12 Trousergate
Trousergate
"CAPTAIN!" HANK STRAIGHTENED from pulling a barrel up onto the beach. "We thought the sea had taken you!"
"Where's Silver?" Hawk demanded, grabbing the front of his shirt. "God help me if you idiots left him to drown - "
"He's fine! Jesus, Captain! He's up the beach, in the water. Helping with the recovery." Hank pulled his shirt free of Hawk's grasp, scowling. "Damn kid swims better than a dolphin, even one legged."
Silver was alive. Hawk’s lungs finally filled with breath. He hurried down the beach, eyes searching the surf.
"Hey, Captain!"
He turned at Hank's call. "What?"
"He went in after you, you know. When you got swept overboard. Thought you should know." There was a strange expression on Hank's face. Perhaps somewhere between envy and admiration, Hawk thought, before pushing the silly idea aside.
"Thank you," he called back, hurrying on his way.
Others called out to him, but he ignored them. He could deal with that later. He needed to see Silver with his own two eyes, to reassure himself of his existence.
"Captain!" The call was faint, but sweeter than birdsong. Hawk raised a hand to shade his eyes, following the sound of Silver's voice. He finally found him out closer to the wreck of the Orca, perched on a rock, waving what looked like his fake leg in the air.
Jesus. Hawk made his way into the surf, kicking through the water. It didn't take long to reach the rocks where Silver sat.
"You idiot!" he roared, hauling himself up the rocks.
Silver opened his mouth to splutter a reply, but before he could speak Hawk had claimed his lips, tangling his fingers in the wet curls of his lover's hair as he kissed him again and again, careless of any audience that they had doubtlessly attracted.
Silver relaxed under his kisses, arching into him, breathless and dazed when Hawk finally released him.
"I can be an idiot," he agreed amicably.
"You went overboard after me," Hawk growled. "Do you have any idea how stupid that was?"
"I’m a good swimmer!" Silver tried to protest.
"You could have gotten yourself killed! Then where would I be?"
"I..." Silver stopped, then flushed, protest draining away. "You do care."
Hawk coughed to try and cover the sudden surge of affection. "You're part of my crew. Of course I care."
"Then, I'm sorry I worried you," Silver replied, looking almost giddy with joy.
"Yes, well." Hawk coughed again, voice gruff. "Let's get you back to shore."
"Oh - I can't go yet. Actually, I need you to bring me something that can float. It turns out that land crabs don't like to swim."
What was the silly man on about now? "What?"
"Millie," Silver replied, motioning with his hand. Further up the rocks, their ship’s cat hissed at him as if Hawk was personally responsible for the fact that she was drenched and shivering. "She found my leg!"
Hawk wasn't sure he wanted to get anywhere near the hissing bundle of clawed fury, but he certainly needed any bonus points he could earn with the crew at this point. He sighed. "Fine, we'll get the cat to shore."
With Silver accounted for, Hawk could take stock of what remained of his crew. He thanked every god he could think of that Ruiz was among the survivors.
"I haven't survived this long to go down in a little storm," he told Hawk with a wink when they reunited. "Only a dozen souls in our crew unaccounted for. Can't say the same for the Tempest, I'm afraid. No sign of Captain Pane."
“Damn it.” Elizabeth was going to kill him if he'd gotten her favorite boy-toy killed. And then probably cut his balls off out of sheer spite. That is, if they ever got back to Port Royal at all. "And the Estrela?”
“Funny story, that,” Ruiz replied scratching the back of his head. “Hank took two men up the coast, to do some reconnoitering?”
“And?” Hawk’s entire body language said that he very much doubted the story was as funny as Ruiz had professed.
“The Estrela, Captain, she’s sitting on the other side of this beach, just over this hill. With no armed convoy, and all the gold that the Portuguese have dragged onto the shore. Perfectly ripe for the pickin’.”
Hawk blinked in disbelief.
“Here." Ruiz handed over a spyglass to Hawk, so that he could convince himself of the accuracy of the situation.
It didn't take long to scale the side of the hill, picking a vantage point that would allow him a view of the beach without being seen. And on the other side of the hill...
Gold. Sacks that were splitting at the seams and crates with the lids pried off, glittering in the sun like a fever dream. More crates were being lugged from the sea by exhausted sailors.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
He returned to Ruiz only to find Silver emerging from the sea again, bright eyed and grinning the smile of a thousand stars and looking entirely overly pleased with himself. "The gold! Did you see it?"
Hawk drew him close with a chuckle. “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, pet,” he whispered into Silver’s ear, brushing his lips against the shell as he moved past his lover.
“There’s still the question of getting this gold off that beach,” he resumed conversation with Ruiz.
“We’re not going anywhere with the Orca in the shape she’s in right now.
And the Estrela, far as I can see, is even worse off.
After all that - if we can’t get off this beach, if the Portuguese and the Natives don’t kill us first - we still face a very realistic chance of dying of thirst and hunger, right here. ”
“To die in Phallandia,” Silver muttered with a visible shudder, and Hawk cast him a questioning look. The kid was an idiot, but he was his idiot.
“We’ll think of something,” Hawk said, in the most reassuring voice he could muster, and took Silver’s hand into his own. “Believing in you got me this far, hasn’t it? Now, you must believe in me.”
In front of them, Ruiz cleared his throat.
“What should I tell the men, Captain?”
“Take stock of all our supplies,” Hawk began reciting his orders, “make a list of everything. Send out a small troop to find potable water, we’ll have to ration...”
A cry from the shore interrupted him.
“Jesus Christ,” Ruiz scratched his head again. “It’s Henry Pane.”
“Of course it is,” Hawk muttered, lifting the spyglass to his eye again. “And in case I had any doubts, he’s completely naked.”
Well, this was awkward. Silverfin hid behind the rest of the crew of the Orca, busying himself with petting Millie the land crab, while everyone else surrounded the freshly beached Captain Pane, the seeming sole survivor of the Tempest.
Leave this crew alone, Silverfin had hissed again at his kin when he'd gone into the sea after Hawk, baring his teeth. If it’s biped blood you want, go after the Tempest. I told you: Pane is more delicious!
He was hoping the Mers would just eat him. But by the looks of it... Nope.
“There was something... in the water..,” Pane was saying to Hawk, his voice even more gravelly and hoarse than usual. “Many somethings. I... I don’t know... they touched me... a lot.”
“Clearly Captain Pane has swallowed a lot of seawater,” Doc LeBaron had suggested, much to Silverfin's relief.
Look, Silverfin may have been a Prince of the Sea, but he was not above petty vengeance. Mara had left their family for Elizabeth, and Elizabeth had left Mara for Captain Pane. In a way, he'd really been asking for it all along, to fuck over sea royalty in such a shameless way.
“What happened to your trousers?” Hawk asked, eyeing his fellow captain suspiciously.
"The savage beasts took them," Pane growled. "Tore them right off me."
“The Portuguese?”
"Not the fucking Portuguese! The things! In the water!"
"I did see some sharks," Hank piped in, clearly looking for a chance to be helpful.
"Sharks that only eat pants?" Hawk cast his bosun a dubious look.
"Sharks don't strip you like that," Pane muttered darkly.
Well, pants or no pants, he was definitely alive, Silverfin reasoned. And all of Elizabeth's favorite bits were clearly intact.
That seemed to also be enough for Hawk, who hollered, "For the love of god, someone find Captain Pane some trousers. There's work to be done and treasure for the taking!"