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Gil was on his shift for watch, standing near the railing of the ship, looking over the ocean and how the moonlight seemed to skip across the waves as they sailed. It was a rather calm night, and with little wind the ship was quiet, only the slight sloshing of the waves against the vessel present. Suddenly, the peace was disrupted by a door creaking open, someone else is here. Alerted, the triton stiffened his posture, still staring at the sea, as he listened to the irregular footsteps behind him. With senses heightened— he realizes he doesn't recognize the rhythms of the steps. As small sparks of light begin traveling between his coral, Gillion’s hand carefully reaches and hovers over his sheathed sword, ready to smite the intruder.
A frantic voice speaks up, “Woah, fuckin’ chill man, jus’ me— good ol’ Chip.” The words are awkward and run into each other, but the voice is easily recognizable as Gillion’s co-captain.
Gil turns away from the sea only to come face-to-face with a disheveled Chip whose hands are held out in a placating gesture. Gillion clears his throat and smiles, “I apologize Chip! You somehow managed to sneak up on me, while simultaneously being as loud as possible! I admire your tactics.”
“Yea yea, whatever man, it’s my turn for watch,” Chip waves his hand in dismissal, stumbling as he makes his way towards Gillion.
“Ah,” Gillion squints, he’s not the most attuned to reading people, yet he could tell there was something off with his co-captain. “Well you’re early. I’m surprised you’re so on top of it tonight, Chip! Usually you’re late.”
Chip clicks his tongue and simply moves closer, labored breathing becoming more apparent as he exhales a puffs of steam from the coldness of the night. As the rogue steps closer, he rubs his hand across his face in a weary fashion. Chip lets out a long sigh before stopping in front Gillion, eyes unfocused as they struggle to adjust to the lowlight of the night.
As Chip opens his mouth to speak, Gillion’s face immediately twists in a grimace and interrupts the human before he can get a word in, “you smell of alcohol, Chip.”
"Geez, blunt as always. " The rogue removes his hand from his face and bounces nervously on the heels of his feet, “what’s it to you?”
The paladin cocks his head to the side, “you’re impaired, Chip. So I’ll take your shift for you, as you won’t be able to properly survey your surroundings, or fight off any danger there may be.” There's no malice in his words.
“Sure I can, I didn’t drink... that much."
The triton raises an eyebrow, “for someone who ‘didn’t drink that much,’ you’re swaying quite a bit.”
The human’s posture goes rigid at this, “am not,” he blurts out. Chip makes a point to stand on one leg to show how perfectly balanced he is, and in this spectacular act of intellect and acrobatics, he begins to lose his footing and falls forward. Before he can eat shit on the deck, Gillion, foretelling this, catches him by his shoulders and hoists him up. As the tritons grip slackens, the rogue slumps forward and leans his full body weight onto Gil, accepting defeat.
“Was Jay drinking with you Chip?” Gil can feel Chip shake his head into his chest.
“You smell like salt,” Chip sniffles.
“Everything smells like salt out here, Chip.” With Gil’s hands still on Chip’s shoulders, the triton begins to slowly peel him off of his chest.
Chip stands up, and one of Gill’s hands drops, the other still staying on the brunet’s left shoulder, not trusting him to be able to keep himself steady. “Sorry, I wasn’t… I didn’t realize I drank too much ‘til I stood up and everything just started... spinning. A lot of spinning.”
“You were… drinking alone, while in your hammock?”
“Yea, couldn’t sleep,” with half lidded eyes, he brings his hand back up to his head, covering his face trying to soothe himself. He continues, “Can…can we sit down, I feel... not good.”
“Oh! Yes, let me just,” Gillion slowly helps Chip sit down on the deck, helping him safely get into a sitting position. As the human leaned his head on one of the banisters to the railing of the ship, his hand was in a death grip on another banister. The paladin sits in front of him with his legs crossed and his hands on his knees with a rigid posture, eyes fixed on Chip.
Chip eyes, finally adjusted to the darkness, drift back to the paladin, “relax, why are you lookin' so uncomfortable for man?”
“I just– I don't believe I'm exactly the best person on the ship for this sort of thing,” the triton admits, hands falling into his lap.
Chip lets out a wet laugh, “they don’t teachu’ how to comfort a sad drunk in the undersea?”
“No, I suppose they didn’t, but I think it would’ve been helpful,” he brings his hand up under his chin in a pondering fashion.
The human’s mouth turns down in a slight frown, “god, you think way too hard man”
“What do you mean?”
“Think’n too hard about what the 'objective' right solution is rather than what you think it is,” his body moves as he speaks, and his hand that's not on the banister moves to poke Gillion’s chest.
The triton makes an unimpressed face, “Well in that case,” he tilts his head, “the right solution to me would be to ask you, ‘Is this about the fight you had with Ollie earlier?’”
Chip sputters and his hand retreats back, his voice significantly lower than before, “you heard that?”
“If it makes you feel better Chip, I believe I was the only one who overheard,” Gil smiles softly.
“No that doesn’t make me feel better actually,” Chip’s single-handed grip on the banister tightens and he moves to push himself off the ground, “I’m goin’ to bed, take my shift or whatever. Don't care what you do.”
“Chip, I’m sorry if I said something that upset you, but I feel like it’s apparent you are…” Gil remains seated, watching as Chip stands and struggles to keep himself upright, “very skilled at the art of pushing people away.”
“Astute observation captain obvious,”
“My name isn’t–”
“It was a joke, Gil.”
The wind picks up slightly. Chip shivers and stumbles as he sits back down, this time next to Gillion, their knees practically touching.
“Fine man, I won’t… run away this time.” Chip rustles around for a second, before taking out a flask, but before he can take a swig, it’s snatched away from him. “Hey– c’mon man– Holy shit .” Chip watches stunned as Gillion drinks it, and he drinks it all. “Gil dude that was practically full–”
Gillion makes a face before wiping his mouth, “the right answer felt like… that.”
“Oh yea?” Chip gingerly takes the flask from Gillion’s hand.
“Now we can converse on equal levels of sobriety!” he declares as the rogue stifles a snicker. The triton clears his throat before continuing, “so… the fight, I really only heard bits and pieces but I’m assuming you tried to get him to agree to stay home?”
The human slouches over and lets out an exasperated sigh. “Yeah man, I… I love that kid so fuckin’ much and I don’t… don’t want him to end up like I did”
“And you ended up how…?”
“Alone as shit,” Gillion makes a face at this, and before he can say anything Chip begins to backtrack, “fuck, wait before you go all ‘we’re a crew’ on me, just… I mean before ‘this,’” He gestures around to the ship, “‘this’ was a lucky thing, a one in a million chance, and I don’t like those odds for the kid. And with this lifestyle, eventually I won’t be here to protect Ollie anymore and... fuck man, that scares the hell out of me.
“I want em’ to live out his life on Zero, with his mom, and not have to grieve me or some shit. I don’t wanna leave him all alone man, I just… I wanna leave em’ on my own accord.” He begins to pick at his chewed-down nails. Gillion makes no move to talk, so Chip continues in order to fill the silence, “I try so hard to just… I just want everything to fit and for like it to be fuckin’ wrapped all nice in a bow but… no matter how hard I try to be like... like Arlin— and how much I fail at that… I feel like the same thing is going to happen all over again…” he trails off.
Gillion’s face begins to feel fuzzy, and he speaks up “does it have to fit into a nice bow for it to be important?”
The rogue stops picking at his hands and looks up at the triton, “no, fuck- of course not Gil! I just wish it were easier.” A pressure builds behind his eyes and his nose begins to burn, “I keep trying to force my feelings onto other people, and it just gets me fucked over every time in the end.” He looks away from Gil back at his hands, and goes back to picking at the abused skin that lines his fingernails. “I just… I keep latching onto having a family but… and every time– every single time I ended up messing it up in the end somehow.”
Chip pauses for a second, before placing his hands behind him on the deck and leaning back on them whilst letting out a wet laugh, “was I just too much for them– did I just… Did they consider me family or did I just fuckin’ make it all up in my head?”
A silence permeates.
He leans forward again and rubs his hands against his face, “Sorry that was stupid I… I just need to go to bed. Rum you know– Gets uh. Really gets me going, no breaks in sight.”
“You never really have breaks in general, Chip,” the paladin blurts out.
“Geez, thanks, Gil”
“Sorry I.. I’m just thinking of what to say,” Gil looks away and rubs the back of his neck.
“Hmm and what’s that o’ wise one?” Chip cocks his head to the side in a jesting manner.
“I think…” the triton pauses, mulling over his thoughts, “I don’t understand exactly what you’re talking about.”
“Wow great fuckin–” Gil’s hand comes up to shush Chip. Gillion maneuvers over in front of Chip, and turns so they’re facing each other now.
“I wasn’t finished.” The human raises an eyebrow as Gillion continues to speak, “while I don’t exactly understand what you’re talking about, I get… what you mean about having weird affliction with the word ‘family.’”
The human takes the triton’s hand and removes it from his face, “Yea?”
“Yea.”
Chip, still holding Gillion’s hand, flips it so it’s palm up, “You wanna… I don’t know, elaborate on that bud?” The brunet takes his other hand and traces the calluses on the triton’s hand clumsily with it.
“Well, Edyn and Pretzel… were really the only family I had, they’re the only reason I got through it as long as I did. And I call Edyn my sister, and she is, but she… she had to do so much more than just be my sister…” He trails off, his words becoming less sharp, and his thoughts falling out his mouth more easily. “Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I had a more traditional family,” the human stops tracing his hand and looks up to meet Gil’s gaze, “and sometimes I find myself only being able to have that if I was never the ‘One’,” he admits. “I… see you all as my family but I‘m not really sure what a family really is at the end of the day.”
They sit in comfortable silence for a while, Chip still holding one of the tritons hands with two of his. Chip looks up while gently shaking Gil’s hand, as if to physically search for his thoughts, “sometimes a family is a fish guy, a fish girl, and a pink frogtapus, nuthin’ wrong with that.”
“Nuthin’ wrong with that,” Gillion echoes.
The brunet leans forward, his head resting against the triton’s chest, “and sometimes a family is three captains and a rag-tag crew”
“Nuthin’ wrong with that,” the paladin repeats, slouching into the touch.
“Hey Gil?”
“Yea?”
“What was the point you were trying to make?”
“In the way my sister isn’t held back by the ‘sister’ label, why do you have to be held back by the ‘Arlin’ label you place upon yourself?” Gillion takes his free hand and places it on Chip’s head, gently carding through his hair, “why are you so… insistent that everything must come to an inevitable tragic end?”
He chuckles softly, “because it’s all I’ve never known, man.”
“But you and I both know that isn’t true, we’ve seen people come back, Chip. Even then, must we wait for an end rather than focusing on what we have now?” As Gillion continues to run his hands through Chip's hair, the tension in him from before slowly begins to melt away, “when… when I was in the undersea, focusing on what I had in the moment, Pretzel and my sister, it helped me. It made me remember why I was going through this, it made me cherish the small things with them. And now, I can do the same with all of you.” The triton smiles, and looks down to Chip waiting for a response. He sits and minutes pass. It's not long before he can feel Chip snoring into his chest. “Chip?” The human doesn’t budge. Gillion chuckles slightly, and places his hands on Chip’s shoulders and pushes him gently forward, not letting go, and as he sits Chip up straight his head lolls to the side.
The triton places his hands underneath the rogue's armpits, and proceeds to lift him up slowly into a standing position. Gil’s eyebrows raise as he looks at Chip's face, realizing that somehow, Chip had managed to stay asleep. The paladin shrugs and proceeds to carry Chip as if he were a cat, body stretched out, with him still snoring as Gil carried him into their sleeping quarters.
Once he makes his way into the captains’ sleeping quarters, and before he places Chip into his hammock, Gillion removes the empty glass bottles that had been stashed away in it. Satisfied with his work, he stands up and brushes off his pants, and makes his way back towards the top deck to continue both his, and Chip’s shift, of watch.
hift, of watch.