Happy birthday, my darlings

Oh god guys, life is challenging me. I need your patience for the birthday fics and I need a break from the deadlines for the rest of the year. 

I’m sorry. I am determined to fulfill these fics, but it’s just not going to happen in the upcoming weeks. 

Happy birthday @theapatheticmoose! I hope you like this, because I had a lot of fun writing it. 

The prompt was: Established relationship/some fluffy shenanigans. I live for these boys being happy. 

[content warning: alcohol, hangovers, intoxicated but consensual sex.]

---

9:57 AM

Foggy awoke to a noise like a confused moose being dragged through a field of typewriters, and was disgusted to discover that it was coming from him.

Fucking hell, what had he done to himself last night?

He thought he should just be brave about waking up, but the window in the corner of the bedroom wedged a dagger under his cracked eyelids and there was another—more aggrieved than concussed this time—moose/typewriter sound.

Unsteadily, eyes still closed, he rolled out of bed, one heavy foot hitting the floor and sending a dress shoe spiralling. Then the second foot. There was a moment of panic when the head went from horizontal to vertical, and the lights behind his eyelids started to swirl ominously.

He made his way to the kitchen slowly, going hand-over-hand on the furniture, the walls, and at one low point, the floor. The sound of the water from the tap rushing into his hands sizzled like acid on his brain but the cool of it pouring down his throat was as much a relief as seeing Matt alive and breathing after thinking him dead.

He opened his eyes. Bright. Painfully bright. Had the kitchen always been so shiny? Maybe Matt had the right of it and Foggy should find the closest nuclear waste truck and give himself a facial.

But besides all the glare and the self-pity, there was a sparkle that, when he lined up enough brain cells to clack together like an executive desk toy, Foggy realized wasn’t because of the chrome of the tap or the glint off the window pane. It was on his hand.

Huh. A wedding ring.

aguacatito

replied to your post

“Dearest @aliscontritum, this is a terrible birthday gift on a number...”

You are a good friend.

Dearest @aliscontritum, this is a terrible birthday gift on a number of levels. One, it’s late. Two, it’s not what you asked for. But right now life is the period of time between hits of my emotional support bi pirates, so please, have too many words of an AU literally no one asked for. 

I also would like to bring you this piece of Dread Pirate Murdock fanart, because it is beautiful. 

[genuine content warnings: violence, blood, and discussions of 18th century slave-trading.]

[comedy content warnings: made up naming practices of the English gentry, completely inaccurate descriptions of ship anatomy, violence to hinges.]

--

Karen

After three days at sea, under a burning Caribbean sun, the Captain's useless hostage ("my guest," the Captain had said, smiling a twisted and vicious smile) deigned to step out on deck without his wig.

From the rigging, men whistled and hooted at the hostage's naked head, the fine gold hair that looked like soft cornsilk. The hostage—she had heard that he was the eldest son of an Earl, back in England, so if her memory served her, that made him The Honourable Lord something or other.

Karen's life in London had been a colourless wash of a chambermaid's drudgery, day after day of not speaking out of turn, of not demanding more than her station was allowed, of not stabbing her employer with his own letter opener when he backed her up against the drawing room fireplace and lifted her skirt. Well. Not more than once. She'd left London not long after that, a fistful of that employer's silverware tied up in her bodice. But she still remembered how to address a Earl's son. 

The Honourable Lord whots-his-face blushed at the catcalling and waved his hand to the men as if to accept the mockery with grudging good humour: "yes yes, you're too kind," and joined Karen at the railing of the quarterdeck.

"Milord," Karen tugged at her wide-brimmed hat.

"Quartermaster," the fancy twit replied, nodding back. "Please, call me Foggy. The captain?"

Karen nods up at the rigging, and the Captain's guest lifted a hand to shade his eyes, squinting up into the web of ropes that to a non-sailor, must have looked like a chaotic tangle.

"Where?"

Karen put her head close to his lordship's, and bid him sight along her arm as she pointed. "There."

Men on land and on sea whispered about the captain of the ship called the Hell's Kitchen, who could see in the dark, who fought like a wraith, and who flew a black flag with a design of a skull with horns above a pair of crossed staves. That same man was now standing upon the foretop-gallant yard, one hand wrapped around the t'gallant stay and leaning out over oblivion, sightlessly scanning the horizon.

Of all of the things that make me miserable right now, the fact that I read a noir AU that is better than anything I can currently write should not be so high on the list.

thosemintcookies

replied to your post

“Hurrah @pluckyredhead​ you made it to the end of the work week!  So...”

Lol, you’re not wrong. I don’t know if I should plead “well if i wrote the same scene focus from each of them it’d be boring” or “Matt’s brain doesn’t half run away with him if he’s unsupervised” or “in my defence, Foggy gets to be flowery in chapters 4-6 of the original” but I feel like should be pleading something. 

I’m generally not unhappy with that section but I know I haven’t earned it yet because I haven’t written the bits that lead him to it (discovering Foggy in Rouen, the whole Alfie and Wat thing, his epic sulk on the bowsprit). Hazards of posting fragments. 

Did everyone know that Stardust_podfics made a podfic of Shinikari and my fic, Say Yes Say Yes (Well I would if you asked) a little while ago?

Go listen to an amazing version of the fic!