pointofhonoria | come sail away inbox

"Erin." It's firm, fond, and a little bit insistent. "I said I'm good, yeah? Twice, even. Trust me, alright? If I wasn't good, I'd tell you. Promise."

And she would, with this at least. If she doesn't want to talk about something, she won't. This might be kind of a lot on very little sleep, but that doesn't change her answer, especially now they've already dipped their toes into it. They may as well just take the plunge.

She shovels another bite of pancakes into her mouth. Processes that first admission. Easy enough to understand, Erin's right about that; she doesn't have that exact experience, certainly wouldn't talk about taking someone home for a night, but... she gets the idea well enough.

"Alright. I get that, I think," she says, after swallowing. "So, Tendi's the easy one. Then what's the not-so-easy one?"

"She's...okay. One step at a time. Also I'm stealing some pancake." Erin nabs one of the spare forks and does exactly that. Has she already eaten breakfast? Yes. Will she ever stop stealing (her girlfriend (NOT YET)) Crabb's food? No. Besides, chewing and swallowing gives her time to think.

"I...listen. This whole thing? It's not exactly accepted even in my time on my world. Just having this talk is literally further than I imagined making it. Usually if you even try you're just...a slut, or playing at love, or an idiot, or a cheater or adulterer or whatever. People get angry at you. Part of why I've basically never seriously dated is it was easier just to be seen as only interested in a quick fling than to...to stare down the barrel of that rejection. I promise I'm not trying to string you along for drama. I'm just."

"...Scared."

"...you don't gotta be scared with me, which— I know it ain't that simple, but—" She groans a little, scrubs at her face again and smacks herself on the cheek a couple times. "I ain't much used to the idea of all this, no. Not outside 'a— Johnny and his boys, or, Hell, the way things between him and his bloke at home worked after Bastrop came back married but not, like, married."

Does that make sense without context? Debatable, but Crabb continues to not be blunt in this one area. She is absolutely not going to say a thing about Ducky and Mimley's non-existent sex life or Johnny's by proxy. She would die on the spot.

"But I ain't... I ain't gonna call you any of those things. I ain't gonna get angry. Might have to bear with me a bit, but I can promise you that much, alright?"

She offers her hand out for at least a quick squeeze.

Erin takes that hand and squeezes it, almost desperately. "Thank you. It's. Yeah it's still kinda hard. Kinda. Scratch that, would honestly rather be fighting for my life again. This whole honest-about-my-feelings thing is goddamn terrifying, I just have a good game face."

(There you go. I'm going back to my nap.)

...Buddy how does this situation even work?

(I over-think things and sometimes you listen to me.)

"...Her name's Cassandra. You might have seen her at the watch party at the start of the month, if you were...you, then. God I hope you were you then, we had such a good talk..." Erin trails off, chewing her lip in worry. Tendi healed the bite from the 1st but damn if she won't just keep doing that if you leave her unattended. "She's from one of those worlds of magic, back in time in comparison to our tech level but, y'know. Shy in that way where you're very polite in order to mask up, real aristocrat coping mechanisms. We...connected. I asked her for some advice, later, trying to make contact with the Captain."

Deep breath. You can do it Erin. You can do it.

"I knew you weren't you by then. I was. Running fucking wild. Out of my skull with stress. So when I went to update her on how that whole thing went I was like, hey, let's get a drink, by the way I'm flirting." Beat. Erin takes out her phone and waggles it. "On this thing where I sound like a fucking robot, hence the absolutely otherwise-insane act of stating openly that I'm flirting. And..."

"...Well, she met me for that drink. We had. I'm gonna say an argument, about the Captain? Shared our hurts. Decided to keep flirting. And then at the Halloween party I reached out again when I was about -" she holds her hand three apples above the floor, "this tall. I need you to understand I was that tall the whole time. I am a very different person that tall. Like. Giddy. Playful. Fucking downright touchable. Am I making sense?"

"I was me," she says that before she addresses any of the rest, "at the Muppets. Didn't get shoved down the stairs 'til a bit over a week later. That was me. And, hey; don't make yourself bleed again, alright? Don't make me make our second kiss me just distractin' you from chewing yourself."

Beat. Face flushing deep. Did she really just say that oh God what the Hell is her tired brain thinking— alright, alright, just... pretend you meant to be that brash and don't look at her. This is fine. Play it off and think.

Because the rest... the rest she needs longer to process. Now she's the one clinging desperately to Erin's hand and just as desperately biting back that illogical part of her that keeps trying to make itself known. That the surface level description of Cassandra, at least, makes her sound so much the opposite of herself doesn't... help. Magic world. Shy and polite. Aristocratic.

(You were gone three weeks and she found someone better, of course she did, no one looks at you that way for long.)

(You were gone three weeks and the world kept turning and people kept living and you shouldn't, didn't, expect anything less so why does that hurt so much?)

She draws in a deep breath through her teeth and exhales it all slowly. Push those stupid thoughts back down into the dark corners of her mind where they belong. Don't pay them any mind. Erin isn't making a comparison. Erin is saying the exact opposite of wanting one or the other.

"...you're making sense, yeah. God, I missed a lot, didn't I...?"

Erin stops biting her lip, self-consciously, her face turning bright fucking red. Hearts crackle in the air around her as Spring returns to its favorite activity: tattling on what she wants.

She lets go of Crabb's hand just long enough to lace their fingers together and hold on for dear life.

"...You did, yeah. We really went apeshit on the ship. Someone even shot up the theater, which, like. Fucking rude, I use that place. Oh god I just admitted that - listen, it's - I am getting off-topic!"

Her thumb, just brushing Crabb's hand. Fighting the urge to hide behind her cloud of hair.

"I'd just...I'd just lost my shit on SecUnit. Big ugly cry. Feeling like everyone was trying to leave me, or had been taken from me. It. It helped me through that, and then I went, okay. Let's get an even keel by unhinging my mind the other way with, in its words, pairing nonsense. Fucking. Okay, you can laugh at this, it's funny in hindsight, but I'd gotten my tiny dress all wet crying so I dunked myself in more water and then had it set me down near Cass, and we..."

"...Talked. Heavy shit. Trying to flirt, trying to have the fucking backbone to show our hurts honestly. And it seemed like it was time to go, and she...she wanted to pick me up."

Her free hand goes back to the three-apple height, for emphasis.

"...I felt so safe, there in her hands. Like I haven't in a long time. Like the world was just gone. Crazy, right? Like as far as I know she's not this heavy like me or SecUnit or that crazy-ass moon fucker I just learned about two days ago. But I felt. Safe. From all the eyes of the world, from having to be this big fucking badass."

"...I think I might have it pretty bad for her too."

(...God it is nice to make her blush in return.)

She doesn't quite laugh, but she does crack a smile at the description of dunking herself in more water to— mask the fact she was crying? At the same time, her chest pangs. She missed so much and though God knows she'll try, she'll figure out how to fill as many of the blanks as she can, she'll still miss some of it; even then, can just hearing about these things ever substitute for living them?

She likes the idea of seeing Erin giddy and enjoying herself like she described. Hates that she missed (contributed to?) her struggling and thus couldn't do a damn thing, as illogical as that is. Doesn't know how to feel about the fact Cassandra was able to give her that sense of safety.

She focuses on Erin's fingers linked with hers, the brush of her thumb against the back of her hand, and tries to put the pieces in order in her head.

"...yeah, I— I think I can hear it. The way you're talking about her, y'know." Some (selfish?) part of her really hopes Erin has talked so obviously about her to someone, too... "M'glad you had that. Glad someone... helped. Let you feel safe." And she really does mean that.

"...I honestly don't know what to make of it," Erin admits in her smallest voice. "I'm not used to having all these...these knight-ass feelings. I want to make her feel safe too. You and me, I like this push-pull we've got, this...the way you make me feel bold is amazing. And, you know, I don't wanna be the fucking badass all the time, but when you got all worked up watching me lick the blood off my knuckles? That was the first time in a long time I remembered, in my heart and not in my head, that it's not always bad to be one."

Erin draws Crabb's hand closer and kisses her knuckles, softly, for the briefest of moments. "And that's...that's the whole confession here, about this anyway. Cards on the table."

Her heart flutters a little at the brush of Erin's lips against her knuckles and she has to swallow hard to remember how words work again.

"Christ, I keep forgetting you noticed that bloody reaction..." that gets a laugh, a little at her own expense. She still doesn't really understand why that got her as hot and bothered as it did in the moment, but it still comes back to haunt her every now and then.

She stuffs another forkful of pancakes into her mouth and chews as she turns all of that over in her head. Tries to separate out the illogical responses from the real, logical responses.

"...I like every side 'a you I've gotten to see, for the record," comes out of her mouth first, as her fingers squeeze at Erin's. "What's happenin' inside my head right now is— complicated. I hear you. Think I get what you're saying. Get what you're not saying. But Hell, Erin, there's some nonsense goin' on up there that feels too goddamned stupid to even put in bleedin' words."

"Yeah, mood. Been arguing with the head voices all October and now one of 'em is off sulking."

(I'm you. You're sulking. We are sulking together. We contain multitudes.)

"...Petulantly sulking." Erin makes a Face, but it flickers back into a smile soon enough. "Listen, Crabb...I don't get to lay this on you and then say whatever you've got going on is too much. Take heart. There's very little chance you're crazier than I am."

It's that Erin comments on arguing with the head voices so simply that has Crabb rolling ahead with that without question. She'd take far more direct note if Erin sounded more... bothered.

"Ain't that I think I'm crazy, so much. What I am is bleedin' frustrated with my own damned—" She makes a frustrated noise, because the word insecurities doesn't flow off her tongue naturally and forces her to find a way to explain this without it. "I ain't used to being... wanted, like this. To having any feelings I catch thrown back at me. 'Cause even besides Cragen, it ain't that I've never... there are people I like, yeah? People back at home that I know ain't ever gonna look at me the way part of me looks at them."

Present tense, but Erin should know there's about as much romantic chemistry between Johnny and Crabb as there is between a couple of rocks, so as much as she loves him in their own way, it isn't about him. The feelings are just still current even if home never will be again.

"Doesn't usually bother me, mind. Not like I don't get it. I ain't what people look for. I know that and I'd rather be me, not what people kept tryna drape over me for years, just—"

She makes another frustrated noise and looks away, staring at a very (not) interesting spot on the wall as she makes herself say, "...so there's this stupid part of me that can't shake the idea that any interest ain't gonna last long. I guess. Sensible bit of me, it knows better, and it ain't your fault part of me ain't so sensible. S'just— just a lot I'm adjusting to."

Erin lifts Crabb's hand again and holds their held hands to her cheek. The contact sends a shiver through her body that makes her seem so much more...

At peace.

"I had some idea of what your deal was when I let myself open my heart up, Crabb," Erin murmurs softly. "And that 'some idea' became a pretty big idea pretty soon after, didn't it? You've never been dishonest with me that anything between us is gonna have some choppy waters to navigate. But if I can indulge in some petty malice, 'hopping to Gallery and collecting teeth from everyone who didn't give you a second glance' has gotten pretty high on my list of petty revenge fantasies, slightly behind curbstomping the pricks who killed Edgar Allen Poe."

"I'm in no rush, love. I spent this long avoiding learning how to be a girlfriend, there's no world where I have a call to say I'm in a hurry."

The gentle tug taking her hand up to Erin's face gets her to look back at her again, expression softening in an instant. She's still a little awed they can just... do this, now.

"Mmm. Rather you didn't take some 'a their teeth, considerin' I still like 'em plenty whether they look at me like that or not, but— think I can appreciate the sentiment." There's the tug of a smile at the corner of her lips and she squeezes Erin's hand again. "I— I like this. I want— this. One kiss ain't gonna do it for me forever, y'know? Just tryna untangle this knot in my head that's taken on a life of its own. Sensible part of me, it don't care that you've got it for someone else when you kissed me not even three days ago—be a hypocrite if it did, considerin' some of those feelings I ain't shaken are for a bleedin' married woman no less—just... just gotta pull that damn knot apart, get it outta there."

Erin's eyebrows raise in delighted curiosity. "I was wondering why you didn't give me more shit when I admitted Colors was in a relationship when we uh...y'know. Married woman...this Ducky you've talked about?"

The question is gentle, but it is absolutely full of curiosity.

Just like her Mantle is now full of little rubber ducks made of smoke.

"God I talk too much, I swear," she groans dramatically and gestures just as dramatically. "Yeah. Ducks. She's— bloody brilliant, she is. Sharpest mind I've ever known. Could bring down anyone or anything if she set her mind to it, I think. Be a bleedin' evil mastermind like good ol' Lady Hawthorne. Instead she's been a part of building Lavender Jack, tearin' down corruption... and God, she's striking. We butted heads a lot at first, but..."

She shrugs one shoulder. Eventually it was just how things were and there was this sort of mutual respect and unspoken fondness, she thinks. Once she settled into being a part of Lavender Jack, Ducky never truly rebuffed her.

"Didn't even think about it properly until she went away for two years, long time to think and all, then she went and came back all... dressed up, hair changed. Y'know how you can make me forget how to bloody speak? Yeah. Christ. So— yeah, point is, I really ain't got room to judge on that front and God I hope Johnny doesn't know this..."

He almost certainly does it's fucking Johnny.

Edited 2022-10-31 03:21 (UTC)

Erin's smile is full of teasing mischief. "She sounds like a hell of a lady. I decree her exempt from tooth collection."

She can't stop touching the back of Crabb's hand, thrilling that she's able to, basking in the warmth.

"...We got one more big talk ahead of us, I think, but not today. There's no way you've missed some of the ominous-ass hints I've been dropping, and you'll get the full story from me...later. But now, right now? I think maybe I'd like to ask if you have any books from your world, or stories from you life, and make a date to sit up at night in your lap listening to them. Y'like the sound of it?"

(Johnny so knows.)

Well no shit, head voice, but he also knows how to mind his fucking business, which is what we're doing by not saying that out loud.

(...Okay but goss time with Johnny later.)

Oh fuck yeah goss time with Johnny later.

Her face is so, so warm again, but so is the smile she casts back at Erin. God if this isn't nice. (God if she doesn't wish that Erin won't have to inevitably leave again.)

"...yeah, yeah I like the sound 'a that. Could pull out one of the books of my detective partner's old cases Johnny got a while back, maybe." She's read every single volume front to back and as much as a part of her has been on and off frustrated with Ferrier ever since finding out about the Nightjar, let alone after her little yelling session at Johnny... she does still love the woman like family, and the stories are good.

And she trusts her voice to stay steady enough reading something she already knows so well, even if she's distracted by having Erin laying in her lap.

"And— no, I ain't missed 'em, you're right, but... yeah. Lemme get my head back on straight again. Dunno when that'll be, after all this, but day by day, right?"

Erin nods. "Only way to do it. Tomorrow will come when it comes and bring everything it's got with it. But." Erin raises a finger with her free hand. "I'ma tell you this now, and you can do with this information as you please. I promised Johnny the full story and he turned me down straight. Even chided me for assuming my business is everyone else's to hold against me, which...yeah, I do that. I don't think that's gonna be your preference, but don't lay what I hand to you down on him, alright? I'm sure he'll tell you just as much if you ask him."

"Yeah, alright. I can trust that out of your mouth as much as I can outta his, so. Alright. But— you're right, I wanna know. Whatever it all is."

The way she says it... even without saying the specific words, she comes across as confident that whatever it is, it isn't going to change a damn thing. Because the thing is Erin is actually planning to tell her and you know what, after she gave Cragen the chance to explain and he goddamn gave her another concussion for her troubles?

That still earns Erin a hell of a lot of good faith.

That shy smile plays across Erin's lips. "Alright then. It'll be a whiskey kinda talk, when we have it. I...should probably try to get on with my day, but you text me when you have an idea of that date, yeah?"

Her shy smile turns fiercer. "If you want a turn being in my lap I've got a novel I'd love to share too. Fairy story, from my time, a love story. Messy and hopeful and bloody and defiant, like love ought to be."

Crabb nods to the first question so as not to speak while actively imagining getting to lay in Erin's lap, which she's sure would result in at least sounding a little strangled again (God help her in either situation, it'll still be the most extended physical affection she's shared with anyone but Johnny).

"Definitely. On both counts. I— I'd really like that."

This all still feels like it shouldn't be real and yet it is. It's so very real and it is making things so much more bearable right now than it would be otherwise.

"Good." Erin leans in, like she couldn't with her ribs busted, feeling fierce and cared for and utterly relieved. She still hasn't let go. "Now, if I was in the market for that second kiss while you've got pancake syrup on your lips so I can leave this room feeling like a damn girl again, you'd say...?"

She hates how ridiculous and desperate this is going to make her sound even before she finishes saying it, but she's about as in control of her words in this moment as she is her own heartbeat, "...God, please."

Help. She's so doomed.

Erin's across the space in an instant to take that offer, fierce and hungry, full of the triumphant feeling of having braved her doubts to find that maybe.

Just maybe.

Being Erin is good enough. All around the two of them a shower of crabs and hearts forms in the smoke.

There's a small burst of surprised, delighted laughter as she closes in that's quickly muffled by Erin's lips, replaced just as quickly by a pleased noise low in Crabb's throat. Her hand finds Erin's face and she does her damndest to match Erin's energy which is... easier than she expected, as it turns out, with how much she wants this too. God, if these kisses haven't half been worth the wait, worth even the circumstances that got them here.

And it's hard, almost impossible even, to doubt that Erin wants her in a moment like this, a fact that settles somewhere in her, warm as anything.

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