239;

[flair]

Title: all talk and no bite
Characters: Reitz I, Rovisco
Rating: G

For the prompt "Want to talk?"

It's hot and cramped in the captain's quarters. There's a small glass of brandy on the desk, and the captain himself is leaning back in his chair, hat tipped over his face and a white gloved hand drumming against the wooden desk.The objects around him lurch and swell; a pen he doesn't quite catch, feeling it slip past his fingers like a virgin's kiss, rolls off onto the floor with a clatter, and he reaches for the glass.

It isn't there, suddenly, and he rights his hat to look for it. He finds it dangling just out of reach, gripped by calloused fingers around the rim.

"Wanna talk, Captain?"

Rovisco raises his eyes to meet Reitz's, and he drops his hand back to the desk with a soft thump.

"There's a storm brewing nearby."

The ship lurches left, tossing half the room with it, and Reitz grins as papers and pens and cups slide neatly past him onto the floor.

"Couldn't tell. What's the plan?"

"There isn't one."

That earns him a frown and a furrowed brow; Rovisco glances out the porthole, wishing he had poured a second glass before the rest of the glasses had ended up on his floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Reitz take a sip of his (stolen) brandy and frown at it.

"That's not like you at all, Captain. Something wrong?"

"Aside from the crew threatening mutiny and no land in sight, no. Nothing at all."

"They won't. We need you too much to do that. It's bad form to toss a captain off his ship and into the sea when there's no end in sight, after all."

Rovisco allows a smile to peek through at the teasing, though serious words.

"And if we find land after all?"

Reitz downs the rest of the brandy and claps Rovisco on the shoulder friendlily.

"No promises there, Captain."

"I didn't expect one."