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Old Salt: An experienced Pirate or Sailor

Alistair

When I awoke next, I knew daybreak would soon be upon us before I even opened my right eye.

I had worn the eye patch again in hopes that what it was concealing wouldn't further startle Caspian. I could already hear the pounding of his heartbeat the previous night when he had eventually yet reluctantly followed me to my chambers, there was no reason to cause his heart to fail entirely.

He knew he had no choice in the matter, and yet as soon as he had set the now empty glass of water on a table near my bedside, and climbed onto the mattress, I saw the seduction of sleep soon coerce that fear straight out of him. He had dramatically positioned himself on the right side of the very edge of my bed, so close that I debated releasing the hold I had on these floorboards, and allowing the waves to force him off it as a lesson...

But I held my own entertaining thoughts at bay.

I first had pulled some light trousers on to further convince Caspian that this request was not what it sounded like, before I, myself, climbed onto and nestled into the left side of the mattress.

Caspian's back had been turned to me, his hair pulled back and laying against the soft padding in alignment with the curve of his spine, while a few strands coated his shoulders. I wanted to question why he was sleeping in so many clothes, but that wasn't quite the question to ask a man who surely thought my intentions were less than pure.

Instead I left him be, allowing his body to slowly relax into the stillness my soul brought this room, before eventually, his heavier breathes became lighter and softer.

Most nights I would spend reading the books conjured by the thoughts of others, or finding solace within my own very thoughts, but I decided it would be quite hypocritical of me not to treat my own recuperation of energy as importantly as I was treating Caspian's.

So when my body stirred awake as the sky itself began to wake the following morning, I found myself feeling more rejuvenated than I possibly had since my early days as a pirate. Before I became an old salt. This sleep had been peaceful, more so than I expected any amount of sleep could bring me.

I had awoken laying on my left side, and was expecting to see the back of Caspian towards me with his long white hair shielding most of him, much like it had when sleep eventually found these aching joints of mine, but instead I was facing Caspian now. Or rather, he was facing me.

His heartbeat was still steady. So steady, it called my attention there first. Called my attention to the fact that Caspian had magic running through him, something that acted as almost second nature to guard one's own heartbeat, or at least mask it... and yet it wasn't. Whatever state Caspian was in now, he felt comfortable enough to lower that shield.

With how relaxed his features were, it led me to believe that this may have been one of the better nights he'd found sleep. His lightly tinted lashes were so long, they gently brushed against his face whenever his eyelids twitched lightly, yet his heart beat maintained that same simple rhythm. He was deeply intermingled with eternal rest itself, it felt like. His sharp features all the more beautiful if anything.

My left arm remained stretched out slightly on the bed, exactly how I'd fallen asleep, and just a few inches away from Caspian's head. He had his head resting comfortably on a pillow besides my own. His hair was no longer as tamed as the style I had grown accustomed to while I drifted off to sleep. Strands of pure white were now scattered all around the soft head rest, down his shoulder, and then past his chest.

Against my own better judgement, and frankly my own conscious actions, my right arm detached itself from my side, before reaching up slowly to the few strands that had crossed the very obvious border Caspian had created between us.

Just as I remembered, those strands felt like spun gold against my otherwise once numb fingers. The fine softness of each strand wanted me to feel more of him and it, yet I only spared myself a moment or two to touch him. I didn't want to stir his resting state.

Those thoughts may have very well been spoken too soon, because as he moved against the calm beating of his heart, Caspian slowly shifted his left arm that was tucked into his chest. He stretched it out against his conscious will, his body still not stirring when his left hand gently rested itself into the palm of my own.

My body remained practically frozen at the touch. His touch. His fingers felt cold in my open outstretched hand, and that mixed all too well with the warmth of my skin. So much so, I felt Caspian press his fingers more firmly into it. And all this while sleep still kept him captive.

This was... something I had no words for... yet somehow, I allowed it.

I allowed us to lay like this for a degree of time I couldn't possibly measure, nor did I attempt to. The bed was still, and yet I felt my ship fighting back against the tides right outside my chambers perimeters. Caspian would be well rested once the sun fully rose, but my men however? Not nearly. I was already preparing myself for the complaints I would hear as soon as my first foot stepped past these private quarters, and on to the main deck.

I watched as Caspian gently nestled the side of his head further into that soft pillow. I wasn't sure when my fingers had found the spaces between his, but I watched as they curled up slightly to loosely interlock them. I hadn't even realized my own heartbeat, but as soon as I had, I ordered my body to get ahold of itself.

It had been some time since I had touched another like this. I didn't know when I had last felt anything with these same hands... let alone this. My body felt him all too strongly, for the yearning it had, would now never subside. This curse had made many things unquenchable, and it was many years ago when I decided the bloodshed was something I could manage. My heightened sexual urges were not, especially when I couldn't feel what most wanted me to.

Cael loved to use this as an excuse for why I could never choose peace. Why my heart was always stirring, never settled... but I explained to him that after having given all pursuits my best efforts, both men and women alike, my only real love could only ever be the sea. I had no soul to bare to another, for these turbulent waters had ripped it from me all those years ago.

I had nothing of substance that another could want either. And this hollowness now made me who I am.

Much like my predictions, even this moment of tranquility between myself and Caspian couldn't last long. The pleasant moments rarely ever did, as they were destined to fall victim to my chaos. I watched as his eyes slowly drifted open, the light from the window only growing brighter with the rising sun, and allowing me the perfect view of those pale eyes... except they didn't look nearly as void of life like they usually had. Like I had almost grown accustomed to by now.

Instead, I saw something else there. Even if it was just a moment. Something that was lost to his features as the days stretched, and something that felt almost secretive to see now. That glimmer of life spread from his pupils through to his irises. He was staring straight back at me, his heart beat still beating to a rhythm startlingly close to my own.

I wasn't sure if it was the grogginess that had made him so slow to react. He hadn't said a single word, with his eyes fixated on mine, but when I felt the hand that was holding his, twitch slightly from a muscle that went against my exact orders of stillness, Caspian's gaze slowly shifted from mine, to there.

I watched in this very present moment as Caspian registered what he was looking at, and yet it took reflexive skills that surprised even myself, to tighten its hold on Caspian's hand and yank him towards me before he managed to violently throw his large frame off the side of the bed... which he had been in the very process of doing.

Throughout the entirety of this night, he hadn't even made a slight effort to move further from the edge, regardless of the comfort he had found with me in my bed. His stubbornness could rival my own.

I yanked him towards me, my right hand grabbing at his hip suddenly to steady him before he could fully crash into my own body. I was holding his hand that was still interlocked with mine, to my bare chest now, and the pale shade Caspian's skin usually wore like porcelain, had since abandoned its solidarity with its lack of color. I first noticed his cheeks turning a bright shade of red, especially once he tried to pull his hand away and my grip tightened.

"A-Al-" Caspian started, to which his voice trailed off again. My gaze never left his, never left those pale blue eyes as my right hand remained on his left hip, and his arm now grew further entangled with my own. I was surprised by how well Caspian held my gaze, but granted with this proximity, there was no where else for him to look. "W-What are you doing?" He asked me. His voice did its best to maintain a very dumbfounded tone.

A brow that curved above my exposed right eye, arched itself in surprise.

"I could ask you the same." I countered, and yet my voice... the very first words that fell past my lips this morning, they were coated in this hoarse roughness that told me this game I was playing was dangerous. Potentially far more to myself, than him.

"Why are you touching me?" The man countered, and it should've been treated as an insult, the words meant to be biting, and yet the way Caspian's teeth pulled his bottom lip in directly afterwards as my hold on his hip shifted, acting as if this would save him from saying another word or uttering another sound he himself didn't approve of, I realized this wasn't the hostility I expected.

Caspian was holding himself back from something, and doing so with such ferocity, I could literally feel the unnatural tension flowing through his already quite unnatural self.

"This is your doing." I spoke, signaling with a gentle squeeze to his hand what I had meant. Once realization arrived, his eyes grew even larger at that, and yet somewhere within this conversation, Caspian had stopped yanking back on the hand I now held close to me.

The hand I still had on his hip had since eased my fingers into the softness there, massaging the tautness of his bones and muscle as I worked to dissolve whatever had moved his body to such an edge. Such rigidness.

"That..." the first time Caspian had broken the concentration of our gaze on one another, was when his eyelid slightly fluttered closed for just a fleeting moment. His whole face was damn near growing flushed. "I... I hadn't meant to I just- I haven't shared a bed-"

This nervousness, yet this direct response to my touch, brought back the memory of our time in Sicoria. When I had brushed against something I hadn't expected from Caspian.

Until this moment I thought he viewed my touch to be sheer repulsion against him, and yet maybe now I understood more of his inflictions. Inflictions I felt nearly compelled to test the waters of in this moment.

The thumb of the hand still interlocking Caspian's close to my bare chest, had now begun tracing a series of patterns against the back of his palm. The hand that rested on his hip dared to pull him even further into me, for whatever space had been left at the beginning of the night, was now no longer.

Both figuratively and literally.

I found my hand bringing the back of Caspian's up to my lips, before I laid a soft kiss there. Surely I had always been know to lean into the tease, especially at the expense of others comfortability, however this wasn't that. When Caspian's eyes drifted close again, I understood now that my touch affected him. Most likely more than he would possibly ever choose to outwardly admit.

His tongue slipped out past his lips to dampen the dry skin there, yet all that did was command my own attention to it. Once Caspian's eyes slowly opened again, I knew he had lost whatever internal battle he was fighting. The look he gave me firmly solidified it as his eyes lids hung slightly low in this almost trance like state. This look he was now giving me was downright tantalizing. Once those lids revealed those pale blue eyes, it made me realize they really weren't all that pale after all.

A hue of a deep, rich blue burned somewhere in there.
And it was something I wanted to see more of.

Before neither this man, nor myself, could make the decision that went against everything our intelligence told us would be less than favoring, especially to our current understanding, I heard a knocking on my door that made me release Caspian almost immediately.

So immediately, I damn near launched myself off the bloody mattress, and I wasn't nearly as close to the other edge.

I knew it was Cael by the way he knocked, and above all else, the last person I needed judgement from at this very moment, was his disgustingly noble self.

I didn't want his commentary nor his influence on how the tides were now shifting between Caspian and myself.

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