Unexpected

First meeting

All things considered, he should've seen that coming, but when he agreed to get on their ship he was drunk and pretty confident in his abilities. Too bad his confidence hadn't been enough.

He tried to gamble his way out of that mess, and to wait for the right occasion to run away, but those pirates were onto him, so he just had to keep bluffing until he got opening.

However his luck had left him – if he ever had some to begin with – and the pirates were tired of playing and wanted their payment.

- All right ye scurvy dog, give us our money or ye can say goodbye t'yer life -, the captain, Havetti, said. He was almost as tall as Makalov, but way bigger and way more intimidating, but Makalov tried to put up a brave and confident front anyways.

- But… -, he was already failing at the whole brave front thing, - I-I don't have any money with me -.

He heard the pirates howling – like they were actual beasts – and Makalov was sure he was going to die there.

- Wait! -, he shrieked, trying to buy some more time, - I said I don't have it with me right now, but I have it, I swear! -.

He made a few steps back.

- I have everything at my place, it isn't far from here. You'll just have to let me go and I will bring you everything -.

- As if we're goin' t' believe ye! -, Havetti exclaimed, walking menacingly towards Makalov.

Uh-oh. He had to think of something, quickly.

- It won't take much, I promise -, he insisted but it didn't seem that he was convincing anyone.

His back touched something, and Makalov realised that he'd just bumped against another pirate. They'd closed every possible way to escape.

- Would you really throw away so much money only because you can't wait? -, he tried again, but it was too late: Havetti already had one hand around Makalov's neck, squeezing around it.

Makalov tried to push that hand away, but he was so terrified – and tipsy – that he couldn't even use all his strength.

That was it. He was going to die.

- Me don't like liars and ye tried t' play us real good -, Havetti said.

Makalov was gasping for air. He was really going to die there.

- Men! -, the pirate yelled then, - What should we do with this liar? -.

A chorus of "feed him to the fish!" echoed and Havetti burst into laughter, soon followed by his men.

Makalov didn't even register it as he was thrown out of the ship – he was very close to lose consciousness – until his body slammed into the cold water.

He started to panic: he wasn't that good of a swimmer, and also the lack of oxygen wasn't helping, as well as the armour he was wearing.

Everything hurt. Everything was fading to black.

That was it. That was how he was going to die.

If only he hadn't been such a horrible brother…

There wasn't anything more for him to see. He already got a full view of the situation.

Naesala adjusted the mantle around him. None would've ever guessed that under that he was hiding a pair of wings. Sure, Crimean were supposed to be less racist than humans from the other countries, but only a fool would've believed that; in the end humans were humans: it was in their nature to hate what was different from them – and it wasn't like laguz weren't the same under that aspect.

He had decided to go check on Crimea to see if Daein had already started its invasion but, despite what he'd thought, Ashnard hadn't burnt it down to the ground yet.

He could've sent spies instead of going all by himself, but where would the fun of that be? He missed the thrill that he felt when he was younger – way wilder – and he would visit Beorcs' countries disguised as one of them, before… well, before he had an entire country on his shoulders.

As much as he needed that "trip" – strangely enough he was feeling less stressed than before – he knew it was time to return to Kilvas; he couldn't leave Nealuchi taking care of everything all alone in his absence.

Before leaving in search of an isolated place to transform though, he went to the shore again, looking at the sea one last time before departing.

In reality he was pondering if he should wait or if he should leave immediately: sure, it was late and usually people from villages that small didn't go out when it was late, so there were less risks to be seen by someone – even though even if that happened would it have really mattered? – but the night was coming soon, and birds didn't see well at night.

Even for someone as fast as him it was impossible to get to his destination before the sky darkened. Maybe he should've waited until dawn to depart.

It was as he decided to go for it anyways – if it got too dark he would've searched shelter in a village nearby – that he saw someone fall from the big ship that was docked.

One of those dumb pirates had fallen from their ship, but soon Naesala started to suspect that it hadn't been an accident. Nobody was trying to rescue him.

The man still hadn't resurfaced.

… Should he do something? No, why should he? He didn't know the man, and if he was thrown out of the ship he must've deserved it.

Well, it was already late, so there was no chance Naesala would've flied off now; he had to find something to do to kill time while he waited for the sun to rise again.

He smirked.

Maybe he could gain something from that whole situation.

Author's notes: well, I guess a lot of you want some clarifications since, of course, this is a crackpairing and I don't think someone has ever done something for them as a couple.

First of all I will start that, if you're here to hate on Makalov, you can just leave now and never come back. He has flaws, of course I won't be denying that, but he's also fun and interesting because of these flaws. Not every character must be perfect and "unproblematic", like people like to say nowadays, and even if I can understand how someone might not like Makalov, I really find all the hate he gets a bit excessive, especially considering that people treat him like he's the worst thing ever created in the whole FE series when there's way worse.

Also we never got an actual height chart of the characters, but I like to imagine Makalov being tall - taller than Naesala - mostly cause I like the big 'n tall loser trope. Also he has freckles here.

Ok, now that I've got that out of the way, I can start talking about the couple.

So, it all started when I've made an highschool!au with my sister with our favourite FE characters. It was nothing serious, it was just for fun. It was then that I started shipping Naesala with Makalov.

At first I just wanted to try and see how they would work, but slowly I grew more fond of them and they became my #1 comfort ship. Also I named the ship "Naesalove" along with my friends because it had Naesala, Makalov and love in it because we are huge saps.

Through this fic I hope to show you how I think a possible relationship between these two would start and work. This first part will be set during PoR, then I'll write a second part set during RD.

They don't really interact in-game. You can make them support each other tho, and it's hilarious; I've actually found out digging in that, before deciding to make the supports as they are in RD, these two were going to have an actual support, and god what a missed opportunity.

I think this couple has potential. It would start silly, but I feel that later it would become increasingly serious, and also considering the characters involved, it has the potential to be a mess, after all it doesn't seem that neither Naesala nor Makalov have such a high esteem of themselves, nor they probably know how to deal with certain kind of feelings.

Well, that's all for now, thank you for reading all of this, and I hope you'll stick till the end of this story.

Disclaimer: before Americans start to nag me about it, yes, I use hyphens for dialogues and quotation marks for thoughts. Why? Because this is how we do in Italy, the country I'm from (actually there's more freedom in Italy but this is how people usually write).

Am I going to change this one day? Absolutely not. This is how I'm used to write and I don't want to change it. If I have to go through hundreds and hundreds of fanfictions where I see quotation marks used for dialogues – something I'm not used to at all – I'm sure you can all go through one story where the style is different without having to point it out every, single, time. Thank you.