craving;

“I’m not being coy,” Amelie scoffed, eyes rolling once again. “I’m sorry if I have an attitude, because, well, I’m not stressing over the fact that there’s someone or some group of people who are setting fire to things.” She said quickly, letting out a huff as her jaw clenched. “I was walking around. But when the fire started I was in the canteen.”

“Are you saying that you don’t know anything about who might have done this?” he asked, his eyes moving to where the smoke was still rising from over the palm trees. “Good. Glad to know you weren’t there,” Chase nodded, accepting  her answer as her finality. 

Her head shook as he asked the question, eyes rolling slightly. “I was at a lot of places, Chase. You have to be specific.” She said, lips pursing together. Amelie liked to wander, especially on nights when she couldn’t sleep, and that night happned to be one of them. Arms crossed over her chest in a sort of.. defense mechanism, a feeling that this conversation may not go as pleasently as it could.

“Don’t be coy. You are aware of what I want to know.” Chase’s voice had hardened ever so slightly, not exactly pleased with the answer that Amelie had provided him. It made him wary, for one, and angry, for another. People could have been hurt in the fire, and she was playing games with him. 

“Straight to the chill part? You didn’t even bring me food sailor.” Belle teased, a small grin on her lips before she leaned back in her seat. “You’re ok yeah?” Chase was important to the Tulach. A hand ran back through dark brown locks. “This shouldn’t have happened Chase - is your sister and Charlotte ok?” Belle was thankful all her siblings were, Chase looked ok, she knew where Tommy and Claire were. Her important people were safe and not a pile of ash. She was clean now though thank god, no longer covered in soot but decidedly more stressed and tired.

It was nearly impossible to pull her focus from Chase. The entire island could burn down and her only focus would be that he was safe. Her fingers tightened in his soaked fabric of his shirt, her forehead pressed against his. 

“I can’t lose you,” she whispered when she broke the kiss. It was the closest she could come to telling him. An I love you lied beneath her words, hiding in her tone. She didn’t need to say it. “Promise me you’ll be careful, Chase. Please.”

“You think I would ever leave you, Charlie?” He asked, a slight hint of amusement in his tone. He pressed another kiss to her forehead before pulling away slightly, to look at her directly in her face, to make sure she was really okay. 

“Let’s get you back to my villa. You’ll be safer there than here.” He really didn’t want her around the smoke, or among the commotion that only seemed to be getting worse. 

“We’re way ahead of you, I’d imagine. Get some rest. Go find your loved ones.” Everybody had somebody they cared about. Emerson needed to find Kyle or Flynn, whom she hadn’t seen since she’d bolted from her villa. “You won’t be any use if you’re collapsed.”

“And what about you?” Chase asked, raising an eyebrow curiously as he crossed his arms over his chest in defiance. “Don’t you have people you should be looking for?”

A tight smile appeared on her face as Chase appeared. Amelie cleared her throat as she ran a hand through her hair. “Because the royals are the easiest people to frame, right?” She said, eyes still on the villa. There was the gut feeling that this was worse than it appeared to be, and it had her worried.

Green eyes looked up at the male as her jaw clenched slightly, “You know I didn’t do this, right?”

(( task 9 ))

“Well, of course,” he tried to tease, but there was no heat in the amusement. He really wished that none of this had happened, but it was obvious that there was no getting away from it. Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair with exhaustion. “I have to ask where you were,” he told her, glancing back at her softly. “What is your alibi?” 

She caught sight of Chase Foley, one of the pirates she knew was on her uncle’s ship. It seemed she’d missed the excitement from her villa. Her fingers raked through her short hair as she turned to face him again. Ashy and covered in soot and sweat. “Go get cleaned up, Chase. Get some rest. Falling asleep on your feet won’t do you any favors.”

Chase waved her off, shaking his head as he let out a laugh. “I don’t have time for that. I have to make sure everyone’s okay. At least those I care about.” He hadn’t been able to find his sister yet, which scared him slightly. He needed to figure out where she was. “And we need to start an investigation.”

Charlotte didn’t care that he was sweaty and was as covered in ash as she was. She threw her arms around him, her face burying into his neck. He was safe. Chase was safe, he was okay. He wasn’t hurt or worse. Tears flooded her vision as she pulled back to look at him.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” she asked, gripping his shoulders. He felt okay. There wasn’t any visible blood from the glow of the flames. “We need to make sure everyone’s safe.” 

Chase reached up, thumbing a tear that escaped her eye and made it’s way down her cheek, ridding it from her skin. He smiled at her assuredly, hoping that the expression would calm her worries, if not for a moment. He wasn’t sure what else he could do. 

“Baby, I’m fine. I’m okay.” He turned to look back at the burning villa, almost but turned completely to ashes now. “Everyone, for the moment, is safe. We can’t know if anyone was inside until the fire is put out and the ashes settle.” Chase turned back to her, his hands cupping her face as he met her gaze. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” Leaning in, he pressed a soft kiss to her mouth, despite the fact that they had never done so in public until that moment. 

“Look, I get that you’re scared or angry or whatever; but I have had one hell of a day and I plan on spending the rest of mine holed up in this office with Netflix. If you have a problem that that take it up with whoever is in charge - oh wait, that’s me.” Belle has only been back in her villa ten minutes after the efforts of quelling the fire that morning. She needed a break, and she needed to avoid being with large groups of people if that calm mask would burst. “So unless you want to watch reruns of Friends, I’d leave. You’re welcome to stay for a bit and discuss whatever it was you have the burning desire to talk about but I’m not leaving this spot for a couple of hours.” In her head, she was already making a list of suspects; of who would be stupid enough to set a fire in a built up area.

After knowing that Charlotte was safe, along with his sister, the next person that Chase came to check on was Belle. It was obvious that as a captain, she would take a lot of responsible of the fire on herself, so he had wanted to make sure that she was okay. Leaning against the wall in her villa, it was clear that she wasn’t exactly at one hundred percent. “Netflix?” He asked, his voice mirroring the amusement in his face, hoping to lighten the mood. “And here I was, hoping we could go right to the ‘chill’ part of the evening.”

closed starter for @chasefoley

The smell of smoke was what woke Charlotte up. The unmistakable, harsh, smell of smoke. She bolted from her bed to look out the window to see orange and red curls of flame licking one of the villas and Charlotte’s blood turned to ice in her veins.

Chase. Emily. Where were they?

Not bothering with shoes, she sprinted down the stairs to see what was happening, only to see people throwing buckets of water and sand on the flame. “Chase! Chase!” she called. 

Panic set in at that exact moment and she was faced with a terrifying possibility that he was hurt, or worse. 

Chase had been trying hard to clear the area so that no one would get any more hurt that they already were becoming, the smoke and the flames quickly claiming more injuries than necessary. He was panting heavily, his dark shirt all but soaked through, and ash resting on all exposed skin as he moved around the chaos surrounding the villa. 

He had been extremely focused on the fire, not letting anything get in his way as he tried to help rid the flames from creating any more damage, from spreading. 

That was, until he heard Charlotte’s voice. 

Dropping whatever he was holding, Chase turned and pressed against the crowd, shouting Charlotte’s name back as he tried to get to her. He shoved himself through the throng of people, finding her just outside the edge of the mob, and he grabbed her, his arms wrapping around her as tightly as he could without breaking her, his nose pressing into the curve of her neck as he breathed her in. It was in that moment that he hadn’t realized how worried he had been. How scared for her that he was. 

“I’m here,” he breathed, his voice just barely heard over the sound of the flames. “Charlotte, I’m here.”

All night, Emerson paced her thankfully-peaceful villa. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. Instead of dwelling, she stepped outside to check, only to see smoke coming up from the trees.

Fuck.

Not having bothered with shoes, she took off in a run towards where it was coming from. A charred villa sat before her and she glanced over both shoulders to see if anyone had seen anything. “Hey! What the fuck happened?” she called to someone nearby.

Chase had tried to help, but by the time that he had arrived to the villa, it was all but gone; there was no use in trying to salvage was the fire had taken. He was covered in soot, and sweat, and water from the buckets he had tried to carry. He was breathing harshly as he tried to breath, despite the smoke hanging in the air, and his eyes - bright red from the soot - caught Emerson. 

“Arson,” Chase told her, only repeating what he had heard from others among the group that had tried to stop the fire in the first place. “Someone set the villa ablaze. No one seemed to be in there. We won’t know for sure until it’s all clear.”

Amelie knew somethng bad was going to happen, she had a feeling in her gut all night that had kept her awake. And, well, it was no surprise when the smell of smoke filled the air. Her first instinct was that it was just a simple bonfire type thing, but as the smell grew stronger she walked outside. Green hues widened as she saw the fire that was engulfing a villa.

There wasn’t a single doubt in her mind that this must have been caused by a royal- why would a pirate set fire to a villa? She felt disgusted with the fact that somebody she probably knew might’ve been the cause of this, and it had her eyebrows furrowing. “At least it wasn’t the canteen,” Amelie tried to joke to the person next to her. After everything seemed to be fully extinguised, she let out a shaky breath. “But, in all seriousness, do you think a royal did this?”

Chase had come up to the scene not long after Amelie had, and since he had been task with protecting her, it was only fair that she was the one that he came up to. His eyes looked over her face, checking to make sure that she was alright, that there had been no injuries to his charge and no evidence that she had anything to do with it. Not that he believed she would do anything like this, ever. 

He tried to smile at her joke, knowing that she was trying to lighten the mood however she could, but it was impossible to get the sinking feeling out of his chest. “That’s what most people will assume,” he told her, glancing back at the flames as they continued to eat away at the villa. ‘But it was an empty villa, and like you said, wasn’t the Canteen. I wouldn’t put it past someone to frame your group.” 

Amelie was sat on a piece of drift wood, green eyes watching as the waves hit the shore. She wasn’t thinking of anything, just admiring how peaceful it seemed to be. Her ears were tuned to the noise of everything around her, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Truth be told, she didn’t notice the person who had walked up to where she was, and it startled her when she did notice them. “It’s kind of crazy right? The way something so peaceful can surround an island where it seems that all hell has broken loose?” The blonde questioned, head turning to look over at the person.

Chase had crossed his arms over his chest as he made his way up to Amelie, sitting quietly on her own, watching the shoreline. He took liberty and joined her without asking if he could, sitting down and leaning his forearms over his knees. “I happen to like the juxtaposition.” He glanced over at her briefly and then back to where the waves were washing up against the sand. “There has to be some peace among the chaos or else we would all go crazy.”