Work Text:
There was this thing Vandren always said, back then: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Mostly he said it in attempt to get Sabian to act less like a little shit and more like a decent fuckin human being, but sometimes he’d say it with a wink when taking Fjord to market the days they could come onshore for supplies and whatever else the crew needed to do -- get laid, get some drug, send some letters home, the like. Fjord never did those things; the orphanage wasn’t much of a home to send letters to or even a home at all, and he’d seen what drug could do to people. As for the sex -- well. Never quite felt that particular siren call, not for the kind of sirens his crewmates, Sabian included, found in the whorehouses they patronized anyway. Instead he followed Vandren to town squares or bazaars or colourful market stalls beckoning patrons to spend their gold, and watched him sweet-talk his way into cheap rum and rope and other things needed to replenish supplies, like discounted salt meat and hard tack and fruit for the ship, some unripened and tough-skinned so they wouldn’t spoil too soon and some sweet and soft with which Jefford their cook could squeeze into juice that would keep longer.
Sometimes he’d say it when two of his men got into an argument, most often about watch rotation and who was to clean out the little mess they had or some other such trivial things. Once he said it when he charmed his way out of an actual bona fide pirate encounter, which they sailed away from hail and hearty, just a few dozen gold short of what they had been before, a little spooked but safe. That night after they were well away from the rickety, small ship the pirates had called theirs there had been so much revelry Vandren had ordered an unplanned stop at the nearest port, on account of how much food and drink they'd had, their astonishment at being unharmed by the raiders turning into cockiness leading their celebrations until the sun rose over the horizon of the Lucidian. He'd caught them all during that night too, with stories he told, voice honeysweet and low in the greying light of the moons near dawn when only a few were still left awake: stories of storms he'd passed through and strange men and women he'd met in his life and monsters he'd seen under the sea.
He was like that, Vandren: not particularly handsome nor even very nice but charming as all get out, you know. And Fjord tried to learn from him, did his best to listen to his every word, and to emulate him -- still did, when he admit it to himself. Of course he did, how could he not? This man who had taken him in, he and Sabian, who had given him a job and a real home, if that’s what it was, and a purpose, no matter how small that purpose was in the grander scheme of all things.
“Sabian,” said Molly. “Sounds like an interesting character.”
Oh. He’d been rambling, talking about things Molly almost certainly didn’t care about. Vandren, Sabian. Honey, vinegar. Fjord shut his mouth and winced when a pain shot through his lip where his little but growing tusks hit. He wasn’t used to them quite yet.
“Nah,” Fjord said, after a few minutes. “He wasn’t.”
They were sitting by the light of their campfire deep in some wood none of them knew the name of, but the trees were old, towering, and occasionally, Fjord felt, watchful. The fire was a risk Jester insisted on taking that night as she said she could not feel her toes anymore, which was a lot coming from her, on account of the fact that she never usually felt much cold, even when it was chilly enough that Caleb, who’d grown in the north and was used to lower temperatures, shivered at night. Not like they had anyone pursuing them who would find them by firelight at the moment -- at least, no one they knew of. It was just that as a group they tended to attract attention, and none of them, save Molly and perhaps Jester in the right circumstances, liked attention much.
Everyone else was sleeping, but near them out in the open, because of the warmth of the flames; they hadn’t gotten a tent yet, but they probably needed to get one or two soon, as it was nearing Winter in Wildemount and if they kept travelling like this, doing odd jobs for the Gentleman here and there, they’d need them. When Fjord had mentioned this Yasha had snorted as Fjord guessed she'd keep on sleeping outside if she had the choice and Jester had squealed and Beau had said something strange about marking it off as a business expense, which didn’t sound like anything she’d know about nor something the Gentleman would approve of, so Fjord ignored it.
“Tell me,” Molly said.
“Didn’t think you cared much about things of the past,” said Fjord. Not far to his left Nott was muttering in her sleep, her flask lying just out of reach of her claws where she’d dropped it as she dozed off. It glinted in the fire -- no moonlight reached through the thick cover of trees here in the little clearing they’d found.
“Not my past,” Molly said. With the flames reflecting in the red of his eyes they seemed demonic, and yet he had laugh-lines around them as he smiled. “But yours I wouldn’t mind hearing about.”
“He was just -- a kid, you know, we both were, and then Vandren took us --”
“Took you,” repeated Molly, a request for clarification.
“Not like, took us took us, but he -- well, once we turned 18 we were too old for the orphanage, you know. We were the oldest there by a few years, so we fell in together a lot, I guess, even though -- well, I was a little older than him so for a few months I just wandered around doin odd jobs on the docks in town, right, unloadin catch and haulin equipment and guardin cargo, stuff like that. Eventually one night there was a fight at one of the taverns along the docks I was workin at and who gets thrown out but Sabian, and he just hung around me for a while, moochin and stirrin shit up more like --”
“Where did you live?” Molly asked. He had somehow gotten closer, and his hair shone red-violet, the silhouette of his jaw sharp.
“Like, a halfway house kind of place. A bedsit, you could say. Cheap, you know. I could hear mice crawlin in the walls, it was -- well. Whatever. Sabian ended up stayin with me because neither of us had nowhere to go, and then --”
“Then what?”
“After a few weeks of that I was sick of it and told Sabian I needed him to find a way to make some money or get out, 'cause I was done payin for his booze and shit. He'd just been sittin on his ass in different taverns, usually, gettin into more fights and gamblin too. He’s the one who found Vandren after that. Offered us a job on the ship and then another and another until we were just -- that was it, you know. For us. I thought so, anyway. For -- for near on fifteen years. And then -- well, you know the rest.”
“Some of it.”
Fjord stupidly felt like he could never make it up to Sabian this, nor forgive him for it. If it hadn’t been for that -- well. He didn’t know where he’d be or what he’d be doing. He didn’t much care for gods but that first job for Vandren, that night he let his temper get the best of him and told Sabian to do something with himself… if that wasn’t fate, or destiny, or some god’s idea of a grand cosmic joke, he’d eat his sword.
Molly’s tiefling-hot breath, even at this proximity to the fire, was visible in the night air. Heat met cold -- and honey, flies. Though truthfully Fjord didn’t know who was who, in this scenario, or whether it even mattered in this before-space they’d been slowly working up to since they began travelling together, the inhale before the exhale, the moment before release. It was beautiful here: careful glances, quiet words, soft touches, in between talks of strategy, looks of understanding whenever the others did something particularly ridiculous, and awkward conversation before bed when they roomed together. He could live in the before-space forever, he reckoned, if he wasn’t so convinced that Molly’s impatience would eventually force them to the resolution they could both see coming. In fact, that Molly was waiting and going against the very nature of everything he was or at least seemed to be was something of a shock -- and whether it was in deference to Fjord’s glaring cautiousness or whether, for once, Molly wanted to enjoy the build-up as much as the pay-off, it was hard to tell. For someone with the impulse control of a two-year-old and the urges of an adult along with all the liberties being one afforded, his restraint was, frankly, impressive.
In any case, Fjord wasn’t one to rush anything, and he liked how Molly looked at him, unsure of something for once in his short life, so he leaned back out of Molly’s space, satisfied.
“Sorry for bendin your ear with my stories,” Fjord said, as if Molly wasn't the grandest storyteller he knew, and watched a sharp huff of breath escape as Molly laughed quietly.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Molly. “I never do.”
“We should wake Beau and Nott,” Fjord said. He stood up and Molly’s eyes took their time tracing his movement. “They’ve got next watch.”
“Right. Of course. Do you want to -- I’ll just -- right.”
It was strange to see Molly flustered but Fjord was all the more pleased -- the situation was almost always reversed with Molly in control but for once Fjord wasn’t put on his back foot. Molly, of course, usually enjoyed making a spectacle of himself and knew the effect it had on Fjord when he did, which Fjord suspected was done on purpose. But this time, somehow, during his long-winded nostalgia that could not even be considered even the clumsiest of flirting, he had gotten Molly's attention. He reached a hand out to help Molly up -- the fingers he grasped were hot, from the fire and most likely from their general state of being, but not sweaty, and they held tight.
However satisfied he was, he felt like playing a little more, emboldened, perhaps, by the things he’d allowed himself to share tonight, and the feeling of those fingers on his.
“Put your bedroll next to mine,” he said, and Molly’s eyes narrowed, glimmering in the firelight. “I’m not so good against the cold like you are. You might have to warm me up.”
Fjord turned to go wake the next two to take watch, and left Molly to blink at his retreat. After all: no matter how slowly honey poured, eventually it would catch a fly.