The Pirate King Ch. 02

"Will you listen to me!" I stood up, erupted, propelled myself forward to where he was standing. He gasped and reached for the blade he wore at his side, but I had him pinned before he had a chance to fully draw it from its sheath. I pushed it back down, returning shining metal to dull leather, and pressed on the soft spots in his hand until he cursed in pain and released his grip.

"I just told you," I said quietly, pushing my leg between his. I wanted him, how I wanted him. He moaned quietly as I moved my body over his, sending spikes of pleasure through my brain. It was becoming hard to think. He was so close to me, and I to him. "It's okay. If you want me, just take me." I watched his lips part and I felt him becoming hard against me, felt him wanting me. I pulled his arms up over his head, holding his wrists with one hand as I traced my fingers down his arm. I let them rest for a moment on his neck, feeling his blood race beneath the pads of my fingertips. His eyes had drifted shut at some point, and I could feel his breathing quicken with each motion my body made. His chin lifted, moving his lips to just inches from mine. Those perfect lips were parted, quivering. I leaned down.

"No," he said against my lips. I froze, his command echoing through my body like ice.

He dropped his head against my chest. "Fuck," he whispered. Then, louder, "Fuck." I moved away from him, letting his wrists drop, finding my shirt and redressing along the way, staring at the wreck of a being I had just crashed against. I had been so sure when I had made my move, had been so sure as I had done all of this. I had just wanted him, wanted him to want me, but looking at him there, standing hunched over and broken, I realized that this was killing him.

I hated it.

It hurt, to see him there like that. As he crumpled before me, I fell with him, a mirror to his descent, his body sliding down the wall and collapsing inward as if there was some weight pulling him in. My knees hit the ground, again, for him. Always for him. I had done wrong, to push him to this. I had been the one not listening.

"Fuck," I echoed him.

Eventually he looked up, saw me watching him. "Stop," he told me.

"I don't know what I'm doing."

"Just. Stop." He looked away.

"Okay," I said softly.

"That," he spat. "Stop doing that."

"I don't -"

"I said stop."

I stopped, my body shivering with the sound of his voice.

He took a deep breath. "You can't just come onto my ship, and do this to me." I wasn't so sure he was talking to me. "You can't make me feel this way. It isn't right. It can't be."

"I'm sorry." I tried to make my voice soft. I was afraid he might become nothing but broken planks. "I just wanted you." He didn't move, and my voice continued, "And I thought you wanted me."

He shifted.

"Didn't you?" I heard myself ask, my voice small, and I hated myself.

"There are rules." He wasn't looking at me. "Rules about conduct and rules about how I can act. Control of myself and control of my ship."

"Who's rules?"

"Mine." He took a deep breath, but he still wouldn't turn my way. Wouldn't lift his head. "I can't do this, if I'm to be what I am. I gave up being a person when I agreed to be their captain. I gave up all of this, whenever I'm at sea."

"That's -"

"Personal attachments," he interrupted, finally turning his gaze to me, "are dangerous. They lead to weakness. I need to be strong for them."

"Okay," I conceded in the face of his glare. "Okay."

He searched my face for a long time, then took in the rest of me, let his eyes trace the outlines of my skin, the way my shirt slipped over my collarbones. Suddenly he squeezed his eyes shut and slammed his head against the wall, causing me to start forward, afraid he'd hurt himself.

"You make it so hard," he muttered. Then he was standing, and he was the Captain I had come to recognize, cold and even. But beneath his eyes I could see the storms raging, watched tempests play out against his soul. To see him like this, to know the pain I had put him in, it made my chest hurt even as I felt tingles shiver through my spine at his commands.

"Get in the chair." I moved quickly towards the desk chair he indicated as he walked towards me, trying to keep distance between our bodies. He grabbed the ropes from the bed and tied my wrists, taking great care not to touch my skin. When he finished, he stepped back and looked at me. I didn't look at his face, didn't want to know what was or wasn't there. I heard him go across the room, heard him rustling as he searched for something.

He returned and stood before me, just stood for some time. I gathered the pain in my chest and looked up.

He held the manacles dangling in his hand.

I felt my breath catch. I knew he would still have my warning in his ears, I knew he understood what this would mean. I rolled my eyes slowly up to his face and found it impassive.

"I'm sending someone up to take you down to the cells. They'll put you in irons down there anyway."

"I cannot guarantee the safety of your crew if that were to happen."

His voice lashed from his mouth. "Donot threaten my crew."

I lifted my chin and let him see the truth in my eyes, let him look for it himself. We stared each other down, the Captain's dark eyes demanding, my grey eyes warning, storms roiling in each.

"Fuck," he finally said one last time before throwing the manacles on the bed and storming from the room.

I wanted to scream. I waited only minutes before untying myself, throwing myself bodily from the chair he had confined me to. I paced around the room for a bit, but pacing is just another form of inaction and it did me no good. I would have to do something, or I was going to die from all the things that were crashing about inside of me.

He didn't want me. He couldn't have me. I had hurt him. I needed to get my head on straight; needed to get to place where I could think. And on the ship, on any ship, there was really only one place for that. Where I felt like home.

I took a breath and tried to calm down. I had to leave this room anyway. I knew he wasn't coming back, and I wasn't going to be put in a position where I would have to hurt someone he cared about. Caring about by proxy - that was a new one for me. I coiled the ropes again and left them on the chair, then headed back to the mess hall.

The cook didn't even look up when I walked in. "No food," he said. "Leave."

I kept moving forward instead. The scents called to me, helped settle the hole that was growing in my stomach at the rejection I had just faced. They were familiar, too familiar to be coincidence, and I tried to convince myself of that as I moved forward. "I was looking for work, actually."

That got his attention. He scowled when he saw me. "Go away. I don't have a death wish."

I smiled. "I'm still alive, aren't I?"

"Yeah, but I'm not as hot as you, so I won't last as long when the Captain's pissed."

I felt my smile sadden at that. "I'd really appreciate something to do with my hands," I paused as I took a breath and took a chance, "Alan."

"Oh, now he thinks we're on first name -" He froze, hands halfway through peeling a potato.

"You are Alan," I asked, moving into the kitchen. "Right?"

The potato fell, but the knife remained. I watched it shake and stayed out of range. "Why are you here?" His voice barely reached me through the kitchen's smoke.

"It was your porridge," I said, softly. The scents of the kitchen held me. I couldn't leave, wouldn't leave. "It tastes just like Minnie's."

The knife lowered. "You know Minnie?"

"Grew up in her kitchen."

"Scullery boy, eh?"

I leaned on the counter, drinking in the scene, the pots around me, the arrangements of knives and tools that were almost the same but just a tad different. It grounded me, helped me to forget what had just happened. I anchored myself in soups and sauces, and threw away the pain I felt. "Something like that." I knew that I shouldn't be here, shouldn't be exposing myself to this man, and yet...

"Min didn't have need of scullery boys."

He had the same pots, I noticed. I wondered if they'd bought them together, or if they'd been a gift, or if they were just so similar they'd chosen the same set. "Taught me everything I know. About knives. About life. Being smart, and when to be dumb." I shrugged, ignoring the knife still pointed vaguely in my direction. "Strategies of command."

"Scullery boys don't need strategies of command," he said warily.

I smiled to hear his voice. They even talk the same, I thought. "Told me about her brother, too. And how he could never quite get their grandma's soup right." I blinked as the knife was raised back to my eye level.

After an appropriate moment of threatening, the cook sighed and lowered the knife. "Minerva, eh?" He gestured me the rest of the way into the kitchen with the blade and handed me a potato. "How's she doing?"

"Haven't seen her in some years, to be honest."

He grunted. "Yeah. Me either."

We worked on potatoes silently for a moment. A rhythm was set, the cook's hands flying over the lumpy tubers and flicking skin expertly into the waste bin. I had to concentrate to keep up with his pace and not get cut in the process. It was good to think about something other than what I had just done, what had just happened, keeping my hands busy with a steady stream of methodological actions. I let my eyes wander the kitchen as I worked.

"You have the same pots as her, you know."

He grunted.

"It's really nice to finally meet you, Alan."

He threw down his knife angrily. "I don't go by that name anymore."

"I'm sorry."

"And you have some nerve, coming in here, calling me by a dead name."

I nodded. He watched me carefully, studying my face for any sign of trickery, but all I had were the last splashes of guilt, colored by a growing nostalgia. He grunted and threw me another root. "What do you call yourself, son?"

I thought about that as I worked. There were a lot of answers to that question, and none of them were especially good.

"It's an easy enough question."

I sighed, coming up with an acceptable explanation. "My name is simmering. I need to keep it covered for a bit more, until it's done."

"Cooking metaphor for the cook, I see, he can't understand anything but what's in the kitchen." I smiled as he grabbed up another potato and set to it angrily. "I've got to call you something, so what'll it be?"

"Boy is fine."

"Good, easy. I like it. Well, here you shouldn't call me Alan. Understand? Here, I'm Cookie."

"Because you're so sweet?"

He flashed me a scowl as he turned away from the table we were working at. He bustled around his kitchen for a bit, chopping this, spicing that, while I kept up the task of potato peeling. I took the time to think, to try and understand what was going on.

And what was going on was, I had lost the Captain.

I shouldn't delude myself; I had never had him to begin with. What had happened the night before was nothing but a slip up, a mistake on his part. Probably due to keeping his dick in his pants for too long on the sea. He had rules, he had said. Gave it all up to be a Captain. I didn't understand his reasons for it, but I would have to respect them.

All I understood was that I could not have him.

For some reason, rather than just disappointment, this thought filled me with the deepest, most bottomless sorrow which manifested in an almost physical pain. How had I let this happen, I thought to myself. How had I let this strange man have such a hold over me? I was the storms that ravaged the seas; I was the fifty foot swells that swallowed boats whole and swatted at navies like flies. I was untamable and uncaring and this man, this man had brought me to my knees. He wanted me, but wouldn't touch me, and that somehow hurt more than anything I had been through yet. Any of the torture, any of the pain. I had come through all of that, and this was the thing that was ripping my soul to pieces? It just didn't make sense. It wasn't fair.

I let myself wallow for a bit, but wallowing never did me much good and I'd never been one to indulge for long. And so, standing there with the potatoes, I came to a decision. In the end, it was simple. He would not touch me. The Captain had said that he would not, and a Captain should keep his word. If I let it, this could break me. For some strange reason, I cared that much. But I had rules too. I could not be broken, and so this would not break me. I would just have to continue, riding the ship until they dropped me off. And then I would continue some more, until I did what needed to be done.

Simple.

My body was resigning to never having him touch me again, and it hurt. I gasped in the face of it, feeling any hope flee as I realized just how much I was losing, how much I could have had. I put down my potato and my knife and tried to just breathe.

It was simple, yes, but that didn't make it easy.

"Boy!" Cookie needed me, and I hung onto that like a lifeboat. He was tasting the soup he was preparing, the one that spat smells that had brought me so surely to him. He passed the spoon to me. "Really. What is it missing?"

I sipped deep, letting the familiar tones flow over my tongue. Thank all the gods for distractions. There was a hint of something, something not quite right... "You added the onions first, to sweat?"

"Yes, yes."

"Andthenthe garlic?"

"Of course, and then the -"

"Lime."

He stopped. "Lime?" He looked around him, then scurried to various cabinets, opening and closing doors. "She adds lime," he muttered, "it's a fucking sailor's recipe, grandma was a sailor, her father was a sailor, of course she fucking adds lime."

I peeled potatoes and watched him. I felt strangely at home here, or maybe not so strangely. I had gotten my start in a kitchen like this one, with a cook just like this, food so similar it was almost identical. How strange, I thought, that fate brought me to this ship, to this cook.

No, not fate. That the Captain brought me here. I froze and looked down, the ice in my stomach that the soup had begun to melt threatening me again with violent force.

"What can you tell me," I managed to ask, "about the Captain."

Cookie turned and looked at me. "Nothing," he said. "I like my body the way it is, intact, and not part of the soup I serve."

But cooks gossip, it's in their blood. And I had to know, despite my better judgement. "Does he really not sleep with anyone?"

The cook scoffed. "He sleeps with whores on the docks, goes the word. Disappears for hours, leaves Wicky in charge. That's how he gets his information, some say. Fucks whores so good they're loyal to him forever. Course, others say he's just payin' like the rest of us." He bustled around me, not noticing how my face had gone so very still. "Wicky's the first mate, hard ass. Slippery sort of fella. He won't like you," he told me flatly. "When we were still up north, Cap used to be more relaxed, but after all that business -"

"You were up north?" I was ignoring how hearing that the Captain preferred whores over me stabbed at my gut. Whores were lovely people, I told myself. And it wasn't like I had never paid for sex. This was an unreasonable reaction.

"Aye, we used to run with the King's Brigade."

"Privateers?" I frowned. "I understand it's lucrative, but -"

Cookie spat. "Fuck 'em, not those scum floatin' for a limp dicked toothless hack who has to have his son chew his food for him."

I blinked. This was definitely Minnie's brother. "But you said the King."

"Aye, son, the true king. The King of the Sea. The Pirate King, him of a hundred names and a thousand lies."

I smiled at the poetry falling like rocks from Cookie's lips. "Sounds like a fairy tale."

"Aye, boy. It was. Thousands of pirate fleets, all loyal to their king and master."

"Pirates aren't loyal to anyone."

"Not anymore, they aren't," he muttered. He pointed over my shoulder with his ladle. "Incoming."

I turned and found the Captain barrelling past the door. At the sight of me in the kitchen, he stopped dead and came back until he filled the door frame, staring at me with those intense eyes. He held so much frustration pinned up between his brows that I didn't know how he wasn't falling over with the weight.

I didn't know what to say to him, so I just kept peeling potatoes. My stomach was doing flips at the sight of him, decked out in his jet black cloak, the skin of his chest suddenly seeming to have as many hues as his hair. How many terrifying things had I faced down, and this man was the thing that made me nervous?

This man who would not have me. This man who would not break me.

"I thought," he finally said, walking towards me, "that I told you not to do this shit anymore."

"You also told me not to listen to you." It was a weak argument and I knew it. He slammed his hand on the counter between us. Cookie jumped; I didn't.

"You don't have to go around scaring Cookie for shit I've done," I told him quietly.

"Scare Cookie?" He laughed, a dry sound that got tangled up in his hair. "Fuck, do you even know what you did?"

I pointed at the potatoes. "I needed something to do with my hands."

"You were supposed to be tied up, waiting to be taken to the cells. If one of my men had found you, do you know what they would have done? What I would have had to order them to do?"

"As if they could touch me."

"Don't you go doubting my men."

"What," I said, putting down the potato in hand, "would you have had me do? Wait around to be taken to the cells? Be put back in irons?"

"Yes! You should have stayed. In the room! Tied!"

I couldn't help myself. He could have had me; he could have me every night, but instead he had whores on the docks, and the bitterness made me spit, "I thought you didn't want me tied up in your bed anymore."

"STOP," he roared. He came around the counter, moving fast into the kitchen. "This isn't a fucking game!" I saw the real anger in his eyes, saw the real fear in Cookie's, and made a decision just as he reached out to grab me.

As soon as I had him on the ground. I drug him behind the counter, out of view of the doorway. "Cookie," I said, using my most calming voice, "go watch the door."

The cook whimpered as he heard the Captain sputter in the hold I had him in, watching him kick and fight.

"Hey, Alan. Alan." He looked at me, eyes wide with fright. "I'm not going to hurt him, I promise."

Cookie swallowed and nodded. He backed out of the kitchen with eyes so big I thought they would burst.

The Captain was still fighting me, trying to push away the arm I had around his neck. I shushed him, burying my head in his hair, waiting for him to stop struggling. "You're okay," I told him again and again, "I'm not going to hurt you, you're okay." I didn't love that this had been my course of action; to hold him down, so soon after pushing myself on him, it felt wrong. But I needed him to calm, needed Cookie to be alright. I held him and hoped he would forgive me, even as I loved the feeling of having him in my arms, and knew it would be the only way I could achieve it.

Eventually his legs stopped their spastic scrabbling for purchase, his hands simply hanging on my muscled forearms. For the second time in as many hours, I could feel his heartbeat against my skin, pounding fast and hard. I waited until he hadn't moved for a good minute, then shifted his head so I could look down at him.

"You good?"

When he nodded I slowly released the pressure from my hold. Even when he could move, he stayed wrapped in my arms, heart beating, hands on my arms.

"Fuck," he whispered.

"I'm sorry," I told him. "I didn't mean to touch you again."