measured time (three to the left, four to the right.)
measured time (three to the left, four to the right.)
pirate ship AU. ryan/brendon. nc-17. ~6500 words. mentions of other pairings.
Patrick helpfully pushes Brendon towards the ladder, too. “If I push you backwards as I’d like to do,” Patrick explains cheerfully, “Then you’d drag him with you, and I don’t need any struggle, so, if you would.”
Brendon climbs the ladder behind Ryan reluctantly, and Ryan would give all his father’s estate to bet that he was already making plans to save him. Or, well, both of them, but mainly Ryan.
*<3 from we_are_cities may 12 07 prompt.
“Must you watch me so intently? It’s ruining my concentration.”
Ryan squints up from watching Brendon’s hands, where they methodically turn the wooden wheel in front of him, flattening and curling metal wires repeatedly.
He blushes, and looks down at his feet. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to,” he says. His shined leather shoes glow as tiny sparks flit around them, and he watches in feigned interest.
“I’ve told you not to sit that close, you’ll get burned,” Brendon comments, a rough voice that still manages to come off as light.
Replies run though Ryan’s mind, fast until he has to shut his eyes against them. The door of the workshop opens, in time to save him, letting in too-harsh light.
“Ryan!” someone calls, and Ryan turns around quickly to meet the face of Spencer, one of the hired help in his fathers home - and also his closest friend. “Ryan, you’ve got to see this! In the harbor, hurry!”
Startled, Ryan jumps up to follow, “Are you coming, too?” he asks Brendon.
Brendon gives the wheel one last crank before slowly wiping his forehead, “I don’t know, I have work to do.”
Spencer calls again, out the door. People rush by him, a collective murmur reaching the insides of the dusty workshop.
“Aren’t you the least bit interested?” Ryan persists.
Brendon quirks an eyebrow, “You probably shouldn’t go, you could get hurt.”
“Come on!” Spencer huffs, one leg poised to run from the doorway.
“Alright, I’ll go see what the fuss is about, Ross, but if I miss any customers…”
“Then I’ll buy everything in the shop,” Ryan says, and he means it.
-
The three rush to the docks among seemingly half of the tiny port town. Ryan trips halfway there, ungracefully flailing his arms to catch his fall, the shock not having time to process before Brendon reaches out and effortlessly catches him by the waist.
“I told you,” Brendon says, “I’ll be blamed somehow if you get hurt, I know it.”
Actually, Ryan wants to say, Spencer would most likely be blamed. His father doesn’t even know he spends most of his days in Brendon’s dimly lit shop, enthralled by fire and able hands. Instead he settles for composing himself and continuing towards the docks carefully watching his feet, and trying to ignore the hand settled on his lower back, ready to catch him if he falls.
Once they reach the view of the inlet, the chaos is overwhelming. A large, foreign ship has docked itself in deeper part, canons peeping from it’s upper deck, and a black flag imprinted with a stark white skull whipping in the wind high above.
“Pirates,” Ryan whispers, clamoring through the crowd to get a better look. Even Brendon follows in interest, closely tailed by Spencer. As they push their way onto the long dock it becomes apparent that a strange man has landed at the top, and already a crowd has formed around him.
“I be Peter the Great,” the man says when Ryan can finally see him. He watches, curiously as the man bites his lower lip, eyes shining almost as if he wants to laugh at what he just announced.
Peter clears his throat, a rough noise that makes Ryan wrinkle his nose in distaste. “I am here to plunder, kidnap and conquer, if you do so mind,” he announces, and the crowds gasps collectively.
A man cheers from directly behind Ryan, leaning forward next to Ryan’s neck and breathing putrid, hot air onto his cheek. “Shiny buckle you got there,” he says, and Ryan flinches when the man’s hand wraps around his chin, closing his mouth.
“Got one!” the man calls.
Peter looks startled, and Ryan’s eyes go wide. “Well,” Peter laughs, “That was easy!” His voice is surprisingly normal and mannered, changed from the rough accent of before. He seems to realize the change and clears his throat again. “Now you know what to expect! Lock up your valuables! Beware!”
He laughs again, and the man behind Ryan pushes him with strong arms down the dock as people scatter to the edge, letting them pass.
Thanks, Ryan thinks, frantically putting all of his weight on his heels to try and get out of the vice grip he is being held in.
“Ryan!” someone calls, and Ryan definitely recognizes Brendon’s voice, echoed by Spencer’s shortly after.
“Hey, get off him,” Brendon growls, closer now, and the man stops, grunting. There is a side boat waiting only a few feet away, and Ryan thinks, yes, he’ll be saved just in time. Saved by Brendon.
Except, then the man with the grip on him lifts him up easily - awkwardly, but easily - and tosses him the few feet into the boat, where three pairs of hands catch him and hold him down. Ryan watches as Brendon and Spencer stop mid-motion to state at him. He stares helplessly back, and feels the new men around him starting to row.
“Brendon!” he calls, but the word is cut off at the end as the hands still around his waist clutch harder.
“Hi,” this man says, “I’m Patrick, I hope I’m not hurting you.” His voice sounds sophisticated, also, and his breath smells a tad better than the last man.
“A little,” Ryan chokes out.
Brendon looks torn on the dock, tugging at his hair with one hand and his handmade coat with the other. Ryan watches, surprised, as Brendon takes a leaping dive into the water, just grabbing the shuttle boat with one hand, making it tip precariously.
“I can’t swim!” Ryan gasps, pushing back into Patrick, who is ordering the two men next to him to ‘shake that man off’.
Brendon clamors over the side before they can do anything, soaking Ryan’s clothing and everything around him.
“You can’t what?” Brendon asks, shaking his head of water.
“Swim!” Ryan says, wide-eyed.
“That skill won’t be needed right now,” Patrick says calmly, as the boat is rowed smoothly into the middle of the bay.
“We have to go back, Ryan,” Brendon says, squinting against the sunlight. Then he mouths, ‘jump.’
Ryan thinks Brendon may have gone temporarily insane. Did he not understand the concept of not being able to swim? Not being able to swim means drowning. Drowning means death. It’s a simple concept, really. He shakes his head frantically. “I am not!”
Brendon gives him an incredulous look, motioning over the side. “Death or swimming back, Mr. Ross.”
Patrick chuckles behind Ryan. “Look,” he says, “we’re at the boat, if you’d just climb -”
Brendon cuts him off, grabbing Ryan’s hand, “Come on!”
Ryan scrambles backwards, there is a ladder right within his reach that leads to something more stable than a shuttle boat - although still not land.
He reaches up and hoists himself as far as he can with Brendon still tugging on his other hand. Patrick helpfully pushes Brendon towards the ladder, too. “If I push you backwards as I’d like to do,” Patrick explains cheerfully, “Then you’d drag him with you, and I don’t need more struggle, so, if you would.”
Brendon climbs the ladder behind Ryan reluctantly, and Ryan would give all his father’s estate to bet that he was already making plans to save him. Or, well, both of them, but mainly Ryan.
-
The deck of the pirate ship is nothing like Ryan has ever read about or imagined. It’s clean, like the British Navy boats he remembers being on board as a child, and there is even one man scrubbing at the far end.
“Ho!” he shouts in greeting as they emerge, and waves his rag at them.
“Jon!” one of the shuttle rowers calls as he hoists himself up, “Look! We kidnapped people!”
Ryan turns around to look at the man, who sways as he talks, even though the bay is very clam. Ryan’s eyes follow him as he walks in a weaving pattern over to Jon, sinking down and wrapping one arm around Jon’s shoulders.
“So you did, William,” Jon says, going back to scrubbing the floor and letting William lean on him.
“That’s right,” William says, and Ryan gets the distinct impression he might be drunk, “I did, they’re pretty, aren’t they?” He leers over in their direction and Ryan can feel Brendon shift uneasily beside them.
Patrick takes both of Ryan’s hands while William saunters off up-deck, “We’re just going to take you down, so you can’t escape, if that’s alright.”
“No! That’s not alright!” Brendon exclaims from next to them, where his own hands are being held in place by another man. “I demand you let us go.”
Ryan watches Patrick’s face as it contorts into a grin, “I’m just trying to be polite, I wasn’t really asking.”
“Who is your captain, then?” Brendon asks, wiggling his arms around his back forcefully, so the man behind him has to bite his lip in concentration to keep him from escaping.
“He’s on shore, and will see you when he arrives back, now if you will.”
Ryan lets himself be led next to Brendon, watching his feet so he won’t notice the looks Brendon is throwing his direction. “This is your fault,” Brendon mutters, “I told you something would happen.”
“Well, I’m not hurt,” Ryan offers helpfully as they are met with a door, which Patrick maneuvers open.
“Oh, well, that’s good,” Brendon says in a falsely cheery voice. Ryan cringes.
-
They wait in what looks like the captains office cabin for hours, until the one porthole that neither of them could fit though lets in blood red light that turns into gray and then into black.
Brendon says nothing to Ryan, and sits with his legs stretched out in the desk chair, eyes strolling over maps and gadgets of the sea that do not interest him in the least.
Ryan spends the time wandering the extensive collection of books and artifacts lining the shelves. He decides that he has not wandered upon a normal pirate ship, but something else. Perhaps a dream.
The cabin door opens just as Ryan sits down with a leather-bound and seemingly gold-embossed book. He gets to the conclusion it is written in Latin before the interruption.
Peter from the docks, who proclaimed himself to be ‘Peter the Great’ enters though, locking the door behind him. “It’s a wonderful night to set sail, really, couldn’t have timed it better,” he says, wandering over to his desk.
Brendon’s eyes flash, but he says nothing. Peter looks over him silently, before turning to Ryan.
“You,” he says, with a wave of his hand, “you are some prize! I came to scare the governor of this little port, and what better way of doing so than having the luck to capture his charming son?”
This time Brendon snorts, and Ryan can hear him mumble ‘charming’ under his breath.
Ryan thinks of the ways he could handle this, “So, um, you’ve scared my father and you can bring us back now, right?” he tries, fidgeting with the book in his hands.
“No,” Peter replies, “It would be much more fun to take you along, your ransom will only rise with time, I’m sure.”
Brendon clears his throat, obviously to comment on this statement, but Peter continues, “I’ll have Patrick escort you to your cabin, I’m sure you will find it quite nice.”
“Also,” he says when Patrick enters, “I hope you boys like warm weather and sunlight! Hopefully you don’t burn easily.”
Ryan thinks of his fair skin the entire trip to their ‘cabin’. The ‘cabin’ turns out to be a musty, salty smelling room with an open porthole from which water is leaking, and two beds seemingly attached to the walls.
“It gets a little rough at sea sometimes,” Patrick comments, pushing them inside, “I hope you don’t get seasick.” He waves though a crack in the door, closes it, and apparently locks it.
Brendon kicks at it, before bouncing back on his other foot and into the bed.
The boat sways, knocking Ryan backwards and into the wall, before sliding him onto his own bed. It’s dark except for one candle burning and the moonlight coming through the porthole. “Ow,” Ryan says pitifully, and curls up on top of the ragged, smelly blanket on top of his ‘bed’.
Which, to Ryan’s dismay is actually more wood.
-
Ryan wakes up with a stiff back and a crick in his neck, which he absently thinks is because he feel asleep at the kitchen table in the house-part of the back of Brendon’s workshop.
Then he realizes his nose burns, his head hurts, and the smell assaulting his nostrils is absolutely nothing like the fire and fried bacon smell of Brendon’s.
He goes to sit up abruptly, and finds himself on the floor.
Ryan hears Brendon’s laughter from the other bed.
“I can’t swim!” he mimics from his bed, peering down at Ryan. His face changes from laughter to annoyance.
-
A few hours later, after Ryan and Brendon have stared at the walls and out of the porthole to long for their own good, Patrick enters, a bowl with a piece of bread in each of his hands.
“Breakfast,” he says unnecessarily, keeping his footing easily as the boat lurches from one side to the next.
Ryan’s stomach growls, and he grabs for the food. Brendon gulps his down immediately, and un-ceremonially shoves the bread in his mouth.
“The captain would like to see you when you are done,” Patrick says to Ryan, and Ryan looks at Brendon questioningly.
Brendon looks out the porthole.
“Um, very well,” Ryan comments as best as he can from around a mouthful of salty bread. He stands up warily, one hand on the edge of the wooden bed, and the other sticking out for balance.
Patrick laughs at this. “You’ll get sea legs soon enough,” he says and walks out of the door, locking it once again after Ryan is out.
Ryan’s stomach growls some more as it remembers the not-so-satisfying taste of his soup and bread while he walks. “Do you serve better food?” he asks, rubbing at it.
It seems Patrick finds everything funny, because he laughs in his light way and shakes his head to himself.
When they enter the captains cabin, Patrick is dismissed.
“Would you like some cake, Ryan?” Peter asks and Ryan fidgets with his shirt hem (now actually dry) in the doorway.
“Cake?” he asks back, stomach rumbling at the prospect.
“Anything you’d like,” Peter says, leaning back against his desk, a crooked smile on his face.
-
Patrick escorts Ryan back to the little locked cabin when Pete is done with him. Ryan follows him dazedly, stomach quite full and an assortment of leather books in his arms.
He enters as the boat rocks in a dramatic shift, and tumbles to the floor with his books accompanying him. Brendon sits still on his bed for a second, knees up by his chin, before deciding to bend down and help. (Ryan knew he would.)
“Why is your hair sticking up like that?” Brendon asks as Ryan looks up at him, slowly gathering his books and locking his knees in case they rock violently again. “And why are your cheeks so red?”
Ryan looks down at the floor, pushing himself up onto his bed with one hand.
“No reason,” he says, embarrassed and flushing more. Brendon doesn’t press, so Ryan engrosses himself in the first book on the stack - about pirate legends - and tries not to remember Peter’s hands - the wrong hands - on him, and what he whispered in his ear.
-
Around the fifth day, when Ryan comes back from another visit to the Captain’s quarters, flushed again but wearing new clothes - tighter than he has worn before - he comes back to an empty cabin.
“Where is Brendon?” he asks, turning around to Patrick.
Patrick noticeably avoids looking at Ryan’s swollen lips. “Up on deck, probably, I was given orders to tell him he could roam around freely. As can you.”
Ryan brightens, “So no more locks?”
“No,” Patrick says, looking solemn, “It was fun locking you in while it lasted.” Then he laughs. Again. The same sound as every other time.
Ryan finds Brendon at the bow of the boat, on the top-top deck, (he can’t quite remember what the one book called it, but he’ll look it up later,) staring into the endless ocean.
“Patrick told me you were up here,” Ryan says, perching beside him.
“I wonder what has happened to my shop.” Brendon comments sagely, brow furrowed, “Or all of my customers, and that cat I used to feed.”
Ryan shrugs in the breeze, “We’ll get back, though, won’t we?”
Brendon lets out a strained laugh, on a different octave than the type Patrick lets out. “Who knows,” he says flippantly, “you seem to be doing fine, you’ve been out of the cabin a lot more than me.”
He turns to study Ryan closely, and once again Ryan settles for admiring his (now) worn leather shoes.
“When you are with the captain,” he asks slowly, pronouncing each word deliberately lest they be lost to the breeze or the sails high above them, “Do you…” he trails off, seemingly unable to finish his question.
Ryan swallows, shrugs at his feet.
Brendon leaves.
-
When he goes back, Ryan finds Brendon curled into the small corner of his bed, the ratty blanket covering his face.
“Brendon?” he asks, nearing the lump with one hand against the wall, “Are you okay?”
Ryan has trouble drifting off to sleep, almost falls into slumber when he hears Brendon mumble, “I don’t really understand what it is that you do, with the captain, but it just seems…” he trails off again.
“Yes, it does,” Ryan agrees around a yawn, he whispers, “I don’t want to think about it.” It’s so low that Brendon would have had to have been straining just to hear each syllable, but he does.
“Do you have to do it?” Brendon asks, voice a little louder like the start of a conversation.
Ryan thinks about it, “I don’t know,” he says honestly, and picks at the blanket around his legs until he is pretty sure he feels something move up his finger.
“Do you want to?” Brendon questions from his corner.
Ryan takes his time to answer, until he thinks maybe Brendon has fallen asleep, under the impression that he himself had fallen asleep. “Not with him,” he whispers.
“Oh,” Brendon whispers back.
-
Jon, the deckhand is extraordinarily pleasant, Ryan finds. He is also perceptive.
Usually Ryan sits on the upper deck on the bow-end, where there is shade from the sails, and watches the crew at work while reading. Jon will stand beside him, leaning on his broom and they will chat.
“So, you go to the Captain a lot,” he comments one day. Ryan lifts his feet so Jon can just under them, and has just enough grace to look a little embarrassed.
“I used to, too. It stopped when you came along,” Jon says, peering down at Ryan from under his messy hair.
“He used to… with you?” Ryan asks, slowly.
“Yes, but he gets bored. At the next port I’m sure he’ll give up on you and find someone else.” Jon smiles, and goes back to sweeping.
Ryan is relieved.
He tells Ryan what Jon said that night, even though they haven’t brought up Peter for a while now.
Brendon says ‘oh’ again in response, and only looks up when he’s done twisting the three pieces of metal-wire he acquired from somewhere. It looks like nothing Ryan can recognize, so he switches the subject.
“How long have we been here?” he asks.
Brendon takes more time to squint at the wire in his hand, “I don’t know, think about the soup-rotation, the first night we were here we had the water-salt one, and we’ve had that about four times since.”
“Okay,” Ryan replies, but doesn’t understand.
-
The first port they arrive at is somewhere Ryan has never heard of. He’s not allowed off, but Peter and most of the crew seem to be welcomed heartily by a crowd of people on the dock. They all laugh as Peter introduces himself as ‘Peter the Great’, and Ryan and Brendon listen to him tell of his ‘adventures’ as he walks down the dock, until they can no longer hear.
“We could sneak off here,” Brendon tells Ryan as they watch the last of the crowd disappear from the dock, “The crew won’t be back for ages.”
Ryan looks nervously at him, “Where would we go?” he asks.
Jon pops out from seemingly nowhere behind them, “I don’t know where you’d get in Pete’s home village, he’s bound to be telling everyone about you.”
Brendon sighs, and runs a hand over his face.
“When you do decide to escape, I wouldn’t mind going either,” Jon adds, staring back at the ocean, “This life just isn’t for me.”
The three of them stare off into different directions. Ryan watches the small people on the beach sitting with each other and children chasing after one another. He misses his luxury bed and dinners cooked depending on the mood he was in. Misses clothes laid out for him and Spencer by his side at all times in the house.
Most of all he misses watching Brendon work. He turns to Brendon, and asks, “Do you miss your workshop?”
Strangely, Brendon brings his palms up so he can see them, and studies them. Ryan looks at them, too. Where he once admired rough, hard skin there is now smoother tight skin that stretches over fingers and palms.
Not really thinking, Ryan takes Brendon’s hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over the lines etched into skin. Brendon keeps still, almost holding his breath, and neither of them notices Jon quietly walk away.
Ryan looks up at Brendon, still with his hands around Brendon’s. “They’ve, um, become smooth since we left,” he says, clearing his throat several times, his own hands burning.
Brendon rolls his jaw around, looking down at their hands, “Yeah, and you have long fingers. I, uh, never noticed.”
Ryan can feel his cheeks get hot, and he can’t decide if he can drop Brendon’s hands, or if he is supposed to keep holding them.
“I think I’ll go back down to the cabin, it will probably be cooler,” Brendon says after a beat. Ryan drops his hands.
“Yeah, it probably is and I can,” Ryan starts, and then realizes it might be more awkward down below deck then above, “I can stay up here with Jon.”
Brendon rubs his hands along his thighs, and Ryan can’t help but watch, “No, it’s okay, you can come down to, if you want to.”
Ryan keeps watching, and forms an answer slowly in his mind until Brendon takes his hands away and clasps them behind his back, where Ryan can’t see. “I’m good, it’s okay up here.”
“Are you sure, because I’m going and it would be okay,” Brendon says, turning his body but not his head.
Well, Ryan thinks, if he doesn’t mind it would be cooler; they just don’t have to look at each other. He reaches up to brush a strand of hair from his forehead before saying, “Yeah, maybe I will, that would be nice.”
Brendon seems startled for a second, and goes to say something, only he lets out one indiscernible syllable and switches to saying, “Okay.”
“Oh, wait, did you not want?” Ryan asks. The whole situation is utterly confusing.
“What?” Brendon asks back. They both laugh.
“Never mind,” Ryan says, “I’m going to talk with Jon.”
“I’ll go do that, too, I think,” Brendon says.
They spend the afternoon talking to Jon about his life. He fell in love when he was ten-and-seven years with a girl who walked by his father’s woodworking shop everyday. She always had some flowers when she walked by, Jon tells them. When he finally got the courage to go and talk to her she ended up being one of the noble daughters, and never walked by again.
“Moral of that story,” Jon says when he is finished and the sun is setting to welcome the crew back aboard, “Is that I shouldn’t have waited.”
“What?” Ryan asks, “I thought it would be not to fall in love with someone like that.”
Jon laughs, “No, she would have loved me had I not waited until the very last minute of your youth to tell her I was in love with her, I should have started in the beginning, kissed her lips, and told her I would like to get to know her.”
“You would have been slapped,” Brendon says, smiling. He peers over the side of the boat, onto the dock, “and look, here they come now.”
Peter climbs aboard first, swaying a little of his own accord, his small arm wrapped around a young boy, who looks both nervous and enthralled and follows Pete down to another deck.
Patrick comes up next, looking rather annoyed and walking without the slightest sway to his step down below deck as well.
A drunken song floats over the side of the boat, spilling onto the deck in the form of the rest of the crew. When William spots Jon he stumbles over, singing disjointed lyrics about a sea-maiden and a boat of mermaids.
“We’ve got another one,” he slurs to Jon, not noticing Ryan nor Brendon, “Darren, pretty little kid for the captain again.”
Brendon snorts, and Ryan feels relived, and maybe a little annoyed that he was that replaceable. Not that he wanted Peter’s hands all over him or his lips rough against his neck, but still.
William tucks his head against Jon’s cheek, “Why dun I get any pretty ones?” he asks Jon mournfully, giving Ryan a crooked smile before untangling himself and wandering off to another shipmate.
-
“So,” Brendon says when both he and Ryan are curled up on their wooden slabs. It’s much to warm now for the ratty blankets, so they use them for pillows, bringing them up deck every day to clean as Jon had advised them.
Ryan makes a muffled noise, and turns over, warm in his long pants and still tight-fitting shirt.
“You’ve been replaced,” Brendon comments. He sounds as if he’s talking into his blanket.
“I didn’t know I was so easily replaceable,” Ryan mutters, the annoyance actually getting to him now.
Brendon laughs, “Are you annoyed?” he asks.
“No, I’m not,” Ryan says, although he knows he sounds childish.
The ship gently rocks in port, and Ryan counts three to the left and four to the right before Brendon says anything else.
“You aren’t, you know, replaceable,” Brendon says, still into his blanket.
Ryan doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t. He just pulls at the hem of his shirt, before sitting up and hunching over to take it off. Somehow, even in the dark he can feel Brendon’s eyes on him.
“Do you remember,” Brendon asks a few beats later, once Ryan has settled down again, “When I asked you about, um, Peter?”
Again, Ryan doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing and draws a swirl of patterns on his stomach.
Brendon continues, “You said, oh, never mind.”
“No, no,” Ryan urges lightly, “I know what I said.”
“Oh,” Brendon says. Ryan wonders if that will be the end of the topic, much like the others before it, but then there is a creak and Brendon is hunched over his bed.
“Out of curiosity, did you mean there was someone else?” He asks, and Ryan starts.
Many possibilities of what could be said run through his mind, but he just ends up wide-eyed, even though Brendon can’t see his expression in the dark.
Brendon seems content to keep standing where he is, and let Ryan be silent, so he continues after a few seconds, “I never understood why you came to my workshop everyday, but I let you. It was fascinating the way you watched me, and how you could sit still for so long without doing anything but observing.” He pauses, and Ryan realizes his hand has moved (of it’s own accord) to where Brendon’s hand was resting on the bed. Ryan makes no sign of moving it, so Brendon continues. “I used to think about it a lot, too much, and then I just figured you had nothing better to do. Then you started staying for dinner, and falling asleep on my table, and in my chair, and I thought, maybe something, and then.”
Brendon stops, and Ryan can almost picture him having a shocked expression. He had never heard Brendon talk so openly all at once.
All Ryan can think of to say is, “Brendon,” and act on the rash decision his mind has already made, to tug Brendon town by the arm resting on the bed and kiss him.
The first meeting of their lips isn’t really anything like Ryan had imagined. Somehow, he’d kept fantasies tucked deep in his head of kissing in the workshop, Ryan leaning forward in his chair and Brendon meeting him halfway over the turning wheel.
Instead, it’s hot and hard, the warmth radiating off Brendon as he slips down next to Ryan almost unbearable against the exposed skin already touched by humid air. He can’t get enough though.
Brendon twists his fingers into Ryan’s hair, and Ryan retaliates by nipping at Brendon’s bottom lip. It’s only when Brendon reaches a hand around to settle with a squeeze on Ryan’s bare hip that he makes a sound, because it’s the hand he’s been waiting for, the right one. Not the small, too-sure hands of a pirate captain or his own, pressing too hard at the wrong angle.
Brendon makes muffled noises around Ryan’s lips and tongue, until Ryan realizes he’s trying to say things - it really seems like the most inopportune moment - and he pulls away.
“That’s, this,” Brendon says, or, tries to say.
“Yes,” Ryan rasps out - thinks, obviously -and pulls Brendon closer.
He’s not sure if it’s okay, but reaches his hand between his and Brendon’s bodies, tugging at the lace of Brendon’s loose pants, already feeling Brendon straining against them. Brendon makes a surprised noise that Ryan files away, and slides down a little, lapping at Ryan’s neck.
“Um,” Ryan says a few seconds later, arching his neck at the sensation of Brendon’s tongue on his pulse point. It’s nice, but his finger is somehow tangled in Brendon’s pants and it is so not going well.
Brendon grunts as Ryan wiggles his hand, trying to get the finger out before his circulation is cut off, and then lets out a low laugh when he realizes the problem.
“Here,” he says, and Ryan is enthralled by the tone of his voice - different from any time he’s ever heard it, “I’ll get it.”
Brendon slips his hand and effectively undoes his laces, freeing Ryan’s hand. The loose pants slip down easily, and Ryan wishes he could see for just that moment. (Definitely not the moment before.) Brendon easily undoes Ryan’s pants as well, and tugs at them from the hip.
Ryan’s pants are much tighter, a gift from Peter, and they drag deliciously over his dick as Brendon gets them all the way down. He bucks up a little at the sensation, and as soon as he kicks the material from his ankles Brendon’s palm is wrapped around the base of his dick, just slowly squeezing.
And, wow.
“I’ve wanted to do this for a while, now,” Brendon says, pushing himself back up the bed. Ryan fleetingly wonders how Brendon manages to say so many words together at once, before the thought disappears completely and he turns his head to meet Brendon’s lips again.
Really, Ryan is fine with what Brendon is doing right now. So very fine. But Brendon stops, his hand stilling and Ryan pushes his hips up impatiently into Brendon’s fingers.
“I want to,” Brendon grates out, although he pauses a while before finishing, swirling his thumb over the head of Ryan’s cock absently, “Fuck you, please.”
Ryan’s eyes roll back, and he tries to tell Brendon yes, okay, please, want, but he isn’t sure it comes out at all.
Brendon resituates himself, looming over Ryan - just a large shadow with a few stark highlights where the minimal light from the porthole is seeping in. He reaches his hand up, sweeping his knuckles against Ryan’s jaw line affectionately before placing two of his fingers at Ryan’s lips.
Automatically, Ryan opens for Brendon’s fingers. They taste of salt and a little bit of himself, but mostly of Brendon, and he sucks on them forcefully, coating liberally and thinking of doing many other things with his mouth.
After a bit, where Brendon rocks back against Ryan’s thigh un-consciously groaning at the wet suction noises Ryan’s mouth makes he pulls back his hand, and sits back. Ryan instinctively opens his legs wider, one hanging over the edge and dangling near the floor below.
At the first press of Brendon’s fingers, Ryan aches back. Brendon teases, but Ryan just wants. He’s okay, he’s used to it. Had enough of fingers from himself, and too little prep from Peter that he just wants to take, now. Please.
“Brendon,” Ryan moans, as Brendon’s first finger slips in to the base. It’s not wonderful yet, but all Ryan can think is that it’s Brendon - finally, and Brendon’s fingers - the finger’s he watched day in and day out, to memorize and go home to, safe in his bed with himself from the first time on imagining this. This.
“Yeah?” Brendon asks. His next finger slips in beside the first, and Ryan pushes down on them. “I’ve never done this before,” Brendon admits, and his voice has a tint of amazement to it.
Ryan wonders again how Brendon is managing to think.
“But, um, Jon kind of told me what to do,” Brendon finishes.
Ryan absently files the statement away to think about later, but says, “Okay, now, please.”
Brendon nods, and even though Ryan can’t see he feels it in the motion of Brendon’s fingers. “Can you?” Brendon asks, and Ryan is kind of sure what Brendon is asking, so he whispers ‘okay’ and waits.
Brendon scoots forward awkwardly, taking his knees from between Ryan’s legs to around his chest, straddling him, and Ryan groans at the pressure. He reaches out and wraps his hand around the base of Brendon’s dick, taking a second to revel in the groan that spills from Brendon’s lips, face turned up into the darkness, before lifting his neck into a awkward position to take the head into his mouth.
He makes fairly quick work, coating enough until he knows that he can take it. “Please,” he groans, taking one last swipe at the underside.
Brendon re-adjusts himself again, but does it more efficiently. Ryan helpfully lifts the leg dangling over the side of the bed onto Brendon’s shoulder, and Brendon presses against him in response.
“Please, now,” Ryan says again, and Brendon pushes forward, slipping in one delicious and full inch at a time.
The bed groans against it’s nails as Brendon starts to move, it almost distracts Ryan from the wonderful pressure with thoughts of crashing down to the floor. He pushes up harder against Brendon just in case they do end up falling.
The humid air sticks to skin, and Brendon moves quicker the warmer it seems to get. The closer he gets - Ryan notices - the longer and deeper he stays inside Ryan, which is nice. Everything is nice.
Brendon lets out a moan, and takes one hand off Ryan’s hip, roughly encircling it around Ryan’s dick. Caught off guard, Ryan shudders into his orgasm, clenching tight around Brendon and causing him to let out a final groan.
Brendon slips out with a tired noise, and curls into Ryan’s side despite the heat. “If the water was calm in the port,” he says groggily, but happily, “I think it just got a little rough for the ships inhabitants.”
Ryan crinkles his nose at this, and halfheartedly flicks at Brendon’s arm.
“I want to go home now,” Ryan mumbles before drifting off, and Brendon murmurs his agreement.
-
Jon looks at them both with a smirk in the morning when they arrive above deck. “I knew I should have placed that bet with Patrick,” he says, deadpan and Ryan thinks he might actually be serious.
The new boy, Darren, comes out minutes after, and Jon waves him over.
“You should probably get off with us at the next port, kid,” Jon tells him, “Pete needs to learn that there is someone who actually wants him.”
Darren just stretches his arms, following Jon, Ryan, and Brendon’s gaze to Patrick who is at the wheel across from them.
“Where are you headed?”
Jon shrugs, and calls across to Patrick.
“I honestly don’t know,” Patrick shouts, his words slightly distorted by the wind the sails have picked up, “Where ever the wind takes us.”
-
It takes a week and a half to get to the next port, and Ryan recognizes it. “I went here when I was younger and my mother was ill,” he says, and Jon smiles.
“Well, someone should be able to tell us how to get to where we belong, then.”
Brendon squeezes Ryan’s hand and they follow Jon and Darren down the dock. William calls something from the ship’s deck that sounds like, “Yo, Ho, Ho,” and Jon laughs, waving from behind.
-
Spencer sees the Ryan, Brendon, and Jon first when they walk up to the estate.
(Darren stayed behind at the dock, engrossed in conversation with a young girl who sold sea-shell necklaces and wanted to see the world.)
He runs out, and twirls Ryan around, then nods to Brendon. “Thank you for bringing him back.”
Ryan learns that his father passed while he was gone, but he is not terribly upset by the news - they were never close. He wishes that he could have said goodbye, though.
He has his own private memorial in the small garden of the estate, gathering his thoughts. Spencer and Jon watch from a window, noticeably standing too close, but neither seem to mind.
Brendon joins him afterwards, a small box in his hand. “Here,” he says, “I made this on the ship, it’s just something small.”
He seems awkward, and Ryan opens it to find a wire-twisted sculpture in the shape of a key, and from the bottom of the key a dangling heart. He can’t find words, so he kissed Brendon instead, and hopes that it says enough.
* I wrote this all in one sitting with no direction whatsoever. I don’t understand why that is what it takes for me to write fic, but this took from about 10:30PM to 2:00AM. I never even thought about pirates until my power went out and then I’m not sure what happened.
* There are lots of other scenes/storylines planned out in my head for afterwards, including a whole Peter/Patrick realization fic, a small Greta/Darren inclusion because I think that would be adorable, and obviously a Jon/Spencer companion that tells of how they fall in love and the adventures Jon leads Spence on. -shakes head- It’s late, I’m tired. I have no actual internet access.
<3!
pirate ship AU. ryan/brendon. nc-17. ~6500 words. mentions of other pairings.
Patrick helpfully pushes Brendon towards the ladder, too. “If I push you backwards as I’d like to do,” Patrick explains cheerfully, “Then you’d drag him with you, and I don’t need any struggle, so, if you would.”
Brendon climbs the ladder behind Ryan reluctantly, and Ryan would give all his father’s estate to bet that he was already making plans to save him. Or, well, both of them, but mainly Ryan.
*<3 from we_are_cities may 12 07 prompt.
“Must you watch me so intently? It’s ruining my concentration.”
Ryan squints up from watching Brendon’s hands, where they methodically turn the wooden wheel in front of him, flattening and curling metal wires repeatedly.
He blushes, and looks down at his feet. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to,” he says. His shined leather shoes glow as tiny sparks flit around them, and he watches in feigned interest.
“I’ve told you not to sit that close, you’ll get burned,” Brendon comments, a rough voice that still manages to come off as light.
Replies run though Ryan’s mind, fast until he has to shut his eyes against them. The door of the workshop opens, in time to save him, letting in too-harsh light.
“Ryan!” someone calls, and Ryan turns around quickly to meet the face of Spencer, one of the hired help in his fathers home - and also his closest friend. “Ryan, you’ve got to see this! In the harbor, hurry!”
Startled, Ryan jumps up to follow, “Are you coming, too?” he asks Brendon.
Brendon gives the wheel one last crank before slowly wiping his forehead, “I don’t know, I have work to do.”
Spencer calls again, out the door. People rush by him, a collective murmur reaching the insides of the dusty workshop.
“Aren’t you the least bit interested?” Ryan persists.
Brendon quirks an eyebrow, “You probably shouldn’t go, you could get hurt.”
“Come on!” Spencer huffs, one leg poised to run from the doorway.
“Alright, I’ll go see what the fuss is about, Ross, but if I miss any customers…”
“Then I’ll buy everything in the shop,” Ryan says, and he means it.
-
The three rush to the docks among seemingly half of the tiny port town. Ryan trips halfway there, ungracefully flailing his arms to catch his fall, the shock not having time to process before Brendon reaches out and effortlessly catches him by the waist.
“I told you,” Brendon says, “I’ll be blamed somehow if you get hurt, I know it.”
Actually, Ryan wants to say, Spencer would most likely be blamed. His father doesn’t even know he spends most of his days in Brendon’s dimly lit shop, enthralled by fire and able hands. Instead he settles for composing himself and continuing towards the docks carefully watching his feet, and trying to ignore the hand settled on his lower back, ready to catch him if he falls.
Once they reach the view of the inlet, the chaos is overwhelming. A large, foreign ship has docked itself in deeper part, canons peeping from it’s upper deck, and a black flag imprinted with a stark white skull whipping in the wind high above.
“Pirates,” Ryan whispers, clamoring through the crowd to get a better look. Even Brendon follows in interest, closely tailed by Spencer. As they push their way onto the long dock it becomes apparent that a strange man has landed at the top, and already a crowd has formed around him.
“I be Peter the Great,” the man says when Ryan can finally see him. He watches, curiously as the man bites his lower lip, eyes shining almost as if he wants to laugh at what he just announced.
Peter clears his throat, a rough noise that makes Ryan wrinkle his nose in distaste. “I am here to plunder, kidnap and conquer, if you do so mind,” he announces, and the crowds gasps collectively.
A man cheers from directly behind Ryan, leaning forward next to Ryan’s neck and breathing putrid, hot air onto his cheek. “Shiny buckle you got there,” he says, and Ryan flinches when the man’s hand wraps around his chin, closing his mouth.
“Got one!” the man calls.
Peter looks startled, and Ryan’s eyes go wide. “Well,” Peter laughs, “That was easy!” His voice is surprisingly normal and mannered, changed from the rough accent of before. He seems to realize the change and clears his throat again. “Now you know what to expect! Lock up your valuables! Beware!”
He laughs again, and the man behind Ryan pushes him with strong arms down the dock as people scatter to the edge, letting them pass.
Thanks, Ryan thinks, frantically putting all of his weight on his heels to try and get out of the vice grip he is being held in.
“Ryan!” someone calls, and Ryan definitely recognizes Brendon’s voice, echoed by Spencer’s shortly after.
“Hey, get off him,” Brendon growls, closer now, and the man stops, grunting. There is a side boat waiting only a few feet away, and Ryan thinks, yes, he’ll be saved just in time. Saved by Brendon.
Except, then the man with the grip on him lifts him up easily - awkwardly, but easily - and tosses him the few feet into the boat, where three pairs of hands catch him and hold him down. Ryan watches as Brendon and Spencer stop mid-motion to state at him. He stares helplessly back, and feels the new men around him starting to row.
“Brendon!” he calls, but the word is cut off at the end as the hands still around his waist clutch harder.
“Hi,” this man says, “I’m Patrick, I hope I’m not hurting you.” His voice sounds sophisticated, also, and his breath smells a tad better than the last man.
“A little,” Ryan chokes out.
Brendon looks torn on the dock, tugging at his hair with one hand and his handmade coat with the other. Ryan watches, surprised, as Brendon takes a leaping dive into the water, just grabbing the shuttle boat with one hand, making it tip precariously.
“I can’t swim!” Ryan gasps, pushing back into Patrick, who is ordering the two men next to him to ‘shake that man off’.
Brendon clamors over the side before they can do anything, soaking Ryan’s clothing and everything around him.
“You can’t what?” Brendon asks, shaking his head of water.
“Swim!” Ryan says, wide-eyed.
“That skill won’t be needed right now,” Patrick says calmly, as the boat is rowed smoothly into the middle of the bay.
“We have to go back, Ryan,” Brendon says, squinting against the sunlight. Then he mouths, ‘jump.’
Ryan thinks Brendon may have gone temporarily insane. Did he not understand the concept of not being able to swim? Not being able to swim means drowning. Drowning means death. It’s a simple concept, really. He shakes his head frantically. “I am not!”
Brendon gives him an incredulous look, motioning over the side. “Death or swimming back, Mr. Ross.”
Patrick chuckles behind Ryan. “Look,” he says, “we’re at the boat, if you’d just climb -”
Brendon cuts him off, grabbing Ryan’s hand, “Come on!”
Ryan scrambles backwards, there is a ladder right within his reach that leads to something more stable than a shuttle boat - although still not land.
He reaches up and hoists himself as far as he can with Brendon still tugging on his other hand. Patrick helpfully pushes Brendon towards the ladder, too. “If I push you backwards as I’d like to do,” Patrick explains cheerfully, “Then you’d drag him with you, and I don’t need more struggle, so, if you would.”
Brendon climbs the ladder behind Ryan reluctantly, and Ryan would give all his father’s estate to bet that he was already making plans to save him. Or, well, both of them, but mainly Ryan.
-
The deck of the pirate ship is nothing like Ryan has ever read about or imagined. It’s clean, like the British Navy boats he remembers being on board as a child, and there is even one man scrubbing at the far end.
“Ho!” he shouts in greeting as they emerge, and waves his rag at them.
“Jon!” one of the shuttle rowers calls as he hoists himself up, “Look! We kidnapped people!”
Ryan turns around to look at the man, who sways as he talks, even though the bay is very clam. Ryan’s eyes follow him as he walks in a weaving pattern over to Jon, sinking down and wrapping one arm around Jon’s shoulders.
“So you did, William,” Jon says, going back to scrubbing the floor and letting William lean on him.
“That’s right,” William says, and Ryan gets the distinct impression he might be drunk, “I did, they’re pretty, aren’t they?” He leers over in their direction and Ryan can feel Brendon shift uneasily beside them.
Patrick takes both of Ryan’s hands while William saunters off up-deck, “We’re just going to take you down, so you can’t escape, if that’s alright.”
“No! That’s not alright!” Brendon exclaims from next to them, where his own hands are being held in place by another man. “I demand you let us go.”
Ryan watches Patrick’s face as it contorts into a grin, “I’m just trying to be polite, I wasn’t really asking.”
“Who is your captain, then?” Brendon asks, wiggling his arms around his back forcefully, so the man behind him has to bite his lip in concentration to keep him from escaping.
“He’s on shore, and will see you when he arrives back, now if you will.”
Ryan lets himself be led next to Brendon, watching his feet so he won’t notice the looks Brendon is throwing his direction. “This is your fault,” Brendon mutters, “I told you something would happen.”
“Well, I’m not hurt,” Ryan offers helpfully as they are met with a door, which Patrick maneuvers open.
“Oh, well, that’s good,” Brendon says in a falsely cheery voice. Ryan cringes.
-
They wait in what looks like the captains office cabin for hours, until the one porthole that neither of them could fit though lets in blood red light that turns into gray and then into black.
Brendon says nothing to Ryan, and sits with his legs stretched out in the desk chair, eyes strolling over maps and gadgets of the sea that do not interest him in the least.
Ryan spends the time wandering the extensive collection of books and artifacts lining the shelves. He decides that he has not wandered upon a normal pirate ship, but something else. Perhaps a dream.
The cabin door opens just as Ryan sits down with a leather-bound and seemingly gold-embossed book. He gets to the conclusion it is written in Latin before the interruption.
Peter from the docks, who proclaimed himself to be ‘Peter the Great’ enters though, locking the door behind him. “It’s a wonderful night to set sail, really, couldn’t have timed it better,” he says, wandering over to his desk.
Brendon’s eyes flash, but he says nothing. Peter looks over him silently, before turning to Ryan.
“You,” he says, with a wave of his hand, “you are some prize! I came to scare the governor of this little port, and what better way of doing so than having the luck to capture his charming son?”
This time Brendon snorts, and Ryan can hear him mumble ‘charming’ under his breath.
Ryan thinks of the ways he could handle this, “So, um, you’ve scared my father and you can bring us back now, right?” he tries, fidgeting with the book in his hands.
“No,” Peter replies, “It would be much more fun to take you along, your ransom will only rise with time, I’m sure.”
Brendon clears his throat, obviously to comment on this statement, but Peter continues, “I’ll have Patrick escort you to your cabin, I’m sure you will find it quite nice.”
“Also,” he says when Patrick enters, “I hope you boys like warm weather and sunlight! Hopefully you don’t burn easily.”
Ryan thinks of his fair skin the entire trip to their ‘cabin’. The ‘cabin’ turns out to be a musty, salty smelling room with an open porthole from which water is leaking, and two beds seemingly attached to the walls.
“It gets a little rough at sea sometimes,” Patrick comments, pushing them inside, “I hope you don’t get seasick.” He waves though a crack in the door, closes it, and apparently locks it.
Brendon kicks at it, before bouncing back on his other foot and into the bed.
The boat sways, knocking Ryan backwards and into the wall, before sliding him onto his own bed. It’s dark except for one candle burning and the moonlight coming through the porthole. “Ow,” Ryan says pitifully, and curls up on top of the ragged, smelly blanket on top of his ‘bed’.
Which, to Ryan’s dismay is actually more wood.
-
Ryan wakes up with a stiff back and a crick in his neck, which he absently thinks is because he feel asleep at the kitchen table in the house-part of the back of Brendon’s workshop.
Then he realizes his nose burns, his head hurts, and the smell assaulting his nostrils is absolutely nothing like the fire and fried bacon smell of Brendon’s.
He goes to sit up abruptly, and finds himself on the floor.
Ryan hears Brendon’s laughter from the other bed.
“I can’t swim!” he mimics from his bed, peering down at Ryan. His face changes from laughter to annoyance.
-
A few hours later, after Ryan and Brendon have stared at the walls and out of the porthole to long for their own good, Patrick enters, a bowl with a piece of bread in each of his hands.
“Breakfast,” he says unnecessarily, keeping his footing easily as the boat lurches from one side to the next.
Ryan’s stomach growls, and he grabs for the food. Brendon gulps his down immediately, and un-ceremonially shoves the bread in his mouth.
“The captain would like to see you when you are done,” Patrick says to Ryan, and Ryan looks at Brendon questioningly.
Brendon looks out the porthole.
“Um, very well,” Ryan comments as best as he can from around a mouthful of salty bread. He stands up warily, one hand on the edge of the wooden bed, and the other sticking out for balance.
Patrick laughs at this. “You’ll get sea legs soon enough,” he says and walks out of the door, locking it once again after Ryan is out.
Ryan’s stomach growls some more as it remembers the not-so-satisfying taste of his soup and bread while he walks. “Do you serve better food?” he asks, rubbing at it.
It seems Patrick finds everything funny, because he laughs in his light way and shakes his head to himself.
When they enter the captains cabin, Patrick is dismissed.
“Would you like some cake, Ryan?” Peter asks and Ryan fidgets with his shirt hem (now actually dry) in the doorway.
“Cake?” he asks back, stomach rumbling at the prospect.
“Anything you’d like,” Peter says, leaning back against his desk, a crooked smile on his face.
-
Patrick escorts Ryan back to the little locked cabin when Pete is done with him. Ryan follows him dazedly, stomach quite full and an assortment of leather books in his arms.
He enters as the boat rocks in a dramatic shift, and tumbles to the floor with his books accompanying him. Brendon sits still on his bed for a second, knees up by his chin, before deciding to bend down and help. (Ryan knew he would.)
“Why is your hair sticking up like that?” Brendon asks as Ryan looks up at him, slowly gathering his books and locking his knees in case they rock violently again. “And why are your cheeks so red?”
Ryan looks down at the floor, pushing himself up onto his bed with one hand.
“No reason,” he says, embarrassed and flushing more. Brendon doesn’t press, so Ryan engrosses himself in the first book on the stack - about pirate legends - and tries not to remember Peter’s hands - the wrong hands - on him, and what he whispered in his ear.
-
Around the fifth day, when Ryan comes back from another visit to the Captain’s quarters, flushed again but wearing new clothes - tighter than he has worn before - he comes back to an empty cabin.
“Where is Brendon?” he asks, turning around to Patrick.
Patrick noticeably avoids looking at Ryan’s swollen lips. “Up on deck, probably, I was given orders to tell him he could roam around freely. As can you.”
Ryan brightens, “So no more locks?”
“No,” Patrick says, looking solemn, “It was fun locking you in while it lasted.” Then he laughs. Again. The same sound as every other time.
Ryan finds Brendon at the bow of the boat, on the top-top deck, (he can’t quite remember what the one book called it, but he’ll look it up later,) staring into the endless ocean.
“Patrick told me you were up here,” Ryan says, perching beside him.
“I wonder what has happened to my shop.” Brendon comments sagely, brow furrowed, “Or all of my customers, and that cat I used to feed.”
Ryan shrugs in the breeze, “We’ll get back, though, won’t we?”
Brendon lets out a strained laugh, on a different octave than the type Patrick lets out. “Who knows,” he says flippantly, “you seem to be doing fine, you’ve been out of the cabin a lot more than me.”
He turns to study Ryan closely, and once again Ryan settles for admiring his (now) worn leather shoes.
“When you are with the captain,” he asks slowly, pronouncing each word deliberately lest they be lost to the breeze or the sails high above them, “Do you…” he trails off, seemingly unable to finish his question.
Ryan swallows, shrugs at his feet.
Brendon leaves.
-
When he goes back, Ryan finds Brendon curled into the small corner of his bed, the ratty blanket covering his face.
“Brendon?” he asks, nearing the lump with one hand against the wall, “Are you okay?”
Ryan has trouble drifting off to sleep, almost falls into slumber when he hears Brendon mumble, “I don’t really understand what it is that you do, with the captain, but it just seems…” he trails off again.
“Yes, it does,” Ryan agrees around a yawn, he whispers, “I don’t want to think about it.” It’s so low that Brendon would have had to have been straining just to hear each syllable, but he does.
“Do you have to do it?” Brendon asks, voice a little louder like the start of a conversation.
Ryan thinks about it, “I don’t know,” he says honestly, and picks at the blanket around his legs until he is pretty sure he feels something move up his finger.
“Do you want to?” Brendon questions from his corner.
Ryan takes his time to answer, until he thinks maybe Brendon has fallen asleep, under the impression that he himself had fallen asleep. “Not with him,” he whispers.
“Oh,” Brendon whispers back.
-
Jon, the deckhand is extraordinarily pleasant, Ryan finds. He is also perceptive.
Usually Ryan sits on the upper deck on the bow-end, where there is shade from the sails, and watches the crew at work while reading. Jon will stand beside him, leaning on his broom and they will chat.
“So, you go to the Captain a lot,” he comments one day. Ryan lifts his feet so Jon can just under them, and has just enough grace to look a little embarrassed.
“I used to, too. It stopped when you came along,” Jon says, peering down at Ryan from under his messy hair.
“He used to… with you?” Ryan asks, slowly.
“Yes, but he gets bored. At the next port I’m sure he’ll give up on you and find someone else.” Jon smiles, and goes back to sweeping.
Ryan is relieved.
He tells Ryan what Jon said that night, even though they haven’t brought up Peter for a while now.
Brendon says ‘oh’ again in response, and only looks up when he’s done twisting the three pieces of metal-wire he acquired from somewhere. It looks like nothing Ryan can recognize, so he switches the subject.
“How long have we been here?” he asks.
Brendon takes more time to squint at the wire in his hand, “I don’t know, think about the soup-rotation, the first night we were here we had the water-salt one, and we’ve had that about four times since.”
“Okay,” Ryan replies, but doesn’t understand.
-
The first port they arrive at is somewhere Ryan has never heard of. He’s not allowed off, but Peter and most of the crew seem to be welcomed heartily by a crowd of people on the dock. They all laugh as Peter introduces himself as ‘Peter the Great’, and Ryan and Brendon listen to him tell of his ‘adventures’ as he walks down the dock, until they can no longer hear.
“We could sneak off here,” Brendon tells Ryan as they watch the last of the crowd disappear from the dock, “The crew won’t be back for ages.”
Ryan looks nervously at him, “Where would we go?” he asks.
Jon pops out from seemingly nowhere behind them, “I don’t know where you’d get in Pete’s home village, he’s bound to be telling everyone about you.”
Brendon sighs, and runs a hand over his face.
“When you do decide to escape, I wouldn’t mind going either,” Jon adds, staring back at the ocean, “This life just isn’t for me.”
The three of them stare off into different directions. Ryan watches the small people on the beach sitting with each other and children chasing after one another. He misses his luxury bed and dinners cooked depending on the mood he was in. Misses clothes laid out for him and Spencer by his side at all times in the house.
Most of all he misses watching Brendon work. He turns to Brendon, and asks, “Do you miss your workshop?”
Strangely, Brendon brings his palms up so he can see them, and studies them. Ryan looks at them, too. Where he once admired rough, hard skin there is now smoother tight skin that stretches over fingers and palms.
Not really thinking, Ryan takes Brendon’s hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over the lines etched into skin. Brendon keeps still, almost holding his breath, and neither of them notices Jon quietly walk away.
Ryan looks up at Brendon, still with his hands around Brendon’s. “They’ve, um, become smooth since we left,” he says, clearing his throat several times, his own hands burning.
Brendon rolls his jaw around, looking down at their hands, “Yeah, and you have long fingers. I, uh, never noticed.”
Ryan can feel his cheeks get hot, and he can’t decide if he can drop Brendon’s hands, or if he is supposed to keep holding them.
“I think I’ll go back down to the cabin, it will probably be cooler,” Brendon says after a beat. Ryan drops his hands.
“Yeah, it probably is and I can,” Ryan starts, and then realizes it might be more awkward down below deck then above, “I can stay up here with Jon.”
Brendon rubs his hands along his thighs, and Ryan can’t help but watch, “No, it’s okay, you can come down to, if you want to.”
Ryan keeps watching, and forms an answer slowly in his mind until Brendon takes his hands away and clasps them behind his back, where Ryan can’t see. “I’m good, it’s okay up here.”
“Are you sure, because I’m going and it would be okay,” Brendon says, turning his body but not his head.
Well, Ryan thinks, if he doesn’t mind it would be cooler; they just don’t have to look at each other. He reaches up to brush a strand of hair from his forehead before saying, “Yeah, maybe I will, that would be nice.”
Brendon seems startled for a second, and goes to say something, only he lets out one indiscernible syllable and switches to saying, “Okay.”
“Oh, wait, did you not want?” Ryan asks. The whole situation is utterly confusing.
“What?” Brendon asks back. They both laugh.
“Never mind,” Ryan says, “I’m going to talk with Jon.”
“I’ll go do that, too, I think,” Brendon says.
They spend the afternoon talking to Jon about his life. He fell in love when he was ten-and-seven years with a girl who walked by his father’s woodworking shop everyday. She always had some flowers when she walked by, Jon tells them. When he finally got the courage to go and talk to her she ended up being one of the noble daughters, and never walked by again.
“Moral of that story,” Jon says when he is finished and the sun is setting to welcome the crew back aboard, “Is that I shouldn’t have waited.”
“What?” Ryan asks, “I thought it would be not to fall in love with someone like that.”
Jon laughs, “No, she would have loved me had I not waited until the very last minute of your youth to tell her I was in love with her, I should have started in the beginning, kissed her lips, and told her I would like to get to know her.”
“You would have been slapped,” Brendon says, smiling. He peers over the side of the boat, onto the dock, “and look, here they come now.”
Peter climbs aboard first, swaying a little of his own accord, his small arm wrapped around a young boy, who looks both nervous and enthralled and follows Pete down to another deck.
Patrick comes up next, looking rather annoyed and walking without the slightest sway to his step down below deck as well.
A drunken song floats over the side of the boat, spilling onto the deck in the form of the rest of the crew. When William spots Jon he stumbles over, singing disjointed lyrics about a sea-maiden and a boat of mermaids.
“We’ve got another one,” he slurs to Jon, not noticing Ryan nor Brendon, “Darren, pretty little kid for the captain again.”
Brendon snorts, and Ryan feels relived, and maybe a little annoyed that he was that replaceable. Not that he wanted Peter’s hands all over him or his lips rough against his neck, but still.
William tucks his head against Jon’s cheek, “Why dun I get any pretty ones?” he asks Jon mournfully, giving Ryan a crooked smile before untangling himself and wandering off to another shipmate.
-
“So,” Brendon says when both he and Ryan are curled up on their wooden slabs. It’s much to warm now for the ratty blankets, so they use them for pillows, bringing them up deck every day to clean as Jon had advised them.
Ryan makes a muffled noise, and turns over, warm in his long pants and still tight-fitting shirt.
“You’ve been replaced,” Brendon comments. He sounds as if he’s talking into his blanket.
“I didn’t know I was so easily replaceable,” Ryan mutters, the annoyance actually getting to him now.
Brendon laughs, “Are you annoyed?” he asks.
“No, I’m not,” Ryan says, although he knows he sounds childish.
The ship gently rocks in port, and Ryan counts three to the left and four to the right before Brendon says anything else.
“You aren’t, you know, replaceable,” Brendon says, still into his blanket.
Ryan doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t. He just pulls at the hem of his shirt, before sitting up and hunching over to take it off. Somehow, even in the dark he can feel Brendon’s eyes on him.
“Do you remember,” Brendon asks a few beats later, once Ryan has settled down again, “When I asked you about, um, Peter?”
Again, Ryan doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing and draws a swirl of patterns on his stomach.
Brendon continues, “You said, oh, never mind.”
“No, no,” Ryan urges lightly, “I know what I said.”
“Oh,” Brendon says. Ryan wonders if that will be the end of the topic, much like the others before it, but then there is a creak and Brendon is hunched over his bed.
“Out of curiosity, did you mean there was someone else?” He asks, and Ryan starts.
Many possibilities of what could be said run through his mind, but he just ends up wide-eyed, even though Brendon can’t see his expression in the dark.
Brendon seems content to keep standing where he is, and let Ryan be silent, so he continues after a few seconds, “I never understood why you came to my workshop everyday, but I let you. It was fascinating the way you watched me, and how you could sit still for so long without doing anything but observing.” He pauses, and Ryan realizes his hand has moved (of it’s own accord) to where Brendon’s hand was resting on the bed. Ryan makes no sign of moving it, so Brendon continues. “I used to think about it a lot, too much, and then I just figured you had nothing better to do. Then you started staying for dinner, and falling asleep on my table, and in my chair, and I thought, maybe something, and then.”
Brendon stops, and Ryan can almost picture him having a shocked expression. He had never heard Brendon talk so openly all at once.
All Ryan can think of to say is, “Brendon,” and act on the rash decision his mind has already made, to tug Brendon town by the arm resting on the bed and kiss him.
The first meeting of their lips isn’t really anything like Ryan had imagined. Somehow, he’d kept fantasies tucked deep in his head of kissing in the workshop, Ryan leaning forward in his chair and Brendon meeting him halfway over the turning wheel.
Instead, it’s hot and hard, the warmth radiating off Brendon as he slips down next to Ryan almost unbearable against the exposed skin already touched by humid air. He can’t get enough though.
Brendon twists his fingers into Ryan’s hair, and Ryan retaliates by nipping at Brendon’s bottom lip. It’s only when Brendon reaches a hand around to settle with a squeeze on Ryan’s bare hip that he makes a sound, because it’s the hand he’s been waiting for, the right one. Not the small, too-sure hands of a pirate captain or his own, pressing too hard at the wrong angle.
Brendon makes muffled noises around Ryan’s lips and tongue, until Ryan realizes he’s trying to say things - it really seems like the most inopportune moment - and he pulls away.
“That’s, this,” Brendon says, or, tries to say.
“Yes,” Ryan rasps out - thinks, obviously -and pulls Brendon closer.
He’s not sure if it’s okay, but reaches his hand between his and Brendon’s bodies, tugging at the lace of Brendon’s loose pants, already feeling Brendon straining against them. Brendon makes a surprised noise that Ryan files away, and slides down a little, lapping at Ryan’s neck.
“Um,” Ryan says a few seconds later, arching his neck at the sensation of Brendon’s tongue on his pulse point. It’s nice, but his finger is somehow tangled in Brendon’s pants and it is so not going well.
Brendon grunts as Ryan wiggles his hand, trying to get the finger out before his circulation is cut off, and then lets out a low laugh when he realizes the problem.
“Here,” he says, and Ryan is enthralled by the tone of his voice - different from any time he’s ever heard it, “I’ll get it.”
Brendon slips his hand and effectively undoes his laces, freeing Ryan’s hand. The loose pants slip down easily, and Ryan wishes he could see for just that moment. (Definitely not the moment before.) Brendon easily undoes Ryan’s pants as well, and tugs at them from the hip.
Ryan’s pants are much tighter, a gift from Peter, and they drag deliciously over his dick as Brendon gets them all the way down. He bucks up a little at the sensation, and as soon as he kicks the material from his ankles Brendon’s palm is wrapped around the base of his dick, just slowly squeezing.
And, wow.
“I’ve wanted to do this for a while, now,” Brendon says, pushing himself back up the bed. Ryan fleetingly wonders how Brendon manages to say so many words together at once, before the thought disappears completely and he turns his head to meet Brendon’s lips again.
Really, Ryan is fine with what Brendon is doing right now. So very fine. But Brendon stops, his hand stilling and Ryan pushes his hips up impatiently into Brendon’s fingers.
“I want to,” Brendon grates out, although he pauses a while before finishing, swirling his thumb over the head of Ryan’s cock absently, “Fuck you, please.”
Ryan’s eyes roll back, and he tries to tell Brendon yes, okay, please, want, but he isn’t sure it comes out at all.
Brendon resituates himself, looming over Ryan - just a large shadow with a few stark highlights where the minimal light from the porthole is seeping in. He reaches his hand up, sweeping his knuckles against Ryan’s jaw line affectionately before placing two of his fingers at Ryan’s lips.
Automatically, Ryan opens for Brendon’s fingers. They taste of salt and a little bit of himself, but mostly of Brendon, and he sucks on them forcefully, coating liberally and thinking of doing many other things with his mouth.
After a bit, where Brendon rocks back against Ryan’s thigh un-consciously groaning at the wet suction noises Ryan’s mouth makes he pulls back his hand, and sits back. Ryan instinctively opens his legs wider, one hanging over the edge and dangling near the floor below.
At the first press of Brendon’s fingers, Ryan aches back. Brendon teases, but Ryan just wants. He’s okay, he’s used to it. Had enough of fingers from himself, and too little prep from Peter that he just wants to take, now. Please.
“Brendon,” Ryan moans, as Brendon’s first finger slips in to the base. It’s not wonderful yet, but all Ryan can think is that it’s Brendon - finally, and Brendon’s fingers - the finger’s he watched day in and day out, to memorize and go home to, safe in his bed with himself from the first time on imagining this. This.
“Yeah?” Brendon asks. His next finger slips in beside the first, and Ryan pushes down on them. “I’ve never done this before,” Brendon admits, and his voice has a tint of amazement to it.
Ryan wonders again how Brendon is managing to think.
“But, um, Jon kind of told me what to do,” Brendon finishes.
Ryan absently files the statement away to think about later, but says, “Okay, now, please.”
Brendon nods, and even though Ryan can’t see he feels it in the motion of Brendon’s fingers. “Can you?” Brendon asks, and Ryan is kind of sure what Brendon is asking, so he whispers ‘okay’ and waits.
Brendon scoots forward awkwardly, taking his knees from between Ryan’s legs to around his chest, straddling him, and Ryan groans at the pressure. He reaches out and wraps his hand around the base of Brendon’s dick, taking a second to revel in the groan that spills from Brendon’s lips, face turned up into the darkness, before lifting his neck into a awkward position to take the head into his mouth.
He makes fairly quick work, coating enough until he knows that he can take it. “Please,” he groans, taking one last swipe at the underside.
Brendon re-adjusts himself again, but does it more efficiently. Ryan helpfully lifts the leg dangling over the side of the bed onto Brendon’s shoulder, and Brendon presses against him in response.
“Please, now,” Ryan says again, and Brendon pushes forward, slipping in one delicious and full inch at a time.
The bed groans against it’s nails as Brendon starts to move, it almost distracts Ryan from the wonderful pressure with thoughts of crashing down to the floor. He pushes up harder against Brendon just in case they do end up falling.
The humid air sticks to skin, and Brendon moves quicker the warmer it seems to get. The closer he gets - Ryan notices - the longer and deeper he stays inside Ryan, which is nice. Everything is nice.
Brendon lets out a moan, and takes one hand off Ryan’s hip, roughly encircling it around Ryan’s dick. Caught off guard, Ryan shudders into his orgasm, clenching tight around Brendon and causing him to let out a final groan.
Brendon slips out with a tired noise, and curls into Ryan’s side despite the heat. “If the water was calm in the port,” he says groggily, but happily, “I think it just got a little rough for the ships inhabitants.”
Ryan crinkles his nose at this, and halfheartedly flicks at Brendon’s arm.
“I want to go home now,” Ryan mumbles before drifting off, and Brendon murmurs his agreement.
-
Jon looks at them both with a smirk in the morning when they arrive above deck. “I knew I should have placed that bet with Patrick,” he says, deadpan and Ryan thinks he might actually be serious.
The new boy, Darren, comes out minutes after, and Jon waves him over.
“You should probably get off with us at the next port, kid,” Jon tells him, “Pete needs to learn that there is someone who actually wants him.”
Darren just stretches his arms, following Jon, Ryan, and Brendon’s gaze to Patrick who is at the wheel across from them.
“Where are you headed?”
Jon shrugs, and calls across to Patrick.
“I honestly don’t know,” Patrick shouts, his words slightly distorted by the wind the sails have picked up, “Where ever the wind takes us.”
-
It takes a week and a half to get to the next port, and Ryan recognizes it. “I went here when I was younger and my mother was ill,” he says, and Jon smiles.
“Well, someone should be able to tell us how to get to where we belong, then.”
Brendon squeezes Ryan’s hand and they follow Jon and Darren down the dock. William calls something from the ship’s deck that sounds like, “Yo, Ho, Ho,” and Jon laughs, waving from behind.
-
Spencer sees the Ryan, Brendon, and Jon first when they walk up to the estate.
(Darren stayed behind at the dock, engrossed in conversation with a young girl who sold sea-shell necklaces and wanted to see the world.)
He runs out, and twirls Ryan around, then nods to Brendon. “Thank you for bringing him back.”
Ryan learns that his father passed while he was gone, but he is not terribly upset by the news - they were never close. He wishes that he could have said goodbye, though.
He has his own private memorial in the small garden of the estate, gathering his thoughts. Spencer and Jon watch from a window, noticeably standing too close, but neither seem to mind.
Brendon joins him afterwards, a small box in his hand. “Here,” he says, “I made this on the ship, it’s just something small.”
He seems awkward, and Ryan opens it to find a wire-twisted sculpture in the shape of a key, and from the bottom of the key a dangling heart. He can’t find words, so he kissed Brendon instead, and hopes that it says enough.
* I wrote this all in one sitting with no direction whatsoever. I don’t understand why that is what it takes for me to write fic, but this took from about 10:30PM to 2:00AM. I never even thought about pirates until my power went out and then I’m not sure what happened.
* There are lots of other scenes/storylines planned out in my head for afterwards, including a whole Peter/Patrick realization fic, a small Greta/Darren inclusion because I think that would be adorable, and obviously a Jon/Spencer companion that tells of how they fall in love and the adventures Jon leads Spence on. -shakes head- It’s late, I’m tired. I have no actual internet access.
<3!