Work Text:
Gillion milled about the party happening on the deck, leaning against the railing of the ship and watching everyone chatter and dance around.
He had recently learned about Christmas and Christmas parties and that they were the equivalent of the winter celebrations for the changing of the currents in the undersea, which brought him some semblance of familiar comfort. The combined crews of the Albatross and The Crescent Moon were all sprawled about the deck, doing different things.
Ollie had somehow managed to drag Drey out of his quarters and was excitedly pestering him for his stories about being a pirate, Chip had a hand in his sisters and if you squinted you could say they were dancing, but in reality, it was more of excuses to punch and shove each other around the deck, and Caspian had his guitar out and was softly strumming music to fill the air of their party. Despite sitting off to the side, he quite enjoyed this. It was peaceful.
His eyes wandered, but they kept landing back on Jay. She was dressed in a beautiful light blue dress with no sleeves and the brown fingerless gloves she wore every day. Her hair was pulled back into her usual ponytail, but he was entranced with the way it looked like fire in the soft glow of the lanterns they’d set around the deck. She was talking about something animatedly with Marshall John who tinkered with something in his hands.
He had come to terms with the fact that he had more romantic feelings for Jay, but that was frankly his secret to die with. In the grand scheme of his destiny and the words of his elders, if he wanted to be strong he couldn’t let emotional desires like that come in the way of protecting his loved ones (His elders also spoke to him about resisting physical desires, but he was good on that, he’d pass thanks).
He fidgeted with the hems of his pants and they irritated his gills. They were a pair of Caspian’s pants because he wanted to wear something nice like the others and simply suppressed the discomfort of having his fins pressed to his legs for an extended amount of time. He shook himself to try and reorient his senses away from the pants and stood up to get a drink.
He took his eyes away from Jay and instead tried to focus on avoiding Chip and Lizzie who were stumbling around the deck and throwing half-hearted tipsy punches at each other. He waved at Caspian with his guitar and reached for the table with the crate of beer on it, grabbing a bottle.
Just on par with his attempt to ignore how looking at Jay ignited butterflies in his chest, he saw her reach for the waters behind the crate. He looked up and she stood next to him, a big smile on her face and her eyes lit up. “Hey Gill!”
“Hello Jay, how’s your—Er, Chrimsas?” he stammered a bit and internally wanted to sink into the deck.
“Christmas,” she corrected gently, she was one of the only people besides Chip and Caspian that made him feel like he wasn’t being talked down to. “It’s awesome though! I was just talking to Marshall John and he’s working on this insane project with some scrap metal, he’s making this awesome steel—“
He smiled at her, nodding along when he heard a wolf whistle from beside him and recognized Chip’s slurred voice. “Haha! Giiiiill looook what you’re underrr,” He looked around and didn’t see anything of significance above him when Jay poked him and pointed upwards at a small gathering of leaves tied to one of the support beams on the deck.
He looked at it quizzically, what was so significant about it? “what does that mean?” he whispered to Jay who chuckled at him lightheartedly, the faintest blush on the tips of her ears and her cheeks.
“It’s called mistletoe, it’s a tradition that the two people who end up under it have to kiss,” she whispered back, and he felt like he was freezing over the way he stopped moving completely to process the information. Chip giggled, and Lizzie waggled her eyebrows at the two.
“Do it! Do it! Kiiiisss!” The captain of The Crescent Moon teased them, and a couple other people turned their heads, calling out teasing things to them and encouraging them to kiss including Caspian who winked at him, and Ollie who called out an ‘ooooooooo’.
Gill’s heart felt like it was speeding up faster then he could handle, and his tail moved anxiously from side to side. It felt like his heart was gonna beat out of his chest, and he didn’t know how to control it. There was nothing more he wanted then to lean down and be able to kiss Jay, but sour memories flooded his mind of his own first kiss. Unwanted hands, unwanted lips. Jay seemed to notice his hesitance and tugged his hand. “Hey, you don’t have to kiss me if you don’t feel comfortable, I can totally tell everyone to fuck off if you want them to.”
Gill thought for a moment that he could stop himself from panicking and quickly moved his head forward and locked lips with Jay. He liked it, a lot more then he wanted to admit; he found out that Jay was a very gentle kisser as well, not at all like the rough lip smashing of the past. He almost felt like the panic from his past was able to melt away until Jay grabbed his hips, tugging him a bit closer.
He doesn't want to be kissed, he wants this girl off of him, he just needs to wait this out and he’ll be fine it’s just a kiss he doesn't want to hurt her feelings—
He heard more whistles from the small crowd watching them and he couldn’t control the way the past took control and wormed its way into the present. He didn’t mean too but he felt his arms working against him and pushing Jay off of him, taking a deep breath, and the world feeling blurry. He stumbled backwards and almost crashed into Caspian, feeling like he needed to heave. What if he was just like her?
He very blurrily saw the distinct red hair and light blue in front of him and Jay reaching forward, but his mind spun and he needed out. He couldn’t be like the person that made him feel like this.
He stumbled past the table with the drinks and ran to the door that led to the lower deck and their quarters. He pushed it open and completely ignored the chorus of yells asking him what was going on and if he was okay.
He half-ran half-stumbled through the hallway and slammed the door to their sleeping quarters open. He crumpled to the floor and leaned against the wall, hyperventilating. It was one bad kiss in his youth, so why would it make him feel like this? The most traitorous parts of his brain even told him that he was just as bad as her and that Jay would think he was disgusting for liking someone like her.
He’d made a lot of progress in his unhealthy mentalities since he came up to the Oversea, but sometimes his old views still slipped through the mental cracks and plagued him. He rocked back and forth, twisting his hands to try and ground himself and hitting his head to try and make the thoughts go away.
A couple of minutes later he heard soft knocking, and he hoarsely called out “go away, I’m fine!”
The door creaked open and Jay stood there, the most concerned he’d ever seen her. She walked slowly towards him like he was a stray animal and sat down on the corner of her bed next to where he was crouched alongside the wall. “Are you though?” Her voice was soft, and he hated how it comforted him immediately. “I just want to make sure you're okay, it’s not like you to just run away. Were you uncomfortable with the kiss? I’m sorry if you felt like you were pressured, I didn’t realize how nervewracking that might’ve been for someone who hasn’t experienced that specific tradition their whole life.”
His words failed him, and he just choked out a strange noise and had to wipe away his tears while burying his head in his arms to not look at her. “Can I touch you Gillion?” she asked in that ever-so-gentle voice that was only reserved for comforting moments like these.
He shook his head, afraid of lashing out because his dumb brain thought she was someone else. She hummed in acknowledgment and gave him his space. “You don’t have to talk about why you ran away if you don’t want to but it's something that I did to you I want to know what it was so I could avoid it in the future,” she took a long pause in silence before she spoke again and in almost a whisper. “Sometimes I see how much you hurt and I just want to hurt the ones that did this to you, you’re so strong and I can’t even begin to fathom the things you’ve had to go through yet you survived with so much love.”
He let the comment sink in, and it grounded him a little more. Guilt overwhelmed him though, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at her even when he could feel her sky blue eyes on him. He scooted back and crawled up onto her bed, but sat a good foot away from her and only looked down at his palms. “I’m so sorry you’ve had to see me like this Jay—“
she immediately interrupted, her hand coming into his view and placed next to his leg. “How many times do I have to tell you, it’s okay to cry even if it’s stupid, it's what makes you feel things the way you do, Gill—”
He brought his eyes up for the first time to look at her, etching the worry on her face into his mind. “I didn’t force that kiss on you, right?”
Her concern morphed into immediate surprise and then confusion. “Gods, no, Gillion. I didn’t step away from the mistletoe and I leaned in, I’m completely sober too—I drank half a bottle earlier while we were setting up the decorations but other then that I’ve just been drinking apple cider and water ‘cuz someone’s gotta watch Chip and make sure Ollie goes to bed on time.”
The triton sighed a huge breath of relief, the answering getting his traitorous brain to shut up for at least a moment. “Once again you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t feel comfortable….but what would make you ask me that? Creepy-touchy dudes are just a part of being a girl and I’ve known a lot of them and you are the exact opposite of a creepy-touchy dude.”
He inched closer to her, close enough that there was still a couple of inches of space between the two of them but he could reach out his hand and put it on her knee in his equivalent of a gesture to tell her it was okay to touch him now. She immediately picked up on the nonverbal communication and put her hand over his.
He wiped the last of his tears away, still feeling that sinking sense of dread at his own memories; but he was starting to reel back the tears he felt made him weak. “It’s….it’s really stupid but when I was an adolescent there was this girl that really liked me and she….she kept touching me. When I didn’t want it. When you pulled me closer it must have reminded me of that, and it made me scared that somehow I was her in this position.”
There was evident disgust on Jay’s face, but not aimed at him. “Gillion,” she seemed to look for the words, tightening her grasp on his hand reassuringly. “I’m so sorry—You’re nothing like her Gill and you never will be, I wish I could crawl into your brain and make you understand how fucked up that is.”
He’d be damned if those weren’t the words he needed to hear, but he had to keep himself together. He had repressed that memory so hard that he hadn’t even realized how much he could still physically feel the pain of it all. “The worst thing is that it feels so insignificant. She didn’t push me for anything more, it was only a couple of times, and in the end it was my fault because I was the one who snuck out to meet her when I wasn’t supposed to and went to this stupid party with kids my age because I thought it would make me more normal and we got shoved into a compartment room together and she kissed me and I hated it. I told her, but she just kept touching me and pulling me back and I knew I could’ve just shoved her off but I didn’t wanna hurt her feelings.”
“Gillion Tidestrider, you listen to me alright? That’s not your fault and it never will be. No means no and if you say it and they don’t stop, you get the automatic right to make them fuck off no matter who they are. Remember the pirate code, if you ignore a lack of consent from someone you will die,” She leaned close to him, bringing his hand close to hers and grabbing the other one to do the same. “Growing up surrounded by people who were so much better at me at everything and who very obviously looked down on me for how I chose to live I learned that sometimes you don’t need to be the bigger person, sometimes people need your boot to smash their face in to really get the message across which is exactly what you should do if anyone ever tries that again!”
That was one of the things he loved about her so much, her strong voice. No matter how deep in his own head he was, the determination and stubborn will of her voice always seemed to bring him back. “Thank you Jay, truly. I don’t think I could put into words all the ways you mean so much to me.”
he leaned in, laying his head on her shoulder while she spoke. “Loss of autonomy is one of the worst things to experience, and that’s been your whole life, Gill. I want to get the idea to you that your body doesn't belong to the elders or your parents or whoever that girl was, it belongs to you. I haven’t experienced it the way you have, but being free to live the way I want to as a pirate and as a woman after having my entire life controlled to a T by my dad and being his ideal son was a type of freedom that I want to see you feel someday.”
“You give that to me, you make me feel free.” It slipped out before he could even register what he said, and he realized the acute proximity of how close he was to being pressed up against Jay. He slowly lifted his head to scooch away again, not wanting to make her uncomfortable but she grabbed his forearm lightly, tugging him back.
“You make me feel like that too. In a different way then Chip or Caspian or Lizzie make me feel, you—“
“Don’t start talking like that.” He murmured.
“Like what?”
“Like that—like—like you know I’ll fall in love.” He said the last word slowly like it might burn his tongue.
“Would that be so bad?”
She gently pulled him closer so that their shoulders were touching and a certain type of tension hung between them. “Given everything we’ve talked about I don’t want to do anything that you’re not cool with but…I really liked kissing you. I liked it a lot, and completely at your own pace and comfort…I wouldn’t mind doing it again.”
Gill froze under her touch, but not due to panic this time. He loved the warmth that emulated from her fingertips and it’s all that he wanted. He smiled, his two front fangs poking out from his lips in the way he smiled when he was truly happy.
“Jay Ferin, may I have the pleasure of kissing you properly this time, no weird human traditions involved this time?”
“Anytime,” she said and grabbed his face to gently close the distance between them. His hands grabbed her waist and he tilted his head to copy her motions. He was right earlier about the way she kissed him gently and tenderly and it made him melt under her arms. Gill leaned against the headboard and when they separated she pressed another couple of kisses to his jaw and down to the collarbone exposed by his button-up shirt.
The triton took a deep breath in, feeling so many emotions creating a whirlpool of giddiness in his chest. He wanted to stay down here and cuddle with her for the rest of the night but he knew if he didn’t come back up soon the others would start worrying. “We should go back up.”
Jay looked like she wanted to stay there too, but nodded and got up, offering him her hand pulling him up with her. She adjusted his shirt collar and took her hand in his. “You’re right, we can talk about it more later….but I’m real glad to have someone like you, Gill.”
even in the dimness of the room, he could faintly see Jay smiling next to him and the rest of the night came and went but he could only really focus on the intoxicating buzz of Jay’s lips on his, a beacon of hope that good relationships were possible for people like him.
—----. . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆—----
Gillion sat on the floor of the bathroom, babysitting Chip who after the party had promptly gotten sick and barely gotten to the toilet before he vomited. Gill had sat behind him keeping the hair out of his face, and now he was sitting and facing a slightly more sober-looking Chip.
“Gillion, remind me why I drink again?”
“It’s far past my reasoning how humans get drunk so quickly.” He mused back at Chip teasingly.
“Fuck you, dude! It’s not my fault tritons have crazy high alcohol tolerances and humans don’t, did you even have any beers tonight? You don’t even look Buzzed.”
Embarrassment heated his cheeks as he recalled coming back up to the deck and knocking back a couple of beers to suspend the disbelief of receiving a reciprocal kiss from his crush. “I…had a few.”
“How many is a few? Actually, I don’t want to know—Come to think of it, I haven’t seen you drink more then one or two bottles in one go, what made you drink like five?” Chip's gaze wasn’t meant to be scrutinizing, but the triton just hated lying to others, especially those he was close with.
He stayed silent while he looked for words or an excuse which just made Chip more suspicious. “Did something happen between you and Jay? I vaguely remember her running after you.”
His tail thumped nervously against the wooden floor and he tried to contain it but he couldn’t. He drew his knees up to his chest and avoided eye contact. “Maybe?” He said half-heartedly, unable to pry away from Chip’s gaze.
“Did you guys have a fight?”
“Possibly…..the opposite…?”
He could see the gears turning in Chip’s still half-drunk brain to try and figure out what that meant. His brown eyes widened when he settled on his epiphany. “DID YOU GUYS FU—“ he lowered his voice. “Wait, no, you’re asexual…and a fish….I don’t want to know how that works. Forget I said that.”
Gillion quirked his eyebrow, laughing at him. “That’s the first thing you think of?”
“I’m being serious! Did you guys, like, kiss?” Chip said it half-jokingly, but the tritons sheepish nod gave everything away. “Holy shit! You guys did!”
Chip reached out uncoordinatedly and grabbed Gillion’s hand, holding it. “I’m happy for you man, I know you’ve had a crush on her for a while. I felt kinda bad about accidentally overwhelming you with all the noise and stuff with the mistletoe, but I’m glad you guys finally got together. There was nothing truly more painful then watching you love lovey dovey heart eyes at her from across the deck.”
He whacked Chip lightly with his tail, but laughed. “Human traditions are weird, but I’m glad it happened. I think I’d do just about anything for her.
“Awe! That’s gross. Now can you hold my hair, I think I might throw up again—“
Gillion quickly got up, helping guide Chip to the toilet. What would he do without his friends?