I have realized that I missed plot a lot.

Credits to whoever owns and to Emerson.

ryuki 100 fluff challenge.
theme 25. dislike.

Ruki does not like mutiny.

She sees him from the deck of her own ship, all dashing and heroic and stupid, diving into the water to save the stupid (and admittedly, beautiful) daughter of the very man they're running away from, and her heart decides to jump away from her and give a tiny sigh. It pulls her forward, for the tiniest moment, into a half thought out wonder of what would happen if she fell into the water herself, forgot how to swim, and spluttered like an idiot as she began to drown.

He'd leave me there. She crushes her heart's moment of mutiny bluntly. And also, he'd probably laugh.

In fact, he'd probably be the one who pushed me in.

They are equals. They are partners- maybe even less than that, she corrects herself. They are pirates. They don't have the time to spend on romance and frivolous affairs. They love nothing but gold and ocean and the feel of the salt wind chapping their rough, feral faces. He would turn on her as soon as the wind changed. She would do the same. They are mercenaries, not happy sailors in matching white and blue caps and cute little gold epaulettes. This is what they do.

But in the end, she's not a very good pirate.

Ruki doesn't sail away at full speed as she always promises she will when he goes off on his stupid spontaneous adventures. She doesn't laugh and shout serves you right to the man just now surfacing, holding that stupid soaked girl wearing a dress close to nothing in his arms as the Augsburg Navy surrounds him, guns bristling.

No, she simply sighs and turns her ship around as she gets ready to pull him out of jail.

Again.

Ruki does not like drinking. He knows this.

He supposes it comes with the whole pirate thing, just like the eye patch and the parrot and the peg leg, just like those stories that kids read. Liquor should be part of the scent of a pirate, mixed with the smell of brine and freedom and the metallic tint of gold. It is part of their blood- nobles bleed the choked, airless blue, peasants bleed dirt, and the pirates bleed seawater and clear rum tinged with the scent of freedom.

But she does not drink.

Rum makes her dizzy (very dizzy) and gives her a headache (a very bad headache), and after she learned how to make wine in the Racao colonies, she came back one day and threw every bottle from his ship and hers into the bay, growling about rotting yeast piss to anyone who dared to vprotest. And when she does, on rare occasion, get drunk, she is a terror and a hurricane fused together, shaken up, and given a tongue like steel knives for good measure.

But here she is, passing a bottle around to the guards around his cell (who knew that the governor wouldn't be grateful?) her painted eyes smiling blankly as she shakes her brittle curls out of her rouged face and glares at him from under her long eyelashes (he notices that these, at least, have stayed the same) and reminds him how angry she is under the canned laughter. She finishes the first bottle in a gulp, and out of her skirts comes another, its cork popping out with a soft thwomp as she passes it to the guards, smiling, smiling.

In a few rounds, the guards are snoring on the floor and Makino Ruki, in full prostitute regalia, is pointedly refusing to look at him, a headache obviously brewing as she turns the key in the lock angrily, nearly snapping it in her unconcealed annoyance.

"If I said your eyelashes were lovely, Ruki—"

"I would probably lock you back in there. Shut up," she says, still not looking at him, "and bring the bottles."

Ruki does not like breaking people out of jail. Especially when she needs to dress up to do it.

She feels like glazed china in the heavy face paint, delicate and so easily shattered by even the tiniest breath. Vulnerable, even. This, she scowls as her cook happily dabs and curls and sews, is not what a pirate is meant to look like.

No, the cook shoots back, this is how a lady looks like.

Ruki, too weighed down by cosmetics and lace and the heat of a curling iron far too close to her face, is unable to answer. She attempts to raise an eyebrow, only to feel the weight of paint pinning it in place. Only her eyes remain untouched.

So she does her best and glares an iceberg.

Or at least, a lady that tries too hard, the cook amends, puffing a lacy sleeve unapologetically. You do look lovely, Captain.

The guards outside of the cells agree.

Ruki does not like losing, even if it is only to herself.

They sit in the tiny rowboat, bobbing on the waves as they float past the city walls, their lantern the only point of light in a world of dark sea, dark sky.

"Did the guards-" Ryou begins, but falls short, unable to complete his thought and sentence.

"No," she says, not looking at him. "They didn't do anything. Just talk."

"I'm sorry," he says, and that is all. They float in silence for another eternity. There is no excuse, no it won't happen again, no next time. He has given up lying to her a long time ago.

She turns her head to look at him, her brittle painted mask almost translucent in the moonlight. "Was she that pretty, Ryou?" There is scorn in her voice, layered with annoyance and contempt, and underneath it all, a real question.

He has a choice of honesty or of annoying her even more. She has risked her life and freedom to free him from the tiny jail cell where he would have undoubtedly rotted until decapitated, walked past the guards with drugged bottles and added yet another crime to her long list, one more guillotine stroke to her neck. She drank the rotting yeast piss. She climbed a hill in high heels and a scrap of silk that could barely cover a sparrow, let alone a woman.

So he annoys her.

"Yes," he smirks, "very pretty. Especially when wet. You should try it yourself, sometime. Especially in that dress."

She nearly leans over to slap him when she remembers what, exactly, she is wearing, and how low the neck is cut. He continues to smirk, even as she splashes his smug face with the filthy bay water.

"You," she says indignantly, "are a true idiot."

"And you," he answers blithely, "are truly lovely. Moonlight becomes you."

They hear shouting in the distance, high and rushed over the slow rumblings of cannon being loaded and aimed. They row faster, cutting the waves in the tiny boat as Fire at will! carries across the water. Gunpowder is roaring as the water suddenly begins to pop and roll around them, fire glistening on black water and rushing through the sky. It is so beautiful that if they weren't being fired upon, it would almost be romantic.

"Well," he says, glancing at the rows of cannons behind them, "it's your lucky day, Ruki. We get to try out my excellent suggestion."

"Over your dead body," she snaps, rowing faster.

He eyes the attacking wall carefully, judging the distance. "No, they're going to come out and chase us soon. We're going to have to jump for it. The ships aren't that far."

"Great," she grumbles, knowing that he is right before her mind can really accept the fact that she will be swimming to her ship in heavy silk and a rain of cannonballs and fire.

"So," he says, innocently looking away, "you might want to take off your shoes. And other heavy things that'll weigh you down. It's not an easy swim."

He is right, even if she hates him so much that she wishes she left him in the cell to rot and die. The skirt slips into the water as he not-so-innocently forgets to avert his eyes as she stands in slip and stockings, shoes in hand, glaring her fiercest.

(Makino Ruki thought that she had too much pride to let herself be won over by a stupid man prone to even stupider adventures, but in the end, love always wins.)

But the dread pirate Makino does not like losing without putting up a fight, even if it is only against herself and she knows that she's doomed.

So she leans over and slaps him anyways, deciding that forgetting what she was wearing for a few seconds would be completely worth it.

"I'm never doing this again. Remember that," she says as she watches the satisfying red handprint fade slowly. ""You are too much of an idiot to chase down and free at every port." She drops the high heeled shoes into the bottom of the boat and lifts her head to glare at him one last time. "I really hate you, you know that? You do the craziest, most stupid things that a pirate has ever--"

"And what you do," he smiles at her, blowing out the lantern, "speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."

A cannon ball explodes besides them, and she stumbles as she stands up, only to feel his hand steady her, grabbing her before she falls.

Together, they leap into the water.

I wrote all of this in order to use one quote and to avoid writing an essay for school.

I have noticed that I write the most for whenever I have the most English papers due.

-liahime.