[u][i]Collaboration with Igraine and AmongHeroes[/i][/u]
 
Antonia hauled herself easily over the edge of the Parakeet’s roof, twisting about as quickly as she could in these blasted skirts. On her hands and knees on the tiles, she peered over the ledge and gutter with a grin, thick black hair falling down about her shoulders like an ebony waterfall. She reached down to offer Thomas a hand, waving her fingers just a touch impatiently. “Here now… No no, not your hand, Silver Fish! The wine!” 

She had, after all, had to run and retrieve the nearly-forgotten bottle just as they’d been about halfway up the exterior wall. And though Thomas was already well in his cups this night, Antonia had only just gotten her reprieve from that eternal vigilance, and she meant to make [i]very[/i] good use of it. Well, Thomas may not have appreciated being left to cling to the inches-wide ledge of the roof for some moments while she clambered back down and dashed back inside the Parakeet.

But she felt confident that even if he weren’t in an entirely appreciative mood? Oh, somewhere deep in his soul, he [i]might[/i] understand. Or at least, forgive her a night’s frivolous silliness? Or maybe she’d just get him drunk enough to forget? Well, [i]that[/i] was always an option too.

“Bloody hell,” Thomas grunted as he gripped at the roof’s edge once more. Balancing precariously, he managed to hand Antonia the bottle of wine. He swung his leg up, and managed to lever himself onto the warm tiles of the Parakeet’s rooftop.

“I see the damned liquor is more important than my neck!” He said to her, laughing with the catalyst of drink and the headiness of her company. As she ascended up towards the peak of the roof, he couldn’t help but reach out and tug at her skirts, pulling her back slightly on the slick masonry tiles. His laughter was uncontrollable, and he used his newfound momentum to pluck the wine bottle from her grip, and jog past her.

“How much is it worth to you, rogue?” Thomas said between snorts of drunken, silly laughter.

Antonia’s eyes widened, jaw dropping as she kicked her useless leather mules to the side, the hard leather soles clattering on the tiles. She tried swatting at him as he ran past, somehow managing to miss him utterly - to her own eternal surprise. Even quite drunk, giddy with laughter like the naughty little child he was being, and balancing precariously on unfamiliar roof tiles? God in heaven, but the man’s natural grace was a wonder.

“Oh, you are a [i]brave[/i] slippery Fish!” she growled with a small snarl of a laugh, hopping after him first on one foot, and then another, as graceless as [i]she[/i] ever got as she pulled off her stockings. Barefoot now, handfuls of her skirts hiked up in one hand, Antonia sprinted after Thomas, leaping for his retreating back.

In a fit of laughter, Thomas stumbled to the roof’s peak as Antonia latched onto his back. With a deftness that belied his state of sobriety, he managed to lift the wine bottle up and twist his body, saving it from shattering against the tiles. With his laughter subsiding into mere breaths of happiness, Thomas moved the bottle for Antonia to take.

“You have bested me,” he said, smiling with his face pressed against the roof. “I raise the white flag, and the day is yours.”

He rolled beneath Antonia so his back was now to the roof, and his copper eyes shone up at her. It took him a moment to perceive the position he had put the pair in, and the realization prompted another snort of laughter. 

“God’s bones,” he said, “last time you had me this way I lost my weight in silver! Well, you’ll have no such luck this time, rogue. My coins have all been spent!” Thomas gave her a look of victory, though truly it was perhaps more for the fact of being straddled by a beautiful woman than saving his bullion from theft. Thomas surmised that Antonia was keen enough to know which.

Antonia simply rolled her eyes, as if she were truly remotely exasperated. 

She most assuredly was [i]not.[/i]

From her perch atop the pirate captain, she reached to pluck her prize, the offered wine bottle - still somehow blessedly safe and whole - from his grip and set it an arm’s length away against a conveniently close ridge of fascia. The small, victorious grin worked its way to her lips as she bent low, her long hair falling about his face and shoulders like a second, soft and starless curtain of night. 

“Your coin is all spent, lovely man?” she asked him with a smirk, resting her folded arms across his chest. [i]“Quel dommage![/i] I’m afraid this will be all the worse for you then! It seems all that is left for me to strip from you, after handily relieving you at various times of your coin, your drink, and obviously your dignity?” 

Antonia sighed oh-so-dramatically, as if deeply grieved to be the bearer of such burdensome tidings to the beleaguered buccaneer captain trapped between her legs. Shaking her head as she sat back atop him, she shrugged her shoulders, palms upward and wide-eyed with feigned helplessness. “Yes Thomas, I’m afraid I must now take all you have left in the world.” 

“I must now relieve you of your virtue as well… ”

She bit her lip, hard, before bursting into sweet, childlike laughter and rolling to one side, closest to the wine, easily sliding herself against the length of his body as she looked up to the sky, her head nestling snugly to his shoulder. “What ever was I thinking?” she murmured with a soft whisper of a laugh in his ear, “You’ve precious little of [i]that[/i] too! Well then, I will simply settle for the stars above, Thomas.”

Thomas laughed heartily, “Virtue? Indeed I say that Lucifer himself may have more shreds of it than I.”

He was silenced by the press of Antonia’s body against his own. Even through his drunkenness the moment cut him to his core like a tree root through stone. A seemingly impregnable shell pierced by the soft press of something yet more powerful than mere might could ever hope to be.

With that revelation warming his flesh more completely than the wine in his belly, Thomas in turn rested his own cheek against Antonia’s ebony hair.

“The stars, yes the stars. That is what I have to offer.” He said quietly, his lips barely moving.

With that same trancelike voice he spoke to her of Cassiopeia, Sagittarius, Scorpius, Libra, Arcturus, Draco, and almost reverently he pointed her to Polaris, the Home Star. Their Home Star. Thomas could not have said how long they had spent this way, staring up to the heavens, and admiring the dance of gods and heroes of old across the inky tapestry.

When he could show her no more, Thomas tilted his face to hers. He saw those stars and the night reflected in the cool grey pools of her eyes, and impulsively he raised a hand to push a stray lock of hair from her brow. They should name a constellation for her, Thomas thought, mark a place in the sky for all to view and be kept on course.

Slowly Thomas withdrew his arm from beneath Antonia’s head, and rolled himself so he was suspended above her. His face hung inches from her own, and though the stars were now blocked from her eyes, Thomas thought them no less resplendent. He closed the distance between their lips with fevered slowness, his heart pounding in his chest, bounding and leaping in great pulses of uncertain happiness and fear.

As his lips hovered before hers, with his copper eyes affixed into the depths of hers, he whispered. “Do the waves not oft lead to paradises both unknown and unexpected?”

His eyes drifted shut, and he moved to close that last final distance between them, a span seemingly as far as the sun and the moon, but no less as bright or radiant. Then he heard the voices.

Thomas froze, and his eyes opened at the sound. The voices were as distinct as songbirds in the still night air, and they carried to his ears like the unwelcome herald of the rooster’s crow.

He scoffed lightly as the fragile moment drifted free. The corners of his mouth curled slightly in a conciliatory smile. “The gods are so cruel, are they not?” He whispered to Antonia. Thomas moved up to kiss the beautiful rogue gently upon the forehead. “Another night,” he said as he lifted himself free from her delicious, gravitic pull, “we shall have to admire the heavens again.”

“Let’s go make them pay for the interruption with their coin,” he said over his shoulder to her as he slid down the tile, and with a finesse of a man born upon the seas, swung into the open window.

Though thoroughly annoyed at the interruption, Thomas could not shake the lingering glow of Antonia’s proximity, and as he descended the steps into the drinking hall of the Parakeet, he could not force the smile from his face.

As expected, both Nicolette and Jax were alone in the room, drinking rum and waiting somewhat awkwardly to his eyes. Thomas smirked, and he hoped that Antonia was not far behind him. He moved towards the pair, picking up a deck of cards as he did.

“Ah, welcome, welcome. I apologize for leaving you to wait, but the view was too amazing to miss.” A playful smile broadened upon his face, “And the stars were not bad either.”

“Shall we play?”