The Pirate King Ch. 04

He took me in, sweaty and held down with ropes that were not his. I watched his eyes flick over every part of me and wanted him to like what he saw, even though I was so angry I could have called a thousand storms and ripped them apart with my own hands. I saw his hands clench so tight they turned white and wanted to cry out for forgiveness, even though I didn't know what I was supposed to be forgiven for.

Then the Captain dropped his eyes and stepped back. His lips pressed together in an emotion I did not recognize, or perhaps did not want to understand. He gestured for me to move where he had been standing, the space now large enough to pass without touching his body. I walked past him and pretended that his gravity did not weigh more than all the ropes in the world combined, trying not to imagine his eyes on my back as I moved across the deck.

That night, after training (one man commented in my hearing that the Captain had been too distracted by me during his rounds today, and I threw him so hard for doubting his commander that he refused to spar me again. I had to let the next man throw me so it wouldn't look like I had any consistency) and after my time in the ropes with Natch ("Do you want to talk about what happened today?" he asked me. I told him I didn't know what he was talking about and climbed ten feet above him so he could not ask me again), I returned to the Captain's quarters to find an array of clothes laid out.

"You are working," the Captain told me.

I stood in the doorway, unsure of how to continue. Of course I was working. What would the Captain have me do? And what did clothes have to do with it?

"I thought. It seems that perhaps, your clothes would need to be changed." He waved a hand at my form. "You've been sweating, I mean. And, you know."

I looked around me at the rows of shirts and breeches, then looked askance at him.

He frowned, taking in the shirts himself. "I didn't know your size."

I continued to look at him.

He threw his hands into the air and disappeared into the washroom. By the time he emerged, I had all the clothing stacked in a single pile and had settled myself, still clad in my original clothes, in his desk chair.

I didn't need his false kindness. I didn't need him to try and get me from my clothes. I sat, stubborn and angry, waiting for the ropes he would use not in the way we both craved.

He stopped, taking in the careful pile and the even more careful way I didn't look him in the eyes. Then he softly made his way over to me and wrapped ropes around my arms and legs. I was sweaty; he was right. I must have smelled badly, and I hoped that would keep him from wanting me, from making a move that would break the walls I had built up around my need for him. He hesitated as he walked behind me to get to my second hand, his head hovering over mind for just a beat too long. I felt my body pulling towards his, my neck stretching even as I fought to pull myself forward.

But he came and knelt beside me, wrapping the rough rope over my wrist. He took longer than he ever had before. I watched his hands tremble, laying more rope than was strictly necessary. I let my eyes follow his hands, telling myself I was just curious about his intentions, that I didn't want to watch his hand shake to be so close to me.

When he had laid almost four inches of rope over my wrist, he finally finished the knot. He stared at it for a moment, as if considering his next move, then he gently rested his fingers over the rope.

I drew in my breath and he flinched, but his fingers remained. To have his hand so close to my skin, only the rope keeping us from contact, it was torture. I knew what it would feel like to have those fingers against my arm, against my shoulder, my neck, my chest. I wondered if he was imagining the same things, staring down at the rough brown cords that separated our bodies.

"Captain," I said, unable to take it anymore. My voice sounded hoarse and quiet in the face of everything else that hung in the air.

He didn't move.

"Captain," I said again, my breath rushing from my lungs. They weren't working right, my lungs. Nothing was working right. I didn't know what I would do if he didn't move soon. I wanted him so bad, to have him so damn close...

He yanked his hand back like my voice had burned him. His head never came up, his eyes never looking to mine. Instead, he sat back on the ground and rested his face on his knees. I didn't look at him, or at least I tried not to, but his pain drew me and I found myself watching him, wondering if I could salvage the pieces he had left.

I could, I thought. I didn't know if he would be able to on his own. I tried to not care, I tried so hard.

He sat like that for so long I thought fish might begin to nest in his wreck, his skeleton becoming part of the new ocean floor. But he drew breath again, a sharp and welcome sound, drawing himself back up. In his motion he refused to look at me, keeping his head turned from my form.

I watched him move back to the bed, watched his tight pants slide over the curve of his ass, his loose shirt barely containing his powerful shoulders. It was hot in the room, and the window was open to let in the breeze causing the shirt to ripple over his body, hiding and revealing his skin and muscles differently as nature decreed.

I was nature, I thought. I was the sea. I could decree.

I took a deep breath and held it, trying to control my thoughts.

He stopped at the bed, and I saw him hesitate. But the room was hot, and he needed to sleep comfortably the same as I did. His hands moved to the bottom of his shirt, playing with the billowing fabric. Then he turned the motion into a decisive one and pulled the ends from his pants, crossing his arms to remove the shirt from his back.

When he slipped it over his head, revealing those shoulders, that back, his muscled waist, all of it bare and perfect I must have made a noise because he froze, his arms extended above his body, trapped there in the fabric of his shirt. He lowered his them slowly, his head making the tiniest of moves towards me. I knew he must be looking back at me, eyes cast over those rippling shoulders in the dim of the room.

My torso was pulled forward, my breath arrested in my lungs. Only the smallest bit of oxygen was able to pass my lips, sliding into the thick air pulled so thin, so tight by the sight of him standing there half naked, from the sound of his breathing, from the feel of his eyes. The air was too tight, I realized terrified. At any moment it was going to snap, snap and take me down.

But the Captain didn't let that happen. He sighed, a quiet sound that tremored through the room and through my body raising goosebumps. His arms raised again, his shirt sliding back over his head, perfect shoulders and spine and back and waist disappearing under white fabric. Then he turned, opening his mouth as if he were going to speak to me.

I turned my head quickly and refused to look at him. It was too much, at that time, to see his face. I didn't know what I would do, wasn't in control of my body, my breath. I couldn't face him, not right then.

I heard him lie back down on the bed, the slats beneath him squeaking. When I dared to look up, he had settled with his back to me, hair splashed across his pillow. My heart beat faster as I traced the curves of his body with my eyes, the rise and fall of his back, the way his shirt had slipped up to reveal just a sliver of skin above his waist.

Somehow, this was worse.

I needed to move. I knew he wasn't asleep yet; I knew his breaths better than I knew my own, could tell when he was excited, relaxed, could pinpoint the moment when he dropped into deep slumber. He was a light sleeper, and moving at all would often awaken him, but I had learned in the last two nights to time any nighttime wanderings or shifts I might have to cause him minimal disturbance. But tonight, I couldn't wait. Where I was sitting was killing me; I couldn't sleep like this, not while I could be watching him. How could I close my eyes when he was right there? I could barely get my body to blink, let alone fall asleep.

My hands were already free, had been since I my heart first started careening. I needed my hands, needed some control from him. Now I reached down and unfastened my feet, finding myself free and able to move.

He tensed at the sound of me standing. I looked over to him, suddenly realizing what I had done. I was free, and he was right there. I could go over to him, I thought. I could lay down beside him, gather him in my arms and pull him close to me, I could press my hands against his back and press my lips to his, or draw his fingers to my waist, or draw my lips to his waist and press them to his...

I grabbed the chair and dragged it bodily across the room, not caring how much noise it made. I wanted to throw it, I wanted to punch the walls, I wanted to let the Captain fuck me and I had promised myself and him that I would not ever let him do that again, not ever let him use me like that. I tossed the chair into the fair corner with such velocity that it spun, toppling over on its side and clattering to the ground. I watched it fall, infuriated that even this chair would not do what I wanted. I wanted to rip it to pieces. I wanted to throw it from the window, except that it did not deserve the sea.

I took a deep breath, crouching down and putting my head in my hands. This was not productive. This was nothing, this was a distraction. I tried to breath through all the things gathering in my lungs and found I almost succeeded. I accepted this as a victory and tried again.

In time I had calmed down enough. The chair was where I had left it, toppled in the corner. As I righted it quietly, I dared to glance over towards the Captain.

His still form froze my veins. He had curled up so tight his face now rested in his knees again, a mirror of the position he had taken at my side. I swallowed to see him there, my hand tight against the handle of the chair. I wondered for a moment if maybe I should apologize for my outburst. It felt like I should, felt like I had done something wrong, but I couldn't find a way to voice what I was feeling, to lend words to the moment brewing in my gut so I just stayed silent, turning the chair into the corner and settling in for the night.

***

When the Captain came for breakfast that morning, there was a murmur through the crew. He didn't look like he'd slept at all, shadows haunting his eyes and a bow to his shoulders that I had never seen. I knew he carried the weight of whatever had happened the night before, that he had sucked the heaviness from the air and taken it all on himself to spare me. The crew only knew that he was bent under something he hadn't been before.

I hadn't left the kitchen yet, waiting for him. I knew he would look bad, but I wasn't prepared for this. The breath left my lungs as I looked at what I had wrought. Behind me, Cookie cursed under his breath.

I took my time filling his bowl, taking in every part of him that I could. He didn't look at me, instead staring off somewhere into nowhere. I wondered what he was thinking about, if he was thinking about anything. He looked so tired I thought he might be asleep.

"You sleep at all last night?" I asked him quietly. For a moment his gaze snapped up to me angrily, and I blinked at the flash of pure ire in his eyes. Then they softened and he shook his head.

I'm sorry, I thought. But those words had never left my mouth easily, and I wasn't sure that it had been my fault. I remembered that he was still afraid from the King's flag, and that he had a life outside of me. I was not his world, not like he was mine. I placed the bowl down before him.

"Hold on," I said. I rattled through the cabinets for a moment, looking for something. Sure enough, Cookie kept a jar of candied ginger just like Minnie did, right behind the dried cayenne.

I grabbed a few and ignored the dirty look Cookie gave me. I knew that this was his personal stash for hangovers, but I didn't really give a shit. The Captain had been waiting patiently as I searched, or maybe he was just too tired to move. I walked back to the counter and put the candied ginger down next to his bowl.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't think of anything to say. The ginger wasn't going to give him his sleep back, or make him feel better after a night up. But it was a gesture of kindness, and I thought, hoped, that maybe that would be enough.

He looked up at me, meeting my eyes. I tried to tell him everything I wanted him to know then, there in my gaze. I don't know if he understood, but he nodded, reaching over to pick up the ginger from the counter.

Late in the movement, I remembered that my hand still lay right next to the pieces. His trajectory was taking him dangerously to my skin. I snatched my hand back, hiding it behind the counter and away from his touch.

He froze, staring at the space where my hand had been. Then he nodded again, much more slowly this time, grabbed the ginger and left.

I hurried out of the kitchen and into the doorway to watch him make his way down the hall. He looked as though he was heading back to his room, his pace slow and his gait unsteady. I watched him as long as I could, then ducked back into the mess.

I was suddenly aware of how many eyes were on me. Their Captain was off - only I could be to blame. There were a few whispers, and a few comments that were not pretending to be whispers. I ignored them all. I turned my shoulder into the combined gaze of the ship and made my way over to Finn.

I sat down beside him noiselessly. Natch shot me a look, which I ignored. "He didn't sleep last night," I told Finn. "Will you go and take care of him for me?"

"I'm his steward, not his babysitter," he muttered. He was obviously frustrated by something, perhaps the fact that he hadn't finished his own breakfast. I reached out and took the bowl from him, removing any chance at distractions. He stuttered at the sudden intrusion and found himself staring into my very clear and very cold eyes.

"Finn." I heard my voice turn dangerous and watched everyone around me respond, their spines straightening and their heads turning to listen. I let the ocean rise within me, let it lend its eternity to my command. "Go."

He stared at me, but I knew I didn't have to say much more than that. He was a sailor, and I was the sea, and he would obey when I spoke. "Aye," he finally said. I handed him back his bowl and he hurried from the room.

I collapsed back into myself as he left, letting the sea return to my soul from my eyes and voice. I could call it when I needed it; these men did not need to know I could exist as a storm, when they were used to seeing me as a prisoner.

Across from me, Natch leaned back and crossed his arms. I didn't meet his eyes as I returned to the kitchen to grab myself my breakfast.

***

That night at training I lashed out and landed a vicious hit on a boy named Ichor, a big black lad that claimed to be a son of the gods. He wasn't, or if he was, it wasn't any god I felt fear from. I had been so sure that he was going to block the attack that I was already planning my next move in my mind, ready to take the jar in my arm and move it through my body.

Instead, I felt my arm extend, the wood blade making a nasty noise as it hit his flesh. He leapt back, holding his injured arm. "Easy, Ghost." They'd all picked up the nickname that Natch had given me, saying it was because I moved so quietly and talked so little. The irony of my size and the perceived lack of stealth it gave me was not lost on them. The true irony of a nickname that mirrored my arch of fate was not lost on me. "Need all my limbs. Not exactly on the King's medical, here."

I drew back, frustrated. Ichor was one of the most vocal proponents of the 'evil King' stories, the campfire tales that had him drinking blood and killing children for black magic and the like. He conflated the old King with the new, which was no fault of his really, but he seemed to pick the worst of both to cultivate some sort of demon-god version of the man that made me deeply uncomfortable. "Didn't think you'd ever have much positive to say about the King, lad."

He blinked at me. "No. I mean. The old King."

That stopped me in my tracks. "The old king?" I repeated, dropping my guard slightly. I hadn't expected him to know this.

"Yeah." He stood down, excited to share his insider knowledge. People were beginning to gather. Pirates can always sense when gossip is about to begin. "Isn't exactly common knowledge, I suppose but. I'll let you know a bit of a pirate secret." He leaned in. "The throne has changed hands."

I tilted my head to imitate his lean. I wanted him to continue. I needed to know how much information had trickled down the ranks.

He saw my lean and did not disappoint. "Aye, Ghost. You're not supposed to know it, but it has."

"You don't exactly throw a party when you overthrow a Pirate King," chimed in a bystander.

"Signals weakness. People might try their own luck," added another.

They knew much more than I had expected. I blinked out into the gathered crowd, genuinely surprised. "So, how do you know?"

Ichor smiled, proud and boastful. "New flag, new policies. Taxes, medical, ratios -"

One of the other men interrupted him, much less puffed up. "Honestly, it's kind of hard to miss."

"Used to be only a tax of 10% on your take."

"And you got comprehensive healthcare."

"Aye, you could bill your care to the King and he would pay for it. Witch doctors, healers, modern medicine, he honored it all."

"I heard a man had a peg leg put in with jewels." There were groans and jeers at this, causing the speaker to double down. "Jewels, boys, as big as eggs! And the King just asked that the man provide his own gems, and that he receive one of them when the man died."

"Were there ten of them?"

"What's that to do with anything?"

"Ten percent, man. It's everything to do with everything."

"But that doesn't happen anymore?" I interrupted. Somehow, practice had stopped completely, each and every man trying to get a word into the conversation about the King. It always seemed to happen like that whenever a good conversation started up. This is why they haven't become great fighters, I thought. Would rather stand around and gossip.

"That's right, boy."

"Why do you think we left?"

"We left because we tried to kill the King."

"Hush, not so loud!"

"It's just the truth!"

"Doesn't mean we have to advertise it."

"Not like he'll come down here, with Cap the way he is."

"Cap wouldn't have had to do that, either, if the King hadn't gone off the rails!"

"Don't be spoutin' things you don't understand, boy."

"Well, what else would you call askin' 50% and giving nothin' back!"

That proclamation caused the entire congregation to dissolve into arguments. I blocked them out, folding away what I had learned. Cap the way he is, I thought. Did they mean nameless?

A hand at my elbow made me jump. I looked down and found the smiling eyes of Natch. We wordlessly made our way to the rigging and climbed into the sky, where only the stars bickered and gossiped.

"Is that true? What they said about the King?"

"Aye." He shifted in the ropes. "I wasn't there, though."

"You weren't?" The surprised me; the crew always talked like they had done everything all together.

"Nope. They picked me up about a year back. That went down two years ago, now."

"And they let you on? Just like that?" That was uncommon; pirate ships were secretive at best and impenetrable cliques at worst.

He shifted again. "Didn't have any other place to go." We sat there, swinging and silent, until I couldn't keep my questions under my skin.