Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I hope that you have a very good reason for sneaking on board my ship, murderer .”

Natsume didn’t need to look away from his desk to hear the captain of The Cosmos enter the room. The man’s footsteps were heavy, but gentle and deliberate all the same, making the floorboards creak in time with the sound of the waves. His low chuckle almost escaped Natsume’s ears.

“…I wasn’t trying to hide myself, don’t worry.” Nagisa’s voice was far gentler than his reputation - both as a slayer of gods and as a ruthless pirate captain. “Tsumugi let me onboard. I told him that I wished to speak with you.”

“ That traitorous bastard ,” Natsume hissed under his breath, “I’ll be sure to have him marooned for that…”

Natsume pushed back his desk chair and stood up, turning around to look at the intruder standing in the doorway.

He was just as tall and handsome as Natsume remembered him to be all those years ago, except now he was holding himself with much more confidence and pride. His hair had been tied up into a tight ponytail, with thick waves from the salty ocean air, and even his sealskin had been altered, turned from a pelt into something resembling a beautiful frock coat that looked like something that Shu would absolutely adore.

Long gone was the quiet little wallflower that was perpetually stuck to Hiyori Tomoe’s side. In front of Natsume now was the most formidable man to ever sail the seas.

“Captain Ran of The Cosmos,” Natsume began, his voice dripping with contempt, “former member of The Fine Star, you are one of the men who ruthlessly slaughtered every one of my brothers in cold blood, stealing their divine hearts and destroying them that they would be eternally cursed to a mortal life. I haven’t the faintest idea why you would assume that you would be welcome aboard my ship under any circumstances, and if you overstay your welcome, then I will personally rid you of your sealskin coat and toss you overboard.”

“…Ah, my apologies. I was under the impression that you were the navigator of The Knight, not her captain?”

Natsume felt his blood boil.

“If you have something to say then say it now, bastard.”

Just as Nagisa opened his mouth to speak, a sound of papers rustling came from behind Natsume. Turning his head, he spotted a black cat - his own familiar - sniffing at his maps, treading ink-stained paws across the desk, and his eyes widened.

“Wh-! Danny, no! Stop that! Get down from there!” He hissed.

Hearing Natsume’s distressed voice, the cat jumped off of the desk and onto the floor. Nagisa smiled warmly at the sight.

“…His name is Danny?”

Natsume flicked his head sharply towards Nagisa.

“That’s Dantalion to you, prick.”

Dantalion casually trotted over to the intruder, sniffing around his legs, before rubbing his entire body against Nagisa’s ankles and purring loud enough for Natsume to hear it from across the room. Nagisa knelt down and petted Natsume’s familiar.

“…He’s very lovely,” The black cat seemed to lean into Nagisa’s touch, pressing his head into the captain’s hand. Natsume squinted. Was everybody on this ship going to betray him in favor of this asshole? “I can tell that you truly care for him.”

“Funny,” Natsume said under his breath, “I thought that you wanted to destroy the things that I care for, not pet them.”

Nagisa froze, his eyes fixed upon the floor, not dating to meet Natsume’s gaze. Silently, he returned to an upright position, watching Natsume’s familiar trot back into the darkness.

“…Yes. About that, I-” Nagisa froze mid-sentence. He closed his mouth, before looking down and to the side, taking a deep breath as he did so. “I want to apologize, but… I’m well aware that it’s far too late to do so.”

“You think? ” Natsume whispered. It had been a long few years since his brothers had been killed - to say that it was far too late for an apology was like saying that the ocean was a ‘pretty big puddle’.

“…I am well aware that nothing that I could say would ever even begin to make up for what we did to you and your brothers. And yet…” Nagisa’s voice became quiet, and his eyebrows furrowed. “If I say nothing, wouldn’t that be worse? It’s something that I remember every night and see in every nightmare, but I know that it can’t possibly compare to what we did to you.”

“Nightmares?” Natsume’s voice left his mouth before he thought through his words, but he was indeed curious. “Why would you be so upset about what you did to us?”

Nagisa nodded slowly as if acknowledging Natsume’s confusion, and placed a hand upon his chest.

“…I’m a creature of the ocean. It’s where I came from, and when I die, it’s where I’ll return. When the god of the depths was destroyed…” He closed his eyes, recalling the memory, “I felt it. Like something tearing inside of me. It was as if… as if I was cut off from a rope that I’d been holding onto for my entire life and dragged to someplace strange and unfamiliar. It was an awful feeling. Still is, really.” The look on Nagisa’s face was a mixture of a lot of feelings that Natsume could only guess at. Grief, regret, perhaps sorrow, but also a trace of fondness, as if he were recalling a bittersweet childhood memory and not the moment that he was forever cut off from his divine connection to the sea. “I think that’s when I truly realized the severity of what we were doing,” He solemnly shook his head. “But of course by then it was too late to stop. Besides, even if I had left then, the others would still finish what they started. Perhaps it was for the best, anyway…”

Natsume stared at Nagisa again, but with much less vitriol than before. When Kanata’s divine heart was destroyed, Natsume felt it too, but in a much different way than what Nagisa had described. For Natsume, it was like a stutter in the waves, a ripple in the water from an earthquake that happened on the other side of the world, and then a sudden, eerie silence filling a place where there should be endless sound.

Shu was the first of the pirate gods to fall, and when he did, his agony resounded across the sea like a church bell. All of the other gods immediately knew what had happened to him, but it was only when Kanata fell that they realized the true extent of Eichi’s plans. The horror had finally dawned on them that what happened to Shu wasn’t an accident. That they were next.

He understood what Nagisa was saying. Deeply, truly, he did. Their experiences weren’t the same, but the feelings were similar enough. Assuming that Nagisa was speaking the truth, of course.

Natsume refused to let his guard down. Even if Nagisa felt guilty about what he’d done, he still played a significant part in Eichi’s crusade. Natsume ought to kick him off of this ship right now, just as he had threatened to do just a moment prior. And yet…

Slowly, Natsume looked Nagisa up and down.

“Is that what you came here to say to me?”

Nagisa was quiet for just a moment, before shaking his head ‘no’.

“…There is much more that I would like to say to you,” Nagisa held his hands in front of him, pressed against each other like he was trying to not fidget, “but like I said, it’s nothing that would ever begin to make things right again. If I were to try, I’d probably be here for several lifetimes.”

Nagisa’s face was twisted into somewhere between a gentle smile and a wince, as if he’d just told a bad joke, but Natsume only frowned, eyebrows furrowing.

“Try anyway,” Natsume whispered, punctuated by the crashing of the waves outside, and Nagisa’s forced smile melted into something much more genuine. “ Please .”

Nagisa inhaled deeply as he took in Natsume’s words. There was a silent moment between them, just a moment, and then in a single smooth motion, Nagisa knelt down on one knee, on the floor right in front of Natsume.

“…I’m sorry,” Nagisa said from his place at Natsume’s feet. “For everything. Every sorrow and every pain that I have given you, I cannot apologize enough for. I can’t imagine the pain that I helped put you and your brothers through.” Natsume was frozen as Nagisa spoke; his eyes widened and his throat ran impossibly dry. “I don’t know what would have happened if we didn’t go through with it, if I left, or if I tried to stop them. I don’t know if that would have been better for anyone or not. If I was told Eichi’s full plan before I agreed to it, maybe I would have left, or maybe I would have stayed anyway, I don’t know.” Nagisa paused and took a breath. “But I do know that-”

“Stop,” Natsume interrupted, voice creaking a little bit. “Stop it, you- you don’t need to kneel.”

Nagisa looked up at him, and quirked an eyebrow. His expression was so genuine and innocent that Natsume could only barely hear his words over the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

“…Isn’t it normal to kneel before your god?”

“I-! That’s-!” Natsume spluttered as he felt his face grow warm, “I’m not- I’m barely a god in the first place, you don’t need to kneel!” He watched Nagisa awkwardly sit back, still on the floor and still technically kneeling, but not nearly as formal as he was just seconds ago. “And who said that I’m your god anyway?!”

Natsume was always the least popular of the gods. Not many mortals wanted - or even needed - a god of navigation, not when Natsume’s power was so minor. Their maps and compasses worked like usual regardless of whether Natsume was on their side or not. Besides, if they had the favor of the other pirate gods, if the wind and waves carried them to their destination, if death chose not to touch them, if treasure was abound in every direction they went, then why would they ever care about Natsume?

Perhaps his brothers would have known how to handle a situation like this. They were used to being on the receiving end of worship and prayer and things like that. But no. Their divinity had been stripped from them and now they were living normal human lives.

How ironic it was, then, that the man who was calling Natsume his god was one of the men that killed his brothers.

In front of him, Nagisa's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"...You're the last pirate god."

"Yeah," Natsume rolled his eyes, "I know that, you don't need to-"

"...No, I mean,” Nagisa licked his lips, and started speaking as if he were spelling out the solution to a puzzle, “you’re the pirate god. The god of piracy, the god of our entire trade. The wind, the waves, death, treasure. Those are all now part of your domain.”

"That's," he started, unsure of what to say in response. What was there to say? "No, that’s not… I’m not… Those are my brothers’ domains. Were my brothers’ domains. I’m just the god of navigation. I’m the god of an art that mortals invented and that mortals teach to other mortals.”

“…You’re the pirate god of navigation, yes.” Nagisa nodded, and then raised an eyebrow. “You’re also the pirate god of the stars, if I remember correctly.”

Natsume tutted.

“That’s an old title. People don’t use it anymore,” he shrugged, shifting his gaze to the corner of the room, “it’s not like the stars can do much, anyway. The only reason that pirates ever look up at the stars is to navigate their path.”

“…No. That’s not the only reason.”

“What do you mean?”

Nagisa closed his eyes, deep in thought for a moment.

“…We look up at the stars whenever we can’t sleep.” His voice was quiet, measured. “We tell each other stories by candlelight, we play card games, as long as we’re quiet enough to not wake up any of the others.” Judging from the little upwards quirk of his lip, he was speaking from experience, not just providing examples, but giving a full list of his own experiences. “We talk about things, under the cover of night, tell each other secrets. Or at least, that’s been my experience.” Nagisa opened his eyes again, and shrugged. “Truthfully, I don’t know if that’s a tradition on most ships.”

It was uncomfortably personal, all of this information, hearing what Nagisa did at night when the stars were out. Far too romantic for Natsume’s tastes.

“So you’re telling me that a bunch of thieves and murderers like to sit under the stars and talk about their dreams like teenage girls?” Natsume deflected, voice quiet and weak, avoiding direct eye contact. “I thought you guys were supposed to be manly badasses.”

Nagisa laughed at that, a genuine hearty laugh, rich and deep, and it made something buried deep inside Natsume ache .

“…Yes, I suppose,” Nagisa smiled warmly, “but it gives us hope. Hope’s on pretty short supply when you’re cramped into a small space with a bunch of other people for who knows how long.” He looked off to the side, taken by a new train of thought. “To be honest, I think that’s what makes us pirates.”

“Hope makes you pirates?”

“…Ah, well, not hope specifically. But…” Nagisa closed his eyes again, eyebrows furrowed slightly as he moved his hands in a vague gesture. “The stars. The night sky. We all navigate by the light of the stars, it’s like they join us.” He opened his eyes, but Natsume still refused to look directly at him, scared of what he might see.

“You don’t need me for that, though.” Natsume’s voice was weak as he spoke. “You do all of that yourselves, you don’t need me.” His eyes bore a hole into the walls of his cabin as he desperately avoided eye contact. “Eichi understood that. That’s why…”

That’s why he didn’t even bother to kill me.

The unspoken words rested heavy on his tongue, but he swallowed them back down.

“…Maybe we don’t need a god for that,” Nagisa spoke up, “but without you, that night sky would hold no meaning. Without you, we would all be little more than criminals on a boat.”

“That’s the definition of piracy, isn’t it?”

“…Not to us,” there was a heavy, bloated pause before Nagisa spoke again, “not to me.”

Natsume finally brought himself to meet Nagisa’s amber-red eyes, intending to refute his argument, but the intensity of his gaze was almost too much for him to bear. Nagisa had taken to kneeling properly beneath him again, and the way he spoke was less like an apology or an argument and more like a…

A prayer .

“We need you,” Nagisa smiled as he spoke, a warm and beautiful thing that really ought to be reserved for a lover; not for a lonely god. “Now more than ever.”

“I… I don’t- I can’t be the god that you want me to be,” Natsume shook his head, willing his eyes not to fill up with tears, “I don’t know how , you shouldn’t-”

“…That’s okay,” Nagisa interrupted, “I don’t know how to pray.” Natsume furrowed his eyebrows, and Nagisa simply shrugged, “No one ever taught me,” He said, as if that explained everything, “I never really had the chance. But…” Natsume looked up at Natsume, watching his face, “Well, if you don’t know how to be a god, and if I don’t know how to pray, then maybe we could teach each other?”

The proposition sounded almost childish coming out of Nagisa’s mouth. Like an awkward suggestion between teenagers rather than an oath of devotion to a young god. Natsume had half a mind to roll his eyes and kick Nagisa off the ship, but before he had the chance to consider any further, Nagisa took Natsume’s hand in his own, lifted it to his mouth, and planted a gentle kiss atop it.

A part of Natsume was almost expecting it to be some sort of divine revelation, fed into his veins like sparkling ichor through Nagisa’s lips, but… no. It was just a kiss. A mortal kiss. Nagisa’s mouth was warm, soft against the skin of his hand, and Natsume could just barely feel his beating heart through it, and-

Natsume didn’t really have the words to describe the feeling. It was like some kind of promise, or unspoken oath. He felt a little bit selfish - Nagisa’s praise for him was misplaced, but Natsume couldn’t seem to care all that much. Was this part of his divinity? He couldn’t help but want more of Nagisa’s attention, more of his worship, more of his-

Oh.

Nagisa pulled away after what felt like an hour, even though it was surely only a few seconds, and the realization hit Natsume like a battering ram.

It wasn’t anything divine.

He couldn’t help but want more of Nagisa’s love , wholly mortal and pure.

As Natsume tried to recover, eyes blown wide and cheeks flushed pink, Nagisa stood up. He shifted in place as some strange range of emotions that Natsume didn’t have the time to decipher flashed across his face. Eventually, he took a deep breath in and out, and smiled, must colder and weaker than before.

“…I really ought to get back to my ship.” Nagisa started to turn away towards the door, “I-”

“Wait!” Natsume cried out as his hand (the one that Nagisa had just kissed) shot out to grab Nagisa by the wrist.

Nagisa turned to look at Natsume, who had his mouth open as if he were about to explain what he wanted, but no sound came out. Nagisa silently observed him for a minute, and Natsume wanted to shy away, worried at what Nagisa might see.

“…Oh,” Nagisa breathed, seemingly connecting the dots. He turned around to face Natsume fully, and the two of them stood face to face for a few moments, both unwilling to make the first move - until Nagisa lifted his hand up to Natsume’s cheek. “Forgive me if I’m misinterpreting this but… may I kiss you?”

Natsume finally closed his mouth properly, swallowing the spit that had gathered there as he did so.

“I mean, you already did.” His words came out as halfway between a mumble and a suggestion, but Nagisa seemed to hear it anyway.

“…I meant,” Nagisa paused for a brief second, gathering his words, “can I kiss you on the mouth?”

Natsume rolled his eyes, and immediately wrapped his arms around Nagisa’s neck, pulling him in for a deep kiss.

Like before, it was warm. Warmer, now that Natsume wasn’t only feeling it through the back of his hand. It was also somewhat dry at first, strange and awkward and bumpy. Natsume had put his hands around Nagisa’s neck, but he could feel Nagisa trying to figure out where to put his hands. It was young, awkward, and full of raw and uncensored feelings - painfully, beautifully human.

They were both breathing heavily by the time that they pulled away. One of Nagisa’s hands had moved to the side of Natsume’s head, with the other resting on his waist. His lips had been stained a vibrant shade of red, and Natsume’s own were presumably in a similar state. 

“Next time,” Natsume rasped between gulps of air, “we need to have a talk .”

“…Next time?”

“Next time.” Natsume loosened his arms from where they were around Nagisa’s neck, and pulled away properly. “Assuming you play your cards right, of course.” He walked away, back around to his desk, and nodded at Nagisa. “You… said that you had to go back to your ship, right?”

“…Ah. Yes. I did say that.” Nagisa had been so confident and quick to leave before, but now he seemed so unsure of himself, nervous. It was cute. “Next time, right? Should I come find you, or?”

Natsume shook his head.

“We’ve got a voyage tomorrow. We only docked here to grab some supplies before we go. If we happen to come across each other in the meantime then maybe , but…” Natsume fidgeted with the compass at his hip. “I’ll find you. Wherever you are.”

“…Right. Okay.” Nagisa swallowed and nodded. “In that case, I suppose I’ll see you… next time.”

Neither of them so much as uttered a sound as Nagisa walked over to the door, pulled it open, and walked back onto the deck.

As soon as he was out of sight, Natsume spotted his familiar on the floor, staring up at him. Natsume picked the cat up, held him in his arms, and buried his face into his fur.