#// rhiannon and arianwen \\ | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

darkandsinister-man · 2 years ago

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hook & ariel

@nosealegs

tw: death, violence, body horror, blood, injury, grief, alcoholism

Hook couldn’t resist the ocean no mattered how many times it tried to kill him. He wasn’t feeling the urge to almost drown himself trying to escape the barrier (yes, he had tried it; yes, there had been drinking involved; no, he hadn’t learned anything from the experience) and was instead broodily watching the sun trying to make its way through the haze of clouds and imagining the sails of ships.

Being landlocked for any length of time was detrimental to his overall health, and he had an anniversary to celebrate. Four fuckin’ years. He missed pirating like missing a limb, and he knew what he was talking about. He scowled when a shadow fell over him, which was only two ticks off from his usual expression. “You’re blockin’ the view,” he growled. He didn’t actually care that much, but he had a bad-tempered reputation to uphold.

“Grumble at someone else,” she hissed as she flopped herself into his lap, a bottle of rum in her hand. “Or I won’t share.” Pointedly, she took a long pull straight from the bottle, her eyes locked out on the water. It was a special sort of torture, to be able to go into the water, and still be trapped, still be locked in to damned hell when the ocean should have been open to her.

Four years. It had been an interesting set of time, to say the least. She’d finally been allowed to walk on land like the rest of her people, but she couldn’t help but feel she’d lost too much in the process. Clean up was fun, she never minded dragging it to the bottom of the ocean floor. But it could only bolster her mood so much. “Besides, I am the view.”

He bared his teeth a little in reply, but the expression wasn’t nearly as sinister as Ari’s. Her fangs were useful that way. He couldn’t say he was particularly surprised to see her today of all days. They’d washed up and started this torture together, after all, although the real hurts had come long before Sallow Hills for both of them.

He curled the arm with the hook loosely around her waist because she knew how to stay clear of it, and reached for the bottle with his good hand. “That you are, love. Happy bloody anniversary.” He took a long drink, savoring the burn in the back of his throat, and handed it back. In between trying to kill each other and inexplicably being unable to go through with it, he’d never expected that the siren who had drowned half his crew would be the person who understood him best in this hellhole. It hurt her just as much to be landlocked.

There was no one else she particularly felt up to putting up with today. It was one of the few days a year where she didn’t have much patience at all. He had been part of her hell in this life and the one prior, she had the scars to prove it. She settled back against him, uncaring of the cold metal against her. It was nothing she hadn’t felt multiple times over the years.

“Happy fucking anniversary,” she grumbled, tipping her head back onto his shoulder. When she got the bottle back, she took another long pull from it and enjoyed every bit of the burn. There was a history of attempted murder between them and these days she couldn’t help but be a little glad that neither of them ever actually finished it. “Damn hellhole,” she hissed, Rhiannon’s angry words ringing in her ears.

They’d both left their marks on each other, visible and otherwise. His leg still twinged occasionally, but it was usually the least of his body’s complaints after a century of violence. Neverland might have stopped him from physically aging, but there were days he thought he could feel every single one of those years catching up to him. He didn’t fancy growing old for real in bleeding Wales of all places.

“Aye,” he agreed softly. Hook went back and forth on whether he was glad Arianwen hadn’t killed him. If she’d let him die the way he was supposed to, he wouldn’t be trapped here, but it was an argument he’d given up years ago. It was done and over with, and since he couldn’t bring himself to kill her, not once but twice, he might as well live with her in this uneasy peace they’d established.

Arianwen certainly had no wish to live out the rest of her days in Wales either. There were days she wished he had left her strapped to that mast to go down with him and his ship. Sure, she wouldn’t have drowned, but there were other ways for her to die. She still had shreds in her tail where it. had never properly healed, and that wasn’t touching the various scars that lingered even on her human skin.

She tipped her head to scrape her fangs along his jaw before she pouted. “How many more years do you think we’ll have to suffer?” She asked the same question every year, every year it was more snarly. There was no longer any real hope of leaving, so she took what pleasure she could find in this dual life of hers.

There were days he wished that too. Then they’d both be dead and out of their misery. But since he was alive–and since he couldn’t have the death of his choice–he was selfishly glad to have a partner in suffering. Neither of them were running for sainthood. They probably deserved everything that they got.

Every year, she asked that question, and he answered it differently each time. Since he didn’t actually know the answer, it was easy to do. He nosed gently against her hair. “If we’re being punished and poetic? One for every life we took.” Hook wasn’t sure he believed in an afterlife, but this certainly resembled a kind of purgatory for both of them. If anything, he got less angry and more melancholy as the years passed. He couldn’t sustain a rage when there was nothing to fight against. He considered it another kind of death.

She could never claim that she didn’t earn every moment in Sallow Hills. Her hands were far from clean and she had long been a fan of turning seawater red. She didn’t think she would stop askiing the question at least for a few more years. If nothing else, it might spur her pirate back into anger instead of whatever melancholy was taking over.

Grumbling, she turned on his lap to straddle it properly within his hold. “Then I’m dying here,” she shrugged as though it didn’t matter before chugging from the bottle in long pulls that burned brilliantly. The only thing keeping her from fading away from that ever burning fire was her deal with the Unseelie and her continuing prodding at him.

Hook didn’t mind the questions. There was a bit of a philosopher in him, truth be told, buried under all the liquor and bitterness. He hadn’t always been a pirate, after all, at least not on the outside. In his heart, it had always been black sails, mercurial oceans, and endless horizons though. He wouldn’t even know who he was without that.

His flesh hand settled at her waist when she turned, and he gave her a sharp grin. “In this version of the story, we already died here.” He didn’t really believe in an afterlife, but he also knew that, unless it was a pixie, the universe didn’t give a fuck what he believed in. He didn’t believe in Neverland before he stumbled onto it either. He snagged the bottle and took another long drink before she could finish it off without him.

The damned pirate was always a study and even after all this time she couldn’t help but be fascinated from time to time. Once, he could have been more than what he was, but she liked the way he’d turned out. A posh, brilliant philosopher would bore her to tears and get fangs in their throat before she purposely let them feel the drowning. But a pirate as brooding and prickly as the seas herself? Well, it wasn’t hard to see why she’d decided to continue to put up with him… mostly.

She liked that grin on his face, not as sharp as hers, but not bad for a human. “Very true. Being trapped here is just a cruel trick before the inevitable. Damn torture wall,” she hissed out the last words. She watched him tip the bottle back and pushed it with a finger to tip it a little further back in encouragement she knew he didn’t need.

For all the philosopher in him, Hook wasn’t one for introspection, and he could hardly fathom the dysfunctional bond that had somehow formed between himself and the siren. He’d had every intention of letting her die a slow, painful death once, and pretty much nothing had worked out for him the way he’d intended ever since. They were both fairly awful people. That was one of his favorite things about her.

“Who knows? If we died again, maybe we’d end up someplace worse.” He gave a soft, dark chuckle. Hook was willing to go down with his ship or perhaps in a fight, but otherwise, he’d lived too long to give up on life that easily. He let her tip the bottle further, never needing encouragement to drink more. It was that kind of day. He liked that about her too.

There had been every intention of death to the other on both sides at the start of whatever the hell this was. Dysfunctional and about the only solid thing in their world beyond the Prince, no one would ever understand it. He was vicious when he chose to be, and downright awful most of the time. She rather liked keeping him around for it.

“Worse than this? Impossible…. wait, no, that’s a lie,” she mused darkly, “It could be a literal desert.” She shuddered at the idea of no water whatsoever. She wasn’t willing to go out in anything but a fight, and she’d take people with her on the way. She watched his throat work as the bottle tipped further and let out a hum of approval. Pulling her bag open, she tugged out another bottle and set it in the sand next to them and tipped her head to nip sharply, just once, at the line of his throat. She could have asked nicely for the bottle back, but that was boring.

Hook didn’t even understand it, and he was one of the involved parties. Somehow, Ari had become one of his people though, and he didn’t have many of those in Sallow Hills. Violence might be one of their languages, but he was ferociously protective of them. Not that Ari ever needed it. She was ferocious all on her own. It was one of her better qualities.

“There ya go. Hellfire. Torture. Daytime television,” he chuckled. He’d been raised to believe in that sort of thing. He couldn’t conclusively say it wasn’t true, but he didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it either way.

He hissed softly at the sting of teeth, not necessarily in pain. “Unless you’re try'n to start something with me, you’re gonna watch where you’re puttin’ those teeth,” he drawled, offering the almost-empty bottle back for her to finish off. He liked sleeping with her, and he liked fighting with her, and the two were practically interchangeable for them.

The unspoken rule was pretty well known that to fuck with Hook was to fuck with Ari and vice versa, or at least have the other threateningly nearby. She liked that they were nearly equally vicious. It was one of their bonding traits, really.

She immediately pulled a face at the mention of daytime television. “If I am ever subjected to a soap opera again, I will just have to end it. Right there. Those things are painful.” She liked living on her own terms, and one of those was no damn daytime television.

That hiss was one of her favorite sounds out of him, which made sense as this was one of her favorite ways to get under his skin. “Why wouldn’t I start something today?” It was notoriously one of her preferred ways to make the day tolerable and she liked the distracting ache for the day and usually the next. Taking the bottle back, she tipped it back to finish it.

People confused them for a dysfunctional couple sometimes, and Hook didn’t usually bother to set them straight on it. People would think what they wanted, and denial would only make them look more guilty. It was true in a sense, but neither of them were made for monogamy. Too boring, and required more commitment than either of them were probably capable of. He’d taken her freedom from her once and didn’t imagine he’d have cause to try it again, in any way.

“Who needs strangers’ drama when there’s a town group chat.” Sometimes they just watched it together and made fun of the people in it, and sometimes it was a drinking game for every time someone said something pathetic. Truly, even his tolerance wasn’t that high.

“In that case, happy to help.” Even at his surliest, he’d have to be crazy to turn her down, and he never had. He got it when it came to today in particular though. Oblivion was often preferable to both of them than facing the reality of this place. With one finger, he gently pushed the bottle up in the same encouragement she’d given him.

There was no point in setting people straight on their relationship. It didn’t fit anything anyone else would understand anyway. Theirs was the closest thing she’d do to a relationship, but they both enjoyed doing as they pleased far too much to stick only to each other. He’d strapped her to a mast to dry out and she’d saved him from the death he’d wanted. That had been enough taking from one another in that way.

“That chat is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen, and that is saying something,’ she mused. The days it became a drinking game had always ended up drunk painfully quickly, not that they minded. If it helped expand their tolerance, well, at least they got some entertainment out of it too.

She had known that would be his reaction and had banked on it. She liked him best when he was surly and still came to her anyway. Tipping the bottle and her head further back with that push, she chugged down the last of the bottle. Setting the empty one in the sand, she looked at him as the burn settled into her chest. “Are we finishing that bottle out here or inside?”

“Strange world we’ve washed up in.” The comment was more thoughtful than brooding. It was more like the world he’d left than Neverland, given a couple hundred years. The technology hadn’t been at all familiar to him, and he didn’t have a lot of patience for cell phones–or, for that matter, anyone he’d want to talk to on one. He and Ari had their own ways of getting in contact when they wanted to. Phones didn’t do so well at the bottom of the ocean.

The captain and surly went hand in hook. He didn’t have a lot of other moods, but they didn’t like each other because they were Suzy Sunshine. He watched the long line of her throat while she swallowed down the last of the bottle, knowing her tolerance well enough to know it would barely get her started.

He considered the question, but if they started something here, there was no guarantee they’d want to move it inside later on, and he was just about done staring at the ocean. No sense in dwelling on what he couldn’t have when something he could had settled right in his lap. He wrapped his good arm around her waist and stood, her slight weight not making much of a difference. “Inside.”

#chat: ariel #nosealegs #verse: sallow hills

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