basil hawkins x f!reader, explicit, cw: breeding kink. established relationship; reader is an astrologer, the grudge dolph's navigator, and implicitly racialized.
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.
"...youshouldbedoneovulating."
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 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.
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?"
"And everyone would know. The crew but everyone, the Navy, once they saw a little family aboard that you're mine. Hmm?"
"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."
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.
"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."
"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.
