suit of cups | viii

You left the ship again.

You weren't unique in this, and Hawkins didn't expect everyone to stay put when they docked for the sake of his anxiety. But until a few months ago, you bounced on the heels of your boots waiting for him to accompany you as you checked out the port town's bookstores or farmer's markets ever since the Grudge Dolph's cook allowed you kitchen privileges. This usually ended with you using your captain as a pack mule, not because you were weak but because you were so short your shopping bags nearly dragged along the ground and he couldn't stand it.

Lately you disappeared in the bustle of men going down the gangplank, and on questioning none of them knew what you were up to, not even Faust, who Hawkins hoped kept your confidence even if the space between you two seemed to grow. You had been at sea with him for nearly two years now. It was ironic your family thought of you two as newlyweds, because he'd call those first few months a honeymoon. Cracks appeared soon afterward. If he lived in total denial, he'd say the reason he didn't notice them was your refusal to move into his room.

But he noticed, as did the rest of the crew.

You pursed your lips in the way you did when you disagreed with him. Hawkins was used to it in conversation, but not now, not when—

"Behind you!"

You ducked, and he thanked fate for your instincts, like a panther as you avoided a glaive by a wide margin. You were distracted your first time being caught in combat, and he was a nervous wreck over it until you got onto the Grudge Dolph safely. He only found you after they pulled up the anchor to make their escape, in the narrow hall near the cold dorm and your separate rooms.

"Hawkins—" you started, cut off by a near-bruising kiss. You made a little "mmph!" of annoyance before reciprocating, like you couldn't help it.

"Be more careful," he rasped, holding your face and studying you for damage or fear, but you looked... angry.

"I've never seen you do that before," you countered. You circled his wrists with your long fingers to gently pry him off, settling for holding both his hands.

"Do what?"

"'Life, minus one,'" you quoted.

He blinked. "Yes, you have." He first tried it when he was a teenager.

"And it scared me back then. But on people..." You bit your lower lip, your habit, and stared unseeingly at his sternum.

Hawkins knew explaining the logistics of it, the evolution of this technique wouldn't appease you. His first tests used shellfish because you were so disturbed at boiling crabs alive but didn't want to knock them out, either, so he attached one crustacean's life to a straw doll and knocked his head into the mast of your paraw. You'd screamed, but you were barely more than a girl then. Now, you were a pirate. What moral qualms could you possibly have?

"They were enemies."

You thumped him in the chest with the flat of your palm. "I don't like seeing you decapitated. You be more careful."

Hawkins exhaled something like a laugh.

"It isn't funny," you said hotly, tilting your head up to glare at him.

He cupped your jaw and kissed you again, softly. "You don't have to watch. You shouldn't. Look after yourself."

You sighed. "Yes, captain."

Hawkins was an old hand at ignoring the faces you made, but for some reason he was sensitive that day. Maybe because you managed to be too busy for him lately, between calculating latitudes and writing your log and tutoring some of the crew in astrology.

"What is it, navigator?"

You looked surprised that he'd say something, surprised that your sass was going checked here and not in private. "Nothing that can't wait."

"No, speak."

It was the domineering tone he sometimes used if you goaded him into it, and he saw your breathing change in response.

"I don't think it's very responsible to dispense percentages when as far as I can tell no one here knows your methodology. I can't even guess it."

The Grudge Dolph was sailing toward a North Blue Marine base previously occupied with monitoring the Donquixote Pirates until a few years ago, when Vice Admiral Tsuru transferred to the Grand Line with much of their original force. But their numbers were up again as rookies like Hawkins and the Surgeon of Death became notorious in this sea, so Hawkins shared his prediction with the gathered crew for their chances of passing without detection.

"You drew, what, Strength Reversed? How does that translate to an integer? Especially given deck numberings? But beyond that—" You didn't let him respond. "How do we get around them? Isn't that my job?"

Hawkins bristled, but kept outwardly cool. He hoped. "Navigate, then."

It was a sound plan: drop anchor until sundown since the moon was just waxing, a silver sickle dim in the sky behind cloud cover anyway, and sail west on the opposite side of a small, uninhabited strait bracketed by melting ice. It was circuitous and added a day and a night to their route, but your recommendations usually let them avoid engaging the Navy. Some of the men found it cowardly, but Hawkins and the rest knew it saved their lives on more than one occasion. Having a captain with a bounty was bad enough; the longer they could avoid identification of other Hawkins Pirates, the better. The Navy already knew they had a Mink among their numbers, though they seemed to disagree about the color of Faust's coat.

It was the sort of plan Hawkins would have heard before. In the quiet of the morning when you finished shooting your sights, despite trying not to wake him up. You'd return to his room with tea for him and coffee for you, and listen to his interpretation of that morning's spread, and offer your thoughts on the ship's coming course.

But he couldn't remember the last time you woke up in his bed.

"Right," Hawkins said as their helmsman agreed more effusively. "You don't consider you're the reason the odds are generally favorable?"

It would've been a flirtation if he had any kind of grace, and you just cocked one eyebrow.

"You have too much faith in me."

Later, Hawkins tells you, knowing he hasn't a leg to stand on, that he wishes you wouldn't argue in front of the crew. You tilted your head as you half-listened. Instead of apologizing, you bent over your desk and said in your lowest purr, "Fix my attitude, captain."

He did, to his shame and pleasure.

It started a cycle of arguments and discipline, increasingly urgent sex he barely dared dream of, but these days you seemed to provoke him in public, from morn to midnight. If you wanted him to be rough with you, he thought you could simply ask, but instead you picked at wounds only you knew about, and no matter how good the sex was, you still left sharp words hanging in the air. He wasn't sure he was much better, kissing your neck in the bath and murmuring thank you's and sorry's against your skin like you couldn't make yourself.

Hawkins was a proud man; you were prouder, and tenfold more stubborn. What would you say it was? Your Aquarius stellium, a fixed sign giving the bull a run for its money, complemented by the Scorpio in his own chart. To him, that was The Star and Death. So of course you were so convinced of your rightness. You blinded him with your brilliance, and he was the end that gave rise to you. He couldn't resent you.

He only wanted you to stay.

Your last argument was about Strawman Cards. You questioned why it was a game with turns taken, why ever give the enemy an opening, and why he didn't stack his deck since he was making up the rules anyway.

That was weeks ago.

Hawkins stopped you before you went below deck. You were polishing off what looked like some sort of wrap, the sort of street food dinner you would normally share and swap bites of if yours didn't have too much meat for his palate.

"Can I help you, captain?"

You said it more plainly, no innuendo at all. Like you didn't want to say his name.

"What have you been doing these last four days?"

It was a long time for them to dock, but they were about to sail the edge of the upper calm belt, so this was a welcome rest before more difficult southern waters.

"Do you monitor all your men like this?" you asked.

"Only my woman."

It was crass, but what he felt, and it seemed to crack something in you. You looked around the deck to confirm your privacy before you stepped close to him, closer than you'd been in Hawkins didn't know how long, and he noticed you were wearing new boots, taller than any of the ones you had already.

"I'm reading tarot," you said finally.

"You're... what?"

Hawkins didn't know what he expected.

"It's faster than astrology," you rushed out. "And I don't want to—I won't stay in the captain's quarters or rely on you for an allowance."

"It's not my money," Hawkins protested. "We're a crew—"

"That doesn't matter. Everyone else is a man with seniority over me, nevermind there's first-time sailors among them. Maybe I should've been here from the start."

He stilled. "Did someone say something?" He loved his crew, truly. But you took priority. Or was that the problem: that even he set you apart?

"They don't have to, Hawkins. It's not just them. I don't want to be known as your girlfriend."

"You're... embarrassed?"

"Not because it's you, just—" You took a breath. "If I ever get a bounty, it better be mine, is all I'm saying."

"So this is envy, actually, you want a bit of infamy—"

"Of course not! But I wanted to stop fighting. Didn't you notice?" You sounded so frantic, so unlike the wild woman he loved. "I thought if I read on my own, actually practiced, I wouldn't be so annoyed by Strawman Cards. I thought—"

"We stopped fighting," he conceded. "We stopped talking."

Despite your decidedly grown-up activities and statures, there were times Hawkins felt like he was playing pretend, that the grand sloop under his command was still the fishing rig on loan from your family somehow inflated all around you two, and the pair of you were just as inarticulate and childish as you'd ever been. Two kids playing pirates, unable to handle friction.

He exhaled.

"It makes you feel better?"

You nodded, meeting his eye seriously. "I needed to cool off. I know you're not—I know it's different. It's how you fight, it's how you protect us, it's—I shouldn't have been so critical."

He let you squirm until your gaze shifted somewhere lower, his neck and chest, and you fidgeted with the bottom hem of your skirt.

"Look at me."

Your eyes were wet, not quite tearful, though he caught one on his index finger before he rested his hands on your shoulders. "You're being safe? They don't know you're a pirate?"

You smiled ironically. "People are slower to assume that about women. And it helps to be... exotic."

The more of his home sea he saw, the more evident it became to Hawkins just how distinctive your family was, how much you stuck out.

"They might connect us," Hawkins warned. "Cartomancy isn't common."

"Then I'll stop," you said simply. "It might do us good, in a way. If we're like a circus act."

That bothered Hawkins, a little. You called tarot a "party trick" in contrast to the science of astronomy and astrology, though he supposed there was a showmanship to both the divination and his Devil Fruit techniques.

"I got you something a few ports ago, by the way. Help me?"

You had arms full of shopping bags, and Hawkins transferred them to his longer limbs with practiced ease.

That night, Hawkins flicked through and shuffled the smaller tarot deck you bought him and wondered if you were still bitter. It was a pip deck like he first learned and struggled with, closer to playing cards with its dearth of illustrations. The kind you used.