The Pirate King Ch. 05

This is part of an ongoing series - please check out the previous four chapters before diving into this one! We'll still be here when you get back:)

Alright, so this is when I admit to being a terrible dirty liar because this is another chapter without sex. Nakamook, you say, you're writing on literotica. Don't be such a dick. I know, I know, but the chapter was getting hideously long so I decided it would be better to split it into two, and drop this part early. You'll still get the rest of the chapter, now chapter 6, at the end of this week. Think of this as a super special bonus - two chapters instead of one!

If you're reading for the story, you're gonna want to read this one. If you're reading for the sex scenes, we'll see you in a couple of days :)

Feel free to write in to tell me how I could have done this better - I don't really know how to post this format of erotic story well on this type of website. Thanks again for your patience, and enjoy!

*****

Morning watch bells woke me from a dream of warm arms and icy commands. I groaned, stretching as best I could while not knocking myself from the ropes. I looked out over the deck - it was deserted in the early morning mist. The only other living being would be the watchman, up in the crows nest. I squinted up towards the top of the mast, trying to see who it was.

The lad must have seen my movement, because a hand came up and waved. I waved back, although I couldn't tell who I was waving at. Then I settled myself in and enjoyed the song of the sunrise and peace of nothingness.

Eventually, it dawned on me that everyone else must be at breakfast, which meant that I should be too. I sighed and pulled myself up, wishing I could stay up here forever. I looked down to the deck.

It would take a long time and a stupid amount of effort to climb down like I had been doing, the land boy's way.

Of course, there was another way. A better way. I'd been avoiding it, because I didn't want these men to know me for what I was, but at this point it seemed foolish to hide my skills. Besides, my way was more fun, and I wanted the rush. Needed to clear my head, flush my body.

I let go of the ropes.

I was down at the deck in moments, letting my body weight do most of the work. It isn't hard to get down from a height, really. You just have to fall. The tricky bit is not letting yourself fall too fast, controlling your momentum with checks and yanks to ropes, until you can force the unyielding ground to accept your body once more, trick it into holding you by rolling across its surface like a stone skipping across still water.

I lost my balance at the very end, tumbling across the deck and coming to a stop on my ass somewhere near the barrel pit. But despite it, I couldn't stop smiling; for the first time in a long time, I had endorphins on my side for no other reason than joy.

I heard a shout go up above me and looked up to the concerned face of the watchman. I laughed and waved, signalling that everything was alright. If I was lucky, he hadn't seen anything but the end of my descent. Perhaps he would think I had fallen. I stood and dusted myself off, moving towards the door to head below decks.

Just as I reached it, it swung open and I was face to face with the Captain.

This, this was what falling truly was. My stomach dropped out from beneath me, my limbs felt as if they were made of water. I put a hand on the door frame to steady myself, trying to keep my knees from buckling. I had hoped that distance might make this easier, that not sleeping in his chambers would lend me some sort of clarity when I saw him again, but the same war waged within me. I needed him. I couldn't let him hurt me again.

I couldn't let myself hurt him.

If my presence had a similar effect on him, he didn't show it. His dark eyes took me in, noting the marks the press of the ropes had left on my body, the way my shirt had fallen from my shoulder. He paused there for a moment, and I wanted him to have a reaction, to show me what it meant to see my bare skin. Instead, his eyes continued unchanged. I pulled my shirt back onto my body only when he no longer was watching.

"Finn told me you'd slept in the riggings."

"Yes." I didn't really know what else to say, but somehow found myself feeling guilt. This man hurt me, I reminded myself angrily. Intentions that were good or no, it had been hurtful and my anger was righteous. I had protected myself as I had needed to; I had nothing to feel guilty about. I remembered the first night I almost hadn't come back, how upset the Captain had been. "I'm sorry," I heard myself start, and was surprised to find that I was.

But the Captain waved away my apology. "For what? For not coming back to my room to be tied up? Like a dog." I thought there was something on his face at that, and I winced to hear my words used against him from his own mouth.

"I just needed some space," I said quietly.

"I understand."

We stood there in silence. I found my eyes wandering his face, his body, looking for any sign that he might still care for me. Natch had said that he wanted me, wanted me so badly he was willing to put his crew in danger; I couldn't bring myself to believe it. Maybe he wanted my body, maybe my hands on his, my conveniently transient soul.

And yet, if he had only wanted me because I was going to leave, why not take me now? Why shut down so completely when he knew that I was going to be gone?

When he knew he would put me on land.

And that, I hardened again, my knees growing new strength beneath me. I straightened up and crossed my arms.

His eyes dropped to my arms. "Oh," he said. He sounded surprised, his voice knocked from its previously sterile state. "You're injured."

I looked down at the red line Ichor had put on me yesterday. "It's nothing," I said truthfully. When I looked back up, I was surprised to see him reaching out to me, his hand hovering in the space between us, and I was surprised that my body didn't pull away.

It didn't need to. He let his hand drop before it came anywhere near my skin. My heart sank, and I reprimanded it sternly. He wasn't to touch me. He wasn't to -

"A decision has been made, about you. I just wanted you to hear it from me first." He wasn't looking at me, instead casting unfocused eyes off to the side. "You're to be dropped off in two days time."

"You've chosen the island then." I tried to keep my accusation from my throat.

"Aye." He sighed. "It's nice, got a village and." He stopped and brought his hands together before him.

"You don't want me with you." There the accusation was; not even in tone, it manifested in words and leapt unbidden from my tongue.

But he was quick to respond, his eyes flashing to my face. "You're the one who pushed away. Is this not what you wanted? This is better for you, safer, to be far from me. I warned you, I told you this would happen, and you still -"

We both stopped as the first of the men filtered past us. I stared at the man before me, dark curls falling into his face as he watched the ground between our feet. Did he think he was protecting me? In fairness, I had thought I was protecting myself to stay away from him, but somehow this felt worse. Somehow, this made me feel so guilty. I wanted to reach out and smooth the lines that passed between his eyes, press back the hair that fell between us until we were so close there was nothing, nothing but our bodies.

I didn't move.

In a break between men passing, he spoke again. "I can't." He sounded so broken that I almost cried. How could one man break so beautifully? How could two words make me feel so terribly? It wasn't my fault, I tried to tell myself, I hadn't caused this, but I just wasn't sure anymore.

"I know," I told him, as softly as I knew how. "I'm sorry."

"Aye." He turned to go. "Me too."

I watched him leave, pushing against the flow of sailors coming up from breakfast. You can't blame him, Natch had said, and as my eyes followed his shoulders in the sea of nobodies I found that I didn't. My soul broke, then, the sea flooding from it to try and follow him, to rush forth and take him back but I knew it was too late.

The Captain was gone.

I cursed myself then, cursed my idiotic need for control and whatever thought had lead me to this point in my life. But there was nothing to do, and so I turned and was swept up in the rush of the sailors, letting their bodies bump up against me in ghosts of touches that I dreamed of, and tried to become a nobody too.

Hams asked me if I was alright three times that morning. I wonder if it was because I has slowed down so much from the day before; I wonder if it was because the weight of everything I had done was crushing me as surely as if I were at the bottom of the ocean. When his hand touched my shoulder for the fourth time, I didn't even jump. The gravity of it all wouldn't allow me. The rope that was in my hand sunk to the deck.

"My boy," he told me quietly. "You've been at that rope for some time now."

"I don't know what I'm doing, Hams." He knew I wasn't talking about the ropes. He patted me on the shoulder gently.

"Aye, lad. Why don't you head down to Cookie; I'm sure he could use your help."

I nodded, slow, and made my way below decks. I was halfway to the kitchen when I heard a voice call from the darkness.

"Boy."

I turned and found Wicky, slouching in shadows. He was staring me down, perhaps trying to be intimidating, but I had already destroyed my world and there was nothing he could do to me.

"If I see you with the Captain between now and when you disembark, I will kill you."

I thought about what to say to that. Better men than you have tried? Give it your best shot?

I settled on the truth. "I'm already dead."

And it was true; the sea had filled my lungs, my heart had stopped, and when my body had begun again I had lost my name, my ship, my friends, and my life. What could this man do to me that compared?

I turned my back on him and walked away.

"Don't turn your back on me, you arrogant fool." Wicky followed me down the hall. "I meant what I said; I will kill you, cut that dick of yours right off. I won't let you bring the Pirate King down on our -"

He let loose a choked cry as I lifted him by the throat. Poor man; he could not have known the sea flowed through me with my breath. It was so hard to breath, so hard to drag air into my chest past the thick ocean that lined my lungs. He was small, insignificant, and I carried his weight easily in the face of everything else I bore. "You should not worry," I told him, "about the Pirate King."

He was kicking, his limbs swinging freely in space, his hands scrabbling at mine. I held him tight. Behind his form, a man rounded the corner. I watched him stop, his jaw dropping at the sight of me holding the first mate aloft, the sounds of choking filling the hall. I met his eyes for only an instant before turning back to Wicky. Nobodies, all of them. I was only vaguely aware when took off at a dead run towards the deck.

"Worry instead," I told the man turning purple in my grasp, "about his ghost."

His eyes went big at that, or maybe they were popping from lack of oxygen. I could kill him, I realized. How easy it would be, to hold him tighter, then tighter still, to deny him breath as he had denied me my Captain. The sea pushed against my ears.

The man skidded around the corner again, pointing. "Ghost," I heard a voice call. I looked up to find the blonde hair of Natch.

I scowled. He didn't want to be anywhere near this. His eyes took in my form, still and dangerous, and the form I held in my hand. Wicky, too, was becoming quite still, his movements sluggish and slow.

"Holy fuck." He approached me slowly, as one might a stray dog. I tightened my grip on Wicky, causing him to jerk in my hand, and Natch froze. "Ghost, mate, put him down."

I didn't see any reason to. I took in the red face of the first mate, the fear that spread through his body like a sickness. Then I turned my eyes back to Natch.

"Please." He looked like he might be sick. "Don't kill him."

"Two days is long enough to take the ship," I told him, still looking at Wicky. "I don't need to go the any damn island." It wasn't the island I was upset about. I wasn't thinking about what I was upset about - I was thinking about how soft Wicky felt in my hand, how fragile. My mouth tasted like salt, whipped up from the storm that brewed in my stomach. The ocean would care for me, I thought. The ocean would take Wicky's body as a gift and it would be calmed, and I would feel better.

Natch was still approaching, the idiot. "Think of the Captain," he said quietly. "Think of what he would say."

The Captain. I took another look at Wicky. "He'll find out anyway." I squeezed.

But Natch was at my side, his hand on mine. "Ghost," he said quietly, guiding my hand to a place where Wicky's feet could touch the floor. They bowed beneath him, unwilling to hold his weight. "Let him go."

I felt my face twist, felt my body shift through a million different versions of how this could go. Natch's hand was warm on mine, and comforting. I felt his kindness calm the storm held in each, the pounding sea retreating up my wrist, returning to my chest. One by one my fingers peeled from Wicky's neck.

I stood there above the gasping first mate, Natch at my side. Then I turned and continued my way down the hall.

"Natch," I heard Wicky gasp behind me. "Control your fucking mutt."

I stopped, my back to them, to listen.

"Oh, Christ," Natch replied. "You can't control a dead man."

Natch might not know who I had been, I realized then, but he knew who I was better than anyone else in my life. I wiped my hands on my pants and walked the rest of the way to the kitchen.

***

When I arrived, I found that Natch had followed me.

"You can't do stuff like that, Ghost."

"I thought you understood that you couldn't control me." I moved past the confused Cookie, finding the coil of rope more or less where I had left it.

"I'm not telling you what to do, I'm asking - whoah." Ropes tied and ready, I was midway through stripping. I turned and raised an angry brow at him.

"Your back." He pointed, as if I didn't know what he was talking about.

"What of it." I couldn't keep the edge from my voice. I didn't want to talk of my scars, violent and painful, deep uneven ridges that lined the entirety of my shoulders all the way to my lower back. I didn't care to explain how they had come about. It was an old life, a distant world.

He backed off at my tone. "Nothing."

"How long until lunch, Cookie."

"Two hours, give or take."

"Good." I stripped of my pants. Natch's eyes bulged and he turned away. "I'm going for a swim." Without waiting for a response, I climbed through the window and cast myself to the waves.

Once in the water, I tied myself to the rope. I didn't want to get lost from the ship, as much as I didn't especially want to be on it. When I was secure, I ducked under the waves and deprived myself of breath.

Before long, my lungs were burning. Then my limbs started twitching, my head throbbing with my heart. But I would not give my body what it wanted. Submit, I told myself. Give yourself to the ocean. Give yourself to fate. Control your body and nothing else.

You can't control anything else. You fucking idiot, stop trying to have control.

My limbs relaxed, running out of fight. My brain reached a hazy point of semi-consciousness, floating there in the salt, and I let myself come undone. I lost my hands, then my feet. Then my torso. In time I was nothing but a soul, adrift in the uncaring sea.

I gave my soul to fate, and then I was nothing.

When I pulled myself up to the kitchen an hour or so later I found it deserted. I didn't mind; it gave me the privacy I still needed. I was delicate from my time in the sea, and took my time washing and dressing.

Cookie came in as I was coiling the last of the rope. He scowled to see me and tossed me a blade, which I caught. "You scared Natch somethin' fierce."

I didn't have anything to say to that. He should be scared. They all should be. It was not my fault they had not taken the time to learn this when they had first brought me aboard.

"And there's something afoot, some emergency meeting."

I shrugged. I had asked the sea to care for me; she either would or she would not. My fate was out of my hands. I did the chores that Cookie asked and was not bothered by this news.

Soon, the first of the men began trickling. They looked excited, perhaps even relaxed. As I served them their soup they did not seem to notice my presence. I floated in a haze created by the comfort of the knowledge of my own lack of control.

Then Wicky appeared in the doorway.

Wicky did not eat with the men; usually one of his lackeys brought him his meals in his room, where he stayed squirreled up doing whatever it was that he did. To see him here should have signalled alarm. But he was a nobody, and I had the sea. I reached out for the bowl that he held.

"Two days," he told me raspily, "can not come soon enough." He wore a cravat, but I could still see the bruising I had given him. It was already darkening. I felt myself smile.

"Cookie," he called. "Serve me. I won't eat food touched by this savage."

Cookie moved, but I put a hand up to stop him. "I serve the food," I told him quietly. The room had gone very still behind Wicky, all eyes pretending not to watch what was happening. I took the bowl from his hand and filled it, slow and deliberate. I placed the bowl on the counter.

Familiar, I thought. How strange to do something so similar, and yet for it to feel so different. "What a difference a man makes," I mused aloud.

Wicky's face clouded. In a parody of my previous motions, he reached out and took the bowl, then slowly turned it over and let the soup fall onto the counter.

I watched it fall, felt it splash upon my person. I really need to launder this shirt, I thought. Then Wicky slammed the bowl down on the counter and stalked away.

I sighed and began to clean the mess he had made.

When I sat down that day with Natch and Finn, they both leaned in. "You can't let him get to you," Finn whispered.

I frowned. "Wicky?"

They nodded.

"Why would he get to me?" He was a nobody; I had the sea. I took a bite of soup and enjoyed the taste, ignoring the look of concern that passed between the two men.

In time, I became aware of a presence above me. I looked up to find Thron, his hands awkwardly filled with his bowl.

I glanced at Natch. He shrugged. I signaled for the large man to speak.

"Ah, yeah. I was just coming over to. I was meaning to say." He took a deep breath. "I wanted to apologize for Ichor in practice yesterday. It's my job to make sure things like that don't happen; he won't be invited back."

Oh. Ichor. I had almost forgotten about the attack; the wound barely throbbed, washed clean by the salt of the sea. I gestured for Thron to sit, and space was made for him.

"There's no need to apologize. I was distracted." I lifted another spoonful to my mouth. "As for Ichor; if he comes back, he comes back."

"Yes, but."

I drew my gaze up to him and he swallowed. I must still have the sea in my eyes, I thought idly. I tried to blink it away, but soon gave up, instead watching Thron. I was surprised by the change in him since yesterday. This was new for me; I did not usually see men become aware of reasons to fear me. It was usually my policy to give them all the reasons they needed the first time we met.

"Do what you will," I finally said. "It's your practice sessions."

He nodded, smiling at me. I pushed him a second piece of bread I had stolen from the kitchen when I was back there and went back to eating.