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Pulling her greasy leather gloves off of her hands, Jay dropped to her knees in front of Chip’s cot, leaning her elbow on the ground as she sifted through the amount of stuff that he had gathered on his side of the room. His area was a lot messier than hers and Jay had yet to figure out if he had any sort of organization system at all. To her, it just seemed like he had stuff thrown about everywhere.
They had designated places for any of their personal items, a chest next to their bed that also served as a nightstand for either of them. Chip’s was covered in trinkets, books, coins, and other pieces of jewelry and items that he didn’t carry on him all the time. Jay had no idea where he got most of this stuff, probably stole it from someone when no one was looking at him, and then dumped it in his own little treasure box.
Even though they had places in their room for all their stuff, Chip ended up leaving his things around the room anyway. His swords, his clothes, and any of the other various weapons that he didn’t carry on his person all the time while they were just on the ship.
He had the unfortunate habit of constantly leaving his coat and hat around the ship. Jay was constantly picking up both items if only for the comedy of him staring her directly in the eyes and asking where his coat was while she was currently wearing the garment. It was one of Jay’s many forms of entertainment on the ship. Especially when Chip didn’t even notice.
At least since the last time Jay had seen him, Chip was currently wearing his coat, but she could see his hat tossed on top of the wooden desk that they had in the captain’s quarters. The extravagant decorations on the hat rustled lightly with the movement of the Albatross as the waves pushed it back and forth.
Jay rolled her eyes at the abandoned garment and continued rooting around underneath Chip’s bed looking for her pliers. He always took them in order to tune his old banged-up guitar since the tuning pegs fell off a while back. So he needed to use the pliers to make sure it stayed in tune. Unfortunately, Chip also has the habit of not putting things back where they belong. So now Jay was left without her pliers and Chip had no idea where he had put them.
The thin sheets on his cot slightly dragged over the edge and fell in front of Jay’s face, obscuring her vision of the dark crevice underneath his cot. Jay sat up just a bit so she could push them away in order to keep looking. Her goggles that dangled around her throat hit her collar when she sat up, the slightly cracked lenses making a thumping sound against her bone when she moved too quickly. Jay adjusted them to a more comfortable position and sighed.
She rolled her eyes and huffed amusedly at the rumpled, messy state of his bed and the fact that his pillow was all the way at the foot of the mattress. He always woke up with his bed looking like he had just tried to wrestle with the blankets in his sleep. Or he woke up on the floor.
That was why Chip couldn’t sleep in his hammock anymore, he would always end up falling out of it. And at the height that it was currently hanging at, it was a lot harder of a fall.
Chuckling to herself lightly at that thought, Jay continued rooting around underneath Chip’s bed, looking for her beloved pliers that he had so rudely stolen from her again. He didn’t even have them near his guitar where he normally left them when he was finished using them. Jay had checked extensively around his guitar but there was nothing.
She found a couple empty bottles of alcohol that must have gotten knocked under his bed during their late-night drinking sessions in the middle of the floor. Or Chip had been hiding them there for his own personal stash. Either way, not what Jay was looking for, she didn’t really care if Chip was stashing food or alcohol on his side of the room. His relationship was food was none of her business.
Jay found one of her own shirts that had gone missing a few months ago and just rolled her eyes and tossed it over to her side of the room where it landed on her own cot. So much for lending Chip her shirts (even though she did the same to him).
There was another dagger stashed underneath his bed that Jay had no idea where Chip had gotten it from, it had a decorative handle with a design etched into the base of the blade. She left it there and didn’t bother with it, she didn’t need to know what kind of cursed objects were underneath Chip’s bed.
There were a few other small trinkets like a deck of cards, and some marbles that may or may not have been from Ollie. A few rocks and shells inside a large wooden mug that Jay was more than certain were from Gillion. She found a bag of caramel candy that she may have swiped one or two of when she found them and tucked them into her pocket for later. But she still couldn’t find her pliers, or any of her other tools just in case they might be here.
Deciding that there was nothing else under his bed of use, Jay used the mattress as an anchor to pull herself up to her feet, head swiveling back and forth as she glanced around the room. The captain’s quarters were still pretty messy from all their combined loot and items that they all had scattered around the room, so just trying to find anything in there was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Jay figured that they all needed to take a day to just clean up their room (and maybe the rest of the ship while they were at it).
Jay scuffed her shoe against the ground and grumbled to herself as she wandered over to Chip’s chest of items next to his bed. He had placed his normal bag on the surface of it so he had easy access to it when they were stopping at an island and he needed to grab something. Normally he had it pretty nearby, but it was open for Jay to take a peek into while she was looking for her stuff.
It was very possible that he had tucked it into his bag out of habit and forgot that he put it there because who would think that he would put it in his bag. Normally he would either leave the pliers with his guitar in case he needed them before Jay did, or he would tuck them neatly back inside Jay’s toolbox sitting near the end of her bed. (Well, at the moment her toolbox was on the table in the common area, but normally it was on the floor at the foot of her bed).
Jay hooked the strap of his bag around her shoulder to keep it supported as she pulled open the flap, digging her hand through the leather bag in search of anything that might be helpful to her specifically. She didn’t really care about the stuff that Chip normally had on him, she just wanted her stuff back.
It was a lot of his normal equipment that didn’t really matter much, Jay pulled each item out to look at it briefly before setting it on the edge of his bed to put back inside later. A bag of ball bearings that had a suspiciously loose ribbon around the lip, a pack of thieves' tools, another dagger, a religious symbol that Jay had genuinely no idea why Chip kept on him. He had some rations and a good few feet of rope coiled tightly together as well as other essential items. He had a lot of stuff in his bag.
Jay’s fingers curled around the neck of a smooth, cool bottle, her fingertips brushing against the ridges of engraving near the lip. Jay furrowed her eyebrows slightly confused as she pulled out the interestingly shaped bottle, knowing automatically that it wasn’t a bottle of alcohol or anything like that. Alcohol bottles usually weren’t shaped so angular or decorated so well. At least not the type of alcohol that Chip bought.
Jay pulled the interesting and very curious bottle out of the bag, her other hand sliding against the hem of Chip’s bag, feeling at the stitches while she examined the other item Chip had. Her eyebrows furrowed and she almost immediately recognized what it was, if only by the color alone.
In her hand was a triangular-shaped bottle with a wide bottom and a narrow neck. Around the neck and the body of the glass were engravings and delicate ridges of a design melded into the glass like a beautiful stained glass window. Jay figured they looked a lot like feathers and flowers, but it was hard for her to be sure when the light of the lanterns nearby and the sloshing of the pink liquid made it a bit harder to tell.
Not to mention the bright pink liquid inside the bottle, seemingly incredibly diluted as it sloshed back and forth with much more momentum than it probably should for a liquid like that. It seemed thinner than water, easier to disturb, and a lot more volatile with the way that it bubbled and fizzed from inside the glass.
On the top of the bottle, just as finely decorated as the rest of the potion, was a spray nozzle with a ball at the end similar to the perfume bottles that Jay remembered seeing in the windows of dozens of stores. It even had a pink tassel at the end with the nozzle and the stopper of the entire bottle colored a dark red color, making the entire thing seem way too frilly for something Chip would own.
And if Jay hadn’t been there when he had gotten it, she probably wouldn’t have believed that the item was Chip’s in the first place. It seemed way too prissy and fancy for him, especially not something that was so well decorated that it even looked like a perfume bottle. But Jay knew better, and she knew exactly what it was without even needing to think too hard. It was distinct enough for her to recognize, and she felt a pang of some sort of disappointed emotion at the fact that Chip had kept it this long.
The Philter of Love.
A love potion.
Chip still had the stupid love potion that he had bought. It wasn’t even hidden away somewhere on his side of the room, it was just sitting in his bag with the rest of his equipment as if he planned to use it sometime soon.
Jay blinked at the bottle in her hands for a long time, staring at it while trying to decide how she felt about the fact that Chip still carried it on him. What did he plan to use it for anyway? Did he have something in mind for the future? Did he think that it would somehow help out in some tricky situation? A million questions ran through Jay’s head as she tried to ration with herself the reason that Chip still had it.
It was just another potion, similar to their low supply of health potions. It was another piece of equipment, another thing that they could use if things went wrong. It was just something they could use. There was nothing to it. Nothing that Jay had to be worried about. Even if it was in the hands of the person she probably trusted the absolute least with a love potion.
Jay shook her head slowly and let out a long breath, her shoulders slumping as she came to terms with what she had just found. It wasn’t a big deal. She didn’t know why she expected Chip not to have it anymore, he wouldn’t just get rid of something like this, especially not when there was still probably something they could use it for. But she was just surprised to see it just sitting in his bag like that.
That was enough snooping for today. Jay was going to call her pliers a lost cause. They were missing in action. Lost at sea. Gone with the wind. Wanted dead or alive. Something like that. Jay wasn’t going to find her pliers any time soon.
They would probably show up a few weeks later long after her project was complete and she had found some alternative way to get by without the specific tool she needed. And then she would get frustrated with herself for not being able to find it when it was in such an obvious place that now seemed stupid in hindsight.
Whatever. She didn’t need to be shifting through Chip’s stuff, he could look for it himself when she would ask him to look for it himself later tonight.
Jay shook her head again and moved to put the love potion back into his bag. However, somehow in the time that Jay had been stuck in her own thoughts, the flap covering the opening of Chip’s bag had slipped back into place, not keen on being open for so long. So when Jay distractedly moved to put the potion back into the bag, the glass bottle slipped off the edge of the flap, not fully going into the opening of the fabric.
Instead of going back into its respective place, the bottle clattered to the floor with a terrifyingly loud thud. A large cloud of the pink liquid sprayed into the air from the nozzle with the way that it had been dropped and Jay found herself coughing at the sharp, almost dry feeling that entered her throat. It was like inhaling sand, a sickeningly sweet taste coating her tongue and making her mouth feel sticky.
She coughed again and waved her hand away from her face to try and clear the pink cloud that had gathered around her head. The smell was almost overwhelming, a sharp, aggressive taste of whatever ingredients had been added to the potion filling her lungs and making her wheeze. It tasted almost like chewing on the petals of the most fragrant flower that Jay had ever encountered, a distinctly floral and fruity smell practically causing her to gag.
Jay braced herself on the bedpost of Chip’s cot, sitting down on the edge of the mattress to allow herself to catch her balance, the sleeping quarters beginning to spin around her in a wave of vertigo. She shook her head slowly and pinched at the bridge of her nose, covering her face with one hand, not even caring about the grease that she smeared all over her cheeks.
The smell and taste alone almost caused Jay an immediate headache, a groan dripping from her lips as she tried to reorient herself, slowly coming back to her senses as if she were pulling herself out of a pool of molasses. The taste and dry feeling of dust or sand down her throat made Jay cough again, but the cloud cleared quickly after a few moments. She could even feel the fizzy texture of the pink liquid on her tongue and every attempt to swallow left her wheezing.
Her vision seemed a little fuzzy around the edges, and no matter how many times Jay blinked and tried to rub her eyes, it didn’t seem to help. But at least the dizziness subsided quickly, allowing Jay to at least lower herself to the floor to pick up the bottle so she could return it to Chip’s bag.
She did so slowly, hands finding purchase on the edge of the bed while she gently placed her knee on the floor, sitting down on her legs to feel where the bottle had rolled underneath Chip’s cot. She felt shaky, slightly disoriented, and with her heart pounding wildly in her chest, enough that it almost made her ribs ache. It was hard to feel around the floor without feeling the swaying of the ship throwing her even more off balance.
Jay managed to feel around enough that she found the edge of the bottle, curling her hands around the cold, bumpy glass. At least it hadn’t broken when Jay dropped it, she felt like she would be in a lot worse of a situation if the glass had actually shattered. Then she would have to deal with broken glass and the fact that she had spilled a very aromatic potion.
But the potion was fine, with a quick and slightly disoriented check, the nozzle and the spray part of it seemed to be in working condition (not that Jay gave it a squeeze to test it). And even if she had a hard time really examining it with the way that her head and vision seemed to swim, she figured that it was okay.
Carefully, she tucked it back into Chip’s bag, making sure that it actually went in this time before letting go. Then she replaced all the items that she had taken out and put on his bed, making sure they all fit back where they were supposed to go.
Jay’s mind felt fuzzy, and she was sure that the growing headache she could feel throbbing in the back of her skull. She remained sitting on the floor for a few moments, Chip’s bag cradled against her stomach as she tried to wait for the feeling to pass, her body shaking and slightly twitchy as she blinked and tried to regulate her breathing.
Her heart pounded erratically in her chest, but at the same time, it felt as if a pool of dread had settled between her ribs. It was as if an aching void had just taken hold of her, getting bigger and bigger until it threatened to swallow her whole, a dark, festering sensation pressing against her heart in a way that made it hard to breathe. Jay grasped at something for support, trying to cling her way back into reality when it felt like she was going to drop off the face of Mana.
The feeling was almost instantaneous, not even a few moments given her to reorient herself before the taste and smell of the potion caused her head to spin. Jay rubbed her eyes again and took a deep breath, the overwhelming floral smell still lingering in her nose. It almost felt like the smell of alcohol but without the actual scent to it, it certainly burned her nose and mouth.
When Jay was just about to get up, her arms and legs shaking hard enough that she had a hard time even hooking her hands around the bedpost, Jay heard the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. If Jay were more aware of what had just happened and what she had just done, the sound might have alarmed her more than it did. But Jay’s thoughts worked sluggishly, processing the situation slowly as she focused more on the disorienting feeling in her body.
The hinges on the door to the sleeping quarters creaked and Jay didn’t even lift her head, breathing shallow and trying to calm her racing heart. She dragged her fingers across the floorboards, trying to grasp onto something that would ground her and maybe make her feel like she wasn’t completely falling off the edge of the world. The pit in her chest threatened to swallow her whole, and with the vertigo that caused her vision to swim, she felt close to falling in.
“Jay? What are you doing on the floor?” Came a familiar voice from the doorway, rough, warm tones filtering through the haze of Jay’s thoughts and rooted themselves right in the center of her mind. She would recognize the voice from a million miles away even in the worst kind of storm, the slightly rough, a little bit scratchy voice of her other co-captain.
The footsteps continued to approach, heavy thuds of well-worn-out boots stopping just next to Jay. Then, he knelt down in front of her with a concerned look on his face, one hand outstretched to place on Jay’s forearm. She was still clutching Chip’s bag to her chest.
It was as if something switched inside Jay’s mind, the gap that had threatened to swallow her whole inside her chest filling like the hole in the bottom of a lifeboat, water soaking into every crevice and weighing her down with both a flighty but heavy feeling. It flooded every part of her chest, filling her ribs with a warm, honey-like feeling that caused her heart to thud aggressively against her sternum. Now she couldn’t breathe for a completely different reason, her entire body locking up.
She was suddenly drowning in the worried gaze of Chip. Her eyes met his, and for a second she felt her heart skip, mouth opening and closing dumbly like a dying fish. He squeezed her arm and furrowed his eyebrows a little bit, looking Jay up and down as if he were trying to find something wrong with her. Jay felt her face flush at his gaze as she instinctively tried to pull away, despite everything else in her mind telling her to get closer.
Jay’s eyes widened slightly and she tried to pull her gaze away from his warm, comforting look, gaze lingering a bit too long on the splotches of freckles that dotted across the bridge of his nose. Or the way that his tattoos curled up underneath his collar, swirling against his neck and moving like the waves that pushed against the side of the boat.
She couldn’t help but blatantly stare at the way that his messy curls framed his face, starting to get a bit unruly with the way that he had been letting it grow out. But it just coiled gently around his face, settling on his shoulders and pulling back behind his ears with the bandana doing enough of a job at keeping his bangs out of his face.
His jaw twitched slightly as he seemed to try to think about something to say. Jay flicked her eyes down to the small dots of patchy stubble that spread across his chin, then to his small, chapped lips and the way that he seemed to hold his jaw as if there were something always in his mouth. How he seemed ready to speak at any given moment, like the way that a dog would twitch its lips right before it would bark.
The corners of Chip’s eyes were slightly scrunched up as he squinted at her, beautiful brown eyes darting back and forth across her face, searching for some sort of hint at what was going on. Jay couldn’t help but shiver. Her entire body trembled like a leaf the longer that he held onto her arms, but held her a foot or so away, not getting closer, not getting further away. They were stuck just a little bit apart and it was killing her.
He was beautiful, really. Jay couldn’t believe that she hadn’t fully noticed that before. Sure she could admit that he was relatively attractive, at least when he cleaned up. But she had never looked this close, never gotten this good of a look at the way that he set his jaw, or how his nose curved, or the way that his entire face scrunched up when he was thinking hard about something. She had never gotten to take a good, solid look at Chip before. Not like this.
And she didn’t know why she hadn’t before. His beauty really seemed obvious to anyone that might look a bit closely. There was a curl sticking out from underneath his bandana that fell over his freckled skin, and if Jay were not frozen in shock, she might’ve reached out to tuck it underneath the red fabric. Her fingers twitched and Jay continued to tremble, breath shaky as it spilled from her lips in startled gasps.
Chip’s eyebrows furrowed slightly at Jay’s silence, at the way that she was staring at him with her face steadily heating up more and more. She opened her mouth, closed it again, then tried to open it only for a startled squeak to be the only thing that came out of her mouth.
“Jay? Are you okay?” Chip placed his other hand on Jay’s shoulder and everywhere he touched seemed to burn. It seemed to make Jay’s heart thump harder, an odd sense of longing causing her chest to ache . She wanted to be closer, she wanted to bury herself into his arms and never leave, she wanted to hide in his warm embrace and feel protected by him. She wanted to hold him and be held. And she wanted to be with him so badly that even the small amount of distance between them seemed agonizingly far.
She wanted to get so close and to cling on so tight and she wanted to never leave. It felt like a fiery intensity right in the center of her chest, burning against her heart and setting every bit of her nerves aflame. Her heart fluttered so hard it felt like she was going to pass out from the way that she was hyperventilating.
Everything felt so intense, but at the same time, it felt like nothing else mattered. It was just Chip and Jay sitting together in their sleeping quarters. And there was nowhere else that Jay wanted to be. It was just them. That was all she needed.
She needed Chip. That was all that mattered at the moment.
Jay felt her breath hitch in her throat and it suddenly felt like the room was closing in on them. She was falling and the only thing that anchored her to the ground was Chip’s hands around her arms. And even so, that feeling deep in her chest caused her to pull away.
Despite every thought in her head, every instinct in her short-circuited body screamed at her to get closer, Jay pulled away. She jerked her arms away from Chip, dropping his bag on the floor between them as she scrambled back as if she’d been shocked. She moved like it too, like there were sparks of electricity jolting down her muscles, causing every move she made to end up twitchy and frightened.
She was scared. The intensity of every emotion running through her head scared her. Every thought, every observation of Chip’s form, his eyes, his lips, his jaw, his neck, his arms, his hands. Every single thing that she noticed, everything that she suddenly saw in such a new light that it was overwhelming. It was frightening. So very, very frightening.
Jay had never felt like this before, she had never felt such intense adoration, such infatuation. She had never felt this raw and vulnerable at just the mere touch of another person. She felt like she was falling apart at the seams, everything inside her screaming to get closer, screaming that she needed Chip, telling her that she needed to get closer.
It hurt. It scared her. It felt strangely comforting, now that she knew that Chip was here. But above all, it was the most terrifying thing that Jay had ever experienced in her life.
And Jay was never good at the whole flight or fight thing.
Chip pulled his arms away from Jay the moment that she started to pull away, his gaze pulled down to the space between them where Jay had dropped his bag as she scrambled back. His eyebrows furrowed a bit more and he seemed confused, tilting his head to the side in such an adorable way that Jay regretted putting the space between them.
“Why do you have my bag?” Chip asked, and Jay found that it was hard to even form her mouth to make a single word. She tried to say something and it just came out in another frightened squeak, a pitiful noise spilling from her lips the moment that she tried to get anything coherent.
She wanted to explain to him everything. She wanted to say that she had been snooping in his stuff. She wanted to tell him that she was just looking for her pliers to keep working on her current project. She wanted to tell him that she had looked through his bag of equipment in hopes that she would find it there. She wanted to tell him the things that she had found, the potion that she had grabbed from his bag.
She wanted to tell him that she had dropped the potion, and in turn, caused the spray nozzle to release. And she had breathed it in.
Oh, gods.
She had breathed it in.
That’s what that feeling was.
But Jay wouldn’t be able to say any of that even if she tried. She couldn’t tell Chip that she had dropped the love potion, or that she had accidentally affected herself with the cursed thing. Chip would make fun of her, he would laugh at her and Jay didn’t think she would be able to handle that at the moment. She couldn’t bear to think of him making fun of her, or his rejection, or him laughing at her stupid mistakes.
He would make fun of her, of course he would. How could she have possibly been this stupid?
“Jay, what’s going on? Come on, talk to me,” Chip begged, looking at Jay with a concerned expression, and Jay found that she relished a little bit in being on the receiving end of such a worried look (he was worried about her. He cared).
Instead of answering, Jay just shook her head and whined, bringing her hands up to her face to hide her expression. Her cheeks were burning to the touch and she figured that her face looked just as red as it felt. She pushed herself away from Chip despite all her thoughts to get closer. She shook and trembled and moved as if she were being struck with jolts of electricity.
“Jay?” Chip tried again. Jay could feel his presence as he reached over to get closer, she peeked up over her hands to see that he was leaning over with his arm outstretched.
Jay made a noise of surprise and backed up, suddenly uncurling herself from her current position and scrambling to her feet. She grabbed onto the edge of Chip’s bed for support, her knees shaking so badly she could barely keep them locked beneath her to hold her own weight. She panted hard and gasped for breath, heart beating so hard in her chest that it felt like it was going to burst.
What was she going to do? What was going to happen? Chip was going to hate her. He was going to make fun of her for such a stupid mistake and Jay would honestly deserve it. What kind of idiot would go snooping around in someone else's stuff?
Jay brought her hands up to her face again if only to hide the tears that were steadily welling up in the corners of her eyes. She whined and backed away, shaking like a leaf as she stared at Chip, waiting for his rejection even though he knew nothing of what was going on inside her head.
If she stayed here any longer she was going to lose it. She felt like a rubber band that was stretched way too far and could snap at any minute. If he kept looking at her with that kind, concerned expression, as if he really wanted to know what was wrong with her, she was going to start sobbing on the spot. She would cry and collapse into his arms and then it would be over for her. Chip would know.
She couldn’t let him know. She couldn’t let him know all the thoughts that currently ran through her head, the emotions that swirled in her stomach and made her want to throw up, all the hard, mushy feelings that made her want to melt at any thought of his gentle touch. She couldn’t let Chip find out. He would think her stupid for loving him, and Jay would deserve it. Even if she couldn’t help it.
He was looking at her so worriedly, already beginning to stand after Jay’s outburst. His expression was slightly furrowed and he had one hand extended as if he were talking to an injured, startled animal.
“Jay, what’s going on? Are you alright? Are you sick? Your face is all red,” Chip hooked his arm around the other bedpost on the other side of his cot and began to stand. Jay took a step away and whined, wrapping her arms around himself. His voice was so soft and gentle, full of worry and kindness. It was like warm honey dripping from the spoons that Jay would dip into the jar when she was little, trying to steal at least a mouthful of the tantalizing sweetness.
The way he looked at her, and the gentleness he showed with each action, was driving Jay crazy. He made himself so easy to love, and Jay couldn’t possibly help it.
She needed to get away. She needed to hide herself in her work and wait until this stupid love thing got out of her system. Jay didn’t have time for this at the moment, she was kind of in the middle of something and she definitely didn’t have time to indulge in stupid emotions like this. Especially not towards one of her co-captains, especially not towards Chip.
Jay shook her head slowly and felt tears welling up in her eyes, her body aching at the distance between them, a chill settling deep in her spine and causing her entire body to shake like a leaf. She trembled and shivered pathetically and felt all the more pain from the lack of contact. She wanted to curl up in his arms and burrow there all day where it was safe and warm. Jay knew how warm he was, it came from the magic that thrummed just underneath his skin.
It hurt. Jay hated the way that it felt physically painful to be this far away from him. From her love. From the subject of all her infatuation bundled up in a tight, heavy ball right in the center of her chest that made it hard to breathe.
“Gotta… Gotta go…” Jay finally managed to spit out, her voice seeming so odd coming from her throat. It was too strained, too high pitched, too shaky, too everything that Jay wasn’t supposed to be at the moment.
She wasn’t supposed to be this shaky and nervous just at the comprehension of her own feelings. Feelings that shouldn’t even be this intense, she shouldn’t be feeling like this, not towards Chip, not towards anyone. Jay had never felt this much in love with someone in her entire life and she couldn’t help but panic at the sensation.
“What? Where are you going?” Chip shook his head in disbelief as if he were having a hard time following this conversation. He looked like he was trying to understand what was going on inside Jay’s head, but by his look of confusion, he had no idea. Jay opened her mouth and then closed it again, continuing to slowly back away.
It felt as if she were a puppet being pulled by strings, but the puppet master was pulling her in the complete opposite direction that she was currently going. She was being drawn back towards Chip with a horrifying amount of panic fluttering in her throat. Jay pulled away from that tug, knowing that if she got away from Chip, then she might be able to wait this entire thing out.
She could hide somewhere on the ship, maybe go into the storage room and work on their alleged month-long project of sorting through all the crates and barrels and actually organizing the messy room. Then she wouldn’t have to see Chip and she could ignore all the feelings bundled up tight around her chest.
Out of sight. Out of mind. That was clearly the best way to go about this. Then she wouldn’t have to fight with every ounce of her willpower to simply keep a little bit away from Chip. The closer he got, the harder it got for Jay to think coherently, all her thoughts orienting on Chip and how much she just wanted to be near him.
Without answering any of Chip’s questions, Jay forced herself to pry her gaze away from him. She squeezed her eyes shut and backed away, bumping into the edge of their shared desk as she groped for the door handle. When she pried her eyes back open, she felt a heavy, cold weight settle down on her shoulders the moment that she forced herself away.
Jay grabbed the door and yanked on it hard to get it to open, the creaky hinges protesting each movement that she made. She forced herself through the doorway and slammed it shut behind her, tears already welling up in the corners of her eyes from the cavernous space between them. One wrong move and she would drop deep into the aching void.
Jay let out a high-pitched whine and brought her hands up to her head, trying to shake all the thoughts out of her brain to clear her mind. She needed to focus, she couldn’t be thinking about Chip. Maybe if she just ignored it, it would go away and she would be fine.
She covered her ears so as to not hear Chip’s voice calling after her like a siren from the depths of the sea. Jay forced herself to move, she forced each and every step that she took, one foot in front of the other. The sound of her boots thudding on the wooden floor was so agonizingly loud, all her senses were on high alert.
She could still smell the potion in her nose, and taste it in her mouth. It was going to be the death of her. Her heart was beating so fast that she was afraid that it was going to give out at a moment's notice.
Jay almost knocked over her toolbox as she moved back towards the table that she had set up earlier before this entire fiasco happened. She was too distracted to really pay attention to where she was or what she was doing and ended up running into the edge of the table. A sharp pain shot down her hip and Jay winced, pulling her hands away from her ears in order to rub the sore joint.
She sucked in a deep breath, then another, then another. She kept pulling deeper and deeper breaths into her lungs in hopes that it would calm her racing heart or calm down some of the spiraling thoughts that nearly made her dizzy. Jay shook her head slowly and ran her fingers nervously through her bangs, her curls catching on the rings on her fingers. Jay sighed and shook out her arms and hands, trying to get back into the mood.
If she let herself get distracted, she wouldn’t get this done. And if she thought too much about Chip, she was going to lose her mind. So either way, Jay needed to get back into her current task before she fully lost it.
Jay plopped herself down on her chair with a heavy sigh, hands shaking and her entire body going cold the moment that she tried to settle. An odd, aching sort of loneliness began to spread throughout her body, starting in her chest before spreading out into each of her limbs like an aura of dread coasting through her veins. She sucked in a deep breath again, held it for a second, and then let it out.
Her hands sought for her pliers that she had originally set out to retrieve. She needed them to continue with this part of the project, none of her other tools had a small enough part that would be able to fit where she needed to get her wires to go. And the pliers that she did have were way too big to be able to get the job done. She needed the pliers that Chip always took.
Jay stared for a long time at the project in front of her, the mess of gears and wires, pieces of scrap metal and bolts. She stared at the place that she needed her wires to go and she really wished that she had her pliers. It would make this entire thing a whole lot easier than her trying to use the tools that she already had.
Maybe she could ask Chip—
No, Jay jolted at the mere thought, her breathing catching in her throat. She couldn’t even help but consider the reason that Chip had taken her pliers in the first place. He wasn’t anywhere near handy enough to need them for their intended purpose, or for any reason in order to repair the ship.
He always took them to tune his guitar since the tuning pegs had long since fallen off. And his guitar never stayed in tune anyway, so he had to re-tune it several times during his playing session. He would play and play and play until his fingers were too sore to go on, and Jay loved to listen to his music. She never got to hear much music when she was in the Navy. At least nothing like the songs Chip would play.
When he played for Jay, he would always play happy, energetic songs, songs that caused his fingers to bounce from string to string, sliding up and down the neck of the guitar with such a fast pace that Jay had a hard time really following what he was doing. He would play and tap his foot to the beat, bobbing his head with the rhythm and smiling so fondly with his tongue poking out from behind his lips.
And when he finished with a song, he would look over at Jay with that adorable, beautiful expression on his face, waiting for her approval, waiting for her final verdict on how well he had played the song. Then Jay would smile and roll her eyes a little bit and clap her hands, even if her heart felt like it was going to burst at the joyful expression on his face.
Jay wondered if he would play his guitar for her right now.
The moment that thought popped into her head, Jay was suddenly jolted out of her daydream with a sudden burst of panic welling up in the back of her throat. She slapped her face in both of her palms and shook her head, trying to knock some sense back into herself.
She was fine. She just needed to stop thinking about Chip and then she could wait for this entire stupid potion to wear off and she could go about her day.
But even as she tried to ignore any thoughts that seemed to surface, everything that Jay did always managed to wind her back to thinking of Chip, her love. She somehow always kept spiraling back to the one topic, even as she pulled her gloves back on, even after she placed her goggles over her eyes in an attempt to block out everything in the room except her project.
She tried to tune out all the other sounds around her, the crashing of the waves against the side of the Albatross, the footsteps on the deck above her, the knowledge that Chip was probably among them upstairs, laughing, talking, interacting with the other crew. And Jay was down here lonely and stewing in her own feelings which she didn’t even understand.
When she worked, Jay’s hands trembled so badly that any tool she picked up seemed clumsy and awkward in her palms. She shivered so hard her teeth were chattering even despite the warmth of the day and the fact that she could feel beads of sweat running down the back of her neck and soaking into her shirt. She sighed and leaned back to fan her face, knowing that she could still feel the blush adorning her cheeks like an aggressive fever.
Jay certainly felt feverish. Her face was hot and her thoughts were working sluggishly, almost a sense of panic in the way that each of her thoughts raced back and forth, somehow managing to come back to Chip like a fixation. An obsession. Like pure infatuation.
And Jay hated that feeling.
She hated the way that she would shake and tremble, how her chest tightened at every reminder of how far apart she was from Chip, how she had isolated herself so much just to get away from her stupid feelings. She hated how her heart pounded so hard against her sternum that she felt it was going to break the thick cartilage. She hated the fact that every thought in her head seemed to revolve around Chip, how infatuated she was with him, how beautiful, how lovely, how kind, how sweet, how absolutely amazing he was in every sense of the word.
It was always him. It kept being him. It kept focusing all her attention and energy on the thoughts of Chip.
Jay was going to pull her hair out with how tight she clenched her fingers around the orange curls. She placed her elbows on the desk and put her head in her hands, trying to ignore the tears that welled up in the corners of her eyes. She wasn’t going to cry over a stupid crush like this (a stupid crush that felt like way more than a crush at this point).
But soon enough, tears were rolling down her face, the ache in her chest getting to be too much. She felt like she was falling apart at the seams, everything in her mind and body fighting against her. She wanted to find Chip (she hated to admit the way that she longed for him, how she seemed to need him). It hurt so bad. It ached like the worst heartbreak that Jay had ever felt in her life, just by being so far apart.
Everything was working against her, it felt like time and space itself had ganged up on Jay just to see her a sobbing mess at her desk in front of her project. Her stupid project that she couldn’t even work on at the moment because she didn’t have the right tools needed. It was frustrating, and she couldn’t even focus that frustration on her work because for once it wasn’t even her projects that she was upset about.
Jay felt a sob bubble up in the back of her throat, she pushed her goggles up to the top of her head and pawed at her eyes, choking on her own breath as she cried. How stupid it was for her to be crying like this. Jay found that as tears ran down her face she wanted nothing more than to sink into Chip’s embrace and allow herself the comfort of his safety.
Jay was so distracted by her mess of tears that she didn’t hear the wet pattering of footsteps until there was a cold presence right next to her. A wet, clawed hand weighed heavy on her shoulder when he reached out to wrap around her. She flinched as if she had just been stabbed a jolt of alarm running down her spine.
“Jay,” Gillion muttered with as much gentleness as he could put in his tone, he rubbed her shoulders gently and Jay shivered at his cold skin. “Are you alright?”
Jay scrubbed at her face and pulled her shoulders up to her ears, curling in on herself in order to make herself seem as small as possible. She leaned away from Gillion’s touch, it was so cold, she was shivering so badly she could barely hear herself think from how aggressively her teeth were chattering.
Even if Gillion was, well, Gillion, Jay figured that maybe, just maybe he might have some idea of how to help in this situation. Even if she had been affected by a potion, Gillion’s magic was strong and vast enough that he might have something that could help this issue.
Slowly, Jay shook her head, her mind was racing so fast that she could barely understand the thoughts that were going through her head. But maybe she could figure out a way to communicate the issue, and he would know what to do.
“What’s wrong?” Gillion looked at her with a concerned expression, his eyes scrunching up as he looked up and down Jay’s arms for any sign of injury, knowing that she often got hurt when she was working on her projects. His ears flicked back and forth and he slid his hand down her shoulder to take her hand earnestly.
“I think I’m in love with Chip…” Jay blurted out, her mouth working faster than the rest of her mind. The moment she realized what she had just said, the weight of her words settled on her shoulders like the weight of the entire world pressing down on her. Her eyes widened and she bit her lip, face somehow managing to flush even darker.
“Oh!” Gillion’s eyes widened, a small crooked smile spreading across his face as he took to understand the meaning behind what she had just said. A million thoughts and expressions flashed across his face while Jay was figuring out how she could manage to dig herself into a massive hole and bury herself while on a pirate ship.
“That’s—that’s not what I meant…” Jay quickly tried to backtrack, holding her hands up in front of herself. She groaned and let out a long sigh. “I… I didn’t… I was being stupid, Gill, okay.”
“I don’t think I’m following the situation,” Gillion’s tail hit the edge of the table when he shifted closer, tilting his head to the side and glancing at Jay with a curious expression. Jay balled her hands into fists around her curls and let out another groan, her heart hammering in her chest.
“I was looking for my pliers and I was going through Chip’s stuff and he… he has this love potion in his bag…” Jay made a wide gesture with her hands, miming the shape of the potion between her palms, “And I dropped it by accident and it went off and now I just… I don’t know what to do, Gill. It hurts so bad and I just want to be around him and hug him and I don’t know what to do.”
“It hurts?” Gillion looked at Jay a bit closer, as if he could find a physical injury.
“Right here,” Jay placed her hand on her chest where the majority of the tightness had been causing her to squirm with discomfort, “It hurts so bad to think about him and to be so far away. It feels so lonely and stressful and scary and it’s so intense and I don’t know what to do. I’ve never felt like this.”
“It was a potion, you said?”
“A love potion, yeah. I don’t know why he even still has the stupid thing,” Jay shook her head in disbelief, picking at her cuticles as she did everything in her power not to melt into the floor at the moment. It felt so embarrassing to admit. Jay’s breath caught in her throat as she struggled to think about something else to say that might make things better.
Gillion on the other hand only seemed to say things to make everything worse.
“So your feelings, are they… are they really how you feel about Chip?”
Jay looked up at Gillion with a shocked look on her face, she couldn’t help but practically gawk at him, mouth opening and closing dumbly as she tried to think of something to say.
“I…” Jay started and then trailed off, more tears welling up in the corners of her eyes, “I don’t know. I love him, that’s all I know. I love him so much and it hurts because I know that it’s just in my head and there’s nothing I can do about it. And I know Chip is going to make fun of me for this because I’m so stupid to do something like this, but it really, really hurts Gill. I don’t know what to do.”
“Jay, I am unsure of how I can help in this situation on its own, but I know that Chip would never make fun of you for something like this,” Gillion placed his hands on Jay’s shoulders and stared at her with an intense, serious expression, “He is a kind man and wouldn’t be so low as to hurt you in a vulnerable moment like this.” He squeezed her shoulders gently and shook her a little bit. Jay was already shaking hard enough that her teeth were chattering. She longed for Chip’s fiery warmth.
“I hate feeling this way,” Jay whined, reaching up to scrub at her face where more tears were falling down her cheeks, “I feel so needy and sensitive and whiny and I hate it. I just want this to be over.”
“It will pass, Jay, it is just a potion,” Gillion tried to reassure her, but the reassurance felt empty coming from him. It felt like nothing in Jay’s mind, it had no effect on her at all, no calming presence or sense of comfort from the Triton. It just felt like a hollow statement, one that Jay had an impossibly hard time believing. She wanted to, but with the aching feeling that threatened to swallow her whole, it was hard to really think like that.
Jay shook her head slowly and pulled her knees up to her chest to hide her face. She let out a sad sigh and shivered, curling her arms around herself and trying to chase away the magical chill that seemed intent on making her freeze to death. Jay sighed and ran her fingers through her hair in an attempt to soothe herself.
For once, Jay turned when she heard footsteps thudding down the stairs, eyes darting over to the wooden entrance where she heard someone approaching. Her heart pounded in her ears and she felt way too jumpy for her own good, like a startled animal unprotected and left out in the open. She felt exposed and vulnerable, everything inside her screaming that she needed to hide, or that she needed to find Chip because he would be able to keep her safe.
However, Jay almost wished that she hadn’t turned, because the moment she locked eyes on Chip’s form as he descended the stairs, she forced her entire body to lock up, refusing to move. She refused to think, refused to look away, refused to even so much as twitch her body. She wouldn’t give in to the longing, she couldn’t give in to the potion that was still aggressively running through her veins.
How long was this thing supposed to last? Surely it would be worn off by now.
Chip looked over at them with a curious expression, his lips twitching into a small smile, Jay’s eyes darting to the movement with a feeling of longing causing her chest to tighten. She slid her tongue over her own lips and tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. Her mouth was dry.
“What’s going on down here? Having a party?” Chip joked, looking back and forth between Jay and Gillion with his hands stuffed casually in his pockets. His coat was bunched up around his shoulders, slightly slipping down to expose the taut skin of his shoulders and the way that his collarbone jutted out when he pulled his shoulders back. His flame tattoos rippled against his skin when he moved, the flames flickering and moving with each twitch of his muscles or in time with the gentle rise and fall of his breathing.
Jay stared wide-eyed, mind going blank. Instead of running this time, she couldn’t help but freeze.
Gillion, sweet, sweet Gillion, looked back and forth between Chip and Jay for a few seconds, taking extra note of Jay’s posture and how she was staring at Chip with the most terrified and awestruck expression that could possibly fit on her features. He smiled and squeezed Jay’s shoulders gently before removing his hands, suddenly jolting her out of her thoughts.
She moved and felt her muscles lock up for a second, a jolt of alarm causing her to shiver and her heart to skip a beat. She tried to look anywhere else but Chip, the common quarters practically closing in on her as she tried to keep her attention away from Chip. Out of sight, out of mind. But that wasn’t working too well.
“I will leave you two to discuss,” Gillion nodded towards Jay with a calm, almost excited smile as he then turned to nod towards Chip, shuffling towards the stairs that Chip had just descended from. Jay watched him leave in horror, heart thudding so hard in her chest that it felt like she was going to explode.
“Discuss?” Chip furrowed his eyebrows and watched Gillion leave, pulling his hands out of his pockets before turning to Jay with such a curious gaze that it made her clam up instantly. It was like a stupid crush that caused butterflies to flutter around in her stomach, except way stronger, way more intense, way more nauseating.
Jay swallowed thickly and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to pull away but finding that she had nowhere else she could go. She was trapped. She couldn’t run. She was so, so tired of all the aches and pains, and her chest hurt so bad that it was getting hard to breathe the longer and longer that she resisted the urge to sink into Chip’s arms and hide away where it was safe. To hold him close, to kiss his cheeks and chin and neck and lips.
Jay felt a shiver roll down her spine, a wave of guilt and shame washing over her at that thought. She shouldn’t be thinking like that, not about Chip. Not about her co-captain. Even if she wanted nothing more than to indulge in those thoughts, to kiss him and hold him tight until nothing else in the world mattered. She wanted to love him and she wanted him to love her and the love that Jay currently felt was so strong that she felt it was going to be the death of her.
“Is there something that we need to talk about?” Chip shuffled forward, footsteps thudding against the ground in a gentle thump, thump, thump. He seemed casual, shoulders pulled back with his head tilted to the side in such a calm, collected manner as if he had no idea of all the internal conflict that Jay was going through. He had no idea that every ounce of Jay’s self-control was about to snap, and she felt that it was going to very, very soon. Especially if he kept getting closer.
Jay shook her head with a lack of anything else to say. She couldn’t talk to him. She didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to have to say anything. Chip could talk and she would listen. She would listen to him talk on and on about anything that he wanted to, if only so that she could hear his soothing voice and pray that it would calm her racing heart and satiate the burning feeling in her chest.
She wanted to stop feeling like this. She wanted to stop feeling like she was going to fall apart at any given moment. She just wanted to sit down normally and be able to focus on her project without the thoughts of Chip plaguing her mind. She wanted to be able to look at him without having to hold herself back from collapsing into his arms in an instant and holding him forever.
She just wanted to feel okay. She wanted to feel normal and comfortable and safe. She wanted to stop feeling so vulnerable and needy, she wanted to stop feeling like she was going to cry at any little thing. Jay hated feeling this needy.
She needed him to hold her, she needed his reassurance, his gentle hand, his gentle words. He needed him to comfort her tears and to hug her tightly to his chest where she would be protected from every threat of the world. She needed him to hug her, to kiss her, to comb his fingers through her hair, and to tell her that he cared.
“You’ve been kind of acting weird ever since earlier,” Chip pointed out, furrowing his eyebrows as if he were thinking hard about what to say next, he reached up to scratch his chin, “If you found something weird when you were looking through my stuff, I can probably explain.”
Jay remained silent, clenching her jaw so tightly so she didn’t accidentally blurt out the same love confession that she had just admitted to Gillion. It was on the tip of her tongue. The love that she felt for Chip swelled up in the back of her throat, curling around her trachea and making it hard to breathe. She loved him so much and she needed to get it out before it killed her, but she couldn’t say it, she couldn’t indulge in these kinds of emotions. Not like this.
“Jay… Talk to me, please,” Chip was within arms reach now, he knelt down in front of Jay where she was perched frightfully on her chair. She whined and wiped the forming tears in her eyes, she had already cried so much today over stupid things. What was she doing crying over a boy? She wasn’t a teenager anymore.
Chip, upon noticing that Jay had started crying again, reached out a tentative hand to cup her face. Jay leaned into the touch with a sob, the warmth of his palm spreading across her skin in such a way that it almost burned. She held his wrist to keep his hand there, feeling the way that his thumb swiped across her cheekbone and wiped her forming tears. Jay sobbed so tiredly at his touch, at his acknowledgement of the emotions he didn’t even know she was having. But it felt like he knew, like he could take one look at Jay and know everything that was going on inside her head.
Jay did her best to pull herself away, as much as she wanted to try and hide from Chip. She would just curl up somewhere dark and cold and try to wait out the pain and the shaking and the needy feeling. She wanted to get away, and the small but logical part still left in her coherent mind screamed at her that she should leave before she did something that she regretted, but everything was overtaken by the feeling of longing.
But she was so tired. And it was getting really, really hard to resist when Chip was being so nice to her. How could she not love him? When he treated her like this, when he looked at her with such kindness and concern when he took the time out of his day to come down and to talk to her. When he kept asking if she was alright because he was actually worried about her and wanted to know what was wrong. When he showed her the attention that Jay had been starved of for practically her entire life. No one ever showed her this much care except her mom, and Jay hadn’t seen her mom in months.
“Jay,” Chip rubbed her cheek, warm hands pressing against her flushed face. Jay met his gaze, falling deeper and deeper into his warm, earthy brown eyes, staring at the intensity of his gaze and feeling like she was suddenly drowning.
With a choked sob that ended halfway in a whine, Jay practically fell forward against Chip who was sitting close enough to easily catch her. He let out a small noise of surprise as Jay tucked herself into his lap, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and holding on so tightly that she dug her nails into the fabric of his jacket. Chip sucked in a sharp breath but instinctively wrapped his arms around Jay as well, holding her just as tightly.
“Hey, are you okay?” Chip asked, beginning to gently rock her back and forth as Jay descended into a fit of loud sobs. She buried her face into his neck and cried, shaking and gasping as she allowed herself the comfort of his embrace. Chip shifted a little bit and pulled her further into his lap, rubbing his hand up and down the center of her back, warm hands skittering across his skin.
Jay didn’t respond, she felt that if she tried to speak it would just come out in garbled whines and sobs. She just nuzzled into his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his tattoos against her cheek as she pressed so far against him that they practically melded into one. Her body shook and shivered and she tried to make some sense of the situation, the racing in her mind settling into static as her brain finally got what it had been longing for this entire time: Chip.
He was so kind to her, so gentle, so caring. He continued to rub his hand up and down her back, tucking her head against his shoulder as he tried to comfort her cries. Even if he didn’t know exactly what was going on, he knew that Jay was upset, and he wanted to do whatever he could to help. And it just made Jay fall even more in love with him.
It was so hard not to.
How could someone not fall in love with someone as amazing as Chip, who treated her so well and was ever so kind to her? Who else would do this for her? To hold her while she sobbed and to rub her back without judgement.
“Jay, you gotta give me something to work with, I want to be able to help you more,” Chip muttered, trying to keep his voice low so as to not startle her. Jay let out small, wheezing pants as she sighed and squeezed her eyes shut, nuzzling into his arms.
“I love you,” Jay blurted out before she could even think about what she was saying. But really, she wasn’t thinking about much of anything. The only thoughts going through her head was the steady pleasant static in her mind after she had finally gotten what she wanted. Everything else just passed by her in a haze, no coherent thoughts, no shame, no guilt, no embarrassment. Just a happy, satisfied buzz that kept her snuggled in Chip’s embrace.
At those words, Chip froze, his hands stilling against Jay’s back. He visibly tensed up, but Jay didn’t fully register why.
Then, Chip was wrapping his hands around Jay’s shoulders and pushing her away enough so that he could look her in the eyes. Jay squirmed at the movement, eyes darting back and forth worriedly as she tried to search his expression for some sort of rejection. He was going to reject her, she knew that he was going to. That’s why she had tried to hide at first.
Chip stared at Jay’s face for a long time, looking deep into her eyes, and then her cheeks, then her lips, then every small nuance behind her current expression. He looked a little scared? Shocked, maybe. He looked like he couldn’t believe what Jay had just said.
“Jay…” Chip continued to examine Jay’s expression, and as he was looking, something seemed to click. His expression fell into a look of almost sadness. “Jay you don’t mean that.”
“I do,” Jay shakily reached out and grabbed Chip’s face in both her palms, “I love you so much that it hurts and… and I can’t bear the thought of being without you.”
Chip bit down hard on his lower lip and he seemed conflicted for a moment, “That love potion in my bag… Jay… Did you… It’s the potion… isn’t it?” He seemed reluctant to finish the sentence, Jay frowned slightly as she took her time in understanding what Chip was talking about. She furrowed her eyebrows and tilted her head to the side, not really processing what was going on. Chip frowned at the expression on her face.
“You have that look in your eyes,” Chip dropped his hands from her shoulders and tried to pull away, “Jay, it’s just the love potion talking. It’s not really you.”
“It’s not that,” Jay shook her head firmly, “It’s true, it’s really me. Chip, I love you.”
“You might feel like you do but that’s just because of the potion messing with all your emotions,” Chip tried to move Jay out of his lap but Jay just clung onto him tighter, trying to climb back into his embrace. But Chip seemed to shift uncomfortably, pushing her away again.
“Why don’t you believe me?” Jay whined, not even trying to hide the high-pitched tone of her voice. She grabbed at his hands. “I want to be together, Chip. I want to stay with you by your side as long as I can. I want to stay here forever. I need you Chip, I love you.”
“Jay… I want you to listen to me, okay?” Chip reached out to hold Jay’s face, forcing her to look at him, not that she had taken her eyes off of him in the first place though. “You’re charmed, okay? The love potion is messing with your head and making you say things and feel things you don’t really feel. I don’t want you to do something that you regret because you were forced to by a stupid potion. I’m sorry that I kept it, I didn’t mean for this to happen to you, but you need to understand that this isn’t real, whatever you’re feeling right now, whatever obsession or infatuation that you think you have is just the potion, okay?”
Jay flinched at his words, the reality of each sentence he spoke sinking deep into her chest and burning where it hurt the most. It felt like rejection, like a really, really bad heartbreak. And from every perspective, it was a rejection. Jay loved him and he said it wasn’t real. But it felt so incredibly real that Jay had no idea what she was supposed to do with herself if it wasn’t.
How was she supposed to think when all her thoughts seemed to cycle back to Chip? How was she supposed to do anything when it hurt just being so far away from him? How was she supposed to go about her life the way she had before when she was now realizing all the beautiful and wonderful things about Chip, things that didn’t let her focus on anything else because she was too busy thinking about him?
More tears were welling up in the corners of Jay’s eyes, and she choked on her own breath, reaching up to scrub at her face. She looked away from Chip, suddenly feeling a wave of shame and embarrassment wash over her, more overwhelming than anything else she had felt all morning, more painful and distressing. Chip’s eyes widened.
“Chip…” Jay gasped out, his name falling easily off her tongue despite her shaky sobs. She trembled and felt tears running down her face as she wrapped her arms around herself, trying to gather her composure. Chip’s expression immediately softened at the sight of her tears.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Chip backtracked a little bit, expression panicked now that she was crying for a completely different reason this time. Jay sniffled and flinched, blubbering pathetically as she hid her face in her hands. “Jay it’s okay, it’s okay.”
Jay shook her head and whined, trying to pull away from Chip as he reached out to put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing her gently. She pawed at her face and tried to wipe her tears, unable to stop the sobs from spilling from her lips.
“You don’t love me…” Jay cried, hiding her face in her hands as she felt her blush darken. But instead of it from her just getting flustered, it was from the embarrassment of Chip’s rejection, the rawness that felt like salt burning against an open wound. It hurt more than it should’ve like an acid-covered knife dug right into her stomach.
“Jay I—” Chip cut himself off and then cleared his throat as he tried to weigh his options for a second, looking back and forth between Jay’s tearful face and somewhere across the room. “Jay… I do love you… and that’s the problem because I know you aren’t yourself right now. It’s the potion, I can see it in your face. I don’t want you to do things you’re going to regret when the potion wears off and I want to love you so much but I can’t when you’re like this. It’ll just hurt the both of us.”
“Why?” Jay couldn’t possibly wrap her brain around this entire situation. She didn’t understand what Chip was telling her. He loved her but he kept pushing her away.
“Because you don’t really love me,” Chip insisted with a heavy sigh, shaking his head slowly, “You just think you do because of the potion.”
“Why won’t you believe me?” Jay whined, not even caring about how needy she was being or how desperate. She grabbed at Chip’s shoulders and tried to pull herself closer. “It’s not just the potion. I love you so much, from the moment I saw you—”
“Jay, stop,” Chip cut her off and shook his head, “We shouldn’t be talking about this now, you’re going to say something you’re going to regret.”
Jay frowned and looked away, hunching her shoulders and trying to make herself as small as possible. She sniffled and reached up to rub her face.
“You’re hurting, it’s because of me and it’s because of the potion,” Chip let out a small sigh and reached out to curl his arms around Jay’s shoulders, pulling her into an embrace which she sank easily into. “I want to help you but I don’t want you to say things without thinking about them first.”
Jay said nothing. She wanted to tell him how much she loved him, how beautiful he was, how amazing and kind and sweet he always was to her (even if he wasn’t being that way to her right now). She wanted to love him so much and she wanted to let him know how much she loved him, how this wasn’t the first time that she had loved him, except this was the most intense.
She loved him when she watched him chase Ollie around the ship and then trip and fall on his face because someone had left a rope where it wasn’t supposed to be. She loved him when they were together early in their adventures, on Loffinlot, on the Casino, on Geraldo, in Eddison Kingdom. All those things made her fall more and more in love with him with every single thing that he did. She found herself falling so deeply in love with him even in spite of herself.
And she wanted to tell him that, she wanted to spill everything she had thought, every hour she spent laying awake at night because she couldn’t sleep because she was too busy thinking about him. She wanted to tell him all the thoughts and emotions that had been bubbling up in her mind since the moment that they had met and Chip had paid her enough attention that she immediately jabbed back at his jokes. She wanted to keep playing around with him, to joke and laugh and poke fun.
Jay wanted to continue to laugh at Chip when he face-planted on the deck, but then at the same time put cream on his sunburn when he refused to come inside after she told him to. She wanted to tease him and shove him around and then hold him tight in her arms while they lay together late at night in silence waiting to fall asleep. She wanted to joke and cry and find comfort in him for as long as he would let her.
She wanted to sink deep into his arms and hide there for the rest of her life. She wanted to hide in his protective arms, to pull him behind her to defend him with her gun. She wanted to take down the entire Navy if only it meant she would be able to keep him safe.
She wanted to protect him, and she wanted him to protect her. She wanted to stay in his arms and stay protected with each other. They had each other's backs and Jay wanted that so badly.
And she wanted to tell him all those things, all those thoughts and needs and wants, and pure longing. She wanted to let him know. It wasn’t just the potion, it couldn’t just be the potion because Jay had been having these thoughts for a long time. Every little thing that he did made her fall even more in love with her.
But he wouldn’t listen and that was the part that hurt the most. Chip said that he loved her, but he made it hard for Jay to believe him when he wrapped it up in other words of denial, in his own disbelief.
Jay buried her face against Chip’s shoulder and cried, the complicated feelings so overwhelming that her fuzzy, love-drunk mind would be unable to untangle them in a way that would be comprehensible. It hurt, her chest hurt, and her heart hurt.
“How can I help you, Jay?” Chip asked, running his hand up and down Jay’s back and tracing gentle patterns into her skin.
“Hold me…” Jay begged, curling her arms around Chip and digging her hands into the back of his shirt, “Promise me you’ll protect me.”
“I’ll keep you safe,” Chip promised, rocking her back and forth lightly. “I promise.”
“Promise you won’t leave, you’ll stay with me.”
“I promise I won’t leave,” Chip tucked Jay’s head underneath his chin, the warmth of his tattoos and the magic thrumming under his skin chasing away Jay’s chill. He ran his hand up and down her back, humming softly from deep inside his throat.
“Do you love me?” Jay asked quietly, her voice barely above a whisper as she pulled her head back a little bit to look up at him. Chip seemed conflicted for a second as if he didn’t want to say anything.
“I do,” Chip whispered back, “I love you so much that it hurts to think you might not.”
“I love you,” Jay sighed and leaned against his chest, she fiddled with her fingers, staring down at the rings that she had. Simple bands, some decorated but no gems in any of them. She felt Chip’s hands wrapped around her, how warm he was, and how gently he rubbed her back.
Jay stared at her hands for a long time. Then, she started to fiddle with the rings, twisting off one of the rings on her thumb since it would be the biggest one. Her hands might be longer than Chip’s, but he had thicker fingers than her so she wasn’t entirely sure if this would work.
But she needed a physical reminder of his promises. She needed to be able to see in the morning that this entire moment wasn’t just a figment of her imagination. She needed to know that she wasn’t making this entire thing up, that she might not have just passed out in the sleeping quarters and this entire thing was going to be a dream.
“Promise me,” Jay muttered as she pulled back enough to look at Chip, pulling his hand down to rest in between them. Chip’s eyes widened slightly as he stared down at their intertwined hands and the ring that Jay was displaying to him. “Promise me that we’ll stay together.”
“Jay…”
“I want you to promise me, please,” Jay begged him, squeezing his hand a bit tighter, “I need to know this was real.”
Chip stared at Jay for a long time, examining her face closely. Then, he sighed softly and nodded in agreement.
“Okay, I promise,” Chip said, taking Jay’s wrist and allowing her to slip the ring on one of his fingers, finding the one that it would fit on. It somehow managed on his pointer finger, which was good enough for Jay. “I promise we’ll stay together.”
Jay allowed her shoulders to slump at that, satisfied with his agreement. She gave a short nod and sank back against his chest, Chip let out a slow sigh, holding her tightly and pulling her further into his lap. He reached up to slide his fingers through her hair, the metal ring on his finger tapping against her ear whenever his hand would brush by. It was already warm from the magic underneath his skin, it was enough of a reminder to calm Jay’s racing heart.
After a while, Jay settled, she let her eyes slip shut as she relished in the warm comfort of Chip’s embrace, the feeling of his hands carding through her hair or rubbing up and down her back. He hummed softly and Jay found that she loved listening to his voice, she could ask him to just pick a topic and talk for hours and hours and hours and she would listen happily.
But Jay didn’t want to say anything else, she was so tired after shedding so many tears. Her mind was fried after being pulled in so many different directions in an attempt to comprehend the situation, and she didn’t think she had the energy left in her to try and understand anything else. She just wanted to stay and relish in Chip’s embrace for the rest of the night, and maybe even tomorrow.
Either way, Jay didn’t want to have to move from where she was sitting at the moment. She was so comfortable, and with Chip so close to her, wrapping her up in his arms, she felt safe enough to finally relax. The tension seemed to leave her shoulders as the tightness and the shaky feeling in her chest began to lessen. The gaping hole that had been threatening to pull her from this world closed up and Jay felt like herself again. She felt whole.
She felt comfortable and calm and perfectly content with the entire situation. Sure, she could feel the dregs of vulnerability that still clung to her and Jay figured that she would probably cry at any little thing. But at least she could rest comfortably without her heart pounding so aggressively it felt like it would pop out of her throat.
Chip continued to hum and Jay felt the vibrations in his throat against her ear when she pressed her face into the crook of his shoulder. She sighed and let herself relax for the first time all morning now that it no longer felt like she was falling apart at the seams.
With the unnatural, magic warmth of Chip’s embrace, Jay found herself slowly drifting off into a comfortable, restful sleep, perfectly content to hide in his arms for as long as she physically could. Her eyelids fluttered shut and Jay sighed, listening to Chip’s humming lull her into a gentle rest.