Fic: Rules of Engagement (Generation Kill)
Title: Rules of Engagement
Fandom: Generation Kill
Pairing: Nate/Ray
Rating: PG to PG-13
Word Count: 4600
Summary: ‘We’ve captured Person!’ McGraw had said, smiling broadly, ignoring Nate’s careful suggestion that perhaps this was a touch too easy, that they hadn’t really captured anyone so much as found Person in the rigging of their own ship, examining their sails with a proprietary air. And then the man had cheerfully held out his hands to be clapped in irons. Of course, McGraw had found nothing about this suspicious at all.
Notes/Thanks: I wrote this strange Pirates of the Caribbean-esque fusion thing long, long ago and have finally accepted that it's time to give up fiddling with it. It's not perfect, but there are pirates! :D? :D?
Much love and thanks to brimtoast and laliandra and attempt_unique for convincing me to release this into the wild, and queeniegalore for reading it yea, all those many years ago. ♥
***
“You know,” Person comments, spinning the wheel with Nate feels is alarming casualness. This isn’t a bloody dingy he’s piloting - it’s the Navy’s finest ship in the fleet, and this drunken sot is going to run them aground. Except there’s no land for miles, nothing but sun and sea. Which, to be honest, is sort of the problem. “I’ve been thinking. You’d make a bloody smashing pirate, Nate. You should consider it.”
Nate glares and resumes struggling with his bonds. The knots look deceptively sloppy and simple, but he’s having a damned difficult time wriggling his way out of them. Ray glances back at him, eyes sparkling dark and wicked beneath smeared black kohl. If Nate can just get loose, he’ll be really pleased to blacken them further, with his fists.
“Sure you don’t want to join my sensationally amazing crew, Lieutenant Fick? Mmm? Because it’s a fine fucking life, you know.” He takes a hand off the wheel and starts counting down on his fingers. “Willing girls in every port, all the rum you can drink. Freedom. Oh, and gold, of which, I assure you, we obtain approximately a fuckton of every other week. Those poor fat merchants, held back from top speed with their ships’ bellies bulging with gold and silver and fine wines - we do them a favor, really, relieving them of their burdens. Do-gooders of the sea, that’s us.”
Nate can’t repress a scoff at this, muffled by the gag in his mouth, and Ray looks delighted; he’s been trying to provoke a noise out of his captive for what feels like hours. Nate supposes it was inevitable. He sags in his bonds for a moment, though, and can’t help but feel defeated all over again.
Worse, he’s only encouraged the lunatic.
“Now, Nate,” Ray sings out, beaming and wagging a finger at him admonishingly. “We’ve been tarred with the wrong brush! Give us a fair chance. We hardly rape or murder at all! Okay, well, fine, there’s a bit of murder. What’s life without murder, eh? Boring, that’s what - though you Navy gents do your share of blood-spilling yourselves, don’t deny it. What next? Oh, right, pillaging! Oh, sure, there’s pillaging, lots of that, it's kind of our thing. But come on, that’s a laugh. You’d enjoy it, my hand to God.” Ray presses a hand to his chest, looking appallingly sincere. “Good for the heart, a decent pillage. You haven’t lived until you’ve smashed up a good shopful of china-relieves stress like you wouldn’t believe.”
Ray Person in a china shop. Nate’s brain temporarily blanks, unable to process the scope of such a disaster. When he shakes it off, Person’s talking about sodomy. Again.
“We definitely do plenty of sodomy,” Ray continues airily, giving the wheel a deft spin and eyeing his compass. “But it’s not like we have the market cornered on that, either. I know allllll about you Navy men - kinky repressed bastards, the lot of you. I’ve seen how your Captain McGraw looks at that tit Kasem. You can’t tell me he’s not rogering that on a daily basis.”
Urgh, Nate wants to douse his brain in lye at the very thought; he refuses to speculate on the possible veracity of it. Then Ray looks back at him and, there’s only one word for it, he leers. “What about you, Fick? You ever go on your knees and polish a mast? You’ve a mouth for it, better’n most whores, and believe you me, I have seen a whore or two.”
Nate can feel his face going red, the curse of a fair complexion. He is-he's appalled. He tries to convey this with his eyebrows. Person just grins at him, then looks back at the horizon, tilting his head and making a complicated face. He licks his finger-disgusting, Lord only knows the last time the wretch had a bath, or what he’s touched since-gauging the wind. Then he leaves the wheel and comes to sit beside Nate, shoulder to shoulder. He smells awful, and he lets Nate kick at him for a moment before settling his legs over Nate’s companionably, pinning him down. Nate’s going to have to burn these trousers later, assuming he somehow gets out of this mess.
“Come on, you can tell your old pal Ray-Ray!” Ray wheedles, smiling winningly. He has incongruously nice teeth, Nate notes absently, before he returns his focus to trying to set the bastard on fire by dint of glaring and wishing very, very hard.
“We’re practically old friends, you and me, aren’t we, Lieutenant? We’ve been seeing each other’s sails for ages.” He pats Nate’s shoulder and takes another swig from the bottle of fine Madeira he’d purloined from the captain’s cabin. “Oh, don’t be sore, you nearly caught us a time or two. I mean, it’s not your fault, Nate, you’re just saddled with a bunch of toddlers in tights that don’t know their balls from their belaying pins.”
Nate is not going to laugh. He’s not.
“You’re fucking wasted on them, Nate! It’s a crying fucking shame, and it breaks my heart, so I’m going to make you an offer: join my crew. Oh, don’t roll your eyes. Fine, we do have idiots a-plenty sailing the seas.” Ray leans in conspiratorially; his breath smells like good wine. “But, unlike the Navy, when someone acts a right tit that doesn’t know starboard from larboard, we don’t play Nate the Nursemaid. We just toss ‘em overboard, let Davy Jones sort the buggers out.”
Nate sucks in a breath through his nose and tries not to show how Ray’s words sting. Like a cut from a fine blade, he almost doesn’t feel it at first. Nate the Nursemaid. That’s-not inaccurate.
Ray’s leaned back, regarding him. He shakes his head. “You, you’ve had to take commands from the bastards. You poor lamb.”
The worst thing is that he actually looks like he might be genuinely sympathetic.
If he wasn’t gagged, Nate would make a scathing comment on how Ray currently has no crew and is apparently such an obnoxious and unfit captain that he’d been kicked off his own ship and marooned on some godforsaken dingy outside Port Royal.
Nate really can’t blame them; Ray hasn’t shut up once since his arrest, not for a single bloody minute. When Nate’s not being lectured on the idiocy of His Majesty’s Navy, he’s being educated on the vagaries of seabird migration, or the spread of variant sea shanties throughout the Caribbean, and what these variations indicate about sexual diseases carried by the men singing them. And from there, a diatribe on the diseases themselves, more than Nate had ever wanted to know, ever. He may never have sex again.
If his mouth were free, he definitely wouldn’t be laughing at any of the above, no matter how strangely charming and deranged Person’s rants could be. And Nate definitely isn’t vindictively pleased that Commodore McGraw is probably going ballistic on shore this very moment. Well, that’s if McGraw’s even noticed the missing ship yet, which isn’t out of the question. Person is right on that count.
McGraw, Nate allows himself to think, only feeling a slight twinge at the insubordination of it, is a complete and utter tit.
This latest disaster is only the latest in a long string of them, but it is undeniably the worst yet. The man had made the incomprehensibly stupid decision to give all the crew immediate shoreleave, resulting in the HMS Battalion being unguarded, still fully-rigged out for sailing, with the notorious pirate captain Raymond Person locked in the brig.
Nate had naturally argued against this, even knowing he’d be dressed down for it, and had been brushed aside as usual.
‘We’ve captured Person!’ McGraw had said, smiling broadly, ignoring Nate’s careful suggestion that perhaps this was a touch too easy, that they hadn’t really captured anyone so much as found Person in the rigging of their own ship, examining their sails with a proprietary air. And then the man had cheerfully held out his hands to be clapped in irons. Of course, McGraw had found nothing about this suspicious at all. He’d barely given Person a pat-down before throwing him belowdeck. ‘We’re all looking at medals of commendation, Nate, cheer up, there’s a good lad.’
Nate feels his face flaming again, blood going hot just thinking about it. He’s-okay, admit it, Fick. He’s embarrassed, and furious, that his enemy had seen them like that. That Ray had seen, up close and personal, the utter incompetence of Nate’s superiors, and by extension, of Nate himself.
Their fleet had had orders to capture the motley band of pirates that were plaguing the Spanish Main, including Person’s ship, the Bloody Petunia-the name of which sounds like a joke, but Nate and his men had spent the last several months chasing them fruitlessly about the Spanish Main, with the pirates cat-calling at them and waving cheerfully as they left the Navy in their wake time and time again.
If it wasn’t Captain Schwetje ordering all the ammunition dumped overboard to ‘lighten their load and make better speed,’ it was McGraw deciding they needed to take the pirates by surprise under cover of darkness and then running himself aground on a nearby reef. Or it was, God save them all, Schwetje swinging his ship about the wrong direction and tangling his stern in McGraw’s bow, necessitating in weeks of repairs. They’d been lucky the ships hadn’t foundered, that no men had drowned.
Then finally, after all those months of embarrassment and humiliation, they’d had an actual chance to get some decent intelligence out of the one person who might best know how to chase down the pirates, what their plans for the future might be, where they make port.
Instead they’d left the man alone in the brig, and everyone else had swanned off to get drunk.
Of course. Naturally. Obviously Nate’d been an idiot to expect anything else.
Nate had been the only man standing guard aboard the Battalion when Ray’d made his grand escape. Nate had just been starting to worry about the sudden silence-Ray had been singing non-stop since they’d sequestered him in the brig, and the only thing that’d kept Nate from stuffing cotton in his ears was the fact that the man actually had a pleasant voice, despite his appalling taste in lyrics.
As soon as he’d had the thought, though, he’d felt the cold barrel of a pistol pressed to his temple and there’d been Captain Person, smiling at him pleasantly, a bundle of ropes on his shoulder. Who could have known the bastard could move so silently when need be? He’d been loud as a herd of drunken cattle previously.
The worst of it was that Nate wasn’t even really surprised, not any more. If more men had been aboard, maybe it wouldn’t have happened-though probably it would have. Person’s damnably adaptable. But in any wise, Nate had been the only one to turn down leave. The only one amongst scores of men that seemed to give a damn for his duty in the slightest.
“Really, Nate, we all know you’re the only one of the lot worth a damn. You know it, I know it-well, I doubt they know it, but that’s the point, innit?” Ray’s prattling on, touching on Nate’s thoughts effortlessly. It’s annoying. “But my crew, we like men like you. Men with initiative, with brains. With pretty mouths. But that’s besides the point. We’ll come back to that bit later.” Ray takes a swig of wine, leans in again, widening his eyes. “You can’t honestly tell me you enjoy serving with that lot of fuck-headed prigs, noses up their own arses. Nate, I’d appreciate you. The way you deserve. You’re wasted on them.”
Nate is being seduced by a pirate captain. And what’s worse, he can’t help but be tempted. The Petunia-god, and how the higher-ups back at the Admiralty winced at having to repeat such a ridiculous name, almost enough that Nate has to admire Person for it-is, for a pirate ship, astonishingly decent. Ray hadn’t been lying, before: his crew never murders unarmed citizens, and in fact, they tend to actually spread their misbegotten wealth in the destitute ports that’ve formed some sort of unholy alliance with them.
Nate had started to suspect, somewhat guiltily aware that his thoughts were tending to the treasonous, that the Petunia was the only reasons some of the colonies in the Caribbean haven’t yet been lost to storm and starvation.
Ray seems to sense weakness, because he smirks and leans in closer, and somehow now all Nate can smell is salt and wine and something like good Cuban tobacco, thick and spicy. He closes his eyes and tries to marshal his thoughts. This is how it starts, probably. First he gets used to the smell, next he’ll be shedding his cravat and the bars on his shoulders and covering himself with tattoos and-the sun must be getting to him. He has to stop thinking like this.
Suddenly there are deft fingers at the corner of his mouth, tracing the spit-soaked cloth, the sore skin where the gag is cutting into the sides of Nate’s lips. Nate’s eyes fly open.
“Must be getting a mite thirsty, there, Lieutenant,” Ray murmurs. Nate glares, trying not to show how his heart-rate’s increased. “How about this. You give me your word that you’ll consider tossing aside the complete and utter boring idiocy of a law-abiding life, and I’ll let you have a drink. Generous, right? Just promise that you’ll think about it. Nod for me if you will, Nate.”
No. Nate isn’t going to give in to this. He’s a good man, a decent man. He’s not a pirate. He doesn’t steal, doesn’t rob or kill. He’s taken an oath to the Crown and he has to uphold it.
“Just think about it,” Ray repeats lowly, runs a rough finger along Nate’s cheek, tips up his chin and looks him in the eye. “Come on! Think about teaching us all the error of our ways. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I bet you would. Brad’s getting tetchy having to control the scurvy lot of us all on his lonesome.”
Brad? Oh, Bradley Colbert, Ray’s first officer. The tall blonde one that scowls constantly and had apparently thrown Ray off his own ship, rumored to be an ex-Navy man himself. Nate hums in thought, wondering why Ray doesn’t sound upset at all over the mutiny, why he’s saying Brad’s name with obvious fondness. Apparently Ray’s takes the sound as agreement, because he beams and says, “That’s more like it, Fick,” and begins working the gag out of Nate’s mouth.
Fuck, but it feels good. Nate breathes in gratefully, working his jaw, and then he swallows, finds his tongue.
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” he points out hoarsely, raising an eyebrow at the pirate captain.
“’Course you have!” Ray says cheerfully, and then holds the cool glass of the wine bottle against Nate’s lips. “Swallow for me, now, there’s a good man.” Nate can’t help but obey. He gulps thirstily, red wine still spills out the corners of his mouth. Ray lowers the bottle and smirks, catches the excess with his fingers. Then, carefully catching Nate’s eye, he starts sucking them clean. The sight in no way gives Nate a shiver, or sends a strange feeling of heat down his spine.
“Wine’s not much good for dehydration,” he accuses dizzily, staring at Ray. At Ray, who’s staring back, looking at Nate’s mouth with his eyes half-lidded, and Nate remembers what he’d said about polishing masts. Good lord, could the man be more depraved if he tried?
“Oooh, well, aren’t we particular. Will you agree that you’ve agreed if I agree to fetch you a dram of water, your highness?” Ray inquires, all politeness and smarm, and if Nate could, he’d throw up his arms in exasperation.
“Fine!” he spits out before he can think better of it, and Ray lights up and presses a smacking kiss to Nate’s cheek. Nate goes still and shocked as Ray bounds to his feet.
“Wait right there! Back in a titch.” As though Nate can go anywhere. And then Ray’s off, singing to himself again, but at least it’s a new song this time, something bright and cheerful and not about swollen masts and foul discharges. Nate stares at his boots for a moment as the singing fades off, and he’s surrounded by silence for the first time in hours. As silent as it gets aboard a ship, anyway: the particular quiet that comes with waves and rustling sails and the creak of wood. What is he doing, Nate wonders. How can he-he’s really considering this. He really is. Part of him longs to cast off the yoke of incompetency, to stop being held back by rules and regulations for once. Despite everything he’s stood for his entire life, part of him wants this.
Captain Ray Person, he concludes, closing his eyes against the sun and heat, is a dangerous, dangerous man.
“Falling asleep without me? I know, I know. Life is dull without the dulcet sounds of my voice. Well, perk up, I’m back, my green-eyed pirate-to-be.”
“Do you ever shut up?” Nate inquires, not opening his eyes, and hears a laugh.
“Quiet’s for the dead, Lieutenant Fick. Though I’m told I’m silent enough when I sleep. Might be lying, though, I know plenty of men that talk even through getting some shut-eye. Some even walk.” Then there’s a hand on his chin again, tilting his head, and Nate lets his mouth fall open. “Good,” Ray murmurs, and then Nate’s swallowing cool water, musty and stale and wonderful, and he doesn’t mind this time when it spills over his face and drenches his collar.
“Nate, honestly, you’re a mess,” Ray says, taking the water away and leaning in, smirking. Nate’s still thirsty, still dazed and not thinking, and he chases after the water and winds up almost brushing his mouth against Ray’s. He jerks back at the first touch, feels his cheeks heating. Ray’s eyes are wide. There’s a trace of wetness on his mouth that could be water, or maybe he’s licked his lips - Nate’s not thinking about it.
Ray looks delighted, rocking back on his heels. “Well,” he says, “if I get a kiss for bringing you water, what’ll I get for preparing supper, mmm?”
“You’re incorrigible,” Nate says, fighting the flush rising in his cheeks. “I didn’t mean to - it’s wasn’t a kiss. Shut up.”
“I can’t help that I’m irresistible,” Ray says, mock-apologetically, making a moue and fluttering his lashes, and Nate snorts. Ray grins at him and holds out the water jug again, and Nate doesn’t want to shiver as Ray’s rough fingers brush the corner of his mouth.
“You’re thinking about it,” Ray sing-songs. “Give in. At least admit you’re thinking about it.”
“It wasn’t a kiss,” Nate insists stubbornly, around the tightness in his throat. “A kiss requires, requires intent. That was - an aberration.”
Ray chucks Nate under the chin and coos, “Oh, aren’t you just the cutest fucking thing. Brad will have to kiss my arse when we get back - he’s going to love you. By the way-I was talking about joining up with my crew, sunshine, but I do like that you’re thinking about kisses instead. Top marks.”
“Oh,” Nate replies, flustered. “No, I wasn’t-I was thinking about your crew.” And then realizes his mistake-he’s gone and expressed interest. The slightest chance he had of Ray shutting up and letting it lie is gone, evaporated in the sun and salt air.
Only it’s not quite a mistake - it’s more honest than he’d meant to be. Nate doesn’t want to sincerely be considering this, but Ray has him completely turned around. It’s unfair. It’s not sporting.
Ray smiles, and it’s not a smile Nate’s seen yet. It’s something new, crooked and pleased. “Right, then, that’s settled,” he says, and then he’s slicing off the ropes and settling back on his heels as Nate shakes out his bloodless limbs, winces through the cramps.
He’s dazed, unsure. Possibly Person has drugged him; he shouldn’t feel like this. Shouldn’t be wanting this.
“I’ve only promised to consider joining,” he reminds Ray, striving to sound casual as he stretches. “Of course, it would help your case if you actually had a crew.”
“Huh?” Ray says, and then bursts into laughter; Nate is resolutely not charmed. “Ohhhh, you mean because Brad tossed me overboard in Port Royal? No, don’t be ridiculous, Brad does that all the time. I pissed him off a bit, but he’ll forgive me. He dumps me off ship, I steal a new ship-it’s sort of our thing. You’ll get used to it. Don’t usually nab a ship this prime, though; he’s going to have fucking kittens.”
Nate stares. “This is how you run your crew?”
“Works for us!” Ray answers cheerfully, waggling his eyebrows at Nate, and then grabs Nate by the wrist and hauls him to his feet.
For the scourge of the Spanish Main, Nate thinks, not for the first time, Captain Person is startlingly young, and also, short. He barely comes to Nate’s chin. He’s also barely sane, but sadly, that’s an improvement on Nate’s previous commanders. Person may not be sane, but he’s at least not stupid. Far from it.
“We ran out of coffee, ‘s what caused the trouble,” Ray prattles on, “But now, thanks to you gents, we’ve got a whole new supply. Things should be all sweetness and light for another month or three.”
Nate has literally no response; Person was put off his own ship over a beverage. A beverage. And that was apparently normal. God’s teeth.
“They’ll be waiting for us in the Caymans by now,” Ray continues, fishing out his compass and tilting it, then glancing up at the sky. “Should reach them by tomorrow morning, if the weather holds.”
“The Navy will come after us, you realize.” Even as Nate says it, he knows it’s not true, not really. Oh, McGraw and the men will give chase, but it’s more than likely that they’ll set off in entirely the wrong direction, or that they’ve still not noticed the missing ship at all. Nate’s not there to subtly point the men past his commanders’ mistakes, anymore.
“Ha! I’m not even going to dignify that with a response,” Ray snorts, and then makes his way to the wheel again, leans against it and tilts his hat over his eyes. His smile is wide and wicked and bright; Nate can’t stop looking at it. The man is all bluff and swagger, grandiloquent speeches and flamboyant gestures, and they do an excellent job of distracting people from the fact that he’s actually appallingly competent.
“Okay, so thing is,” Ray says, watching Nate’s face, “as brilliant as I am, which is pretty fucking brilliant, on a ship as big as this one, I could use another hand.” This makes sense. Ray’s been running all over the deck throughout the day, cursing cheerfully all the while, and seems to be making it work; Nate has to admit this supports the brilliance theory. He doubts he could manage as much on his own. But it has to be exhausting, even for Ray Person, who to all appearances has coffee running in his veins rather than blood.
“So, Fick, what’ll it be? Will you slow us down in the misbegotten, poorly placed hope that your priggish, lackwitted commanding officer will manage to take his head out of his own arse and catch up with us, or will you condescend to lend your assistance and throw your lot in with a miscreant group of miserable sea dogs?” Ray pauses, then continues with a cocky grin, like he already knows Nate’s answer. “Of course, that’s assuming a blue-blooded, superfluous officer such as yourself even knows how to tie a sheepshank knot.”
Nate knows when he’s being baited; that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. He bends, picks up one of the ropes that had bound him, and keeps his eyes on Ray’s face as he untwists the strands and makes an eye splice from muscle memory, deftly braiding everything together. He tosses the completed result at Ray’s feet, crosses his arms, and raises an eyebrow.
“Not bad, not bad,” Ray says, and leaves the knot at his feet. He’s grinning, though, jiggling his foot up and down. “But how’re you with trimming a sail?”
“Idle question or request-” Nate asks, and then hesitates, but he’s not one to pretend or look back once he’s made up his mind, and so he finishes it up by saying “Captain?”
But he can’t quite keep his eyes on Ray as his does, looks down at his feet. Stupid, but there are tears prickling his eyes, like he can only truly believe how completely fucked his life had been, how much he’d hated it, until just now. Part of him thinks he’s making the worst mistake of his life, that he’s going to be throw into a world of filth and lechery and murder, but-but it can’t be worse than the life he’d been leading up to this moment. Watching his men tend to the rich, fat merchants, forced ignore the starving families on shore. Following officers that he knows aren’t fit for command of a floating tub, let alone a ship-of-the-line.
And it’s naïve, he knows, but, well. He’s spent the last six hours listening to Ray Person expound on anything and everything happens to pass through his head. Nate considers himself a decent judge of character, and he can’t-he can’t think Ray Person is actually a bad man. Maybe not a good man, not conventionally. And he’s a madman, yes, and probably riddled with disease, but for how much he rants about being a blood-crazed warrior upon the high seas, dealing death and retribution on his enemies, he still sounds outraged and bewildered when describing the wreck of a coastal town, the deaths of the children there.
He talks about drawing and quartering a fellow pirate, someone who’d gone after one of the women on his crew, but he doesn’t have the viciousness or blankness in his voice that McGraw does when he talks about executing prisoners.
Nate notices these things. And at least here he’d not been bound to silence by command and protocol, but by an actual gag. It seems cleaner-cut, somehow. More straightforward, less like lying to himself. Here, he can say what he wishes. He might be tossed overboard, but he’d have his honor, in a strange way.
When he forces himself to look up, Ray’s beaming like the sun after a storm, and then he’s throwing his arms around Nate and kissing his cheek, sloppy and smacking, and Nate finds himself laughing helplessly and trying to fend him off.
“Is this how you recruit all your crew?” he asks, snorting in mock-disapproval and then running a hand over his sweaty hair. He’s-he’s made his choice, there’s no time for regrets, now. There’s a ship to run.
“Yeah, well. Pirates, what can you do,” Ray says shamelessly, eyes sparkling. Then he tips his hat, looks Nate up and down, and winks. Nate sucks in a breath and Ray’s smile, impossibly, widens. “Welcome to the crew, Lieutenant. I do suspect we’ll make good use of you.”
Fandom: Generation Kill
Pairing: Nate/Ray
Rating: PG to PG-13
Word Count: 4600
Summary: ‘We’ve captured Person!’ McGraw had said, smiling broadly, ignoring Nate’s careful suggestion that perhaps this was a touch too easy, that they hadn’t really captured anyone so much as found Person in the rigging of their own ship, examining their sails with a proprietary air. And then the man had cheerfully held out his hands to be clapped in irons. Of course, McGraw had found nothing about this suspicious at all.
Notes/Thanks: I wrote this strange Pirates of the Caribbean-esque fusion thing long, long ago and have finally accepted that it's time to give up fiddling with it. It's not perfect, but there are pirates! :D? :D?
Much love and thanks to brimtoast and laliandra and attempt_unique for convincing me to release this into the wild, and queeniegalore for reading it yea, all those many years ago. ♥
***
“You know,” Person comments, spinning the wheel with Nate feels is alarming casualness. This isn’t a bloody dingy he’s piloting - it’s the Navy’s finest ship in the fleet, and this drunken sot is going to run them aground. Except there’s no land for miles, nothing but sun and sea. Which, to be honest, is sort of the problem. “I’ve been thinking. You’d make a bloody smashing pirate, Nate. You should consider it.”
Nate glares and resumes struggling with his bonds. The knots look deceptively sloppy and simple, but he’s having a damned difficult time wriggling his way out of them. Ray glances back at him, eyes sparkling dark and wicked beneath smeared black kohl. If Nate can just get loose, he’ll be really pleased to blacken them further, with his fists.
“Sure you don’t want to join my sensationally amazing crew, Lieutenant Fick? Mmm? Because it’s a fine fucking life, you know.” He takes a hand off the wheel and starts counting down on his fingers. “Willing girls in every port, all the rum you can drink. Freedom. Oh, and gold, of which, I assure you, we obtain approximately a fuckton of every other week. Those poor fat merchants, held back from top speed with their ships’ bellies bulging with gold and silver and fine wines - we do them a favor, really, relieving them of their burdens. Do-gooders of the sea, that’s us.”
Nate can’t repress a scoff at this, muffled by the gag in his mouth, and Ray looks delighted; he’s been trying to provoke a noise out of his captive for what feels like hours. Nate supposes it was inevitable. He sags in his bonds for a moment, though, and can’t help but feel defeated all over again.
Worse, he’s only encouraged the lunatic.
“Now, Nate,” Ray sings out, beaming and wagging a finger at him admonishingly. “We’ve been tarred with the wrong brush! Give us a fair chance. We hardly rape or murder at all! Okay, well, fine, there’s a bit of murder. What’s life without murder, eh? Boring, that’s what - though you Navy gents do your share of blood-spilling yourselves, don’t deny it. What next? Oh, right, pillaging! Oh, sure, there’s pillaging, lots of that, it's kind of our thing. But come on, that’s a laugh. You’d enjoy it, my hand to God.” Ray presses a hand to his chest, looking appallingly sincere. “Good for the heart, a decent pillage. You haven’t lived until you’ve smashed up a good shopful of china-relieves stress like you wouldn’t believe.”
Ray Person in a china shop. Nate’s brain temporarily blanks, unable to process the scope of such a disaster. When he shakes it off, Person’s talking about sodomy. Again.
“We definitely do plenty of sodomy,” Ray continues airily, giving the wheel a deft spin and eyeing his compass. “But it’s not like we have the market cornered on that, either. I know allllll about you Navy men - kinky repressed bastards, the lot of you. I’ve seen how your Captain McGraw looks at that tit Kasem. You can’t tell me he’s not rogering that on a daily basis.”
Urgh, Nate wants to douse his brain in lye at the very thought; he refuses to speculate on the possible veracity of it. Then Ray looks back at him and, there’s only one word for it, he leers. “What about you, Fick? You ever go on your knees and polish a mast? You’ve a mouth for it, better’n most whores, and believe you me, I have seen a whore or two.”
Nate can feel his face going red, the curse of a fair complexion. He is-he's appalled. He tries to convey this with his eyebrows. Person just grins at him, then looks back at the horizon, tilting his head and making a complicated face. He licks his finger-disgusting, Lord only knows the last time the wretch had a bath, or what he’s touched since-gauging the wind. Then he leaves the wheel and comes to sit beside Nate, shoulder to shoulder. He smells awful, and he lets Nate kick at him for a moment before settling his legs over Nate’s companionably, pinning him down. Nate’s going to have to burn these trousers later, assuming he somehow gets out of this mess.
“Come on, you can tell your old pal Ray-Ray!” Ray wheedles, smiling winningly. He has incongruously nice teeth, Nate notes absently, before he returns his focus to trying to set the bastard on fire by dint of glaring and wishing very, very hard.
“We’re practically old friends, you and me, aren’t we, Lieutenant? We’ve been seeing each other’s sails for ages.” He pats Nate’s shoulder and takes another swig from the bottle of fine Madeira he’d purloined from the captain’s cabin. “Oh, don’t be sore, you nearly caught us a time or two. I mean, it’s not your fault, Nate, you’re just saddled with a bunch of toddlers in tights that don’t know their balls from their belaying pins.”
Nate is not going to laugh. He’s not.
“You’re fucking wasted on them, Nate! It’s a crying fucking shame, and it breaks my heart, so I’m going to make you an offer: join my crew. Oh, don’t roll your eyes. Fine, we do have idiots a-plenty sailing the seas.” Ray leans in conspiratorially; his breath smells like good wine. “But, unlike the Navy, when someone acts a right tit that doesn’t know starboard from larboard, we don’t play Nate the Nursemaid. We just toss ‘em overboard, let Davy Jones sort the buggers out.”
Nate sucks in a breath through his nose and tries not to show how Ray’s words sting. Like a cut from a fine blade, he almost doesn’t feel it at first. Nate the Nursemaid. That’s-not inaccurate.
Ray’s leaned back, regarding him. He shakes his head. “You, you’ve had to take commands from the bastards. You poor lamb.”
The worst thing is that he actually looks like he might be genuinely sympathetic.
If he wasn’t gagged, Nate would make a scathing comment on how Ray currently has no crew and is apparently such an obnoxious and unfit captain that he’d been kicked off his own ship and marooned on some godforsaken dingy outside Port Royal.
Nate really can’t blame them; Ray hasn’t shut up once since his arrest, not for a single bloody minute. When Nate’s not being lectured on the idiocy of His Majesty’s Navy, he’s being educated on the vagaries of seabird migration, or the spread of variant sea shanties throughout the Caribbean, and what these variations indicate about sexual diseases carried by the men singing them. And from there, a diatribe on the diseases themselves, more than Nate had ever wanted to know, ever. He may never have sex again.
If his mouth were free, he definitely wouldn’t be laughing at any of the above, no matter how strangely charming and deranged Person’s rants could be. And Nate definitely isn’t vindictively pleased that Commodore McGraw is probably going ballistic on shore this very moment. Well, that’s if McGraw’s even noticed the missing ship yet, which isn’t out of the question. Person is right on that count.
McGraw, Nate allows himself to think, only feeling a slight twinge at the insubordination of it, is a complete and utter tit.
This latest disaster is only the latest in a long string of them, but it is undeniably the worst yet. The man had made the incomprehensibly stupid decision to give all the crew immediate shoreleave, resulting in the HMS Battalion being unguarded, still fully-rigged out for sailing, with the notorious pirate captain Raymond Person locked in the brig.
Nate had naturally argued against this, even knowing he’d be dressed down for it, and had been brushed aside as usual.
‘We’ve captured Person!’ McGraw had said, smiling broadly, ignoring Nate’s careful suggestion that perhaps this was a touch too easy, that they hadn’t really captured anyone so much as found Person in the rigging of their own ship, examining their sails with a proprietary air. And then the man had cheerfully held out his hands to be clapped in irons. Of course, McGraw had found nothing about this suspicious at all. He’d barely given Person a pat-down before throwing him belowdeck. ‘We’re all looking at medals of commendation, Nate, cheer up, there’s a good lad.’
Nate feels his face flaming again, blood going hot just thinking about it. He’s-okay, admit it, Fick. He’s embarrassed, and furious, that his enemy had seen them like that. That Ray had seen, up close and personal, the utter incompetence of Nate’s superiors, and by extension, of Nate himself.
Their fleet had had orders to capture the motley band of pirates that were plaguing the Spanish Main, including Person’s ship, the Bloody Petunia-the name of which sounds like a joke, but Nate and his men had spent the last several months chasing them fruitlessly about the Spanish Main, with the pirates cat-calling at them and waving cheerfully as they left the Navy in their wake time and time again.
If it wasn’t Captain Schwetje ordering all the ammunition dumped overboard to ‘lighten their load and make better speed,’ it was McGraw deciding they needed to take the pirates by surprise under cover of darkness and then running himself aground on a nearby reef. Or it was, God save them all, Schwetje swinging his ship about the wrong direction and tangling his stern in McGraw’s bow, necessitating in weeks of repairs. They’d been lucky the ships hadn’t foundered, that no men had drowned.
Then finally, after all those months of embarrassment and humiliation, they’d had an actual chance to get some decent intelligence out of the one person who might best know how to chase down the pirates, what their plans for the future might be, where they make port.
Instead they’d left the man alone in the brig, and everyone else had swanned off to get drunk.
Of course. Naturally. Obviously Nate’d been an idiot to expect anything else.
Nate had been the only man standing guard aboard the Battalion when Ray’d made his grand escape. Nate had just been starting to worry about the sudden silence-Ray had been singing non-stop since they’d sequestered him in the brig, and the only thing that’d kept Nate from stuffing cotton in his ears was the fact that the man actually had a pleasant voice, despite his appalling taste in lyrics.
As soon as he’d had the thought, though, he’d felt the cold barrel of a pistol pressed to his temple and there’d been Captain Person, smiling at him pleasantly, a bundle of ropes on his shoulder. Who could have known the bastard could move so silently when need be? He’d been loud as a herd of drunken cattle previously.
The worst of it was that Nate wasn’t even really surprised, not any more. If more men had been aboard, maybe it wouldn’t have happened-though probably it would have. Person’s damnably adaptable. But in any wise, Nate had been the only one to turn down leave. The only one amongst scores of men that seemed to give a damn for his duty in the slightest.
“Really, Nate, we all know you’re the only one of the lot worth a damn. You know it, I know it-well, I doubt they know it, but that’s the point, innit?” Ray’s prattling on, touching on Nate’s thoughts effortlessly. It’s annoying. “But my crew, we like men like you. Men with initiative, with brains. With pretty mouths. But that’s besides the point. We’ll come back to that bit later.” Ray takes a swig of wine, leans in again, widening his eyes. “You can’t honestly tell me you enjoy serving with that lot of fuck-headed prigs, noses up their own arses. Nate, I’d appreciate you. The way you deserve. You’re wasted on them.”
Nate is being seduced by a pirate captain. And what’s worse, he can’t help but be tempted. The Petunia-god, and how the higher-ups back at the Admiralty winced at having to repeat such a ridiculous name, almost enough that Nate has to admire Person for it-is, for a pirate ship, astonishingly decent. Ray hadn’t been lying, before: his crew never murders unarmed citizens, and in fact, they tend to actually spread their misbegotten wealth in the destitute ports that’ve formed some sort of unholy alliance with them.
Nate had started to suspect, somewhat guiltily aware that his thoughts were tending to the treasonous, that the Petunia was the only reasons some of the colonies in the Caribbean haven’t yet been lost to storm and starvation.
Ray seems to sense weakness, because he smirks and leans in closer, and somehow now all Nate can smell is salt and wine and something like good Cuban tobacco, thick and spicy. He closes his eyes and tries to marshal his thoughts. This is how it starts, probably. First he gets used to the smell, next he’ll be shedding his cravat and the bars on his shoulders and covering himself with tattoos and-the sun must be getting to him. He has to stop thinking like this.
Suddenly there are deft fingers at the corner of his mouth, tracing the spit-soaked cloth, the sore skin where the gag is cutting into the sides of Nate’s lips. Nate’s eyes fly open.
“Must be getting a mite thirsty, there, Lieutenant,” Ray murmurs. Nate glares, trying not to show how his heart-rate’s increased. “How about this. You give me your word that you’ll consider tossing aside the complete and utter boring idiocy of a law-abiding life, and I’ll let you have a drink. Generous, right? Just promise that you’ll think about it. Nod for me if you will, Nate.”
No. Nate isn’t going to give in to this. He’s a good man, a decent man. He’s not a pirate. He doesn’t steal, doesn’t rob or kill. He’s taken an oath to the Crown and he has to uphold it.
“Just think about it,” Ray repeats lowly, runs a rough finger along Nate’s cheek, tips up his chin and looks him in the eye. “Come on! Think about teaching us all the error of our ways. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I bet you would. Brad’s getting tetchy having to control the scurvy lot of us all on his lonesome.”
Brad? Oh, Bradley Colbert, Ray’s first officer. The tall blonde one that scowls constantly and had apparently thrown Ray off his own ship, rumored to be an ex-Navy man himself. Nate hums in thought, wondering why Ray doesn’t sound upset at all over the mutiny, why he’s saying Brad’s name with obvious fondness. Apparently Ray’s takes the sound as agreement, because he beams and says, “That’s more like it, Fick,” and begins working the gag out of Nate’s mouth.
Fuck, but it feels good. Nate breathes in gratefully, working his jaw, and then he swallows, finds his tongue.
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” he points out hoarsely, raising an eyebrow at the pirate captain.
“’Course you have!” Ray says cheerfully, and then holds the cool glass of the wine bottle against Nate’s lips. “Swallow for me, now, there’s a good man.” Nate can’t help but obey. He gulps thirstily, red wine still spills out the corners of his mouth. Ray lowers the bottle and smirks, catches the excess with his fingers. Then, carefully catching Nate’s eye, he starts sucking them clean. The sight in no way gives Nate a shiver, or sends a strange feeling of heat down his spine.
“Wine’s not much good for dehydration,” he accuses dizzily, staring at Ray. At Ray, who’s staring back, looking at Nate’s mouth with his eyes half-lidded, and Nate remembers what he’d said about polishing masts. Good lord, could the man be more depraved if he tried?
“Oooh, well, aren’t we particular. Will you agree that you’ve agreed if I agree to fetch you a dram of water, your highness?” Ray inquires, all politeness and smarm, and if Nate could, he’d throw up his arms in exasperation.
“Fine!” he spits out before he can think better of it, and Ray lights up and presses a smacking kiss to Nate’s cheek. Nate goes still and shocked as Ray bounds to his feet.
“Wait right there! Back in a titch.” As though Nate can go anywhere. And then Ray’s off, singing to himself again, but at least it’s a new song this time, something bright and cheerful and not about swollen masts and foul discharges. Nate stares at his boots for a moment as the singing fades off, and he’s surrounded by silence for the first time in hours. As silent as it gets aboard a ship, anyway: the particular quiet that comes with waves and rustling sails and the creak of wood. What is he doing, Nate wonders. How can he-he’s really considering this. He really is. Part of him longs to cast off the yoke of incompetency, to stop being held back by rules and regulations for once. Despite everything he’s stood for his entire life, part of him wants this.
Captain Ray Person, he concludes, closing his eyes against the sun and heat, is a dangerous, dangerous man.
“Falling asleep without me? I know, I know. Life is dull without the dulcet sounds of my voice. Well, perk up, I’m back, my green-eyed pirate-to-be.”
“Do you ever shut up?” Nate inquires, not opening his eyes, and hears a laugh.
“Quiet’s for the dead, Lieutenant Fick. Though I’m told I’m silent enough when I sleep. Might be lying, though, I know plenty of men that talk even through getting some shut-eye. Some even walk.” Then there’s a hand on his chin again, tilting his head, and Nate lets his mouth fall open. “Good,” Ray murmurs, and then Nate’s swallowing cool water, musty and stale and wonderful, and he doesn’t mind this time when it spills over his face and drenches his collar.
“Nate, honestly, you’re a mess,” Ray says, taking the water away and leaning in, smirking. Nate’s still thirsty, still dazed and not thinking, and he chases after the water and winds up almost brushing his mouth against Ray’s. He jerks back at the first touch, feels his cheeks heating. Ray’s eyes are wide. There’s a trace of wetness on his mouth that could be water, or maybe he’s licked his lips - Nate’s not thinking about it.
Ray looks delighted, rocking back on his heels. “Well,” he says, “if I get a kiss for bringing you water, what’ll I get for preparing supper, mmm?”
“You’re incorrigible,” Nate says, fighting the flush rising in his cheeks. “I didn’t mean to - it’s wasn’t a kiss. Shut up.”
“I can’t help that I’m irresistible,” Ray says, mock-apologetically, making a moue and fluttering his lashes, and Nate snorts. Ray grins at him and holds out the water jug again, and Nate doesn’t want to shiver as Ray’s rough fingers brush the corner of his mouth.
“You’re thinking about it,” Ray sing-songs. “Give in. At least admit you’re thinking about it.”
“It wasn’t a kiss,” Nate insists stubbornly, around the tightness in his throat. “A kiss requires, requires intent. That was - an aberration.”
Ray chucks Nate under the chin and coos, “Oh, aren’t you just the cutest fucking thing. Brad will have to kiss my arse when we get back - he’s going to love you. By the way-I was talking about joining up with my crew, sunshine, but I do like that you’re thinking about kisses instead. Top marks.”
“Oh,” Nate replies, flustered. “No, I wasn’t-I was thinking about your crew.” And then realizes his mistake-he’s gone and expressed interest. The slightest chance he had of Ray shutting up and letting it lie is gone, evaporated in the sun and salt air.
Only it’s not quite a mistake - it’s more honest than he’d meant to be. Nate doesn’t want to sincerely be considering this, but Ray has him completely turned around. It’s unfair. It’s not sporting.
Ray smiles, and it’s not a smile Nate’s seen yet. It’s something new, crooked and pleased. “Right, then, that’s settled,” he says, and then he’s slicing off the ropes and settling back on his heels as Nate shakes out his bloodless limbs, winces through the cramps.
He’s dazed, unsure. Possibly Person has drugged him; he shouldn’t feel like this. Shouldn’t be wanting this.
“I’ve only promised to consider joining,” he reminds Ray, striving to sound casual as he stretches. “Of course, it would help your case if you actually had a crew.”
“Huh?” Ray says, and then bursts into laughter; Nate is resolutely not charmed. “Ohhhh, you mean because Brad tossed me overboard in Port Royal? No, don’t be ridiculous, Brad does that all the time. I pissed him off a bit, but he’ll forgive me. He dumps me off ship, I steal a new ship-it’s sort of our thing. You’ll get used to it. Don’t usually nab a ship this prime, though; he’s going to have fucking kittens.”
Nate stares. “This is how you run your crew?”
“Works for us!” Ray answers cheerfully, waggling his eyebrows at Nate, and then grabs Nate by the wrist and hauls him to his feet.
For the scourge of the Spanish Main, Nate thinks, not for the first time, Captain Person is startlingly young, and also, short. He barely comes to Nate’s chin. He’s also barely sane, but sadly, that’s an improvement on Nate’s previous commanders. Person may not be sane, but he’s at least not stupid. Far from it.
“We ran out of coffee, ‘s what caused the trouble,” Ray prattles on, “But now, thanks to you gents, we’ve got a whole new supply. Things should be all sweetness and light for another month or three.”
Nate has literally no response; Person was put off his own ship over a beverage. A beverage. And that was apparently normal. God’s teeth.
“They’ll be waiting for us in the Caymans by now,” Ray continues, fishing out his compass and tilting it, then glancing up at the sky. “Should reach them by tomorrow morning, if the weather holds.”
“The Navy will come after us, you realize.” Even as Nate says it, he knows it’s not true, not really. Oh, McGraw and the men will give chase, but it’s more than likely that they’ll set off in entirely the wrong direction, or that they’ve still not noticed the missing ship at all. Nate’s not there to subtly point the men past his commanders’ mistakes, anymore.
“Ha! I’m not even going to dignify that with a response,” Ray snorts, and then makes his way to the wheel again, leans against it and tilts his hat over his eyes. His smile is wide and wicked and bright; Nate can’t stop looking at it. The man is all bluff and swagger, grandiloquent speeches and flamboyant gestures, and they do an excellent job of distracting people from the fact that he’s actually appallingly competent.
“Okay, so thing is,” Ray says, watching Nate’s face, “as brilliant as I am, which is pretty fucking brilliant, on a ship as big as this one, I could use another hand.” This makes sense. Ray’s been running all over the deck throughout the day, cursing cheerfully all the while, and seems to be making it work; Nate has to admit this supports the brilliance theory. He doubts he could manage as much on his own. But it has to be exhausting, even for Ray Person, who to all appearances has coffee running in his veins rather than blood.
“So, Fick, what’ll it be? Will you slow us down in the misbegotten, poorly placed hope that your priggish, lackwitted commanding officer will manage to take his head out of his own arse and catch up with us, or will you condescend to lend your assistance and throw your lot in with a miscreant group of miserable sea dogs?” Ray pauses, then continues with a cocky grin, like he already knows Nate’s answer. “Of course, that’s assuming a blue-blooded, superfluous officer such as yourself even knows how to tie a sheepshank knot.”
Nate knows when he’s being baited; that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. He bends, picks up one of the ropes that had bound him, and keeps his eyes on Ray’s face as he untwists the strands and makes an eye splice from muscle memory, deftly braiding everything together. He tosses the completed result at Ray’s feet, crosses his arms, and raises an eyebrow.
“Not bad, not bad,” Ray says, and leaves the knot at his feet. He’s grinning, though, jiggling his foot up and down. “But how’re you with trimming a sail?”
“Idle question or request-” Nate asks, and then hesitates, but he’s not one to pretend or look back once he’s made up his mind, and so he finishes it up by saying “Captain?”
But he can’t quite keep his eyes on Ray as his does, looks down at his feet. Stupid, but there are tears prickling his eyes, like he can only truly believe how completely fucked his life had been, how much he’d hated it, until just now. Part of him thinks he’s making the worst mistake of his life, that he’s going to be throw into a world of filth and lechery and murder, but-but it can’t be worse than the life he’d been leading up to this moment. Watching his men tend to the rich, fat merchants, forced ignore the starving families on shore. Following officers that he knows aren’t fit for command of a floating tub, let alone a ship-of-the-line.
And it’s naïve, he knows, but, well. He’s spent the last six hours listening to Ray Person expound on anything and everything happens to pass through his head. Nate considers himself a decent judge of character, and he can’t-he can’t think Ray Person is actually a bad man. Maybe not a good man, not conventionally. And he’s a madman, yes, and probably riddled with disease, but for how much he rants about being a blood-crazed warrior upon the high seas, dealing death and retribution on his enemies, he still sounds outraged and bewildered when describing the wreck of a coastal town, the deaths of the children there.
He talks about drawing and quartering a fellow pirate, someone who’d gone after one of the women on his crew, but he doesn’t have the viciousness or blankness in his voice that McGraw does when he talks about executing prisoners.
Nate notices these things. And at least here he’d not been bound to silence by command and protocol, but by an actual gag. It seems cleaner-cut, somehow. More straightforward, less like lying to himself. Here, he can say what he wishes. He might be tossed overboard, but he’d have his honor, in a strange way.
When he forces himself to look up, Ray’s beaming like the sun after a storm, and then he’s throwing his arms around Nate and kissing his cheek, sloppy and smacking, and Nate finds himself laughing helplessly and trying to fend him off.
“Is this how you recruit all your crew?” he asks, snorting in mock-disapproval and then running a hand over his sweaty hair. He’s-he’s made his choice, there’s no time for regrets, now. There’s a ship to run.
“Yeah, well. Pirates, what can you do,” Ray says shamelessly, eyes sparkling. Then he tips his hat, looks Nate up and down, and winks. Nate sucks in a breath and Ray’s smile, impossibly, widens. “Welcome to the crew, Lieutenant. I do suspect we’ll make good use of you.”