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amethystunarmed · 3 months ago

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Oh Captain, Let's Make a Deal

Word Count: 2,380 AO3 Written for @pulpmusicalsfortnight2024 Alternate Prompt: Possession. Huge thanks to @jackalope-t-m for betaing this for me and for all the beautiful art!!! I am forever grateful!

AJ tries to ignore the pounding in his chest. Even under his orders, the crew is restless, unsure. He can’t blame them. The sight of that fog consuming the other ship... It would have made him quake in fear, if he hadn’t seen it once before.

He steels his resolve, turns to the man onboard he trusts most, and hopes he isn’t sending him to his doom.

“Reese. You have been on the ship more than anyone. You will be her captain,” AJ says. Reese hesitates, but nods.

“Yes sir. May we discuss the specifics in your office?” His tone is pleasant but firm. AJ feels a bead of sweat drip down his neck. He enjoyed having Reese as a boatswain because he wasn't afraid to challenge a captain's decision. Like AJ, Reese values the safety of their crew above all else.

AJ has a feeling this trait is about to bite him the ass.

But still, he can't deny this request, not without making the rest of his crew even more agitated. They trust Reese, more than even AJ himself some days, and ignoring Reese's legitimate question could break into a full-blown mutiny.

“Of course,” AJ acquiesces, trying to hide his gritted teeth. “The rest of you are dismissed. You'll be receiving your assignments shortly.” The crew begins shuffling away, but he doesn't miss the way they glance at Reese for assurance before they go. Only once he nods to them does the crowd truly dissipate.

(Well, most of them. Herschel and Stratford are having an impressive argument over who will be joining Reese on the ghost ship once he returns. AJ can't help but roll his eyes. It's always some kind of drama with those four.)

AJ and Reese walk to the Captain's Quarters in tense silence. His boatswain has a smile resting on his face, but it is a flimsy thing. It comes with none of the playful banter or laughter AJ has become accustomed to. It feels fake.

The door clicks shut behind Reese, and AJ can tell immediately he was right. Instantly Reese's smile drops and anger overtakes his expression.

“What the hell are you doing?”

AJ straightens, standing at his full height, six inches taller than Reese. “You dare speak to your captain like this?”

Reese doesn’t even falter. “I do when he isn’t acting like my captain! Amos and Elijah are-” he fumbles over his words. “Are missing, and you want to send more of the crew over there as a sacrifice? For what?”

“I would never-”

“Then act like it!” Reese interrupts, cheeks pink with fury. AJ can count on one hand the number of times he has seen Reese this furious. He doesn’t like being the cause of it. “Because right now,” Reese continues, “it seems like you care more about money than you do the sailors and passengers you swore to protect. If that is the case, I will lead the mutiny against you myself!”

“Ooooh, aren't we testy this evening! Captain, you ought to make him walk the plank!” A familiar voice crows, and AJ feels his blood turn to ice.

Black fog crawls up the legs of his office chair like vines growing over a cracked wall, writhing and curling. AJ can barely hear Reese gasp over the sound of his heart pounding. His desk chair spins around and Kal is there, leaning forward on his elbows, chin perched on his hands. AJ takes a step forward, placing himself fully between Kal and Reese.

“Get out of my chair, Kal,” AJ growls. He shouldn't be anywhere near Reese, not after his stunt with Amos and Elijah.

“Kal...” Reese repeats, “Like the man Samuel saw? But that means-” He hears Reese gasp as he puts it all together. “Captain, tell me you aren’t working with this man.” Reese moves around behind him. AJ can’t tell if Reese is going away from him, horrified, or getting closer, ready to attack; either way, he doesn't dare take his eyes off Kal. He doubts he'd like the expression on Reese's face anyways.

“Quite a quick study, aren't you,” Kal purrs. His eyes have a hunger in them AJ doesn't like.

“Officer Reese, I need you to leave. That's an order!” AJ barks.

“Captain, with all due respect,” Morgan growls, and AJ can hear the implied which is none, “I have a duty to my crew. I will not- mmmf!” AJ turns in time to see a black band of fog lock around Reese's mouth, cutting off whatever it was he was going to say. He tugs at the gag with his hands and AJ can hear his muffled cries.

AJ would try to help if he knew it wasn’t useless. “Is this really necessary?” he asks.

“Sorry, sorry,” Kal says, examining his nail beds. “He just seemed like he was going to go on and on.” Kal groans, like the mere thought is torture. “And besides, you and I have business to attend to. This way we can continue our conversation uninterr-”

There is a click behind them. AJ and Kal turn. Reese is leveling his pistol at Kal's head. AJ’s heart quivers in fear at the sight. He imagines the fog around Morgan’s mouth constricting, suffocating him entirely, crushing his skull with the pressure.

Kal could kill Reese so easily, and AJ would be powerless to stop him.

“Kal, don’t,” he begs.

Kal just smirks at him. He crosses his legs and leans back in AJ's chair. “Cute.”

Tendrils of fog spring up from the ground, whipping at Reese so quickly, AJ can barely follow them. One snatches the gun from his hand and crushes it into tiny pieces. They scatter across the floor in a shower of splinters and warped metal. The other two tendrils loop around Reese’s wrists, binding his arms. Reese tugs as hard as he can against the foggy shackles. AJ still hears him shouting through the gag. Reese winces as the fog tightens; AJ can hear his bones creaking.

“Kal, you swore you wouldn't hurt my crew!” AJ barks and Kal rolls his eyes.

“If they didn't keep getting in my way it wouldn't be a problem.”

AJ swallows. “Is that what happened to Amos and Elijah? They got in your way?”

Kal tilts his head, seeming genuinely confused for a moment. “Who are you- oh, the sailors on the other ship?” He waves his hand. “Oh, they’re long gone.”

AJ feels the words like a bullet through his heart. He already knew, he thinks. The second the fog swept through the abandoned ship, he knew. It doesn’t make it any easier to hear. Reese’s anguished scream, muffled through the gag, only drives the wound deeper.

Kal pouts at him. “Aw Captain, don't be sad! You have done amazing so far!” He jumps to his feet, popping to attention. “A soldier doing what must be done, following your orders to a T!” He salutes and AJ briefly wishes Reese had shot him. “Your debt is almost fulfilled.”

“Almost?” AJ gasps, “I have done everything you asked. What more could you possibly-”

“Calm your nerves, my dear captain,” Kal says with an easy smile. The sight of it makes AJ's blood boil. “There have been some...” He tilts his head back and forth, humming as he decides on a word. “Complications with getting control of the other vessel. I have a plan to get what I need and you”—He taps AJ’s nose in a damn near playful gesture—“fill a key role in making the whole thing possible.” He holds out the green glass bottle of rum that never seems to leave his person. “I just need you to drink from this, and all your suffering will finally end. Doesn't that sound nice?”

A life without Kal. A life where he no longer spends each day looking over his shoulder, waiting for his debt to be called in. A life where he no longer had nightmares of all the terrible things Kal would ask him to do, a life where AJ wasn't currently doing them-

It sounded like a dream.

“Give me the damn bottle,” he spits, taking the neck of the bottle firmly in his grasp. It is heavy in his hands, near full to the brim. He can smell the harsh burn of alcohol and already dreads the hangover he is sure this will bring. No matter; it will be well worth it if it gets Kal to leave.

“Don’t you want to know what my plan is?” Kal asks, sounding nearly... demure. His eyes gleam in the candlelight.

“No, I don’t care,” he scoffs. He can hear Reese’s muffled protests growing in volume and it only strengthens AJ’s resolve. He doesn’t have the time to feed this mad man’s ego. He needs Kal off his ship this instant. He lifts the rum to his lips and-

Morgan Reese snatches the bottle out of his hand.

The fog binding him fades into the air like it was never anything more than mist. AJ’s eyes widen.

Why would Kal...

It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have time, and he wants this debt over with. Kal isn’t going to hurt anyone else, not if he can help it.

“Officer Reese, return that bottle to me at once!” AJ demands. He begins to stride forward, planning to take the rum back but-

The fog grabs him, wrapping around his limbs and tangling him up like the tentacles of an octopus. He tugs against them, but the binds leave him completely immobile. “What the devil? Kal, release me!”

Kal doesn’t even deign to look over to him. He glides over to Reese, towering over him. Reese is younger than he was, all those years ago in Mobile Bay, but AJ gets the feeling this is just what he looked like. A desperate, frightened man clutching a bottle while a demon dangles the solutions to all his problems just out of reach. AJ struggles harder in his bonds. He won’t let Reese make his same mistakes.

“What do you plan on doing with that?” Kal smirks, smug as a cat with a mouse beneath its paws.

“I’m considering smashing it,” Reese spits, and Kal tsks.

“You don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?” Reese snaps, “You killed my friends, enslaved my captain, why shouldn’t I ruin everything you're working for?”

“You could,” Kal admits, “and I would be quite angry, true. A lot of work went into crafting that. You would set me back quite a ways. I would make your death slow and painful for the trouble.”

“Kal!” AJ yells, and his distress only makes Kal smirk wider.

“But... even after all that, your death would be meaningless,” Kal says. He reaches out, invading Reese’s space to straighten his hat for him. Reese doesn’t flinch away from him, and AJ wishes he had the wherewithal to be proud. “AJ here owes me a debt. And I will collect.”

Reese swallows, nervously. “You just need someone to drink this, right?” he asks. “Then you'll cancel out his debt?”

Kal smiles at him, patronizing. It is the smile an adult gives to a precocious child who thinks they have figured out how the world works. “That's right!”

“Officer Reese, you will hand me that bottle immediately!” AJ shouts as he strains against the fog’s hold on his limbs.

Reese looks between AJ and the bottle, before he knocks it back and chugs.

“Morgan!” AJ yells, but Kal doesn't free him until Morgan has finished every last drop.

“There,” Reese says, as he lowers the bottle and wipes his mouth, “Now, you can get the fuck off-”

Reese gasps, and hunches over, letting out a strangled cry. The bottle slips out of his hand, and shatters on the floor. His knees give and he clutches his throat, wheezing and gurgling. AJ clambers to his side, his bad knee be damned.

"Reese!" AJ cries, pulling Reese into his lap, out of the glass. He glares up at Kal. "What did you do, you son of a bitch?"

Kal hums. "Won't be long now."

Reese claws at AJ's jacket and AJ smooths his hair away from his forehead. "Officer Reese," AJ demands, "look at me, you are not allowed to die. That is an order, you hear me?"

"C-Captain?" Reese wheezes, gazing up with glassy eyes. They roll back in his head, and he collapses, completely boneless.

No.

NO!

He clutches Reese closer, cradling his head. He shakes him, twice. "Morgan, MORGAN!"

And suddenly, like a miracle, Morgan gasps. His eyes flutter up, and they are solid, midnight black. He looks up at Kal, and grins. He strokes a hand down AJ's chest.

"Oh Captain, if you wanted to hold me in your arms, you just had to ask!"

AJ shoves him away in horror, without a thought. That... That isn't-

That sounded like-

AJ looks around the room, and Kal is gone. But surely he couldn't have... That would be-

"Now, now, AJ, don't be so rough!" Reese's voice says. "This body can't take as much damage as I’m used to. You wouldn't want to hurt poor Officer Reese, would you?"

"Get out of him, now," AJ demands. "You made the deal with me, you leave him out of this."

"I would have loved to!" Reese- Kal says, "But your darling boatswain already took the spell. I need him, for now. But~" His eyes flicker back to normal and he grins, and it is so cheery and so bright and so Morgan, it makes AJ feel sick. "You'll help me? Won't you, Captain?" It's the same eager tone he used when he asked AJ to let John, Margaret, and the Stratfords on the Ellen Austin. But it is... Wrong. A shade too slimy, too manipulative, to be the man AJ trusts.

His eyes go solid black again and Kal's smirk looks so wrong on Reese's face. "I'll give him back the moment I'm done, I swear. All you have to do is help me, one last time."

AJ swallows. He knows what he is going to say, and already regrets it. But he has no choice, not if it means saving a member of his crew.

His hand shakes as he extends it.

"Deal."

#Morgan Reese #AJ Griffin #pulp musicals #Kalfu #the ghosts of antikythera #my writing #pulp musicals fortnight 2024 #pulp musicals fortnight day alternate: possession #tw violence #Kalfu pulp musicals #my fanfic

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