Chapter Text
You know me. You know my story.
You know already how I fell into damnation, my hands fisted tight in the torn robes of a holy man, and you watched us yank each other back out. So forgive me for not giving you the spiel again. I’m not exactly in the mood.
You remember my name, right? Jean Kirschtein, supernatural janitor. Say it five times fast, you’ll get it sooner or later.
It’s been quiet here. At least, as far as quiet goes in shitty old crime-ridden Trost. Nearly two years have passed since that bullshit with the averted apocalypse or whatever. It still hasn’t quite hit me the way it’s probably supposed to, not yet.
One time, I was over having beers with Eren and Levi, and in the middle of an unenthused conversation about hockey, Eren leans over to me and blurts, “Holy shit, dude.” I stare at him like he’s fucking crazy (which he might well be), and he continues, “You saved the world, you know that?”
Levi and I, we look at each other, and both of us kind of feel that sinking sensation. The feeling of displacement. That weird, piercing surreality that I’m some big gay Captain America. What the hell.
I finally stopped dreaming of elevators about a year ago. Since last August, I haven’t jolted awake in a cold sweat, blinded by the white-lit steel marred black by her filthy, tiny hand, feeling frantically beside me to make sure that Marco’s still there, still whole. No pieces missing, no darkness seeping from the invisible scar marring his back, the exit wound present only in our memories.
Yeah, between a good, solid round of therapy and the passage of time, I’ve been sleeping peacefully for almost a year. At first, I barely dreamt at all, which was nice. Quiet time is something I’ve come to appreciate.
It turns out, the loudest thunder is that which cracks through the still night.
The walls of my quiet dreamland started coming closer, growing darker. Still, it wasn’t bad. I’m not really scared of tight spaces.
At least, I wasn’t.
Not until the dark tomb I’m trapped in at night started leaking water. Not until it started filling up little by little, night by night. Not until the water began lapping around my ears, into my mouth, up my cheeks, even as I shoved my face desperately harder against the unforgiving roof of my prison.
As I struggle to gasp in the bare inch of air the water leaves me, as the frigid depths rise up and fill my ears and cover my eyes, the chill brings with it a haunted voice.
‘His devil is long-caged.’
--
I’m not fucking stupid, alright. I mean, sometimes I am. I’m human, it comes with the territory. But still, I’ve been doing this shit for long enough to send it to college, and I know Bad Things Coming when I fucking dream them.
The second time my coffin floods completely, ice plugging my veins and submerging my lungs and my brain, that voice whispering raggedly under the water-mute sounds of my screams, I go straight to Levi.
At like three am on a Tuesday. He’s thrilled.
He lets me freeze on his doorstep for about a minute and a half while he takes in my sheepish expression, my face flushed in the chill October wind, before he lets me in.
Thank god for psychics, man. I don’t even have to tell him what I need. He just shoves me into a chair and sits across from me, rolling his eyes when I cross my still-frozen legs under me, and leans his forehead against mine. He’s clammy.
I wonder idly if he’s having these dreams too.
I close my eyes and sit in silence, leaning maybe just a tiny bit against him. (Hey, we’ve known each other since I was ten and he hauled my ass out of a morgue. Cut me some slack.) After a long while of him probing my subconscious, he leans away from me and lights a cigarette. I decline when he offers me one. Still nicotine-free, somehow.
“I don’t feel her anywhere,” he says around a billowing cloud of smoke. “But I wouldn’t say you’re entirely alone in there.”
Groaning, I bury my face in my hands and curl in on myself. Why? Why this? Why again?
After cursing everything in existence and underneath it, I lean up again and rake my hands through my hair with an exasperated sigh. He talks before I can, as usual. “It’s just a touch. You’re not harboring fugitives. Whatever it is, though, it’s getting stronger.”
I stare blankly at him. “Can you, uh.” Levi quirks an eyebrow. Clearing my throat, I mumble, “Can you, y’know, take it out?”
He rolls his eyes and pulls off his cigarette again. I know, I know. It’s not a goddamn splinter. If he could, he’d have done it already. Heaving a huge sigh, I uncross my legs and sidle out of the armchair pow-wow, then stuff my hands awkwardly in my pockets. Levi watches me kick at his carpet, undoubtedly feeling my dull anxiety with crystal clarity, before he asks, “Are you going to tell him?”
Flicking my eyes to the floor, I give an unenthused shrug. I’ve told Marco everything except the words whispered to me, except the frozen depths finally filling my lungs. I think he knows something’s up, but he’s letting me shrug it off for now.
You’d think we’d be the utmost of honest with each other. For the most part, we are, I swear. I even tell him when I have those attacks of guilty conscience about all that shit two years ago. Marco holds me close and whispers that he loves me, though, even when I’m near-panicking and reminding him of every horrible thing I’ve ever done to him.
I can’t tell him about this, though, because Levi and I are both thinking the same thing.
We only really know one person who’s ever had a devil inside of him. Well, I’m just speaking for myself. God only knows what Levi’s seen.
The only other person I can think of is Armin, but it’s been six days since the last full moon, and I only started drowning yesterday. Kinda rules him out in favor of the other option.
I’m fucking terrified.
What if it’s not over?
“Hey,” Levi interrupts, very suddenly standing in front of me. I jolt, my hands shaking in my pockets, and he has the good grace to throw me some shade when I lean over to steal one of his cigarettes. It’s only one. I light it, immediately feeling the calming rush of nicotine, and close my eyes. “We don’t know anything yet,” he says finally, moving to perch on the arm of the chair he’d abandoned. “So we can’t assume anything about Marco or anyone else.”
Feeling forlorn, I tap my cigarette over his ashtray and give him the most piteous look I can muster. He grimaces, then stands again and moves to pull something out of his printer tray. “This’ll cheer you up,” he says as he hands me the paper. I raise my eyebrows, look down at it, and immediately grin so wide my damn cigarette almost falls from between my teeth.
“Oh my god yes,” I say in a rush, before I fold the paper into my pocket and grind out what’s left of my cigarette. “Thanks, man.”
Levi nods, then grumbles, “Now fuck off back to bed,” which I gladly do.
My day just got much fucking better.
--
Marco gives me a sleepy frown when I crawl back into bed, turning to face me before I can finish winding myself around him. “Been at Levi’s?” he asks blearily, his words slurring together. I pause above him.
“Yeah.” He sniffles. I sit back on my heels, smiling softly at him. He can smell the smoke on me. It bothers him, I know it does. I’d changed before I came to bed, but the smell has a way of clinging to my skin, my hair, my breath. “Want me to go shower?”
He shakes his head and rolls onto his back, reaching his arms out to me and—god, pouting in the waning moonlight. I grin and flop onto his chest, kissing him warmly. He’s so damn cute.
I wrap my arms around his waist and my legs around his, effectively trapping him against me, and he rolls into my chest and grumpily winds his arms around my neck, wiggling closer in my grasp. Burying my face in his hair, I run my hands idly up his huge t-shirt, the only thing he’s wearing. My cold fingers against his toasty skin soothe me, but the chill seems to perturb him, so I pull my hands back out and just settle my arms around him.
As I get sleepier, my nervousness returns to me. Having Marco pressed against me, though, wrapped around him like a damn starfish, I start to feel my system ticking down into quiet again. He has that effect on me. Soothing, comfortable. He’s like a damn furnace.
Still, he can’t follow me where I go. I’m alone there.
After I’ve aggressively cuddled him for a while, he nuzzles into my neck and rasps, “You okay?”
I sigh into his hair. I’m becoming less and less okay the longer these dreams go on. Not really sure I’ll ever be able to swim again, and I know for sure that I won’t ever be taking any jobs with critters that like to bury their food. Christ only knows what kinds of phobias are waiting in the darkness now.
No matter how bad I want to tell him, I can’t. I can’t tell him about the vague threats that fill my chest and steal my breath.
If there’s anyone more worried than me about shit like this, it’s Marco.
Marco. God, my perfect, beautiful lover. Boyfriend, I guess. I can’t help but feel like that title is insufficient, though. Which is why, as of late, I’ve been pondering asking him if he’d consider accepting another title. If he’d let what we have occupy some space on his left hand.
Can’t say I fucking understand marriage, but it sounds like something I’d wanna do with Marco, and that’s good enough for me.
I’d pondered too long, let my mind wander too long, so Marco leans out of my neck and gives me a mildly concerned, definitely awake look. “Jean?”
“Sorry, sorry,” I murmur, leaning forward for another kiss. I close my eyes and nuzzle my nose into his as I lie, “Just tired.”
He hums, and I know he doesn’t believe me. He trusts me, though. There’s a big difference between the two. I just snuggle him closer and mumble cutesy shit to him until he relaxes, and then I comb my fingers through his hair until his breath evens out against my neck, and eventually his comfort and my continued whispers lull me back into a deep, thankfully dreamless sleep.
--
The paper I’d gotten from Levi is an online press release, with a date, a time, and three words scrawled on the back:
October 19th, 8:00 pm, King’s Pride.
Blah blah. I’m only really interested in the last word, the third word. I could fucking kiss this paper. In fact, I have, about four times since I’ve woken up, because it fills me with such childlike glee that I’m seriously considering cutting it out and putting it in my wallet like a family photo.
What word is it?
The best word I have ever had the fortune of laying my eyes on.
Hafgufu.
It’s an Old Norwegian word. Now, normally I’d light that shit on fire and then throw it off a building, given my less-than-positive recent experiences with the Norse, but this word is special. I’ll allow it. And why’s that? Well, simply put: the hafgufu is a particular creature of ocean-based legend.
It’s a motherfucking kraken.
A kraken! An honest-to-god giant-ass fucking man-eating boat-eating world-devouring giant cephalopod. This is the best day. I’ve never been so goddamn happy to get an assignment. The only way this shit could get better is if Levi had dumped fucking Cthulhu Undying into my lap. I am giddy.
Marco notices my enthusiasm when he finally rolls out of bed, looking beautiful and grumpy, his hair sticking up magnificently on one side. He stares at me blearily while I bustle around the bright kitchen of our little South Trost apartment, filling the whole damn place with the smells of coffee and breakfast. Marco, natch, is interested in only one of those things right now.
He comes and leans against my back once he’s helped himself to a mug of extra-strong jet fuel, nuzzling into the crook of my neck with a little grumble. I spear half a sausage on the end of a fork (yes, I have since invested in real kitchenware, fuck you very much) and reach back to nudge his head with my knuckle, and when he looks up I take the liberty of stuffing my meat into his mouth. Heh.
“Mmph,” he grouses, before he chews noisily in my ear.
“Hi.”
“You’re up.”
“How astute,” I tease as I turn the stove off, then turn to settle my arms around his shoulders. He can’t help but smile at my cheer, setting his coffee on the counter so he can wrap his arms around my waist. “Say, love, what are you doing on Sunday after church?”
The way he squints at me makes me wonder if I should ask when he’s more conscious, but then his eyes wander the way they do when he’s pondering something, until he finally gives me a lopsided shrug. “Nothing, I don’t think. Why?”
“Oh good,” I reply, grinning and leaning up to nip playfully at his lips. “Because we totally have a super fancy date.”
He raises his eyebrows, dipping to brush his lips against mine briefly before he reaches for his coffee. It’s still hot, but he doesn’t wince when he takes a careful sip, even though I’m entirely sure he burned his tongue. I nudge him toward the kitchen table while I finish assembling breakfast.
After graciously refilling his coffee, I set a plate piled high with a breakfasty amalgamation between us and toss him a fork. We eat in comfortable silence for a while, him slowly waking up as I cram cheesy heaps of eggs into my face and hum happily over the prospect of getting to fire an actual harpoon at an actual kraken. I might try to tape the whole experience so I can relive it for years to come.
Marco squints at me about midway through the monstrosity I call an omelet, spearing a few greasy mushrooms with his fork before saying, “Did you get a job from Levi?” I nod, ignoring the thick string of cheese trailing from my lips to the plate. “Is that why you’re so chipper?” I nod again, flashing him a giant smile. He stares at me, obviously mildly perturbed by my outrageous cheer before noon. I can’t blame him. Every other day of the year, I’m a lousy, grumpy asshole, and yet somehow he finds it in him to love me.
Today’s different, though. Today is kraken day.
Marco and I finish out the pot of coffee between us before we retreat back to the bed for more cuddling. And maybe some fooling around. What better use is there for days off, really.
“Jean,” he says somewhere around mid-afternoon, his hair now sticking up on the other side instead. I hum, lacing my fingers behind my head, and look over at him. “What’s Sunday?”
“Uh,” I reply eloquently, “The nineteenth?”
“I mean, uh, why the super fancy date night?”
“What,” I laugh, turning over to drag him closer to me now that our temperatures have settled a little. “I’m not allowed to spoil you?”
He chuckles, letting me wrap myself around him again with a content hum, then leans in and kisses me softly. “It’s for the job, isn’t it.”
Shit.
I puff out my cheeks and look anywhere but at him, but he just laughs more and buries his face in my neck. He’s too damn smart, I swear to god. Either that, or he knows me too damn well. Near two years we’ve been together, I suppose it makes sense by now.
Rolling out of bed into the cold, cruel world outside of our blankets, I grab Levi’s paper off the desk and cannonball back into bed with a grin. I swear, every time I look at it, my heart skips a beat. This is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, though. I’m allowed to be stoked.
I crawl back under the blankets and show him the scrawl on the back, peering over the edge of the sheet at him as he squints. His brow furrows when he reads my favorite part, but before he can ask what it means, my eye catches the goddamn headline of the stupid press release for the first time.
I could kill Levi.
‘Wave of antique ship bombings spreads north: King’s Pride at risk?’
Fuck.
--
The King’s Pride is the only still-functional ship of its kind in the country. It’s also fucking notorious for attracting supernatural bullshit.
It was stolen by the US Navy, lit up with mutinies, suspected of pirate activity, and spent a pretty solid chunk of time speared upside down on a rocky Irish coastline before it was brought to good old Trost become a fancy-ass restaurant. It’s gone up in flames something like four times in the last twenty years, with each fire claiming several lives.
If that doesn’t fucking scream ‘haunted’ to you, I don’t know what to tell you.
In my youth, Levi once sent me to deal with a haunting in the freezer, and while I was masquerading as a busboy and also trying to handle the very angry frozen chef, I managed to steal an entrée that was sent back for ‘too much pink in the steak.’
Let me tell you, fucking snobby rich people. Whoever sent that gift from god back was a highly misguided individual. I still haven’t ever experienced a steak quite that perfect, and that was like ten years ago.
So, I have mixed feelings.
On one hand, fucking enlighteningly delicious food. On the other hand, haunted-ass boat.
If I had a third hand, it’d be holding the kraken that’s apparently making its way up the Eastern seaboard and eating other historical landmark vessels. And may potentially be gunning for said haunted-ass boat. That I have unwittingly agreed to bring my husband-candidate to for culinary transcendence.
Fucking lovely.
--
It doesn’t take long for me to lay all this out for Marco, what with his prodding at my fucking lemon-sour face once I come to this less-than-comfortable realization.
He’s so full of surprises, though.
“Okay,” he says, looking back up at me from the paper lying between us. “We’ve had worse.”
“We might get eaten,” I deadpan. Just making sure he gets the stakes.
He ponders again, running a hand through his thoroughly fucked hair. “I mean, we almost got eaten last month.” Oh yeah. The Sphinx. Fuck the Sphinx. I nod, conceding. He continues to surprise me when he laughs, “It’ll be fun. I’ve never almost been eaten on a boat before.”
I stare at him for a good, long time, even after he tilts his head questioningly. Eventually, I regain control of my love-struck meat sack, and I tackle him to the bed and kiss the bejeezus out of him.
If he’ll have me, I’m gonna marry the shit out of Marco. Swear to god.
--
I spend the week teaching and grading midterms, and Marco spends the week preparing for church, fording rivers of Concerned Old Women and their myriad complaints, and researching the vessel we’re to be dining on and potentially sinking.
Every night, I drown.
Every single fucking night, that voice whispers to me over and over. His devil is long-caged.
You’d think it’d stop being terrifying after the nth time I’ve heard it, but the feeling of my face crushed against the lid of my coffin while I struggle against the rising silence spices up the budding repetition.
I stop sleeping by Friday night. Marco notices.
“Jean,” he says somewhere around four hours into Saturday, “You don’t have to right now, but will you tell me soon what’s happening?”
Somehow, his unwavering trust in me is like a knife turning between my ribs. I swallow, looking up at him from the couch, and my fingers itch for a cigarette. His gaze softens, his face still pale with sleep. When he comes over to the couch, his bum knee stiff from the chill and leaning him to one side slightly, I put my laptop on the floor and slink down so he can lie between my legs, his head on my chest.
We sit quietly for a while, his back rising and falling under my hand resting over his spine, fingers tracing around and around. Nervous habit.
As soft as it is, his voice cutting through the quiet startles me slightly. “Are you having those dreams again?”
My breath hitches before I deflate under him.
He leans up onto his elbows and looks down at me, his thumb coming to run over my cheek gently. I already know don’t have to answer him, so I don’t, but he leans down and kisses me gently anyway.
Marco knows it’s not a matter of trust. Our trust for each other could keep monuments from falling.
He knows that it’s because I’m afraid.
His eyes scan my face, even as he brushes the tips of our noses together, and we have a conversation made of sighs and soft touches rather than shaky words and my shitty jokes.
I know I’m worrying Marco. I get bad when I don’t sleep, anxious and distant and kinda really weird, if we’re being honest. I overthink everything. My instincts dull, and I become less observant. Bad for the reaction time, too.
I’d rather he worry about an unknown threat than worry about his devil long-caged, though. If he’s even who my dreams are talking about. I’m really grasping at straws here, but to say optimism is in my nature would be a bold-faced lie.
Either way, dreaming of my interment in the salty depths every single fucking night isn’t doing any favors for the fact that we’re about to face a monstrous creature from said salty depths. I’m anxious.
“Jean,” Marco whispers, breaking me out of that train of thought. “Love, you’re already shaking.” He moves one hand to my ribs, tracing the trembling muscles of my sides and my stomach. He’s right, they’re already going kinda weak and floppy. I’ll be slouching a lot tomorrow. “You know you’re not a kid anymore, yeah?”
“Says the man sprouting at least a dozen grey hairs a week,” I joke lamely, running my fingers through his soft hair. He graces me with a small smile, knowing that neither of us minds them, not really. Not when I get to watch each of them come in and mark another time we didn’t die. With a loud sigh, I idly wrap my thighs around his hips just to drag him closer. “I’m just nervous about this job on Sunday.”
“Is that what they’re about?”
My hands come up to his face, tracing patterns in his freckles. They’re starting to fade a little, now that the summer is past, but it’s not like they’re gonna go anywhere. I run my thumb across my favorite one, the one by his left eye, before he turns his head and presses a warm kiss into my palm.
Eyes closing, I mumble, “Kinda. It’s… there’s water. Lots.”
He pauses, then presses a few more slow kisses against my hand. “I see.”
Marco’s right. I need to sleep. I can’t pull all-nighters like I used to, not with the weight of the world we saved on my shoulders and the paltry years I’ve been allowed slowing down my system. I let him dose me with that foul sleep-aide shit NyQuil started making, and in which we should probably buy stock based on the amount we consume, and he murmurs sweet nothings to me and curls warm around me while I slip into blessedly dreamless sleep.
--
On Saturday night, I take the sleeping shit again, and in the morning, Marco kisses me warmly before he goes to church. I notice he takes his cane with him this time. It must be raining.
My brain still kind of doped out, I fall back asleep, and I am plagued by nothing but the chill of the sheets cooling beside me.
When he wakes me up again after service, I immediately pull him back under the covers, and he laughs quietly as I doze off on his chest.
--
“It’s been stripped of all the weaponry,” he says to me as we make our way up the riverside. “But if I read the article right, there might still be a harpoon gun on the deck somewhere. The harpoon itself’ll be locked away, if they even have one.”
“Dude.” Marco blinks at my wide grin. I’m hyper from sleeping all damn day, practically vibrating with glee again. Goddamn mood swings. “I’m gonna harpoon the shit out of Davy Jones.”
He doesn’t correct me. He just lets me have my cheesy joke with a warm smile, and he lets me kiss his cheek noisily too. I’m damn spoiled.
We’re both something approaching dapper, I suppose, but he definitely rocks it better than I do. He’s got those strong, broad shoulders that fill out his shirt just right, and he’s forgone the tie in favor of a classy sport coat.
I stole his nice red tie. I don’t exactly have cause to buy any of my own, what with how rarely I wear them.
We come upon the river pier where the King’s Pride is docked and I lace my fingers with his, whistling in the chill breeze. He’s been pretty quick with his cane for a while now, but even better are the days where he doesn’t need it, even if they’re still few and far between. When we walk up the plank to the floating restaurant, I let him go in front of me, mostly so I can stare at his ass. He smirks at me and raises an eyebrow, but he still goes up first with no objection.
The second we’re on the ship, my wallet starts shrieking in anticipatory agony. This place is so fancy. It’s dark out already, and the mood lighting in the waiting area isn’t exactly helping, but it definitely enhances the classy maritime aesthetic they’re going for. Everything’s some variety of gold on wood, with carpeting that’s probably nicer than any I’ve had the pleasure of standing on before. My heels sink into the rich fibers like sand. Makes moving quickly kinda hard.
“Hi, uh,” I say to the hostess, who smiles massively and with far too many bright teeth. I wonder when the last time I combed my hair was. Did I even shave? Whatever. “Reservation for two at eight? Last name’s Kirschtein.”
She taps on a computer screen, then gives me another broad smile. “Kirschtein-Bodt?”
I smile widely to fend off the flustered squawk I already feel building and nod. Marco chokes back a splutter of his own behind me. I’m gonna kill Levi. Asshole thinks he’s funny.
The girl grabs some menus and leads us back along the surprisingly large inside cabin, what used to be the cannon hold. The deck’s probably closed for the winter, which is good. If things go how I imagine they’re going to, it’s not gonna be a fun place to be in a short while.
Great.
I reach both hands behind me, and Marco catches some of my fingers in his, letting me guide him down the dim aisle. Seems like all the big tables are toward the front, so we should be nice and inconspicuous at the stern. At least, as inconspicuous as we can get with nearly every damn table booked solid. Crowds of laughing old people, young couples on dates, waiters and busboys whirling around each other… place is fucking packed. Not like it ever isn’t. I just wish tonight was a little less so.
I look around, peering out the windows at the river, until Marco scoots up behind me and whispers in my ear, “On your left.” I blink, then look left, and oh, baby.
There’s a shiny glass display case between two velvet booths with the biggest fucking harpoon I have ever seen. I mean, it’s the only harpoon I’ve ever seen, but oh it’s massive and I’m so excited I might have a half-chub. I am living the fucking dream.
… Not that dream.
Shaking my head, I catch up to the quick-footed hostess, still towing Marco behind me. He’s probably searching for other potential weaponry, exits, hiding places. Me, I’m just looking for anything out of the ordinary. Kraken-bait, hauntings, potential weak points in the walls, misplaced idols… the works. Together, we’ll make a pretty complete picture of what we’re dealing with. Teamwork.
We stop at a dark little table with a nice view of the river, complete with a lone flower and an entirely insufficient candle, in the relatively quieter section of the ship. I pull out Marco’s chair before I sit next to him, and the hostess hands us the menus, then flits away with some vague pleasantry.
“It’s really old,” Marco murmurs to me, leaning closer. “The harpoon, I mean. The gun must be, too. There’s no guarantee it’ll work.”
“Hey, now,” I reply, giving him a goofy pout. “Don’t jinx it.”
He laughs and kisses my cheek softly, then opens the menu as I peer out the window. There’s some kind of fishing barge floating up the river, which looks about as murky as ever. Maybe more so. I frown when I realize there’s no moon, even though it should still be around waning crescent. Shit. Must be cloudy. Rain might make life more difficult than it already is, not to mention significantly wetter, which is inconvenient for Marco but doesn’t make a lick of difference for my half of the plan.
Which I have yet to run by him. And which I know he won’t like.
“Do you like scallops?”
I blink over at him, then up at the ceiling. “Aren’t those, like, little onion things?”
“How do you know what shallots are, but not scallops?”
“Oh.” I give him a charming grin, and he rolls his eyes good-naturedly and slides a soothing hand over my knee under the table. I lean closer, looking at his menu rather than mine, and mumble, “Levi thinks it’s a kraken because of the age and prestige of the ships that are sinking.” He pauses, staring down at the frilly words scattered over the page, but I know he’s listening intently. “They like old windjammers like this because of the fate attached to them. History leaves a sort of taste in the wood, you know?”
“Is there anything else it could be?”
I shrug, running a hand through my hair. “It’s a really distinctive hunting pattern. They emerge from the deep in the fall and surge north to cold water to feed on transatlantic vessels. There hasn’t been a coastal sweep like this since colonial times, though. It’s moving from port to port and eating the oldest ship in each, so that’s weird too. They’re not usually that picky.”
“How, uh.” He scratches his cheek and peers at me. “How do they eat them?”
Grimacing, I reply, “They punch through the starboard hull, and when it starts to sink, they sort of, uh.” I sit up and make octopus tentacles with my fingers, then mimic their attack. Namely, wiggling my fingers upwards, lacing them together, and pulling down. “They give it a big hug and take it home.”
He stares at me. I smile. Only mildly exasperated, he runs his hands down his face and leans back in his chair with a soft laugh. “Good, good,” he sighs, dropping his hands to his lap and giving me a somewhat-encouraging smile. “Is there any reason we couldn’t have done this from the probably-armed steel battleship just across the river?”
Oh god. That thing. “Oh, uh. That’s military. It’s harder to sneak onto. Plus, uh…” I scratch my head and give him a sheepish grin, at which his eyebrows shoot up. “They, um. They might know my face. A little.”
He stares harder, then bites his lip against a giggle. “What, they keep wanted posters of you around?”
“Hey,” I sputter, adjusting my tie in an attempt at looking affronted. “Don’t even joke about that, that’d be a nightmare. There’s no way they’d ever get my nose right.”
“Probably not,” he laughs, reaching over to pinch it lightly. “Not with how often it changes shape.”
“I haven’t broken it in like six months,” I whine, reaching under the table to tickle his good knee. He twitches, biting his lip, then assumes the kind of face that leads me to believe our waiter has arrived just in time to catch us horsing around.
I hadn’t even looked at the menu, so I just end up getting the special, and Marco gets the scallopy things he was asking about. I imagine they’re the only thing he looked at too. The waiter is more than eager to educate us deeply about every aspect of the menu, though, and Marco surprises me again when he innocently wheedles some information about the ship itself out of the guy. Like that the brig is mostly used for storage still, and no, they don’t have any jail cells down there, and yes, the King’s Pride has admittedly engaged in some acts of piracy when in the wrong hands.
Marco’s gotten so used to this shady-ass life. It’s surprising even now, almost two years later. He always was a shitty liar, but here he is, smiling and asking our waiter about pirates with a completely innocuous face.
God, I love him.
In situations like these, I usually feel a bizarre mix of pride and guilt. Right now, though, I’m all pride. My hand finds his under the table, twining our fingers on his knee.
He knows the exact point at which to stop asking questions to elude suspicion, and so he lets the waiter zoom away to grab our drinks and put in our order. “So, what are we waiting for?” I blink at him as he asks, fiddling with a roll from the basket we’d been brought. I shrug, looking out the window again. The river’s a little more turbulent now, reflecting shards of bright colors shining from the illuminated bridge, and it looks like it might have started raining. Fuck. “Just, uh, a large crunching sound?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” I mutter, leaning over to look downriver. The Sina River forms the border for the eastern edge of Trost, then curves toward the industrial district on the south side of town before jutting out to the ocean, and on a good day the water’s nearly gelatinous in texture the whole way down. The kraken’s gonna slop up from downriver, I assume, so it seems like we got pretty good seats at least.
“Aren’t these things supposed to be huge? Can it even fit this far inland?”
“They’re like jelly.” I turn back to him, stuffing half the roll into my mouth and continuing in a shower of crumbs. “Only hard part’s the beak. They can fit anywhere the beak can.”
“… A beak.”
“Yeah.” I put my hand in front of my mouth and make beaking motions, which makes him snort. I’m glad he thinks my dumb ass is funny. Anything I can do to ease his anxiety. Cheering him up soothes me too, thankfully, so it’s for both our sakes that I make an asshole of myself and wiggle my fingers in less of a beak motion and more of a Cthulhu motion.
“And it’s supposed to hit here around nowish?”
“That’s what I’m led to believe, yeah,” I mumble, slathering the other half of my roll in butter. “So I’m thinking, right.” I lean forward again, letting him steal the bread from me while I lay out the plan of attack. “I’ll break the harpoon out, you head up on deck and man it.” He raises his eyebrows, but I cut him off before he begins. “And while you watch for its head to surface, I’m gonna run down to the brig and see if I can make any trouble through the hole it makes in the hull.”
Marco’s brow furrows. “You’re going to the brig.”
“Yeah.”
“… Where the water’s gonna be rushing in, and where the ship’s gonna fall apart first.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Jean,” he sighs, catching my hand worriedly. “I don’t know about this.”
I turn his hand over in mine, running my thumbs over his palm and tracing his broken lifeline. After a moment, I lean down and press a kiss against his palm, then give him my best courageous smile. “Its biggest weak point is gonna be down by the hole. If I wait until the brig fills up, I can swim out of the break and fuck its day up underwater.”
Marco’s lips part on an unspoken protest, his eyes searching mine, so I bring his palm back to my lips and keep his gaze.
“Try to hit it in the eye,” I say, trying to spice it up with a weak chuckle.
Another long silence between us, before he murmurs, “I thought you wanted to harpoon it.”
“Nah,” I reply, slouching back into my chair and spreading my legs obnoxiously under the table, bumping his knee with mine. “You know my aim. I’d miss it by a mile. I’m better with hand to hand.”
“Mano-a-tentacle?”
I bark laughter, twining our fingers tightly. “You got it, babe.”
He chuckles too, giving me a bemused smile, before he leans in for a kiss, which I gladly give him, whispering love against his lips. I sit back again to check out the window, noting with some chagrin that the rain has picked up significantly, the river choppy in the downpour. Also, there are some flashes in the southern distance I really don’t think I’m okay with. Swear to god, if this thing brings a typhoon with it, I’m gonna be salty. At least wait until I’ve gotten my damn food.
It doesn’t.
I’ve just turned my head to ask Marco something stupid when a flash of lightning lights the cabin absurdly bright, followed by a crack of thunder, but neither are pressing enough to disguise the way the ship heaves on a monstrous swell, nor the way the hull cracks deafeningly under the kraken’s strike.
I move without thinking.
Marco sheds his coat and knocks his cane aside as he moves after me. I’m quicker, lighter on my feet, and I wrap my cloth napkin around my elbow and break the display glass like it’s nothing. Marco was right, the thing’s old as fuck, and rusty in places, but it’ll have to do.
The ship heaves again as I rip the spear off its display and sprint back over to him, pressing the rough metal into his hands and kissing him almost desperately.
“No matter what,” I rasp, barely audible over the sounds of people screaming as they sprint by us. He lifts the pointy end of the harpoon toward the ceiling and pulls me against him, kissing me again. Speaking against his soft, warm lips, my voice shaking, I say, “No matter what, Marco, I love you.”
“I love you, Jean,” he murmurs, and he kisses me again before he makes for the stanchioned-off stairs up to the deck.
Time’s up.
People are running, shouting for each other, some still sitting shell-shocked at their tables and staring hard at me as I make my way against the flow of panic. Kitchen’s back here, along with the stairs to the bottom of the ship, I remember. My mouth is dry, my hands shaking until they wrap around the hilt of my knife, stuffed under my shirt. As much as it soothes me, I’m still nervous.
My breath is quick. The lights all over the ship are flickering, and it smells, like fucking salt and decay. The air reeks. The ship rocks like the goddamn Titanic, the wood shrieking and pulsing with the creature’s insane strength.
When I skid to a halt in front of the short gate in the kitchen’s back corner, I stare down into the dim brig, and I can already see dark river water lapping up the stairs.
I panic.
My guts clench, my eyes widen, my body floods with ice, and suddenly I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
I’m going to drown.
I slam backward against a steel counter, half due to the rocking of the ship, and look around desperately just so I don’t have to stare down at my death. There’s a huge, bald chef crouched in the corner, his hands quaking as he smokes a cigarette and stares at me.
My mouth flaps open and closed, cracked sounds coming out as my eyes widen in terror, and rather than say anything to me, he tosses me his pack. Thank god he can translate whatever beached-fish language I was fucking speaking. I shakily light one and suck down about half the damn thing, my own hands trembling something fierce, and my eyes slide closed as the nicotine rushes my brain.
Breathing in smoke instead of salt does something to soothe me, whatever that may be.
Doesn’t mean I wanna fucking go down there.
I exhale shuddering smoke into the thick air and watch the water rise, hearing the lights snap broken as the pressure crushes them down there, rendering the water black and lifeless like—
Like—
No. No no, no, don’t go there. Not there.
I wheeze down the last of my cigarette and chuck it into the rising water, rake my hand through my hair, and look back at the cook.
He just swallows, then closes his eyes and buries his face in his hands.
The silent commiseration we’ve been sharing is the sort of attitude learned by the damned.
The ship groans, jostling again, and the lights flicker violently before they all go out.
I have to go. I have to.
Taking a deep breath and maybe saying something akin to a prayer, I shove myself off the counter, vault over the low gate, and fall straight into the abyss.
There’s no movement, I notice, my eyes squinted against the foul river water clogging my vision. Shit’s nasty. Regardless, there’s no movement, and that’s a big problem. Krakens are violent creatures, loud and clumsy, and it should be gutting the brig with its stupid, flailing arm as it drowns the ship.
And yet, the water around me is silent as the grave.
My stomach tenses with the nervous force to expel what air I’d pulled in. Wasteful, fuck. I haul myself vaguely upward and poke my head above the surface, grateful for the bare strip of air between the rising flood and the wooden ceiling. It’s enough that I don’t panic again. Enough room. I look around, my hand braced against the ceiling, and fruitlessly try to force my eyes to acclimate to the darkness as I gasp for air. It doesn’t work.
I can kind of see some light from where I imagine the hole to be, though, so I take a few deep breaths and prepare to gun it.
But I don’t. It’s too quiet.
Too quiet to be a kraken.
The surface of the black tide is turbulent, small waves licking between the walls, but the bubbles that crop up just in front of me are unmistakably out of place.
A head emerges from their weak ripples. My eyes widen further.
Soaked, stringy hair. Cataract-pale eyes huge and sunken behind cracked glasses. Gaunt skin mottled and long-drowned.
The whispers.
‘His devil is long-caged.’
I’m screaming. I can’t help it.
‘He will come out roaring.’
The water’s rising, pressing me against the ceiling, shoving my face against the wood and flooding my ears and bringing with it a thousand more whispers, a thousand fucking voices filling my mind and wiping my brain and dragging me under they’re dragging me under I’m going to drown, I’m going to drown—
The head sinks back under the water, and claws fisted in my clothes yank me beneath the surface.
I’m going to drown.
I can’t die here.
I flail wildly against the hands holding me under, lashing out ineffectively with my knife, until a flash of doomed brilliance has me desperately slicing open my forearm. Dead man’s blood clouds from the wound and the hands recoil with a shudder that vibrates the water around me like a pulse, and it’s fucking enough. It’s enough.
I kick violently toward the stairs, emerging with a ragged wheeze and grasping for the gate’s bars.
A hand catches me and drags me up out of the water.
Marco.
His pants are torn, I notice, and there’s a long gash across his bum thigh, probably from his own knife. It looks like he’d smeared his blood on the tip of the harpoon, which he’s holding like a damn polearm in one hand as the other hauls me to my feet and away from the creeping, pale fingers reaching out of the water.
“We need to leave,” I gasp, steadying myself against a counter. “We need to leave, this is bad.”
He turns to me, mouth open to reply, but his eyes flash rage and he spears the harpoon past me. I hear the telltale sizzle of whatever unfortunate soul he just sent to limbo with his own dead man’s blood.
Marco’s anger isn’t something I’ll ever get used to. It sends a bolt of icy fear through my guts, even on top of the terror already curling my insides.
“Love,” I say, moving closer and patting one soaked hand against his cheek. He shakes his head and looks at me again. “Marco, we gotta go, c’mon—”
He swallows, and we both look back at the drowned corpses beginning to crawl up from the darkness, dripping ichor and hissing.
“Yeah, okay.”
He takes the harpoon with him, and we sprint with all damn haste off the ship, trying to move with its sinking spasms as we bolt. The plank’s splintered horribly by the time we hit the entrance, but the pier is almost level now, so I push him to jump first and follow quickly into the pounding rain.
We don’t stop running. Not even when I glance over my shoulder and watch the King’s Pride sink into the depths. That’s about when I notice the dark shadow of another ship, monstrous and rotten, silhouetted against the lightning crashing violent across the sky.
My stomach churns.
--
By the time we hit our apartment, Marco’s knee has to be killing him. Luckily, there’s a little bench in our shower for him, and he perches on it while I sit in his lap, wrap my arms and legs around him, and sob into his shoulder.
At first, I flinch away from the water.
This water is hot, though. It’s clear and controlled, and there’s nowhere for it to pool or collect here.
Marco whispers these facts to me as he clutches me tightly to him and runs his fingers through my hair and tells me he loves me, and it’s only by virtue of his body heat and the scalding shower water that I eventually stop shaking.
After something like an hour, we dry off and move to the bedroom, where I stitch shut his thigh and rub his weird, sinus-clearing joint cream over his taxed knee. We might have to break out his crutches again after this.
He doesn’t let me feel guilty for it, and with his encouragement I fight off the guilt spirals on my own as I wrap a dry bandage around his thigh. After he glues the slice on my arm closed, we curl up under the blankets until a particular pattern of knocks at the door tells us that Levi’s letting himself in.
I’m too tired to even bitch him out. I’m just exhausted from the panic. This is fucking awful.
I roll to face Levi when he strides into the room, though, peering out of the blanket burrito, and Marco nuzzles warmly into the nape of my neck and wraps his arms around me.
“What happened?”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I pull the blanket back over my head, and Levi knows me well enough to know when I’m using lame physical humor as a coping technique.
The bed sinks under his wiry little frame, and I let him slap my hands away from my face so he can rest his hand against my forehead and pull out what he needs.
I’m kind of surprised by his reaction, though.
After a few minutes, he freezes, his fingers twitching against my forehead, before he stands suddenly. I peer back out of the blankets, watching him glare out the window.
“Levi?”
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then looks at me over his shoulder. “Ghost ship.”
I stare at him. Loudly.
“That is a far cry from krakens.”
He rolls his eyes, stuffing a cigarette between his lips. He doesn’t light it, though. So polite. “Come by tomorrow, I’ll have it figured out by then,” he spits, sounding weirdly… I don’t know. Pissed. Maybe he’s salty about being wrong. I’m salty about him being wrong. I couldn’t have been less prepared if I’d tried. He turns on his heel, but before he leaves, he glances back at me.
“Don’t tell Eren.”
My eyebrows shoot up, but he’s already gone.
That’s fucking random. After kind of dropping him ass-first into the world of the supernatural, we’d sworn to tell Eren about shit like this instead of doing our shady little dance around him. Let him onto the island of lost toys, or whatever the fuck we’re considering ourselves now. Still, Levi probably has his reasons. Not like I have to like them.
I roll onto my back and wiggle one arm under Marco’s neck, burying my face in his hair when he lays his head on my shoulder. “We have time,” I mumble. “Ship won’t sail until tomorrow night. Ghost rules, or some bullshit.”
“What d’you wanna do?” I blink as he asks, his voice quiet and kind of rough, but I catch his drift.
He already knows that I’m pissing myself at the mere idea of falling asleep. I’m so fucking tired, but if I fall asleep… I shiver, and he folds himself tighter around me and murmurs soothingly.
“I don’t know,” I reply finally, digging the heel of my hand into my damp eye. “I just.”
He looks up at me.
“I just don’t fucking know.”