Archive of Our Own ^beta

Hongjoong heard it in a tavern in Jeokdo.

He wasn't supposed to be in the tavern. He was supposed to be overseeing the cargo transfer at the dock, which was Mingi's job, which Mingi was doing perfectly well without him, but three weeks at sea had given Hongjoong the specific restlessness that only solid ground and something strong could fix. He'd left Mingi at the dock with instructions and found the nearest establishment that served something worth drinking.

He was on his second cup, minding his own business — which for Hongjoong meant listening to every conversation within a twenty-foot radius without appearing to — when he heard it.

Two merchants. Table behind him. Deep in a conversation about a ship they'd encountered, a captain they'd dealt with, and a name that had come up in the negotiation.

The pirate king, one of them said, with the reverence people usually reserved for weather and natural disasters. That's what they call him. The pirate king. Controls the whole north channel. Nothing moves through without his blessing.

Hongjoong's cup stopped moving toward his mouth.

And is he? the second merchant said.

Is he what?

The pirate king. Actually.

A pause. Well. He calls himself it. And people believe him. Which, the first merchant said philosophically, is most of the job, isn't it.

What's he look like?

The first merchant made a sound. It was, Hongjoong noted, embarrassingly close to a sigh. Beautiful, he said, with the specific helplessness of a man reporting a fact he found deeply inconvenient. Tall. Silver hair. Carries two swords. Moves like— He stopped. I don't have a word for it. Like something that doesn't quite belong on land.

Hongjoong set his cup down.

Very carefully.

The pirate king, the merchant said again. Park something. Park—

Hongjoong turned in his chair.

Both merchants looked at him.

He smiled.

Not the pleasant kind. The kind that didn't reach his eyes, the kind that sat on his face like a warning — the specific smile of someone who already decided what was going to happen and found the whole situation faintly amusing in the way that preceded something bad.

"Kim Hongjoong," he said. Very quietly. "The actual pirate king." He stood, left money on the table, and walked out.

Behind him, one of the merchants said to the other: that's—

Yes, the other one said.

Is he going to—

Probably, the other one said. I'd leave town if I were Park whoever.

"Someone," Hongjoong said, back on the ship, in his cabin, in front of his charts, with Jongho and Wooyoung and Mingi arranged around him in the specific formation of people who knew something was happening and were deciding how to feel about it, "has been operating in my territory and calling themselves by my title."

"The north channel," Jongho said, already at the charts.

"Three routes," Hongjoong said. "All three. For at least a year, based on what the merchant described. A year, and I'm only hearing about it now."

"To be fair," Wooyoung said, from where he was draped sideways over a chair in the corner, "the north channels are—"

"Mine," Hongjoong said.

"Yours," Wooyoung agreed. "I was going to say far, but yours also, yes."

"Silver hair," Mingi said, thoughtfully. "Two swords. That's a very specific description. Someone would have to be fairly confident to operate like that for a year without—"

"Without me finding out," Hongjoong said. "Yes. Fairly confident or fairly stupid."

"The merchant said beautiful," Wooyoung said.

Everyone looked at him.

"I'm just noting," Wooyoung said, with complete innocence, "the full picture. Those are Hongjoong's words not mine or well the merchant ones. Beautiful, silver hair, two swords, moves like something that doesn't belong on land." He paused. "That's either a very dangerous person or a very interesting one."

"Both," Jongho said. He had not looked up from the charts. "Based on the description, both."

"How long to the north channel junction," Hongjoong said.

"Two days with current wind," Jongho said. "Maybe less."

"Then we move," Hongjoong said.

"Are we starting a war?" Mingi asked. He was leaning in the doorway. He had been there the whole time, apparently. "I'm not opposed. I just like to know in advance so I can make extra food."

"We're having a conversation," Hongjoong said.

"Right," Mingi said. "I'll make extra food."

"The last time you said we were having a conversation," Wooyoung said to Hongjoong, sitting up slightly, "we were in active combat for six weeks and Jongho broke three ribs."

"Two," Jongho said.

"Two ribs," Wooyoung amended. "My point stands."

"My point," Hongjoong said, with the specific patience of someone who had this crew and had made his peace with it, "is that someone is using my name and my territory and I want to look them in the eye when I tell them to fuck off and break his nose, maybe some ribs too." He looked around the room. "Everyone clear?"

"Crystal," Wooyoung said.

"Setting the course," Jongho said.

"Making food," Mingi said, already leaving.

Hongjoong looked at the charts.

He thought about silver hair and two swords and a year of operating in his territory with his title and the specific confidence that required.

He thought: this is going to be interesting.

He had no idea.

They found the ship in a day and a half, which was better than predicted and which Hongjoong attributed to good navigation and Jongho attributed to favorable current and which Wooyoung attributed to the universe having a sense of humor.

The north channel junction. A wide stretch of open water where three routes converged — the kind of position you held when you wanted to see everything and be seen. The ship was anchored there with the calm confidence of something that expected to be found and did not consider being found a problem.

It was a good ship. Hongjoong clocked this immediately, the way he clocked all ships — professional assessment, automatic, before anything else. The lines of it were clean. The rigging was well-kept. The guns along the side were not decorative. Someone had spent money and time on this vessel and it showed.

Flying a flag.

Black. A crown on it.

Hongjoong looked at the crown through his glass for a long moment.

"That's my crown," he said.

"It's a crown," Wooyoung said, next to him with his own glass. "It might not be specifically—"

"Wooyoung. That is my crown. That is the specific crown. The one from my flag. Someone has taken my crown and put it on their flag."

"It could be a similar—"

"The left point is bent," Hongjoong said. "Slightly. From the incident in Wando three years ago when the flag got caught in the— it's my crown. Someone copied my crown down to the bent point." He lowered the glass. His expression was very controlled. "That's actually impressive."

"Is it?" Wooyoung said.

"The audacity of it is impressive," Hongjoong said. "Yes."

Wooyoung looked at the flag. "Should I be worried that you sound almost admiring?"

"We're boarding," Hongjoong said.

"There it is," Wooyoung said.

The boarding was easy. Suspiciously easy.

The ship's crew — and it was a full crew, Hongjoong noted, well-armed and fast to their feet — arranged themselves on deck in a defensive formation that was practiced and professional and did not attack.

They waited.

Which meant they'd been told to wait.

Which meant whoever was in charge had seen them coming, had made a decision about how to handle it, and was implementing that decision with confidence.

Hongjoong stood on the deck of a ship that wasn't his and looked at the crew arranged before him and clocked them in order: a very tall one, broad, the kind of physical presence that made tactical calculations very simple. A dark-haired one with a face like something carved and eyes that were already looking at Wooyoung with an expression Hongjoong didn't have time to analyze. A sharp-featured one with a hand resting on a blade hilt in the specific way of someone who used it regularly.

Three of them, and a full crew behind.

They were waiting for someone.

The door to the captain's quarters opened.

The first thought Hongjoong had, before any other thought, was:

Oh. Fuck. He's— oh.

Not because of the height, though the height was notable. Not because of the silver hair, though the silver hair was — the wind caught it as he stepped through the door, moved it across his face, and the afternoon light on it did something that made it look less like hair and more like something that happened in the sky before storms. Not because of the two swords, though the two swords were there, handles visible at both hips, and the way he wore them was not decorative.

It was all of it. The whole picture of him, moving across the deck toward the center of it with the specific quality of someone who had never in their life been uncertain about where they were going. Dark eyes doing a sweep of the situation — fast, thorough, professional. A long dark coat that moved with him. The set of his jaw. The way the deck seemed like it was his even though it was his because it was his ship and that was the point but even so—

He moves like something that doesn't belong on land, the merchant had said.

The merchant, Hongjoong thought, had undersold it significantly.

I want to— his brain started, and he told it firmly: later. Not now. Now we have a situation.

The silver-haired captain stopped in the center of the deck and looked at Hongjoong with the specific dark-eyed look of someone conducting a thorough assessment and not yet publishing the results.

Hongjoong looked back.

He let the look sit for a moment.

Then he did something involuntary: he scoffed. It arrived before he could stop it, half amusement and half genuine disbelief at the whole situation — this person, this ship, the crown flag, the fact that this was what had been operating in his territory for a year with his name — and the scoff became a grin because it was actually funny, it was genuinely, specifically funny—

"You look more like a pirate queen," he said.

The silence was the kind that had weight.

The kind where a thing has been said and the air is waiting to find out what it costs.

The silver-haired captain looked at him.

His expression did several things in fast succession. The first was surprise, which lasted approximately three quarters of a second — then it was gone, replaced by something that settled in like weather, slow and absolute and very, very specific. The expression of a man who had been called something and was deciding, with great calm, what to do about it.

"Say that again," he said.

His voice was low. Controlled. The voice of someone with a notoriously short fuse who had learned to speak levelly while the fuse was actively burning.

Hongjoong considered saying it again. This took approximately zero point five seconds.

"Pirate queen," he said. Helpfully. "You look like one. The hair, the—" he gestured vaguely at all of him— "the general presentation. Very regal." He tilted his head. "Princess, actually. Pirate princess might be more accurate. More specific."

The captain's left eye twitched.

It was a small movement. Barely visible.

It was, Hongjoong would later reflect, the most beautiful thing he had seen in recent memory.

"I," said the captain, "am going to kill you."

His hand moved.

He was fast.

This was the first useful piece of information Hongjoong received about Park Seonghwa — because that was the name, he'd find that out shortly, but in this moment it was just the silver-haired captain and the blade coming out of its sheath with a speed that suggested the hand and the weapon had an established relationship of long standing.

Hongjoong stepped sideways.

The blade passed close enough that he felt the displaced air against his cheek.

He grinned.

The captain reset. No recovery time — the specific reset of actual training, the next movement already beginning before the first one had finished, and the second sword was out now too, one in each hand, and Hongjoong thought: two swords, both simultaneously, interesting— and then he was moving because the captain was moving and the combination of both blades at once required more attention than one.

He did not draw his weapon.

The captain's eyes tracked this.

His jaw set.

He attacked again — committed, fast, a combination that had clearly worked before, the kind of combination built from experience — and Hongjoong read it and moved through it, stepped inside one swing and out of the other, turned with the momentum of it and ended up behind him for a half second before stepping back.

"Draw your weapon," the captain said.

"Why," Hongjoong said.

"Because I'm—" A swing. Hongjoong ducked. "—trying to fight you and you're just—" Another swing. Hongjoong stepped sideways. "—standing there—"

"I'm moving, to be fair," Hongjoong argued. "I'm moving quite a lot."

"Draw your weapon," the captain said again, with a quality that suggested the repetition was not a request.

"I'd rather not," Hongjoong smirked.

"Why—"

"Because," Hongjoong said, stepping around a thrust with the ease of someone who found this genuinely enjoyable, "you're doing so well on your own. It would be rude to interrupt."

The captain made a sound.

It was not a word. It was the sound of a man who had encountered something so specifically infuriating that language had temporarily failed him.

He attacked with more commitment.

The next several exchanges were — Hongjoong would describe them later as invigorating. Seonghwa was technically exceptional, precise in a way that came from years of genuine practice, and the two-sword combination was legitimately difficult because it required processing two attack lines simultaneously and the captain used them cleverly, not just two separate weapons but a system, the left setting up the right and the right creating openings for the left. He was also fast — faster than the first exchange had suggested, building speed as he went, as if he'd started at eighty percent and was now at ninety-five and climbing.

And he was furious in a way that added energy rather than taking away accuracy, which was unusual and which Hongjoong noted as information.

The tip of the right sword caught the edge of Hongjoong's coat. A clean slice, neat as a tailor's cut.

Hongjoong looked down at it.

Looked up.

"Nice," he said.

"Draw," the captain said, through his teeth, "your weapon."

"You want me to pull my weapon out," Hongjoong said.

"Your sword—"

"I just want to be clear about what we're asking for," Hongjoong said. "You want me to pull out my—"

"Sword," the captain said, with great emphasis.

"—sword," Hongjoong said. "Got it. No." He grinned. "Although if you want me to pull out my cock, I could probably arrange—"

The next swing was significantly faster than the ones before it.

Hongjoong moved significantly faster in response.

"Alright," he said, stepping back and putting a bit more distance between them, "you could also—" he had to move again because the captain had not stopped, was not going to stop, was apparently going to keep going until one of them was dead or exhausted and based on available evidence it was not going to be the captain— "—become my wife. Think about it. You wouldn't have to steal my title. You'd be the official pirate queen, which is—" he ducked a swing— "which is honestly a better title. More specific. More evocative. You could get it put on a flag—"

"I will," the captain said, still advancing, still fast, still with both swords, "end you."

"Kim Hongjoong," Hongjoong said, because he realized abruptly they hadn't introduced themselves and this felt like an oversight. "The actual pirate king. And you are—?"

A pause in the assault — just a fraction, the specific pause of someone who has decided to answer a question while also trying to kill you.

"Park Seonghwa," the captain said.

Like a threat.

Like the name itself was a warning.

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said. He let it sit in his mouth for a second. It was a good name. An extremely good name that suited the silver hair and the two swords and the dark eyes and the fury and all the rest of it in a way that Hongjoong found he had opinions about and was not going to share.

"Princess," he said instead.

The next swing came for his head.

He moved.

Behind him, from the vicinity of his own crew, Wooyoung said to someone: "This is going very well."

"Define well," said a voice that was definitely not his crew.

"We're all still alive," Wooyoung said. "That's my benchmark."

It was the lookout that stopped it.

Seonghwa's crew, specifically — someone in the crow's nest calling down with the specific urgency of important information. Both of them stopped. Seonghwa looked up first, then Hongjoong turned.

Coming around the eastern headland: a ship. Large, moving with purpose, the specific speed of something that had a destination and wasn't interested in subtlety. Flag visible. Reavers — eastern fleet, which was the worse kind, which anyone who operated in these waters knew meant serious trouble.

Not a social call.

Hongjoong looked at the ship. Ran the numbers — fast, automatic, the way he always did. Tonnage, guns, crew, angle of approach. He looked at Seonghwa's ship and ran the same numbers for that.

"We can help," he said.

Seonghwa turned.

He looked at Hongjoong with the expression that had been building toward violence approximately thirty seconds ago and had not fully dissipated.

"Get off my ship," he said.

"There's—"

"Get off my ship, Kim Hongjoong."

"—roughly sixty of them, based on the size of that hull," Hongjoong said, "and you've got what, forty crew? Twelve guns?"

"Forty-two," Seonghwa said. "Fourteen guns. Get off my ship."

"That's manageable but not comfortable," Hongjoong said. "We flank left, you take center, they have to split—"

"I don't need your help," Seonghwa glared.

"I know you don't need it," Hongjoong said. "I'm offering it."

"I don't want it," Seonghwa said.

"That's a different thing—"

"Kim Hongjoong," Seonghwa said, with a quality that had dropped below fury into something colder and more absolute. "Get off my ship, go back to yours, and stay there. If you fire a single shot without my instruction I will sink you myself after."

A pause.

"After," Hongjoong said.

"After I deal with the reavers," Seonghwa said. "Yes."

"You're going to deal with the reavers and then sink me," Hongjoong said, amused.

"Correctly summarized," Seonghwa said. He turned back to his crew and started calling orders.

Hongjoong looked at the incoming ship. Looked at Seonghwa's back. Looked at the specific set of his shoulders that said this conversation was over and had been over since it started.

"You're unbelievable," Hongjoong said, smiling.

"Go away," Seonghwa said, without turning around.

"Fine," Hongjoong said. "Die, then. See how that works out for you."

"I won't die," Seonghwa said, still not turning, issuing another instruction to Yunho simultaneously, apparently capable of two conversations at once.

"I'm rooting for you," Hongjoong said.

"I don't want you to root for me," Seonghwa said.

"Rooting for you anyway," Hongjoong said. "From my ship. Which I'm going back to right now. Best of luck, princess."

Seonghwa turned. Just to look at him. The dark eyes and the fury and the silver hair and both hands going to his swords.

"Go," he said.

Hongjoong went.

He went back to his ship and stood at the rail and watched.

"We're not helping?" Wooyoung said, appearing beside him.

"He told me to go away," Hongjoong shrugged.

"And you just—"

"Went away," Hongjoong said. "Yes."

Wooyoung looked at him. "You never just go away."

"I'm going away this time," Hongjoong said. "He wants to handle it himself. So. We watch."

He watched.

The reaver ship came in hard and fast and targeted Seonghwa's ship because it was the larger prize, which was the predictable tactical choice. Seonghwa's guns opened up at the right moment — not too early, not late, the exact window — and the first volley was clean. Good. Genuinely good.

"See?" Hongjoong said to Wooyoung. "He's fine."

"He looks fine," Wooyoung agreed.

"He doesn't need us," Hongjoong said.

"He doesn't," Wooyoung said.

The reaver ship took two hits and kept coming. It grappled.

"He's still fine," Hongjoong said.

"Still fine," Wooyoung said.

The deck fighting started. Seonghwa's crew held the initial push — Hongjoong watched them work and noted, professionally, that they were good. Coordinated. Trained. Seonghwa moved through the fighting like a current, two swords and the specific economy of someone who didn't waste anything.

Hongjoong had his arms crossed on the rail.

He was watching.

"He's good," Mingi said, appearing on his other side.

"He's very good," Hongjoong said.

"We're not helping," Mingi said. Not a question.

"He told me to stay out of it," Hongjoong said.

"Right," Mingi said.

A pause.

"He's still good," Hongjoong said.

"Mhm," Mingi confirmed.

The reavers pushed harder. A second wave from the ship — they'd had more crew below deck, which was the move you made when you wanted the initial defenders worn down first. Seonghwa's crew had not expected the second wave at full strength, or hadn't expected it this fast. The deck fighting got messier. Two of Seonghwa's crew went down — not dead, Hongjoong clocked this, but down and out of the fight. The pressure on the deck increased.

Seonghwa was still moving. Still handling it. But—

Hongjoong's jaw tightened.

"He's still—" Wooyoung started.

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"He said not to—"

"I know what he said," Hongjoong said.

He watched three of the reaver crew corner Seonghwa against the far rail and felt something happen in his chest that was not anxiety, he did not do anxiety, but was functionally similar to anxiety in the specific way that involved someone he— someone on a ship that was— someone whose name he'd been thinking about since a tavern in Jeokdo getting backed against a rail three to one.

"Jongho," he said.

"Already ready," Jongho said, from directly behind him, which meant he'd been standing there the whole time.

"We're going in," Hongjoong said.

"Thank god," Wooyoung said. "I was starting to get bored."

"Battle stations," Hongjoong said. "Left flank. We don't ask permission."

The Eunjang moved.

The fight was not clean. They rarely were.

Hongjoong's guns hit the reaver ship's port side twice before they could respond to the new threat — the split attention, the thing he'd offered and Seonghwa had refused, working exactly as he'd said it would. The second hit opened something structural. The third, from Seonghwa's remaining guns, took out their main mast.

After that it was deck fighting.

Hongjoong went across.

He went across because close fighting was where he was actually useful and because Jongho had the Eunjang and because — he was going to be honest with himself — no one else was going to be the one to fight Seonghwa. That was his. Whatever that meant, whatever it was going to become, that was his, and the idea of a reaver blade getting anywhere near that silver hair made his vision go slightly narrow.

He was not going to examine that thought further right now.

He dealt with the reaver crew that needed dealing with — efficiently, the way he'd been doing this for years, moving through the chaos of the deck fighting with the economy of someone who'd made this an expertise. He was looking for the reaver captain, which was always the fastest way to end things.

He didn't need to find him.

Oh.

He found what was left of him first.

Seonghwa had gotten there before him.

Hongjoong came around the edge of the chaos and stopped.

The reaver captain was on the deck — recently, the specific recent of still-falling — and Seonghwa was standing over him with one sword moving through the end of the stroke and the other already coming up into guard, scanning, looking for the next threat.

He was—

Bloodied. Not mostly his — someone else's, across the left side of his face and his coat and his hands. His silver hair had come all the way loose and was moving in the wind off the water. His expression was the cold efficient thing, not the fury, something below fury — the specific expression of someone who had dealt with this and was now dealing with the next thing, completely present in the capability of themselves, without performance, without anything except the exact fact of what they were.

He found the next threat. Moved toward it.

Like something out of a myth, Hongjoong thought, which was not a new thought, he'd been having versions of it since the moment Seonghwa had walked out of that cabin door, but it landed differently now, with the blood on him and the loose hair and both swords in motion. Like something carved from the same material as storms. Like something the sea made on a day it was trying to prove it could.

And underneath that, more explicitly: he's mine to fight. Not theirs. Mine.

He went and dealt with the remaining reavers and did not examine the possessiveness further.

He was going to examine it later.

Probably.

He said something to the captain.

Hongjoong couldn't hear it over the noise of the fight around them.

The captain said something back.

Whatever it was, it was wrong.

Seonghwa's expression, which had been the cold efficient kind, did something. Not fury — colder than fury, more specific, the expression of someone who has been given an answer they already knew they were going to get and has already decided what comes after it.

He moved. Slicing his throat. 

It was fast and it was final and the captain went down and Seonghwa straightened and one sword came up immediately into guard, scanning, looking for the next thing.

He was—

Impressive.

And then the useful part of his brain, the part that had kept him alive for thirty years, added: also I want to pin him to this deck and fuck him until he can’t walk anymore and I need to think about something else immediately.

He went to help with the remaining fighters and thought about something else.

He was partially successful.

The reaver ship sank.

Not all at once — the slow list of it, the particular way it went, crew in the water and longboats pulling away with what could be saved. Hongjoong stood on the deck and watched it go down and felt, privately, the specific satisfaction of a fight that had ended correctly.

Then he turned and looked at Seonghwa's ship.

The damage was — bad. Not fatal, structurally, he could see that from here. But bad. The hull had taken a hit below the waterline that was being managed but couldn't be ignored. Two guns out of commission. A hole in the upper deck that was currently open to the sky and the sea and whatever else wanted in.

Seonghwa was at the rail of his own ship.

Looking at it.

He was very still. The cold efficient expression had dropped off him entirely and what was underneath it was — something Hongjoong filed away and was not going to look at directly because it felt like something that wasn't meant to be seen by people you'd been trying to kill forty minutes ago.

He crossed to Seonghwa's ship.

Seonghwa heard him coming. Didn't turn.

"Nice work," Hongjoong said. "The second-wave push was rough but you held it."

"I know what I did," Seonghwa said.

"Wouldn't have happened," Hongjoong said, gesturing at the hole in the upper deck, "if you'd let me help from the start."

Seonghwa turned.

The expression on his face went through several things very fast and landed on the one that meant imminent violence. His hand came up — not for a sword, a fist, the specific movement of someone who had decided they were going to punch someone and had identified the target.

Hongjoong stepped back.

The punch missed by about four inches. Seonghwa's fist went through the air where his face had been.

Hongjoong giggled.

It was not a dignified sound. It arrived without warning and was genuinely delighted and he put his hand over his mouth and that did not help.

Seonghwa stared at him.

"Did you just—" he started.

"Sorry," Hongjoong said, not sorry. "Sorry. The—" He gestured at the air where he'd been standing. "The swing, it was—"

"I will do it again," Seonghwa said. "I will do it correctly this time."

"Okay," Hongjoong said, still with the hand over his mouth, still with the giggle in his voice. "Okay. You're right. The damage is—"

"I know what the damage is. I have two perfectly working eyes, you asshole," Seonghwa said, turning back to the rail, jaw tight, shoulders rigid with the specific rigidity of someone not going to acknowledge that they just tried to punch someone and missed.

Hongjoong looked at the damage.

He looked at Seonghwa's back.

The giggle was gone.

Something else was there instead — something quieter, something that had been present since the corridor on the Eunjang and had been getting louder in a way he was choosing not to address directly.

"Seonghwa," he said.

"I can see it," Seonghwa said.

"The hull—"

"I know what the hull is doing," Seonghwa said. Flat. The voice of someone who did not need information, who had already processed all available information, who was currently having feelings about that information and was not going to discuss the feelings.

Hongjoong looked at the damage.

"You can't make port on your own," he said. "Not safely."

Silence.

"I know," Seonghwa said. Very quiet.

"So," Hongjoong said. He turned to look at him — at the silver hair loose and wild, the blood drying on his face, the set of his jaw. "Two options."

Seonghwa looked at him.

"One," Hongjoong said, "I throw you overboard."

"You couldn't," Seonghwa said.

"I'm significantly stronger than I look," Hongjoong said.

"You're not and you are short," Seonghwa said like it's a well known fact.

"Rude," Hongjoong rolled his eyes. "Two. You and your crew come aboard my ship. As my guests." He held the gaze. "Until we reach port. Your ship gets patched enough to tow. You sit prettily and don't try to kill anyone."

"I don't sit prettily," Seonghwa said.

"You could learn," Hongjoong said. "I could teach you. We have time."

Seonghwa's expression did the thing.

He looked at the water.

He looked at it with the focused, specific attention of a man who was conducting an independent assessment of whether the water was a viable alternative option.

"Seonghwa," Yunho said, from somewhere behind him, calmly.

"I'm thinking," Seonghwa said.

"I know," Yunho said, with the patience of someone who had watched this thought process before and knew where it went.

"I would rather," Seonghwa said, turning back to Hongjoong, with great precision and conviction, "jump into that ocean."

He looked at the ocean.

"I would rather swim to port," he said. "Which I could do."

"It's fourteen nautical miles," Hongjoong said.

"I'm an excellent swimmer," Seonghwa said.

"It's fourteen—"

"I've done longer," Seonghwa said, and this was said with such complete and unargued certainty that Hongjoong actually paused, because it might have been true, and that was insane, and somehow also not surprising.

He stepped onto the rail.

He actually, physically, stepped up onto the rail of his own damaged ship and looked at the ocean with the expression of a man making a decision.

"Don't," Yunho said.

"I'm not going to let him—" Seonghwa started.

"Seonghwa," Yunho said.

"—call me a princess and board my ship and act like—"

"The water is cold," Yunho said.

"I don't care about—"

Hongjoong moved.

He covered the distance fast and his arm went around Seonghwa's waist — around the slim warm leather-coated fact of it — and pulled, and Seonghwa came off the rail and they staggered backward and Hongjoong caught his balance and in the chaos of all this Seonghwa went over his shoulder.

He stopped.

He was standing on the deck of a ship holding Park Seonghwa over his shoulder.

Seonghwa had gone completely still.

It was, Hongjoong noted, not the stillness of acceptance.

It was the stillness of someone rapidly calculating all available options.

Then: a pressure at his left side. Sharp. Precise. The point of a blade — small, a knife, appeared from somewhere he hadn't seen, held against his ribs with a steadiness that said this hand knew exactly what it was doing.

"Put me down," Seonghwa said. Very quietly.

"If I put you down," Hongjoong said, "you're going to get back on the rail."

"I'm going to stab you," Seonghwa said.

"That too," Hongjoong acknowledged.

The knife pressed slightly harder.

Hongjoong looked around the deck at the assembled situation.

His crew was watching with varying degrees of alarm and interest. Jongho had the expression of a man whose entire body was a suppressed sigh. Mingi was watching with eyes that had gone very wide. Wooyoung had moved — somehow, without anyone noticing — significantly closer to the dark-haired member of Seonghwa's crew, and they appeared to be in the middle of a conversation.

Seonghwa's crew: the tall one — Yunho, Hongjoong had gathered — was watching with the patient expression of someone who had seen this before, specifically, multiple times, and had made his peace with it. The dark-haired one was talking to Wooyoung. The sharp-featured one was watching Seonghwa with the fond resignation of someone whose love language was long-suffering.

"Is this normal?" Mingi said, to the sharp-featured one.

The sharp-featured one looked at Seonghwa, suspended over Hongjoong's shoulder with a knife in his hand.

"He's calm right now," he said.

Mingi looked at the knife.

"Right," he said.

"He's a maniac," the dark-haired one said to Wooyoung, cheerfully.

"He seems great," Wooyoung said, with complete sincerity.

Hongjoong made a decision. He crouched — fast, before the knife could adjust for the change in angle — and put Seonghwa down.

Not gently.

Seonghwa hit the deck on his back and rolled immediately, already trying to get up, but Hongjoong was faster and he crouched over him, one hand on the deck on either side, looking down from above.

Seonghwa looked up.

His silver hair was spread across the deck around him and there was still blood drying on his face and his eyes were— dark and furious and absolutely, genuinely beautiful, and Hongjoong's brain produced a thought that he was not going to act on, and he grinned, because what else was there to do.

Seonghwa stared up at him.

Then he spat.

It landed on Hongjoong's cheek.

The grin disappeared.

There was silence.

The specific silence of a deck full of people who had all just watched the same thing happen and were waiting to find out what it meant.

Hongjoong reached up. Wiped his face. Very slowly. Looked at his hand. Looked back down at Seonghwa.

His expression had done something.

Not the grin anymore. Not angry exactly. Something that was — colder, and more deliberate, and considerably more dangerous than either of those things.

His hand moved to Seonghwa's throat.

Not squeezing. Present. The statement of capability that said: I could. He pressed him down and leaned over him and the expression on his face was the one he used when he wanted people to understand the full situation.

"You," he said, very quietly, "are into spit, gorgeous?"

Seonghwa's jaw tightened.

"Open your mouth," Hongjoong said.

"I will not-"

Hongjoong's hand moved from his throat to his jaw — thumb pressing at the hinge of it, the specific pressure that made the mouth open whether it wanted to or not - and Seonghwa's eyes went wide with fury and he tried to turn his head and Hongjoong held it and then-

Hongjoong spit.

Into his mouth.

Then he sat back and grinned.

The deck was silent.

Seonghwa stared at him.

His expression was doing several things simultaneously and Hongjoong watched them happen with great interest. There was fury — obvious, present, the top layer. Under it something that was incredulous, the specific incredulity of someone who had not expected this particular response and was recalibrating. And under that, very briefly, something else — something that arrived and was gone in the time it took to blink, something that Hongjoong logged carefully and set aside for later consideration.

"I don't know," said Jongho, loudly, from somewhere on the deck, to no one in particular, "if this is a fight or foreplay, but if they start fucking on this deck I'm going to stab my own eyes out."

"Jongho," Hongjoong warned.

"I'm going below," Jongho said. "I'm going to go below and I'm going to sit quietly and think about something peaceful."

"Nothing peaceful has happened on this ship in four years," Wooyoung said.

"I'm going to think about something peaceful," Jongho repeated, "that has never happened to me personally but that I believe exists in theory." He looked at Seonghwa. He looked at Hongjoong. He left.

Seonghwa, who had heard all of this, sat up.

He spat on the deck.

Demonstratively. Aggressively. With the energy of someone who needed to make a statement and had chosen this medium.

Then his hands went to his swords.

Both of them.

The specific double motion of someone who had decided the situation called for maximum available weaponry, both blades clearing their sheaths in one clean pull and held at his sides, and he stood up and he was — the blood and the loose silver hair and both swords and the fury in the dark eyes and the fact that he was standing on someone else's ship (it was Seonghwa’s but semantics) having been held over that someone's shoulder and having received a mouthful of someone else's spit and was responding to all of this by drawing both weapons and making it very clear he intended to use them—

He was extraordinary.

He was genuinely extraordinary and Hongjoong's brain was doing something that was categorically not appropriate for the current moment and he told it to wait.

"If you want to cuddle with the sharks tonight," Hongjoong said, from where he was still crouched on the deck, looking up at him, "be my guest, princess. Jump off my ship. I won't save you again."

"This," Seonghwa said, with both swords still out, "is not your ship."

"My ship is right there," Hongjoong said, gesturing at the Eunjang. "This is your ship. Which, as we've established—"

"I know the situation," Seonghwa said.

"Then you know the options," Hongjoong said.

"I know," Seonghwa said, "that I would rather—"

"Jump," Yunho said, from behind him. "Yes. We know."

Seonghwa turned to look at him.

Yunho looked back with the expression of a very tall man who had long since run out of surprise.

"Don't," Yunho said, exhausted.

"I wasn't—" Seonghwa started.

"You were," Yunho said.

"You don't know what I was—"

"Seonghwa," Yunho said.

A standoff.

Then Seonghwa turned back to Hongjoong. He looked at him with the dark-eyed expression that had the fury in it and the second thing under the fury and the two swords still out and the blood on his face.

He flipped him off.

Both hands. Sustained. Maintained eye contact the entire time.

Then he sheathed both swords, walked to the rail, and jumped.

The splash was considerable.

Everyone looked at where he had been.

Then at the water.

Then at Hongjoong.

Hongjoong stood up. He looked at the water where Seonghwa had gone in. He watched the silver head surface, watched the silver hair get shaken back with the specific irritation of someone who had done something and was committed to it, watched strong clean strokes take him away from both ships.

He watched him swim.

He watched him for a while.

I want, his brain said, and he let it say it because there was no one in his head to hear it: I want to take him apart. I want to find out what he looks like when there's nothing to fight about. I want to make him make a sound that isn't fury. I want to pin him down and kiss— he just jumped off a ship rather than agree with me. He would rather swim fourteen nautical miles than sit on my ship. He is actually insane. He is genuinely, specifically insane and he's the most beautiful thing I've seen in three years and I want to—

"He's going the wrong direction," Mingi said. He was watching the swimming figure with genuine concern.

"He knows," Yunho said.

"There's nothing in that direction," Mingi said.

"He knows," Yunho said again.

Seonghwa reached a large piece of floating debris — part of his own ship's hull that the reavers had opened up and the sea had given back — and hauled himself onto it with an economy of effort that was completely, unnecessarily graceful and had no business being either of those things given the circumstances.

He settled on the debris.

Looked back at the ship.

Across the water, his eyes found Hongjoong's.

Hongjoong cupped his hands around his mouth.

"We're eating in an hour, princess!" he called. "Be back by then!"

A pause.

"YOU CAN FUCK YOURSELF!" came back across the water, clearly and with great projection, because of course Park Seonghwa had excellent projection. "AND I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON YOUR FOOD WHILE YOU'RE AT IT!"

Hongjoong laughed.

The laugh arrived without warning — real, from somewhere genuine, the specific laugh that came when something delighted him past his ability to manage it. He put his hand over his mouth. He gave up. He laughed.

"Is this normal?" Mingi asked Yunho.

"He's relaxed," Yunho said.

Mingi looked at the figure on the debris. "He's sitting on a piece of his own sinking ship in open water."

"He's done worse," Yunho said.

"What's worse than—"

"You probably don't want to know," Yeosang said, appearing beside them. "It's more peaceful not to know."

"He once," San said, materializing on Mingi's other side, and he said it with the energy of someone who had been waiting for an opportunity to share this, "killed an entire crew."

A silence.

"Killed—" Mingi started.

"An entire crew," San said. "By himself."

"Why," Mingi said.

San's expression was the specific expression of someone delivering information they found completely reasonable. "They called him pretty," he said. "And then one of them said—" He paused. "One of them made a comment. About what he probably was. In bed. A bottom. I mean they deserved it, they were bad people, but that was his last straw."

Another silence.

"He killed all of them," Mingi said.

"Every single one," San confirmed. "He let the ship go. He's not a monster. But the crew—" He made a gesture. "Gone."

"That's—" Mingi looked at the figure on the debris. "That's a significant response to a comment."

"He has a thing about it," San said pleasantly. "You probably shouldn't bring it up."

"I wasn't planning to," Mingi said.

"I'm just noting," San said, "as useful information. For the future."

"He's on our ship," Mingi said.

"He's going to be on your ship for several days," San agreed. "So. Useful information."

"Right," Mingi said. He looked at the figure on the debris for a moment. "What else."

San considered. "He once climbed to the top of an enemy captain's mast in a storm."

"Why," Jongho said, appearing from nowhere, apparently also listening.

"Because the captain had said something rude to him," San said. "He climbed to the top, cut the sail from up there, climbed back down. In a significant storm."

"Why couldn't he cut the sail from—"

"The point," San said, "was not the sail."

"The point was the mast," Wooyoung nodded, understanding the meaning of Seonghwas actions, from where he had migrated very close to San over the course of this conversation.

"The point was the mast," San confirmed, looking at Wooyoung with the expression of someone who finds a person immediately comprehensible and has decided what to do about it.

Silence.

"I genuinely like him," Wooyoung said.

"He tried to kill our captain," Jongho frowned.

"Multiple times," Wooyoung agreed. "I know. I still like him."

Hongjoong, watching the figure on the debris, thought: if this is him relaxed, I want to see him go crazy.

"He's—" he started, and stopped.

"He's what?" Wooyoung said.

Hongjoong looked at the silver hair catching the afternoon light from a hundred meters away, the long lines of him sitting on a piece of his own ship in the middle of the ocean with the specific composure of someone who had chosen this.

"Nothing," Hongjoong said. "We're waiting for him. No one moves the ship."

"For how long?" Jongho said.

"Until he decides to come back," Hongjoong said. "However long that takes."

"And if it takes—"

"However long," Hongjoong said.

He looked at the horizon.

He thought: Park Seonghwa. Two swords. Jumped off the ship.

He thought: I need him on this ship so I can argue with him for several more days and I'm not going to examine why.

He didn't examine why.

They didn't move.

The ship sat and the crew managed the situation of two vessels and the towing prep for Seonghwa's damaged hull and Mingi made food because Mingi made food in all situations, it was how he processed things, and the figure on the debris sat on his piece of ship and glared at them from a hundred meters out and did not come back.

An hour passed.

The food was ready.

The figure on the debris was still there.

Hongjoong looked at it from the deck.

"He's still out there," Mingi said, appearing beside him with a bowl of food that Hongjoong had not asked for and ate anyway because Mingi had a way of making food appear that made the question of whether you'd asked for it feel irrelevant.

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"He hasn't moved," Mingi said.

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"What if he—"

"He's fine," Hongjoong said. He watched the figure. It was definitely still there, definitely still sitting upright, definitely still in possession of what appeared to be the specific posture of someone making a point. "He's making a point."

"What point," Mingi said.

"He hasn't decided yet," Hongjoong said. "He's sitting out there deciding which point he's making."

Mingi considered this. "Is that how that works?"

"With him, yes," Hongjoong said, with the confidence of someone who had known Park Seonghwa for approximately four hours and had somehow already clocked exactly how he operated.

Another thirty minutes passed.

The figure was still there.

"Captain," Jongho said, appearing, as Jongho always appeared, at his left shoulder.

"We're waiting," Hongjoong said.

"I know we're waiting," Jongho said. "I'm not arguing about waiting. I'm noting that if he stays out there significantly longer—"

"He'll come back," Hongjoong said.

"And if he doesn't?"

"Then I'll go get him," Hongjoong said.

A pause.

"Right," Jongho said.

Another ten minutes.

The figure was— not on the debris anymore.

Hongjoong went to the rail. Looked at the debris. Looked at the water. The debris was there, bobbing, unoccupied.

He looked at the water.

He looked at the ship.

He had the feeling he sometimes had in situations — something at the back of the neck, a specific awareness that the geometry of a thing had changed without announcing it.

"Where is he," he said.

"He was there twenty minutes ago," Yeosang said, from behind him.

"He's a very strong swimmer," Yunho said. "He'll have—"

"Where did he go," Hongjoong said.

He turned from the rail.

He looked at the ship. The deck, the rigging, the hatch to below deck. He thought about the geometry of it. He thought about a man who had swum around an enemy ship in a storm to cut a sail from the mast, just to make a point.

He went below.

The corridor was narrow and dimly lit and Hongjoong moved through it quietly because moving quietly was a habit and also because something told him to.

He turned the corner toward his cabin.

The knife arrived at his throat from behind.

It arrived with a precision that was — he went still, let it sit there, felt the press of a forearm against his back, a body against his, warm and smelling of salt water and the specific sharp-clean smell of sea air. The knife was held by a very steady hand. Not shaking at all. Completely certain.

"What," said Seonghwa's voice, very close to his ear, low and with a quality of satisfaction in it, "if I took you hostage on your own ship?"

Hongjoong thought about this.

He thought about the geometry of the corridor and the knife and the person pressing it and the specific quality of the voice.

"My crew wouldn't let you, princess" he said.

"Your crew," Seonghwa said, "is eating with my crew food and Wooyoung is making eyes at San and no one has come below in fifteen minutes."

This was, Hongjoong admitted internally, probably accurate.

"They'd notice eventually," he said.

"By which time," Seonghwa said, and the knife pressed slightly, "the situation would be established."

"The situation," Hongjoong said.

"You. Hostage. On your own ship." A pause, and there was something in it — the specific quality of someone who is enjoying this, who had swum around a ship in the cold ocean and waited in a corridor for twenty minutes for exactly this moment and found the whole investment worth it. "How does that feel?"

"Honestly?" Hongjoong said.

"Yes."

"Impressive," Hongjoong said. "The swimming, the waiting, the— you were patient. That's not what I expected."

A silence.

"You thought I was just going to come back when you called me for dinner," Seonghwa said.

"I thought you'd come back," Hongjoong said. "Not like this."

"And yet," Seonghwa said.

"And yet," Hongjoong agreed. He thought about his next move. He thought about the knife and the corridor and the warm press of the person behind him and thought: I could get out of this. I know how to get out of this. I could turn left, get the knife hand, step out—

"You smell like salt water," he said instead.

A pause.

"What," Seonghwa said.

"You smell like salt water," Hongjoong said. "From swimming. Did you know—" He shifted his weight slightly, feeling the response of the person behind him, the adjustment to maintain control. "—you can smell Mingi's food from here? He does this thing with fish, I don't know what he puts in it, some specific—"

"I have a knife at your throat," Seonghwa said.

"I know," Hongjoong said. "Does it smell good to you? The food? You've been in the water for—"

"Kim Hongjoong," Seonghwa said, with a specific quality that suggested his name was functioning as a warning.

"Park Seonghwa," Hongjoong said, with a quality that said he'd heard the warning and found it interesting.

He was very aware of several things at once. The knife. The warmth of the body behind him. The specific proximity of Seonghwa's mouth to his ear — close enough that when he spoke, Hongjoong felt the warmth of it. The press of the forearm. The press of other things, because they were in a narrow corridor and Seonghwa had been in cold water and had been crouched in a dark corridor for twenty minutes waiting and was now pressed against Hongjoong's back and he felt his dick agains this ass—

"Is that a knife in your pocket," Hongjoong said, "or are you—"

"Don't," Seonghwa said.

"I was going to ask if you had a second knife," Hongjoong grinned. "You had two swords earlier, I thought maybe—"

"I don't have a second knife," Seonghwa said.

"Then," Hongjoong said, "something is pressing against my—"

"Shut up," Seonghwa snapped.

"I'm just noting—"

"Shut up," Seonghwa said, and his voice had done something, gone slightly rougher at the edge, and the knife pressed harder and Hongjoong thought: interesting.

He moved.

Fast — because he always moved fast, because it had kept him alive, left turn, knife hand grabbed at the wrist, step out and turn, and they ended up face to face in the narrow corridor. He had Seonghwa's knife wrist in one hand and Seonghwa's back was against the wall and they were very close, and Seonghwa's free hand moved immediately — going for the second sword, he'd resheathed them at some point in the swimming and now going for one and Hongjoong caught that wrist too and now he had both and they were very, very close in a narrow corridor and Seonghwa was looking at him with the fury and the dark eyes and something underneath both—

Hongjoong looked at him.

He looked at the fury and the flushed face and the silver hair still damp from the ocean and the dark eyes and thought very explicitly several things he was not going to say out loud.

He let go of one wrist.

His hand moved between them.

Found Seonghwa's crotch.

Squeezed. Not hard — present. Deliberate. The specific message of: I know.

He was hard.

Seonghwa made a sound.

It came out of him before anything could stop it — high and soft and involuntary, the sound of something surprised out of a body that had not been given any say in the matter, right into the small space between them, right at the level of Hongjoong's ear, and it went through him like current.

He went very still.

Seonghwa went very still.

The sound was still in the air between them.

Seonghwa's expression was doing something that was cycling through several things too fast to fully track, and his chest was rising and falling in a way that was not the calm of before, and his free hand — the one Hongjoong had let go of — had not gone for the sword.

It had gone to Hongjoong's chest and was gripping his coat.

Not pushing.

Gripping.

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said. His voice had done something. He noted this.

And then the knife moved and he felt a burning pain.

Into his shoulder.

Not deep — he felt the calculation in it even through the sharp bright fact of it, the specific placement of someone who knew anatomy and had chosen the most inconvenient non-fatal location available. It hurt. He let go of Seonghwa's wrist. The hand on his chest disappeared.

Hongjoong put his hand over his shoulder and looked at Seonghwa.

Seonghwa looked back.

He was breathing hard. His face was flushed — not just the exertion, something more than the exertion — and the knife was still in his hand and he was looking at Hongjoong with an expression that was fury and something else and his jaw was tight and his hand with the knife was not entirely steady.

"You," Seonghwa said, "grabbed my dick."

"You had a knife at my throat," Hongjoong said.

"That's not—" Seonghwa stopped. "That's not an equivalent—"

"I was making a point," Hongjoong said.

"I was making a point," Seonghwa said.

"Your point stabbed me," Hongjoong said.

"Your point—" Seonghwa stopped again. Something moved through his face that looked briefly like it wanted to be something other than fury and was not going to be allowed.

"Your point grabbed my—" He stopped for a third time. Pressed his lips together. "We're done here," he said. "This conversation is over."

"You're still in my corridor," Hongjoong said.

"I'm leaving," Seonghwa said.

"You're welcome to—"

"I know I'm welcome to," Seonghwa said. "I don't need your permission to—"

"I know you don't," Hongjoong said.

"Then stop—"

"Stop what," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa looked at him.

"Being like this," he said.

"Like what," Hongjoong said.

"Like—" Seonghwa's jaw tightened. He gestured at Hongjoong with the hand that didn't have a knife in it. "This. Like this. This—" He stopped. Clearly couldn't find the word. Which was the first time he'd failed to find a word and Hongjoong noted it.

"Charming?" Hongjoong offered.

Seonghwa's expression said that was not the word.

"Infuriating," Seonghwa said.

"That one," Hongjoong agreed, "I'll accept."

Another silence.

"Your shoulder," Seonghwa said, with the specific tone of someone who does not want to be having the feeling they are having. "Is bleeding."

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"You should deal with that," Seonghwa said.

"After food," Hongjoong said. "Which is what I was going to do before you put a knife to my throat in my own corridor."

"You," Seonghwa said, furious, "grabbed my dick—"

"You started it with the knife," Hongjoong said.

"You started it by calling me—"

"We could go all the way back," Hongjoong said with a lazy smirk, "or we could go upstairs and eat."

Silence.

Seonghwa looked at him.

"I," Seonghwa said, with great dignity, "am going upstairs to eat because I've been in cold water for two hours and I haven't eaten and not because you're suggesting it."

"Of course," Hongjoong said.

"And you need to deal with your shoulder," Seonghwa said.

"After food," Hongjoong said.

"Before—"

"After," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa looked at the ceiling. Then he looked at Hongjoong with the expression of a man exercising considerable restraint. Then he turned and walked toward the stairs, and Hongjoong watched him go and thought about the sound he'd made in the corridor and thought about it again and told himself to think about something else.

He was not successful.

Fuck. He was also hard. 

The deck had rearranged itself.

Dinner had happened — Mingi's food, on a makeshift arrangement of crates and boards and whatever else was available, both crews in the specific uneasy proximity of people who were not sure about each other but were using the food as neutral territory.

Seonghwa appeared from the hatch.

He appeared like he owned the ship. Like he had always owned it. Like the concept of being on someone else's ship was something that had not been communicated to his body. He walked to the far end of the makeshift table and sat down and looked at the food and then looked at Mingi.

"What is it," he said.

"Braised fish," Mingi said. "With—"

"I'll have that," Seonghwa said, pointing.

"That's the same—"

"That one," Seonghwa said.

Mingi gave him that specific one, too exhausted to argue over fish. 

Seonghwa ate.

He ate like he walked — like the ship was his, like this was simply what was happening and any other interpretation was incorrect. He did not look at anyone. He did not engage with anyone. He ate Mingi's food with the expression of someone conducting an independent review of the food and deciding the results were acceptable and was not going to tell anyone the results.

Except— his expression, when he took the first bite, did something.

One thing. Very small. Very involuntary.

His eyes went slightly soft for approximately half a second in the specific way of someone who has eaten something excellent and whose face has betrayed them.

Then the expression closed.

He continued eating.

Mingi, who had seen it, looked at Hongjoong.

Hongjoong, who had also seen it, looked at Seonghwa.

"Good?" he said, smirking.

"It's food," Seonghwa said, dismissively.

"Mingi's food specifically," Hongjoong said. "Which is significantly better than—"

"It's fine," Seonghwa said.

"His face said it was more than fine," Wooyoung said, from somewhere.

"My face," Seonghwa said, very controlled, "said nothing."

"Your face," Wooyoung said, "said quite a lot actually. Your face is very expressive. It's—"

"Stop it," Seonghwa said.

Wooyoung looked at him.

Seonghwa looked back.

Something happened — a brief silent exchange, the specific kind that sometimes happened between people who had just met and were already calibrating each other.

"You're right," Wooyoung said, pleasantly. "Your face said nothing. It was a completely neutral face."

"Thank you," Seonghwa said.

"It was the most neutral face I've ever seen," Wooyoung said.

"Thank you," Seonghwa said again, with the tone of someone who knew they were being made fun of and was choosing their battles.

Hongjoong watched this and watched Seonghwa's face do the thing where it wanted to be amused and wasn't going to be, and thought: He's funny. He's actually funny. He has no idea how funny he is and that's the funniest part.

"Shoulder," Seonghwa said, without looking at him.

"After food," Hongjoong said.

"You've been bleeding on the deck this entire time and it’s disgusting—"

"It's a minor—"

"It's a knife wound," Seonghwa said. He still wasn't looking at him. "From a reasonably sharp knife. Held by someone who knew where to put it."

"You sound proud of that," Hongjoong said.

"I'm noting the medical reality," Seonghwa said.

"You stabbed me and now you're concerned about the stab," Hongjoong said.

"I'm not concerned," Seonghwa said, with great emphasis. "I'm noting."

"There's a difference?" Hongjoong said.

"A significant difference," Seonghwa said.

"What's the difference," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa looked at him.

For the first time since sitting down, directly, fully, the dark eyes and the set jaw and the silver hair and the very controlled expression of someone who was not going to say the actual answer to that question.

"Eat your food," he said, and looked away.

Hongjoong ate his food.

He was smiling. He noted this, told himself to stop, but failed.

Yeosang appeared at his elbow and bandaged his shoulder with the efficient hands of someone who had done this many times and was choosing not to have opinions about the circumstances.

"He's precise," Yeosang said, quietly, wrapping the bandage. "With blades. Always has been."

"I noticed," Hongjoong said.

"He knew exactly where to put it," Yeosang said. "To hurt without causing lasting damage."

"Also noticed," Hongjoong said.

"I'm saying," Yeosang said, with the carefully neutral tone of someone saying a thing without appearing to say it, "that it was a choice. Not a loss of control."

Hongjoong looked at Seonghwa at the other end of the table.

"I know," he said.

Yeosang finished the bandage and moved away.

Hongjoong looked at the table. Wooyoung had somehow ended up next to San, which had happened fast — too fast, really, but Wooyoung had a specific gift for ending up exactly where he intended to be without anyone noticing the intention. They were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for longer than they had. Mingi and Yunho were in a conversation that Hongjoong caught fragments of — something about provisioning routes, something about fish, something that made Yunho look genuinely interested, which was notable because Yunho generally looked at most things with the pleasant blankness of someone who found the world adequate.

Jongho and Yeosang were not talking to each other. They were sitting near each other and both looking at things that were not each other with the extreme focus of people using other things as reasons not to look at each other, which was its own kind of communication.

And at the end of the table, Seonghwa ate and said nothing and looked at nothing in particular, and the late light was on his silver hair and his face in repose was—

Ethereal, Hongjoong thought, and it arrived with the specific quality of a thought that was trying to be useful and had overshot into something else. Like something you'd see painted on the side of a ship for luck. Like something the sea made on a day it was trying to prove a point.

"You're staring," Wooyoung said, from beside him. He had materialized. He was always materializing.

"I'm looking at the horizon," Hongjoong said.

"The horizon," Wooyoung said, "is in the other direction."

Hongjoong looked at the horizon. It was in fact, in the other direction.

"I'm looking at the table," he said.

"You're looking at the person at the end of the table," Wooyoung said, teasingly.

"Wooyoung," Hongjoong warned.

"San says," Wooyoung said, dropping his voice to something that was technically a murmur but was constructed to carry, "that Seonghwa once refused to pay a harbor tax because he disagreed with the philosophy behind it. He wrote a four-page letter to the harbor master explaining his position."

"Did the harbor master—"

"Waived the tax," Wooyoung said. "Because the letter was very good apparently. San still has a copy."

Hongjoong looked at the end of the table.

Seonghwa was eating.

He looked up, found Hongjoong looking at him, and held the look with the specific expression of someone who was not going to be the first one to look away.

Hongjoong didn't look away either.

A standoff, across the table, in the evening light, with Mingi's food and both crews around them and the damaged ship being towed behind them.

Seonghwa looked away first.

But not quickly.

Hongjoong thought about the sound in the corridor again.

He thought: Tomorrow is going to be interesting.

He thought: This whole trip is going to be interesting.

He thought: I should probably be more concerned about my shoulder.

He wasn't.

The first night, Hongjoong slept in his cabin.

He slept like he always slept on the ship — deeply, efficiently, the specific sleep of someone who had trained themselves to rest when rest was available because the alternative was not functional. He went to sleep. He was asleep.

And then he was not asleep.

Because something was on his face.

He came awake with the specific speed of someone whose body had developed strong opinions about surprise, and his hands came up automatically and grabbed at the thing on his face which was—

A pillow.

Held by two hands.

Pressing down with the specific pressure of someone who had a plan and was implementing it with commitment.

Hongjoong grabbed the pillow, pulled it sideways, and in the dark of his cabin looked up at the person who had been holding it.

Seonghwa looked back at him.

He was sitting on the edge of the bunk and he had a pillow in his hands and he was looking at Hongjoong with the expression of someone whose plan had just encountered a setback. He recovered from the expression immediately and replaced it with the glare. The glare was very much present. It was functioning at full capacity.

Silence.

"You," Hongjoong said, "just tried to smother me with my own pillow."

"I came to return it," Seonghwa said.

"You came to—" Hongjoong stopped. "You were pressing it onto my face."

"I was adjusting it," Seonghwa said.

"I was asleep," Hongjoong argued in disbelief. "I don't need my pillow adjusted while I'm—"

"You had it at a bad angle," Seonghwa said, neutral.

Hongjoong stared at him.

In the dark of the cabin, which was not completely dark because the moonlight came through the small window, Seonghwa looked back at him with an expression of absolute conviction and the glare intact.

"Park Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

"Kim Hongjoong," Seonghwa said.

"Were you trying to kill me in my sleep," Hongjoong said.

"No," Seonghwa said.

"With my own pillow," Hongjoong said.

"I told you," Seonghwa said, "I was returning—"

"You broke into my cabin," Hongjoong said, "in the middle of the night, to press a pillow onto my sleeping face."

"I didn't break in," Seonghwa said. "Your door was unlocked."

"My door wasn't unlocked, but if it was, it was because I was asleep and not expecting anyone to try to smother me."

"I wasn't—"

"If you say adjusting again," Hongjoong said, voice low, "I'm going to ask you to adjust something else and I don't think you're going to like what I'm pointing at."

The glare sharpened considerably.

"Get out of my cabin," Hongjoong said.

"It's a ship," Seonghwa said. "I have as much right—"

"Get," Hongjoong said, "out of my cabin."

Seonghwa stood.

He stood with the specific dignity of someone who had been caught doing something and was not going to acknowledge what it was. He put the pillow down on the bunk. He walked to the door. Opened it.

He paused.

"Your angle was wrong," he said.

He left.

Hongjoong lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling.

He thought: Found my cabin, waited for me to fall asleep, and then tried to smother me with my own pillow.

He thought: That's insane. That is genuinely, specifically insane.

He thought: That's the funniest thing that has happened to me in years. I want to laugh. I'm lying in my bunk in the dark and I want to laugh at the man who just tried to assassinate me with my own bedding.

He did not laugh.

He stared at the ceiling.

He thought about silver hair in the moonlight and a pillow held with genuine commitment and an expression of absolute conviction about pillow angles and a glare that had not wavered once through the entire conversation.

He thought: He's going to try again.

He thought: I'm going to let him.

He thought: There is genuinely something wrong with me.

He went back to sleep.

He was right.

The second night: not the pillow. This time he woke to the specific feeling of weight on his chest — Seonghwa, sitting on him, with one of his smaller knives held above Hongjoong's sternum at an angle that communicated intent.

Hongjoong looked at the knife.

Looked at Seonghwa.

Seonghwa looked back. Dark eyes. Set jaw. Moonlight on the silver hair. The knife held with complete steadiness. Glaring at him with the specific intensity of someone who had thought about this on the way here and was committed.

"Good morning," Hongjoong said.

"It's two in the morning," Seonghwa said.

"Good morning," Hongjoong said again.

Seonghwa's glare sharpened by several degrees.

"I could," he said, with great precision, "end this right now."

"You could," Hongjoong agreed.

"I have a knife," Seonghwa said.

"I see the knife," Hongjoong said. "I've been seeing the knife since I woke up. It's hard to miss. It's very close to my— actually, can you move it slightly left? It's pointing at something I'd like to keep."

Seonghwa looked at where the knife was pointing.

Looked back up.

His glare did not change.

"I could also," Hongjoong said, "interpret this as you just wanting to sit on me. Which, for the record, you don't need a knife for. You could have just asked, princess."

"I didn't come here to sit on you," Seonghwa said.

"You're sitting on me," Hongjoong grinned.

"I came to—"

"Sit on me," Hongjoong said, amused. "With a knife. Which is a choice. I'm not judging it."

"Kim Hongjoong," Seonghwa said, with a quality that said the name was a warning.

"Park Seonghwa," Hongjoong said. "Hi. Why are you in my cabin."

A pause.

Seonghwa looked at him with the glare and the knife and the moonlight.

"You stole my title," he said.

Hongjoong blinked.

"I," he said.

"My title," Seonghwa said. "The pirate king. I built something real in the north channels and you come in on your ship with your flag and your—" A pause. The jaw tightened. "You've been sitting on that title for years. I earned what I have."

"I," Hongjoong said, "am the pirate king. That is my title. That I had first. That you then took."

"I didn't take anything," Seonghwa said. The glare had gone somewhere past fury into something absolute. "I earned it. Separately. Independently. The fact that you had the same name first doesn't make it yours."

"That is literally what makes it mine," Hongjoong scoffed.

"That's not how—"

"That's exactly how it works," Hongjoong said. "That's the entire logic of the thing. I had it. You took it."

"I built it from nothing in waters you didn't even operate in," Seonghwa said. "I ran three routes, I made agreements, I built a reputation. That's not stealing. That's—"

"Using my name," Hongjoong said.

"Using a name," Seonghwa said. "A name I have as much right to as you."

"You have no right to—"

"I have earned every right to—"

"You were pretending to be me," Hongjoong said.

"I was never pretending to be you," Seonghwa said, and the fury in his voice had gone very sharp and very specific, the fury of someone hitting a point that actually matters. "I was using a title that fit what I had built. I didn't know you. I didn't care about you. I was operating in my channels with my crew on my ship and the name fit so I used it."

"It wasn't yours to use," Hongjoong frowned.

"It's mine now," Seonghwa said, final.

"It's—" Hongjoong started.

And then he moved.

Fast — before the knife could adjust, before Seonghwa could read the intention — he grabbed Seonghwa's knife wrist with one hand and the other went to his hip and he rolled, using the momentum of the turn, and they flipped.

Seonghwa hit the mattress on his back.

Hongjoong was above him.

Hands on either side of Seonghwa's head, knees bracketing his hips, hovering over him in the narrow bunk with the moonlight coming through the small window and lighting the silver hair spread across his pillow.

He grinned down at him.

Seonghwa glared up.

It was, Hongjoong thought, an excellent glare. Fully committed. Furious in a way that was very specifically directed at him and the grin specifically and the fact that the grin existed in the world.

"It's mine," Hongjoong said, pleasantly. "The title. Just so we're clear."

"Get off me," Seonghwa said.

"We are having a conversation," Hongjoong said.

"The conversation is over," Seonghwa said.

"Is it," Hongjoong said.

He was looking at Seonghwa's face from above, close, the moonlight on it — the fury and the silver hair and the dark eyes doing the glare and underneath the glare the thing that was always underneath it, the second thing, present and controlled and—

He moved.

Slowly. Deliberately. Watching Seonghwa's face as he lowered himself — not all the way, not contact, just the slow press of proximity, his dick almost pressing against Seonghwas, close enough that the warmth of it was there between them, his hands still on either side of Seonghwa's head and his body above Seonghwa's body in the narrow bunk and he watched the expression.

He watched it.

The fury was there. The glare was there.

And underneath both of them something shifted — something that moved through Seonghwa's dark eyes like a current, something that passed across his face before the armor could stop it, something that was not fury and not the careful thing and was unmistakably, specifically something else.

Lust.

Brief. Real. Gone in approximately one second as the armor came crashing back up.

But there.

Hongjoong had seen it.

He grinned.

And then the top of Seonghwa's head connected with his face.

The headbutt was committed and precise and Hongjoong reeled back — not off the bunk, but back, hand going to his nose, eyes watering with the specific involuntary watering that had nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with being headbutted.

Seonghwa was off the bunk and on his feet before Hongjoong had finished processing what had happened.

He was — flushed. Visibly, even in the moonlight. His silver hair wild around his face and his chest heaving slightly and his expression assembled back into fury but with something underneath it that he was working very hard to contain.

He pointed at Hongjoong.

Did not say anything.

Turned and left.

The door did not quite slam because Seonghwa was apparently too controlled to slam it, but it closed with a very specific amount of force that communicated everything a slam would have.

Hongjoong sat in his bunk.

He put his hand over his nose. Still watering. He was going to have feelings about his nose tomorrow.

He was also — he took stock of the situation — he was also dealing with a fairly significant problem in the lower half of his body that had arrived sometime in the last sixty seconds and was not going to resolve itself quickly.

Fuck, he was hard. Again. 

He lay back on the bunk.

Stared at the ceiling.

Thought about the expression on Seonghwa's face in the one second before the armor came back up.

Thought about the warmth of him in the close dark of the bunk.

Thought, with the specific clarity of someone who had been headbutted and had a problem and found the whole situation genuinely funny: He was hard too. I felt it. When I lowered myself down — half a second, barely — I felt it.

He started laughing.

Quietly, because it was the middle of the night and his crew was asleep, but genuinely — the real laugh, the one that came from somewhere that found things actually funny.

He laughed at the ceiling of his cabin with his nose aching and a problem that wasn't going away and the silver hair still in his head like it had been put there.

Mine to fight, he thought. Mine to— everything. All of it.

He's going to come back tomorrow night.

I want to make him mine.

I want him to be mine.

He went to deal with the problem, jerking off to the thought of the person who just headbutted him.

He was still laughing, slightly.

The third night, he left his door unlocked.

He left it unlocked and he arranged himself in his bunk and he waited to see what would happen.

Nothing happened.

He lay awake for an hour, waiting, and nothing happened, and he went to sleep annoyed about this, which was ridiculous, and he knew it was ridiculous, and he was annoyed about that too.

He woke up with a hand over his mouth.

Not the pillow. A hand. Pressed firmly over his mouth, and the weight of someone on the bunk beside him, and when he went to move the other hand caught his wrist and pinned it and Seonghwa said, directly into his ear: "This time I'm actually going to—"

Hongjoong turned his head.

This was, significantly, a mistake, because turning his head in the direction of the voice meant that his face ended up very close to Seonghwa's face, which was not something either of them had planned for, and for a moment they were both very still in the dark.

Very close.

The hand over his mouth.

The wrist pinned.

The moonlight.

"—do something," Seonghwa finished, somewhat less certainly than he'd started.

The something remained undefined.

Hongjoong looked at him across the extremely small distance between their faces in the dark.

Seonghwa looked back.

He was glaring. Even at this distance, even in the dark, the glare was fully operational — dark eyes and set jaw and the specific expression of someone who had come here with a plan and was now in a slightly different situation than the plan had accounted for and was not going to acknowledge this.

"Mhm," Hongjoong said, against the hand.

"I can't understand you," Seonghwa said.

The hand moved. Slightly. Enough.

"You left your door unlocked," Seonghwa said.

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"Why," Seonghwa said.

"I knew you'd come back," Hongjoong said. "I left it open for you."

The glare intensified.

"That's stupid," Seonghwa said.

"Yes," Hongjoong said.

"You're insane," Seonghwa said.

"That’s coming from the right person," Hongjoong scoffed. "Also you're very close to me right now."

"I'm aware," Seonghwa said.

"Close enough," Hongjoong said, "that if you wanted to, you could—"

"I'm going to stop you there," Seonghwa said.

"I was going to say kiss me goodnight," Hongjoong said.

"You weren't and thats even worse," Seonghwa said.

"I absolutely was," Hongjoong said. "What did you think I was going to say?"

The glare.

"Nothing," Seonghwa said.

"You thought I was going to say something else," Hongjoong said. "Something more—"

"I didn't think anything," Seonghwa said.

"Your face," Hongjoong said, "is doing the thing."

"My face," Seonghwa said, "is not doing anything."

"It's doing the thing where you're thinking about something and you don't want to be thinking about it," Hongjoong said. "I'm very familiar with that face. I've been watching it for two days." He tilted his head slightly. "What are you thinking about, Seonghwa."

"Nothing," Seonghwa said.

"Nothing that involves me," Hongjoong said. "Or something that involves me. Specifically."

The glare hit a new register.

"Let go of my wrist," Hongjoong said.

The grip released.

"Get out of my bunk," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa got out.

"That’s my princess," Hongjoong said, knowing that he was playing with fire.

He stood in the middle of the cabin and looked at Hongjoong with the glare and the crossed arms and the silver hair loose and the two swords at his hips because of course, always, the two swords.

"Two days to port," he said, ignoring the „princess“ comment.

"Two days," Hongjoong agreed.

"And then we negotiate," Seonghwa said. "Routes."

"Routes," Hongjoong said.

"That's all," Seonghwa said.

"You've mentioned," Hongjoong said.

"I'm mentioning again," Seonghwa said.

"I heard you the first time," Hongjoong said. "And the second. And now the third."

Seonghwa looked at him.

"You called me princess again today," he said. "Three times."

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"Once in front of my crew," Seonghwa said.

"I remember," Hongjoong said.

"Yunho told me afterward that I had my hand on my sword for forty-five seconds straight. I was debating if I should cut your tongue off first or your dick," Seonghwa said.

"I know," Hongjoong said. "I was watching. And very impressive that you didn't. That's process, princess."

Silence.

"And you still did it," Seonghwa said.

"Yes," Hongjoong said.

"You're doing it right now. You are doing it on purpose," Seonghwa said.

"Yes," Hongjoong said.

"Why," Seonghwa said, sounding genuinely curious.

Hongjoong looked at him.

"Because," he said, "when I say it and you do the thing with your jaw and your hand goes to your sword and the fury comes up—" He paused. He was going to say something that he probably shouldn't say. He'd decided to say. "You look like something out of a story. The kind of story people tell so they don't forget that certain things exist."

Seonghwa stared at him.

"That's—" he started.

"I know how it sounds," Hongjoong said.

"That's a terrible reason to—"

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"You're calling me princess," Seonghwa said, "because of how I look when I'm furious about it."

"Partially," Hongjoong said. "Also because it fits."

Seonghwa looked at him for a very long time.

The moonlight was on him and he was furious in the quiet way that was the most dangerous way, the fury that had gone below the surface and was just — there, present, and his hands were at his sides and the two swords were at his hips and he was—

Extraordinary. He was genuinely extraordinary and Hongjoong was lying in his bunk at two in the morning watching him and thinking about it without trying to stop himself.

"I'm going to make you write an apology," Seonghwa said. "When we get to port."

"An apology for calling you princess," Hongjoong said, grinning.

"For—" Seonghwa gestured at him— "all of this."

"In writing?" Hongjoong said.

"In writing," Seonghwa said. "Formal. Signed."

"Will you frame it?" Hongjoong said.

A pause.

"Possibly," Seonghwa said, with great dignity.

Hongjoong grinned.

Seonghwa's expression did the thing — the thing where it wanted to be something else and was not going to be, the long-suffering controlled version of something that might otherwise have been the beginning of a smile.

He turned and left.

Hongjoong lay in the dark and grinned at the ceiling.

He thought: Two more days.

He thought: I need two more days and also possibly the rest of my life, which is a thought I'm going to put in a box and address later.

He thought: He's going to come back tomorrow night.

He was right.

The days were their own specific disaster.

Seonghwa had opinions. This was the dominant fact of sharing a ship with him. He had opinions about everything, expressed with the conviction of someone who had thought about things thoroughly and arrived at correct conclusions and did not find it necessary to be uncertain about correct conclusions.

He had opinions about navigation. These were, Hongjoong discovered to his private irritation, largely correct.

"The current shifts here," Seonghwa said, on the second morning, pointing at Hongjoong's chart. His finger landed on exactly the spot Hongjoong would have pointed to. "Two degrees east in this season. Your route assumes summer current. We're in summer. So."

"I know about the current," Hongjoong said.

"Your route doesn't reflect it," Seonghwa said.

"My route—"

"Is two degrees wrong," Seonghwa argued.

"It's not—" Hongjoong looked at the chart. The chart was two degrees wrong. He looked at Seonghwa. "It's a minor adjustment."

"Minor adjustments," Seonghwa said, "become major ones. Over distance."

"I know how navigation—"

"Then navigate correctly," Seonghwa said, and picked up a pencil and corrected the chart.

On Hongjoong's chart.

With Hongjoong's pencil.

While Hongjoong watched.

"That's my—" Hongjoong started.

"It's correct now," Seonghwa said, setting down the pencil, looking satisfied.

Hongjoong looked at the chart.

It was correct.

He looked at Seonghwa.

Seonghwa looked back with the expression of someone who had done something useful and found the world's response to useful things inadequate.

"Thank you," Hongjoong said, through something that was not quite his teeth.

"You're welcome," Seonghwa said, and walked away.

"He corrected my chart," Hongjoong told Jongho.

"I heard," Jongho said.

"My chart," Hongjoong said.

"He was right," Jongho said.

Hongjoong looked at him.

"He was right," Jongho said again. "The current adjustment. He was right."

"I know he was right," Hongjoong said. "That's the problem."

Jongho looked at him. The expression on Jongho's face said several things that Jongho was not going to say out loud, which was one of Jongho's most valuable qualities.

"He got into my bunk again last night," Hongjoong said.

"I know," Jongho said.

"You know," Hongjoong said.

"The whole ship knows," Jongho said. "His crew doesn't seem concerned."

"Because apparently it's normal," Hongjoong said.

"Apparently," Jongho said. He paused. "Is he—" Another pause. "Is it a problem."

"He sat on my chest with a knife," Hongjoong said.

"I'll ask again," Jongho said. "Is it a problem."

Hongjoong looked at the corrected chart.

"No," he said.

Jongho's expression did the thing.

"Don't," Hongjoong said.

"I'm not saying anything," Jongho said.

"You're doing the face," Hongjoong said.

"I don't have a face," Jongho said.

"You have several faces," Hongjoong said. "You're doing the one that means you've concluded something and are deciding whether I need to hear it."

"What I've concluded," Jongho said, "is private."

"Jongho," Hongjoong said.

"The chart looks better," Jongho said, and left.

Hongjoong looked at the chart.

It did look better and he didn't mind.

The arguments were — varied in their subject matter and consistent in their energy.

"You can't store it there," Seonghwa said, on the second afternoon, looking at a section of cargo.

"I've been storing it there for—" Hongjoong started.

"The balance is wrong," Seonghwa said. "You've been storing it there and compensating for the imbalance in how you set the sails. Which works but it's—" He made a gesture that conveyed inefficiency. "Wasteful."

"It's not—"

"Move it here," Seonghwa said, pointing. "And here. That distributes the weight correctly."

"I know how to balance a ship. This is my ship. I know how to balance my fucking ship," Hongjoong said.

"Then why is the cargo—"

"Because it's worked fine for—"

"Fine and correct are different things," Seonghwa said.

"I know the difference between—"

"Do you?" Seonghwa said, with a quality that was not quite asking.

Hongjoong looked at him.

Seonghwa looked back.

"Move the cargo," Hongjoong said, to Mingi.

Mingi moved the cargo.

The ship's movement changed very slightly — a small smoothing out, an efficiency gained. Hongjoong felt it in the deck under his feet.

He said nothing.

"You're welcome," Seonghwa said, and walked away again.

"He's right a lot," Mingi said, appearing beside Hongjoong.

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"Is that a problem?" Mingi said.

"Why does everyone keep asking me that," Hongjoong said.

"Because," Mingi said, "you have a specific expression you get when someone is right and you're having feelings about it."

"I don't have—"

"You do," Mingi said, kindly. "It's a good expression. It's the one where you look like you've found something interesting." He paused. "You've had it a lot today."

Hongjoong looked at the horizon.

"Make extra food for dinner," he said.

"Already am," Mingi said, and left.

"I would rather," Seonghwa said, in the middle of an argument about where to dock that had started as a practical question and escalated into something else, "stab my own eyes out than use your preferred dock."

"My preferred dock is—"

"Overpriced and has terrible anchorage," Seonghwa said. "The eastern dock is better."

"The eastern dock has a harbourmaster who—"

"Who I know," Seonghwa said. "Who owes me a favor."

"Owing you a favor and being reliable are—"

"He's reliable," Seonghwa said. "I've used him twelve times."

"In my territory," Hongjoong said.

"In the territory I've been running for a year," Seonghwa said. "With reliable docking infrastructure."

"With my—"

"With the territory," Seonghwa said, flat. "Call it what it is."

"It's mine," Hongjoong said.

"It was yours," Seonghwa said. "Arguably."

"It is mine," Hongjoong said. "Currently. Legally. By every measure—"

"I would rather," Seonghwa said, with great deliberateness, "cut off my own hand than acknowledge that."

"Your own hand," Hongjoong said. "Yesterday it was your eyes."

"I have strong feelings," Seonghwa said.

"You'd need both hands," Hongjoong said. "To cut off one hand. You'd have to—"

"I'm aware of the logistics," Seonghwa said.

"It's not—"

"I would rather," Seonghwa said, building to something, "sleep with a siren than let you tell me the north channel is yours."

"You keep bringing up sirens," Hongjoong noticed.

"It's an expression," Seonghwa said, glaring at Hongjoong.

"You've used it three times," Hongjoong said. "Specifically sirens. Not sea monsters, not krakens, not any of the other options. Sirens."

"It's a common expression," Seonghwa said.

"It's not a common expression," Hongjoong said. "I've never heard anyone use it."

"You," Seonghwa said, "move in limited circles."

"You look like a siren," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa stopped.

He looked at Hongjoong with the expression that cycling through several things.

"I look like—"

"The hair," Hongjoong said. "The way you move. The— all of it. You look like something the sea made. Like something that exists in stories where ships disappear." He tilted his head. "It's a compliment. Sirens are—"

"Sirens," Seonghwa said, very controlled, "lure sailors to their deaths."

"You've tried to kill me four times," Hongjoong said. "The metaphor is apt."

"I have not tried to—" Seonghwa stopped. "The knife in the corridor was self-defense."

"You came into my cabin a few times," Hongjoong said.

"Those were—"

"With weapons," Hongjoong said.

"I was—"

"Returning my pillow," Hongjoong said, amused. "I remember."

Seonghwa's jaw tightened to an architectural degree.

"The eastern dock," he said. "That's where we're docking."

"We'll discuss it," Hongjoong said.

"We just discussed it," Seonghwa said.

"We argued about it," Hongjoong said. "That's different from—"

"We discussed it," Seonghwa said. "Thoroughly. The eastern dock."

Hongjoong looked at him.

"Fine," he said. "The eastern dock."

Seonghwa looked at him with the expression of someone who had expected more resistance and was suspicious of the lack of it.

"Fine," he said.

He walked away.

Hongjoong watched him walk away and thought: He's right about the eastern dock. I was going to agree anyway. I just wanted to argue about it.

He thought: I wanted to argue about it because he argues like it's a contact sport and I find this deeply enjoyable.

He thought: I need to think about something else.

He thought about something else for approximately forty seconds.

Then Seonghwa came back.

"The rigging on the third mast," he said.

"What about it," Hongjoong said.

"It needs adjusting," Seonghwa said. "The port side—"

"I know about the rigging," Hongjoong said.

"You know and haven't—"

"I was going to deal with it tomorrow," Hongjoong said.

"It should be dealt with today," Seonghwa said.

"It's fine until tomorrow," Hongjoong said.

"It's—"

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

"What," Seonghwa said.

"Go away," Hongjoong said.

Silence.

"I'm trying to help," Seonghwa said, with the specific tone of someone who had just said a thing and immediately regretted saying it.

Hongjoong looked at him.

Seonghwa looked back with the expression of someone who would like to retract the last five seconds.

"Are you," Hongjoong said.

"The rigging," Seonghwa said, loudly, "needs adjusting."

"I'll have it done this afternoon," Hongjoong said.

"Before—"

"This afternoon," Hongjoong said. "Before sunset."

A pause.

"Good," Seonghwa said. He nodded once, the nod of someone concluding a business transaction. He turned to leave.

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

He turned back.

"Thank you," Hongjoong said. "For the advice."

Something moved through Seonghwa's expression. Very briefly. Something that was not fury and not the careful and not any of the constructed things — something that arrived fast and was gone fast, and what it was, exactly, Hongjoong could not have named, but he noted it.

"The mast," Seonghwa said, and left.

Wooyoung appeared beside Hongjoong.

"He's helping," Wooyoung said.

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"He doesn't know he's helping a lot," Wooyoung said.

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"That's very endearing," Wooyoung said.

"Don't say that where he can hear you," Hongjoong said.

"He'd probably try to stab me," Wooyoung said, with the tone of someone who did not find this concerning. "San says he stabs people when he's embarrassed."

"That explains a lot," Hongjoong said.

"Doesn't it," Wooyoung said, and drifted away toward San.

The rigging incident happened on the last afternoon.

The third mast — the one Seonghwa had noted needed adjusting, which had been adjusted, but the adjustment had revealed a second issue further up that required someone going up the mast to address. Hongjoong was looking at it from below and deciding who to send when the decision was made for him.

Seonghwa climbed the mast.

Not asked. Not told. He looked at the situation, made a decision, and went up.

He went up fast — not recklessly, with the economy of someone who had done this before and knew exactly how, but fast, and the wind was picking up in the way of late afternoons on the water and the mast was moving slightly and he went up anyway with two swords still on his hips and his silver hair coming loose in the wind and reached the top and dealt with the rigging issue with his hands while the mast moved under him.

The crew watched.

Hongjoong watched.

Like something the sea made, his brain said again, unhelpfully. Like something out of a myth. Beautiful. Standing up there like gravity is a suggestion and the wind is an opinion.

"He does that," San said, appearing beside him. "When something needs doing and no one's moving fast enough. He just—" He gestured upward. "Does it."

"Someone else could have gone up," Hongjoong said.

"He was there first," San said, with the fond shrug of someone who had long since made peace with this. "He's always there first. He hates waiting for things."

Above them, Seonghwa dealt with the rigging problem, checked the work, and started back down.

He reached the deck.

Looked at Hongjoong.

"It was the secondary line," he said. "The splice was going."

"I saw," Hongjoong said.

"It would have gone by morning," Seonghwa said.

"Thank you," Hongjoong said.

A pause.

Seonghwa looked at him with the expression that was not sure what to do with thank you.

"It needed doing," he said.

"Still," Hongjoong said.

Another pause.

The wind was moving the silver hair. Up close, slightly flushed from the climb, with the loosened hair and the set jaw and the dark eyes doing the calculation they always did—

Like something carved from weather, Hongjoong thought. Like something that happens at sea that you tell people about later. Like—

"Stop," Seonghwa said.

"Stop what," Hongjoong said.

"Looking at me like that," Seonghwa said.

"Like what," Hongjoong said.

"Like—" Seonghwa stopped. His jaw moved. "Like you're cataloguing something."

"I'm just looking at you," Hongjoong said.

"Then stop looking at me," Seonghwa said.

"You're in front of me," Hongjoong said.

"Then I'll move," Seonghwa said.

He didn't move.

Hongjoong didn't stop looking.

"Princess," Hongjoong said, quietly. Not the weapon version. Not the infuriating version. Something that arrived differently.

Seonghwa's expression did the thing.

Not the fury. The other thing. The thing that arrived under the fury and was there for a second before the armor came back up.

"One more day," he said. "One more day and we dock and we never have to—"

"Negotiate," Hongjoong said. "We dock and we negotiate."

"Routes," Seonghwa said. Quickly. "That's all."

"Routes," Hongjoong said.

"Nothing else," Seonghwa said.

"If you say so," Hongjoong said.

"I say so," Seonghwa said.

"Alright," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa looked at him.

"Stop smiling," he said.

"I'm not smiling," Hongjoong said.

"You're doing that thing with your face—"

"I'm looking at the horizon," Hongjoong said.

"The horizon is—"

"Goodbye," Hongjoong said, and walked toward the helm.

Behind him, after a moment, he heard Seonghwa make a sound.

Low. Frustrated. The specific sound of someone who had wanted the last word and had not gotten it.

Hongjoong smiled at the horizon.

The last night.

He left the door unlocked.

He lay in his bunk and waited.

Nothing happened for a long time.

Then the door opened.

Seonghwa came in — not with a knife, not with a pillow, just himself, and he stood in the middle of the cabin and looked at Hongjoong in the dark with the moonlight on him.

"Last night," he said.

"Last night," Hongjoong agreed.

A silence.

"You knew I'd come," Seonghwa said.

"Yes," Hongjoong said.

"Every night," Seonghwa said. "You knew."

"Yes," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa stood in the moonlight and said nothing.

"I hate this ship," he said, finally.

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"I hate the situation," Seonghwa said.

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"I hate you," Seonghwa said.

A pause.

"Do you," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa looked at him.

The moonlight was on the silver hair and the dark eyes were doing the thing where they were several layers deep and the top layer was something controlled and underneath it something that was not.

"You're insufferable," Seonghwa said.

"Yes," Hongjoong said.

"You called me princess in front of a port master today," Seonghwa said.

"I did," Hongjoong said.

"He wrote it in his register," Seonghwa said.

"I know," Hongjoong said. "I saw."

"I'm going to burn his register," Seonghwa said.

"That seems disproportionate," Hongjoong said.

"It's in his register," Seonghwa said.

"Princess is a—"

"If you say it fits one more time," Seonghwa said, "I'm going to—"

"Stab me," Hongjoong said. "I know."

"Something worse than stab," Seonghwa said.

"What's worse than—"

"I'll think of something," Seonghwa said. "I have time."

"You have one more day," Hongjoong said.

A pause.

"One more day," Seonghwa said. Something in his voice had shifted. Something had gone out of it that had been there before. "And then we negotiate and we go our separate ways."

"And then we negotiate," Hongjoong said.

"Routes," Seonghwa said.

"And whatever else needs negotiating," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa was very still.

"That's not—" he started.

"It's whatever it is," Hongjoong said. "I'm not pushing. I'm saying the door's open."

A long silence.

"You left your door open every night, after the first time I came in," Seonghwa said, quietly.

"Yes," Hongjoong said.

"Why," Seonghwa said.

Hongjoong looked at him.

At the silver hair and the moonlight and the two swords at his hips and the dark eyes and the complicated expression of someone who had been fighting everything for three days and was tired, slightly, just slightly, of fighting.

"Because," Hongjoong said, "I wanted you to have it open."

Seonghwa stood in the dark.

"That's—" he said.

"I know," Hongjoong said.

Another silence.

"Get some sleep," Seonghwa said, finally.

"You're in my cabin," Hongjoong said.

"I'm leaving," Seonghwa said.

"Then goodnight, princess," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa turned.

He paused in the doorway.

"Princess," he said, very quietly. Not to Hongjoong. Almost to himself. Testing the shape of it.

Then he left.

Hongjoong lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling and thought several things he was going to address in port tomorrow.

He thought: Park Seonghwa. Two swords. Three assassination attempts in three nights with decreasing commitment to actually assassinating me.

One day.

I've known him for three days and I'm going to spend the next however long finding out everything else.

This is going to be the best decision I've ever made or the worst.

Either way, it's going to be interesting.

He went to sleep.

Outside his unlocked door, the ship moved through the dark water toward port, and somewhere on the deck Seonghwa was probably looking at the horizon with the silver hair in the night wind and an expression on his face that Hongjoong would give a great deal to see right now.

He was right.

He just didn't know it yet.

The port of Hyangdo was loud and bright and smelled like fish and salt and commerce and all the specific things that ports smelled like, and Hongjoong walked through it toward the meeting place he'd named and tried not to think about the fact that in approximately one hour he was going to have to sit across from Park Seonghwa and conduct an actual negotiation like an actual adult and not say any of the things that had been living in his head for the last three days.

He was fairly confident he could do this.

He was less confident than he would usually be.

"You're walking fast," Wooyoung said, beside him, keeping up easily.

"I walk fast," Hongjoong said.

"You're walking faster than usual," Wooyoung said. "You walk fast when you're managing something."

"I'm not managing anything," Hongjoong said.

"You're doing the face," Wooyoung said.

"I don't have a face," Hongjoong said.

"You have several," Wooyoung said. "You're doing the one where you've decided something and you're not sure it's the right decision and you're walking fast so you don't change your mind."

Hongjoong said nothing.

"What did you decide," Wooyoung said.

"Nothing," Hongjoong said.

"Hongjoong," Wooyoung said.

"We're negotiating routes," Hongjoong said. "That's all. Routes."

Wooyoung looked at him.

"Right," he said.

"That's all," Hongjoong said.

"San is coming," Wooyoung said. "He said Seonghwa asked him to."

"Good," Hongjoong said. "Fine."

"He also said Seonghwa has been in a terrible mood since they docked," Wooyoung said. "Worse than usual."

Hongjoong thought about this.

"What's his usual," he said.

"Significant," Wooyoung said. "So currently it's—"

"I get it," Hongjoong said.

They walked.

"Routes," Wooyoung said.

"Routes," Hongjoong said.

"Nothing else," Wooyoung said.

"Nothing else," Hongjoong said, and meant it, and was approximately forty percent sure he was telling the truth.

The place was a back room in a building that was technically a trading company and practically a place where people who needed private conversations had private conversations. Hongjoong had used it before. The table was good, the chairs were functional, the person who brought food didn't ask questions.

He was there first.

He sat down.

He thought about nothing in particular.

The door opened and Seonghwa walked in.

He had changed since the ship — different coat, same swords, silver hair pulled back, which was different from the loose version and was somehow worse because it meant Hongjoong could see all of his face without anything in the way. He looked like he'd slept, which was more than Hongjoong could say for himself. He looked, objectively and inconveniently, extraordinary.

He sat down across from Hongjoong.

Looked at him.

Said nothing.

Hongjoong looked back.

Also said nothing.

This lasted approximately ten seconds, which was longer than most silences between them had lasted, and had a different quality — not the charged combative kind, something more like two people recalibrating after several days of a specific kind of proximity and trying to find where the line was now.

"Routes," Hongjoong said.

"Routes," Seonghwa confirmed.

They got to work.

It was — not what Hongjoong had expected. Or it was, partly. The arguing was what he'd expected — that was entirely consistent, Seonghwa argued about everything with the specific energy of someone who had correct opinions and found it baffling that other people didn't immediately recognize this. He argued about the northern route boundary with the conviction of someone who had been running it for a year and knew every current and hazard and seasonal shift, and he was right about most of it, and Hongjoong argued back anyway because several of the points were genuinely debatable and also because—

Because arguing with Seonghwa was — he couldn't call it enjoyable, that wasn't the right word, it was more that it required his full attention in a way that almost nothing did anymore, the specific engagement of someone who was actually being matched, and he found he'd missed it slightly in the four hours since they'd docked.

Which was insane.

But there it was.

"The eastern branch of the second route," Seonghwa said, pointing at the map. "That's mine."

"That branch connects to—"

"I know what it connects to," Seonghwa said. "I've been using it for eleven months. It connects to the Chedo approach which I've already told you is mine."

"You told me," Hongjoong said. "I didn't agree."

"You said fine," Seonghwa said.

"Under duress," Hongjoong said.

"You weren't under duress," Seonghwa said. "You were standing on a dock in the morning sun in a good mood."

"I'm never under duress," Hongjoong said. "That doesn't mean I agreed."

"You said fine," Seonghwa said. "Fine means—"

"Fine means I was done arguing about that particular thing at that particular moment," Hongjoong said. "It doesn't mean I conceded."

Seonghwa stared at him.

"That's not what fine means," he said.

"That's what it means when I say it," Hongjoong said.

"Then you should say what you mean," Seonghwa said.

"I do say what I mean," Hongjoong said.

"You say fine when you mean—"

"I mean what I say," Hongjoong said, and something shifted in his voice slightly, something that had come up from underneath without permission, and he watched Seonghwa hear it and clock it and look at him for a second with something in his expression that was not the argument.

A pause.

"The eastern branch," Seonghwa said. Back to the map.

"The eastern branch," Hongjoong agreed. Back to the map.

They worked through it.

An hour. Then two. The food arrived and they ate without pausing and kept working, the map between them covered in marks and corrections and the specific record of two people who both knew what they were talking about arriving at a document that reflected that.

It was — good work. Genuinely. Hongjoong found himself noting this the way he noted tactical things — professionally, accurately, without sentiment. Seonghwa was thorough and precise and had a specific kind of intelligence that was strategic rather than just clever, the intelligence of someone who thought three moves ahead and had learned the hard way why that mattered.

He found himself watching him more than the map, sometimes.

Seonghwa caught him twice.

Both times, he glared and said something about the document.

Both times, Hongjoong looked at the document and responded and did not say what he was actually thinking.

The argument, when they got to the question of what happened if one of them operated in the other's acknowledged territory, was the worst one.

"Compensation," Seonghwa said. "Agreed rate. Per incursion."

"I'm not paying you every time one of my ships ends up in your waters by necessity," Hongjoong said.

"By necessity is different," Seonghwa said. "I said per incursion. Necessity isn't an incursion."

"Who decides what's necessity," Hongjoong frowned.

"We define it in the document," Seonghwa said.

"We define it," Hongjoong said. "The two of us. Now."

"Yes," Seonghwa said, narrowing his eyes.

"And when there's a dispute about whether something was necessity or incursion," Hongjoong said, "who arbitrates."

"We do," Seonghwa said. "Together."

"So every time there's a dispute," Hongjoong said, "you and I have to—"

"Meet," Seonghwa concluded. "Discuss. Resolve."

Silence.

Hongjoong looked at the document.

He looked at Seonghwa.

"You're building in reasons for us to have to meet," he said finally, connecting the dots.

Something moved through Seonghwa's expression.

Very fast.

"I'm building in a dispute resolution process," Seonghwa said, with great precision. "Which is standard in any maritime agreement. Which you would know if you'd ever formally documented anything in your life, which based on the state of your charts—"

"My charts are—"

"Were wrong," Seonghwa said. "By two degrees. Which I fixed. Which you thanked me for."

"I thanked you and I'm still annoyed about it," Hongjoong said.

"Your feelings about my competence," Seonghwa said, "are not my problem."

"They're not feelings," Hongjoong said. "I don't have feelings about your—" He stopped. "The dispute resolution clause is fine."

Seonghwa looked at him.

"Fine," Hongjoong said, deliberately.

Seonghwa's mouth did something that was almost, almost a thing.

He looked at the document.

"Fine," he said.

They finished the document.

It was done by late afternoon, they had walked back to the dock.

Two copies, signed, the specific formality of a maritime agreement done properly, witnessed by the person from the trading company who didn't ask questions, which was convenient.

They sat with it.

Hongjoong looked at the document with his name and Seonghwa's name on it and the routes laid out and the terms and the dispute resolution clause that meant they would have to meet when things came up and thought: I built that in too. He knows that. I know that. Neither of us said it.

"That's done," Seonghwa said.

"That's done," Hongjoong said.

A silence.

It was a different silence from the ones they'd been having. Looser. Something had been accomplished and the space where the work had been was now just — open.

"Your crew," Seonghwa said.

"What about them," Hongjoong said.

"They've been on my ship," Seonghwa said. "Getting—" A pause. "Attached."

"Your crew too," Hongjoong said.

"My crew is always attached to things," Seonghwa said, with the tired quality of someone who had long since made peace with this. "Wooyoung and San are apparently—"

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"Yunho and Mingi—"

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"And Jongho and Yeosang have been—"

"Jongho hasn't said a word about it," Hongjoong said. "Which means it's serious."

Seonghwa looked at him.

"So," Seonghwa said. He looked at the document. "Routes."

"Routes," Hongjoong said.

"And we go," Seonghwa said. "Our separate ways."

"Right," Hongjoong agreed.

He said it evenly. He said it the way he said most things — clearly, without performance.

Seonghwa looked at the document.

"Good," he said.

"Good," Hongjoong said.

Neither of them moved.

"I hope," Seonghwa said, standing, picking up his copy, "that we don't see each other again. Outside of any necessary dispute resolution."

"And I hope," Hongjoong said, standing, "that you never use my title again. You have your routes documented. You don't need it."

"It's my title," Seonghwa said.

"It's not—"

"It will always be my title," Seonghwa said, with the absolute conviction of someone who had made a decision about this and was not revisiting it. "I earned it. The document doesn't change that."

"Park Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

"Kim Hongjoong," Seonghwa said.

"Use my title one more time," Hongjoong said, "and I will come find you."

"Then come find me," Seonghwa said. "I'll be in my territory. Running my routes. As the pirate king."

"You," Hongjoong said, very controlled, "are the most infuriating—"

"Goodbye," Seonghwa said, and turned toward the door.

"Fuck you," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa turned back.

"Fuck you," he said, with great feeling, "and your title and your ship and your—" He gestured at all of Hongjoong. "Everything. All of this. Goodbye."

He turned again.

"The offer still stands," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa stopped.

"Which offer," he said, without turning around. Very controlled.

"You could be my pirate queen," Hongjoong said. "Officially. The offer I made on the first day is still open. You'd never have to steal the title. You'd have it legitimately." He tilted his head. "Marry me. We solve every problem in one move."

A very long silence.

Then Seonghwa turned around.

He looked at Hongjoong.

He looked at him with the dark eyes and the silver hair and the set jaw and the full specific fury of someone who had been managing something for three days and had just been handed the one thing they had not been prepared for.

And then he closed the distance between them in three steps, put both hands flat on Hongjoong's chest.

And then he shoved.

Hongjoong went off the dock and into the water.

The splash was significant.

He surfaced.

Looked up at Seonghwa standing on the dock above him, silver hair moving in the late afternoon wind, expression doing something that was fury and the other thing and several things that were not being named.

Hongjoong started laughing.

Not the managed kind. Not the kind he used. The real one, the one from somewhere genuine, coming up out of the water with him, and he laughed up at Seonghwa standing on the dock with the look on his face and thought: He shoved me into the water. He actually shoved me into the harbor. He is the most—

"I hate you," Seonghwa said, from the dock.

"I know," Hongjoong said, still laughing, treading water, looking up at him. "The offer stands."

"The next time I see you," Seonghwa said, "I am going to—"

"I'll see you for the first dispute," Hongjoong said. "That was your clause."

Seonghwa looked at him in the water.

Something moved through his expression that Hongjoong caught even from the water and catalogued.

Then he turned and walked away from the dock without looking back, and Hongjoong watched him go — the long coat and the silver hair and the two swords and the walk — until he was gone into the crowd of the port.

The laughing had stopped.

He looked at the space in the crowd where Seonghwa had been.

I meant it, he thought. Every time. Every single time I said it I meant it.

He swam to the ladder and climbed out of the harbor and stood on the dock dripping in the late afternoon sun and thought: Park Seonghwa. Gone.

I should be fine with that.

He was not fine with that.

He picked up the signed document from the ground, which had survived because he'd had the sense to drop it before falling into the water, and walked back toward the ship.

The crew noticed.

Hongjoong was not a quiet person by nature — he talked, he moved, he had opinions about things and expressed them, he was present in a way that the Eunjang generally ran on. The crew had calibrated itself around this over years.

So when he got quiet, they noticed.

Not silent. He still ran the ship, still gave orders, still managed things. But the specific ambient presence of him — the commentary, the observations, the running monologue of Hongjoong finding things interesting — dialed down in the days after they left Hyangdo.

He stood at the bow a lot.

He looked at the horizon.

He had the document out more than necessary, reading it with the look he got when he was thinking about something that wasn't the thing in front of him.

"He's thinking about him," Wooyoung said to Jongho, in the kitchen, on the third day.

"I know," Jongho said.

"He's been at the bow for two hours," Wooyoung said.

"I know," Jongho said.

"He is holding the document," Wooyoung said.

"He always holds the document," Jongho said. "He carries it in his coat."

"He keeps rereading the dispute resolution clause, which is embarrassing and sad at the same time," Wooyoung said.

A silence.

"I know," Jongho said.

"Should we—" Wooyoung started.

"No," Jongho said.

"He's going to be like this for—"

"No," Jongho said. "We leave it."

"He shoved him in the harbor," Wooyoung said. "Seonghwa shoved him in the harbor and Hongjoong laughed and that was—" He paused. "That was not the face of a man who is fine with never seeing someone again."

"No," Jongho said. "It wasn't."

"And now he's at the bow," Wooyoung said.

"And now he's at the bow and he looks miserable," Jongho agreed.

They both looked in the general direction of the bow.

"I miss San," Wooyoung said, which was a different conversation but also not.

"I know," Jongho said, with the tone of someone who was also missing someone and was not going to say so.

"This is stupid," Wooyoung said.

"Yes," Jongho said.

"He meant it," Wooyoung said. "Every time he called him his princess, his queen. Every single time. Captain is in love"

"I know," Jongho said.

"He just let him walk away," Wooyoung said.

"He got shoved into the harbor," Jongho said. "That's slightly different from letting someone walk away."

"He laughed," Wooyoung said. "He got shoved into the harbor and he laughed and watched him leave. That's worse than letting someone walk away."

Jongho considered this.

"Yeah," he said.

They left him at the bow.

He stayed there until dark, and then he went to his cabin, and on the desk was the document with the signed names and the dispute resolution clause, and he looked at it for a while before he went to sleep.

He dreamed about silver hair, which was information he was going to keep entirely to himself.

Three weeks.

Seonghwa ran his routes. The north channels were his — documented, acknowledged, the kind of legitimate that came with a signed agreement and a witness and two copies and the specific satisfaction of having done something properly.

He ran his routes and he managed his crew and he made agreements and he was, objectively, fine.

He was fine.

He was perfectly fine.

He was not thinking about Kim Hongjoong.

He was occasionally — not often — sometimes thinking about Kim Hongjoong. Specifically about the way he'd laughed in the water, the real laugh, the one that was different from the grin. Specifically about the dispute resolution clause that he had built into the agreement because — because disputes came up, it was standard maritime practice, it had nothing to do with—

"You have the document out again," Yunho said.

"I'm reviewing the terms," Seonghwa said.

"You've reviewed the terms," Yunho said. "Several times."

"Maritime agreements require regular review," Seonghwa said.

"Do they, I mean we are pirates and most of us don't listen to stuff like that," Yunho said.

"Yes, but we are different I like rules," Seonghwa said.

Yunho looked at the document.

"You're looking at the dispute resolution clause again," Yunho said, exhausted.

"I'm looking at the whole document," Seonghwa disagrees.

"You're specifically—"

"Yunho," Seonghwa warned.

Yunho sighed and left. 

Seonghwa looked at the document.

He thought about — he thought about the giggle. The one in the corridor the first night when he'd pressed the pillow down and Hongjoong had grabbed it and looked up at him with the expression that had done something Seonghwa hadn't been prepared for. The giggle had been — it had been genuine. Helpless. The sound of someone who found something actually funny and couldn't manage it.

He thought about the headbutt and the boner.

He thought about his own boner, which was something he was not going to think about.

He was doing a terrible job at that.

He thought about lying beside Hongjoong in the narrow bunk on the third night with his hand over his mouth and the specific warmth of the body there, the specific quality of being close to someone you'd been trying to fight and finding the fight was not the only thing present.

He put the document away.

He's annoying. He's genuinely annoying. He called me princess in front of two port officials and a harbor registrar and I am probably in that registrar's records as—

He meant it. Every time he said it. I know he meant it.

I got hard twice. On a ship with an infuriating man who kept not drawing his weapon and flirting while I was actively trying to kill him and I got hard twice. That says something about my judgment that I don't want to examine.

He was funny. He was actually funny. He is the most annoying person I have ever encountered and he was also actually funny and I miss—

He did not finish that thought.

He went to look at his routes and think about commerce.

He heard about it in a port tavern.

Two sailors. Not his crew — dock workers, the kind of people who moved between ships and picked up information the way ships picked up barnacles, without trying and without being able to stop.

Kim Hongjoong, one of them said. The pirate king. You heard?

Seonghwa's cup stopped moving.

Heard what, the other said.

Taken, the first one said. The Eunjang was hit. Most of the crew wasn't aboard — they were resupplying, split between the dock and the ship — and someone came with enough men to board what was there. Took the captain.

Dead?

Captive, the first one said. Word is he negotiated. Traded himself for the crew they had.

A pause.

Stupid, the second said.

Brave, the first said. Or both.

Seonghwa set his cup down.

He set it down carefully and stood up and walked across the tavern to where his crew was sitting — San, Yunho, Yeosang — and they saw his face and stopped talking.

"Captain," San started.

"Who knows about the Eunjang," Seonghwa said.

A pause. They exchanged looks.

"We heard," Yunho said. "Earlier today. We were going to—"

"Who has them," Seonghwa said.

"We don't know yet," Yunho said. "There are—"

Seonghwa turned.

Two men at a corner table. He'd clocked them when he came in — also dock workers, the specific kind that moved information, the kind that knew things. He walked toward them.

He pulled a knife from his belt.

He drove it into the table between them hard, making the men flinch.

Both men went very still.

Seonghwa put one hand around the throat of the one on the left. Put one hand around the throat of the one on the right. Not squeezing. Present. The statement of capability.

He leaned in.

His expression was the one his crew recognized and had never, in several years, seen directed at them, and they were watching from the other table with the specific stillness of people who knew better than to intervene.

"Kim Hongjoong," he said. Very quietly. "The pirate king. You know something."

The man on the left tried to speak.

Seonghwa's grip tightened. Slightly. The specific degree that said: not yet.

"I'm going to ask you questions," Seonghwa said. "You're going to answer them. If you lie to me—" He tilted his head, the specific tilt. "I'll know. And I have a second knife. And a very specific use for it when people lie to me. Just so we are clear, I will cut your tongues off," He looked at the man on the left. "Where is the rest of his crew."

He released enough for an answer.

"Scattered," the man said, hoarse. "They — we heard they ended up in Haedo. The tavern district."

"Who took him," Seonghwa said.

A pause that was too long.

He squeezed hard, marking the man gasp and groan in pain.

The man on the right made a sound.

"Baek," the man on the left said quickly. "Baek Jungwon. Operates out of the south islands. He's been — there's been a price on the pirate king for months. From the eastern navy. Baek collected."

"Where does Baek operate," Seonghwa said.

"South islands," the man said. "Specifically — there's a fortress. On the third island of the Jaedo chain. That's where he takes—"

Seonghwa shoved them both to the ground.

He pulled the knife out of the table.

He walked back to his crew.

"Haedo," he said. "Now."

"Captain," Yunho said, very carefully. "Are you—"

"Now," Seonghwa said.

They went.

Haedo's tavern district was the kind of place that existed in every port city — the part that was loud and dim and full of people who had been at sea for too long and were remedying this with varying degrees of success. Seonghwa moved through it with his crew behind him and his expression doing the thing that made people step out of his way without being asked.

He found them on the third tavern.

Mingi first — the height, unmistakable, visible over the top of the crowd even sitting down. Then Wooyoung. Then Jongho. All of them at the same table, drinks in hand, with the specific exhausted furious energy of people who were not resting because they wanted to but because they were between options.

Mingi didn't see them come in.

Seonghwa crossed the tavern, grabbed Mingi's coat at the collar, and pulled.

Mingi's drink went sideways. He came half out of his seat with an expression that moved through alarm to recognition to something complicated very fast.

Seonghwa was close to his face. He looked furious.

"How," he said, with great control, "did you let this happen."

"Seonghwa—" Wooyoung started.

"How," Seonghwa said again, still looking at Mingi,voice getting harsher "did you let someone take him. Your captain. You were there. You were supposed to—"

"We weren't there," Mingi said. He had gone very still in the way large people went still when they wanted to communicate that they could be large if they needed to and were choosing not to be. "Most of us weren't on the ship. We were resupplying. Split between the dock and—"

"Someone should have been with him," Seonghwa said.

"He told us to go," Jongho said, from his seat, very level. "He told all of us to go. The resupply was his call and he sent us and when we came back—"

"He was gone," Seonghwa said.

"He was gone," Jongho said.

Seonghwa released Mingi's coat, shoving him harshly in the process.

He stood there.

He was breathing harder than the walk across the tavern accounted for and his hands had closed into fists at his sides and his expression was — several things, layered, the fury on top and under it something that his face was not designed to show and was showing anyway.

"He negotiated," Seonghwa said. "He traded himself."

"For two of our younger crew members. Both 15," Mingi said, quietly. "They had them. When the ship was boarded. The others weren't aboard but those two were and they— Hongjoong negotiated. Said he'd go with them if they took his crew off the ship and left."

A silence.

"He went with them," Seonghwa said. "Voluntarily."

"He went with them," Mingi said. "Yes."

Seonghwa stood in the middle of the tavern and breathed.

"How," he said, with a very controlled quality, "can someone be that fucking stupid—" He stopped. Started again. "What was he thinking. What was he— he walked onto an enemy ship because they had two of you. Two. He is one person. Without anyone helping him. He is—"

"He's Hongjoong," Wooyoung said. Gently.

Seonghwa looked at him.

Wooyoung had an expression that was — not the cheerful one, not the amused one. Something genuine underneath. Something that had been sitting with worry for however many days this had been and was now looking at Seonghwa with a very specific kind of understanding.

"He knew what he was doing," Wooyoung said. "He always knows what he's doing. Even when it looks like he doesn't."

"He walked onto an enemy ship," Seonghwa said.

"He's been in worse," Wooyoung said. "He knows how to survive. He's been doing it for—"

"That's not—" Seonghwa stopped. His jaw was tight. "That's not the point. That's not what I'm—" He stopped again.

The tavern was going about its business around them. No one was paying attention. His own crew had filed in quietly and positioned themselves with the specific arrangement of people who knew better than to crowd Seonghwa right now and were staying visible and available.

"Where is he," Seonghwa said.

"We have locations," Jongho said. "Three possibilities. Baek Jungwon's operation—"

"I know Baek's operation," Seonghwa said. "The Jaedo chain."

Jongho looked at him. "How do you—"

"I have sources," Seonghwa said. He looked at Wooyoung. "Get your crew. You're coming on my ship."

A pause.

"Your ship," Wooyoung said, confused.

"My ship," Seonghwa said. "We move tonight. All of us."

"Seonghwa," Yunho said, from behind him, very calm. "Why."

The question sat there.

Seonghwa looked at the table. At the drinks. At Mingi's upended cup and the spreading liquid and the three of them watching him with the specific quality of people waiting for an answer.

"Because," Seonghwa said, "no one gets to give Kim Hongjoong shit except me." He picked up someone's drink and took a long pull of it and set it down. "And I'm going to kill him myself when we find him. Get up."

They got up.

Wooyoung and San exchanged a look across the tavern — San had materialized at some point, he was good at that — and the look had several things in it that neither of them was going to say out loud.

"Not a word," Seonghwa said, to both of them, without looking.

"I wasn't going to say anything," Wooyoung said.

"Good," Seonghwa said, and walked out.

It took four days.

Four days of searching, following information, ruling out two of the three locations — one abandoned, one with the wrong signature entirely — and finding the third on the fourth afternoon.

The third island of the Jaedo chain was small and rocky and had a fortress on it that was exactly what Seonghwa had expected from Baek Jungwon's operation: functional, defensible, and full of men who thought the island and the rocks and the walls made them safe.

They were wrong.

Seonghwa went in at dawn.

He didn't wait for the full tactical arrangement — he left Yunho and Yeosang coordinating the main force, San and Wooyoung taking the east approach, Jongho and Mingi the gate — and he went in through the gap in the wall that no one was watching because it didn't look like a gap until you were close enough to know it was, and he went in alone because he moved fastest alone and because—

Because.

He moved through the fortress with both swords out.

The first group of men in the outer corridor: he dealt with them. Fast, efficient, the cold economy that he had in situations like this. Not cruel — not more than necessary. But not gentle. Some of them said things. What is a pretty thing like you gonna do to us? Get down on your knees and stop swinging those swords, you are gonna hurt yourself. He cut their tongues off. One of them, on the ground, with Seonghwa's sword at his throat, said: He's upstairs, cells, third level, but you won't— and then looked at Seonghwa's face and stopped talking.

The second group was worse. Or made themselves worse.

There was a man with a hammer who called him pretty. Who said, to his companion, while Seonghwa was three feet away and fully capable of hearing: Look at that one, pretty as a picture, what's something like that doing here—

And his companion said: Bet he's better use on his back, spreading his legs for me, with my dick inside him than—

Seonghwa put both swords to work.

He put them to thorough work. Cutting off their tongues, obviously, and then one by one he cut their fingers off, while they were still concision. 

When he came out the other side of the corridor he wiped his swords on the wall and kept moving.

Third level. Cells.

He found the right one by the specific sound of someone talking.

"—I'm just saying, statistically, the odds of anyone coming for me are actually—"

"Shut up," said a second voice, from somewhere else in the cellblock. Weary.

"Someone will come," the first voice said. "Trust me, I have this feeling—"

"Shut up," the second voice said.

"—finding a specific fortress on a specific island when we were moved three times in four days is hard, but not im—"

That sounded like my idiot. 

My?

Seonghwa found the cell.

He looked through the bars.

Hongjoong looked up.

He looked — not good. Several days of not good, specifically: the specific accumulated look of someone who had been somewhere they should not have been for too long. A cut on his face, dried. Bruising along his jaw. His coat was gone, shirt torn, and he was sitting against the wall with his wrists chained to the ring in the stone behind him in a way that looked deeply uncomfortable.

He looked up.

He saw Seonghwa.

And he grinned.

The grin arrived before anything else — before relief, before recognition, just the grin, the specific one, the one that Seonghwa had spent three weeks not thinking about, wide and real and directed entirely at him.

"I told you," Hongjoong said, to the cell at large and the men somewhere in the adjacent cells and the walls, "I told you my queen was going to come."

"I'm not your—" Seonghwa started.

"My queen came," Hongjoong said, to the cell, delighted. "He came. I told you. I told all of you. Pay up."

"I have no money," said the weary voice from somewhere else.

"The principle stands," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa was already working on the lock — he had picks, he'd had them for ten years, it was a good lock but not exceptional and it was open in forty seconds and he pushed the door and crossed the cell in two strides and crouched in front of Hongjoong and looked at him.

Up close: worse than from the door. The bruising was across his ribs too, visible through the torn shirt. The cut on his face needed cleaning. He looked tired in the specific way of someone who had been performing being fine for several days and was slightly relieved to have an audience he didn't need to perform for.

"Hi," Hongjoong said, quietly.

"Hi," Seonghwa whispered. He looked at the chains. "Are you—"

"I'm fine," Hongjoong said. "It looks worse than—"

"You look terrible," Seonghwa said.

"You look incredible," Hongjoong said. "The blood really—"

"Don't," Seonghwa said.

"You have blood on your face," Hongjoong said, "and you're doing the thing with your eyes where you're furious and also—"

"I said don't," Seonghwa glared. He was working on the chains. Different lock, simpler, and it released and he caught Hongjoong's wrists before they could drop and checked them — the circulation, the skin, the damage. "Can you move your hands."

"Yes," Hongjoong said.

"Both of them. Properly."

Hongjoong moved both hands. Properly.

"Good," Seonghwa said.

"You're checking my hands," Hongjoong said.

"I'm assessing the damage," Seonghwa said.

"You came all the way here," Hongjoong said, amused, "and you're checking my hands. What about my face? That's more important."

"I'm going to check all of it," Seonghwa said, "and then I'm going to—"

A door at the end of the corridor opened.

Seonghwa stood up.

Baek Jungwon was — larger than Seonghwa had expected, which was information, and had several men with him, which was also information. He looked at the open cell and Seonghwa standing in front of it and took in the specific picture of the situation.

"Well," he said.

"Leave," Seonghwa said.

Baek laughed. "That's not how this—"

"You should listen to him," Hongjoong said, from inside the cell, and his voice had changed — not the performing-fine version, something else, something that had an edge in it. "He said leave and if I was you, I would do that."

Baek looked furious and ready to fight.

"I'm rooting for you, princess," Hongjoong added, to Seonghwa, in a completely different tone, warm and genuine. "You've got this."

"If you say one more thing," Seonghwa said, without turning, "I will leave you in that cell."

"You won't," Hongjoong said.

"I will," Seonghwa said.

"You probably spent four days searching for me," Hongjoong said. "You're not leaving me in the cell."

"Watch me," Seonghwa said.

"Also," Hongjoong said, "you look like something out of a story right now. Has anyone ever told you that? Like a dream come true. The hair and the swords and the blood and the—"

"Shut up," Seonghwa said, with the specific quality of someone whose focus is being genuinely challenged, and moved toward Baek.

The fight was — Baek was good. Better than good. He had weight and reach and the men with him filled the space in a way that required constant awareness of the multiple angles and Seonghwa had both swords out and was managing it, reading it the way he always read things, but Baek had clearly done this before and clearly knew how to keep pressure on multiple points simultaneously and it required full attention.

"Your footwork on the left," Hongjoong said, helpfully, from the cell.

Seonghwa glanced sideways.

Baek hit him across the shoulder with a blade — not deep, a grazing hit, but a hit — and the sting of it was significant and Seonghwa moved back and reset and turned to look at Hongjoong with an expression that was the specific expression of someone who had just been hit because of an idiot.

"That," Seonghwa said, "is your fault."

"That was my fault," Hongjoong agreed, with the expression of someone who was also slightly delighted. "I'm sorry. Genuinely. You're doing—"

"Don't talk," Seonghwa said.

"You're doing amazing," Hongjoong said. "Truly. It's—"

"I will—"

"Can I repay for that hit with a blowjob?" Hongjoong said. "Is that on the table? As compensation? I feel like given the dispute resolution clause in our agreement—"

Seonghwa turned back to Baek.

He put both swords to work with the specific fury of someone who has had enough.

The fight ended fairly quickly after that.

When the last of them was down and Baek was — dealt with, conclusively, the way things got dealt with conclusively — Seonghwa stood in the corridor and breathed and looked at his hands and then looked at the cell.

Hongjoong was watching him.

The grin was gone.

Something else was in its place — something that was looking at Seonghwa with an expression that was not the performance, not the charm, not the grin. Something real and present and not managed.

Seonghwa walked back into the cell.

He crossed to Hongjoong.

He looked at him for one moment — the bruising, the dried blood, the torn shirt, the hands.

And then he punched him.

Right across the jaw. Not gentle. Not enough to do damage beyond what was already there, calculated as always, but committed — the specific force of someone who had been holding something for four days and had now released it.

Hongjoong's head snapped sideways.

He blinked.

Looked at Seonghwa.

"What the fuck, princess."

"How," Seonghwa said, breathing hard, hands shaking very slightly, "did you think this was a good idea. How did you look at that situation and think yes, I will trade myself, that's the smart—"

"The kids were—"

"I know what they were," Seonghwa said. "I know why you did it. That doesn't make it—" His voice had done something, gone slightly rough at the edge, and he pressed his lips together and looked away. "That doesn't make it not stupid."

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

"Don't," Seonghwa said.

"Look at me," Hongjoong said.

"I'm looking at the wall," Seonghwa said.

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said. Quiet. Genuine.

Seonghwa looked at him.

Hongjoong was looking up at him with the expression that was not the grin and not the charm and was — something that Seonghwa had seen once before, in a narrow corridor on a ship at night, and had been thinking about for three weeks without admitting he was thinking about it.

"You came," Hongjoong said.

"Obviously I came," Seonghwa said.

"You spent four days to look for me," Hongjoong said, he was counting the days.

"I know how long it took," Seonghwa said.

"You brought both crews," Hongjoong said.

"Your crew needed transport," Seonghwa said.

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

"I'm going to kill you," Seonghwa said. "When you're recovered. I'm going to kill you properly."

"Okay," Hongjoong said, smiling brightly.

"I mean it," Seonghwa said still glaring.

"I know you mean it," Hongjoong said. He reached up — hands free now, both of them, and he reached up and put one hand on Seonghwa's jaw and Seonghwa went still. "You came."

"Stop saying that," Seonghwa said.

"You came for me," Hongjoong said. "You spent four days looking for me. Both crews. You walked through a fortress and probably killed all of them right?"

"Several people said something rude," Seonghwa said. "It wasn't entirely about you and they deserved it."

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

"You're delirious," Seonghwa said. "You've been chained to a wall for four days. You need water and medical—"

"Are you going to heal me with kisses?" Hongjoong said.

"I'm not going to—"

"Or a blowjob," Hongjoong said. "I feel like the blowjob offer was—"

"You're delirious," Seonghwa said.

"I'm not delirious," Hongjoong said. "I'm completely lucid. I've been lucid this whole time, it's been deeply unpleasant. Look at me."

He was looking at him.

He had been looking at him.

He had been looking at him since he walked through the door and he was looking at him now, the blonde hair and the blood on his face and the dark eyes and the expression that Seonghwa had been keeping behind something for three weeks and was not successfully keeping behind anything anymore.

Hongjoong put his other hand on Seonghwa's face.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," Seonghwa said, very quietly.

"Thank you," Hongjoong said, softly. Genuinely.

Seonghwa looked at him.

"Don't," he said.

"I knew you'd come," Hongjoong said. "I told them. I said my queen—"

"I'm not your—"

Hongjoong kissed him.

It was — not soft, the way a first kiss was supposed to be soft, it was something more committed than that, the specific kiss of someone who had been thinking about it for three weeks and a corridor and a pillow and a headbutt and was not interested in soft right now. His hands on Seonghwa's face, Seonghwa going still with surprise for exactly one second and then—

And then not still.

Seonghwa kissed him back.

One hand in Hongjoong's torn shirt, gripping, pulling, and the other coming up to the back of his head and Hongjoong groaned against his mouth and Seonghwa—

Seonghwa felt Hongjoong's hands drop.

The grip on his face went slack.

He pulled back.

Hongjoong's eyes were closed.

His face had gone — loose, the specific loose of someone who had been keeping themselves together through force of will for days and had just had that will removed by something warm and sudden, and he was — Seonghwa caught him. Both hands, automatic, as Hongjoong's weight shifted forward and he went — not fully unconscious, something in between, the specific somewhere between of total exhaustion meeting sudden relief meeting someone finally, finally, being there.

He fainted.

In Seonghwa's arms.

Seonghwa held him.

He stood in the cell in the fortress on the third island of the Jaedo chain holding Kim Hongjoong who had just kissed him and then immediately fainted, and he looked at his face — the bruising and the dried blood and the loose expression of someone finally, finally asleep — and thought several things.

You absolute bastard.

You impossible, infuriating, reckless—

He thought, very quietly, underneath everything else: I've got you.

He held him closer.

"You," he said, very quietly, to Hongjoong's unconscious face, "are going to be the death of me."

He gathered him up and carried him out.

Hongjoong woke up.

There was a sword at his throat.

Not pressed against it — resting, the flat of the blade, with the specific weight of something that had been placed there deliberately. Cool metal. Very present.

There was also a weight on his chest.

Not the pillow. Not a knife.

A person.

He opened his eyes slowly — the specific slowness of someone assessing a situation before announcing they're awake — and looked at the ceiling first because the ceiling was safe, and then down.

Seonghwa was sitting on him.

Or — had been sitting on him. Was currently in the specific position of someone who had been sitting on him and had fallen asleep doing it, one hand on the sword, head dropped forward slightly, silver hair loose and falling around his face. He was in a clean shirt, which meant they were on a ship, which meant someone had thought about clean shirts at some point. There was still a bandage visible at his shoulder where the blade had caught him.

He had fallen asleep on Hongjoong's chest.

While holding a sword to his throat.

Hongjoong looked at him for a long moment.

He thought about the cell. The kiss. The last thing he remembered, which was Seonghwa's face at extremely close range and the specific warmth of his lips.

He smiled.

He moved his hands to Seonghwa's thighs.

He squeezed.

Seonghwa's eyes snapped open.

The sword was up in an instant — Hongjoong watched it move fast and then stop, Seonghwa registering the situation in approximately one second: him, Hongjoong, the ship, the chest he'd been sleeping on, the hands on his thighs.

He glared down.

"Good morning," Hongjoong said.

"Don't," Seonghwa said.

"Are you going to wake me up like this from now on?" Hongjoong said. "Because I genuinely wouldn't mind. The sword is a lot but the rest of it—"

"Shut up," Seonghwa said.

"You fell asleep on me," Hongjoong said.

"I didn't fall—" Seonghwa started.

"You fell asleep on my chest," Hongjoong said. "With a sword. Which is—"

"I was keeping watch," Seonghwa said.

"You were asleep," Hongjoong said.

"I was keeping watch," Seonghwa said. "In a resting position."

"Your eyes were closed," Hongjoong said.

"I was—"

"You were asleep," Hongjoong said. "You sat on my chest to keep watch and you fell asleep. Which means you haven't slept properly in—"

"Kim Hongjoong," Seonghwa said, with the quality that said the name was a warning.

"How long," Hongjoong said. Quieter. Something in his voice had shifted. "Since the fortress. How long did you sleep?"

A pause.

Seonghwa was still sitting on his chest. The sword was still in his hand but the angle had shifted — not at his throat anymore, just held. His hair was loose from the sleep and the glare was present but under the glare something was showing through that Hongjoong was looking at directly.

"You haven't slept," Hongjoong said.

"I've slept," Seonghwa said.

"You haven't slept," Hongjoong said, "since the fortress. You've been on watch the whole time."

"Someone had to—"

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

"You were in bad shape," Seonghwa said, very controlled. "Someone had to—"

"You stayed," Hongjoong said.

"I was keeping—"

"You stayed with me," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa looked at him.

The glare was still there. It was always there. But underneath it — the expression that had been living underneath things for three weeks on a ship and three more weeks after a port and four days in a search — was very close to the surface and not successfully submerged.

"Don't look at me like that," Seonghwa said.

"How am I looking at you," Hongjoong said.

"Like—" Seonghwa stopped. His jaw moved. "Like that. Stop it."

"I can't help it," Hongjoong said. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever looked at. I've thought so since the moment you walked out of that cabin door and tried to kill me." He tilted his head. "You still have blood in your hair."

"I've been busy," Seonghwa said.

"Come here," Hongjoong said.

"I'm already—" Seonghwa looked at his own position. On Hongjoong's chest. "I'm already—"

"Come here," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa looked at him.

Looked at the hands that were still on his thighs.

Looked at Hongjoong's face — the bruising, the healing cut, the expression that was not the grin and not the charm but something underneath both of those that was, apparently, what was there when those things stopped being needed.

"You fainted," Seonghwa said. "In my arms. You kissed me and then you fainted."

"I know," Hongjoong said.

"That was very dramatic," Seonghwa said.

"I had been chained to a wall for several days," Hongjoong said. "I think I earned it."

"You could have—"

"Come here," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa looked at him.

His jaw was still tight. The glare was still there. His chest was rising and falling in a way that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with proximity and the hands on his thighs and the specific expression on Hongjoong's bruised face.

"Don't look at me like that," he said again. Quieter.

"I mean it," Hongjoong said. "Every word. I meant every word since the first day."

A silence.

"Princess," Hongjoong said. Soft.

Seonghwa's expression did the thing.

The armor cracked.

He leaned down and kissed him.

This kiss was different from the one in the cell.

The cell one had been — sudden, committed, the release of something held for too long. This one had time in it. The specific time of two people who both knew and were acknowledging that they know and are choosing to stop pretending they don't.

Seonghwa kissed him and Hongjoong kissed back with both hands moving up his thighs to his hips and pulling, and Seonghwa made a sound against his mouth that was almost the sound from the corridor — almost, not quite, closer to something that had stopped being managed.

"You're supposed to be resting," Seonghwa said, against his mouth.

"I feel fine," Hongjoong said.

"You were chained to a wall—"

"I feel extremely fine," Hongjoong said, hands at his waist, at his hips, learning the shape of them. "I feel better than I have in weeks, actually. Come here."

"You need to—"

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said. He pulled back enough to look at him. "I spent several days in a cell thinking about you. I spent three weeks before that thinking about you. I'm not going to rest now."

Seonghwa looked at him.

"You thought about me," he said, softly.

"Constantly," Hongjoong said.

"I didn't think about you," Seonghwa lied.

"You thought about me," Hongjoong said.

"Only when I was reviewing the maritime agreement," Seonghwa said.

"The dispute resolution clause," Hongjoong said.

"The whole document," Seonghwa said.

"The dispute resolution clause," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa's jaw moved.

"I thought about you," he said. Flat. The specific tone of someone reporting a fact they've decided to stop fighting.

"I know," Hongjoong said. His hands slid under the hem of Seonghwa's shirt, warm against his skin. "I know you did."

Seonghwa inhaled.

"You're injured," he said.

"I'm not interested in the injury right now," Hongjoong said.

"The bruising on your ribs—"

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

"—is significant and—"

"I'm going to need you to stop talking about my ribs," Hongjoong said, "and kiss me again."

A pause.

"I'm going to stay like this," Seonghwa said.

Hongjoong grinned. "Perfect."

"I'm serious," Seonghwa said.

"I know you're serious," Hongjoong said. "I said perfect. You're on top. I want you on top. I've been thinking about you on top of me since—"

"Don't," Seonghwa said.

"—since the second night when you sat on my chest with a knife," Hongjoong said, "and I thought about what else you could—"

Seonghwa kissed him to shut him up.

Which Hongjoong had, somewhat, been aiming for.

He kissed back with both hands sliding up Seonghwa's back under the shirt and Seonghwa's hands were in his hair — not gentle, the specific grip of someone who had been managing something and was done managing it — and the kiss went on from the kind with time in it to something else, something with heat in it, the heat that had been living in corridors and narrow bunks and night visits for weeks.

"I'm topping," Seonghwa said, against his mouth.

"Sure," Hongjoong said.

"I'm serious," Seonghwa said. "I'm—"

Hongjoong rolled.

The speed of it — Seonghwa went onto his back with Hongjoong above him and the sword went somewhere, the bunk was narrow and both of them were aware of this and working around it, and Hongjoong was looking down at him with the grin and Seonghwa was looking up with the glare that was not entirely a glare.

"I said," Seonghwa said, very controlled, "I was on top."

"You were on top," Hongjoong said. "I'm on top now. We're both correct."

"That's not—"

"Also," Hongjoong said, hands on either side of his face, "if you think I'm going to bottom when I've been thinking about you for three weeks, you're significantly wrong."

Seonghwa's expression did something.

"If you say that word," he said, very quiet, very controlled, "one more time—"

"Bottom?" Hongjoong said.

"I will cut your cock off," Seonghwa said.

"You need my cock," Hongjoong said.

A silence.

Seonghwa's face went several colors.

"I don't need—" he started.

"You want it," Hongjoong said. He leaned down, very close, the grin and the dark eyes and the bruised face. "You've wanted it since the corridor. Since the second night. Since I pressed myself against you and you—"

He rolled again. They went again. The narrow bunk was not designed for two people having this argument and they were both aware and neither of them stopped.

Three more rolls.

The bunk ended.

They hit the floor.

A pause.

Seonghwa was on top.

He looked down at Hongjoong.

Hongjoong looked up at him.

"Perfect," Hongjoong said, grinning. "You're on top. You can ride me now. Everyone wins."

Seonghwa grabbed his face with one hand, fingers pressing into his jaw, and kissed him in the specific way of someone who has decided this is how it's going to go and is implementing the decision. Hongjoong made a sound against his mouth — muffled, real, the first sound he'd made that wasn't managed.

"Don't look so smug," Seonghwa said, against his mouth.

"I'm not smug," Hongjoong said.

"You're extremely smug," Seonghwa said.

"I'm happy," Hongjoong said. "There's a difference."

Seonghwa looked at him.

At the bruised face and the grin and the hands that had found his hips again and the specific expression of someone who was happy, genuinely, underneath everything else.

"Insufferable," Seonghwa said.

"You like it," Hongjoong said.

"I don't—"

"You came for me," Hongjoong said. "You killed half a fortress. You sat on my chest for however long making sure I was breathing."

Seonghwa's jaw tightened.

"Shut up," he said.

"Make me," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa kissed him again.

The clothes went.

Slowly at first — slower than either of them had patience for, and then faster, the specific impatience of wanting and finally being allowed. Seonghwa's shirt. Then Hongjoong's. The swords, set aside with the specific care Seonghwa always gave them even in circumstances that were not sword-focused. The rest of it.

Hongjoong looked at him.

He looked at him the way he had on the first day when Seonghwa had walked out of the cabin door — with the full attention of someone for whom this specific person was the most interesting thing available — but different now. Closer. The real version.

"You're staring," Seonghwa said.

"Yes," Hongjoong said.

"Stop—"

"No," Hongjoong said. "You're—" He paused. Let himself say it. "You're beautiful. You know that. Don't pretend you don't know that."

Something moved through Seonghwa's expression that was not the armor and not the fury.

He looked at Hongjoong instead of answering.

"Your ribs," he said, softly.

"Are fine," Hongjoong said.

"They're not fine," Seonghwa said, hand moving to them — not harsh, careful, the careful of someone assessing. "The bruising is—"

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

"I'm checking—"

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said. He caught the hand. Held it against his ribs. Held his gaze. "I'm fine. I need you to trust that I'm fine."

A pause.

Seonghwa looked at the bruising. Looked at his face.

"You say you're fine and you're not," he said.

"I'm fine," Hongjoong said.

"If you—"

"Come here," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa gave up.

Hongjoong had two fingers in Seonghwa's mouth.

He'd done it without asking — one moment his hand was at Seonghwa's jaw and the next his fingers were pressed to his lips and Seonghwa had parted them and that was — that was information, that was the specific information of someone who was going to pretend this wasn't exactly what they wanted and was currently making it impossible to pretend because his tongue was sliding between his finger while his other hand was opening him up—

"Look at me," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa looked at him.

The dark eyes from above, Hongjoong below him with both of them stripped and the floor of the cabin and the two swords a foot away, and Seonghwa was looking at him with the expression that had nothing in front of it, nothing behind it, just present and open and slightly furious in the way that was the real way, the way that had nothing to do with combat.

Hongjoong pulled his fingers out.

Slow.

He held Seonghwa's gaze the whole time.

"You're doing that on purpose," Seonghwa said. His voice had done something. Gone lower, rougher at the edge, the voice of someone whose body had taken over a significant portion of the controls.

"Yes," Hongjoong said.

"Hong—"

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said, soft. He reached between them. "Tell me if—"

"Don't ask," Seonghwa said. "Don't — I know. I know what I want. Just do it—"

"Okay," Hongjoong said. "Okay."

He pulled his finger out and pressed his dick in slowly.

Seonghwa made a sound.

Not a word. Not managed. The specific involuntary sound of someone whose body had overridden all other considerations, and Hongjoong felt it land everywhere and held still, watching his face, watching the furrow of his brow and the way his jaw had dropped slightly and the silver hair spread beneath him.

"Still okay?" Hongjoong said.

"I'm going to—" Seonghwa started, and stopped, and the sound he made when Hongjoong moved was the answer.

"You're so—" Hongjoong started.

"Don't," Seonghwa said, breathless.

"I'm going to," Hongjoong said. He moved again and watched the sound leave Seonghwa's mouth without permission, the whimper of it, sharp and real and going directly through him. "You're so fucking beautiful. I've been thinking about this since—"

"Don't," Seonghwa said, but the don't had no armor on it anymore.

"Since the first day," Hongjoong said. He pressed deeper and Seonghwa's hands gripped his hair and Hongjoong said, into his ear: "My princess. My queen—"

Seonghwa moaned.

Loud. Actual. The sound of someone who had stopped caring about the volume and was experiencing something that overrode the preference for quiet, and Hongjoong felt his whole body respond to it, felt the low heat of it, his dick twitching inside Seonghwa and held himself still because he needed a second.

"Hongjoong- you," Seonghwa said, breathless, furious, "cannot call me—"

"Princess," Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa's hips moved.

Not a decision. The involuntary kind, the kind that happened before the decision to be controlled could catch up, and Hongjoong grinned and moved with him and the sound Seonghwa made was — not the whimper this time, something bigger, a moan that had been living in him for several weeks and had finally found the exit.

"Say it again," Hongjoong said.

"Say what—"

"Say my name," Hongjoong said. He moved again, the slow drag of it, watching the expression do the thing it did when all the armor was off. "Say it."

"Hongjoong—" Seonghwa said, and it broke in the middle, split by a breath, and that was it, that was the thing Hongjoong had been waiting for without knowing he was waiting for it.

He picked up the pace.

Seonghwa's sounds changed — the whimpers and the moans and between them the whines, the specific whine of someone who needed more and was past caring about admitting it, hands scrabbling for purchase on his shoulders, silver hair wild across the floor, the expression fully present and fully unmanaged and looking up at Hongjoong like—

"Look at you," Hongjoong said, slightly hoarse, moving, watching him. "Look at you, you're perfect ... fuck—"

"Don't stop," Seonghwa said. It came out almost steady. Almost.

"I'm not stopping," Hongjoong said.

"Don't—" A sound. "Don't stop."

"I've got you," Hongjoong said. "I've got you, I'm not—"

"Hongjoong," Seonghwa whined.

He didn't stop.

Afterward, Seonghwa lay on the floor of the cabin with Hongjoong's weight half on him and breathed.

Hongjoong's face was against his shoulder.

Not moving.

"If you faint again," Seonghwa said.

"I'm not fainting," Hongjoong said, into his shoulder. "I'm resting. There's a difference."

"Mm," Seonghwa said.

A silence.

The ship moved around them. Sounds from above — crew, the specific sounds of a ship being operated. Not Seonghwa's crew — both crews, the combined arrangement that had been making itself work for the last several days.

"My crew," Hongjoong said.

"On my ship," Seonghwa said. "Everyone is fine."

"Wooyoung and San," Hongjoong said.

"Are insufferable together," Seonghwa said. "Somehow even more insufferable than separately."

"And Jongho and Yeosang," Hongjoong said.

"Still not talking," Seonghwa said. "Still looking."

"Mingi and Yunho," Hongjoong said.

"Mingi has been making food every two hours," Seonghwa said. "Yunho has been eating all of it. They're fine."

Hongjoong made a sound against his shoulder.

Something warm. Something that had nothing to do with amusement.

"You know all of their situations," he said.

"I was on a ship with them for several days," Seonghwa said.

"You kept track of all of them," Hongjoong said.

"Someone had to," Seonghwa said.

A pause.

"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said.

"Don't," Seonghwa said.

"Thank you," Hongjoong said. "For all of it. The fortress. The crew. The—" He paused. "All of it."

A silence.

Seonghwa looked at the ceiling.

"You're going to be impossible about this," he said.

"Probably," Hongjoong said.

"You're going to call me your queen publicly," Seonghwa said.

"Definitely," Hongjoong said.

"In front of harbor registrars," Seonghwa said.

"Every one I can find," Hongjoong said.

"I will cut your cock off," Seonghwa said.

"You need my cock," Hongjoong said, and Seonghwa could hear the grin in it without having to see his face.

"I need nothing from you," Seonghwa said.

"You need me to update the dispute resolution clause," Hongjoong said. "Given the current situation. The original terms don't reflect—"

"Go to sleep," Seonghwa said.

"It's a legitimate—"

"Kim Hongjoong," Seonghwa said.

"Park Seonghwa," Hongjoong said. And then, quieter: "Princess. My queen."

Seonghwa's jaw tightened.

The ship moved.

The sounds from above continued.

Hongjoong's breathing, against his shoulder, slowed.

Seonghwa lay on the floor of his own cabin and looked at the ceiling and thought about the dispute resolution clause and the document with both their names on it and four days of searching and a corridor on a ship and a pillow and a headbutt and a man who had grinned at him from a jail cell with blood on his face.

You impossible, infuriating, reckless—

Mine.

He didn't say it.

He looked at the ceiling and listened to Hongjoong breathe against his shoulder and didn't say it.

But he thought it.