3, 8, 9, or 11 for wesper!!! (I love ur way with words????)
3 - things you said too quietly
jesper doesn’t look up when wylan joins him, overlooking the side of the ship. he’s used to it by now. the sea, the stars, the silent side-by-side. it’s peaceful – some might even call it romantic – and wylan hates as much as treasures it because jesper doesn’t even know it’s him.
ninety-nine percent of the time, wearing kuwei’s features is a relief. wylan can’t even recognise himself in the mirror, except as a stranger, and it makes him feel freer than he can remember. people have always told him he looks like his father. familial resemblance be damned, there’s nothing familial about it.
sometimes, just once, he wishes jesper could realise who it is standing next to him.
of course, wylan would never have the nerve to do this looking like himself, so maybe the fact that he’s here and able to do it at all is a blessing. there’s no point, though, when jesper looks at him and sees kuwei, gives him the polite smile reserved for a reticent stranger, with none of the warmth and brightness wylan’s come to know and he feels a second behind the rest of the world.
jesper doesn’t know. he doesn’t know, but– wylan hates the feeling of being a stranger among people he’d begun, tentatively, to feel at ease with.
they never talk. wylan doesn’t know much shu, and his kerch (unaccented, fluent) would give him away. jesper’s content to stay silent too, which is strange, but wylan can’t push it because he can’t speak, although he wants to ask. he wants to ask so much the need of it almost chokes him, to say something, anything.
would jesper care, even if he knew? now that they’re set for home (home?), going their separate ways, three million kruge richer, would he care who’s at his side when there’s nothing left to bind them together? it’s not like there’s much of a chance to find out.
just girls? no. not just girls.
did they really survive the ice court just to end up here?
jesper’s staring at him, full attention - quizzical, surprised, a little bit uncertain. shit. wylan said that out loud. muttered quietly enough that, small blessings, jesper probably didn’t have time to recognise the voice or even realise what he said, only that he said something. that’s why he’s staring, wylan reminds himself. he thinks it’s kuwei talking.
that’s why he’s surprised.
words dance on the edge of wylan’s tongue, but he swallows them down. the tips of his ears are flushed and his heart beats in his throat as he drops his eyes from jesper’s, turns back to the sea.
he can feel jesper’s eyes on him a minute longer, considering and then dismissing. what’s one more strange passenger in a crew of thieves and criminals, after all?
what’s one more could-have-been in sixteen years of not good enough?
nothing. and so they say nothing at all.
send me a ship and a number
