suit of cups | ix

You came back to him in the worst of circumstances.

By the time you entered the Grand Line, Hawkins hadn't kissed you in months. You'd been on the Grudge Dolph for five years, soon to be six. The crew had changed enough that you were now one of the veterans. Newer additions you picked up in this sea were surprised to learn you grew up together, much less that you were ever lovers. Their captain was stoic and sage; their navigator was no-nonsense, hardly mystical at all.

But there were still glimmers. Hawkins touched you easily, moving you by your hips to get around you in the narrow spaces of the ship. The two of you sparred, him shortening his Straw Sword to a dagger, and some of the crew watched, spellbound. You never called him "captain," only his name. And he ate your rare cooking religiously, like it made him homesick.

It was near the Devil's Sea that the Hawkins Pirates faced an ambush. They passed too closely to what they thought was a ghost ship, full of hungry, desperate men screaming incoherently about their shadows and the sunlight. Hawkins was occupied with keeping them from sinking his ship, summoning an enormous Straw Man that drove many of the pirates overboard, but what cut through the air more chillingly than anything was something he hadn't heard since you were a girl: your scream, deep and guttural, a howl of terror from somewhere in the upper decks.

There were too many enemies, and he cut through them indiscriminately. Faust leapt there gracefully, that Mink agility coming out to play, and Hawkins calmed himself enough to continue his defense.

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight you made.

Faust had one of your arms slung over his shoulder as he helped you up the ladder, and the men—all more devoted to you than you knew, how in-your-head you were—tripped over themselves to either give you space or come closer, unsure what to do. Hawkins barreled through them until he saw the bright spray of blood along your front—not yours. You clutched the blade he gave you all those years ago in a vice grip, glistening red, staining the purple quartz at its hilt.

"You did good, navigator," Faust was murmuring. "You're safe. He'll be dead soon."

Hawkins hurried below deck to make sure of it, and lord, you did a number. You must have sliced into his thigh and hit a major artery, how dark, nearly black the blood looked in the low light of the decks. The man was in shock, the lost volume enough to kill, and inanely Hawkins thought it'd be better to rip out the floorboards than try to scrub it. It wasn't about keeping his ship pristine, but how were you ever supposed to pass by here again?

He stepped closer. The would-be assailant's eyes were screwed shut from the pain as he shouted and swore, called you a bitch and slurs Hawkins knew were more specific, the kind leveled at Boa Hancock and women of Kano in the West Blue. He ground his boot into the man's leg with prejudice. Underneath his screams, Hawkins noted the wound yawned open under the man's sliced, tattered trousers. You hadn't only stabbed him, but dragged your knife nearly to his knee.

Good girl.

Hawkins didn't think of the hot blood seeping into the leather above his soles as he stepped on the man's other leg, the crunch of his kneecap almost making him flinch.

"I'd bring you back to kill you again," he said softly.

You knew him and Faust the longest, and there was something innocent about the two men you met as boys standing guard outside the bathroom as you cleaned yourself. You didn't cry, hadn't made a sound since you screamed, until you croaked out, "Hawkins?"

He stood at attention like you were his master. "Yes?"

"Can you help me?"

To his relief, you only wanted carrying out of the tub after your shower, and you pressed your face into his bicep in a kind of nuzzle of thanks. It was easy for him to look only at your face and your hair. Bizarrely, you'd never felt more like family than in these last few years. You could be both the only person he'd ever loved in this way, and a crewman he'd care for like any other.

Only a third of the Hawkins Pirates had kills under their belts, and now you were one of them.

Hawkins and Faust sat on the floor by your bed until you fell into a sleep more fitful than Hawkins knew you were used to. You clapped them in the backs of their skulls in the morning to let you out for your dawn sights. He watched you tread gamely over the still-darkened wood where the man died, bleeding faster than they could throw him overboard. On another day, you'd go straight to the kitchen for breakfast, but instead you returned to the sleeping area of the upper decks and went straight to the captain's quarters.

"It's quieter," you explained, before helping yourself to his bed just like you did back home.

You stayed there until twilight. Hawkins had the cook keep a dinner warm for you, and you brought it back to his room, eating at his desk away from the crew's prying eyes. At night, he turned his back to you to make his intentions clear—that you were roommates and nothing more—but you huddled into his warmth, spooning him so your forehead landed between his shoulder blades. "Thank you, captain," you mumbled sleepily.

The two of you continued this strange, nostalgic, chaste intimacy, like you were kids again, until you didn't. Hawkins woke in the night a week or so after the attack to your familiar grip on his hard cock, and your sly smile in the low lamplight.

"Someone woke me," you teased, and he groaned.

"You don't have to…"

"I'm offended it took this long," you said. "Sharing a bed with your ex."

"Why do you think I face this way?"

It was different, sweeter than the sex you had when your relationship was crashing apart, and slower than the rare hookups since. It was dangerously close to lovemaking, how slowly you took what you needed from him, how careful he was with you. You even said the words that were rare back then: "I love you. You know that, right?"

Hawkins wasn't happy, per se, because you were so different, but how couldn't you be? He'd returned to you changed, with blood on his hands, and you'd reacted in contradictions, pushing him away and pulling him back, like tides.

He found himself less self-conscious about keeping close to you in mixed company, and you leaned into him, too, quickly squeezing his hand to communicate a surprising range of feelings. You were never this quiet, which more spoke to how much you used to run your mouth, how many of the kisses he stole from you were to give your poor voice a break. The crew didn't notice the difference, but Hawkins did. Because he knew your every mannerism entirely, and he meant to learn you again.

At Sabaody, you hooked your arm into Faust's to go shopping, thankfully keeping away from the rougher crowds at Grove 24. Hawkins was weary of the rest of the so-called Worst Generation, less so the known quantities from the North Blue and more the others. He worried about you landing in the sights of a Celestial Dragon. He worried about your bleeding heart, the kindness you clung to despite everything.

When Kizaru blinded him, Hawkins thought of starlight.

"Hawkins."

The Hawkins Pirates finally put their coated ship to use after witnessing the end of the Summit War. You were having trouble falling asleep, in the bubble of the Ryugu Kingdom, and Hawkins laid awake listening to your breathing.

"Hmm?"

Your head was tucked under his chin, your pajama-clad back warm and right against his front.

"I don't want to be here anymore."

His mind runs through what that could mean: Fishman Island? On Earth, alive? Or with him, like this?

"I want to stay with you, but I can't be a pirate."

Hawkins recalled a spread he pulled just before the Grudge Dolph reached the Red Line, which he didn't know what to make of, which filled him with dread on the mangroves.

"I know," he said. "I saw it."

You were the High Priestess in all the ways she countered the Magician, cerebral and hungry, a vessel of knowledge while he was the capable Fool. The others were the Eight of Cups and The Chariot: two kinds of departure. He feared you being taken away by something faster and stronger than he could chase after, never you walking.

"I'm sorry," you said quietly.

"No, you're not." And he kissed the crown of your head, breathing your clean hair.

"Don't be nice."

"No one's accused me of that."

You laughed, and it turned to a sob. "Can you do something for me? When we surface?"

To the crew's confusion, you spent the ascent packing, and Hawkins suspected your less-used books already lined your trunk, how quickly you went. He would've noticed your emptier shelves if you hadn't moved into his rooms like he'd asked, at last.

You part ways in front of a Vivre Card shop, your sheet full and alive in his hand—all that he couldn't give you.