you got your perfect
but now I'm too perfect for someone like you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

walk me home in the dead of night

"What kind of idiot goes around bragging about document forgery?" Flora quips back, one of her brows raised challengingly if only to make up for the fact that this hadn't been a particularly good comeback.

Perhaps rather disappointingly for anyone who had hoped for more for Flora and much to the satisfaction of those who want to see her embrace her trauma for what it is, the Doubletake has developed a near-crippling praise kink such that the small flinch of Jack's lips has the girl ready to fall to her knees between his. He can't see the way her lips part with want as he pinches the apple of her cheek, but certainly his mind will feel the way hers is suddenly all to greedy to go back on what she'd said before and gag herself on his thumb. All this simultaneously occurs while the Doubletake wonders if she can't try and get Jack to start signing for things around the Tavern. He'd be too clever to avoid replying if she sent him a letter, but were there other ways of getting the fine captain's penmanship on some parchment? Oh, she certainly thought so.

Twisting the ring and shimmering back into focus, her cheeks flushed but her shoulders straight, Flora turns to pour herself a gin with Spice's assistance.

JACK

"What kind of idiot sits at a table out front and practices it?" Jack quips back; there's a perfectly good guild HQ in the back for nefarious games like that, and yet here Flora is. But of course everything else becomes irrelevant as he manages to push the very right sort of buttons in the Doubletake's psyche, and as she blinks back into view, the good captain's hand drops from her cheek and his gaze seems very interested in the curve of forged ds on her parchment.

Even if he'd intended to sign for anything around the tavern, that fully snuffs out now that he knows Flora's into forgery as a hobby, and so instead Jack merely tilts his head at her. "Cat got your tongue, love?" he wants to know, his smile turning sunny and self-satisfied, even as he reaches out to let busy fingers sift through the examples of Remi's handwriting.

"Never thought you'd bother to keep letters from him," he remarks.

you wanted perfect, you got your perfect
but now I'm too perfect for someone like you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

walk me home in the dead of night

"They kind that would have put it away if anyone other than you walked in." Flora snaps back, and while that was certainly true, few who walked into the Tavern were interested in what Flora was doing so much as what she was wearing and how much of her cleavage or thigh was on offer. But Jack, as ever, went against the grain such that if the Doubletake ever wanted to really get ahead in Torchline, she'd need to break off this debilitating crush. Ahh well, another time.

Not a cat, no, but a certain pervasive memory of LongNight that had Flora feeling very thirsty all of a sudden, and not just for gin. "Nope, just thinking, and-hey!" Flora, who had been about to sass something about subtly meaning that she wasn't going to tell Jack every single thought floating through her mind, frowned before trying to pluck a very specific letter away the pile. Whether or not it was the one in Jack's hands she couldn't see from her angle, but the last thing she needed was the captain reading Remi's goodbye letter to Isla.

"Shows up much you know. Besides, it isn't like letters take up a lot of space, and you never know when things like that will come in handy." Like now, for instance.

JACK

"Mmhm," Jack says around a sip of whiskey, purposefully and infuriatingly vague as he lets his fingers dance across all of the alchemist's pretty penmanship. And of course, like a moth to a flame, the captain is only more intrigued as he realises there's a specific letter Flora doesn't want him to see. Letting silence speak for her - goodbye letters and sex by bonfire light indeed - it's with a sigh of apparent acceptance that he leaves the pile of letters be.

"How resourceful you've become," he drawls, settling back in his chair to regard her, rolling his whiskey glass beween his hands. "Never realised you were so full of surprises. Colour me impressed." Smoothly shooting back the remainder of his drink, Jack sets his empty glass down and rises to his feet. "If I ever need a letter from the Lullaby, I know where to come."

you wanted perfect, you got your perfect
but now I'm too perfect for someone like you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!