Chapter Text
It is their final night on land. Quentin closes one final chest now packed with tinctures and infusions and joins the Waugh-Bladesmith family in the now empty tavern for one last drink. Fen gives Quentin a smile and a mug of beer and takes a seat beside her husband who has Fray nodding off against his shoulder.
Eliot is singing again, a mournful song of the sea made a sweet lullaby for the little girl in his arms. Fen joins him on the refrain in a soft high soprano and Quentin listens in silence as they lull their daughter to sleep.
He’s been lucky. So lucky, to see Eliot like this. To be allowed to witness the most tender parts of him. The parts he’s willing to spill blood for.
That morning, Eliot had slain Bayler. It had been the furthest thing from easy, Quentin could tell. The High King’s duty is not the wish of Eliot Waugh. It had come down to the safety of his wife and child. Bayler had been drunk at the Cottage. He’d been drunk to the point of pulling his blade, and where Fray had been playing. Where Eliot could ignore words of mutiny he could not ignore actions which endangered his daughter. Quentin reads no regret over Bayler’s death in Eliot’s features. It had been a quick fight, and a fair death. But the tracks of tears dried on Fray’s cheeks would haunt Quentin’s lover. Her life and death had nearly been decided by her uncle’s carelessness, and there is no erasing the fear that came from the flash of a blade seen too young.
It is a bittersweet final note to their visit, to be sure.
Quentin lays his hand on Eliot’s shoulder for one long moment before stepping outside to give the family some privacy.
“Q?”
Quentin paused in the doorway, turning back to find Eliot’s warm gaze on him.
“Don’t go too far.”
Quentin smiles. “Just a walk. I’ll be back.”
He winds his way through Fen’s garden one last time. The flowers and green fronds sway and whisper under the moonlight. Beyond that, the sea crashed against the cliff face far below the Cottage. That sound had once been the source of so much misery for Quentin. Now, it fills him with longing. Quentin picks his way between the flower beds until he leaves the green world behind and all he sees is the dark horizon, dotted with stars and the full belly of the moon casting the sea into sparkling lights.
“You miss her.”
“I—what?”
Margo plops down beside him on the grass with a dark glass of liquor in her hand. She’s been putting in a lot of time on the ship, supervising repairs and restocking. Quentin feels like he’s barely seen her lately. It’s easy to forget what a picture she makes, like a picture from an adventure novel.
“The sea,” Margo repeats, “You miss her.”
“I—” Yes , Quentin realizes, looking out over the waves. A gust of wind pulls his fingers through his hair and he feels the touch like a lost lover’s.
“I didn’t think I would,” he confesses, eyes on the horizon, “I thought I hated it. Tolerated it, at least.”
Margo hums, sipping her drink. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how hate can turn to love. Passion is passion. It’s indifference that dooms us.”
Quentin had spent so much of his life passive. Indifference had seemed like a means to survive until he had entered the High King’s service and his world had exploded into living color.
“I have a note in my logbook, for a month from now,” Margo says after a pause, “I’m to ask you what heading we should sail toward, so we can arrive in time for the end of your contract.”
Quentin’s stomach drops, as though someone had plunked an icecube in it. He’d all but forgotten.
“Now, I haven’t received any orders to change it,” Margo continues, “But given what I hear from the men I think that note might be a bit out of date.”
“I—” Quentin had thought things were so certain between them. But Eliot hasn’t actually said anything about it, has he? It’s all been left unspoken, replaced with kisses and lovemaking and time spent with Eliot’s family. “If Eliot wants me to go…”
“That’s not what I said.” Margo rolls her eyes. “Honestly, you’re both being so thick about this. He’s looking for a sign, Coldwater. You have to ask, because he thinks if he does you’ll take it as an order.”
“Eliot thinks I would become a pirate out of…obligation? Christ, he’s a fool.”
Margo barks a laugh. “It takes two to make a mess, doctor.”
“Fair enough.” Quentin thinks. There must be some gesture that would show Eliot that Quentin is making this choice of his own free will. Something that will show his commitment. “I have an idea. But I need your help.”
Quentin winds up breaking his promise not to wander off. He misses the final loading up, in fact, thanks to a long night that involved a hot sewing needle and several slightly drunk crew members that insisted they knew what they were doing.
Hopefully his methods to stave off infection would prove effective when it came to self-treatment.
The point is that by the time all goodbyes are said and all duties are fulfilled that have them prepared for the always present possibility of the Navy bearing down on them, they are well out to sea. Quentin tracks Eliot down by climbing up, finding the Whitespire’s captain in the crow’s nest. In a rare sight, Eliot has his back to the horizon, his gaze fixed on the ever shrinking coastline in the distance. Quentin hoists himself up and joins him, sitting cross legged at Eliot’s side facing the opposite direction so that their knees touch and they’re almost facing one another.
“So you are aboard.” Eliot offers him a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I thought maybe after the unpleasantness yesterday you’d finally had your fill of drama.”
Quentin takes Eliot’s hand. “It hadn’t occurred to me. You did the right thing, with Bayler.”
Eliot shrugs. “It can’t be undone, now.”
“No,” Quentin agrees. “Speaking of, I’ve done something. It’s a gift, in a way. For you.”
Eliot smiles, bemused. “If I were a maiden I would think this was a marriage proposal.”
He says it like a joke, but there’s something vulnerable in Eliot’s eyes. Margo was right.
“The right to wear your ring belongs to Fen,” Quentin says without jealousy, “And I was looking for something a little more permanent.”
Eliot had shed blood, in service of his family. Quentin had shed his own, in service of his new loyalties. It might be a superficial gesture, given the circumstances, but nonetheless Quentin tucks his hair back to let Eliot see the row of gold studs that now trace up the shell of his ear.
“I realized I didn’t really look the part,” Quentin says, “A change of clothes and I’d be ready to rejoin polite society. But I don’t want that. I’m sorry I took so long in telling you.”
Eliot’s eyes are wide.
“I think I was afraid because I always thought of a ship as a prison,” Quentin confesses, “I only saw the dark spaces. The crowded bodies. And I’ve always needed to be able to run away from my ghosts. But this year has been...”
Around them spray sparkles under the sun like crystal.
It’s beautiful.
“Could I stay?” Quentin asks, afraid to look away from the endless shimmering sea which against all odds has somehow become the only home he’s ever wanted. “Would you let me stay, with you? Not for a year. Not for a contract. I haven’t thought about that contract in months, Eliot. I’ve just been living. With you.”
“If you want to stay, then stay,” Eliot murmurs, and with a rueful smile, “Your king might command it, even.”
“I could never disobey my king,” Quentin says, “But what does my lover say?”
Eliot sighs, and laughs. He wraps a hand around the back of Quentin’s neck and pulls him in. He breathes in the scent of Quentin’s hair and presses the gentlest kiss to Quentin’s ear where the flesh is still hot and tender.
Quentin thinks, perhaps, that this is all that Eliot can give. That between his wife and his queen and his crown Eliot already has too many loves in his life to be able to give voice to another. And he’s ready to make his peace with it, as long as he can stay and serve as a shore to Eliot’s magnetic, ever pulling tides.
But then:
“He says ‘stay with me’,” Eliot replies, voice soft in the rushing wind, “Share my bed. My life. Share the sea and the salt air, before the blades and bullets and the bloody Crown catch up to us.”
It’s as sweet as a wedding vow. More than Quentin had ever dared to dream of. Eliot tips Quentin’s head up with a finger under his chin, and hazel eyes sparkling: “My love, stay with me.”
That night, Eliot takes Quentin into his bed to keep. He moves in him, strong and relentless and tender, until Quentin weeps he is so overcome. Eliot calls him dear and darling and my sweet love, pressing kisses to his mouth and his throat and his hair as Quentin clings, and cries out and peaks peaks peaks to a summit of pleasure he’s never known.
“Jesus— ” Quentin gasps, nearly broken with it, “ —Jesus . This is where I belong. This is where I’m meant to be.”
Eliot strokes his hair back from his sweaty brow, cheeks flushed from his own climax.
“ Sweetheart , I know.”
They rest with all necessary questions settled, they are woken by a pounding on the door and Todd’s crow of delight.
“Ship on the horizon, captain! She’s a prize for sure!”
Quentin looks to Eliot and sees the King of the Western seas, the husband, the father, but above all, the pirate. His eyes are bright, and a rakish grin creeps over his features, a promise of a day that will keep Quentin busy in the surgery.
“Make ready the men! Let’s shake the rust off and give them a real show.”
They race into clothes, Eliot draping himself in a scarlet silk coat fit for the cover of a novel. Quentin watches Eliot button himself into the persona of the dread pirate Waugh with transparent desire. Eliot notices, and pauses in pulling on his polished black boots to give Quentin a kiss that promises one hell of a fuck later.
“Godspeed, captain.”
Eliot grins. “Godspeed, doctor.”
The thrum of a song begins to drift down from the upper decks, the crew clapping, and stomping their feet along with their booming voices and raucous laughter. Quentin catches the lyrics and laughs himself as he follows his king up into the bright morning sun to face the day’s adventure.
Yo ho, and all that.