Chapter Text
Alina has not always been at sea.
There was a time before, when she lived on land. She remembers grass and trees and mountains, even. She thinks she lived in a city—she remembers it being loud and crowded. She remembers leaving on a ship.
But that’s all gone now.
She tries to recall the faces of her parents, but time has reduced them to nothing but fuzzy outlines, little better than mirages on the horizon. The captain tells her it’s better if she doesn’t try to remember. He says forgetting is one of life’s few blessings.
She is unconscious when they pull her aboard. Floating like a corpse, is how the quartermaster put it later, looking like he would’ve preferred it if they hadn’t found a pulse. His are the shoes she vomits on when she comes to, expelling the seawater that had tried to drown her as well as half-digested bits of her last meal.
She lies shivering on deck, thin body shuddering beneath the lash of the rain and the howl of the wind. All around her are men’s boots—brown, black, tall, short, ragged, and fine. A few men, she notices with hazy confusion, even seem to have mismatched pairs.
The men argue in so many different languages that she cannot hope to understand a single word. She huddles on deck, too weak and cold and scared to move. Every time she thinks she might be able to rise, to plead her case, the rain lashes out to beat her back down or the boat pitches beneath her and she loses her footing. She has no choice but to cower and await their judgment.
Eventually, one gruff voice cuts through the noise, and the rest fall silent. Alina looks up through the torrent of rain and sees an enormous black bear stalking towards her on its hind legs. Her heart seizes in her chest—
But no, when he gets closer, she realizes he’s only a man. A huge man, taller than most of the men surrounding him, but a man all the same. He wears black from head to toe, and his enormous greatcoat whips in the wind. She can hardly see his face, hidden as it is beneath a tricornered hat and a thick, dark beard.
She knows without having to be told that this is the ship’s captain and that he alone will decide her fate. She watches the way the other men shift to make room for him before automatically closing ranks behind him to block the rain and the wind. He comes to a stop beside the tall, dour man upon whose shoes she vomited. The two speak quietly for a moment, clearly confidantes, before the captain turns to the rest of the crew.
They all begin shouting at once.
Alina cannot understand a single word, but she catches the through line, for she’s heard the stories: Bad luck to have a woman on board.
She learns the particulars of their fears much later: that she will run them aground, get them caught in a typhoon, kill them slowly with the plague—all while stealing the riches they’d stolen for themselves, and bringing down the wrath of the royal navy upon their heads.
Silly superstitions, the captain assures her, pressing one calloused hand to her soft cheek.
But at the time, standing on deck in a rainstorm, the captain does not dismiss a single man’s claim. All he does is listen. He lets each man speak, and when they are finally finished, he turns to her. He asks the same question in four different languages before he lands on the one she understands.
“How old are you?”
She is so overwhelmed with the relief that someone knows her language that she cannot reply at first. When she finally stutters out an answer, she sees him smile. It is a surprise how white his teeth are beneath that beard. She expected to see at least half of them missing, and the rest blackened or capped in gold.
The captain turns back to the crew, and speaks loudly in their language before dismissing them all with a wave. They disperse, but not without a good number of them shooting her furious glares or gesturing at over their hearts as if to ward off evil. She ducks her head away from them, trying to make herself as small and inoffensive as possible.
It doesn’t work. Footsteps are coming towards her, firm and measured, and then something heavy is being draped over her shoulders.
A shroud, she thinks, and she shakes harder than ever despite the protection from the rain. She’s seen shrouded bodies before. She knows that next: she'll be going up in flames.
She wonders, as she’s hauled upward, if dying by fire is worse than dying by water. Does it take longer? Does it hurt more?
She does not realize she’s not being carried to a pyre until the rain stops altogether and suddenly she is inside. Belowdecks, the world is dry and—at least in this small space—warm. Still, she does not allow herself to hope she's been saved until she’s sat upright by the stove and passed a bowl and spoon. The captain’s greatcoat is stays wrapped around her like a shield.
They warm her with broth and blankets. The cook, a clean-shaven man whose name she later learns is Fedyor, keeps a watchful eye on her until she eats every spoonful. He even passes her a crust of dry bread when the captain isn’t looking, pressing a finger to his lips as he does so. She crams the whole thing in her mouth, bowing her head in gratitude.
Exhaustion takes over quicker than she expected, and despite the wild rocking of the ship, she is asleep in minutes, the captain’s coat still clutched close over her wet clothes.
When night falls, the captain returns for her.
At his instruction, she follows him out of the mess and down narrow hallways towards the stern. She has to hurry to keep up with his long strides, and the shifting of the ship on the waves has her crashing into walls. Without turning his head, he promises she’ll get used to it.
He opens the door at the far end of the passage and steps aside, revealing a large room with windows at the back, walls of bookshelves, a huge oak desk cluttered with parchment and quills, and a bed with a real mattress. There is even a rug covering the wooden floor.
It is, she realizes, his personal quarters that they are standing in.
“You cannot sleep among the men,” he points out, and she nods, because of course she can’t. She is a girl and they are men.
But he is the captain. Captains are good men. Trustworthy.
She climbs into the bed and lets him pull the covers over her until she feels as safe and warm as she once did in her own bed at home.
When she wakes, she is alone. It is impossible to tell the time, but she feels as if she's has been unconscious for days. She lays beneath the heavy covers for as long as she can before her aching stomach drives her to her feet. Waiting for her on a chair beside the bed, she finds a pile of hand-me-down clothes. They were clearly taken from the smallest man on ship, but even so, she has to roll up the sleeves and the pants multiple times before she has full use of her hands and feet. The coat fits better, at least, and if she wears both pairs of socks she was left with, the shoes are almost her size.
It feels strange, walking about in men’s clothes instead of a dress, but she's simply too relieved to still be alive to care what she looks like.
It takes her some time to find the mess again. The ship didn’t seem so complicated when the captain was leading her about, but now every hallway looks the same. None of men she passes look inclined to help her, and she's too nervous to try even the most rudimentary sign language.
Eventually, she ends up back in that warm little room. The stove is still burning hot, and Alina lets out a sigh of relief. It is empty, save for the man clearing the tables. She must’ve just missed the meal, but the cook smiles at her and gestures for her to sit.
She spends a long while savoring the stew he places in front of her. She knows food can be hard to come by this far out at sea, and these men are likely already rationing. An extra mouth to feed is never welcome. She has to clench her hands into fists under the table so she won’t be tempted to the lick the bowl before he takes it away. A minute later her mouth falls open when he places it in front of her again, once more full and steaming. She doesn’t stop to think before jumping to her feet and hugging him.
Though she wants nothing more than to stay in the safe embrace of the mess, Alina forces herself to her feet once she’s finished eating and heads up on deck to find her savior.
The captain is standing at helm, eyes squinting against the glare as they sail into the sun. He gives her a nod of acknowledgment, which she manages to return in as ladylike a way as possible. The hand-me-downs she was given itch, but she refuses to betray her discomfort in front of him. She reminds herself, once more, that she is lucky to be alive.
For a quarter of an hour, she stands beside the captain as he maneuvers the ship, confers in quiet tones with his grim-faced second-in-command, and shouts orders at his men. Finally he steps away, and gestures for her to follow him to the port side railing, safe from the spray of the sea.
“Why did you let me stay?” she blurts. His eyes—dark as his clothes, as his beard—peer down at her with a kind of icy sharpness. "I mean—I know the crew didn’t want me,” she whispers.
Even now, the men working the ropes are glaring at her. One even spits when she happens to make eye contact.
“The crew,” the captain says, and she is surprised by how softly he speaks in her language, “do not always know what's good for them.”
“But—” She bites her lip, knowing better than to argue, knowing she is safe only if she does not argue. But she cannot bear the uncertainty. “I shouldn’t be allowed here. Everyone knows—”
“Knows what? That women aboard ships are bad luck?”
She nods, pale and shamed.
“Well, that may be true, but it doesn’t apply in your case.”
She looks up, confused. How can it not apply?
He crouches down in front of her, until he is no longer a giant and they are instead eye to eye.
“You, Miss Starkov,” he says, “are a girl. And girls—unlike women—are good luck.”
She has never heard such a thing before—can’t be certain if it’s even true—but the captain is smiling at her when he says it and Alina, remembering her mother’s teaching to always reward kindness with kindness, smiles back. If he thinks she’s good luck, then she will do her best to prove him right.
As he promised, she does grow used to the rolling of the ship. She learns how to walk below decks, to always flatten herself against the walls so the crew on shift can get past and do their duties. She learns to keep her feet nimble on the top deck, not to slip on water or oil, nor to hang onto any of the rigging. She learns not to speak or make eye contact with a certain contingent of the crew—still they gesture over their hearts and mutter prayers whenever they spot her.
Mostly what she learns is how to be alone.
Despite being on a ship of nearly sixty men, she often finds herself on her own—either because the men are sleeping, or working, or avoiding her. She is used to talk ceasing whenever she gets too close, and not resuming until she is so far away she couldn’t have heard even if they’d been shouting. Not every crewman is hostile; in fact, a majority of them simply prefer to ignore her. There is no anger in their faces when they look at her, simply disinterest. Some days she finds that harder to take.
Her one solace, apart from the captain, is the cook. She spends most of her time in the mess with him, trading words while he prepares the crew’s meals. Slowly, bit by bit, she and Fedyor build up a kind of vocabulary in one another's languages. It’s nice to have someone else to talk to, even if they can’t fully express themselves.
Weeks pass, and on rare days when the sea still makes her queasy, she sits on deck, well out of the way of the men, and watches the horizon. She thinks about her parents, and hopes their deaths were quick.
While she eats breakfast and her noon meal in the mess, she always takes dinner alone with the captain in his quarters. There is nothing formal about it, and the food is only marginally better than what the crew gets, but it feels special nonetheless. Just the two of them, sitting at a shared corner of his desk, a few fat candles between them to illuminate the meal.
On rare nights, he lets her have a few sips of his wine after their plates are cleared away. She doesn’t like the taste much, but she does like the way he looks at her when she drinks it: like he finds her immensely interesting, a creature deserving of deep and intensive study. She does not think anyone, even her parents, has ever paid her such close attention as he does at these moments.
So she sips the wine slowly, holding it in her mouth to keep his attention for as long as she can before she swallows. The wine settles low in her stomach, hot and viscous.
In his eyes, she can see herself as someone worthy of being saved.
She has never shared a bed with anyone before now, but she finds she likes sharing one with the captain. He’s big and warm and the sea can be a terribly cold place. She burrows close to him for heat and shelter, though she often wakes cold and alone. The captain is a man with many responsibilities, she knows, and the ship must always come first.
Even so, she finds herself scuffing her heels against the top deck, and scratching her filched dinner knife into the railings at the bow. She feels silly for fighting with a thing over his attention. But she cannot help herself.
On some lucky, lazy mornings, she wakes to find him still in bed beside her. The first time it happens, he is snoring so loud she has to cover her mouth so she won't laugh. The second time, his arm is wrapped around her midsection, the weight of it pinning her pleasantly in place as she falls back to sleep.
One day, she wakes to the feel of something hard poking at her back. She reaches behind her to push it away, thinking perhaps it is a bottle of some kind, caught between their two bodies. She knows the captain has trouble sleeping sometimes, and he always says with a weary smile that drinking helps with that.
But there is no bottle trapped between them.
Alina isn’t sure what it is, exactly. When she reaches back, she feels only fabric—coarse fabric, like the trousers he sleeps in, though there is something else underneath. Something that doesn’t feel like his leg. She pushes whatever it is away, but it doesn’t budge—even seems to spring back when she eases up. She frowns and pushes harder.
She’s startled when the captain’s morning-deep rumble fills the cabin.
“You’re a curious little thing, aren’t you?”
She peers over her shoulder to find him staring at her with half-hooded eyes, clearly having just woken up. But there is something—odd—in the way he is looking at her. Something different than sleep. Something that makes her feel too warm inside all of a sudden.
She licks her lips. “Curious?”
“Mm.”
He shifts on the bed, turning his head more fully to face her. The sight of him strikes her dumb for a moment, for he is always at his most handsome in the mornings.
“You were touching me.”
“I…” That was him? “I’m sorry,” she says, eyes dropping in contrition. Her mother taught her never to touch anyone without permission. “I didn’t mean to.”
“There’s no need to be sorry,” the captain replies, and his voice is so gentle that she chances a look up.
His eyes still look—strange—but the smile on his face is familiar. She takes refuge in it. Things are still okay so long as he is smiling at her.
“Do you know what you were touching?”
She frowns. Is she supposed to?
“I-I’m not sure,” she stammers.
“Maybe if you see it, you’ll know.” His hand is already sliding beneath his trousers. “Do you want to see?”
She licks her lips, still unsure. “I…”
“You don’t have to say yes,” he tells her.
But his hand is moving beneath his trousers like he really wants to show her, so she nods. Her lips part as she watches him pull them down.
She has never seen a man naked before. Never knew exactly what it was they had between their legs. It looks strange, like a half-grown appendage. She feels the inexplicable urge to touch it, to see if it’s real.
She is already reaching a hand across the sheets before she remembers her manners. Her mother was always insistent about manners.
“Can I…? I mean, may I...?”
Her hand cannot wait for permission; it is drawn to him like a compass needle to north. Her palm hovers just above the surface. It—whatever it is—seems to twitch beneath her.
“My brave little castaway.” The captain smiles. “Of course you can touch, my dear.”
It is not like anything she’s ever felt before. He is hard and yet soft. She is mystified to feel him change beneath her touch. To grow—firmer, somehow. Or is it larger? Her hand doesn’t fit around him and she wonders if she will always be this small. Or is he simply so big? She wonders if grown women can fit their hands around him, and then she snatches her hand back, blushing at the thought of anyone else touching him here.
“Did I scare you?”
“No, captain.”
When he tilts his head to the side, it causes a few locks of his dark hair to fall over his forehead. It makes him look so terribly handsome, and she has to actively resist the urge to reach out and push his hair out of his eyes. Manners, her mother snaps in the back of her mind. She’s already tried to touch him once without permission.
“You know it’s all right to be curious, don’t you?” The captain gives her one of his small, secretive smiles that always make her feel unbearably special. “Some say curiosity is a curse, but I think it’s a blessing. If we didn’t have curiosity, how would we ever learn? How would we grow?”
He has a point, she must admit. After a moment of deliberation, she gives in to her own curiosity, nodding at the thing between his legs.
“What do you call it?”
“Well, it has a few different names, I suppose,” he says with a wry smile she can’t quite read. “But you can call it a cock.”
She repeats out the word, scrunching her nose. She’s never liked chickens very much, and noisy roosters least of all. They never shut up, not even after the sun is up, and they always peck worse than the hens. When she says as much, he laughs.
“It’s not that kind of cock,” he chuckles, though she knows that. She might be a girl but she isn’t a fool. What’s between his legs doesn’t resemble a rooster at all.
“Would you like to touch it again?”
She isn’t sure she would, really, but he’s looking at her with such expectation that she nods anyway. What’s the harm in touching it?
When she reaches her hand out this time, she notices there is something wet at the tip of it. It isn’t the color of blood or pus, and it isn’t translucent like tears or sweat. Curiosity is a blessing, she thinks, but before she can satisfy her own by asking, the captain is moving closer, his voice a low murmur:
“You can wrap your hand around it if you like. Don’t be shy now.”
She tries, but can’t quite manage it. He’s so thick, and seems to only be getting thicker with each passing second. Or is she imagining things?
“I can’t reach,” she mutters, frustrated.
“That’s all right. Just do your best.”
She does her best. She tries again and again, sliding her palm up and down, trying to find the narrowest point so that her thumb and pointer finger can touch. But it’s impossible.
She expects him to be disappointed, but when she looks up into his face, he doesn’t seem unhappy at all.
He looks like he does sometimes late at night, when he’s had too much to drink before bed. Eyes shining, gaze upon her but not seeming to see her at all. She’s thinking of asking if he’s all right, and she shifts on the bed, briefly tightening her hold on him to keep her balance.
He grunts like he’s in pain, and she stops, drawing her hand away fearfully.
“It’s all right,” he tells her through clenched teeth, but it doesn’t seem all right.
“I’m sorry, captain.” She gnaws on her lower lip. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear.”
“Doesn’t hurt,” he bites out. His hand is cupping the—thing—between his legs.
Cock, her mind supplies, suddenly thinking of her vocabulary lessons with Fedyor. She wonders what the word is in his language for this, then blushes at the mere thought of asking. She watches with wide eyes as the captain grips his cock fully in his large hand. It fits so much better in his hand than hers. Like they were built perfectly in proportion, one to hold the other.
He squeezes it much, much harder than she did. She can see the tendons in his wrist, straining against the confines of his own skin. His hand moves faster, too, stroking it in a way that makes it clear he’s done it many times before. When she manages to tear her eyes away, to look at his face, his expression is all twisted. How is it possible that he’s not in pain? His breathing is growing fast, his body twitching in ways that don’t seem natural. Should she call for someone? Is he having a spasm? Could he be dying?
“Captain, are you oka—?”
“Quiet, sweet thing,” he grits out. His hand is moving faster and faster. “Just—let me—”
He doesn’t finish his sentence.
A sound leaves his mouth—something between a gasp and a groan—and his hips buck upwards as some kind of white liquid shoots out of the tip and she jumps in surprise. She’s never seen anything like it. He groans as it splatters across the bedsheets in wide arcs—once, twice, before slowing to a dribble.
The captain is panting, his hand still wrapped tight around his cock. His chest and neck, she notices, are flushed a deep red. A color she’s never seen before on him except staining his nose and cheeks on the coldest days on deck.
It’s magical, she thinks, this part of him. His cock. It’s smooth and yet hard, it grows and moves, it discharges, it can even changes the color of his skin. She has never seen anything like it.
“Oh, my.” The captain glances at her sheepishly once he’s caught his breath. “I’ve made a mess, haven’t I? All over our bed.”
“It’s all right,” she tells him, mostly because she doesn’t know what else to say.
Is it all right? Surely it is. Sheets can be washed. And the lazy, happy look on his face tells her that whatever he did, touching himself like that, really must have felt very good. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him look so content, not even when he drinks.
She watches his cock as it goes soft between his legs, color fading away to match the rest of his skin, and she tells herself she’ll find a way to wrap her hand around him. She wants to be the reason he looks as peaceful as he does now, with all his many cares erased.