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1
You frowned, fingering the edge of the card you just set down, and Hawkins hissed in a breath.
"What is it?" he asked through gritted teeth.
"I forgot this deck has Strength as eleven."
"Does it really matter?"
"To you and your percentages, yes." You sighed and drew another, and your table twitched. "Captain."
"It's cold."
You squeezed around him, and he groaned.
"I'm sorry. I could've shuffled longer—"
”Move."
You lightly swatted his cheek, not even enough to make him flinch, lest he disturb the spread on his broad chest. "Not yet."
His hands were large on your hips, only there to hold you steady, not direct you in anyway, and you loved him for it.
"Tell me, at least."
"You're very opinionated for a table," you chided. "For the cross…" You hovered over the first two cards you set down, on his right pectoral. "The situation is the Seven of Coins. The challenge is the Ace of Swords."
Hawkins barked a laugh, and the cards jerked with the movement.
"Captain," you chided.
"What else?"
"The past is the Pope, and the future is Strength."
He all but threw his head back into the pillows. "Only four?"
"Five. Halfway. Don't rush it." You set the fifth near his shoulder. "The Empress…" The sixth by his rib cage, "...and the Seven of Cups. What do you think?"
His eyes were closed, and he breathed like he was trying to focus, or resist. Idly, you leaned backward a little, bracing your hand on the bed between his legs, and the change of angle got a gasp out of you.
"Answer the question, captain."
Hawkins exhaled, his eyes fluttering open. "Two sevens… Delayed gratification."
You grinned. "And?"
"Indecision. Paralysis."
This was your idea. Actually, you wanted him to use you, but he preferred far less space efficient layouts for which you simply did not have the real estate. That, and the smallest deck you owned between the two of you—and the only one you'd risk bending—was your Visconti Tarot, with its cheap, faux-gold foil that was wearing away anyway.
The Pope as the past was easy enough: your lover was used to having command of his ship and in bed, the latter with minimal encouragement from you. Strength, the future, was more of an exchange. It was your turn to subdue him, starting now.
You set up the tree of the Celtic cross starting high on his left side abdomen, and his breaths came deeper, at the cool cardstock against his skin or your clever hands not-quite touching him. The force of his breathing knocked the Ace of Swords from its horizontal position over the Seven of Coins, and the Pope threatened to fall into his armpit. You kissed your teeth.
"Another way to frame the Seven of Cups?" you started. "Staying still." Hawkins grunted, the tension throughout his body visible, and tangible under your thighs as you paused to fix the first part of the spread. "Good," you cooed.
His upper chest and neck were pink with exertion, and you hoped pleasure at the praise and you wrapped around him.
"For me, it's the Four of Cups," you told him. "The environment is Justice," which you made a face at, and he caught, chuckling low in his throat. Not fair. It wasn't fair that awkward, reedy boy grew into such deep voice, befitting his large frame and tall stature. "Then it's the Eight of Coins and…" You frowned. "The Hermit, for the outcome."
"That's just me, isn't it? Us."
He meant the Hermit's traditional assignment to Virgo, his sun and your moon.
"But the context, captain."
"Right." At that, he sat up, the cards falling to his sides on the mattress or getting stuck between the two of you. "What did you ask, my maddening girl?"
You moaned as he rolled up into you, against somewhere deep that only he could reach. "How long you'd last."
"Ten cards?" You giggled, and he rolled his eyes. "Was that fun for you?"
"Yes, captain—oh—"
He shifted his hold on your hips to your ass as he took back control, moving you however he pleased.
I love you, you could say, but you were lost in the feeling of his hot, hard cock buried exactly where you liked it, and you moaned stupidly, open-mouthed against his sternum, one of his hands cradling the back of your head. Later, you decided.
2
Hawkins didn't usually hover while you shot your evening sights of Venus and Polaris, but your captain's eyes had been glued to you all day, and really for most of the week despite each of you being quite busy while the Grudge Dolph traced along the Calm Belt. You were trying your best not to direct the ship into the jaws of some sea king, while Hawkins was, for the most part, utterly immersed in his cards or sparring with some of the more combative crewmen, usually on deck and in your line of sight. At first you wrote off his proximity as a ship's close quarters, but it was most obvious when he joined-but-didn't-join you for your multiple coffees. He'd lope into the galley kitchen a moment later and linger a while longer, make himself a tea, talk to someone else, but he was always there.
It'd been nearly two months since you, still to your embarrassment, explicitly called Hawkins your partner, and for the most part you were perfectly cordial in mixed company. You spent most nights in his bed, though this last week you were so exhausted you crawled into yours, dead to the world until habit woke you up before dawn. This wasn't unusual, either: you'd stir slightly as Hawkins wished you good night, anyway, with a chaste kiss to your forehead or your hair that you pretended to be asleep for but still anticipated.
Not so lately. You'd even heard the creak of the timber outside your door a few times as he hesitated before turning on his heel toward his own room.
What the hell was his problem?
You meant to say as much as you hopped off the ladder to the berthing deck, but to you surprise, Hawkins caged you with his hands on the rails higher than yours, your feet still two rungs off the floor, and you gasped feeling his hard cock against your back. You turned your head over your shoulder to look back at him, and he caught you in a kiss so hungry the awkward angle didn't matter. He broke it with a rough, low, "The moon's waxing."
"Yeah...?" Any seaman worth their salt kept track of the moon, for nighttime visibility and the tide. It was part of why Faust was more or less your co-navigator, because even though he had no training in his Sulong form, he was still somatically aware of it, and what the hell was your problem, thinking of tides when your man was so mad with want you were afraid (hopeful) he'd take you right there?
Hawkins' cheeks colored, and he mumbled something more into your neck.
"What was that?"
"...youshouldbedoneovulating."
Surely you misheard.
"What?"
He let his forehead drag down to your shoulder. "You had your period two weeks ago. The full moon."
Oh my god. "Hawkins," you said patiently. "A cycle is rarely exactly 28 days." But you were lightheaded at the thought of him watching you, wanting you but waiting, because... "You don't want to breed me?" you teased.
"B-breed?" he repeated, raising his head.
You turned, leaning back against the ladder, a kind of pirouette that risked you falling, but he'd never let you. You were almost as tall as him like this, and his eyes were wide and incredulous. "You like cumming in me, don't you, captain?"
"You're shameless."
You smiled, pleased as a cat with cream as his neck and cheeks turned red.
"I like it too," you whispered in his ear. "I think we'd make such pretty babies."
Hawkins almost stepped back in shock before remembering the precarity of your position, and instead of helping you down, he scooped you into his arms.
"Tell me," he almost growled as he tried not to bash your head into the narrow bulkheads.
"About our kids? You've never struck me as paternal." Nor were you maternal.
"Tell me what you want."
You clung to his neck. "I want your cum. Please."
You almost certainly passed an open cabin door or two on your way to his room, but both of you were beyond caring. He practically kicked his door open and had you pinned under his weight in an instant, peeling your clothes off you and dragging the cups of your bra down, not ungently, but you winced.
"Sorry—" he said, but you shook your head.
"They're just sensitive, keep going—"
The muscles of your thighs burned as he folded you, his silken hair falling like curtains around and over your face. You'd yet to get the hang of this with your awkward heights, but Hawkins seemed determined to look into your eyes tonight. You found your head barely in his pillows while he braced his strong arms wide on the mattress, too far to kiss but still somehow more intimate than you'd ever been as he guided his leaking tip where you needed it. You both moaned as he sank in deep.
"What did you say?" Hawkins huffed. "Breed? Like cattle?"
You whimpered at the stretch. "Uh-huh. Breed me, captain. Fill me up."
He grit his teeth. "So vulgar."
"You like it," you gloated.
"I didn't say otherwise."
"Come on," you gasped as he started fucking you up the bed, and you groped for the rails of his headboard, out of your reach until they weren't. "Tell me you want to. Tell me you're gonna."
Hawkins didn't respond, focused on the cant of his hips into yours, and you momentarily forgot your own request, whining at the feeling of him rubbing the deepest parts of you until he spoke.
"...get you pregnant? Make you a mother on my ship? Is that what you want?"
You groaned.
"And everyone would know. The crew but everyone, the Navy, once they saw a little family aboard that you're mine. Hmm?"
"Oh god, Hawkins—"
"My—Empress," he groaned, and you could have laughed at his one-track mind if the image on the Major Arcana wasn't suddenly so erotic to you: a queen heavy with child, breasts heavy with milk, barefoot, flesh-and-blood.
"You freak," you said, "All that waiting, all that being careful, and—oh—!"
For that cheek, he nearly pulled out before thrusting back in sharply, and you bit your lip to keep from screaming.
You knew Hawkins was tired if he didn't immediately herd you away for a shared bath, and you hummed an idle tune as you half laid on his chest and traced patterns on his pale skin, your legs feeling like jelly with a mess of shared fluids between them. He was just as boneless and breathless as you.
"You're a true witch, you know? Putting such images in my head..."
"They're already there," you said. "The Empress, the Emperor. Emperor of the Sea?"
Hawkins combed his fingers through your hair. "Don't tempt fate."
You smiled. "You know how I feel about that."
"Synchronicity, then."
You planted your chin on his pectoral and studied his face. He was perfect to you, the only man you wanted to be with as long as you lived. You knew that was your youth speaking, and the two of you were far too young to even joke about having a family, but sometimes your affection overwhelmed you and you either wanted to run away or shove him into the sea—of course you'd fish him out again, like you always had—and something like tonight came dangerously close to satiation, how close you wanted to be to him, how much you wanted him to be part of you.
"What?" Hawkins said.
"Those kids of ours," you lied.
"Interesting. Who do they take after?"
"Well, you've seen my mixed cousins. Me."
He made a face that said of course. "Probably for the best."
"Hey."
"I just mean their eyebrows."
"...Okay." You still pouted, resisting the urge to scold him since you liked his eyebrows. "And we'll have their birth times to the second. I hope one of them's a Gemini."
"Hmm." Hawkins seemed to think seriously. "We'd have to plan for September or October."
"Of course. The Virgo or Libra new moon."
His brow furrowed. "You said..."
"I'm joking. You know, last time my period ended while the moon was waning, so you're talking about a four-to-seven-day window for both menstruation and ovulation."
Hawkins sighed. "Quarter phases it is."
"And," you said, finally, "I am on birth control."
He looked at you with the most long-suffering glare you'd ever seen.
3
You bumped into Hawkins' left side.
"I have something for you."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "I've heard this before."
Between the two of you, you had about a dozen decks of cards, years of gifts given and resented and ignored. He thought you'd like an astrological oracle, one of the times you were too upset with him to speak. You wanted to push him out of his comfort zone to pip decks that didn't fit his Devil Fruit techniques in the slightest. They were less thoughtful than they were passive aggressive, but you suspected he kept them all, like you kept his.
You were aboard the Grudge Dolph for a change, and no one was bothered you slept in your old captain's bed. The exasperated look Faust gave you two in the passageway made you feel more welcome than ever. It wasn't like those halcyon early days when you were free of home with your first boyfriend. You were older, and this was familiar and strange all at once. Last night you'd only planted a dry kiss to Hawkins' lips before sleeping with your backs to one another, you giggling at the alien experience while he grumbled.
Hawkins poured your coffee at the galley kitchen's table as you set your latest collector's item between you two. The deck was taller than any you'd handled before, a curiosity you picked up a year ago in your brief solo travel after Fishman Island. It would be difficult to shuffle, but the surface area was smaller, and might sit nicely in his large palm.
"These are playing cards," you said. "There's no history of divination with them that I could find. It's called Minchiate."
"Minchiate," he repeated.
"The pips are all the same: batons, chalices, coins, swords. But there are 40 trumps."
"...18 more?"
You shook your head. "The 22 aren't perfectly interchangeable. There are five popes, for example. There's no Tower, and—"
He all but slapped his hand down on the box. "I'm sold."
You rolled your eyes, but you wanted to cry. He was able to joke about his near-death, though you thought the House of the Devil was a better fit for Hawkins' account of Onigashima in flames. At the prim swat of your fingers over his, he eased off with a chuckle and prepared his tea while you divided the deck.
"The obvious 'extras' are the signs, the elements, and four virtues."
The cards seemed small to you, and looked even smaller in your ex-lover's hand. He took the cut of the deck you'd made of the more familiar trumps and set them before him face up, carefully examining each one before sliding it to the side to make a clumsier deck, how the texture of the paper didn't lend itself to friction. Being with Crocodile showed you some of what you took for granted with two hands, but your new boss had years of practice with his hook and the stump underneath.
The scar at Hawkins' shoulder was another story.
"I have a theory about the five popes," you said. "They're the first numbered ones after The Fool."
He slid them into a line. Ever since he started reading when you were teenagers, Hawkins didn't like laying cards flat. The first reason was he couldn't control his environment, how clean or dry any surface was. The second was peering over a table at his height hurt his neck and shoulders, especially when looking at the large spreads he preferred.
"The Five Elders," he concluded. The former Warlords you kept for company told you about their curious, astronomical names, and you were fixated since. "Where did you get this?"
"Near the Red Line." Near Mary Geoise.
Hawkins leaned back. "I can't tell if this is treasonous or not."
Your former captain was infuriatingly apolitical, the basis of more than a few fights while you were on this ship. He didn't understand why you followed the news stories about the Revolutionary Army so closely, but had enough sense to know you were nervous to make "landfall" at Sabaody Archipelago. Your own science was a sort of blasphemy: taking the stars from the self-named celestial.
"But doesn't five look like it could be The Lovers?"
"Labels would help."
You near-snorted. That was one of your annoyances with his favorite deck: If you like pictures so much, why add words at all? You regretted a lot of what you said to him, but there was no one else who'd seen you so ugly and petty.
Hawkins hummed periodically as he examined each card, the very slight timbre of which you could discern as surprise or confusion, him earmarking a thought for later. You made comments here and there, what you remembered from discussing with the vendor and your own observations from the few times you handled the deck. He made a vocal sound of distaste as he got to the signs, and you laughed.
"What is that?" he said with a shudder.
"Scorpio."
That was it; your ex was an aesthete, and the crude, woodblock print illustrations of this deck weren't to his tastes.
"Hawkins," you said, "It has historical value."
"I know that. Don't lecture me." A line that would have pulled a shrill scream from you in your early 20s, but you only grinned. "I see why you like it. Pisces is fine."
"You don't like Virgo?"
"I still have that Scorpio stellium you're always on about."
"Well, I don't really like Aquarius in this deck, either. Who is that guy?"
"The water bearer."
You aimed a kick at his shin, which he neatly avoided.
"Anyway," you said primly, "I think the virtues and the elements would be good Strawman Cards. Not sure about the rest."
"Fortitude instead of Strength is interesting," he said.
He looked at the cards before him for a moment, and you hesitated before speaking.
"Do you remember the games my family played on holidays?" Hawkins' brow furrowed, but he nodded. "The one with the big, thick tiles. Mahjong."
Mahjong players shuffled the deck by mixing the tiles on a poker-style table with edges to prevent any escapees. Your grandparents weren't that fond of it, instead trying to teach you go, which you dragged Hawkins into more than a few times while the mahjong tiles crashed like thunder in the next room.
He sighed. "And how do you propose I manage that in battle?"
"I know I said Strawman Cards just now, but I'm talking about divination. Since you mostly read probability"—you still had your misgivings about this method of his, but you'd long laid that argument to rest—"instead of for other people, there's not a querent to shuffle."
"Why not you?"
You inhaled. "I'm not your partner."
"Let me imagine."
If you were his partner in any true sense, he'd have listened to you more before that first, awful breakup, and you would've been half as cruel as you were. You learned to live and work together in the aftermath, of course, but there were lapses. Like this.
You set your hand palm-up on the table, and he took it without question.
"I love you," you said. Words you still hadn't managed to say to anyone else, and that you learned to load with all sorts of intentions other than their face value.
Hawkins stroked his thumb over the veins on the back of your hand. "You, too."
4
You were showing Hawkins a chart you drew the other night when he grabbed your arm and rolled up your sleeve in one move, with his one hand. If it was anyone else, you would've recoiled or even struck them, but you only sighed as he pursed his lips seeing your reddened skin.
"What's the point of the rest of them?" he said quietly as you let him inspect your other arm.
"We're all busy," you defended, but that wasn't all. Your other relationships were too new, or you were too prideful, too fond of the elegant side of yourself you showed to your partners to reveal you had needs.
But this was an old, familiar dance. Hawkins wasn't forceful without encouragement except when it came to your health. You relaxed in his hold, letting him pull your feet into his lap and bunch your skirt up above your knees to show more of the irritated, dry skin you were so used to hiding.
"You're coming with me."
Some of Buggy's men shared perplexed looks at you being manhandled by Cross Guild's newest addition, and you realized you looked a fair bit like you were being abducted as Hawkins led you to the docked Grudge Dolph with your hand in an iron grip.
"Slow down," you hissed.
"You want to be carried, is that it?"
To you surprise, Hawkins let you go, and you were about to sass him in some way when—there was no other word for it—he tackled you with enough force that you fell over his shoulder like a sack of rice.
"Hey!"
He audibly grunted as he straightened, holding you securely with his forearm under your ass. "You're eating well."
You smacked his back, the blood rushing to your head. "Hurry up."
"'Slow down'," he mocked, "'Hurry up'…"
But undeterred by the difference in your heights, Hawkins' long legs carried you to the ship where you passed your twenties and through its narrow passageways to the captain's quarters, where he tossed you on his bed.
"Strip," he said distractedly as he went to draw a bath.
"You used to kiss me before giving me orders."
"I don't know how anyone else deals with you."
"Nicer than you do." But you complied, too itchy and hot to bother folding your clothes, until you realized: "Is that two years old?""
He paused mid-pour. "It's new. I use it sometimes."
"Really." It was colloidal oatmeal really meant for babies, or rather it was only you and newborns who had this particular skin condition.
"Really."
"Miss me?"
He didn't respond to that, just mixing the bath with his hand. "Come here," he said finally.
It'd been more than two years since either of you saw the other in this state of undress. Even the last course of intimacy between you two started out chaste, like this: clinical, care rather than craving. Still, you eyed him as you shrugged your bra straps off your shoulders and undid the hook as you went over. He kept his gaze on your face, like he knew you were challenging him, and you finally rolled your panties down your legs and kicked them to the side before you dipped a toe into the water.
You sighed at the temperature. "You're good at this," you mumbled as you stepped in fully. Hawkins offered his left shoulder as a handhold, and you thought of the marled flesh under his shirt as your fingertips rubbed into the fabric. He moved behind you, and you thought he was leaving to let you soak until his hand appeared by your head holding a hair claw.
"Here," he said. "I can't put it up for you."
You were glad he couldn't see your expression, but your breath caught in your lungs so sharply he must have heard it. Every time he said he couldn't or used to do something was bitter, but when it was something to do with you, your gut twisted like you'd maimed him yourself.
It was wretchedly selfish to think in such terms.
"Thank you," you said instead as you accepted the accessory.
He moved behind you, kissing his teeth as he plucked your clothes off the floor. "Always so messy."
It was the bath, you told yourself, how your neck heated thinking of other times he'd said something to the same affect. "I don't have anything to change into," you said when you heard him toss them in his laundry basket.
"Yes, you do."
You thought you packed pretty well, but you also had about two of his shirts and a pair of boxers.
"What, pray tell?"
Hawkins and opened his wardrobe. "…Not much."
You turned your head even as you sank into the bath to your chin and saw what he held up was a translucent black teddy, and you remembered exactly why he washed it instead of you.
"Good job," you said lightly, to which he dipped his head in an ironic bow.
You hummed as you relaxed into the freestanding tub. The times you'd shared on this ship were late, quiet nights in the common bathroom since he was so absurdly tall. You and Perona could probably fit in here, and no one else. You had little to do but listen to and watch your ex-captain move, in this room that had changed only incrementally since you'd left, while you were both forever different.
This, however, was the same. You, dumped in this powdery bath like a pet or a child. Hawkins, clothed and with only the purest intentions.
One question when you were kids, when he thought the blisters on your hand were a burn and looked ready to kill, and that was that.
Your first winter at sea, you had a flare so bad that after Hawkins plucked you from this same tub, he slept with his body pressed over yours and your wrists bound together with straw, and your innocent boyfriend was perplexed you went from hissing at him and feeling hideous to your hot breath on his neck as you rocked your hips into his, your legs caging him to you, your compulsive itch and vanity temporarily supplanted by want.
Such distraction tactics waned with your relationship, of course.
"Hawkins?" you said.
"Hmm?"
"You're too loyal."
He paused. "Is there such a thing?"
You bit your lip. You were deathly afraid he'd never had anyone else and more afraid of what you'd do if he had, which didn't make any damn sense with your current entanglements. You supposed he was different, and always would be.
And like always, you evaded.
"You could have betrayed Kaidou."
"This again?" Hawkins pulled a stool over. "You could have stayed."
The water had cooled, unpleasant and tepid along your nape by the time you said, "I don't regret it."
But when you lifted your head, Hawkins was asleep, his elbow propped on the edge of the tub and his jaw resting in his palm. The way his fingers curled against his cheek and his long lashes rested there made him look boyish, and you exhaled.
"Nevermind."
5
You usually tried to sneak out for your dawn sights, so Hawkins was bewildered and irritated when you jabbed him in the side in what must have been the dead of night.
"What?" he grumbled.
He felt you shimmy up his body like a worm so you could get your lips near his ear.
"It's your solar return."
Hawkins blinked one eye open. Below deck, the only light in his quarters was a dim lamp he kept burning near the entryway for your sake so you wouldn't run into furniture or corners on your way to beat the sunrise. Your dark eyes shone somehow, bright and gleeful and expectant as you rested your chin on his shoulder.
"And what time is my solar return?"
"18:57 in Mary Geoise."
"Which is?"
"…2:57."
Hawkins closed his eyes. The room smelled like the two of you, not the stench of sex that pervaded some evenings but your perfume and his shampoo, the laundry detergent you packed from the North Blue, the dry straw that clung to him and you breathed deep like you liked it.
This was exactly where you belonged. Annoying him.
"And what's ahead for me, navigator?"
Your grin fell. "I didn't like, write a report or anything."
"Hmm. So you woke me up for nothing."
"No!" You shot up and reached around to your nightstand. Your star charts and sea charts were a disorganized mess, to his eye, scattered throughout the office that was supposed to be your room and the whole ship. He was reasonably sure the only work you brought to bed was astrological, and he only knew enough to read and recognize his own natal chart. Anything else, and you astonished him with your patience, how you watched the seconds on your silver watch to, evidently, time exactly when to ruin his sleep. "Let me see…"
You squinted in the dark, and Hawkins didn't need to grope too blindly to find your glasses jammed between some pillows. You ducked your head for him to slide them over your ears, and you cleared your throat.
"It's a 2nd house profection for you," you said. "That's Leo, so…"
"Boring."
"Stable," you corrected. "Did you enjoy your lunar year, captain?"
Well, he got his first bounty, which heightened the crew's collective paranoia and resulted in much more evasion while Hawkins was their only capable combatant. And it ended with you in his bed.
"I hardly knew it was happening," he said. "I didn't have my astrologer."
If your flirtation was being a pest, he returned it by flattery, and Hawkins smirked seeing how you bit your lip and pretended to scan your hand-drawing intently. This was one of his favorite things about you, the you he only knew now that you were both free and at sea: the loudest, brightest force he'd ever known became shy, and it disturbed him how he preened at being the cause.
To that point, he tugged the chart from your fingers, not particularly caring about its fate as he pulled you back over him. You were sailing the upper latitudes this week, and Hawkins had to admit he preferred your warmth to anything you'd ever knit for him.
"Tell me about the year before."
"Huh?"
"Make it up to me," he murmured. "For staying behind. For making me wait."
Since you started sleeping together, most of your conversations danced around such candor. It was in how you called him "captain," despite knowing him for over a decade, and how you both spoke about "us" and "the crew" when you only meant yourselves.
Your confused look turned into a sad little smile. "You're awfully confident. What if I was busy?"
You were. Hawkins didn't hold it against you, not really. You were too anxious about your navigation and Hawkins too anxious about you, and given what the last three years looked like for the Grudge Dolph, he thought you'd both be dead if you were there from the start, that he wouldn't be as efficient or able to protect you as he did now, no matter how you frowned at his methods.
"You're on retainer, I thought."
"Well," you said, and your slim fingers traced along his chest. He shivered. "I missed your 11th, 12th, and 1st house years. I'd say the 11th you spent finding everyone, the 12th you spent in obscurity, and the 1st—" You sighed. "I'm not sure I agree with 'The Magician,' you know."
"It could be worse," he said with a shrug. "There's someone they're calling the Surgeon of Death."
"Ew."
"And it makes you The High Priestess."
You made a face. "I'd rather be The Magician."
"Let's call the Marine."
Hawkins hoped you'd never get a bounty. He didn't want that for anyone on his crew. He'd be their proxy and their shield, and most of all yours.
"So when you were 23, your time lord was Mercury, and—" You yawned. "Since that's in Libra—"
"Don't you have to be up in a couple hours?"
"You asked me."
"I was teasing," Hawkins said. "Of course I know you thought of me."
"What do you mean of course?"
"Because I drew for you every day."
You blinked. "Every day?"
He didn't think he needed to respond, or needed you to admit to something similar. He just looked at you, his hands wandering along your body, sliding under your sweater to your bare skin. You hissed. "Cold."
"Warm."
You squirmed a little, and if he was more awake he'd take that as a invitation, but for now you kissed his jaw, his neck, lingering at the tattoo that matched yours, which his palm rested over now. "Happy birthday, captain," you said against his skin.
"Go to back to sleep."
"Don't wanna," you said through another yawn, but settled with your cheek on his sternum. "Have something for you. Later."
"I don't want anything."
He felt like he had it all.