keelwalker.

not that laurent had tried terribly hard to hide it. stumbling upon such intimate knowledge of bastian's captivity had felt like a violation of exceptional order, like wandering uninvited into a surgical theatre to find someone laid open, their innards left haphazardly upon the table.

bastian never knocks back, but laurent watches the light beneath his cabin door flicker and pulse with the rhythm of anxious strides. for several minutes, he leaves him to it. then several more. but he's never known the silk to pace like this before, and unrest begins to prickle unpleasantly in his gut.

had he erred more gravely than he'd thought?

the door swings open onto bastian.

“you're going to wear the floorboards thin,” laurent says simply.

behind him, candlelight stretches his shadow long across the corridor until it eclipses bastian. even half-swallowed by it, the silk's face is unreadable. what a talent.

laurent steps aside.

it being only a matter of hierarchy would make things easier; he had thought of it, an alternate universe in which he'd ended up with another ship and another leader to govern it.

he’d gladly dance taunting circles around the line of subordination right up to his own marooning; he still often did here, with others.

with laurent the impulse had not occurred to him once.

the consideration that he’d been shown. the humanity. so much truth, offered freely, from a man whose lies the wisest among them could not tell from fact.

where wit will not do and a blank face no longer holds, best he can do is nod, as he enters, the first fault line running beneath old stone. what is this today? his eyes travel, snagging on the tasteful and organized clutter of laurent's cabin. anything but him. bastian's hand finds a pair of brass dividers left beside the charts; he opens them a fraction, watching the points separate. what a peculiar thing. what do you know? he offers a stare from the middle of his captain's room, stopped by a vile thought of his own torture recounted back to him, a facial expression affronted so abstractly he does not worry laurent will think it directed at him.

are we truly going to require a direct question? feet that have crossed the stillest of nights unheard now pace loudly. his stride keeps shortening by a fraction over the same plank in the room — give it another month and it will creak loudest precisely when laurent most needs the room to swear itself empty. the toe of bastian's boot presses against it several times. he turns.

adeola nodded as bastian confirmed that he wasn't here to cause any trouble. a part of her wasn't sure that she totally believed him... though maybe that was more because she knew better than to trust pirates completely. unless they were her pirate.

" soup i can do. " adeola nodded. she quickly busied herself and pulled together a bowl of soup, a little bit of bread and some ale. she knew her customers well enough by now. the ones who came in often, adeola liked to ensure that she knew what they wanted before they could ask her. it was part of her job, she thought. it was important to pay attention to the little things.

"do you not know?" curiosity threads quietly through the question. he supposes it would not ruin much for him, if it turned out she knew. amusement softens his gaze and blunts whatever point the question carried. "the heat inspires full-stomached idleness. has this not been my refuge for the better part of the week? perhaps i’m biding my time to ask for your cassava bread recipe." vos idly turns the cup between his fingers. "and whatever else you might say."

afternoons in tortuga were always quite hot. it didn't help matters that nya had to go bring their supplies in, because she wasn't going to wait for someone else to do it, not when they needed it badly. she was struggling to lift with her small form but she was determent to it anyway, knowing she had at least two more trips to make. just when she was at the treshhold of sawbone, the box broke and all that was contained inside fell to the floor. "oh no." she said frustratingly and ran inside to find an empty box to fit the things inside, only when she got outside someone was already picking the things up. "that's not for stealing." she said, half joking.

"you must think so little of me." bastian's hazel-blue eyes settle on nya, calm; seawater under a windless sky. "to steal in broad daylight."

gathered glass vials roll smoothly over his palm, green and periwinkle in the late-afternoon light. he has no particular need to steal these; su shi's lethal precision keeps his own stock reliable, from opium’s gentler surrender to the unruly temper of henbane. she knows his work well. but antidotes are a less obedient science; dependent so inconveniently on what one has thought to keep nearby.

bastian's thumb skims the labels as he lowers the vials into the container, catching names and quantities in swift passing, and lifts boxes with ease, strength built by endless hours swimming against currents and hauling himself over hulls. thrown over his shoulder as he walks it into the sawbone, an afterthought:

the sky is clear and redolent with flickering starlight by the time he makes it back aboard the widow's wake, and he finds the sight mocking, as if to taunt him for the knowledge he now possesses.

drunk men were always terribly charitable, giving away their secrets and misdeeds as if they were sweets. there had been a particularly loud one a seat or two away from laurent and conversation partner of the evening, a red-cheeked merchant, telling some story loud enough for half the tavern to hear. luckily, laurent is adept at appearing to be engaged in a conversation while eavesdropping on another. something about a prisoner. hungarian. land infiltrator. did not take to water well, least the way they administered it.

by the time laurent reaches the wake, some of the crew are loitering on deck with drink in hand, sprawled over barrels and crates, their laughter skipping across the black water like stones. bastian among them. ‘you look like a fuckin’ tomato when you’re drunk, you know that?’ ‘stick it up your arse, you don’t even need one drop of rum to have all the barmaids in tortuga clamoring for your hide. someone outta keep youse in a crate!’

raucous laughter, howling and barking. the taste of wine still bitter and burning in his mouth.

“yeah? if i’m a dog, never seen a bigger drowned rat than bastian! shoulda seen him when we first hauled him out the water, swear he coughed up half the ocean in my face!” a stomach churning impersonation of said gagging and spluttering.

“oh, i’m sure baptiste has had greater public humiliations,” laurent cuts in. “surely i’m not the only one who remembers when he tried to impress that pretty little thing at the siren’s nest and fell straight through the table.”

“captain! how could you! the table was rotten.”

“and the six cups of rum?”

bastian's lounging half-sprawled, one shoulder brushing against a stack of secured crates on a night so akin to many others, swapping insults and bored dirty looks, tipping the rim of a crewmate’s cup just to watch him swear. it's a love language, of sorts, to annoy each other. they would of course never know that some remarks drop clean through him. he would gladly make his anger known over the proper way to coil a line, about baptiste using his knife to cut cheese, or the slanderous accusation that he apparently snored. but this? he knows precisely how quickly he would start detesting the people he has grown to like if pity ever found its way onto the deck, and thus learns to exist silently alongside the blade, cutting as it may be.

yet laurent's involvement is a factor entirely new. bastian catches laurent’s eye as the captain enters the conversation and turns it beneath his hand without anyone noticing, away from memories laurent could not possibly know still taste vile in bastian's mouth. the room readjusts, easy as a sail catching wind. yet it cannot be a rescue. laurent is not sparing him ridicule ; neither of them would insult each other so, that he trusts.

more like a subtle, deliberate adjustment of where the current is flowing, it feels. laurent would not have done this yesterday, in a discussion like this, or many a time before. the hours afterward lose their shape as it dawns on him, what it must be. bastian hates, vehemently, that he suddenly can't bring himself to look at anyone, despite the conversation continuing to flow as free as ale. he only follows laurent with his eyes at first, the three knocks. the familiar signal feels newly invasive; a kindness he has accepted a hundred times becoming unbearable the moment it contained knowledge he never gave. he keeps tracking laurent until he's out of sight.

where: the devils cask

"not in a mood." it is a simmering hot day in tortuga, and bastian varga would like the mercy of a mast’s shadow shifting with the quick water, or the touch of the salt wind off the harbour ; but beholden to someone else's routine he is, enduring the habits of a mark that evidently likes nothing more than to eat. have they the necessity, to venture into the same place every day? a scanning glance travels slow around the emptiness of the tavern, and his voice follows with the same procedural lilt. "no funny business."