Me: I've procrastinated enough this week, time to work on Monster in Context-
Brain: Pirate mer flower husbands.
Me: But I want to be finished before the new-
Brain: PIRATE. MER. FLOWER HUSBANDS.
Me: Alright, fine! But I get to complain about it and post a bit from each!
“Give her the prince! Give her the prince! Give her the prince!”
The chanting of the crew hid the rattling of Scott’s frantic yanking and head-shaking. He barely paid attention to the Captain’s attempts to convince the crew they could get out and get the royal treasury, but they were not swayed.
“Fine!” the Captain shouted. He tossed a key to the First Mate, who fumbled it. “Fine! But you offer that bloodthirsty mongrel the prince yourself! If it doesn’t work, we’ll leave you and go with my plan, understand?”
The First Mate’s face went white and red, but she nodded. “Yessir.” She knelt to pick the key up.
“Actually, that’s not gonna work, ‘cause we were going to kill you for him anyway.”
Scott jerked his aching head in the direction of the unfamiliar voice. Sitting and watching the drama on a nearby rock was a man dressed in green and brown, and wearing a fish mask. The Codfather waved cheerfully.
“Would that work?” Jimmy pointed to a brush on the sink. It wasn’t one of Jimmy’s, he never had one with gold details—did he even still own a brush? He cut his hair in human form and didn’t appear in his True Form anymore for some reason.
Scott shook his head without looking up. “That’s a hairbrush. The bristles are all wrong and it doesn’t give me enough reach anyways.”
Scott stood up and rifled through the pockets of his swim clothes hanging on the curtain rod, as though it magically shrunk to fit. He huffed and put his hands on his hips, his ears flicking. “Well, that sucks.”
“How bad is it?” Jimmy asked. He might be a fish, but there were more birds in his swamp than he could count. He knew how important preening was to their general health and flight ability. Looking at Scott’s wings, bedraggled and soaked despite two towels drying, he thought it was pretty bad.
Scott shrugged. “Annoying? I can freeze and dissipate the water, that’s not a problem. I’d still have feathers messed up from the water though, and I’m pretty sure there’s some mud I didn’t get. I can still fly! It’s just a little uncomfortable and I’ll need to soak and preen when I get back home.” Scott knelt to put things back in his bag.
So Scott would have to leave now if he didn’t want that bothering him. Jimmy understood; he would never put Scott through discomfort for his sake.
“Safe travels, then,” Jimmy said. “Uh, do you want to take your clothes or are you leaving them to dry?”
“I’d rather leave them to dry, honestly, but if you don’t want my stuff hanging around, I can take it…” Scott slowly looked up.
Jimmy shrugged and tried to pretend like his heart wasn’t going a million miles per hour. “I can do whichever.”
