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A grey dawn seeps beneath Gabriel's eyelids as he rises from the trenches of sleep, each fact of his surroundings filtering into his awareness in turn and coaxing him into resentful semi-wakefulness. He registers no danger despite the uncommon noises from nearby: accented voices shouting and laughing, a cart rattling over cobbles, sounds of industry that don't belong to a ship. Likewise, there's no sway to the bed he's sprawled in, nor the steady thunder of waves in his ears. Only the crack of raindrops against a windowpane and a cold draft licking his skin where his godsdamned blankets have been thieved. 

Inn room, his common sense supplies. Some corroborating's done by the rude throb at his temples and his mouth tasting like shit.

No pitcher of water on the nightstand because it's an old quarter Orly dive if his recollection's to be trusted, but there is an animal warmth next to him, taking up most of the bed and hoarding the worse-for-wear blankets.

Hugo, flat on his stomach and sound asleep. Lucky asshole.

Gabriel is of a mind to join him again seeing as being awake ain't been a thrilling experience so far, but then Hugo shifts, body unconsciously seeking his, and his blood stirs. The scent of sweat and oil and liquor on him—yeah, that's got Gabriel wide awake whether he likes it or not. 

The temptation here is to prod Hugo till he rouses and make him suffer alongside, then goad him into one more room-wrecking fuck before they round up their respective crews and part ways again. 

A further temptation is to let him sleep a little longer. 

Though not while he's got all the pillows. Gabriel tugs one out from under him and he lifts his head with a shapeless, questioning noise. 

"Ain't full morning yet," Gabriel tells him, voice rough like he swallowed a holystone. Hugo goes right out again, if he even got properly awake to begin with. The blanket slides down his shoulder, baring an expanse of scarred skin. It’s a foreign land in the pre-dawn gloom. 

That’s what usually wards off this temptation in particular, on account of all the twisted-up feelings it agitates. But being either still drunk or not drunk enough, Gabriel finds himself running his fingers over the rippled crescent of skin on Hugo's biceps. He's touched Hugo's flaying scars plenty before, but usually it's in the heat of the moment, with bared teeth and crude taunting, greedy hands shoved under his shirt, when Gabriel can believe they're both shaking with lust and nothing else.

Like this, it's different. Here he can look his fill and draw conclusions, and generally think overmuch about it. Like how they must have started from the edges of his back and worked their way in, peeling him real neat to begin with but cutting deep and vicious by the time they got to his spine. 

No matter how much Gabriel, at a particular time and in a particular mood, would proclaim loud and long that it's the least of what his former captain deserved—it ain't how it should be done, gouging the bond out of a man like that. 

Gabriel of all people knows butchery when he sees it. 

He follows an edge of the scarring with his fingertip, a pinched pale curve that used to be a sacred coil of tentacle unfurling over Hugo's shoulder, and feels a desolate ripple of magic in the inked lines of his own bondmark. A shout without an echo, a prayer lost to the wind. Yeah, thinking too much about it is bad, the way it makes him thirst for the holiest of vengeance. 

This, too, is some godsawful shit: the compulsion to hook his nails under its edges and tear the mass of scarring off his back, a second flaying driven by a brief but feverish conviction that he'll find smooth, tattooed skin beneath. It puts a sick ache in the pit of his stomach, how he swears he can still feel the currents of Hugo's mark under his touch, enough that he could perfectly trace out its old pathways—but there was a time he knew it almost better than his own, and memory can be all seven hells of a bitch like that.

Anyway, Hugo's thick as thieves with his deity of mysteries and bullshit now. He'd sooner cut off his other hand than admit it, but Gabriel can tell when the man's flirting.

He noses between Hugo's shoulder blades and presses his lips to the rucked skin there, open-mouthed, teeth and beard and jewellery scraping so to leave his own mark. Can't bruise a scar, but it stokes the heat in his veins well enough to smother all the rest, so maybe now he can get on with having a good time instead of chewing on old rope for no reason. 

For all the circumstance that had to be weathered to get here, fact is this: Hugo is back in his life, back in his bed, and that's riches beyond measure. 

Well. A bed. 

He kicks the defiled blankets the rest of the way off; they slouch to the floor along with some of their discarded clothes. Hugo sleeps on, stridently undisturbed, so Gabriel pushes himself up onto one elbow to brush some of his grey-streaked hair aside. His fine and handsome rat bastard face is relaxed in slumber. Peaceful. Serene. Untroubled.

Gabriel bites him on the ear.

Hugo jerks awake with a sharp inhale, heaving onto his side and taking a swing at the same time. Fair play to him, he would've cracked his jaw real good if it hadn't been a right hook. Gabriel laughs and catches him by the elbow, managing to land a kiss on what's left of his forearm before he pulls free and tucks it against his side, eyeing Gabriel with promising, if bleary, animosity.

"A fine way to get yourself stabbed of a morning," he says.

"Nah, your knife's still stuck in the doorframe downstairs."

Hugo yawns, rolling onto his back to stretch, joints cracking. And here's more skin for Gabriel to put his hands on: fresh scars among familiar old ones, new landmarks to chart. 

"So you remember, then. A marvel for how many of your sheets were flung to the wind."

"Didn't stop you drawing steel on me the moment you rolled in. How many dives did you ransack before you found me, anyways?"

"I wasn't looking for you," Hugo says loftily. 

It's never too early in the day for him to be a lying son of a bitch, but Gabriel is still half an inch too hungover to bother calling him on it. Besides, hard to deny that Hugo darkening the tavern door was the finest sight of the evening. The barkeep might be inclined to disagree, seeing as their way of greeting each other put a fright into the scofflaws and whipjacks more than the average barroom brawl might, but he doubts they'll make it either his or Hugo's problem. 

There's a satisfying ache to his limbs, points of soreness where bruises have ripened in the night. Hugo is less scathed, but only because Gabriel had demolished a bottle of the local firewater and had a mighty inclination to be shoved against a wall by the time he showed up. 

Pretty good night, all told. 

Gabriel runs his thumb over one of the delicate lightning forks ribboning over Hugo's side, following its path inward, detouring along an older, more deliberate scar that stretches across his pectoral, and then to his sternum. His chest hair's made a valiant attempt to grow back between the radiating bolts, though where Gabriel spread his hand in desperate prayer is fated to remain bare. 

He does the same now, splaying his fingers over the taut, smooth skin, feeling Hugo's heart beating steadily beneath, the controlled rise and fall of his breathing. These new scars draw their own rawness to the surface, like there's no right place to keep the immensity of the emotions they stir. They pelt Gabriel like the fiercest storms he ever sailed all broke on him at once. 

He might've sacrificed the scar Gabriel cut into his palm to bring Xeheia salvation, but the feeling he used to get when Hugo peeled off a glove and he caught sight of it, that promise, that declaration—it ain't gone. It's here instead, a tight ache in his chest when he looks at these marks on Hugo's skin. 

A different-shaped promise now, maybe, and new declarations, but the meaning amounts to the same.

Hugo regards him with his usual quiet intensity, always like he can hear Gabriel's contemplations clear as a harbour bell. Godsdamn insufferable. With a scrunch of his nose, Gabriel shifts, bearing more of his weight on the hand spread over Hugo's chest as he leans down with intent.

A hand in his hair reins him in a breath from Hugo's mouth. "If you crack my ribs again, I won't let you off so easily this time."

"You didn't let me off easy the first time, asshole. You were just too busy pulling rank in whichever hell was fool enough to take you." Gabriel attempts to filch a kiss again only for the grip in his hair to tighten. He manages to land a glancing blow at the corner of Hugo's mouth before he's yanked back again, laughter rising up from his belly.

"I'm glad one of us finds it funny," Hugo says aridly, attempting to push Gabriel down his body.

A clear message. And if that's what he's wanting, who is Gabriel to deny him?

Well, he's Gabriel Berthelot, so he'll get to it in his own time.

He ignores Hugo's disgruntled sigh and pleases himself, straining against the familiar vice-grip in his hair to scrape his teeth over the corner of Hugo's stubbled jaw. "How about you turn yourself back over," he says into his ear, and if he can't see Hugo's filthy look he sure as hells can feel it raise the temperature of the room. 

"I'm comfortable as I am."

Gabriel slides his hand from over Hugo's escalating heartbeat to his flank, tracing an arc of scarring with his fingertips, then threatening his way between his back and the mattress. 

"I know you made fine use of that oil last night, but being screwed six ways to sundown wasn't rightly what I acquired it for. Call me ungrateful, but—"

"Ingrate," Hugo says with relish.

"—but I ain't of a mind for either of us to leave this room till I get my godsdamned way. So are you gonna turn over, Captain, or am I gonna have to flip you like a fish in a pan?"

"It seems to me that you've been as careless with your sense of self-preservation as I have with my favourite knife." 

At least Hugo doesn't seem inclined to bring the matter to an impasse, even if he grouses extraordinarily while turning over, and doubly so when Gabriel swings a leg over to sit astride his ass. 

The rainy light from the window filters over his back, shadows making it roil like a wind-licked ocean, and Gabriel's hand hovers over the knotted plane of his shoulder blade. 

Now he's got him where he wants him, touching Hugo's back somehow holds more weight than ever. A transgression against a mortal man instead of blaspheming against a god. 

Hugo watches his indecision from over his shoulder, inscrutable with the lower half of his face hidden but gaze as sharp as any harpoon. 

"All those high-handed demands, Berthelot, and you only plan to look?"

"Swear to the Watcher, if you say anything about my follow through I'll sit on you for an extra hour," Gabriel says, and feels himself relax some when Hugo laughs in the back of his throat. "I was just trying to figure out what happened to the bottle."

The flex and bunch of Hugo's back is still a sight and a half as he seeks amongst his ill-gotten pillows, muscle sleek beneath the pale twists of scar tissue. He stretches his hand under and back without a word, a small blue glass bottle cupped in his palm. 

It's missing its cork and most of its contents, but by Gabriel's estimation, there's enough. He warms a splash of it between his palms. The merchant he'd shaken down claimed it was a miracle substance capable of healing a mortal injury or sloughing away the ugliest scar, but Gabriel ain't stupid. Any merchant would swear the sea was sweet as molasses if it meant seeing the back of him.

Nah, he wanted it because he liked the smell.

Warm amber and musk scents the air, and Hugo throws him the same dark look he did last night when he was shoving Gabriel's legs apart with slick fingers. The reminder makes his dick throb, but pleasant as that is nestled up against Hugo's sorry excuse for an ass — something for later.

For now, he has to decide where he's going to start. 

All he knows is it ain't at the edges.

He draws his thumb in an arc over Hugo's right shoulder blade, and has to tamp a holy rage when he feels how deep the scar tissue runs. The muscle beneath is as taut as an overwound line, no surprise. He figures this shoulder gives Hugo the most trouble, on account of the way he knuckles at it when he thinks nobody's looking. Might be that things healed worst here, or maybe the weight of his artificed arm takes its toll more than his unwavering blade lets on. 

Either way, the second pass of his thumb drives a soft breath out of Hugo, the kind of yielding that burns in Gabriel's belly like spiced liquor. Emboldened, he leans more heavily onto him, working at the tense bunching in his shoulder until he tears out a real groan.

Hugo whips his arm back and grabs his calf, blunt nails digging in hard. "Stop."

Gabriel pauses, easing up where he's pressed his thumbs under the shelf of Hugo's shoulder blade. "I know you ain't one for pain, but I don't reckon this comes close by either of our standards."

"I'm not saying it hurts."

But he doesn't say anything else, either. He always had a way of saying plenty without opening his mouth, but these days it's not so obvious what that is. At least not like it used to be, back when they were all tangled up in the Depths and half submerged in each other. 

Gabriel sits back, oiled palm gliding up to grip the nape of Hugo's neck. "It's not so different from what you do for me," he says. "With your magic, I mean. In my bond."

"And you're just as obstinate about it." Hugo exhales through his nose, not an inch more unwound for all of Gabriel's hard work. "It's not that."

"Whatever it is, how about you spit it out instead of me havin' to make divinations." 

There may as well be a chart divider between Hugo's teeth, the way he's measuring what he wants to say. The more things change and shit. Gabriel gives the back of his neck a squeeze. 

"At least talk while you insist on kneading me," he finally says.

"Huh. Thought me shuttin' up was a special kinda gift."

"If I wanted peace and quiet I would find something for your mouth to do."

With a low chuckle, Gabriel slides his fingers into Hugo's hair and rakes through the greying strands. His nails scrape over his scalp, over the tattooed script hidden there. Secrets and secrets, just like always. 

Hugo makes a sound that's neither sigh nor groan but something else entirely, giving up his death-grip on Gabriel's thigh and sinking back into the mattress. This time Gabriel strokes his knuckles down the length of his spine, bumping over vertebrae like a string of beads. If it's talk he wants, well, Gabriel's never been short of something to say. 

"So, I gotta know something about when you were a scum-suckin' redcoat."

Hugo inhales slowly. "You can ask, but that doesn't mean I have to answer."

"Tell me something new. So this has been bugging me like a flour sack full of roaches. Keeping me up at night and all, the implications of it scurrying through my head—"

"The point, Gab."

"So much for civilised conversation. All right, this is what I wanna know. Since you bootlicked your way up to commodore and all, did you have to wear a stupid-ass hat?"

Hugo suddenly heaves under him, his bark of laughter muffled in the pillows and then swiftly followed by a loud cough as he tries to save face. Gabriel grins to himself.

"In my experience," he says, managing to sound mostly serious, "wearing an officer's hat is an invitation to be shot in the head. But it was part of the uniform, yes."

"Bet you looked a right prick."

"Mm. Sadly, it was lost to a high wind almost immediately."

If Gabriel knows Hugo at all, there's no way in any of the hells he didn't toss it overboard himself. "Shame," he says, firmly rolling the heels of his hands into Hugo's taut back until it dips beautifully, his hips rising in counterpoint. "Stupid-ass hat is still better than that haircut, in my opinion."

"Don't worry, I was issued another."

"How long did you keep that one?"

"A week, maybe ten days. Unfortunate incident while I was inspecting the pumps."

"Sacrificed to the bilge deities, huh."

"For all the good it did." Hugo sounds lightly strained as he stretches, arching under the pressure of Gabriel's fingers as he ploughs along the grain of his muscle. "Though at least it was understood why I declined to wear the damned thing after it was oh so helpfully fished out of the stinking water for me."

"And we're supposed to be the filthy dogs." 

"Mm."

Gabriel keeps at his work on Hugo's back, seeking out its knots best he can. Distracting the way some of the scarring almost smooths away when he stretches it, only for it to corrugate again when he moves along. More of it stays thick and unpliable no matter how he kneads it, like a coil of line tarred to a deck. Or innards over a boardwalk, such as whoever did this is gonna end up if he has anything to do with it.

He only realises he's slacked on the conversating when Hugo's soft exhales drop off and he starts getting stiff under him again, and not in the fun way. Sure, Gabriel could think of a new thing to needle him about, but his rage's simmering up again and he ain't got anywhere to put it but here.

"If you don't want me touching your back you can just bleedin' say—"

"I don't like anyone touching it." The words scythe out of Hugo, so sharp they lop the end off Gabriel's sentence. "I thought that much was obvious."

Typical Hugo, letting Gabriel have his own way then acting the martyr about it. It pisses him off something fierce, and godsdamn if he doesn't want to shake the hells out of him. Better than contemplating the thought that he ain't always an exception to Hugo's convoluted rules, so Gabriel gives him a good shove, then another when he tries to get up, pinning him by the shoulders and leaning on him until he grunts.

Incensed colour rises on Hugo's cheekbones and reddens the back of his neck. The scar that coils behind his ear stands out stark and pale. Gabriel is furious all over again that someone did that to him, and just as furious that Hugo let it happen, that getting himself mutilated was a better choice than staying.

He leans over and bites down on the scar, anger and reverence braided into a familiar savagery. 

Hugo hisses and lands a vicious elbow to his ribs, but Gabriel has all the advantages here. He settles his weight more solidly before Hugo can start bucking, though he loses his grip on his neck in the process. A crescent of white teethmarks frame the twist of scarring, quickly fading to a red that's lost in the flush of Hugo's ire.

"Berthelot," Hugo says in a serrated rasp, cutting through Gabriel's temper. His amputated arm presses into the mattress as he tries to gain some leverage. A godsdamn wretched trick of the eye makes it look as though he's plunged his hand through the bed, and the last of Gabriel's anger is swept away on a wave of grief.

But the thing about waves is they all return to the ocean in the end. No teeth when he presses his face into Hugo's neck this time, just long deep breaths while he waits for him to stop straining against him, the smell of him after sex and sleep unchanged even when everything else has. 

Hugo succumbs a little at a time to Gabriel's bulk, but many things have tried to crush him and failed. His pulse thrums against Gabriel's skin. He wets his lips, starts to say something. Stops. 

"When they were repairing me, afterward," he says after a while, steady and deliberate, the way digging out a bullet is steady and deliberate. "I had little choice in what I was subjected to. You don't ask a tool's permission to handle it."

The art to giving Hugo's bullshit a good enough shake that the meaning falls out ain't a reliable one, but Gabriel can make enough sense of things this time. He exhales through his nose and subtly as he can, eases some of his weight off him. "Guessing they don't talk to it, neither."

"Oh, there was talk," Hugo says, then falters. Not his usual clamming up though; Gabriel can see enough of his profile to catch the rapid blink of his lashes, a furrow creasing his brow. 

"What did they say to you?"

The sound of rain soaks the drawn-out silence.

"I don't—" Hugo's brow draws down ever further, his jaw tightening. "It was a difficult time. I wasn't fully—I was in significant pain. Trying to remember is like grasping for a dream."

Gabriel knows what kind of dreams Hugo used to have. There was a time between sleeping and waking he could sense the turbulence of Hugo's soul in the bond, just before he came fully to the surface and tidied it all away. They've travelled through enough of the hells since then that his nighttime ruminating ain't likely to have gotten any sweeter. Can't entirely fault him for wanting to lie ahull of it.

Well, maybe a touch. But not enough to start another fight. And not when he's blown by four winds at once trying to explain. If it'd come out of him seamless, then Gabriel would be more inclined to think it was his usual obfuscating. 

"Yeah, all right," Gabriel says with a sigh. "What I think I know don't always line up with what you're willing to say, but I figure that's always been the way for us. Must confess to having some raw feelin' about that still, but I don't need to understand right now."

Finally, the rigid arch of Hugo's spine softens. The long exhale that comes with it speaks more of resignation than relaxation, but beggars can't be choosers. He reaches back, hand brushing Gabriel's thigh. Sorry, thank you, and other such unsayable things.

"Would you move? Time and tide won't permit us a whole hour more."

But Gabriel's forgiven him worse. "Maybe for you. 'sides, I'm comfortable."

"That makes one of us." This time the pause Hugo leaves is full of machinating. "The small of my back could use some attention if you're still feeling handsy."

Coin flip whether it's a genuine request or if he's gonna turn Gabriel onto the floor the moment he lets up. Either way, he ain't one to refuse an invitation.

"That's mighty convenient." Sitting up doesn't get him slung overboard like a sack of ballast, so he shifts himself over so he can glide his hands lower, spreading oil over the dimples in Hugo's lower back. 

"Nothing convenient about cracking like a rotted mooring post whenever I stand up."

"Sure it's your back and not that stick up your ass?"

"Gods forfend," Hugo says dryly, then lets out a breathy grunt as Gabriel digs his thumbs either side of his spine, into the oil-shimmer of scarring where Xeheia's limbs once rose from an ink black sea. 

He could let those currents of the past drag him under again, trick him into searching for remnants to bring back to the surface, but Gabriel figures that could drown even him. So instead he rubs his way southward to give Hugo's backside a hearty double squeeze, one hand encompassing each flat buttock. 

"Yeah, the stick's doin' just fine," he says to the restrained sigh that floats up from Hugo's heap of pillows.

Gabriel strokes down the back of his legs, pushing his fingers into the firm cording of his inner thighs until they nigh quiver, and then Hugo relaxes that final inch. His legs ease apart under Gabriel's gentle insistence. The wet smeared there ain't all oil.

"Up," Hugo demands, and the hoarseness in his voice has Gabriel scrambling off him so he can lift himself onto his knees and elbows, good forearm braced crosswise to keep his balance on the sagging mattress.

Can't reach to get himself off when he's propped up like that, but Gabriel figures that's where he comes in.

He spreads himself over the pale straits of Hugo's back, texture like wet satin against his tits and belly. He reaches around to drag his hand down his scarred chest, following the trail of soft hair over his flat stomach until it turns coarse, seeking and finding his clit. Gabriel presses two firm fingers to it. He doesn't stroke or anything, not cause he's of a mind to tease, but because Hugo always wants to set the pace. 

And he wants it vicious this morning. Hugo rocks into Gabriel's fingers, grinding like when he's got leather strapped over his hips and deadly intent on sheathing his weapon of choice in Gabriel deep as he can. 

Tough to keep up the pressure with his fingers, even with the heel of his hand shoved against Hugo's crotch so hard he can feel bone. Not with how it's making Hugo drip. His clit slips between Gabriel's knuckles on the next thrust, and yeah, okay, maybe he ain't trying as hard as he could to give Hugo something to rut against. The rasp of breath in Hugo's throat is too good, the thud of his pulse and his bristling frustration sacrosanct. It makes Gabriel want to burst like a wave against a sea wall, get dashed into a thousand soaking pieces. 

Hugo's good hand mangles the sheets. "I do not have all morning. Get me off, or I'll do it myself and make you regret it later," he says from between gritted teeth.

"Thought you were meant to be the patient one." Gabriel slides Hugo's clit into the vee of his fingers, hood pushed all the way back and baring his full hardness. He squeezes, relishing the responsive twitch and accompanying hiss of breath. "Always in it for the long game, bidin' your time and all that."

"Even I have my limits, Berthelot."

"Well, don't say I don't do nothing for you." Gabriel anchors an arm around Hugo's chest, hand spread over his webwork of scars. "Up."

He lifts into a tall kneel with a complaining creak from the bedframe, hauling Hugo up with him until his balance tips. Good arm freed, he grabs Gabriel's wrist and shoves his hand deeper between his legs.

Gabriel rests his chin on Hugo's shoulder, teasing with his fingertips. He's slick, open, hot as blood. Desire batters him like a storm surge. "Yeah?"

"What of it?" 

"I ain't complaining," Gabriel says, and curls two fingers into him.

"Good." Hugo pushes back immediately, arching like a filled sail and riding Gabriel's fingers deep as they'll go, rings and all. Godsdamn. "Good," he says again, rough with approval that slips like a hot blade into Gabriel's belly. 

Hugo's breath comes in short hard bursts as he thrusts into Gabriel's palm, tensing with each roll of his hips until his cunt grips Gabriel's knuckles and he comes in long, wet, shuddering pulses. 

Gabriel lets Hugo drop back to the mattress while he's still panting. He rolls over, sweat gleaming on his shoulders and his eyes narrowing in his flushed face, and with a predatory half-smile, he hooks his legs around Gabriel's waist and yanks. What follows is more tussle than fucking, but if Hugo wants to play dirty then Gabriel's as filthy as they come. He wins this round by clamping Hugo's face in his sweaty armpit and rubbing himself off to his muffled protestations.

"I should have left at first light," Hugo mutters, real sour for a man who still has his nose buried in Gabriel's armpit hair despite being let go. Sunrise proper licks through the window, gilding the snarl of scarring on his flank, and Gabriel smooths his hand over it before he can stop himself.

Hugo grasps his arm. His fingers run over the cloth binding Gabriel's biceps, dipping into the pitted wounds and lingering there. It's a horrible kind of intimacy, unsettling like stepping over an abyssal shelf, but he reckons that's Hugo's point.

Still, only so much of that a man can endure even if he's accustomed to plunging into deep waters. He catches Hugo's wrist when he presses in like he wants to reach the bone, jolted by the pain and because who the hells knows what would happen if he touched the dark clot of magic that festers in Gabriel's veins. 

Hugo spreads his fingers suchlike it could be taken for surrender if not apology, and the only thing Gabriel can think to do next is kiss his palm. The way Hugo lifts his head to look at him with brutal affection doesn't help anything.

"There weren't many things I missed," he says, low, fingertip skimming the crest of Gabriel's cheek, "when I left."

"Yeah, so I recall you saying twice or thrice."

 "—but I missed this. A great deal."

A hundred asshole things Gabriel could say to that, like and who's godsdamned fault was that, and one dangersome thing like yeah, I love you too, so he bites his tongue. 

"Navy dogs all shitty lays, huh."

Alright, still a touch bitter when he mostly meant to joke. For his part, Hugo hasn't taken it either of those ways. That odd look clouds his face again, as though he's trying to remember something but doesn't know what. 

The harbour bell peals through the air, a loud clanging to mark high tide.

Hugo's unsettled air vanishes like a horizon mirage, and takes the moment with it. He curses under his breath and slings himself to his feet, shrugging on his shirt and thumbing its buttons through their holes with studied deftness.

"Relax, Hugo." Gabriel props himself on an elbow to watch while he bends over to fetch a stocking. "The tide ain't going anywhere without my say-so."

"I know. But my crew are under orders." He sits on the edge of the bed to tug on his breeches. "And they will be expecting their captain." 

"Not lookin' like he got keelhauled through a nighthouse, they won't."

"Don't just lie there, then." Hugo gestures imperiously at the rest of his scattered clothing. "What did you do with my other boot?"

Gabriel finds it wedged between the mattress and the wall, and unties Hugo's cravat from the bedpost while he's there. His slops are tangled in the sheets; he shakes them out and dons them. Meantime Hugo's strapped his artificed arm on—there must be a trick to it, but he's touchy about being watched. He stretches the arm out, turns his wrist, obsidian fingers clicking as he slowly makes a fist.

"Sure you can't spare half a turn more?" Gabriel says, hope in his heart and filth in mind. 

Hugo arches a sly eyebrow, but shakes his head. "It wouldn't be half a turn," he says. "Don't push your luck, or you might find yourself the victim of a violent maritime accident."

"I am the violent maritime accident." Gabriel laughs when Hugo castigates him in the tit with a cold finger, and draws him in to bump foreheads. 

They hold there a long moment, the inn clattering around them and breakfast cooking smells drifting up, until Gabriel's empty stomach rumbles like thunder.

Hugo sighs, and looking supremely pissed off, says, "Smells like goat chowder."

"Take some for breakfast on the Tide?"

"You know I detest goat, nor have any fondness for chowder."

"Yeah, but I like it just fine," Gabriel says, "and my crew ain't expecting to get underway till tomorrow. So, are you gonna invite me onboard or have I gotta invite myself?"

"Seems to me you just did."

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That would be @artofmisi

• If you don’t own OCkiss, why are you organizing it?

I had been organizing this event three years in a row over at my artblog @artofmisi and people kept asking me, and they say three time’s the charm, so I went for it as a way of having things organized in one blog, and so people who want to participate in my version of this event can have an updated and controlled place to stay informed. Also, I just love OCkiss :P

• Has OCkiss been organized by other people?

Absolutely, and I take no credit for their idea nor their work! As far as I’m aware of, @/becausedragonage is the first one who did it on this post  in 2016 with #ockiss16, and then @/slavetothemocha followed with #ockiss17 the following year on this post. From 2018 until this day, I have organized it every year. I’m not aware of other people organizing it, but if you do, please let me know and I will add them to this list!

• Is OCkiss exclusive to Tumblr?

You can participate and post on your preferred social media, however, OCkiss will only be sharing entries here on Tumblr. There are two reasons for it: 1) I really want to help reblog culture on this site, and promote creators by sharing their work and 2) I simply don’t have time to check every social network!

• Why is it in February / will it always be in February?