wanderlust

Emerson couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t set an alarm and allowed herself to wake up naturally. It mattered little that it was Wednesday, it mattered that today was the start of two consecutive days off and therefore, her weekend. Work orders, emails, meetings, and the pressing matters that ordinarily sent her into overdrive were taking a much-needed backseat. 

However, there was one thing that was rather familiar and that was whose bed she awoke in. Her late nights were spent in Flynn’s bed instead of her own for the past several days, but today, she didn’t dare open the laptop now securely kept in his office. Rain pounded on the roof of his villa and the white noise of the blowing fan made her doze ever so slightly. 

“If I’m not working today, I’m insisting you don’t either,” she murmured from her position in his bed. 

​Being asked to make a necklace was one thing, but having few to no tools to make it happen was another. Grace understood her watcher’s reticence to allow potentially dangerous tools, however. In anyone else’s hands, it was a disaster waiting to happen. 

It took more convincing than she thought to eventually obtain said tools, but the actual jewelry-making process only took the better part of an afternoon. What took the longest was the handmade compass charm that went with it. The finished product was nothing short of a masterpiece. While Grace was reluctant to part with her “ultra-rare” deep purple sea glass, the necklace was absolute perfection. 

She laid the necklace into the cushion once she found the box. “I’ve left the tools near your office,” she reported as she slid a piece of tape to seal the gift inside. “It’s been treated with the sealing spray and it should last.” 

If there was one thing Grace was forever thankful for, it was the freedom for royals to move about the island as they pleased. It allowed Grace to spend more time with Lola whenever she pleased. It allowed her to (hopefully) at least somewhat get her watcher’s trust enough to make more jewelry to hand out to her loved ones.

It was what sent her to Lola’s villa with a small bag in hand. “Annwyl, it’s me!” she called through the wood. “I have a gift for you!”

Flynn: I have years of experience when it comes to navigating, I can actually help with things around the boat, and I can reach things that are high up without a ladder.

Flynn: I don't need to 'come up with' things. Those are facts.

Flynn: And if it doesn't...?

Emerson: I know, I was teasing. You have your perks and you don't steal my spot when I get up in the middle of the night. It's a big plus in your column.

Emerson: He will. I know him. He won't be happy that I left him to go on the ship.

Emerson: But you're not navigating this course. I am.

Piracy meant Flynn spent the majority of his time out in the sea. That was his home. It also meant that he didn’t get involved with anyone inland. Not for long, anyway. His staying had always had an expiration date, and he never gave anyone unrealistic expectations that he might be back. It wasn’t as if he had someone waiting for him wherever he docked. He wasn’t that person, but he’d had his fair share of dalliances, and it made sure he developed some cardinal rules. Flynn never stayed the night. He always held his trysts at their place so that he felt comfortable leaving once it was over.

With Emerson it was different. Maybe he would have acted the same way if they had tumbled to bed the night when they drunkenly flirted with one another. Or if he hadn’t known her for the better of his life, but there was something inherently wrong about fleeing her villa after they’d had sex. And there was something about it that made him want to stay. It wasn’t even the thought that there was no way he would be able to avoid her afterward if he’d snuck out of her house like a coward. It was something else. Something he couldn’t understand.

“I know what you do is important to you,” he nodded. “But you could have said your job was taking you away,” Flynn noted, though there was a part in his brain that told him that he might not have understood it as well as he might have made it sound. Still, it would have been better than having to live with the alternative and what he’d felt towards himself, with nothing but doubts and insecurity. “I wouldn’t have taken it away from you,” he stated, and he knew it to be true. Much as he might have wanted her to stay, he would never put her in a position in which she had to choose one or the other. It would have been like asking a bird to clip its wings, and Flynn couldn’t take her essence away from her.

Emerson’s communication skills often left something to be desired. When it came to piracy, she had found her way. When it came to matters of the heart, she was borderline illiterate. She had lived her life only answering to herself. Anyone who knew her by reputation knew that she was a restless soul. Staying was out of the question on a normal basis. Emerson didn’t enjoy the aftermath, the awkwardness of redressing and saying we’re not doing this ever again. She simply took her leave and that was that. Intimacy need not apply, until Flynn. 

If Flynn had asked her to stay or to come with her, she would have caved instantly. Yet Emerson knew he wouldn’t have asked the former. What she wouldn’t give to know the thoughts that flickered through his head. 

“I figured we both could use the distance,” she murmured. She wasn’t going to bring it up. She couldn’t make herself ruin the moment. Even if it made her want to get up again, Emerson pushed it down this time. “I shouldn’t have put that on you. Any of it.”

Perhaps this was the afterglow she had missed out on earlier before she had taken off for her villa. 

Flynn: Will you make me present you reasons why I could be more useful?

Flynn: Isn't there like a way to make him learn this is ok? Cause, it would make all of our lives a lot easier.

Emerson: Yes, only because I'm curious to know what you'll come up with.

Emerson: Dalmatians are temperamental, what can I say?

He looked at her as she spoke. No one would ever call his drinking habits a project. “I wasn’t sleeping,” he shook his head, although she hadn’t asked. He might have been tired from the trip to the new island, but it didn’t mean he was able to close his eyes and easily drift to a slumber either. “But I can’t say I was up to anything else either,” he shook his head.

It was a surprising change of pace when she rose from the couch and tugged on his hand, especially cause when he saw what she was doing, he half-expected Emerson to walk to the door and out into the stormy night instead. She always felt like a flight risk.

Maybe it was sad how easily he complied with what Emerson wanted out of him, but this was his life, and if he could make his peace with it, why did others feel entitled to pipe in? Flynn wondered as he made the way across the hallway, following the youngest Tulach’s sylphid form. If this was some type of dream or drunken mirage, he would hold onto it for as long as he could.

He laid in his bed with her, staring into Emerson’s liquid gold eyes while his fingertips brushed up and down her side in a gentle caress. Flynn moved his head a little to deposit a kiss on the inside of her wrist. The navigator watched her profile in the pale light that filtered through the draperies of his bedroom. “I’m glad you’re here, too,” he whispered back at her. “Don’t get me wrong, you fuck with my head in several different ways, but I’ll still take that over the alternative,” he explained. The only other choice was to live without her, and Flynn wasn’t sure it was something he would still be able to do.

Emerson’s expression softened as Flynn’s lips grazed the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist. Maybe it wasn’t often that they lie together like this yet she had never felt so relaxed when they did. Every time she stayed, it was a war within herself. Flynn quieted any demons that plagued her, but she found herself constantly conflicted. 

Ordinarily, this was something she would overthink. And ramble. And try to justify, rather than just lay quietly. Or try to figure out why he calmed her. Why everything seemed to just stand still. Why hours felt like minutes. Emerson could spend days with Flynn, whether those days were spent tangled in the sheets or doing just about anything else, it felt like no time passed at all. Like now, she was simply...relaxed. And more so than she had felt in months. 

“You fuck with mine, too,” she admitted. 

He fucked with her head so badly. Enough that she attempted to escape from him by leaving to another island to try and clear it, yet the confusion stayed and the longing intensified. Emerson broke her rules for him. Flynn had been in her villa more times than she count count and he stayed. She went back to him continuously. He had seen her break. He had helped her pick herself back up. She showed him genuine affection and what was even worse, she allowed him to do the same. 

As she wallowed, her fingers caressed along his jaw, threaded into his hair. There was no motive behind the soft brush of her lips over his, at least this time. 

“I’m sorry I left without telling you. I was offered this position here, to ready this new island, and I had to take it.” 

Flynn: Well, I can be a travel companion, too.

Flynn: Yeah, you should definitely talk to her. She might not even mind it.

Flynn: Funny thing, I don't like having him watching us kissing either. How can we settle that?

Emerson: Not saying you can't be. Just that he's my usual.

Emerson: I'll ask.

For the first time after their accidental meeting earlier that day, Flynn felt at peace. He wasn’t mulling over what had happened, now was he trying to find meaning in something he couldn’t even begin to understand. Right now, he could shake all of them off.

And just as he was relaxing in his position on the couch, came her question. Puzzled, Flynn backed away to look at her, as if her words had stung him somehow. “What?!” he didn’t seem to know where that question was coming from, and Emerson wasn’t one to bother mincing her phrases, so whatever she was going to say, she would spit it out already.

.

It hadn’t occurred to Emerson until then that she could have possibly said something very wrong. Not until Flynn drew back and looked at her like she had grown two heads or said something about retiring from piracy to join the circus. 

(Or that she said she loved him. Again. Maybe those words had slipped out.)

“It’s just late, Flynn. You don’t look as though I woke you up. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t catch you in the middle of a project,” she explained. Any other time, she would have bristled with I was trying to be sensitive to the time or some other remark that would have sparked an argument that would have likely ended with her leaving. Yet any will to fight and argue died as soon as the very idea formed. Or perhaps she was simply that tired or she had missed him that much. Perhaps she simply...stopped fighting it. 

Finally, she slid off his lap and intertwined their fingers together in order to gently tug him to a standing position. “Well, let’s at least move to the bed. If I’m responsible for keeping you up at this hour, I won’t be responsible for a possibly stiff neck in the morning if and when we actually do fall asleep.” 

Emerson stopped fighting it. She stopped fighting how much she wanted to be around him and how much she wanted to stay. She stopped fighting because pretending took too much out of her. She stopped fighting the comfort and safety she felt when she tucked herself into his arms in bed and completely gave in. 

Her fingers locked together on the back of his neck, her thumbs resting on either side of his face, and her forehead rested against his. “I should have said it earlier, but I’m happy you’re here.” 

Flynn: Bummer...

Flynn: You're a captain. Can't you ask someone to watch over him while you go away for a little while?

Emerson: Hey, he's my travel companion.

Emerson: I very easily could. I can see if Nellie wouldn't mind looking after him.