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Chip sat swaying in a rotted rowboat, a deep-seated fear still writhing uncomfortably in his belly and stinging at his throat. DarkPort, All-Port’s criminal underbelly, disappeared behind him beneath a moss-coated bridge, but his anxieties did not fade. When Chip closed his eyes all he could see was Reuben Price falling stiff to the floor, one gleaming purple eye wide with shock and anger. Hatred. From an old friend. From someone he used to … Never mind. It hardly mattered now.
Chip rolled out his right shoulder with a guiding hand, wincing at the sharp stab of pain where he’d been hit while making his escape. His fresh tattoos ached anew, a stinging, itching sensation that was warm to the touch. A developing infection, perhaps. He could have Jay or Gill look at it when he reached them, though what he would tell them about his whereabouts, he had no clue. Chip supposed he should tell the truth, now that the danger was somewhat passed. Encourage them to pack up and leave early lest a vengeful lackey decide to give chase, if nothing else. He couldn’t lie to them anymore. Especially not to Gill.
What would have happened had he not escaped? What would his co-captains think? His heart panged; it had been forever since Chip had ventured out to do anything on his own, and the experience dredged up worse memories and a bitter taste on his tongue. He knew he could be selfish, impulsive, prone to dangerous actions and impromptu plans. It was a wonder that he’d survived at all before meeting his friends, but … but Reuben was his problem and his alone. Earl had been beaten and bloodied at the hands of Chip’s past; the image of him curled in an alleyway around his incised stomach was something that would live with Chip forever. He just couldn’t bear the thought of anybody else getting caught in his crossfire.
The situation had been handled, and that was that. He was still miraculously alive and with few injuries to his name, which was more than he could ask for when playing with fire. Still, the anxiety in his gut wriggled like snakes, curling around his lungs and choking him from the inside. How long would the immobile spell hold? Was Reuben’s gang close behind, even without the direct order of their leader? Could Ruffus and Amber be in danger, now that he’d accepted their help in cursing the eye?
A cool wind from the ocean blew over the waterway. Chip shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets and fought the shiver that threatened to crawl up his spine. His fingers brushed against the cool glass of a bottle; frowning and wondering perhaps if he had left a flask of ale there by mistake, he fished the bottle from between the folds of fabric and lifted it to examine in the moonlight.
Pink liquid sloshed from within a heart-shaped container, rocked by both Chip’s handling and the continuous lull of the rowboat. In the moonlight it possessed a certain sheen—almost a glow—that Chip had discovered from watching Gillion fight was characteristic of potent, powerful magic. He had forgotten about it in the heat of the moment, and wouldn’t that have been so much simpler? To spritz Reuben in the face and have him calling off his thugs, shaking Chip’s hand, and apologizing for all the trouble he had caused?
Idiot, Chip reprimanded, shoving the potion back into his pocket. This whole endeavor might have ended two hours ago, and maybe he’d even be getting a decent night’s sleep by now. Maybe Reuben wouldn’t hate him so much. Although, when the potion wore off, maybe he’d hate Chip more.
There was no use conjecturing now. He’d work himself into a panic with these what-ifs if he did not forcibly stop them from spiraling. The boat continued on, the halfling ferryman humming a mournful tune as he rowed, and Chip kept his hand in his pocket to fiddle with the bottle and distract himself from derailing thoughts. The glass was smooth and thin. Fragile. He popped off the cap, popped it back on, ran his nail along the indentation of the heart’s top. What would he use it for, now that danger had passed? Why had he wanted it so badly, anyway? He couldn’t remember.
Chip started when the rowboat bumped softly against the wooden dock, signaling the end of his ride. The halfling stared at him with an impatient raise of his brow, so Chip obligingly tossed him a coin and stepped out onto solid ground. “Uh, thanks,” he said when he’d gotten his bearings, and he leaned down to help push the rowboat back into the waterway. The ferryman groaned in acknowledgement and gave Chip a two-fingered salute. Chip watched him switch lanes and begin the trek back to DarkPort, disappearing beyond All-Port’s glowing streetlamps.
“Chip!” shouted a voice from behind him, deep and echoing, marred by some sort of voice modulation. Chip froze, goosebumps crawling up his skin, panic pounding in his chest. He knew, in that moment, that the plan had failed. Reuben had sent someone after him, and somehow they had made it out of DarkPort before he did. They were there to meet him. To end him.
Chip turned on his heel, fear and the rush of battle alighting his movement. Whoever they were, they were fast approaching, and all Chip saw beneath the speeding blur of a silhouette was two pinprick eyes glowing a deep, ominous red. Fearing for his life and lacking weapons, Chip reacted on impulse: he whipped out the potion and chucked it at his attacker.
The glass shattered on impact. Pink splashed in all directions, catching the light from the streetlamps in the liquid’s arc toward the ground, an explosion of yellows and pinks. Its fumes, as if it had a mind of its own, wrapped around and through the slats of what Chip was quickly beginning to realize was a black metal helmet. The attacker leaned backward and, like pulling the reins on a horse, skid to a stop so abrupt it had them falling over onto their ass. Inches from Chip.
He wilted in relief, shoulders slumping, breaths heaving. It worked. He was still alive.
“Chip?” came a voice from beyond his attacker. He blinked at the familiarity of it, and when he looked up he saw Jay jogging towards him, her arms heavy with several grocery bags of goods. Beyond her stood Ollie, clutching a leather-bound notebook to his chest and looking altogether confused. “What was that—?” she started, but then her attention shifted to the person seated in front of him, and her face paled. “Gill!”
“Gill?!” Chip echoed, hating the way his voice cracked. He looked down and for the first time took in the blue-green skin, the details of the armor, the water bowl fixed to the hip. Jay was kneeling, hands outstretched, and in panic Chip grabbed onto her wrist and pulled. “Wait, Jay, don’t touch him!” he yelled, thinking only of the potion that had soaked into his clothes.
Jay stared at Chip, at his pale face and shaking hands, and her wide eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What the hell did you hit him with?”
“I—” Chip started, but then Gillion was moving, raising his hands to unclasp and slip off the helmet. Beneath, his face was flushed a deep blue all the way from his nose to the tips of his fins. The coral atop his head glowed strangely, a pulsating pink that worked its way from the roots to the end and back down again. His eyes were awash in an inky, bubblegum pink, blotting them out like milky cataracts.
Gillion blinked several times at Chip, like he couldn’t believe his sight, and his coral’s pink pulsating slowed gently to a stop. The color drained from his eyes too, melting down into his waterline and leaving behind nothing but a thin glowing outline of a heart curving delicately across his irises.
“Chip,” Gill whispered reverently. His pupils dilated like a cat’s, larger than Chip had ever seen them.
“Shit,” Chip said, eloquently.
Jay stared, opened and closed her mouth, lost for words. “You—” she started, going pink in the face in her exasperation. “You—!”
“Hey, Gill, buddy,” Chip said, trying to disguise the shake in his voice and avoid Jay’s righteous indignation. “Why don’t you go wash off?”
“I—Yes,” Gill replied, blinking hard and shaking his head. “I will do that,” he said clunkily, moving to stand.
Gill moved away from Chip like he was walking through molasses and without ever taking his eyes off him. He kept squishing up his face and clenching his teeth like the effort itself was physically painful, but then he closed his eyes and with a steadying breath jumped off the dock into the water below. Without Gillion staring at him like a lovelorn puppy, Chip’s guilt relaxed the vice-like grip it had on his heart, and he felt like he could breathe again.
“I told you you shouldn’t buy that philter of love,” Jay said, like a nagging mother (or what Chip imagined a nagging mother might sound like, anyway). Despite her obvious annoyance, there was a hint of humor in her tone, and it was just enough to take Chip out of his worry and into the comforting embrace of aggravation.
“It’s not funny!” he said as Ollie came up next to him, carefully minding his step over the broken glass. “I thought he was attacking me! I panicked!”
“I can see that,” Jay said, leaning down to pick up her groceries. When she straightened and was met by Chip’s ill-humored expression, she sighed. “Look, relax, okay? It was an accident. It’ll wear off on its own.” Jay sidled past him to the docks, rapping twice on the wood with the heel of her boot. “You’re good now, Gill!” she shouted. “Come on up so we can go back to the ship!”
Gillion emerged meekly, his nose and eyes out of the water but his mouth remaining submerged. He sucked in air through his gills and released it from his nose in careful, measured breaths that rippled the surface of the water. With the full moon behind him, he all but glowed, his hair pooling in mossy green strands around his face.
Chip might have been an idiot, but he wasn’t altogether stupid. He knew himself, his strengths and his many, many, many faults, better than anyone thought he did. Reading emotion was a necessity born from a life on the run; he’d learned how and when to disengage fast, because it otherwise meant nursing a black eye or a dislocated bone in some dark city corner by himself, alone. He knew how to read and regulate his own emotions for the same reason. You can’t effectively lie to someone without knowing the truth first: what sets them off, what picks at their heartstrings, what turns up their nose.
So he knew he felt…something…for Gillion. Something he refused to label, even after that awful, horrible, no-good kiss on Desire Island sharpened it into stunning clarity, even after he held Gill while he nearly bled out in the very heart of the B.L.O.C.K, in a situation so stacked against them that every instinct in Chip’s body was screaming for him to run. There wasn’t anything for it except to sequester it away, tucked behind the protective shell of his ribcage, and pretend it didn’t exist. After all, Gill had his prophecy, and he had the Black Rose Pirates. Their paths were more destined to divide than they’d ever been to intertwine in the first place, that lucky day Chip found him floating at the surface.
Why couldn’t it have been me? Chip wondered as he watched Gillion clamber onto the dock, stiff and awkward in a way Chip had never known him to be. Guilt so heavy it made him nauseous settled in the pit of his stomach. This would be so much easier if it was me.
But he didn’t say that. Instead he reached down to retrieve Gill’s helm, checking for stray splashes of potion or bits of glass as he did, and held it out for him to take. “Here.”
Gillion reached out to take the offering, but in doing so their hands brushed against one another—and then Gill’s pupils were dilating again, his eyes clouding over with that hazy bubblegum glow, and he was falling boneless into Chip’s chest like a fainting maiden. Chip rushed to hold him up even as he felt the zing! of touch rush through him, even as he wished to melt to the floor with Gillion in tow.
“I apologize,” Gill gasped, trying and failing to take his own weight. “I’ve gotten you all wet.”
Chip would be lying if he claimed he’d noticed. “That’s alright,” he said. “You’re okay.”
“What you hit me with…it was poison?”
It should have been funny. It would have been funny, had it been anyone else. “No, Gill. It was a love potion.”
“Oh.” Gillion grimaced and stood, finally managing to get his feet under him again. His hand trailed from Chip’s shoulder down his arm, sending cooling waves over his stinging tattoos and a buzzing sensation up his spine. “That explains it,” he whispered, his eyes and fingers lingering near Chip’s heartline.
“Maybe I should take him,” Jay said, putting a hand on Gill’s shoulder and gently directing him away.
The effect was immediate: his coral pulsated with color and his eyes glazed over—so much so that the whites disappeared altogether. “No,” he growled, snapping his teeth at Jay. He grabbed Chip’s wrist and held fast, so tight it was bruising.
Chip must have made some sort of pained noise, or Gill must have seen something on Chip’s face, because when Gill turned back to look at him, it was over as soon as it had begun. He released his grip on Chip’s wrist like he himself had been burned, taking several stilted steps backward and away. “I’m sorry,” he said to Chip. Then, to Jay, who was wearing a twin expression of shock: “I’m so sorry. I…think that would be wise.”
Chip watched Jay lead him away in utter silence. He felt feverish. He looked down at the shattered glass on the dock, noticed the little slice of paper that had been the bottle’s label, and scooped it up. It read:
꧁𓊈PHILTER OF LOVE𓊉꧂
Causes the user to become infatuated with the first creature they see. If it is someone they would usually be attracted to, they’ll believe it’s true love. Duration: 12 hours. Side effects may include infatuation or enamoration, lightheadedness, insomnia, dry mouth, anxiety, clinginess, mild fever, and aggression. NOW IN SPRAYING FORM. Use sparingly. No refunds.
“Hey, Chip,” Ollie said in a small voice. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” Chip replied, ignoring the way his voice broke a little at the end. “Just fine.”
⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹
After swinging by to drop Ollie off, Chip spent most of the night avoiding the ship. He wandered the levels of Allport aimlessly, watching drunks stumble from taverns until even they had closed up shop. It was selfish of him, he knew, to be doing this instead of packing everyone up and leaving before Reuben or his little henchmen could recover enough to come after them, especially with all that had already happened. Chip’s past had a nasty habit of coming back to bite him, and it was stupid of him to not be prepared.
But after seeing the way Gillion acted when he was around, all distracted and dizzy and so unlike himself, he was convinced everyone would be better off without him for the night. And anyway, he felt so guilty and conflicted about Gill’s affections that he didn’t know if he could stand to look in those pink-tinted eyes without throwing up. Or, worse still: if Gill really started coming onto him, Chip worried he wouldn’t be strong enough to resist. If that happened, Gillion would still come back to his senses by late morning, probably feeling more betrayed and honorless than ever. The rift between them might never be mended.
Again, Chip found himself wishing that the roles had been reversed. Gill was so virtuous and heroic and chivalric and perfect that he’d have no problem managing Chip, and then Chip would be able to play it off like he was just under the effects of the potion—yes sir, no deep-rooted, heartfelt, long-time crushes here!
It was the wee hours of the morning, when the night sky was just shifting into that deep purple color that foregrounded the rising sun, before Chip finally worked up the courage to return. It’d been a long day—or, yesterday had been a long day—and despite his trepidations, it was all he could do not to stumble down the ladder that led into their bedroom.
That was, until Gillion was pinning him against the nearest wall.
“Gill,” Chip gasped, every point of skin-to-skin contact feeling electric, the smell of petrichor lingering in Gill’s hair, his clothes, his breath. The prey animal in Chip’s chest—the one that kept him alive for so long, the one that told him to run, run, run— was practically chewing off its leg at being boxed in. But he held perfectly still. He barely dared take a breath.
“Where were you?” Gill asked, and it sounded…pained. Chip took in the harsh glow of his eyes, pink on pink on pink so deep and bright that none of the pupil or iris was visible underneath, that the light reflected off the crescent markings on his cheekbones and carved shadows into the hollow of his cheeks. Then he took in the tension in Gill’s jaw, the wrinkle between his brow, the way that the arms that bracketed Chip’s head shook.
Chip stuttered out an answer lackluster even to his ears. “I’m sorry. I went on a walk. I…thought it’d help you. If I kept my distance.”
“It did not help. It did not help at all,” Gillion said, rambling. “I haven’t slept. Jay refused to go looking for you. I would have gone myself, if I weren’t so…” Even without the pupils, by the way his long, perfect eyelashes were twitching, Chip could tell his gaze kept bouncing down to his lips. If Gillion were to close the distance…
Chip absently licked his own lips, tried to rid them of the phantom taste of a kiss that happened long, long ago. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again, wholly inadequate. “Gill, I—just tell me what I can do to help you.”
Gillion’s eyes flicked back to Chip’s. His hand came up to brush a stray strand of hair away from Chip’s face, his thumb and forefinger lingering at Chip’s jawline, tilting his head up to better face him. This is it, he thought, his whole face burning up.
“Knock me out,” Gillion said, so close now that Chip felt his exhale hot on his cheek.
Chip froze. His brain stuttered, bluescreened, went dark. “...What?”
Gillion disengaged. He reached down with the hand that had been caressing Chip’s jaw to unsheath one of the twin swords at his waist, pressing it into Chip’s own limp hand. “Please, please knock me out, Chip.”
“...I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I cannot trust myself. This is the only path forward I know. Hit me. Please.”
“I can’t—I—I won’t do it, Gill,” Chip said, dropping his sword. It fell to the floorboards with a dull thud. “Violence isn’t the solution this time.”
Gillion let out a keen so desperate, so unlike him, that Chip could barely believe his ears. He recoiled, jerked forward, recoiled again. He wrapped his hands around his own stomach in a vice grip so tight Chip could make out the turquoise of his knuckles paling even in the low light. Watery pink leaked from his eyes and fell like tears down his cheeks.
All at once, Chip realized why it had gotten so bad, what Gillion was doing to himself trying to resist it. He was killing himself. All because of that bullshit self-sacrificing hero complex, the one that Chip admired and feared in equal measure, because it meant he might lose the person he trusted most in the whole damn world.
Maybe Chip was doing that, too. Maybe hiding his own feelings for Gill was what had caused all of this: that, if he’d been more truthful, Gillion wouldn’t feel like any outward affection was a breach of boundaries. How many times had he pushed Gill away, afraid of getting hurt like Reuben had hurt him? And where had that gotten them? Right here, right now, with Gillion manfully trying to protect Chip’s threadbare “honor” at the expense of his own health.
An odd sense of calm passed over him. He knew what he had to do to fix it. They need only, for once in both of their lives, to stop holding back. It was up to Chip to take that first step.
“Give in,” Chip told him, stepping away from the wall.
Gillion stumbled back even further. “Have you lost your mind?” he snapped.
“Gillion,” Chip said. He held out his arms, brandished his heart, aired out that little secret he’d kept tucked away for so long. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You could never hurt me. I trust you.”
Gill stared at him, swaying on his feet, carefully weighing his options. Chip held fast. This was a battle he refused to lose.
Then, like all the fight leached out of him at once, Gillion’s eyes rolled back and he toppled forward. Again, Chip rushed to catch him—but this time, he wasn’t quite fast enough to regain their balance. Both of them clattered to the floor, Gill curled against Chip’s chest with his head pressed into the crook of his neck, his stuttering breath hot on Chip’s collarbone. Chip wrapped his arms around Gill’s back and held him just as tightly, whispering soothing reassurances into the space between his coral crown and his forehead.
“Wazzat?!” Jay shouted, sitting straight up in bed. She turned towards the sound of bodies falling, saw their silhouettes tangled together from across the room. “Chip? Gill?”
“All good!” Chip replied, giving her a thumbs up. Against him, with one huge, final sigh of relief, Gillion’s breathing evened out. “Um, think you could grab me a pillow?”
Jay rolled her eyes but nevertheless obliged. “You idiot,” she muttered as she approached. “Where were you? What took you so long?”
Chip shot her a small, comforting smile. “Won’t happen again.”
“Good,” Jay said, running her hand along Gillion’s cooling forehead. Apparently satisfied, she sat back and nodded. “Glad to have you home.”
Chip sighed. “Glad to be back.”
⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹
Chip woke to a warm weight against him and the soft sound of…purring? He opened his eyes to see the sun slanting through the portholes, warm where it crossed his and Gillion’s feet, still tangled up on the floor together. He adjusted to glance across the room and, surprised at the lack of embarrassment he felt, saw that Jay’s bed had already been vacated and made.
Gillion hummed at the movement and tried to dig his head deeper into the crook of Chip’s neck.
“You big cat,” Chip teased, rubbing circles into Gillion’s back.
“Never call me that,” Gillion responded, muffled against Chip’s skin. “A cat is a monstrous beast of a creature.”
“And yet you sure purr like one.”
“Purring is a natural healing instinct for all manner of creatures,” Gillion said. “Humans are stupid for not doing it themselves.”
Chip chuckled quietly. Despite being pinned down under Gill’s bulk, that prey animal instinct in his chest was strangely, blessedly silent. He felt that he’d be happy laying there all day. Or, at least, as long as Gillion asked of him. “Feeling better?”
“Much,” Gillion whispered. “Thank you for accommodating me like this.”
Are you kidding? This is like, my wildest dream, Chip thought. What he said was: “You’re allowed to take up space, Gill. I don’t want you feeling like your needs are worth less than mine. Or Jay’s,” he rushed to tack on. “Or anyone else’s.”
“This is different,” Gillion said. He adjusted, tilted his head back so that he could look up at Chip’s face. Chip noted that his eyes were nearly back to normal: only the thinnest outline of a heart remained. “I feel that I am taking advantage of you.”
Chip closed his eyes, took a deep breath. This was it; the moment before the plunge. He had to say it, if not here, then never again. “I haven’t been truthful with you, Gill.”
The purring stopped. The silence was all-encompassing without it. “No?” Gill asked.
“No. The truth is, I’ve had feelings for you since Desire Island. Maybe even before.” At Gill’s blank stare, Chip clarified: “Romantic feelings.”
“Oh…Oh!” Gill said. A knowing little smile graced his lips. “When we kissed, you mean?”
Chip felt his face grow hot. “Something like that,” he muttered.
Gillion sat up. Chip had only a second to doubt everything, to wish he’d stayed silent for just a little longer to preserve that moment they’d had, when suddenly Gillion was rotating to be face-to-face, chest-to-chest, with Chip. “Well, then. Why don’t we try that kiss again?”
Chip nearly bluescreened again. But at the sight of Gill leaning forward, his wits returned, and he placed a firm hand against Gillion’s chest. “Woah there, tiger. Now I’m taking advantage of you. Let’s revisit this when the potion has worn off, hm?”
Gillion stopped, frowned. “It has not worn off yet?”
Chip furrowed his eyebrows, confused. “You can’t still feel it?”
Gillion smiled again, and Chip would do anything to be able to kiss that smile, to make sure he gets to see it over and over again. “I have not been entirely honest with you either, Chip,” he said. “I have harbored these ‘feelings’ as well.”
“No way,” Chip said. He shook his head, suddenly unsure about his decision to confess when he had. Should he have waited a little longer for the philter to drain out of Gill’s system? “That’s the potion talking.”
Gillion hmmed. When he blinked down at Chip, the hearts in his eyes abruptly unravelled and disappeared, leaving only those bluest blue eyes that Chip loved so much. “Since you apologized to me after we battled in the arena, I believe.”
Chip’s whole world lit up. “Shut up! The ‘Fish and Chips’ thing?”
Gillion chuckled. “I did find it quite clever.”
It was Chip that finally closed the distance. It wasn’t at all like the kiss on Desire Island; it was rushed, it was messy, it was furious. They kept pulling away to laugh at each other and then diving back in, breathless, hungry for more. Gillion leaned down and kissed at the wound on his shoulder, at the itchy red of his tattoos, and Chip felt the cool buzz of Gill’s healing magic wash over him. It wasn’t perfect, and yet, it was everything Chip could have dreamed it to be.
They would both be just fine.