The day had started, as most of her days were bound to start lately, waking up from dreams of drowning. She'd startle from sleep with sweat pooling between her breasts and running down the length of her spine, gasping air past a throat that could still remember the sting of salt water. Her fingers would reach for the bedside table then, closing around the splintered edges of a deep blue jewel, a thumb brushing over its facets.

Remembering the abyssal depths - and the way they'd stared back at her.

Then faint sunlight would spill into the room, and Captain Dross would erase the remnants of her dreams with the drag of teeth over tan skin, with coaxed hisses and curses spilled into the still morning air. Uncaring for anything past the shut bedroom door and the playful pull of ocean blue eyes.

When Skyler steps out into the deck she has a roll of gauze clasped between her teeth, and another being wrapped around her fist. Her hair is an untamed mess of gold that looks as if it has never seen a brush, nor would be likely to. The elastic she uses to keep it bound and out of the way nearly snaps from the pressure of trying to keep the curls contained.

Behind her, a grumpy Dorado yawns widely, fangs glinting in the morning sunlight as he follows his captain.

"No." The captain tears the strip of gauze in two with a pull of her teeth. Her silver eyes seek the horizon, lingering for a couple of breaths before shifting to the ship proper - and Angelo. "She had the early morning shift, so she should be around. Unless she stole all the cookies again. Then you'll probably find her by the barrels - snoring."

A couple of steps bring her to Angelo, a lazy grin curling her lips when chilled fingers find their way past loose fitting shorts to brush over familiar hipbones. A slight pressure brings the courier closer, squishing her front to his back. Her chin is propped on his shoulder, nose skimming his jaw as she looks up at the mast with a frown.

Her next words are breathed tauntingly close to his ear. "What are those doing here?"

As if in response, a Dragapult blinks lazily at her. Not moving an inch. 

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"No." Which meant, in Skyler speech, that yes, they would. She'd never admit to that though, even if her cross expression says otherwise.

With a display that would make Dorado proud, Captain Dross bares her teeth at the ghosts on her ship, something not unlike a hiss slipping past her gritted teeth. Her nails sink into Angelo's skin for a breath or two before receding with a taunting brush of calloused digits.

Skyler steps back from Angelo's warmth, arms moving up and back arching in a feline stretch, releasing a relieved sigh when her shoulders pop. As if summoned by the sound, a mass of swirling tentacles emerges from the side of the ship, dark eyes peeking up from the railing. Otis.

While Delphini wanders away to cause chaos and mayhem somewhere else, Dorado sticks close. His small paws are similarly wrapped with gauze, though a strip has broken loose and is now being chased by the feline, his pupils blown wide as he swats at the mortal enemy fabric.

"So," Skyler has already started with her morning stretches, silver eyes flashing dangerously as she gives Angelo a slow once over, "guess you're my sparring partner today, Angel baby." 

The angelic picture of sunlight spilling onto golden curls is somewhat ruined by the approaching Grapploct, her perpetually aggressive expression casting a shadow over Skyler. Literally.

   

angelo vestri

An oceanic breeze sweeps through the space between them, chilly enough to chase away some of the morning warmth, even if only momentarily. Skyler's stillness is like the tang of ozone in the air before the howl of the storm, a beat of flashing eyes followed by a carnivorous turn of her lips. Between one breath and the next she's taken a step in Angelo's direction, predatory focus bleeding into the tilt of her head and the intensity of her stare.  

Challenge eagerly accepted.

Cotton slides over sweat-slicked skin with satisfying ease, baring Skyler's midriff to faint sunlight as her workout shirt is left, crumpled, over the wooden planks of the Sotally's Tober deck. Molten silver doesn't shift away from Angelo, demanding his attention as workout shorts follow soon after, haphazardly thrown to the side - and coincidentally landing over an engrossed Dorado.

The ensuing hissing and ripping of fabric is entirely ignored by the captain. When she steps up to Angelo, it is less of a coy walk of attempted seduction and more of a deliberately threatening prowl, looking for all the world as if she was going to kick him out of her ship.

"I hope..." Calloused palms dance down his abdomen when she reaches him, settling over sharp hipbones. "That you enjoy your swim, baby."

Her smile is an omen of war. There's little time to react when her hands shove Angelo over the gangplank and down into the waves. Should he resurface, he'd find her waiting, shit-eating grin in place, a challenge of her own written across her hungry expression.

Come get me, Angel baby.

   

angelo vestri

Angelo's shirt becomes another unwilling victim to a furious feline, steely claws ripping into the fabric with a yowl of vindictive satisfaction. It makes for an interesting background noise amid distant Wingull cries, though it quickly fades to a corner of her mind when blue eyes resurface honed by a sharp, hungry desire to wage war - one Skyler's all too willing to engage in.

"You wouldn't like me otherwise," she answers back, fully confident in the words that escape past a troublesome, lopsided grin. Unapologetic and utterly shameless in the way she leans down to face him, gold spilling past her shoulder in a soft caress. 

Revenge steps into her ship in the shape of burning ocean eyes and broad, dripping shoulders. Captain Dross stands her ground, halfway drunk on the adrenaline rushing through her veins, facing him like she would an ocean storm: with the intent to conquer.

The fingers that find their way into her waist are met with a feral flash of teeth, soon hidden when stray droplets draw her attention - and she leans forward to catch them with a deliberately languid swipe of her tongue against a tanned neck.

Skyler's nails dig into Angelo's back at the realization that they're edging dangerously close to the ship's side. Her mouth parts with a threat that fails to materialize. Instead, the drag of teeth on her skin elicit a breathy gasp and a slight arching of her back, pressing her into a drenched chest.

It might've been a shorter fight should that be enough to tame a wild ocean captain.

"Sure you don't want to end up under me, Vestri?" 

The small of her back bumps into the railing, sun-warmed wood prompting Captain Dross to tilt her chin, a whispered promise (threat?) brushing teasingly close to Angelo's ear. "If I'm going down, baby, you're going down with me."

A leg winds around his waist to bring him closer to her.

   

angelo vestri

"Whatever gave you the idea," Teeth tug at the skin of her neck with sharp intent, causing the captain's lips to part with something terribly close to a moan, "that I wanted to put you off, Angel?" Fingers dig into the back of her thigh, her own hands trailing up his spine to tangle in soft brown hair, grasping firmly in a silent demand to keep him where he should be: lavishing her throat with the drag of his teeth.

His affirmation is met with a scoff, though Skyler isn't given much time to think about it, much less reply.

Her back meets the sun-warmed deck in a confusion of entangled limbs and hushed laughter, spilled from her lips wild and carefree. Silver burns bright as a mouth crashes onto her own in a savage kiss, and Captain Dross is all too eager to meet Angelo's hunger with her own, back arching to slide against the wet skin of his torso.

Crumpled bed sheets flash in her mind, but the vision is quickly thrown aside to make way for the pressing weight of Angelo between her thighs. Ocean blue eclipsing the entirety of the sky behind it.

She doesn't miss it.

"Is that an invitation?" This time Angelo's ribs are uninjured, so there's no guilt when Skyler wraps her muscled thighs around his waist and uses her hips to flip them over. 

Calloused fingertips circle the soft skin of his wrists, pinning them to deck in a quick, efficient motion. Gold pools around them, having freed itself from its restraints in the struggle. Triumph peers down at Angelo in slivers of molten silver, followed by the carnivorous edge of a smirk and a deliberate roll of her hips against him.

Her voice is rough and commanding when she speaks. "I'll have no mutiny aboard this ship, Angel." 

   

angelo vestri

Captain Dross might be a lackadaisical sort when out and about, but when it comes to her job she leaves nothing to chance. Equipment is painstakingly checked and rechecked both before and after the dive and carefully tucked away after each use. There's no detour taken, faithfully following the set of coordinates blinking from the device on her wrist. More often than not, there is a time limit to these things.

After all, she isn't the only treasure hunter in these waters despite her (unfortunate) growing reputation. 

Before Angelo can zip up his wetsuit fully, warm lips press a kiss to the relatively recent cuts, already turning away before the courier can as much as blink. Skyler's movements are fluid and efficient, confidently striding forward with an ease of step that betrays her competence. She's in her element - and it shows.

They're already underwater when Skyler speaks into the helmet she's outfitted herself with - Angelo has one too. "We're to retrieve a small 'family heirloom'", her eye rolling is echoed in the dry tone of her voice, "from a shipwrecked vessel to the west of here. It is relatively close to the surface, so it shouldn't take us long." A pause. "There might be others coming, Angel, so be careful."

It isn't the first time, nor would it be the last, that Skyler accepted dangerous assignments. She'd tangled with rival treasure hunters enough times to bear the scars - and to shove Angelo into a nearby kelp forest when she notices the lights shining out from the bones of a sunken ship.

They'd beaten her here. Shit. 

With a careful movement of her wrist, Captain Dross releases Krakentoa. 

angelo vestri

“Guess it’s common for people to bring their irreplaceable valuables on treacherous voyages?”

If not for the helmet obscuring her expression, Angelo would've been able to see the flash of a smirk peeking up from the corner of his vision. As it is, the amusement which blooms in Skyler's chest bleeds instead into her voice, crackling with static as it echoes within Angelo's helmet. "I did bring you here, didn't I?"

The swaying forest of kelp disguises their movements as they approach the shipwreck on what little light pierces through the deep blue, silhouetting a twisted shape of corroded metal and wood. A subtle movement of Skyler's hand sends Krakentoa ahead, blending in with other ocean fauna as she surveys the area. 

Captain Dross trusts Angelo to be able to hold his own in these situations, which does nothing to quell the tremble of hesitation that seizes her for a second, fingers grasping tightly onto the courier's arm. "We'll flank them. You take the right side, I'll take the left. Try not to engage, but be ready for combat." A pause, silver eyes catching a stray sunbeam as they pierce into Angelo's. "Be careful." It somehow comes out sounding like a threat.

Then she's swimming away in the shadows of twisting tentacles. A couple of minutes later, her voice would return to his helmet in the shape of a hissed curse when, in an attempt to sneak into the shipwreck, she'd stumble upon the shape of a giant, animated anchor.

angelo vestri