[SRP] To be thus polluted (Honey & Joya)

[Princess_Feylin]

Joya

Word must have spread of her brother's plans to put together a crew of his own. That was the only reason Joya could come up with for all these silly corsairs to be surrounding her and trying to make nice to her. She did not trust any of them, despite the fact that she already knew the majority of them to be little more than children who could be easily won over with sparkly trinkets. They did not impress her, and more importantly they did not fool her.

"Your brother...do you know if he's got a favorite?" one of the corsairs asked her.

Joya was barely able to conceal her disgust. In fact, she did not manage it, for her answer came with a curled lip and a disdainful quirk in her tail. The answer was that her brother did not discuss his carnal interests with her and she was content for that to be the case. She would have resented any other female in his life even more than she resented the females who seemed to flit in and out of their father's life.

"The best way to learn anything about Blackbeard is to ask him yourself," she told them. This was also true, although she doubted any of these pathetic creatures would get much more from him than a brusque dismissal.

Honey

To be honest, the cheetah generally known as Honey had not given a second thought to the troubles of the lion called Yellowbelly since he'd been told of them. The problem as presented had not seemed totally insurmountable, but it had also not seemed like one that Honey was all that interested in tackling. The delicate process of turning loathing to loving was much too time-consuming and energy-intensive for Honey to choose to go through it for anyone's benefit but his own.

Seeing the blood red lioness talking to the other corsairs who gathered around her, Honey wondered if perhaps the image of the corsair that Yellowbelly had painted for him had been closer to the truth. Yellowbelly imagined that there was some sort of soft, gooey interior to this lioness, but Honey had never seen any evidence of it. He'd spoken to most of the corsairs and whenever Joya's name came up in conversation it was not joined with pleasant descriptors.

No. Yellowbelly was delusional, Honey decided, and he was going to keep out of the whole sorry affair.

 

[Princess_Feylin]

Joya

Out of the corner of her eye the blood red lioness noticed a slim golden figure moving through the area where corsairs gathered. Grateful for anything which would enable her to disentangle herself from the morons pressing her for information about her brooding brother, she turned her head sharply to get a clear look at the passerby.

Upon recognizing the cheetah Honey who was a general favorite among the corsairs of the pride Joya wondered if she had really been granted a reprieve after all. Honey was an excellent adviser and confidante to many of the corsairs in the pride, Joya knew, but she had never thought of him in that way. She also did not regard him in a romantic light. It did not matter to her that he was supposedly a skilled lover because he was only a hunter, too slight and weak to be worthy of her attention under ordinary circumstances.

These were not ordinary circumstances though. These were trying, irritating circumstances from which the arrival of a favorite lover or friend might distract at least a few of the gaggle around her. Since no one else seemed to have noticed his appearance, the first step was to direct their attention in the correct direction.

"Honey!" she exclaimed with false exuberance. There. That ought to do it.

Honey

Honey only rarely saw Joya amongst the other corsairs, and he had been surprised to do so now. It was her unexpected presence that reminded him of Yellowbelly's pathetic plight and then the scornful curl of her lip that reminded him further of his preference to keep out of her way. Instead of stopping to chat with the corsairs he saw, he kept moving through the area. Unfortunately, his motion seemed to have caught Joya's eye, for she called out to him.

Ignoring her would be a bad idea. Joya was not usually a violent lioness, but she was certainly capable of cruelty and her brother was violent enough for the both of them. If he gave her offense, there was always a possibility that he would find himself threatened by a hulking black figure who would think less of ridding the world of a smart-a** cheetah than he would of which paw to lick the blood from later. Better to be polite and charming. So business as usual.

"Ah, Oceanic Jewel," he returned her greeting. "You resemble a queen holding court, surrounded as you are. I feel as though I ought to bow to you, or offer you gifts befitting royalty."

 

[Princess_Feylin]

Joya

Joya was pleased at the effect her greeting had on the gaggle of lionesses around her. True to their nature, they were distracted by the appearance of something new to coo over. She smirked at their simple mindedness. It wasn't worth feeling smug over having read them correctly. That would be like feeling smug for remembering to drink water and not sand. Too easy.

Irritatingly, Honey did not seem to be an adequate distraction. At least, he would have been if he had not insisted on turning the group's attention back to her. There were so many things which annoyed her about the manner in which he accomplished this - not to mention the task being accomplished in the first place - that Joya hardly knew where to begin to complain. Perhaps with her name.

"Don't call me that," she snapped. "Don't turn my name into an object."

Her mother had called her by another name, she dimly remembered, but her father had renamed her on the trip to the pride. He had told her what her name meant, and Honey had been correct in translating it, but that didn't mean she wanted to go around being called by her name's meaning. It felt uncomfortably familiar.

"You are welcome to bow or offer me gifts," she told him as her smirk deepened. She did enjoy being likened to royalty, since she felt that was her due as the pirate king's daughter, but she sense that Honey was not being earnest when he said so. "But as you seem not to have anything with you and I don't see you bowing, perhaps you can please me in another way."

Honey

Honey was not used to making incorrect decisions when it came to how to deal with females. He had grown up among females and he had always felt comfortable around them. Joya put him off balance by not reacting to him the way he expected. Any other female he knew would have been pleased that he bothered to learn what her name meant and flattered that he compared her to royalty. In fact, given Joya's attitude about her father, he had really expected her to approve of being thus compared.

"I'm sorry," he said, allowing her to see that he was genuinely confused. "I did not mean to offend you."

Her last words to him cause Honey to look at her more sharply than he probably ought to have done. For an instant he wondered if this was her strange, imperious way of propositioning him, but then he recalled several things. First, Joya was incredibly secretive about her life, and so unlikely to make any sort of proposal to him with so many witnesses. Second, she had already made it very clear to him in the past that she wanted nothing to do with him on the basis of his species.

"Naturally I would be interested in knowing how I could do that," he told her. He was nervous but he would not cringe or grovel. He was a free cheetah.

 

[Princess_Feylin]

Joya

It pleased Joya to see Honey thrown off balance. He had always annoyed her by being so supremely self-confident and apparently fearless. Now she could tell that she had him uneasy and anxious, and she liked that. It made her feel more powerful than any of his silver-tongued flattery and talk of queens and courts could do. At this moment, he knew that she had the power to make his life miserable, or even shorten it, should he push her too far, and he was treading carefully.

There were too many witnesses for her to threaten him as she might have done in private. Besides, he had not actually done anything more to earn her ire other than exist. She was just frustrated that after his obvious initial bemusement the cheetah seemed to have recovered his dignity and aplomb and could now seem perfectly reasonable and likable again. The b*****d.

"Cover my retreat." That should keep the arsehole confused.

Honey

Honey glanced at the corsairs which had earlier drifted a short distance away from Joya on their way to welcome him to their gathering. Now they seemed to have formed a rough circle around Joya and himself like they expected the two of them to prove some sort of entertainment. Well, probably they were already doing just that, but Honey felt uncharacteristically annoyed with them. They could be helping him out here.

There were very few things a female of any species could do or say to surprise Honey, but Joya had already proven herself capable of surprising him. Or at least capable of catching him unawares and putting him off balance, which was more or less the same thing. But this new utterance of hers, as conspiratorial and almost chummy-seeming as it way, had him completely baffled. There was nothing in their conversation which had lead him to suspect that might be what she wanted from him.

"Your...retreat?" he repeated. Now it seemed he was in the unfamiliar position of being somewhat tongue-tied. He really, really didn't like Joya.

 

[Princess_Feylin]

Joya

"Precisely," she replied. Her single word was accompanied by an emphatic nod and a wink.

And then, before the cheetah could say anything more or recover his wits, Joya took advantage of the space that had cleared around them as they spoke and bounded past the other corsairs, effectively breaking away from their stupid questions.

Once she was away from that unexpected and unwelcome interrogation Joya found herself grinning. Although she was more than a little annoyed by many of the events that had taken place among the corsairs that morning, from their lengthy session of questions about her brother to Honey's usual ease, Joya was pleased with the outcome overall.

She had not revealed anything about Teech that was not already known. She had not bowed to the pressure exerted on her by her so-called peers. She had very obviously been acknowledged as the most superlative person present. She had gotten the best of Honey. None of these things were worth mentioning to Teech the next time she saw him, but they pleased her nevertheless.

Honey

Honey stared, dumbfounded, after Joya as she burst through the ragged ranks of corsairs to make her escape. That whole encounter had been very, very odd. In some ways it had been as if he and Joya had been flirting, but he was not stupid enough to think that was the case. More likely she was simply using him and taking the opportunity to make him anxious at the same time.

"Right then," Honey said to himself, shaking his head as if he could shake off the oddness of that whole episode with that simple action.

Although his habitual easy smile returned to his face and his body relaxed as he began greeting individual corsairs by name, it was not because he was actually feeling all that relaxed. It was just something he had to do so that he could begin to feel relaxed. And no matter how much he managed to convince himself that he was relaxed and this had simply been an inexplicable event that meant nothing to anyone involved, Honey decided he would sleep somewhere other than his den that evening.

With that thought in mind he turned his brilliant smile on a shy, clumsy leopardess...

"Bella."