On the third, or fourth, or fifth time he finds and captures his toxic ex-bestie on the open seas, Lazlo loses it. Unable to balance his need to keep the friend he still loves safe and the need to look strong in front of the crew, he chooses unhinged homoerotic behavior.
Teen.
Lazlo/Snowe is heavily implied.
Cringe and free.
—
Original Note: I always saw Punishment as male for some reason. Since I already had so many male pronouns bouncing around, I made Punishment 'he' and 'him' in italics.
—
Oh, Lazlo was so tired of this. He was so goddamn tired of this.
He was tired of this happening, he was tired of having to handle it, he was tired of having to get rough, he was tired of having to be nice. He was at once hurt that Snowe had the callousness to attack him and that he had the ever fucking gall to believe he could attack him. He was distraught to watch Snowe humiliated, for the third of fourth time, sprayed with the blood of his crew and perfumed with the sea water that foamed up around him in the fire-scoured ship, miserable to see him desperate for one fucking victory, and hysterically fucking angry to hear him shouting orders, rung thin across the waters, to load cannons, tighten rigging, and attack. Attack Lazlo, as if he had any fucking right to. He was heart-sick to watch him pistol-whipped by one of Lazlo’s crew, dropped and bound, hands secured behind his back and cinched to a rope around his neck, he was livid to see him marching with his head held up anyway, his crew butchered and him still the picture of noble pride, sneering down at the pirates, as if he thought he had any honor left to mock them with. And goddamn, he really thought that he did.
It made Lazlo fucking angry to watch him. It made him feel hollow. It made him feel sick.
How did he still look like Snowe when he was marched up to Lazlo, center of the deck and surrounded on all sides by his crew? How did he still look like his brother? Who was this?
“Captain Vingerhut,” said Lazlo.
The low quiet of his voice forced everyone else to hush. They wouldn’t want to speak louder than him, nor would they miss hearing what Lazlo was about to say. The first time Lazlo had Snowe in captivity, he offered him a chance to start again, join him, and leave the past behind. Snowe spat in his face. Snowe spat in his fucking face and told him to act noble in front of his own band of lowlife and criminals, he knew better. Lazlo had sent him adrift.
The second time he had Snowe captured, he felt soft to him still. He didn’t want him to be killed even though they had chosen opposite sides in a war with a clearly correct side. He shoved him in a boat without conferring with anyone and told him to get out.
The third time, he blew up his ship, pitched him into the water, and did not look back.
He was fucking back again. He was fucking back again. Not dead, and he was still so fucking proud, and he was still acting like Lazlo had done something wrong. This man, who had thrown him to the sharks to escape what would have probably been a suspension for him. This heartless, compassionless, thoughtless copy of his penny-pinching, arrogant father. This fucking asshole.
He had already mourned him.
Snowe looked down his nose at him. His cheeks were flushed and his chest was heaving with exhaustion. He wasn’t wearing that ugly brocade this time—he was in something that looked almost reasonably like armor. Good heavens, he might have lifted a finger and fought this time. All the same, it was studded with golden buttons and steel buckles, with a tooled crest, because he was a fucking tool.
“Your masters haven’t gotten tired of supplying you with new ships and new coats yet?” Lazlo asked. “Isn’t it expensive for them?”
A low ripple of giggles. The tension was heavy, but obviously, his crew felt no fear here. “Isn’t their patience wearing thin with their coffers? Aren’t they tired of sending you out to not capture me yet?”
Snowe was turning red. He was trying to not reply. He was trying to act above him. He was trying to save face, probably. Probably he was nervous. He turned red like an apple, patchy, fetchingly mottled on skin still pale.
“Are they going to take you back this time?” Lazlo pressed him, ire swelling the longer he didn’t speak. “Do you want to chance it?”
“If you’re trying to get me to join you in your nest of vipers again, save your breath,” Snowe snapped. His voice was thinner and more strained than he wanted it to be. Lazlo felt a pulse of embarrassment, followed by anger.
“Oh. If you fucking think…” Lazlo took a single shaking breath. “Sorry. That invitation has expired.”
Lazlo reached out to Snowe, a little curiously. He wasn’t sure what he was about to do. It seems he was going to rest the fingertips of his left hand on Snowe’s collarbone. Not a threat… if it came from anyone else. He felt sickly satisfied when Snowe tensed.
“Then throw me overboard and be done with it. I detest to spend another minute on your ship.”
He detests to… fucking hell. He didn’t even used to speak like this!
Lazlo was always expressive. His fingers curled into a grip on Snowe’s shoulder when he spoke, because he was angry. “Are you trying to negotiate the method of your death? What a politician.”
Everyone laughed. Snowe’s eyes shimmered with fear before they frantically steadied themselves again. He didn’t think he was going to die. He really didn’t think he was going to die. Lazlo didn’t think Snowe was going to die either. The thought of Snowe thrown down on the deck, his blood pouring into the veins of the wood, it made his heart beat with fear. Terror. But Lazlo wasn’t sure Snowe was going to stay alive either.
How could he excuse it? After attacking him four fucking times with the intent to kill his men, wreck his ship, bring Lazlo himself almost certainly to a death by hanging. How could he excuse it?
He wasn’t responding again.
“You think you can weasel your way out of it? Do you think you can pay me? Do you think I want to look merciful to my crew? Are you depending on my feelings for you?”
He didn’t bother to say so quietly. Let it be uncomfortable for everyone else. It was agony for him. Snowe himself flinched away. Good. He hated it and it felt good. “Oh, but I’ve got an idea,” he said. He tightened his grip on Snowe, moving his hand to his neck. Really, he was trying to hold him still, but he could feel Snowe’s heart immediately start pounding under his hand. Panic. He could feel it. Panic. Mortal fear. Anxiety and stress. Exhaustion. Sadness.
An old sadness. A heavy one. Sadness in a numbing cocktail with jealousy, self-loathing, and confusion. It was like an echo ringing over the sea.
Lazlo had pulled a knife out of his boot and straightened back up. Snowe’s eyes were wide with their huge, awful emotions. He had a few bad habits that cropped up one he zeroed in on someone. That uncomfortable stare he heard he had was one. He didn’t think Snowe liked what he was seeing in his eyes, because his heart hammered again, like a sword at a forge. Lazlo lifted the knife to the height of his throat.
“Hold him up, Kika.”
No argument.
The whining began when she had Snowe braced. Kika was taller than him, no surprise. That quiet and awful whining, like a scared dog. It came out of humans who were beginning to believe that they were about to die. Lazlo curled his left hand into the front flap of Snowe’s coat, slowly parting the sides. The shirt underneath had nice golden buttons too. His right hand adjusted itself on the knife.
He sliced the top button of Snowe’s coat off suddenly, carving through the threads. Snowe shrieked an incredibly short, stifled shriek, curdled terror he somehow swallowed down. He went to panting, horrified and confused, as he watched Lazlo toss the golden button in his hand.
“Couple of carats,” Lazlo muttered. “That’ll start your payments for the massive damage done to Iliya.”
He tossed it blindly over his shoulder. He heard a short scramble to catch it and no sound of gold hitting the deck. He’d be damned if he ever heard gold actually hit the deck before being caught on this ship. He grabbed Snowe again, forcefully, to make his breath hitch. He sheared off the next button, and the next one after that. “The people of Na-Nal and Nay have a lot of holes in their economy now that Kooluk soldiers are slaughtering their able-bodied men,” he continued, “so that’ll help. Let’s give them this too.” He cut off the buckles that fastened the coat, well-tooled steel, surely worth something. The coat sagged open, revealing his shirt.
“Now…. Let’s see… one, two… hmm hmm… ten? What the hell does a shirt need ten golden buttons for?” Lazlo started at the top, slicing off buttons one by one, naming another small island with each one, another private, cozy little home in the wide ocean that this war had broken or destroyed. He heard himself saying names of the dead. The shirt, tailored to Snowe’s body, fit snugly, and the blade of the knife felt the spasms in his stomach as Lazlo cut closer and closer. When he thrashed, unable to hold fear of the knife at bay, Lazlo cut into him, eating through a couple layers of skin.
In the end he was bare-chested and red, blood dripping down to his pants, muscles trembling with the effort to stay standing, aided by Kika’s grip on his bound forearms. Lazlo removed the last button, barely above the hem of his pants, and tossed it above the shoulder. “And that’s for Elenor and her island, specifically, since you’ve cost her so many years of her already advanced life.”
“Hand that over, sonny,” he heard Elenor bark at some unfortunate crew member, “you heard him.”
Lazlo was surprised that Snowe still had nothing to say to him. But when he looked up at his face he was that Snowe was expending the effort of his mind to keep his fear at bay, to not tremble cry, or faint, to remain at least standing solid, the bare minimum of respectability.
It was laughable. When they were ten, Lazlo had once watched him bawl for an hour about a schoolyard dispute. Yeah, right.
But where he was standing, he could see that the button of his pants—listen to fucking this, ladies and gentlemen, even the button of his fucking pants was gold and probably worth something. Lazlo couldn’t tell if it was just plated or real gold, but it was coming off. Every fucking muscle in Snowe’s body tensed as Lazlo steadied a knife on his hip, gently tapping the hipbone as he planned his cut, an unstoppable grin twitching on his face. He swung it over and cut it off, just once, perfectly, and the button fell into his hand.
Standing, he pocketed it. “And the acting monarch of Obel—me, just in case you forgot—thanks you kindly for the slight contribution to the rebuilding projects we’re forced to undertake since your people fucking invaded and drove business to the fucking ground.”
Snowe was glaring at him with fire-heat. He was horribly disheveled now, clothes falling off, blood-stained, held up by the ropes which bound him mercilessly.
It was fun, this way. Lazlo liked to see him humiliated without having to suffer seeing him in physical pain. He deserved it, didn’t he? Putting personal angst aside, as if it could be put aside, his actions had caused a lot of deaths. Human lives are priceless, not even counting the damage done to so many islands. He deserved it. A little bit of punishment.
Lazlo could feel his hands curl together. “You understand, right? You have a lot to pay for. That’s what you understand, right?”
“You— you—”
Snowe couldn’t get out what he wanted to say to him. Lazlo could see he was burning with anger. He could see he was choked up with fear. He didn’t know what else.
His fear made him feel insane.
“Get him—” he reconsidered after he started shouting. What was appropriate? What could he do? What did he have to do? “No,” he said out loud. He paced a half step, faced away from Snowe. The sea was glittering with golden sunlight. The world is so distractingly beautiful when you’re trying not to think. “No, no.” He half turned, turned back, and observed his brother again.
His anger was boiling away everything else, it seemed. He had been startled, he had been frightened, but just maybe, he was no longer afraid. If Snowe wasn’t afraid… if Lazlo truly believed he wasn’t afraid…
“Lock him into my quarters.”
“With plea—what?” Kika asked.
He leaned in to her, Snowe bound between them. “Corpses don’t pay off debts,” he whispered, depending on the sea breeze to keep his rationale between himself and Kika. “I don’t think locking him into a prison cell would be a good idea.”
Their cells were public access, meant to encourage gawking and humiliation. Kika slowly tipped her head onto her shoulder. She understood. She tended to make bodies instead of keep prisoners herself, but she respected Lazlo’s methods. They had talked about this, at length, in bed.
“And what’s wrong with… an empty room?”
“My crew respects my space.”
Lazlo knew she wasn’t happy. He could tell she accepted it anyway. She knew there was more to his decision. He had shown his hand just by lowering his voice. He wondered what she understood… he raced to remember what he had told her, in moments of weakness, in the dark… she didn’t say anything.
Snowe, too, had gone into uneasy silence at the change of direction in the script. Though it was easy before, now, Lazlo found it hard to look at him.
His eyes, skirting around his white hair, his pinched face, his bright eyes, saw pain, pulsed with pain. Anxiety buzzed backwards through his mind, from his eyes, through his skull, foamed into bitterness, scoured the shore, leaving something pale, worn, and tired. He felt the regret and anxiety building, he knew and hated it. Snowe—Snowe—
What could he do? What could he do? What could he excuse? What would they accept? What could he accept? What could he accept?
He needed time. He needed. To calm down. Find his feet. The crowd rung around him. Before he had to…
“Alright, thanks to the little prince, we’ve got a plan to revise,” Lazlo shouted, turning his back on Snowe. His heart hammered. “Into the meeting room. You know if you’re suppose to be there. Once we’ve got a schedule ironed out and a course plotted, then we’ll have time to settle this.”
“And how are we going to settle this?” Someone dared ask.
Elenor. Elenor dared ask. Because she could.
What could he do? What could he do?
“With a bleeding back,” he said. “Or perhaps a bleeding neck.” He began to walk through the crowd, silencing the conversation. “Or perhaps something else. We’ll see.”
If he put it into his own hands. As the captain. Then they had to accept his choice.
Then they had to. But. He would talk to Snowe first. He couldn’t. He shouldn’t His mind would change. He didn’t know what would happen. He didn’t know who Snowe was any more. He’d grow weak. He couldn’t take it. He’d feel so—so—but the temptation was too great. If he could talk to Snowe in private, if they could be alone together—the temptation was too great. He didn’t know what he’d do. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to make this choice.
But if he did it, they would have to accept it. If he did it, he could control it. If he punished Snowe himself… then no one else would have the right to. Because this was his ship, his castle, and his prison, and his command was law. He could declare war, demand death, command the destruction of ships, and he could even save someone, and no one could stop him.
Sensibly, Snowe was searching through his drawers when Lazlo entered the room. He had hoped to see either that or tampering with the window, since either would mean that he had some fight in him.
Weirdly, the drawers he was messing with were in his wardrobe, but, well, Snowe might have hoped he was hiding keys in his underwear, or something. Lazlo was going to assume the best.
On instinct Snowe slammed the drawer shut and put his back to it when Lazlo opened the wall. It was painfully familiar—how many times had they both been caught, alone or together, messing with something they should never have been touching in the first place? Eating raw cake batter, teasing a kitten, almost killing each other with swords they took off the wall to play with, and… well, all kinds of things. Shit. He wondered if this was how Mayor Vingerhut had felt when he watched his son whirl around, excuses, plans, and panic flicking bright as daylight in his eyes at once.
Hurt, bitter, nostalgic, trying to stomp down the pain? Lazlo doubted so, based on the punishments he could remember.
But, had he come here to do anything but punish Snowe?
His stomach hurt.
He realized he was supposed to say something. He was the authority here, Snowe was a captive, and one he had caught being insubordinate. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, asshole,’ right? ‘Put your filthy hands where I can see them,’ right? He had even done some of that himself, but suddenly…
He had to start by locking the door behind him.
Kika had stripped off Snowe’s ruined clothing and left him with… next to nothing, actually. Bare from the waist up, untreated wounds that he seemed to have just spot-cleaned and left, no shoes, hair awry. Then again, Snowe might have made that choice. Harder to escape with ruined clothes falling off of you, right? Had he been actually looking for clothing? Fuck, was he just cold?
This sucks.
“What?” asked Snowe, voice hoarse. “What do you want?”
Oh, he spoke first. Lazlo reminded himself that Snowe had never taken pressure well. Well, neither of them did. Lazlo was commended for being stoic, but really, he locked down from on the spot. He wasn’t just keeping his silence, he found it almost impossible to speak if asked to when he was nervous. Snowe, however, had always found it hard to shut up when in trouble.
…Come to think about it, was that the reason why? Was that why Snowe had sold him out in the first place?
“Just—well, just tell me. I understand I’m a prisoner. Just tell me what you want with me instead of—don’t be gentle about it, just tell me what’s going to happen to me.”
“…You think I’d be gentle about it?” Lazlo asked, unamused. Truthfully, though, he was surprised how rough his voice sounded.
A surprised, offended exhalation. “I mean don’t toy with me. Just let me know. Are you here to kill me? Will it be an execution or are you just going to do it here? Just let me fucking know before it happens.”
Honestly? That was surprisingly to the point. He had hardened his guts a little in the past few years, he really had. Lazlo could appreciate that. He definitely wasn’t the daddy’s boy he had been, but how different really was he? Making demands like that, maybe he had done nothing but grown to become a man like his father.
Didn’t look like him. Which wasn’t relevant, or important, at all.
His eyebrows pinched further, Lazlo could see he was trying to not pull his arms up. He could feel that pounding in the air, even from here. Fear. Mortal terror. Denial. Anger. Old, old, fermented sadness, potent now. “What… what do you want?”
Lazlo didn’t feel like approaching him. He didn’t feel like breaking the silence, which Snowe so obviously wanted him to. He didn’t feel like anything, he just, maybe he wanted to watch him, but without him being so… afraid. If only he could watch him, unknown… but why? What did he want to learn?
“I don’t know what you want me to do. I—I understand—that I’m at your mercy. I don’t—I’m not—I just want to know what’s going to happen!”
Instinctively, Lazlo thought, he was trying to reach for a weapon.
“God dammit, can’t you just say something?”
“Hm…” Lazlo groaned, so reluctant to begin. His thoughts were hardly together. He advanced on Snowe a few steps; Snowe steadfastly held his position, though it must have been a battle of will. He was so tense. It was like the air was thin around him. Dizzying. He liked it, Lazlo wasn’t so sure about himself. “There’s been some disagreement about you, actually,” he heard himself saying. Low, expressionless. He wondered if he was controlling himself well, or if he was just feeling detached from this. Maybe, was he feeling something he couldn’t even access? Or was anything, anything he could have possibly felt about this, any way he could have reacted something he had already denied himself?
Snowe didn’t respond. He lowered his head, his wide, wide eyes, to watch Lazlo begin to pace his room.
“Kind of on the order of… who are we punishing, exactly? Who are we talking about? How would an outsider court treat you? What would they consider you? What I mean to say is, I’ve been accused of being a little personal about all of this. Imagine, right? Ha ha.”
Oh, yeah, he was badly detached from the situation right now. He couldn’t feel his uncomfortable laughter and his reaction to Snowe’s growing panic was a dull, grey pain.
“You know, we don’t do this alone. Kika, Dario, a whole lot of others, Elanor, they own their own ships, Lino is a King, there are people here I don’t just boss around, you know? I have the final word, don’t get me wrong. What I’m saying is I listen when they tell me I’m being.”
He caught Snowe’s eyes. Stupidly. His heart hit him with a bloody slap to let him feel that he was horrified.
“Personal,” he finished. Stupidly.
He could feel his face suddenly.
“Uh…” he had to turn away. “Yeah. Well. Elenor thinks that I’m out to punish a brother I’m angry with. Well. She thinks that I’m approaching the situation differently from everyone else. But then everyone was asking, who are we trying to punish? An enemy general who we defeated? A rival pirate who entered our territory? Or, to people who aren’t pirates, a filthy pirate who deserves no mercy? An incompetent fool who shouldn’t be bothered with? Or even a representative of Razril? Or… or maybe it is personal. You know. Maybe, maybe you are a brother, and it is personal.”
Oh. Ok. Shit. Lazlo turned around to look at something else. It was the window now. Hello, window. Hello, ocean. “See, all of these people would be treated differently for their actions,” he explained to the waves. “And even if we could agree on what you are that doesn’t mean our feelings agree with our rationale. Yeah, a lot of those people across the way and down a level want to just throw you overboard and be done with you. And a lot of them are scared that you won’t die again even if we try? But we have to consider whether death is really the punishment for the crimes you’ve committed, divorced from the fact that we have our own feelings about you.
“…And, well, it is?” Lazlo shrugged. The waves said nothing. “According to most of the criminal justice systems we’re working with, some of which, Pirate’s Code, are harsher than others. Hell, even if we go by Obel, notoriously lax… once we get to the fact that war has been declared, that you perpetrated violence and death against most of the factors here that have declared war, and also that as a pirate, you straight up are fair game for the stocks or labor slavery under most codes that I know of?... Yeah, you’ve just like… gone across the board as to who you’re allied against and continued to perpetrate bloody violence no matter who you were antagonizing at the time, so… yeah, I’ve got a lot of people who really think you’re going to die in the future, but I have the right to decide how.”
Lazlo turned his chin to stare at Snowe. “What do you think?”
He didn’t know how he thought Snowe would react. Maybe he felt like his dreary, blurry malaise would rub off on him? Not likely. Snowe, apparently, wanted to live badly enough to launch himself at Lazlo, probably trying to knock him into the wall. That was always a bad idea, especially if you were unarmed. Snowe hit him and Lazlo rolled him, pushing first with a free shoulder and then with his thigh, until Snowe hit the back of the wall. Lazlo could handle his bucks and convulsions pretty easily, but there were a couple of scratches that were going to stay on his face and his arms for a few days, at least.
After some struggle, he stilled, hands clutching still at the front of Lazlo’s jacket, chest heaving—Lazlo didn’t feel like he had relaxed. He felt like Snowe realized he was getting nowhere and was going to save his energy. Weirdly calculating. He had always acted with his heart. He just had a shitty heart. “Hey,” Lazlo heard himself say, a tone of voice meant to calm a child or a dog. “Hey, settle down. It’s going to be fine.”
“It’s going to be FINE?—”
“Yeah. Yeah. Calm down. I’ve got this.”
“You’ve got—what?? What?? Lazlo, what do you mean?” He tilted down his shaking chin, which had been gasping for breath after the trouble; he was bright. Fever-bright eyes, panic-white skin. This man was like marble. Lazlo could see the blue, yes, literally blue veins under his ears and his eyes. Oh, no. “Oh, so have you got a plan already?” he snapped. “So you’ve decided? Am I going to be quartered or just hung? Or are you gonna fuck—fucking stab me, or—”
“Calm down. Calm down, okay?” He really wasn’t doing a good job of reassuring Snowe right now. He knew his body wasn’t saying ‘calm down.’ His left arm pressing Snowe to the wall across his collar and throat, his thigh carefully placed so that he could shove him again if he bucked at him, his right hand hovering in the air, his straight gaze, they all said something more like ‘shut the fuck up.’
“I’m not going to do any of that. If I were treating your life lightly, I would have put you in a cell next to the General so you could be plucked at through the bars by every bit of lowlife the Dauntless has to offer. I’m trying to protect you here, ok?”
“Protect?? You’re not trying to protect me, you’re trying to—set up a show execution, keep the glory for yourself, make sure no one else can get to me so YOU can do the honors!”
“Kind of? But also, not at all.” Lazlo huffed. “Just calm down so I can talk to you.”
“No!” Snowe snapped, observably calmer. Lazlo assumed that if he let Snowe go, he would attack again, but if he kept holding him like this, he couldn’t have the conversation he needed to have with him. What to do?...
((...Clearly, I never decided what.))