#also very small subtle cameo of dovahgarbage's lee in the beginning there

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

SC - Turning Page

Original Fiction Prompt: The way they look after a rough night. Project: Seven Cities Word Count: 2570 Warnings/Tags: None 

This was technically in response to an ask prompt, but I grew so fond of it that I decided to give it a post of its own. It’s been a while since I felt the heartbeat in a piece. I hope y’all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. God, it feels good to enjoy it again.

Mood music that caught me when I was working on this piece: [The Boy’s Gone]

———–

There were three patrons still left on the Fairfield Inn’s meager tavern floor.

One was a young man that had stumbled in not long after sunset, and had spent the entire night nursing himself into a drunken, heartbroken stupor. One was a grimy older gentleman with hard eyes and a manner of falling into his cup that suggested that he’d been doing so for quite a while now. And the last, tucked into the furthest corner table, was Tahir, watching the pair of them as he pretended not to watch the door.

The rest of the crew had retired to their suite of rented rooms nearly an hour ago. Adelina had been the last to go, convinced to stagger her way upstairs only by Myrine’s coaxing and the yawning that she had done a miserable job of hiding. She had fought both for as long as she could stand, then had loomed over Tahir’s table with strict instructions that he was to wait for their captain’s return. If he couldn’t, she told him, he was to wake her. Immediately, she had said. 

He had laughed at the time, saluted her, given her his best “aye, aye” and then waved her into Myrine’s care. Now the tavern was almost properly empty, the moon had passed well overhead, and Tahir was beginning to think that there might be some cause for her worry.

He took an absent swig off of his tankard and let his gaze slide back to the door. Alex was private, sure, but she rarely went off without warning. Rarely went off in general; when there was no work to be done, she was usually more inclined to watch her crew from close quarters than she was to assume that they knew how to behave like civilized folk. But he had spent the entire night among them, drinking and dicing and losing card games to Davin, and not once had he seen so much as a single swishing coattail of….

Almost as soon as the thought occurred to him, the door of the inn swung open, and Alex Sheffield shouldered her way inside.

“Well now,” Tahir called from across the room, tucking his relief neatly behind a casual lean into his chair. “Kind of you to show your face around us again, captain! You might’ve said something before we -”

He broke off as Alex turned to face him. Wherever she had been all night had clearly taken its toll. She looked a proper mess, sagging beneath with the weight of a finely embroidered blue coat that Tahir recognized as Finn’s. She usually kept it on retainer for whenever she needed to look particularly stately, but now it hung open, at a slovenly angle that revealed the stained work shirt that she wore underneath. Her hair had been pulled out of its braided tail and trailed over her shoulder in a messy tangle, and there was an unhealthy wreath of pale red and bruise purple around her eyes. When she stopped walking to glare at him, Tahir saw her sway hard enough to have to catch herself on a nearby chair.

He was on his feet almost before he realized it.

“Merciful Lord, Alex,” he said, threading a path quickly around the tables towards her, “you look like hell. Are you alright? Christ, what happened -”

“Fucksake, be quiet.”

Tahir froze halfway through a step. Alex was slurring. Her normal cadence was a drawl, certainly, but always the deliberate sort, and always understandable to his ear. Only great need of sleep made her words run together. Sleep, or…

Frowning, Tahir took a few more steps forward, then recoiled as the nose-searing odor of alcohol met him.

“You’re drunk,” he said softly. Alex’s face twisted into a grimace.

“Brilliant notice,” she sneered. “Ought to let you ride a yard, eyes like that.” 

Scowling, she tried to stagger her way past, and Tahir moved quickly to intercept her. By her own design, Alex had only been properly drunk a precious few times in her life. Tahir had been around to see all but one of them, and knew better than to let her wander.

“Easy, lad,” he said, as she buried a shoulder into him in an effort to shove past. “Easy. Come and sit a spell, hey? Stairs will be the death of you right now.”

Alex grumbled something incomprehensible under her breath, but let herself be led back towards Tahir’s table. Even staggering drunk, she seemed to know that she couldn’t best Tahir in a matter of strength. He silently praised whatever God was looking out for him for that.

She took a seat opposite him, scowling and sullen as Tahir waved the tavern keeper down.

“Water,” he muttered to the man, with the hopes that Alex wouldn’t hear. He had apparently burned clean through whatever remained of his luck, however; when he looked up again, Alex was glaring at him.

“My mum’s been gone a while now,” she growled. “I think I don’t need you to start playing her.”

“‘Course not,” said Tahir, rolling his eyes. “But I’ve been on the bottle often enough to know what comes in the morning. It’s one of the few things I’ve more experience with than you. You don’t want that, Alex. And I sure as shit don’t want to see you suffer it.” 

The tavern keeper returned then, setting two mugs onto the table in front of him. Tahir nodded his thanks, and then pushed both across the table.

“Drink.”

He braced himself for another argument; even sober, Alex always had some toothless insult or slight against his character ready, often just for the fun of it. Instead, he watched as she stared fixedly at the tankards for a long, silent moment, then slowly reached out and took the first one.

“Right,” she said quietly. “You’re right, of course. Sorry.”

She reeled the mug close, bearing it like a cross against her chest and taking sullen sips as Tahir stared back. It was as if every ounce of fight had been leached out of her at once, replaced with a quiet melancholy that she seemed suddenly resigned to. If he had been concerned before, he was truly, properly worried now. 

He waited until she had gotten through about half of the mug before he tried speaking again. 

“Alex -”

“He’s here, you know.”

The interruption came without preamble, as Alex stared hard down at the table in front of her. Tahir’s brow furrowed.

“Who’s here, lad?”

“Why, Mr. Edward Sheffield, of course.” She stole a look at him out of the corner of her eye and smiled grimly. “Recently relocated and fully engulfed in the dockside merchant business once more. A grand coincidence, ain’t it?”

She took another draw off of her mug as Tahir blinked in surprise.

“Your father?” he asked, bewildered. “Your father is here?” 

“Aye. Him, along with a wife and a new brat between them, aged six. The whole fucking family.”

She didn’t bother hiding the bitter edge in her voice this time, and Tahir felt his frown curl deeper. Alex had been quits with her father a year or two before they’d met, but what little she had shared told Tahir that their separation had been more amicable on his end than hers. Relieving himself of responsibility for her had apparently been very easy indeed. 

“Where did you see them?” he asked after a moment. Alex gave a short laugh, dry and humorless.

“At their home,” she said, leaning forward to prop her chin against a hand. “I joined them for dinner, in fact! Was invited just this very morning, after Mr. Sheffield caught sight of me at the dockside. His wife is apparently very keen on cooking for guests.”

Tahir watched, silent, as Alex drained the last of her mug in a motion that seemed too familiar on her by half. 

“So you went along,” he said when she reached for her second cup.

“I did.”

“And?”

“Nothing.” She leaned back in her chair again, making a grand gesture out of her shrugging. “Not a God damned fucking thing. It was as if I was a client, come ‘round to be entertained for an evening. He told me of the move, of his work, about a hundred stories of all of the things his beloved son had been up to. Managed to talk his way all through till dessert, then thought to ask what I’d managed in the last seven years.”

The reminder apparently made itself a knife-twist in Alex’s gut; she grimaced, and then hid the look behind the lip of her tankard.

“I didn’t actually tell him about the Service, mind,” she went on after a moment, very quietly. “Thought talk of a desertion might end with more than a ruined dinner. Told him I’d taken up sailing though. That I had some command of a ship. You know what he asked me?” She snorted. “He asked the name of the captain I’d married, from whom I’d taken command.”

“Christ,” said Tahir, with so much withering disgust that Alex very nearly smiled. The look didn’t hold though, and almost at once, she returned to staring down at her tankard, absently swirling the water inside.

“I’m not a fool. I know my having anything like command on the Ranger is an unusual thing, mostly taken thanks to you, and Dav, and a host of sailors who didn’t have any better choices. I don’t expect it’s always understood. But, Christ.” She took Tahir’s tone on the word, a burst of mingled revulsion and anger. “He didn’t even entertain the notion, Tahir. Not for a moment. I was doing sums and consulting navigational charts when I was ten. He taught me the bloody arts! And even then, even with all of that, still…”

Her voice got very small then, and sunk low into her chair, Alex suddenly looked as tiny as Tahir had ever seen her. He watched in silence as she worried her lip against the edge of her still-full tankard, turning over what she’d said, what he’d seen. Then he scoffed.

“Is your father blind?”

The question caught Alex so off guard that she could do nothing but blink and stare up at him for a few long seconds.

“What?”

“Blind,” Tahir said again, louder this time. “From squinting down at little pieces of paper and all of those tiny numbers and some such. Surely he must be, because I can find no better explanation for how he could take even one single look at you and think that you’d do anything on board a ship but strut around and bark orders at men twice your size.”

Alex’s mouth twitched, the barest ghost of a smile, and Tahir saw her roll her eyes to cover the little huff of laughter that had escaped her. Emboldened, he pressed on.

“In fact, I’d say blind is not nearly good enough a reason. A man might hear you and know your standing! Certainly, he is blind, deaf and mad as well. Or at least doesn’t know a damn thing about you.”

By now, Alex was laughing quietly to herself, trying desperately to tuck it behind a hand.

“No,” she said, around her not-laughter, “no, I imagine he doesn’t.”

“I’d like to think I do, though.” Tahir leaned back in his seat, casual in a way that his words weren’t. “And you know what I think? All mishaps and faults aside - and Almighty hell, there’s been a lot of them - I think there is no one on God’s green earth that could have lead as unholy an expedition, or commanded as unruly a ship as the Ranger, with as much grace and dignity as Alex Sheffield.”

Alex’s snickering vanished easily behind a hand now, and she fixed him with a look so hard and narrow that he felt it in his bones. She opened her mouth, closed it again, then repeated the motion a few more times for good measure, silently trying to mash her sense into something resembling coherence. Tahir stifled a little grin. Sincerity always ruffled Alex, needled her low opinion of humanity until she couldn’t form the sentences necessary to argue. She’d left him little option otherwise, though. She wouldn’t have listened to anything that she considered coddling, and her father was still her father, his miserable idiocy notwithstanding. Renouncing him would have done as much good as agreeing. 

Still, she had been through well enough today already; Tahir could abide giving her a break. 

“Of course,” he said after a moment, “the actual amount of grace and dignity involved is still something of a debate….”

Now the grin came, wry and too quick to hide behind a hand. Snorting, she kicked halfheartedly at him under the table.

"I’ll not hear talk of grace from a man that cannot walk ten paces belowdecks without running headfirst into a beam.”

“Ha! You mistake my talents for flaws.”

They traded barbless insults and blows deliberately aimed to miss underneath the table, stopping only when Alex nearly toppled out of her seat going after Tahir’s shin. She righted herself carefully, suddenly aware of the dubious relationship that she currently had with gravity. 

“I’m for bed, I think,” she said when she had steadied herself again, gripping the edge of the table. “I’ve likely worried Ade enough.”

“Oh, you have,” said Tahir. “She threatened me, you know. Said that I was to stay on watch until you returned. And that I should wake her if I couldn’t. Or else, she said.”

"Did she?” Alex stroked her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe I ought to stay, then. Hide in a corner, wait to see how you fare against her. That would certainly lift my spirits.”

“You are cruel indeed to make me suffer the wrath of a scorned woman, lad.”

Alex gave a deep bow that nearly sent her staggering to the floor. When she found her feet again, Tahir chuckled and pushed her still-full tankard of water across the table. She rolled her eyes, but took it without a fight.

“You’ll tell your lady that I followed her orders, won’t you?” Tahir asked over a shoulder as Alex shuffled past him on the way to the stairs.

“I’ll consider it,” came the reply, not far behind him. Tahir grinned to himself, then leaned back and folded his hands over his stomach. She sounded better, at least. No amount of sneering at her father’s expense would fix quite everything, but at least her slurring was only the drunkard’s sort now.

“Tahir.”

He glanced over his shoulder and found Alex stopped at the foot of the stairs leading up to the rooms above. Her hand had a shaky, white knuckled grip on the railing, but she stood tall.

“Get to bed,” she said. Now Tahir rolled his eyes, turning pointedly back to his tankard. 

“Aye, captain.”

“I’ll need you in the morning.”

“Aye, captain.”

“And… thank you.”

Tahir raised an eyebrow, then slowly turned back to where Alex stood. She met his gaze from her place at the stairs; knuckles even whiter, grip on the railing even more unsteady, but with a stare as firm and unflinchingly open as he had ever seen on her before. Still not running away. A little coal of pride, hot as the summer sun, sparked to life in his chest, and Tahir smiled.

“Aye, captain.”

#original fiction #seven cities #my writing #oc crap #alex sheffield #tahir #i MIGHT have been overconfident with that post last night but #i still had fun with it #and THAT'S WHAT'S IMPORTANT #anyway this is a scene i've had in mind for mmmm literal ages #glad to finally write ti #it's sort of one of the indicative moments of alex's character change #and this piece has sorta been my change in how i'm trying to interact with my art #thus the title lmao #also very small subtle cameo of dovahgarbage's lee in the beginning there #cause I love him #OKAY I'M DONE TAG RAMBLING