Past Lives - The Caribbean
Nov. 13th, 2010 01:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face, Hannibal/Murdock, H-BAMF implied
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Hannibal with long hair (IDK, does stange and wonderful things to me)
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Pirate!AU. Can be slash or gen---I'm posting it here instead of the general post so that the author can take it to any PG-13, R, or higher if s/he wants.
John Smith, buccaneer extraordinaire, finds himself a blue-eyed civil servant during a raid of a commercial shipping vessel in the Caribbean. He becomes determined to win the lad over.
And yes, this is definitely not gen. Because I can’t write that.
“Captain?” said the bosun, touching him lightly on the shoulder. “Captain, we’ve won the day.”
Standing on the for’c’stl, John looked up at the cloudless ocean sky, away from the dark, slippery deck of the civilian clipper and allowed himself a tight smile and a quick laugh. Nearly twenty years in this life, fifteen in command of his own crew, and he still loved that thrill of victory, the promise of a good haul and shore leave for his men, the freedom the black flag permitted him. Far better than those days in the Royal Navy, an Irish boy working under English officers. It had been a nightmare.
Piracy, in contrast, was surprisingly agreeable.
He looked up at his bosun, the dark-haired man with wild eyes, damp shirt fluttering loose against his fine chest. Former military man, like himself, prisoner at one of the little forts out here, condemned for insulting the local governor. John had found him and broken him out. The man had been his ever since.
He had a habit of madness, probably the result of some old battlefield trauma, but in this line of work that wasn’t exactly a drawback.
Out here, he was his own man.
The bosun smiled at his captain and laid a surprisingly gentle hand on John’s shoulder, squeezing a little, and John grinned back, feral and possessive, each knowing what the other man wanted. No shame and no stigma out here at sea, far from the quarrels of European churches and the reach of ignorant fools and their narrow definitions of things. No, HM enjoyed playing, always eager for John’s hands, mouth, cock...
John took a deep, satisfied breath, catching the lingering smells of blood and gunpowder on the stiff, salt-laden breeze. Wonderful. He wiped his cutlass carefully of a scrap of cloth. “Report, HM.”
The bosun snapped him a salute and lapsed into a perfect aristocratic accent. “The lads are conducting a thorough search of the vessel, sir. About halfway complete. If there’s anything useful to be found, they will find it.”
John had no doubt of that. His men were exceedingly thorough. “Any survivors?”
“A few women...”
“See that they’re not spoiled, HM. I can’t abide that kind of behavior on my ship. We’ll drop the lot of them off at Barbados,” he said sharply. Was his blade was clean enough? He hated putting it away dirty.
“Already ordered it, sir,” HM said, voice falling back into his own peculiar cant.
Down on the main deck, the last of the bodies hit the water. Most of the men aboard had surrendered, sitting in a tight cluster under guard. Not too many dead. He preferred that kind of operation.
“Lets see how the lads are doing, shall we?”
The clipper was a merchant craft, small and quick, running English coin and flying the British flag. John wasn’t sure which made him happier, the silver the men were pulling out of the hold or the small casks of tobacco - the good stuff, judging by the brands on the ends. A tall man, John had to duck to navigate the low ceilings, his polished knee-high boots soft on the wooden deck of the main cargo bay. Sunlight streamed in through holes in the hull, shattered beams a reminder of what they’d done here.
“So many pretty explosions,” the bosun said, tracing a fingers over one of the new openings and leaned back in John’s chest for just a moment, closing his eyes as the captain moved against him. “Hey, captain, can we use the exploding balls for next time?”
John was scanning, only half listening. These merchants had all kinds of cubby-holes and secret compartments and... “Has that door been forced?” he asked, striding into a dark corner and rapping on an innocuous-looking section of interior wall. Hollow. “HM, help me with this,” he called over, and the bosun was there in an instant, muttering something to himself about Hermes’ magically sealed box, until cracked wood finally gave and the whole thing sprang open.
“Well,” HM said, peering out from behind his captain’s back, “there’s a treasure for you, sir.”
A young man was standing there, blue eyes huge, angry, pistol in hand, shaking just a little bit but still admirably calm. A beautiful face. Behind him, a huge Negro squatted up against the wall, watching the two pirates with interest, clearly unconcerned with the entire situation.
Indeed, John thought and took a step forward, then another, the lad’s finger slipping off the flintlock’s trigger, the weapon lowering, anger fading from those perfect blue eyes, confusion mirrored there for a moment, before the pistol came back up, this time very nearly resting on the older man’s chest.
“Not a step closer,” the young man snapped.
“Commendable. And I’d love to oblige,” the pirate told him, closing calloused fingers down around the young man’s wrist, noting a slight gasp as he did so, “but I can’t let you shoot us, now can I?”
Quicker than the lad could react, John jerked in and brought the back of an elbow hard in on his temple and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious. He knelt down, stroking a strand of loose, light hair out of that face, not sure what it was he was feeling. There was something about this young nobleman... but he shook that away and looked to his bosun.
HM was on his knees in front of the big slave, talking to him softly, rubbing a hand down his arm, offering him help up. The slave stared at him, like he couldn’t understand such a small kindness offered to him by a white man, but HM didn’t budge.
There were shackles around his feet, his arms. Taken with the defeated, angry expression, the way he was holding himself...
John smiled a little, understanding, leaving the boy on the ground and went over to pat the Negro on the shoulder. “There are no slaves on my crew. What’s your name?”
“Baracus,” he said, still watching the bosun, who’d retreated again, like a cat from a particularly vicious waterbug. “And that sounds like a right fine deal to me, sir.”
+++++
John settled back in a chair, resting a boot up on another, watching the young man sleep in his own bunk in his own cabin, wondering what he was going to do with him when he came to.
The crew had gotten the loot on board and set fire to the ruins of the clipper and was out on deck now, celebrating with a brace of very fine casks of brandy and purloined foodstuffs, far better than what they normally relied upon. He could hear a fiddle starting up under the night sky and high lanterns were lit up in the masts. Let the crew have their fun.
He was trying to decipher the meaning of this man in front of him.
The clothes were plain and simple, but made from expensive material, the latest cuts from Europe, very fashionable and well-tailored. The pistol was his own, not matching any that they'd pulled off the clipper’s crew. A man of some money and status, then.
The slave - former slave now - hadn’t said much about that, or anything else, when the crew’s smithy had snapped the manacles off and set him free. Just an unshed tear of gratitude and a slight nod to the captain before following the bosun off to meet the crew. No help there.
John twisted a cut of tobacco into his pipe and puffed as he lit it with a scrap of parchment and the cabin’s lamp. He enjoyed a good mystery.
But the young man was stirring, and then he was awake and sitting up, swinging himself upright, gripping the edges of the bunk with white knuckles. Those blue eyes met his, and John inwardly smiled in anticipation. The lad licked dry lips a few times before speaking, a slight little gesture that sent tremors through the captain.
A plan began coming together in his fertile brain.
“What am I doing here?” the lad demanded, arrogance barely concealing a lovely hint of nervousness.
“You are... my prisoner,” John said expansively.
“Your, your prisoner?” and the lad actually laughed, the lace bunched at his throat shaking a little. “Shouldn’t I be in the brig if I am your prisoner?”
“Down there in the filth and the smell? No place for one as fine as you,” the pirate replied, aware of how it must sound and not caring. “That pretty face of yours. My guest, rather."
The younger man looked away. “My man, Baracus?”
“Your slave, you mean? I don’t permit that sort of thing on my ship. I offered him a berth. He’s agreed to stay.”
The young man nodded after a moment’s thought. “Good. He is... was... the property of my employer, Colonel Lynch.”
“The governor of Port Royal?” John asked, a little surprised at the lad’s vehemence. Another nod. That explained a few things.
“Neither man deserves his lot.”
“Indeed,” the captain agreed and stood up, walking over, squatting down a little and picking up one of those hands again. They were covered in ink stains. “I’d offer the same to you, boy, but I’ve no use for a secretary.” Those blue eyes hardened and John laughed. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Templeton Peck, late of Virginia,” he said with a little too much defiance in the words. “And I am a damn fine shot with the pistol.”
“Unless you get knocked senseless, I assume,” John quipped and leaned in a little. Why, he couldn’t exactly say. There was something about this boy, something dangerous beneath all that fine clothing and Colonial bravado. Some delicious. He let a hand rest on the lad’s chest, feeling his breath skip a little, hard muscle tensed there. “Such a beautiful face you wear, lad.”
He let his fingers move, just a little, stroking.
“Remove your hand.”
That nervousness was back. Like Templeton Peck wasn’t sure what was going to happen to him here.
Truth be told, John wasn’t sure yet either.
But, the lad was so... he decided to see where this would take them.
He let his voice go a little hard. Just a little, just an edge. Let the lad know who’s in charge. “You’re either with me, or you’re in this cabin. You are not to do anything else while aboard. Understand, my friend?”
“Your guest?” There was a slight shudder in the voice.
“Yes,” John murmured.
“I...”
“Something you should understand, Master Peck, is that on this vessel, I am god. If you don’t follow the rules...” and he let his hand move a little against that chest. He wondered what the body beneath these clothes looked like, what it was going to look like, writhing underneath him, and the pirate had to bite back a moan. “...I will see you thrown overboard with an eight-pound shot on your feet.”
The lad’s eyes, so expressive, widened considerably as John’s fingers found a hard little nub under the fine shirt. “... I understand.” It was so quiet that John almost missed it.
He let himself move a little closer, barely any space between them at all now. “And if you say you’re good with a pistol, I’d very much like to see that.”
“Yes, of course...”
Those lips were open, parting for another word, and John dove right in, sealing his mouth over the lad’s, pushing his tongue down, demanding entrance and meeting no resistance at all. Deep and sweet, this lad, an ocean of passion right beneath the surface, deep currents moving through him. John could taste it, feel it in the way the lad shuddered. He pressed his hand down, firm and heavy, sliding down just a little, right below the ribs, holding him down, making no secret of his intentions for the lad.
He pushed back after just a moment of that, noting with pleasure the deep flush in the man’s skin, coloring his face, his beautiful face. This was going to be highly enjoyable.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Master Peck. I trust we’ll have a pleasant voyage to Barbados.”
John pushed back with a final caress, ignoring the tightness in his breeches but making no attempt to hide it, feeling the boy’s eyes on his all the way out.
He loved the way the light in the lad’s eyes had changed, going from anger to confusion. Confusion, either at his own reaction to John’s very unsubtle overtures or perhaps the gentleness with which they were given. He chuckled at that. It had been a long time since he’d had anyone interesting enough to seduce.
And this Templeton Peck was very interesting.
He locked the doors behind him with a set of irons, the ones HM was holding out for him. The stars were brilliant in the night sky, a slight breeze ruffling the sails and cooling his overheated skin. That boy, he thought to himself and shook his head.
“How’s he gonna be, sir?” the bosun asked, a sideways smile on his face.
John played with that set of small gold rings down HM’s left ear, trying to figure out what exactly to say to him. But there was nothing but curiosity in the bosun’s eyes, nothing but that doglike devotion and fractured intelligence staring back at him, trying to discern an answer.
He drew the man in for a deep kiss, holding him close, wanting to reassure him. Wasn’t necessary, he knew, HM wasn’t the jealous type, but he believed in taking care of his men.
HM broke it first and pushed John’s falling hair back into the braid with a smile. “He’s got you alight, doesn’t he?”
“Interesting lad,” John murmured, and they went down to join in the festivities.
+++++
HM's odd taste in what he liked to call "booty" paid off the next morning.
The governor’s secretary proved himself an honest man, out on the stern with HM and the new man, Baracus and a gathering crowd of curious crewmen. They were under a strong wind, sails full and fast, and his bosun had a crate of the fine-bone china he'd kept from a shore raid last month. These he was passing off to Baracus, who in turn was tossing them high in the air behind the swift-moving ship. The white and red patterns glinted in the air for a moment, sharp against the blue sky.
They’d given Peck a flintlock musket, one of the worst they had in the armory. He’d taken it silently, examined it and nodded.
Now he had the thing pressed into his shoulder, sighting along the barrel with an intensity that seemed so at odds with his soft exterior. Squeezed the trigger. Down came the flint. Powder ignited. Noise.
None of the plates, not one out of two dozen, hit the water whole.
There was whooping and hollering, the pirate crew applauding the display of marksmanship, John considering it a little more carefully. High wind, terrible weapon, moving deck...lad had sea legs on him and an excellent eye. Hardly traits of an ordinary secretary. The lad had left his waistcoat and jacket in the captain’s cabin, and he was nothing but smooth faw breeches and pale shirt and flashing eyes as he turned, asking for approval.
For John’s approval.
“You clearly have the touch for this,” he said, clapping the lad on the shoulder and took the long gun away from him, passing it off to a crew member.
“I’d prefer to clean it myself,” Peck replied firmly, and John just laughed at that and clapped him again. He cast a glance over to Baracus. The big Negro looked far better than he had yesterday. HM had gotten him fresh clothes and fed him, yes. But there was something else.
That defeated slump had gone out of his shoulders, something strong and determined resurrecting itself in him. The captain wagered himself that the man would prove himself an excellent fighter.
And the way he was patiently listening to the bosun babble on about the time they’d fought Davy Jones himself, the way he was letting HM touch him on the small of his back, how he was leaning into it just so slightly?... no need to worry about his pursuit of his lad, John thought with a smile, and led Peck down below decks.
Down in the dining hall, the lad spread the weapon out with a certain care and attention the pirate hadn’t been expecting, the sergeant at arms coming in with his cleaning kit and the captain waving him out.
“You were telling the truth,” he observed as the lad began rolling up wide sleeves.
“I do that often...”
“... yet people are always surprised?”
The lad kept his attention on the task at hand. “I’m a bastard. Born liar, you know. No father. My mother left me with a Quaker family as a babe.”
There was pain there, and John had a sudden flash of his own mother, lying dead in a Dublin alley, sightless eyes, finally succumbed to the pox...
“Sometimes all we had was venison and turkey.” He patted the musket with a proud smile. “I’ve shot worse than this lady here. Just as good with a pistol.”
“Pistol’s not a hunting weapon, lad.”
“No,” and the young man angrily rammed a rag down the barrel, pulled it back up, back down. Up. “Ran away from there when I was old enough to get berth on a trader out of Boston as a cabin boy.” He looked up at John. “But I’ve never gone pirate.”
“Never considered it at all?” John asked, reaching across the rough wood slats and grabbing up one of those hands. Not as soft as he’d imagined. The ink stains were a little lighter today. He pressed the back of the lad’s hand to his lips. “Never?”
The lad gasped a little as John sucked one finger into his mouth, then another, working them all in turn, dragging his lips, as slow and sensual as he could make it. He shook his head once and John moved around behind him, pressing a kiss to the curve where neck met shoulder beneath the shirt, nibbling, then sucking, hard enough to raise a mark and draw another other of those sweet little noises from Peck.
His cock twitched, and he wondered if he shouldn’t just toss this boy back over the table and strip him and take him, right now, nothing but spit and cleaning oil to ease the way. But while such actions had their place in his life, this wasn’t one of them. He didn’t want to rape the lad, he wanted to possess him, own him body and soul and that was going to take more than a tumble in the dining room.
No. The captain wasn’t a terribly patient man, but he did love watching a plan come together.
So John nipped the lad’s ear instead and stroked a hand all the way down to the top of his sinfully tight breeches. “Now, Templeton Peck, how are you with a cutlass?”
The lad just smiled, and rammed the cleaning rod back down the barrel with a little smirk.
Tease
+++++
They had an incident aboard, late in the second day, nothing major, just a crewman who’d decided it was acceptable to break the captain’s rules and cheat at cards. Such things could not be permitted, so John had had the man tied to the main mast and lashed. Ten times, to be exact. Just to preserve discipline. Nothing too serious; HM only brought the whip down hard when John told him to. Lots of shouting and jeering. Still, he had to be carried down below decks and tended to, and when John finished his little speech about rules and punishment, when he turned around, Templeton was gone.
The anger he felt at the lad for disobeying him, for going off on his own, faded a little when he’d found him curled up in a corner of his own cabin. He had said it was an acceptable space.
“Lad,” John murmured softly, "what's going through that pretty head of yours?”
He didn’t respond, but John knew he was awake and settled back over his heels. He could wait for an answer.
Blue eyes turned to meet his after a few minutes. “Captain Smith?”
“It’s John, lad.”
“Fine, John, then.”
So cold. Like there had been nothing between them. John didn’t quite understand it, and ran a soothing hand down the lad’s back, and froze. Everything, destroyed by the whipping.
Not the violence of what John had clearly done to the lad’s ship and fellow passengers. The whipping.
A network of fine scars met his fingers. Lad had been a cabin boy, hadn’t he said? Those blue eyes fell to the floor, like he couldn’t stand to look at John. Anger? Shame? What was it?
He grabbed Templeton and dragged him upwards. “I don’t hold with whipping boys, Templeton. You may think me an evil man, but I never beat children. Just my men when they don’t listen.”
“You’ll beat me, too, then? When I don’t listen?”
He grabbed the lad’s chin and forced his eyes up. Laughed a little, thinking of how quickly Templeton had gone from not wanting to be here to assuming John was going to take him on as a crewman. “When will you ever not listen to me, lad?” he asked, quite serious, and the young man slumped back.
“You’ll tire of me in time. You, HM, everyone,” Templeton said, quite serious himself. “Tire of me and cast me out.”
“I couldn’t,” John murmured, leaning in for a kiss, but the lad pushed him away, averting his face.
“You will. Nobody...”
He didn't say it, but the pirate could still hear it. Nobody wants me.
It was so plaintive and womanish and it still shook John to his core. He pressed that kiss on the young man’s cheek, despite what the lad thought he wanted, and slapped those irons back on the handles of the door and went off to find HM.
Time to change the plan.
+++++
The bosun was coiling the whip up in his own small cabin, that same strange expression on his face that he always got when he had to do this. The man liked excitement, same as the rest of his crew, enjoyed the action, but he didn’t revel in the violence. It was one of many, many reasons he was John’s second in command.
“How’s Peck, captain?” HM asked. The fondness in his voice was unmistakable. Over the last two days, John had been forced to conclude that these two were a pair themselves, Templeton laughing at all of HM’s little jokes, playing along with him, inventing words to the bosun’s fiddle music. “He upset... with me?”
“No, HM, he’s mad at me.”
“What’s that mean for,” and he gestured wildly. “For this?”
John didn’t really have an answer for that. Didn’t have an answer for the feelings the lad brought out in him. Didn’t know at all what to do about, except shove HM up against a wall and tear his loose trousers clean off and feel the heels of his bosun’s boots dig into his ass as he took him, hard and fast and dry, like they both liked. HM moaned through the first initial push like he always did, tensing and clenching, and he was looser than he should have been - John hadn’t fucked him in at least five days.
“Baracus?” he asked with a slight smile and was rewarded with one in return. This was going to make this better.
He liked the big man. Hard worker, sharp, liked by the rest of the crew, taking to the ship as if he’d been doing this all his life. He obviously liked HM, and John had gotten the sense that there was something between he and Peck. Nothing... active, perhaps, but something. Baracus belonged here, just as John was convinced that Templeton belonged here, with them, with him.
There was a reservoir of sadness in the young man, of anger and resentment and that damn Quaker denial. He’d been working wherever and however he could since he was twelve, he’d told John, trying to keep himself honest. But he was a buccaneer at heart. John could see it in the way he laughed and gambled and drank and told stories and responded to John’s flirtations, making a few of his own in reply, and the way he shot, the way he fought when John had dared him to grapple, half naked on the deck in view of the entire crew, like there was something trying to get out, like there was something ripping him apart.
Nothing better than the open sea to take that confusion away, to make everything simple and right and good.
He pounded into HM harder, loving the way the bosun’s body welcomed him in, clenching tight around him. Heavenly, this.
“I’m going to need your help, Henry Murdock,” he whispered in his bosun’s ear, using his full name as he continued to thrust and started to explain, and the other man just grinned and let his head fall back against the wall.
Taking everything in.
Internalizing the plan.
It seemed to be agreeing with him.
+++++
It was starting to rain as he came back topside. John nodded to the man on watch and passed into his cabin. He re-lit a lamp, throwing a little illumination around the dark space, looking for Templeton.
His heart swelled, seeing the lad tucked up into his bunk, light covers pulled over that scarred back. John smiled at the sight. Lad had slept on the floor the last two night, rather than sleep with him. Seemed an invitation that he wasn't now. At least, that's how John intended to interpret it.
Knowing full well he still smelt of HM, of sex and sweat, the pirate climbed in next to the sleeping man, bringing a booted leg up over a cloth-covered over, bringing an arm up to stroke down a smooth, naked shoulder. “Wake up, Templeton,” he murmured against the lad’s neck. “I need you to wake for me.”
“I am awake, John,” he replied, not moving, stiff. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Good,” the captain said, pressing his hand down a little harder, his cock beginning to rouse itself once again. “Let’s keep you awake, shall we? I can imagine so many things...” He moved them both, holding himself up on his elbows. It was cramped in his bunk, and the heat was building
“It’s port tomorrow, isn’t it?”
He felt the man shift against him. “Yes.”
“I’ll be disembarking. There’s always work for a literate man,” Templeton said, and that was true. The young man also spoke German, Spanish and French, as well as slave pidgin. There would be work.
“I could make use of you, marksman like you are...” The rest was left unsaid. It didn’t need to be voiced.
There was no room in here, the walls close, air stale. “I want to show you something,” he murmured, and Templeton let himself be dragged from the narrow pad and outside.
The watchman was gone, taking his cue from the earlier nod, the same one John used when he played this game with HM. It was one of their favorites. It was cool but not cold, the rain light and somehow warm. Templeton shivered as the soft drizzle hit his bare skin, and John laughed, holding him into his chest, loving it. “Too many years of landlubbing, eh, lad?”
“You’re one to speak. You're dressed,” Templeton complained and John laughed.
“You want to do something about that, lad?”
A sweet bit of hesitation. “Out here?”
“Nowhere better. Free space, open air, nobody to see, nobody to judge if they did...” He punctuated each little statement with a demanding, greedy kiss, pulling him down the stairs, towards the center of the deck, drawing down into that passion he’d felt when he'd first kissed him. When? The day before yesterday? Hadn’t it been longer? Hadn’t it been a lifetime? “Just you and me and all the freedom in the world...”
Templeton groaned, bare feet scrambling on smooth board as he let himself be driven right up against the mast. He still had his breeches on, tented now, plastering to his body in the light rain, and gasped as John attacked his throat, moving down, tongue laving over a nipple.
“Sweet boy,” he growled deep in his throat and Templeton seemed to lose himself for a moment or two before balling his fists into the pirate captain’s hair and pulled him back, pure lust shining from that beautiful face in the weak lamplight, something different now.
“I need you.”
John allowed himself a pleased little smile.
There it was.
“I need you, John,” he repeated, fingers going for the fine gold buttons on the man’s waistcoat, fumbling a little and then ripping, buttons flying and fabric tearing. “I need you.”
John reminded himself to teach this lad a lesson about ruining perfectly good clothing, but then Templeton kissed him and he forgot what he was thinking about. No matter. Everything was getting wet anyway. The remnants were discarded over the lad’s shoulder, and he attacked John’s shirt next.
Lace tore, seams tore in the wet material and when John kissed him instead of lifting his arms, Templeton ripped this clear off as well. It joined the waistcoat, nothing more than rags on the wet deck. Braid coming undone, hair slick on his back, John grinned and ground himself up into the lad, both of them groaning as cloth-covered erections met and moved against one another.
“Need you.”
“I know, lad,” John soothed and started on the buttons of the younger man’s breeches, letting himself play there a little longer than he needed to. Templeton sighed with relief against the mast as his cock sprang free. The captain worked the material down and off and sighed at the sight before him. The lad, naked, rain coursing down his lightly tanned body, head thrown back, hair loose around his shoulders and dark with water, eyes closed, a hand coming down to wrap around his own erection. ‘Twas a sight to behold.
“Beautiful,” the captain said softly, and knocked the lad’s hand away, replacing it with his own, teasing the young man’s cockhead as those hands undid his sword belt and sash, pushing them away.
There was no way John was getting his boots off in any short order, black leather wrapped to the thigh and wet, hard as he was. So, when Templeton finally got the captain’s breeches off, he pushed them down as far as he needed to for this. He grabbed the boy and flung him around, staring at those scars on the finely muscled back.
He licked a long, hot trail up the younger man’s spine, loving the taste of the rain, tailbone to ear, letting one hand knead that tight ass. “You’re mine, Templeton Peck,” he growled and slipped two fingers between the lad’s cheeks, Spit seemed a little pointless in this downpour. Not that he, himself, minded. “Can you feel that?”
Templeton moaned like a cheap whore out as two of the pirate’s fingers breached him and spread, scissoring, opening him up. Pained, yes, but from the way he was starting to lightly rock back, begging for more. John was more than happy to oblige him this, and added a third in short order, wanting his boy to be ready for it.
“Can’t you feel it?” he murmured, the sound falling with the rain around them. “The way we fit together? How Providence has delivered you to me...” He withdrew his fingers, earning himself another little whine of a completely different sort. Lined himself up. One hand on the lad’s shoulder, one wrapped around and playing with his cock again. Squeezing. Waiting, his own erection tight against the lad’s stretched entrance. “...so I can do this to you?”
But if Templeton had an answer, it was cancelled out by the loud cry he gave as John thrust all the way in. Hard. One long push.
He had no doubt the lad had some familiarity with such intimacies between men. The way he had responded to John’s teasing was proof enough of that, as was his history. But the captain didn’t think he’d been taken like this in a long time, judging by how tight he was, the burning heat fluttering around him. He didn’t give the lad any time to adjust, too far gone for that, needing release and needing it immediately.
Templeton continued moaning, still for a moment as John set a brutal pace. Then he braced himself a little better, elbows on the mast, head between tight fists, pushing back against John on every stroke, a certain harmony in the movement. It didn’t take long before John felt his balls drawing up and his stomach tightening, and one more thrust up, deeper had him yelling his climax, pumping his seed deep into the younger man’s bowels and biting down on that mark he’d left on the lad’s neck a few days ago. He didn’t pull out just yet, not until Templeton shuddered beneath his skillful hand, his own orgasm warm in the rain. The lad went still and then limp, and John had to catch him before he crumpled completely and fell.
They lay in a heap at the base of the mast for a moment, struggling to breath, Templeton running John’s hair, completely free of its braid now, through boneless fingers.
“You don’t really want me,” the lad said after the long silence.
“Yes, I assure you, Templeton. I do want you.”
“It’s only been a few days...”
John bit his lip. “Feels like forever.”
“It does,” Templeton replied quietly, and twined his fingers into John’s, pulling them up to his mouth. “Why?”
“You belong at my side,” the pirate said firmly, and stood, pulling the younger man into his arms, lifting him up. Cradling him to his chest.
“John...”
“I’m taking you back to my cabin, drying you off. And you’re coming to bed with me,” the captain said, walking away, leaving their clothes in a mess where they’d fallen. “I insist.”
Templeton just yawned, and smiled, and didn’t fight him at all on any of it.
+++++
“Fall asleep in your boots again, sir?”
He felt the hand on his forehead. It wasn’t Templeton’s.
Templeton was gone.
He snapped awake.
HM was staring down at him with soft brown eyes, smiling. Bouncing on his toes. He had the new man, Baracus, wrapped around him. No wonder he looked so happy.
The captain started, confused for a moment about why the lad wasn’t there, and had a horrible thought that maybe they’d already made landfall, that the lad had vanished into the port city and John would never see him again. The thought made him grind his teeth.
“Where’d the lad get off to?” he growled, and HM knelt down, pointing out to the back balcony. John craned his neck around was greeted with the sight of his brocade dressing gown, leaning up against the railing, staring out to sea. He nodded and pulled himself out of bed, fastening his breeches back up. Baracus had a stunned expression on his face. How HM had gotten him up here, the pirate couldn’t guess. “Thank you, Henry.”
“My pleasure, sir. Or is it your pleasure? I never know for sure...”
“Crazy fool,” Baracus muttered, obviously flustered and HM bumped back into him playfully. If HM wanted him like he seemed to, John wasn’t capable of leaving him out.
John sat up on an elbow and grabbed a handful of fresh blouse, pulling the dark man in for a long, slow, leisurely kiss. “Our pleasure, HM,” he told him after they finally broke, Baracus still slightly stunned but clearly warming to the whole idea. “Lad needs a family, doesn’t he?”
That smile widened.
“Let’s see how he’s doing this morning.”
If Templeton heard John coming, he gave no sign. His hands were tight on the carved rail, his hair wild and loose, pale in the fresh morning wind, the red and gold robe barely tied around him. He was staring out at where the sun was breaching the horizon, and barely moved as John slotted up against him.
“We’ll make port in a few hours. If you want to leave, I won’t stop you.”
He clenched a fist against the railing. “I... I should leave. You’re a pirate...”
“Aye,” John said, kissing that neck again. God, he loved the way this man tasted. “What of it?”
“I’ve tried...”
“Where has trying to be good gotten you? Whose good? Was it your good? Good for you?”
Templeton hesitated.
“We’re not peaceful men,” John told him, covering a hand with his own, playing with that little frill of lace at the end of the sleeve. “Violent and nasty business, this. But you’d make a valuable addition to my crew and my ship, and to my bed...”
Templeton leaned his head against John’s shoulder. “It’s not so...”
HM suddenly appeared on the other side of him, leaning forward, whispering in an exaggerated whisper that was anything but subtle. “The plan, captain?”
“Feel free, Henry,” John said, chuckling at the confused expression on the lad’s handsome face. A passing confusion.
Dissolved away once HM grasped his shoulders firmly and leaned in, delivering what was no doubt one of those wild and delirious kisses only he was capable of, hands roaming under the heavy robe, shoving him roughly back until he could get all the way in front of him and wrap both hands around his waist, holding him fast.
Templeton barely protested, only shooting a concerned glance over to John, who nodded ever so slightly and was rewarded with the wonderful sight of his boy falling into it, letting HM push him back, hold him up, guide him right back into Baracus’ waiting arms.
He shuddered and pushed HM away, twisting around to look up at the former slave with a tender expression. “I’m happy for you, my friend,” he said softly, dragging a hand down his cheek to wind around his neck. “I hated the way the colonel was treating you, like a piece of baggage, like you were nothing...”
“That all over now,” the big man replied and tugged him fully around. He didn’t go for a kiss, though, no, he nuzzled into the other man’s neck and let one big hand trace a path down to that bare cock, fingers curling around balls and eliciting a pleasured yelp. Templeton’s hand tightened around Baracus’s neck, easing down a thick shoulder.
HM bumped against John as the other two tentatively explored one another in the morning air. “They’re so sweet together, aren’t they, dear?” he teased as Templeton made that little moan again, the one from last night.
John nodded. “Stop it, lads. I don’t want Templeton making a mess inside that borrowed robe. Came all the way from Singapore, that did. I’m rather fond of it.”
“Oh, but the white’d be so pretty on the gold, captain!”
“Henry...”
“You ruined my breeches, John,” the younger man said breathily, kissing Baracus before pulling away to lean against the rail, yawning and rolling his shoulders, giving the other three a clear view of everything. “What else am I supposed to do?”
“We’ll get you something in port, lad.”
“Oh, generous of you. But are you sure I won’t run off on you?”
John looked him up and down, considering it. No, there was no mistaking it. The way he was breathing, how blue and shining those eyes were, that little smile. “You won’t,” and he went back inside for his pipe. “And it’ll be a loan, lad, on your future earnings.”
“What do you mean? Do you have something planned?” Templeton asked, breaking away from the other two with not a little regret and following him inside.
John cleared off his small table, revealing a map of the Caribbean, jabbing a finger down at Port Royal. “Your former employer, Lynch, and I have quite a history. Might be cathartic to go and hit his town?”
Templeton looked down, then up, and smiled. “Should be fun,” he said.
"Don't forget, lad, in my cabin or by my side. You understand?"
He nodded, face warm and willing, and with a quick kiss on John’s cheek he was running back out onto the balcony, HM catching him up in a bear hug and nearly dropping him over the side.
John puffed contentedly on his pipe, coaxing it awake, watching them laugh and play and joke with each other, port an hour away, where they'd indulge themselves with good food and better rum, pick out something suitably dashing for Templeton and maybe find him a nickname more fitting this life, throw money around and act like fools and get into brawls and barely avoid arrest.
After, after all that, though, they would come back here, happy and warm, ready... and John looked over at his whole inadequate little bunk meaningfully.
That most certainly needed to be enlarged.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Hannibal with long hair (IDK, does stange and wonderful things to me)
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Pirate!AU. Can be slash or gen---I'm posting it here instead of the general post so that the author can take it to any PG-13, R, or higher if s/he wants.
John Smith, buccaneer extraordinaire, finds himself a blue-eyed civil servant during a raid of a commercial shipping vessel in the Caribbean. He becomes determined to win the lad over.
And yes, this is definitely not gen. Because I can’t write that.
“Captain?” said the bosun, touching him lightly on the shoulder. “Captain, we’ve won the day.”
Standing on the for’c’stl, John looked up at the cloudless ocean sky, away from the dark, slippery deck of the civilian clipper and allowed himself a tight smile and a quick laugh. Nearly twenty years in this life, fifteen in command of his own crew, and he still loved that thrill of victory, the promise of a good haul and shore leave for his men, the freedom the black flag permitted him. Far better than those days in the Royal Navy, an Irish boy working under English officers. It had been a nightmare.
Piracy, in contrast, was surprisingly agreeable.
He looked up at his bosun, the dark-haired man with wild eyes, damp shirt fluttering loose against his fine chest. Former military man, like himself, prisoner at one of the little forts out here, condemned for insulting the local governor. John had found him and broken him out. The man had been his ever since.
He had a habit of madness, probably the result of some old battlefield trauma, but in this line of work that wasn’t exactly a drawback.
Out here, he was his own man.
The bosun smiled at his captain and laid a surprisingly gentle hand on John’s shoulder, squeezing a little, and John grinned back, feral and possessive, each knowing what the other man wanted. No shame and no stigma out here at sea, far from the quarrels of European churches and the reach of ignorant fools and their narrow definitions of things. No, HM enjoyed playing, always eager for John’s hands, mouth, cock...
John took a deep, satisfied breath, catching the lingering smells of blood and gunpowder on the stiff, salt-laden breeze. Wonderful. He wiped his cutlass carefully of a scrap of cloth. “Report, HM.”
The bosun snapped him a salute and lapsed into a perfect aristocratic accent. “The lads are conducting a thorough search of the vessel, sir. About halfway complete. If there’s anything useful to be found, they will find it.”
John had no doubt of that. His men were exceedingly thorough. “Any survivors?”
“A few women...”
“See that they’re not spoiled, HM. I can’t abide that kind of behavior on my ship. We’ll drop the lot of them off at Barbados,” he said sharply. Was his blade was clean enough? He hated putting it away dirty.
“Already ordered it, sir,” HM said, voice falling back into his own peculiar cant.
Down on the main deck, the last of the bodies hit the water. Most of the men aboard had surrendered, sitting in a tight cluster under guard. Not too many dead. He preferred that kind of operation.
“Lets see how the lads are doing, shall we?”
The clipper was a merchant craft, small and quick, running English coin and flying the British flag. John wasn’t sure which made him happier, the silver the men were pulling out of the hold or the small casks of tobacco - the good stuff, judging by the brands on the ends. A tall man, John had to duck to navigate the low ceilings, his polished knee-high boots soft on the wooden deck of the main cargo bay. Sunlight streamed in through holes in the hull, shattered beams a reminder of what they’d done here.
“So many pretty explosions,” the bosun said, tracing a fingers over one of the new openings and leaned back in John’s chest for just a moment, closing his eyes as the captain moved against him. “Hey, captain, can we use the exploding balls for next time?”
John was scanning, only half listening. These merchants had all kinds of cubby-holes and secret compartments and... “Has that door been forced?” he asked, striding into a dark corner and rapping on an innocuous-looking section of interior wall. Hollow. “HM, help me with this,” he called over, and the bosun was there in an instant, muttering something to himself about Hermes’ magically sealed box, until cracked wood finally gave and the whole thing sprang open.
“Well,” HM said, peering out from behind his captain’s back, “there’s a treasure for you, sir.”
A young man was standing there, blue eyes huge, angry, pistol in hand, shaking just a little bit but still admirably calm. A beautiful face. Behind him, a huge Negro squatted up against the wall, watching the two pirates with interest, clearly unconcerned with the entire situation.
Indeed, John thought and took a step forward, then another, the lad’s finger slipping off the flintlock’s trigger, the weapon lowering, anger fading from those perfect blue eyes, confusion mirrored there for a moment, before the pistol came back up, this time very nearly resting on the older man’s chest.
“Not a step closer,” the young man snapped.
“Commendable. And I’d love to oblige,” the pirate told him, closing calloused fingers down around the young man’s wrist, noting a slight gasp as he did so, “but I can’t let you shoot us, now can I?”
Quicker than the lad could react, John jerked in and brought the back of an elbow hard in on his temple and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious. He knelt down, stroking a strand of loose, light hair out of that face, not sure what it was he was feeling. There was something about this young nobleman... but he shook that away and looked to his bosun.
HM was on his knees in front of the big slave, talking to him softly, rubbing a hand down his arm, offering him help up. The slave stared at him, like he couldn’t understand such a small kindness offered to him by a white man, but HM didn’t budge.
There were shackles around his feet, his arms. Taken with the defeated, angry expression, the way he was holding himself...
John smiled a little, understanding, leaving the boy on the ground and went over to pat the Negro on the shoulder. “There are no slaves on my crew. What’s your name?”
“Baracus,” he said, still watching the bosun, who’d retreated again, like a cat from a particularly vicious waterbug. “And that sounds like a right fine deal to me, sir.”
+++++
John settled back in a chair, resting a boot up on another, watching the young man sleep in his own bunk in his own cabin, wondering what he was going to do with him when he came to.
The crew had gotten the loot on board and set fire to the ruins of the clipper and was out on deck now, celebrating with a brace of very fine casks of brandy and purloined foodstuffs, far better than what they normally relied upon. He could hear a fiddle starting up under the night sky and high lanterns were lit up in the masts. Let the crew have their fun.
He was trying to decipher the meaning of this man in front of him.
The clothes were plain and simple, but made from expensive material, the latest cuts from Europe, very fashionable and well-tailored. The pistol was his own, not matching any that they'd pulled off the clipper’s crew. A man of some money and status, then.
The slave - former slave now - hadn’t said much about that, or anything else, when the crew’s smithy had snapped the manacles off and set him free. Just an unshed tear of gratitude and a slight nod to the captain before following the bosun off to meet the crew. No help there.
John twisted a cut of tobacco into his pipe and puffed as he lit it with a scrap of parchment and the cabin’s lamp. He enjoyed a good mystery.
But the young man was stirring, and then he was awake and sitting up, swinging himself upright, gripping the edges of the bunk with white knuckles. Those blue eyes met his, and John inwardly smiled in anticipation. The lad licked dry lips a few times before speaking, a slight little gesture that sent tremors through the captain.
A plan began coming together in his fertile brain.
“What am I doing here?” the lad demanded, arrogance barely concealing a lovely hint of nervousness.
“You are... my prisoner,” John said expansively.
“Your, your prisoner?” and the lad actually laughed, the lace bunched at his throat shaking a little. “Shouldn’t I be in the brig if I am your prisoner?”
“Down there in the filth and the smell? No place for one as fine as you,” the pirate replied, aware of how it must sound and not caring. “That pretty face of yours. My guest, rather."
The younger man looked away. “My man, Baracus?”
“Your slave, you mean? I don’t permit that sort of thing on my ship. I offered him a berth. He’s agreed to stay.”
The young man nodded after a moment’s thought. “Good. He is... was... the property of my employer, Colonel Lynch.”
“The governor of Port Royal?” John asked, a little surprised at the lad’s vehemence. Another nod. That explained a few things.
“Neither man deserves his lot.”
“Indeed,” the captain agreed and stood up, walking over, squatting down a little and picking up one of those hands again. They were covered in ink stains. “I’d offer the same to you, boy, but I’ve no use for a secretary.” Those blue eyes hardened and John laughed. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Templeton Peck, late of Virginia,” he said with a little too much defiance in the words. “And I am a damn fine shot with the pistol.”
“Unless you get knocked senseless, I assume,” John quipped and leaned in a little. Why, he couldn’t exactly say. There was something about this boy, something dangerous beneath all that fine clothing and Colonial bravado. Some delicious. He let a hand rest on the lad’s chest, feeling his breath skip a little, hard muscle tensed there. “Such a beautiful face you wear, lad.”
He let his fingers move, just a little, stroking.
“Remove your hand.”
That nervousness was back. Like Templeton Peck wasn’t sure what was going to happen to him here.
Truth be told, John wasn’t sure yet either.
But, the lad was so... he decided to see where this would take them.
He let his voice go a little hard. Just a little, just an edge. Let the lad know who’s in charge. “You’re either with me, or you’re in this cabin. You are not to do anything else while aboard. Understand, my friend?”
“Your guest?” There was a slight shudder in the voice.
“Yes,” John murmured.
“I...”
“Something you should understand, Master Peck, is that on this vessel, I am god. If you don’t follow the rules...” and he let his hand move a little against that chest. He wondered what the body beneath these clothes looked like, what it was going to look like, writhing underneath him, and the pirate had to bite back a moan. “...I will see you thrown overboard with an eight-pound shot on your feet.”
The lad’s eyes, so expressive, widened considerably as John’s fingers found a hard little nub under the fine shirt. “... I understand.” It was so quiet that John almost missed it.
He let himself move a little closer, barely any space between them at all now. “And if you say you’re good with a pistol, I’d very much like to see that.”
“Yes, of course...”
Those lips were open, parting for another word, and John dove right in, sealing his mouth over the lad’s, pushing his tongue down, demanding entrance and meeting no resistance at all. Deep and sweet, this lad, an ocean of passion right beneath the surface, deep currents moving through him. John could taste it, feel it in the way the lad shuddered. He pressed his hand down, firm and heavy, sliding down just a little, right below the ribs, holding him down, making no secret of his intentions for the lad.
He pushed back after just a moment of that, noting with pleasure the deep flush in the man’s skin, coloring his face, his beautiful face. This was going to be highly enjoyable.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Master Peck. I trust we’ll have a pleasant voyage to Barbados.”
John pushed back with a final caress, ignoring the tightness in his breeches but making no attempt to hide it, feeling the boy’s eyes on his all the way out.
He loved the way the light in the lad’s eyes had changed, going from anger to confusion. Confusion, either at his own reaction to John’s very unsubtle overtures or perhaps the gentleness with which they were given. He chuckled at that. It had been a long time since he’d had anyone interesting enough to seduce.
And this Templeton Peck was very interesting.
He locked the doors behind him with a set of irons, the ones HM was holding out for him. The stars were brilliant in the night sky, a slight breeze ruffling the sails and cooling his overheated skin. That boy, he thought to himself and shook his head.
“How’s he gonna be, sir?” the bosun asked, a sideways smile on his face.
John played with that set of small gold rings down HM’s left ear, trying to figure out what exactly to say to him. But there was nothing but curiosity in the bosun’s eyes, nothing but that doglike devotion and fractured intelligence staring back at him, trying to discern an answer.
He drew the man in for a deep kiss, holding him close, wanting to reassure him. Wasn’t necessary, he knew, HM wasn’t the jealous type, but he believed in taking care of his men.
HM broke it first and pushed John’s falling hair back into the braid with a smile. “He’s got you alight, doesn’t he?”
“Interesting lad,” John murmured, and they went down to join in the festivities.
+++++
HM's odd taste in what he liked to call "booty" paid off the next morning.
The governor’s secretary proved himself an honest man, out on the stern with HM and the new man, Baracus and a gathering crowd of curious crewmen. They were under a strong wind, sails full and fast, and his bosun had a crate of the fine-bone china he'd kept from a shore raid last month. These he was passing off to Baracus, who in turn was tossing them high in the air behind the swift-moving ship. The white and red patterns glinted in the air for a moment, sharp against the blue sky.
They’d given Peck a flintlock musket, one of the worst they had in the armory. He’d taken it silently, examined it and nodded.
Now he had the thing pressed into his shoulder, sighting along the barrel with an intensity that seemed so at odds with his soft exterior. Squeezed the trigger. Down came the flint. Powder ignited. Noise.
None of the plates, not one out of two dozen, hit the water whole.
There was whooping and hollering, the pirate crew applauding the display of marksmanship, John considering it a little more carefully. High wind, terrible weapon, moving deck...lad had sea legs on him and an excellent eye. Hardly traits of an ordinary secretary. The lad had left his waistcoat and jacket in the captain’s cabin, and he was nothing but smooth faw breeches and pale shirt and flashing eyes as he turned, asking for approval.
For John’s approval.
“You clearly have the touch for this,” he said, clapping the lad on the shoulder and took the long gun away from him, passing it off to a crew member.
“I’d prefer to clean it myself,” Peck replied firmly, and John just laughed at that and clapped him again. He cast a glance over to Baracus. The big Negro looked far better than he had yesterday. HM had gotten him fresh clothes and fed him, yes. But there was something else.
That defeated slump had gone out of his shoulders, something strong and determined resurrecting itself in him. The captain wagered himself that the man would prove himself an excellent fighter.
And the way he was patiently listening to the bosun babble on about the time they’d fought Davy Jones himself, the way he was letting HM touch him on the small of his back, how he was leaning into it just so slightly?... no need to worry about his pursuit of his lad, John thought with a smile, and led Peck down below decks.
Down in the dining hall, the lad spread the weapon out with a certain care and attention the pirate hadn’t been expecting, the sergeant at arms coming in with his cleaning kit and the captain waving him out.
“You were telling the truth,” he observed as the lad began rolling up wide sleeves.
“I do that often...”
“... yet people are always surprised?”
The lad kept his attention on the task at hand. “I’m a bastard. Born liar, you know. No father. My mother left me with a Quaker family as a babe.”
There was pain there, and John had a sudden flash of his own mother, lying dead in a Dublin alley, sightless eyes, finally succumbed to the pox...
“Sometimes all we had was venison and turkey.” He patted the musket with a proud smile. “I’ve shot worse than this lady here. Just as good with a pistol.”
“Pistol’s not a hunting weapon, lad.”
“No,” and the young man angrily rammed a rag down the barrel, pulled it back up, back down. Up. “Ran away from there when I was old enough to get berth on a trader out of Boston as a cabin boy.” He looked up at John. “But I’ve never gone pirate.”
“Never considered it at all?” John asked, reaching across the rough wood slats and grabbing up one of those hands. Not as soft as he’d imagined. The ink stains were a little lighter today. He pressed the back of the lad’s hand to his lips. “Never?”
The lad gasped a little as John sucked one finger into his mouth, then another, working them all in turn, dragging his lips, as slow and sensual as he could make it. He shook his head once and John moved around behind him, pressing a kiss to the curve where neck met shoulder beneath the shirt, nibbling, then sucking, hard enough to raise a mark and draw another other of those sweet little noises from Peck.
His cock twitched, and he wondered if he shouldn’t just toss this boy back over the table and strip him and take him, right now, nothing but spit and cleaning oil to ease the way. But while such actions had their place in his life, this wasn’t one of them. He didn’t want to rape the lad, he wanted to possess him, own him body and soul and that was going to take more than a tumble in the dining room.
No. The captain wasn’t a terribly patient man, but he did love watching a plan come together.
So John nipped the lad’s ear instead and stroked a hand all the way down to the top of his sinfully tight breeches. “Now, Templeton Peck, how are you with a cutlass?”
The lad just smiled, and rammed the cleaning rod back down the barrel with a little smirk.
Tease
+++++
They had an incident aboard, late in the second day, nothing major, just a crewman who’d decided it was acceptable to break the captain’s rules and cheat at cards. Such things could not be permitted, so John had had the man tied to the main mast and lashed. Ten times, to be exact. Just to preserve discipline. Nothing too serious; HM only brought the whip down hard when John told him to. Lots of shouting and jeering. Still, he had to be carried down below decks and tended to, and when John finished his little speech about rules and punishment, when he turned around, Templeton was gone.
The anger he felt at the lad for disobeying him, for going off on his own, faded a little when he’d found him curled up in a corner of his own cabin. He had said it was an acceptable space.
“Lad,” John murmured softly, "what's going through that pretty head of yours?”
He didn’t respond, but John knew he was awake and settled back over his heels. He could wait for an answer.
Blue eyes turned to meet his after a few minutes. “Captain Smith?”
“It’s John, lad.”
“Fine, John, then.”
So cold. Like there had been nothing between them. John didn’t quite understand it, and ran a soothing hand down the lad’s back, and froze. Everything, destroyed by the whipping.
Not the violence of what John had clearly done to the lad’s ship and fellow passengers. The whipping.
A network of fine scars met his fingers. Lad had been a cabin boy, hadn’t he said? Those blue eyes fell to the floor, like he couldn’t stand to look at John. Anger? Shame? What was it?
He grabbed Templeton and dragged him upwards. “I don’t hold with whipping boys, Templeton. You may think me an evil man, but I never beat children. Just my men when they don’t listen.”
“You’ll beat me, too, then? When I don’t listen?”
He grabbed the lad’s chin and forced his eyes up. Laughed a little, thinking of how quickly Templeton had gone from not wanting to be here to assuming John was going to take him on as a crewman. “When will you ever not listen to me, lad?” he asked, quite serious, and the young man slumped back.
“You’ll tire of me in time. You, HM, everyone,” Templeton said, quite serious himself. “Tire of me and cast me out.”
“I couldn’t,” John murmured, leaning in for a kiss, but the lad pushed him away, averting his face.
“You will. Nobody...”
He didn't say it, but the pirate could still hear it. Nobody wants me.
It was so plaintive and womanish and it still shook John to his core. He pressed that kiss on the young man’s cheek, despite what the lad thought he wanted, and slapped those irons back on the handles of the door and went off to find HM.
Time to change the plan.
+++++
The bosun was coiling the whip up in his own small cabin, that same strange expression on his face that he always got when he had to do this. The man liked excitement, same as the rest of his crew, enjoyed the action, but he didn’t revel in the violence. It was one of many, many reasons he was John’s second in command.
“How’s Peck, captain?” HM asked. The fondness in his voice was unmistakable. Over the last two days, John had been forced to conclude that these two were a pair themselves, Templeton laughing at all of HM’s little jokes, playing along with him, inventing words to the bosun’s fiddle music. “He upset... with me?”
“No, HM, he’s mad at me.”
“What’s that mean for,” and he gestured wildly. “For this?”
John didn’t really have an answer for that. Didn’t have an answer for the feelings the lad brought out in him. Didn’t know at all what to do about, except shove HM up against a wall and tear his loose trousers clean off and feel the heels of his bosun’s boots dig into his ass as he took him, hard and fast and dry, like they both liked. HM moaned through the first initial push like he always did, tensing and clenching, and he was looser than he should have been - John hadn’t fucked him in at least five days.
“Baracus?” he asked with a slight smile and was rewarded with one in return. This was going to make this better.
He liked the big man. Hard worker, sharp, liked by the rest of the crew, taking to the ship as if he’d been doing this all his life. He obviously liked HM, and John had gotten the sense that there was something between he and Peck. Nothing... active, perhaps, but something. Baracus belonged here, just as John was convinced that Templeton belonged here, with them, with him.
There was a reservoir of sadness in the young man, of anger and resentment and that damn Quaker denial. He’d been working wherever and however he could since he was twelve, he’d told John, trying to keep himself honest. But he was a buccaneer at heart. John could see it in the way he laughed and gambled and drank and told stories and responded to John’s flirtations, making a few of his own in reply, and the way he shot, the way he fought when John had dared him to grapple, half naked on the deck in view of the entire crew, like there was something trying to get out, like there was something ripping him apart.
Nothing better than the open sea to take that confusion away, to make everything simple and right and good.
He pounded into HM harder, loving the way the bosun’s body welcomed him in, clenching tight around him. Heavenly, this.
“I’m going to need your help, Henry Murdock,” he whispered in his bosun’s ear, using his full name as he continued to thrust and started to explain, and the other man just grinned and let his head fall back against the wall.
Taking everything in.
Internalizing the plan.
It seemed to be agreeing with him.
+++++
It was starting to rain as he came back topside. John nodded to the man on watch and passed into his cabin. He re-lit a lamp, throwing a little illumination around the dark space, looking for Templeton.
His heart swelled, seeing the lad tucked up into his bunk, light covers pulled over that scarred back. John smiled at the sight. Lad had slept on the floor the last two night, rather than sleep with him. Seemed an invitation that he wasn't now. At least, that's how John intended to interpret it.
Knowing full well he still smelt of HM, of sex and sweat, the pirate climbed in next to the sleeping man, bringing a booted leg up over a cloth-covered over, bringing an arm up to stroke down a smooth, naked shoulder. “Wake up, Templeton,” he murmured against the lad’s neck. “I need you to wake for me.”
“I am awake, John,” he replied, not moving, stiff. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Good,” the captain said, pressing his hand down a little harder, his cock beginning to rouse itself once again. “Let’s keep you awake, shall we? I can imagine so many things...” He moved them both, holding himself up on his elbows. It was cramped in his bunk, and the heat was building
“It’s port tomorrow, isn’t it?”
He felt the man shift against him. “Yes.”
“I’ll be disembarking. There’s always work for a literate man,” Templeton said, and that was true. The young man also spoke German, Spanish and French, as well as slave pidgin. There would be work.
“I could make use of you, marksman like you are...” The rest was left unsaid. It didn’t need to be voiced.
There was no room in here, the walls close, air stale. “I want to show you something,” he murmured, and Templeton let himself be dragged from the narrow pad and outside.
The watchman was gone, taking his cue from the earlier nod, the same one John used when he played this game with HM. It was one of their favorites. It was cool but not cold, the rain light and somehow warm. Templeton shivered as the soft drizzle hit his bare skin, and John laughed, holding him into his chest, loving it. “Too many years of landlubbing, eh, lad?”
“You’re one to speak. You're dressed,” Templeton complained and John laughed.
“You want to do something about that, lad?”
A sweet bit of hesitation. “Out here?”
“Nowhere better. Free space, open air, nobody to see, nobody to judge if they did...” He punctuated each little statement with a demanding, greedy kiss, pulling him down the stairs, towards the center of the deck, drawing down into that passion he’d felt when he'd first kissed him. When? The day before yesterday? Hadn’t it been longer? Hadn’t it been a lifetime? “Just you and me and all the freedom in the world...”
Templeton groaned, bare feet scrambling on smooth board as he let himself be driven right up against the mast. He still had his breeches on, tented now, plastering to his body in the light rain, and gasped as John attacked his throat, moving down, tongue laving over a nipple.
“Sweet boy,” he growled deep in his throat and Templeton seemed to lose himself for a moment or two before balling his fists into the pirate captain’s hair and pulled him back, pure lust shining from that beautiful face in the weak lamplight, something different now.
“I need you.”
John allowed himself a pleased little smile.
There it was.
“I need you, John,” he repeated, fingers going for the fine gold buttons on the man’s waistcoat, fumbling a little and then ripping, buttons flying and fabric tearing. “I need you.”
John reminded himself to teach this lad a lesson about ruining perfectly good clothing, but then Templeton kissed him and he forgot what he was thinking about. No matter. Everything was getting wet anyway. The remnants were discarded over the lad’s shoulder, and he attacked John’s shirt next.
Lace tore, seams tore in the wet material and when John kissed him instead of lifting his arms, Templeton ripped this clear off as well. It joined the waistcoat, nothing more than rags on the wet deck. Braid coming undone, hair slick on his back, John grinned and ground himself up into the lad, both of them groaning as cloth-covered erections met and moved against one another.
“Need you.”
“I know, lad,” John soothed and started on the buttons of the younger man’s breeches, letting himself play there a little longer than he needed to. Templeton sighed with relief against the mast as his cock sprang free. The captain worked the material down and off and sighed at the sight before him. The lad, naked, rain coursing down his lightly tanned body, head thrown back, hair loose around his shoulders and dark with water, eyes closed, a hand coming down to wrap around his own erection. ‘Twas a sight to behold.
“Beautiful,” the captain said softly, and knocked the lad’s hand away, replacing it with his own, teasing the young man’s cockhead as those hands undid his sword belt and sash, pushing them away.
There was no way John was getting his boots off in any short order, black leather wrapped to the thigh and wet, hard as he was. So, when Templeton finally got the captain’s breeches off, he pushed them down as far as he needed to for this. He grabbed the boy and flung him around, staring at those scars on the finely muscled back.
He licked a long, hot trail up the younger man’s spine, loving the taste of the rain, tailbone to ear, letting one hand knead that tight ass. “You’re mine, Templeton Peck,” he growled and slipped two fingers between the lad’s cheeks, Spit seemed a little pointless in this downpour. Not that he, himself, minded. “Can you feel that?”
Templeton moaned like a cheap whore out as two of the pirate’s fingers breached him and spread, scissoring, opening him up. Pained, yes, but from the way he was starting to lightly rock back, begging for more. John was more than happy to oblige him this, and added a third in short order, wanting his boy to be ready for it.
“Can’t you feel it?” he murmured, the sound falling with the rain around them. “The way we fit together? How Providence has delivered you to me...” He withdrew his fingers, earning himself another little whine of a completely different sort. Lined himself up. One hand on the lad’s shoulder, one wrapped around and playing with his cock again. Squeezing. Waiting, his own erection tight against the lad’s stretched entrance. “...so I can do this to you?”
But if Templeton had an answer, it was cancelled out by the loud cry he gave as John thrust all the way in. Hard. One long push.
He had no doubt the lad had some familiarity with such intimacies between men. The way he had responded to John’s teasing was proof enough of that, as was his history. But the captain didn’t think he’d been taken like this in a long time, judging by how tight he was, the burning heat fluttering around him. He didn’t give the lad any time to adjust, too far gone for that, needing release and needing it immediately.
Templeton continued moaning, still for a moment as John set a brutal pace. Then he braced himself a little better, elbows on the mast, head between tight fists, pushing back against John on every stroke, a certain harmony in the movement. It didn’t take long before John felt his balls drawing up and his stomach tightening, and one more thrust up, deeper had him yelling his climax, pumping his seed deep into the younger man’s bowels and biting down on that mark he’d left on the lad’s neck a few days ago. He didn’t pull out just yet, not until Templeton shuddered beneath his skillful hand, his own orgasm warm in the rain. The lad went still and then limp, and John had to catch him before he crumpled completely and fell.
They lay in a heap at the base of the mast for a moment, struggling to breath, Templeton running John’s hair, completely free of its braid now, through boneless fingers.
“You don’t really want me,” the lad said after the long silence.
“Yes, I assure you, Templeton. I do want you.”
“It’s only been a few days...”
John bit his lip. “Feels like forever.”
“It does,” Templeton replied quietly, and twined his fingers into John’s, pulling them up to his mouth. “Why?”
“You belong at my side,” the pirate said firmly, and stood, pulling the younger man into his arms, lifting him up. Cradling him to his chest.
“John...”
“I’m taking you back to my cabin, drying you off. And you’re coming to bed with me,” the captain said, walking away, leaving their clothes in a mess where they’d fallen. “I insist.”
Templeton just yawned, and smiled, and didn’t fight him at all on any of it.
+++++
“Fall asleep in your boots again, sir?”
He felt the hand on his forehead. It wasn’t Templeton’s.
Templeton was gone.
He snapped awake.
HM was staring down at him with soft brown eyes, smiling. Bouncing on his toes. He had the new man, Baracus, wrapped around him. No wonder he looked so happy.
The captain started, confused for a moment about why the lad wasn’t there, and had a horrible thought that maybe they’d already made landfall, that the lad had vanished into the port city and John would never see him again. The thought made him grind his teeth.
“Where’d the lad get off to?” he growled, and HM knelt down, pointing out to the back balcony. John craned his neck around was greeted with the sight of his brocade dressing gown, leaning up against the railing, staring out to sea. He nodded and pulled himself out of bed, fastening his breeches back up. Baracus had a stunned expression on his face. How HM had gotten him up here, the pirate couldn’t guess. “Thank you, Henry.”
“My pleasure, sir. Or is it your pleasure? I never know for sure...”
“Crazy fool,” Baracus muttered, obviously flustered and HM bumped back into him playfully. If HM wanted him like he seemed to, John wasn’t capable of leaving him out.
John sat up on an elbow and grabbed a handful of fresh blouse, pulling the dark man in for a long, slow, leisurely kiss. “Our pleasure, HM,” he told him after they finally broke, Baracus still slightly stunned but clearly warming to the whole idea. “Lad needs a family, doesn’t he?”
That smile widened.
“Let’s see how he’s doing this morning.”
If Templeton heard John coming, he gave no sign. His hands were tight on the carved rail, his hair wild and loose, pale in the fresh morning wind, the red and gold robe barely tied around him. He was staring out at where the sun was breaching the horizon, and barely moved as John slotted up against him.
“We’ll make port in a few hours. If you want to leave, I won’t stop you.”
He clenched a fist against the railing. “I... I should leave. You’re a pirate...”
“Aye,” John said, kissing that neck again. God, he loved the way this man tasted. “What of it?”
“I’ve tried...”
“Where has trying to be good gotten you? Whose good? Was it your good? Good for you?”
Templeton hesitated.
“We’re not peaceful men,” John told him, covering a hand with his own, playing with that little frill of lace at the end of the sleeve. “Violent and nasty business, this. But you’d make a valuable addition to my crew and my ship, and to my bed...”
Templeton leaned his head against John’s shoulder. “It’s not so...”
HM suddenly appeared on the other side of him, leaning forward, whispering in an exaggerated whisper that was anything but subtle. “The plan, captain?”
“Feel free, Henry,” John said, chuckling at the confused expression on the lad’s handsome face. A passing confusion.
Dissolved away once HM grasped his shoulders firmly and leaned in, delivering what was no doubt one of those wild and delirious kisses only he was capable of, hands roaming under the heavy robe, shoving him roughly back until he could get all the way in front of him and wrap both hands around his waist, holding him fast.
Templeton barely protested, only shooting a concerned glance over to John, who nodded ever so slightly and was rewarded with the wonderful sight of his boy falling into it, letting HM push him back, hold him up, guide him right back into Baracus’ waiting arms.
He shuddered and pushed HM away, twisting around to look up at the former slave with a tender expression. “I’m happy for you, my friend,” he said softly, dragging a hand down his cheek to wind around his neck. “I hated the way the colonel was treating you, like a piece of baggage, like you were nothing...”
“That all over now,” the big man replied and tugged him fully around. He didn’t go for a kiss, though, no, he nuzzled into the other man’s neck and let one big hand trace a path down to that bare cock, fingers curling around balls and eliciting a pleasured yelp. Templeton’s hand tightened around Baracus’s neck, easing down a thick shoulder.
HM bumped against John as the other two tentatively explored one another in the morning air. “They’re so sweet together, aren’t they, dear?” he teased as Templeton made that little moan again, the one from last night.
John nodded. “Stop it, lads. I don’t want Templeton making a mess inside that borrowed robe. Came all the way from Singapore, that did. I’m rather fond of it.”
“Oh, but the white’d be so pretty on the gold, captain!”
“Henry...”
“You ruined my breeches, John,” the younger man said breathily, kissing Baracus before pulling away to lean against the rail, yawning and rolling his shoulders, giving the other three a clear view of everything. “What else am I supposed to do?”
“We’ll get you something in port, lad.”
“Oh, generous of you. But are you sure I won’t run off on you?”
John looked him up and down, considering it. No, there was no mistaking it. The way he was breathing, how blue and shining those eyes were, that little smile. “You won’t,” and he went back inside for his pipe. “And it’ll be a loan, lad, on your future earnings.”
“What do you mean? Do you have something planned?” Templeton asked, breaking away from the other two with not a little regret and following him inside.
John cleared off his small table, revealing a map of the Caribbean, jabbing a finger down at Port Royal. “Your former employer, Lynch, and I have quite a history. Might be cathartic to go and hit his town?”
Templeton looked down, then up, and smiled. “Should be fun,” he said.
"Don't forget, lad, in my cabin or by my side. You understand?"
He nodded, face warm and willing, and with a quick kiss on John’s cheek he was running back out onto the balcony, HM catching him up in a bear hug and nearly dropping him over the side.
John puffed contentedly on his pipe, coaxing it awake, watching them laugh and play and joke with each other, port an hour away, where they'd indulge themselves with good food and better rum, pick out something suitably dashing for Templeton and maybe find him a nickname more fitting this life, throw money around and act like fools and get into brawls and barely avoid arrest.
After, after all that, though, they would come back here, happy and warm, ready... and John looked over at his whole inadequate little bunk meaningfully.
That most certainly needed to be enlarged.
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Date: 2011-07-05 04:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-05 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-05 11:56 pm (UTC)