5 Hotness with Management #2
Silver's plan to intercept a treasure galleon and its Portuguese warship companion was insane. Yet Hawk couldn't let it go. Whether making Elizabeth Barnes his co-conspirator would temper the insanity or only add to it remained to be seen. But at least they could talk through the logistics of it.
“If we assume the lunatic is telling the truth, if we want to intercept that treasure galleon, we’ll need better munitions,” Hawk said to Elizabeth as they shared a bottle of rum. “Or we’ll never stand a chance against a Portuguese warship.”
“I know how we can get some muscle,” Elizabeth whispered, despite the fact that they had been sitting in her office alone.
It was probably good to be cautious, Hawk granted, in Port Royal even walls had eyes and ears, and the last thing they needed was anyone overhearing their conversation.
“Captain Tyson owes me. I made him what he is. And he’s easy to control.
The Hecate may be slow, but she has the best munitions of any ship in Port Royal. ”
”I don’t need a consort,” Hawk growled. “Especially not one of your little playthings that doesn’t know a cannon from his own arsehole. Plus, what’s to stop him from betraying us, sinking the Orca and taking the entire prize for himself?”
“We’ll put half his guns on the Orca and put you in charge of both crews. It’ll be like he’s not even there. Just leave it to me.” Elizabeth had that faraway look that meant she was calculating several steps ahead in a complicated game of chess that had kept Port Royal in this woman's iron hold.
“That is well,” Hawk drank and let the rum percolate down his throat. “I look forward to putting that hunt behind us and moving on.” He raised his glass, “To the Pirate Republic of Port Royal.”
“You look forward to being rid of Silver?” There was a gleam in Elizabeth’s eyes as she toasted him.
“Aren’t you?”
“Not I. He’s easy on the eyes,” she smiled. “And I hear the whores all love him.”
“That’s... I’m... no.” Hawk shook his head, attempting to dislodge unwelcome thoughts of Silver amidst whores. Or Silver naked. Or Silver and his unruly fucking cock in the first place.
“They call him The Cannon.”
A strangled, embarrassing noise escaped Hawk's throat. “Elizabeth, please.”
“I could have sworn I heard Mara call him ‘brother’ the other day,” Elizabeth persevered. “I presume she meant that metaphorically. He cannot be her actual brother, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t know the first thing about him,” Hawk protested weakly, though the two certainly looked enough alike. “Where is Mara from, anyways?”
“Tortuga?”
Hawk shook his head again. “Well, at least she actually sounds French.”
He’d never really given much thought to Elizabeth’s former - lover? Personal bedroom assistant? - Mara, but he supposed he’d assumed from the tawny color of her skin that she'd escaped from the Americas.
When it came to Silver, as beautiful as he was, he might as well have been born and raised in a jungle for all Hawk could figure.
Only the other day, he'd caught Silver staring at his dinner, and instead of eating the damned fish like a sane person, he had started having an entire one-sided conversation with it. Then he stormed off, muttering like a madman about how “Some friends you eat, and some friends you don’t!”
If only Silver hadn’t been so infuriatingly attractive! With his eyes and his lips and those god damn collarbones! And hands, so firm, so scaldingly hot on his own skin when Silver had touched him.
Hawk wasn't about to admit to anyone how he'd jerked off thinking about those hands - those lips, that neck - an embarrassing number of times since that night.
It was too easy to remember the proof of Silver's, er, handiwork that the pretty young man had left behind on the windowsill of his cabin, which quickly degraded into, ug, fantasies.
It was far too easy to picture Silver perched in his cabin, flushed and hard for him, stroking himself.
Or kneeling at his feet, looking up at him with those pretty blue eyes as Hawk pushed his cock into that infuriating mouth -
Jesus.
“Where are you right now, Hawk?” Elizabeth grinned like the cat who got the cream.
“The Estrela,” he grunted in reply. “Firmly.”
Returning to his ship, Hawk had found his quartermaster, Ruiz, in some kind of secret cabal with their bosun, Hank Thompson.
“Captain,” Ruiz nodded at him with a glint in his eyes.
“Captain,” Hank echoed Ruiz, no doubt emulating the man who had been a father figure to him.
“Gentlemen,” Hawk frowned. “I use the term loosely, of course,” he added lest they take offense. “What, pray tell, are you giggling like little girls about?”
“Just a funny joke that Silver told us about whales, Captain,” Hank offered with a look of feigned innocence.
“Oh yeah?” Hawk was already not impressed. “Care to share?”
“What do whales eat?”
“What?”
“Fish and ships!” Hank’s face was unreadable, while behind him Ruiz snorted.
“I hate you both,” Hawk declared. The plan could wait. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my quarters.”
He strode past, towards his cabin, trying to ignore the sounds of womanly tittering behind him, especially the whispers of “My money’s on two more days” and “If he even lasts that long!”
Hawk wasn’t sure if he had a mutiny on his hands or if he had just become the butt of an unknown number of jokes, least of them having to do with an actual whale, and most to do with his whale of a problem.
The door to his cabin stood ajar, the shutters flung open to let in the sunlight.
And, somehow, Hawk was not at all surprised to find Silver there, perched in a most peculiar way on a chair, with both his legs folded at the knees under him, and reading what was surely one of Hawk’s books.
He was so taken aback by the sight of him - engrossed by the words before him, loose curls hanging over Silver’s eyes as he poured over the pages - that before Hawk realized he'd completely forgotten to be outraged. He supposed, in some way, this had been a relief; at least he hadn’t walked in on the kid doing something untoward.
“Which book do you have there?” he finally asked and Silver’s face shot up as if torn from a reverie.
“Christopher Marlowe,” he replied. “The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second,” he had read from the cover.
Hawk smirked. “That is not exactly some light reading, Mr. Silver.”
“Where I come from, when books such as these come our way, oftentimes they are in very poor condition. Your books are very well cared for. Loved even.” Silver’s hand caressed the leather binding and he flipped to the front of the play again.
“As for light or dark, I care not for how it ends, but rather that the story itself be beautiful.”
“And do you find it so? Beautiful?” Hawk asked, sitting down across the desk from his uninvited guest and pouring himself a glass of rum.
Rather than reply, Silver’s finger moved down the page with the gentleness of a lover’s caress, and then he opened his mouth to recite the opening lines of Marlowe’s play.
“My father is deceas'd. Come, Gaveston,
And share the kingdom with thy dearest friend.
Ah, words that make me surfeit with delight!
What greater bliss can hap to Gaveston
Than live and be the favourite of a king!
Sweet prince, I come! these, thy amorous lines
Might have enforc'd me to have swum from France,
And, like Leander, gasp'd upon the sand,
So thou wouldst smile, and take me in thine arms.”
Silver looked up and smiled, forcing Hawk to swallow around the sudden lump that grew inside his throat. Beads of cold sweat peppered his furrowed brow, along with his palms.
“It isn’t the love story that you might think it is,” he finally said, formulating words with difficulty around his parched tongue.
“How can it not be? Listen to this,” Silver insisted and continued his recitation.
“The sight of London to my exil'd eyes
Is as Elysium to a new-come soul:
Not that I love the city or the men,
But that it harbours him I hold so dear,—
The king, upon whose bosom let me lie,
And with the world be still at enmity.”
“It’s not. It isn’t,” Hawk protested becoming acutely aware that his head was beginning to spin. “Because they both die!”
“You gave away the ending!” Silver pouted, azure eyes accusing Hawk of gross betrayal.
“How could I? It’s right there in the title - Lamentable Death.”
“Gaveston too, then?”
“Gaveston first.”
Silver slammed the book shut as if it had burned his hands. “Why must it be so?”
“It isn’t always so,” Hawk said, his voice softening. “Not for everyone.”
“They loved each other. They should have been happy.”
Silver looked out through the storm windows, his face cast into a stark relief against the darkness of the room. In the moments of silence that followed, Hawk felt a yearning that seemed too close to self-delusion.
For the first time in a long time, his heart pushed back the tragedy of his past. He wanted to speak more, to say that not all stories had unhappy endings, to say that perhaps he could suggest a different book for Silver to read.
But, before he could even open his mouth, a harried Ruiz knocked at his cabin door.
“Captain! It’s the Hecate. She’s set sail without us!”
“We are betrayed,” Hawk rose from his chair, Silver and Marlowe both forgotten. “Make haste, Ruiz. We’re going hunting!”