If you're reading this, I woke up to use the bathroom and had to kill a goddamn centipede.
Safe to say I'm up now, so I've worked tirelessly yet again to try and get this uploaded.
Images are probably still all fucked up but it's whatever at this point lol.
Enjoy, lovelies!
xoxo

My Heart is pierced by Cupid
I disdain all glittering gold
There is nothing can console me
But My Jolly Sailor Bold

Alistair

I awoke to a sudden jolt of someone stirring beside me. My instincts reacted before my eye could even adjust to the dim lighting surrounding it, and I found my arm quickly reaching out to wrap itself around Caspian, yanking him towards me just before he managed to find himself on the floor yet again.

At this point, he must've preferred it over every other surface with how willing he was to throw himself there.

I hadn't meant to bring him so close to me, yet again I didn't exactly understand what had led to this. Led to him so suddenly stirring like that. He hadn't awoken fully like he did whenever he had a tainted dream. I could hear him in his room next to mine most nights, regardless of how quiet he attempted to be shortly after waking.

The shirt he was wearing was soft to touch as my fingers gripped hold of it, a material that felt nice against inner side of my bare arm, yet I could feel him shivering slightly once my arm secured itself around his waist. He was cold to the touch.

The temperature must've dropped again, I thought to myself. It was difficult for me to notice since my blood ran so warm. Because of this, I decided on that to be the most reasonable reason for why I didn't pull my arm from him right away. As his body grew more rigid against me however, it more or less registering my now sudden proximity, I began to think that perhaps it was for the best we weren't this close. Regardless of the chill that now openly ran through my ship, beckoning him even closer.

Once my right arm slowly started to move from his upper stomach, retracting itself back towards my side, I felt his own right arm that has tucked up close to his chest, just under his chin, abruptly shift. He gently slid it down his still shivering body until his hand touched mine, which made mine freeze in its place entirely.

And I had only expected this. Accepted this, rather. That perhaps this was the furthest he was willing to go. The farthest his body would allow in regards to touch.

I hadn't expected his hand to hesitantly yet slowly lift and rest itself over my own, his fingers finally finding the spaces between mine. I instinctively locked them before he even had the opportunity to... or to think not to... but when he moved back slightly further into me, into the warmth I brought with me, I took a slight sharp inhale.

His hair was now occupying some of my pillow. His scent invading all my senses. Those strands felt like unwoven silk against my face and its bare skin, and when the curves  of his lower half unexpectedly reached mine, the grip around him tightened.

If he moved any further, I'd break my promise. That, I was now almost startlingly sure of.

"Go to sleep." I whispered to him, my voice traveling directly to his ear without my lips even having to part. He wasn't fully awake, but I knew a part of him had stirred. And I felt it against me immediately after, it was the shiver that ran through him from the proximity of my voice, but I closed my eye once more in an effort to focus. In an effort to calm myself back to a beating rhythm that my own heart could finally recognize again.

Sleep soon took that as an invitation, to which I gratefully welcomed it once more for the both of us.

He and I would need it for what was to come.

When I awoke again somewhere within the night, Caspian was still in my arms...

Yet I didn't feel that soft material below them.

Instead I felt it above my arm, brushing against the hairs that were now raised towards the worn cotton as the soft rise and fall of Caspian's bare chest meshed with my own skin, was what I felt below. He had brought me even closer to him, pulling both his hand and mine underneath the material of his shirt as he curled further into it.

He was using my arm as a bit of warmth, his body curled into me as if he was afraid to ask for more... and so I shifted closer, bringing his back even further flushed against the front of me. I welcomed the hold he had on my arm as he allowed the rest of himself to melt against heat. His body fit here well. Perfectly, rather.

I had meant to pull myself awake now. I could feel the threats of the sun as she would soon emerge from the horizon, and yet this feeling of Caspian against me yanked at the initial plans of my departure with such ease, it terrified even myself.

The soft rise and fall of his heartbeat as my hand rested directly above it. His soft yet firm skin warming with every place I touched, as it acted as the only barrier between I and his heart.

There was comfort in this embrace, one that soon seduced me, lulling me back to the great depths of slumber for the second time now, and against my own will once more... yet one could say I allowed it. Welcomed both it, and him...

When I awoke for the third time, it was the internal clock in me that forced me awake.

Yet it was the position Caspian had turned to that further questioned my reasoning for rising before the sun had.

Once my eye adjusted once more to the dim lighting, I was staring right at Caspian.

He had moved so close, his head was now sharing the pillow with mine. I was still sleeping on my left side with my left arm stretched under the soft plush material, so I hadn't noticed the added weight till now.

Instead of our once interlocked fingers, my right arm was still securely around him, holding him close by the small curve of his lover back. I was tempted to trail that same hand just a little lower, to feel just a bit more of him, but the slight shift of Caspian stopped myself. And that was when I noticed where his hands had now found themselves.

He had tucked them up under my shirt this time, pulling up the material with them until it was scrunched against his chin and  lower jaw. I felt my own jaw lock as I looked down at him with part of my attire tucked up under him like that. My sight couldn't comprehend how peaceful he seemed... and how almost unnecessarily beautiful he was this night in particular.

My teeth pulled at the inner lining of my cheek, biting down to keep whatever things I was feeling and tempted to act on, to myself. I didn't want to stir him... and yet I was so close, it would only take a slight lean forward to connect my lips to his. Those slightly red tinted ones.

And yet...

I finally glance past Caspian to the window behind him. The sun itself was the threat now, in which it would bear with it lack of preparation if I didn't wake myself now. Cael would also most likely take it upon himself to wake me himself if I failed to soon, and and I was growing tired of having these private moments so consistently interrupted.

I glanced back to Caspian, his features nothing more than a hairs length away from mine. Even if I only allowed myself another brief moment, I studied those features of his. And I studied them well. His light eyebrows that paired themselves with his long white hair, only to then pour into the sharp bridge of his nose. I watched as he curled his lower lip up into itself, dampening it before his teeth released it back into this world.

And I wanted to capture it with mine instead. I wanted nothing more than to touch him, yet I settled on the one thing I figured would break the promise I made the least.

My head tilted up slightly, before I hesitantly leant forward closer to him and allowed my lips to lightly graze his forehead, placing just the whispering of a kiss there. Nothing near firm enough to wake him. Then I began the treacherous process of removing this surprisingly strong grip he had secured on my shirt for his comfort.

The last thing I had done after separating myself from the man, and quickly dressing, was the hand I placed on the doorway before I shut the door. "Keep him warm." I whispered to my ship. I could just make out the hatches of my room's window locking shut before the door closed behind me.

The first thing Cael noted as I entered the study was "you look well rested."

I shot him a look, daring him to act coy at an early time such as this one, especially after the comfort I had just left, yet he threw his hands up in a defensive stance.

"That was the truth, I swear it. You genuinely look rested."

With all the shit this man had given me in private for the... well, the progression with Caspian and I, I didn't take a single compliment of his seriously. The comment he has snuck in over supper two nights earlier was "I've only known you to mark the dead. Look at you venturing out."

He almost lost a tooth that evening. Perhaps all 32 if I was feeling generous. Luckily Caspian had been to distracted with the misery of my men over supper itself, to not hear it said.

"Well it will be needed for what I have planned."

"Shall I remind you how utterly idiotic said plan is?" Cael asked.

"You relentlessly have been over the last two days, why stop now? I applaud the consistency."

The look Cael gave me made it seem like he was gearing to knock a few of my own teeth out.

"And if you are to gain nothing by this?"

I scoffed at that, setting the book I had borrowed from Cael back on the desk in front of him, before I took a seat across from him myself. "Give a man security and time, and he will tell his truths whether he knows it or not. A simple flaw with every human is their inability to hide their hand when faced with the opportunity of admiration. It is how the best of kings fall."

Cael nodding as he took the book from the table, before he tucked it under his left arm.

"And what are the crew to think of this?"

I sat with that question a moment, pondering Cael's words. "They won't like it." I finally admitted, and with a great deal of honesty too. "However, I've just pulled them half across the sea in two days time. I don't think my men are in the greatest position to fight regardless."

It was Cael now who sat with that a moment. I knew he would never bless this, therefore I knew not to ask.

There were many things Cael also knew. Such as, this couldn't be no ordinary pirate that just went on account. It took skill to execute even a slightly successful surprise attack on my vessel and my crew. And there was no pirate alive who would risk it on his own accord, which was why I assumed Gaelick had distanced himself from his own ship for this very reason. No captain would throw such a crew away like that unless he was ordered to.

I wanted to know who had sent him. Who dared to wage war with The Pirate King... or at least, who was senseless enough to try.

Cael could feel what my blood was starting to burn with. What the tips of my fingertips itched to touch. He knew that this was more than just about Gaelick, and though I had spent many years wreaking mayhem, any man bold enough to attempt this meant I simply hadn't done enough.

And to that, my only response would be Aye. Perhaps it was time to remind the seas and those who inhabit it, of what exactly it was my soul was tethered to. And what exactly owned it.

"You know Alistair, our pairing is an odd one. I think of war and my heart grows weary, whereas I can practically feel the harsh beating of yours filled to the brim with excitement. All I ask if that you approach this with reason-"

"I appreciate you find that my decisions have the potential for reason, however I must remind you Cael that to the outside world looking out at the sea, they see me as a mad man."

"No," Cael corrected, "they see you as a mercenary. I see you as a mad man. Savvy?"

That made the edges of my lips slowly curl up into a smile before a few dry chuckles slipped past them.

"Aye." I nodded.

"So please," Cael continued, practically groveling by now. "The entire world doesn't need to burn at the hands of a few spent men."

My eyebrow raised some at that line of thinking. "Maybe not the entire world... Theirs, however? Theirs will surely find nothing but comfort in the ashes they'll soon burn to, for they'll know they've reached both their final form and their place of rest. That I can assure you of."

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