#hubriel

“What?” Gabriel spreads his arms wide. Since he’s already divested himself of everything but his focus, the gesture affords Hugo an unimpeded view of his nakedness. “You act like a doddering old man preparing for your own burial at sea, I’m gonna call it like I see it. There was a time you’d’ve beaten me and been down in the water already. Now you’re sittin’ there like a sour headwind.”

A gratifying flush blooms from the vee of Hugo’s lavender vest to the underside of his jaw. Anger, lust, or general vexation—the source of his consternation hasn’t ever mattered to Gabriel, and sure as all seven hells it doesn’t matter now. He just likes that he’s ruffled Hugo’s feathers.

“Let’s say I’ve developed a certain distaste for sailing close to the wind.”

“Let’s say you’re full of shit.” Gabriel ticks points off on his fingers as he lists them. “Fisting a god, stealing ships out from under the noses of merchants, bringing me and the fold to the Enclave in the first place, hells, burning down a whole godsdamned Imperial port—yeah, I know that one was you, don’t look so surprised. Play at even keel all you like, but don’t pass it off as anything but an offering for your secret-eater.”

Hugo puts his hands behind his back. The new definition in his scarred biceps means he must be clenching his fists. Another point in Gabriel’s favour.

“That’s a creative way of calling me a liar. For you, anyway.”

“If I wanted to call you a liar, I’d say it plain. I’m saying it ain’t the whole truth, and you know it, and I’m sick of settling for subterfuge and signal flags from you. We’re past all that.” At Hugo’s flat expression of disbelief, Gabriel laughs without mirth and adds, “As past it as the two of us are ever gonna get.”

Hugo rocks back on his booted heel. A raw wound flashes across his face. There’s a stretch where Gabriel thinks Hugo will find some forthcomingness. But then he looks off into the distance, treating Gabriel to a familiar stoic profile, so whatever notion he’s grappling with only bloodies the waters of this particular argument.

He’s long past the days of chasing after his former captain, and lucky for him, there’s a quick and diverting exit from this conversation he no longer wants to have. He’s three strides from the edge of the waterfall when a coil of familiar metal captures his forearm.

Alright, so maybe he doesn’t chase after Hugo.

But there’s still the fucking riptide of his presence to contend with, drowning any urge to break free. There’s a fissure in Hugo’s expression, a crack in the hull in want of sealing.

“This…” Hugo begins, trailing off, gesturing with his other hand to encompass himself, Gabriel, the cliffs, the seas beyond. “Brings back memories that are difficult. Unpleasant to recall.”

The tempest of Gabriel’s temper builds and breaks on his indignant exhale. “Yeah, you don’t have to remind me of how bleedin’ unpleasant you find the fold. You’ve made it pretty godsdamned clear. So piss off and—”

The rest of his swears vanish in the warmth of Hugo’s lips on his, urgent, insistent, tongue all velvet heat as he delves into Gabriel’s mouth. He kisses like it’s the only apology he knows how to give, or like he’s gasping for air, or like a prayer in a language they still share, and by the time they break apart, Gabriel’s heart rivals the waterfall as it pounds in his ears.

“Not every part of those memories is unpleasant,” Hugo says in a low rasp, grazing his teeth along the stubbled skin fluttering in time with Gabriel’s pulse. He pulls back to fix him with a stare of breathtaking intensity, lips pursed in thought. “Everything worth remembering includes you.”

A mutiny erupts out behind Gabriel’s ribs. It’s as close as Hugo’s gotten to the words he, for whatever gods bedamned reason, talks circles around, the ones involving ‘I’ and ‘love’ and ‘you’ next to each other.

He’ll take it. For now.

Gabriel cradles the back of Hugo’s head in his palm and draws him close until their foreheads touch. “’Course it does. I’m unforgettable, by your own lengthy and colourful admissions. And spectacular. The best captain to sail the Fourfold and veritable holy terror.”

“Second best.”

“I’ll remember that when I’m heaving half the fucking ocean up to save you from getting pincered by a bunch of navy dogs.”

“Perhaps you’d do better to remember why you’re permitted on Enclave shores at all.”

“Well, Jihane and me have taken a shine to each other, so I reckon I’ll be invited back. Especially since it’s the Squall she asked to sail aboard and not the Tide.”

“And I wish you luck in accommodating Jihane and her… exacting standards.”

“Nothing the best captain in the Fourfold can’t handle.”

There—a rebellious twitch of Hugo’s lips, buried beneath the overwrought consternation he strangles it with.

With a snort, Gabriel shoves Hugo’s bare shoulder. “Even second-best captains aren’t afraid of such a tiny risk like some cliff jumping. Besides, I ain’t hearing any alternative propositions for the evening’s entertainment.”

“I have a few.” Hugo looks Gabriel over from head to toe with filthy intent, and while tempting, the beck and call of the sea below raises a different kind of tide in Gabriel.

“Would it kill you to relax for a godsdamned turn and follow my lead?”

One bold eyebrow wings up. “Kill me? Hardly. But it would certainly be a leap of faith.”

Gabriel turns away from Hugo to look over the cliffs and the basin below. It’s a glittering, dizzying drop, enough to make his head spin, but he’s no stranger to a plummet. His blood heats in anticipation.

“Everything’s a leap of faith these days, Captain Melançon, in case it’s escaped your fine weather eye. Comes with being at the beck and call of forces beyond our ken. So why not start here?”

Without waiting for an answer, Gabriel pivots, swallows the ground in two long strides, and launches himself off the cliff's edge, his joyful bellow echoing through the oasis. The freefall snatches his stomach and pins it to the base of his throat. He flips through the air, ass over end, clutching his knees to his chest in the last moments, and then—

He plunges into the sea like a shout, saltwater rushing over the ink of his bondmark and bringing him to a second kind of life. Gabriel exhales as momentum drives him further downward. Xeheia’s presence fills him as he inhales blessed water, a thunderous euphoria joining the mortal delight of a leap off the edge.

For a moment, he’s tempted to drift further down, to commune, to pray. To find where aquamarine becomes sapphire becomes deepest black.

But for now, there are other matters to tend to.

With the orange and pink sunset to guide him, Gabriel orients himself skyward. A series of powerful kicks gets him most of the way to the surface. He breathes out Xeheia’s sustenance, breaches, and inhales the soil-after-rain scent of Enclave air, grinning wide and laughing loudly. The power and majesty of the waterfall impress even more from this angle as he treads the waters disturbed by its arcing flow.

Squinting, Gabriel glances up and sees Hugo leaning over the edge before vanishing beyond it. Figures. It’ll be a decent climb back up the cliff, so he may as well enjoy a swim before he heads back to the uptight son of a bitch.

Instead, he finds himself in a meditative trance as he treads water, lulled into a prayer-like state of calm by the nearby waterfall. Gabriel’s never been this close to one or seen one this large. It’s not the Depths, or the enchanted veins of water laced through the Storm’s Eye, but there’s a holy might to it all the same.

Then a motion from above draws his eye.

There’s no mistaking Hugo’s form—not the ass-naked state of it, nor the elegant twist of his lean limbs as he dives off the cliff into the waters below. Gabriel holds his breath as he watches Hugo soar through the air in a graceful arc, then expels it in jubilation a moment later, whooping and hollering. A blink later, Hugo slips beneath the surface, cutting through the water clean as a knife, vanishing without a sound.

Each passing moment turns Gabriel’s excitement acrid. The bubbling sensation toes the line of fear. His own difficult memory flashes behind his eyelids unbidden: Hugo floating, lifeless and prone, bleeding and blackened.

Before true terror can take hold, Hugo takes hold instead, using the element of surprise to drag him beneath the churning surface of the lake.

The world vanishes in an expanse of crystal blue threaded with green. Gabriel aims a vicious kick in Hugo’s direction, aiming to dislodge his hands from his ankles. Maybe bloody his nose up a bit for the trouble, too. He manages the first goal if not the second. Hugo treads water beside him; orange-gold sunlight from above dapples across his skin, his silver-streaked hair floating in an aura around his head, grin no less fierce for being toothless. He rotates in the water and propels himself upward.

Bold of him to show his scarred back to Gabriel.

He does Hugo a kindness by letting him get a couple good gulps of air in. After all, Gabriel’s rarely interested in an unfair fight, no matter his reputation past and present. Then he glides over, grabs Hugo on either side of his waist, and drags him right back under.

Were it not for the blood-warm waters of the Enclave flooding the spaces between their limbs as they wrestle, it could be a time ten Risings passed. He could be a first mate again, lust-sick, half ready to put a knife to his palm already, insubordinating his way to a dunk in the sea for the joy of Hugo’s attention in Xeheia’s waters.

The present makes itself known in other ways. Hugo, the slippery bastard that he is, lands a punch on Gabriel’s tit with his artifice hand as he shoves away. The pain forces a bubbly stream of Watcher-blessed air from his lips. But the throb of the impending bruise matches the interested one in his dick, which hasn’t changed much at all.

Gabriel gives chase. They collide in slow motion, the powerful currents from the waterfall making the lake harder to move through. He wraps one arm around Hugo’s thighs from below, blocking Hugo’s slow-motion swat with his other elbow. The angle gives him a great view even with all the thrashing: the dark curls between his legs, the scarred muscle of his chest, and the ferocious set of his jaw. He looks away from Gabriel, towards the surface, throat bobbing. His lungs must be burning by now.

Here, another marker of change. Once, there was a time Gabriel would have held him under and watched him drown. (Would have tried, anyway.) Instead, he releases Hugo, content to gloat about his victory when they’re both above water again.

Hugo swims towards him instead.

Strong hands, one metal and one flesh, grip Gabriel’s shoulders, Hugo using him like an anchor to situate himself. Fathoms-deep emotion lurks in the vivid green of his eyes, and there’s Gabriel’s heart again, twisting like a fish out of water. Heat builds low in his belly and coils outward as Hugo weaves himself into Gabriel’s bulk—chest to tits, thigh wedged between his legs against his stirring dick, and of godsdamned course, a hand in his hair, to get him right where he wants him.

Gabriel doesn’t mind. Much.

Not when Hugo places his mouth to Gabriel’s, demanding even as he yields, a moan vibrating through his chest as Gabriel breathes sacred air into his lungs. Hugo drinks him down. His calloused palm charts a course along Gabriel’s neck and collarbone, coming to rest in the valley of his chest, right next to his thundering heart.

It fills Gabriel with uncanny rapture.

His bondmark fills with magic, skin thrilling as his power seeks, quests—

And finds nothing.

It’s gotten easier, these spiritual stumbles, but not easy. Xeheia’s gift proves a storm wind howl, searching for a port, or maybe a shore to destroy.

Gabriel gives it both.

His limbs burst with power, merging and uncoiling into four, six, then eight tentacles. There’s a pain like a good, deep stretch, then a sickening lurch of his stomach, and then finally bliss, Xeheia’s magic coursing through him as rapidly as the nearby waterfall. Hugo pauses their breath sharing to draw back, eyes widening in surprise, then narrowing as Gabriel wraps slick, powerful limbs around each of Hugo’s. His pupils are wide as the dark moon, his teeth digging into his lower lip, and that’s when Gabriel kisses him.

It’s like this they breach the surface, a tangle of arms and legs and tentacles, Hugo held fast in his embrace whether he likes it or not. They’ve drifted to a distant curve of the cliffs around the brackish lake, the roaring waterfall behind them.

Gabriel won’t ever feel Hugo bond-to-bond again, but this—his Xeheia-blessed arms tracing the ghostly scars of his butchered bondmark, coiled against the wet heat of his folds, squeezing the taut muscles in his thighs and calves—is as good a substitute as he’s getting. If he focuses hard enough, Gabriel can almost sense the faint echo of magic, the last shred of Xeheia left in Hugo’s spirit.

He's got other things to focus on, though.

“Quit while you’re ahead and release me, Berthelot,” Hugo says, pitching his voice in that too-familiar way to be heard over the thunderous susurrus.

“Your mouth says one thing, but your cunt says another.” To illustrate his point, Gabriel slides the muscular tentacle between Hugo’s legs back and forth. The slickness there ain’t all him, that’s for godsdamned sure, and Hugo’s strangled gasp only proves his point further. “You know what a white flag looks like. So go on and wave it, then, if you wanna go so bad.”

Consideration weighs down Hugo’s expression. While he’s thinking about whatever vagaries are in the offing, he pinches Gabriel’s nipple hard, rolling it between his fingers afterward.

“You ain’t exactly helping your case, doing that.”

Hugo, being Hugo, does it again, just harder this time. A final limb, barbed and sensitive, begins to unfurl from the slit tucked between Gabriel’s tentacles, swelling along with the heat in his blood.

“And what,” Hugo begins, dipping his head and sinking his teeth into the corded muscle of Gabriel’s shoulder, eliciting a string of curses from him. “What case am I trying to make, exactly?”

“Oh, the usual.” Gabriel’s airy tone belies the strength he uses to grip Hugo’s jaw, heart pounding as he admires the black tips of his limbs curled against Hugo’s neck. “I best you, you refuse to admit I bested you and act the sore loser, we fire some shots across the bow and maybe punch a few earnest holes in the hull, then we both get what we want anyway.”

“Is that right?” Hugo tries to pry Gabriel’s arm away, fingers splayed across the sacred ink spilled there. He’s still got a tentacle or three free, so he lifts one from the water and wraps one coil of sucker-covered muscle around Hugo’s forearms, lacing them tight as his own precious boots. “Seems you’re getting ahead of yourself without a plan. As usual.”

Unbothered, buoyed by pleasantly warm currents, bitten by sharp teeth of lust, Gabriel admires the picture before him: Hugo, arms bound above his head, muscles tense against the restraint of Gabriel’s Xeheia-blessed body, glaring daggers even as his hips grind and roll against limb between his legs.

Gabriel trails his barbed cock along the outside of Hugo’s thigh and curls it around his backside, a quiet moan rumbling in his throat at the resulting shiver of pleasure. Fury darkens Hugo’s features, but the circles along the undersides of new limbs can sense—can taste—the fresh arousal pulsing from his cunt.

With a monumental sigh, he pulls off his headphones, closes his laptop, and lets the playerbase of Fourfold Seas breathe easy for a few. He knows who it is even before he flips his phone over and sees the resting bitch face photo he attached to this number.

"You better have a good reason for calling when you know I'm busy," he says, couch creaking under his weight as he leans back.

"I wouldn't have to call if you replied to your messages."

"You know the rule, you gotta fit what you have to say into the character limit or you get left on read. I'm a busy man, Hugo, I ain't got time for triple texts."

"Then let's get to the point. Scrap the second verse and start over."

"But that's the best verse."

"It's objectively terrible."

"It ain't all that different from Depth Charge and you know that's a fan favourite. This'll be an anthem, put money on it."

"Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good," Hugo says. "It's lowest common denominator lyrical effluvium and you can do better."

"Stone cold. Lucky I got thick skin or you might hurt my feelings."

"It takes more than that to put your nose out of joint. It's not as though I'm critiquing your guitar work. Yet."

Gabriel laughs, lifting out of his seat to fish a flattened carton of cigs from his back pocket. Out on his balcony, the sun dips below the skyline, burning up the clouds and spilling rich gold over the coastal view. His true home is in front of a sea of adoring faces, drinking in their worship as he bares his soul in song, but here's got its own kind of peace, too.

Well, mostly.

He leans on the railing and wedges his phone against his shoulder, tucks a cigarette between his lips while he lights up, and takes a deep draw so that Hugo can hear it.

"So you wanna come over and work on it, or are you not done with the foreplay yet," he says on the exhale.

"I refuse to fuck anyone who makes Five Finger Death Punch sound highbrow."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. You don't have to deepthroat a thesaurus to be meaningful, you pretentious asshole."

"But you do have to be meaningful." Hugo clicks his tongue, a sound like a switchblade flicking open. "I don't like the direction Matriarch Records is pushing us in, and I don't know why you're being so complacent about it."

Gabriel stifles a heavy sigh. This bullshit again.

"It's Friday night, Hugo. Can't you think of something better to do than bitch at me over the phone?"

"Fine, I'll come do it in person," Hugo says, and hangs up on him.

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 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.