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Some would say it’s rank foolishness to grow fond of a Naut. They come and go with the tide.
She never had many thoughts on it all – she’d rarely met Nauts, other than for the odd bit of business at the port, when her uncle needed some cargo shifting. She’s drunk with one or two, when keeping Constantin company crawling through the taverns. But between the isolation of her rank and their famed secrecy, she didn’t have the opportunity to truly know many. (Their only conversations consisted of things like “What about that crate over there?” and “No, I didn’t know Constantin could balance a glass on his nose either.”) The most she knew of the subject was an occasional rumour, usually about some noble spending a night in a way their family would disapprove of, and the odd tavern song. Some of them quite bawdy – but all of the ones about more than a tumble ended up with a broken-hearted land-lubber pining away at the docks.
The thing is, the sailors in those songs were fickle, and Vasco may be one of the most constant people she’s ever met. When he cares for something, he commits: whether that be his calling, or his drive to find his birth family, or this very quest they’re on.
Even so, that’s a dangerous train of thought to allow. She tries not to be too indelicate with her questions, but she’s gathered enough from his sheer amount of tattoos compared to other captains, the odd story he’s let her have, and the way his crew speak of him – he’s somewhat of an exceptional sailor. She’d suspected, comparing his rank to his age, but it was another thing to travel with him. His laying-off smelt of politics rather than aptitude, and she knew it wouldn’t last for long. And so it didn’t; he’s been reinstated, with new marks of loyalty.
(They look like… serpents, she said, in quiet fascination, and he smiled and said, So they are. To represent defeating a monster of the seas. And she remembered the nádaig, and he turned his head into the light, left and then right – allowing himself to show off. His eyes always on her, as if curious to see what she thought of him. She bit her tongue against the truth.)
She’s quite certain they’re friends now, a fact which in itself once seemed more than a little impossible. Good friends, even – the sort that exchange idle words by campfires and gaze at the stars together, that ask after each other’s wounds and drink together while speaking of family difficulties. The sort that shore each other up with kind words after the worst has happened.
He’ll head out to sea soon enough. She’ll send him a letter, and perhaps he may even find the time to send one or two of his own, between sailing through storms and swashbuckling. She’s probably supposed to think that she’ll be forgotten, but somehow, with Vasco, she doubts that. Perhaps, if the world is kind, they might even get to sail together again. She knows he’s done enough work in Tír Fradí. And anything else, the sort of thing she considers in idle daydreams? That will fade, given enough time. She knows how to deal with this; it’s far from the first interest of its kind. And at least this time it’s one of the quietly kindest men she’s ever met, rather than a court cad. There are worse things than to enjoy the company of a fine man.
(And if he looks at her sometimes with his eyes warm and thoughtful, or spars with her word for word, or responds to her endless questions with a huff that seems more like fondness and something deeper, rather than frustration, and she wonders… Well, she enjoys the moment, then tells herself firmly to know a joke and easy friendliness for what it is.)
The alternative is… yes, a dangerous train of thought. Better to disabuse herself of it swiftly. So she asks him when he plans to set sail again. A swift cut is cleaner than a slow one.
Soon, but not yet, he tells her - the answer she expected.
She’s never been one to hold back a kind word, especially to a friend. And at court, it’s a rare gift to tell the truth, so she tries to do it as much as possible elsewhere. “I hope that someday, when this is all over… I will get to sail with you again.”
“I hope so too,” he says. And then he looks at her, and his voice is quiet when he says, “To be truthful, I’d rather not leave these shores without you.”
Quieter than a matter-of-fact friend’s compliment, or half-jokes they’ve shared. The sort of quiet that comes with a confession.
...Oh.
She blinks at him. He only looks back at her levelly, his mouth tight, his face caught between softness and a sort of half-afraid defiance. She recognises it, somehow: remembers him turning his newly-inked face into the light, showing himself to her and daring her to have an opinion. Because her opinion mattered to him, and she’s only now starting to realise how much.
She realises too late that she’s staring, and she tries to close her mouth. She has the terrible suspicion that everything she’s feeling is showing in her expression; that it must be obvious her heart is in her throat, or that she must look like something from some terrible shanty. He’s always been good at making her too earnest, at catching her off-guard.
He swallows, and then looks over her shoulder, pointedly. “The governor’s aide is looking for you.” He squints. “And making desperate hand gestures.” His words are back to their usual dryness.
She could force it. She could ask the sailor standing next to her, already settling his face into neutrality and putting his hands behind his back, exactly what he meant. (So that she can ask him whether what she’d thought were her idle compliments and endless questions bouncing off him, only being read with half their intended interest, were… something else. Whether all that half-glimpsed softness and the way he’d sometimes seemed to be carefully looking elsewhere when she turned her head were her imagination.)
She doesn’t. She won’t push. She steps back and adjusts her hat, glancing over her shoulder to the harried aide. Gives Vasco one last long look, leaving the rest to him; telling herself that if she hasn’t entirely misinterpreted, there will be time. “Of course.”
She suspects, then.
And because she suspected, it’s somehow not a surprise when he eventually takes her aside, though more surprising is the poetry – poetry, and she was always raised to watch for potential useful alliances, not a man quoting Marcelleau to her like he means it, half-terrified, with his heart in his eyes. Not a surprise, either, is the quiet knock at her bedroom door – or the way they almost forget to close it afterwards, when she takes his hand and he kisses her with such desperate tenderness, the sort that has clearly been stored up and held close to his chest for a long time.
And contrary to all the songs, she’s somehow unsurprised, too, when the morning finds him in her bed - skin pale and ink dark against her sheets, coat tossed onto the chest at the foot of her bed, curled up as if more used to a ship’s hammock and unsure what to do with all the space. Not a story here and gone with the tide. Nor is she some longing ghost, waiting at the docks.
Then we shall set sail together on this bitter sea.