Fantasy short. There is something queer afoot on a sea captain’s vessel.
Fantasy short. 3.1k. There is a stowaway on the vessel of Captain Tom Warren, and he determines to get to bottom of it.
Content warnings: references to period-typical transphobia, sexual content, sex magic.
Tom Warren and Sam Coates first appeared in:
https://johannestevans.medium.com/spanking-d3887c9b931f
Trevor hid his yawn in his elbow as he walked out on deck, huddling in his oil coat as the rain dashed down against the wood. In the grey gloom from the downpour and the fog cast over the choppy waters, the lanterns on deck were distant, dark yellow glows, could barely be distinguished as lamps at all through the thick film of falling water.
He couldn’t even see Cox, who was on watch, but he wasn’t much interested in going looking for him: he occupied himself with traipsing over the water-washed deck to trim the candles in their lamps as quickly as possible, so he could go back below decks and try to get dry again.
Although the sails were tied up tightly, bound so that nothing could tear free in the wind, he could hear the creak and shift of the masts and hear the loud flap of one or two loose corners of cloth, and water was pouring heavily from some corners of the masts, gathering in pools in the gaps before it came down all at once.
He was soaked to the skin once he’d trimmed the last lamp, and he stood for a second on deck, as still as he could be as the wind whipped one way and the next.
There was something he could hear, something he couldn’t put his finger on — it was too soft to be the howl of the wind, and he was fairly certain he could hear it under the wind, somehow. Tilting his head, he listened more carefully.
It touched him, that sound.
It poured down his throat like something hot and wonderful, settled itself in the base of his gut, in the core of his bones, and dug in him deeper, so that although his teeth were chattering in the rain and cool bite of the wind, although his clothes were sticking fast to his flesh under the oil coat, and his cock was hard in his breeches.
It was almost musical, that sound.
There was something beguiling in it, hypnotising, something that made his skin feel hot, made him smile despite the storm, and before he knew it, he was stepping forward onto the centre deck again.
Where was it coming from?
He needed to hear it more closely.
It was a midshipman, Charles Guyett, that found Lee Trevor the next morning.
He was found on the foredeck, apparently so drunk he wasn’t even shaking: buried deeply in a dreamy stupor, he stared into the middle distance as Guyett tried to shake him awake, even when Guyett slapped his shoulder, slapped his face.
The ship’s surgeon wasn’t called for immediately — the officers thought he must be drunk, and were discussing his likely punishment until McCleary came in, and said that Lee Trevor was all but a teetotaller, owing to the fact that spirits made him violently ill.
Captain Warren detested all these proceedings in order, even before he laid eyes on Trevor sprawled back in the cot one of the officers had tipped him into. Trevor looked very pale, but not otherwise unwell, and it was almost as if he’d forgotten how to swallow when the surgeon urged him to drink.
He was dizzy and confused, smiling like a fool, and didn’t even react to any question posed of him, let alone answer it.
He was buried in a strange land of his own making, dancing in whatever that dreamy place was made of, and Captain Warren was loath to admit it, but he was unsettling to look at. Eyes glassy, mouth ajar, head tipping slowly from side to side with the swell and trough of the seas beneath them, Trevor looked like the classical sailor bewitched by the Sirens’ call.
Sailors, even — especially — navy men, were a superstitious lot, and already the ship was rife with gossip and conflicting stories — no matter that it wasn’t true, Warren wished more of them would think it was down to drink.
“Some manner of stroke, maybe,” said the surgeon. “I really couldn’t say, Tom. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
It took a few days for him to recover, two or three, where they had to force a little meal and water down his throat every few hours, but then he slept properly, and when he woke, it was like nothing had ever happened.
Trevor was disoriented and confused, couldn’t understand that he’d been unconscious for some three days, and all he could talk about was how wet it had been, how he’d been out to trim the glim, that this couldn’t have happened, that he hadn’t gone anywhere.
They thought it a funny thing, certainly. Three days was too long to fake that stupor for just to be workshy, and Trevor had never had a history of avoiding work — if anything, he was one of their most committed sailors, threw himself to everything with aplomb.
Three weeks later, it happened again, not to Trevor, but to Coates, and Captain Warren was glad it was him that found him.
He stepped out on deck in the middle of the night, just wanting the fresh air, and he didn’t even realise it was Coates at first, just saw one of the sailors hanging down over the deck wall. It made him angry, truth be told, even before he saw the breeches pulled down around the sailor’s knees — and he knew it was Coates, then, before he saw his face, which was hanging over the side with the rest of his front half.
Coates’ cunt had been used very well, bright pink and shining in the night’s gloom, and white-stained juices were dripping down the back of his plump thighs. His arse was a mess of bruises, the sort a man sucked into place, and whilst Warren recognised the cunt he was looking at, he didn’t recognise these — and he’d last had Coates in his office only three days ago.
He went from furious to terrified within a moment, gripping the waistband of his breeches and pulling them up — his mind jumped first to assault, to rape, and this wasn’t improved when he pulled Coates to his feet and saw the giddy, absent smile pulling at his face, the distance in his eyes.
“Coates?” Warren demanded, gently smacking his face. “Coates?”
No answer would take hold of his senses — they’d been dashed from him, fucked out of him, and would take some time to return.
It wasn’t as though they had some arrangement of exclusivity, that Coates wasn’t to lie with another sailor on the deck, but Warren knew that as a rule, he wouldn’t: Warren was particular about reserving the truth of his identity very carefully beyond that which any other sailor was aware of, and were it not for happenstance, Warren would never know himself.
So long as he never fell pregnant or succumbed to some malady that required a catheter, Warren didn’t expect anyone would ever learn, that Coates would allow for it — and yet here was Coates now, dizzy and well-fucked and buried in a stupor, and someone had fucked him.
Reid was easily stirred when Warren went below decks, and as Reid checked Coates over, palpating his belly, checking his lungs, his throat, his pulse and heart as he had Trevor, Warren said, “I have no delicate way to ask what I shall now ask you.”
“Very well,” said Reid, with a cautious glance at him.
“Was Trevor sodomised?”
Reid was still a moment, his fingers pressed to Coates’ throat, and he glanced up to Warren, met his gaze. “Was this one?”
“No damage done to him — you needn’t go to look,” said Warren. “But his breeches were around his ankles when I found him, and it seemed to me he had either fucked or been fucked ere I found him.”
“I wish you’d not be so coarse, Tom,” muttered Reid.
“I don’t have your medical training, Joss. I know no more pleasant or more anatomical way to say that which I mean.”
Reid sighed. “I didn’t think to check,” he said. “But I shouldn’t say it to the crew — rumours of the Sirens’ call already abound.”
“As they will do,” said Warren, and left the surgeon to his work.
It wasn’t worry that ailed him in the coming days. It seemed to Tom Warren that worry was reserved for mothers and fathers or wives and husbands, not for ships’ captains, even those who were buggering their sailors.
No, it wasn’t worry — but it did sit ill with him.
Each night found him wandering the deck at strange hours, unable to sleep or to soothe himself with book or whiskey.
It was the third night that he felt, even as he moved, his steps slow and quiet, that he were in some dream, although he couldn’t recall when it was he’d fallen to, or if he even had. The night felt thick as treacle and twice as sweet, and he tipped to and fro as he moved, feeling almost drunk until he came to the top deck and the cold night air made him shiver.
He felt sober, now, but the night remained drunk: the ship tipped very strange one way and the other, and it seemed to him that the glow of the night candles was swimming on the air, reflecting colours that ought not have been.
Sitting upon one of the covered rowboats, long tresses of dark hair falling about his shoulders, was a man. He did not wear a sailor’s uniform, only a white blouse worn loose and a pair of tight, wine-coloured breaches: one of his booted feet was brought up, his elbow rested on the knee, and the other foot hung down, swinging slightly as though he were sitting on a bench on some public thoroughfare.
It had to be a dream, Warren thought as he came down the steps toward him.
There was a tabby cat sitting with him, leaning against his side, its tail in the air — the ship’s cat, a nasty and unkind creature more tigress than moggie, would never stand for such trespass.
They couldn’t even have a dog without her ripping the poor creature’s muzzle to shreds.
The man had fine, impossibly smooth skin, so much so that it almost seemed as though he had been painted. His nose was finely carved, his eyes heavily lidded, his lips plump and full. His eyes, when the light caught them, were a deep purple, like ancient wine, and some of his same colour showed in the headband tied through his hair, crowning his head and keeping it out of his face.
This stranger and his cat both looked to Captain Warren with lofty curiosity, as though it were he trespassing on their ship, and not the other way around.
“I took only what I needed to sustain me,” said the stranger, in a clear voice like a bell — not like a bell, but like the sound cracking ice made on a wide floe, strange and musical, echoing in a way that was undeniably of nature, and yet undeniably of something else, too. “Your men did not seem to resent my asking it, and gave themselves readily with nary even a word of payment.”
“You enchanted them,” said Warren, feeling still like he was in a dream, his mouth moving slow. “Bewitched the both of them.”
“I took only what I needed,” repeated the stranger, stroking his fine, smooth fingers from his cat’s head down to her tail, so that she purred a sound of soft delight.
“And passage, I see,” said Warren. “With neither papers nor permission.”
“Permission,” said the stranger, and laughed. It was a haunting sound, like a thousand glaciers cracking at once. “I am seeking no permission from you, Captain — I am giving you a courtesy, for I know I have taken something of yours. I take trespass to heart — do you?”
“You’re trespassing now,” said Warren.
“This is not your ship, sir: I believe it belongs to your king.” The stranger laughed, then, as though he’d told some funny joke, and tilted his head to one side, purple eyes shining. “I believe you know which trespass I refer to. You English are a backwards people, as uncultured as you are barbaric — I had no idea you would allow for such men as Sam Coates in your naval service.”
“Is that why you fucked him?” asked Warren, and the stranger’s laugh was a soft and tittering thing, with a gentle echo to it.
“See the barbarian bluster,” said the stranger, standing slowly to his feet and turning his head, addressing, it seemed, his cat, “when his territory is encroached.”
The stranger was taller than Warren was, unnaturally tall, superlative in his height. He moved with a sinewy grace, much like his cat did, and laid one perfect hand upon Warren’s breast, and the fingers were so warm that he could feel them through his coat, his uniform.
“I have no care for stowaways,” said Warren, and the stranger leaned in closer to him, smelling like fresh roses and old, old wine.
“Have you knowledge of my name?” asked the stranger in breathless tones, so that Warren’s skin felt hot under his uniform, and his cock stirred half to life. “Have you heard it whispered on the winds I’ve brought you, the better to carry this ship of yours to port — all the faster, I might add, than it might have?”
“I — ”
“Heed,” said the stranger, gesturing with one hand, and Warren felt the whole of the ship creak underneath them, the wood sounding, and he looked cautiously up to the sails as they filled with wind, and the ship took on a burst of speed that ought have made him unsteady on his feet.
He rode it with little more than a slight tilt forward.
“A man of the sea,” said the stranger, and Warren felt no fear, although he knew now that he should. “You trust yourself to wind and wave, do you not?”
“You are a Siren, then,” said Warren.
“I am my mother’s son,” said the stranger. “As I am my father’s. What is any man but that?”
“You are a man, then?”
“You are a wily one,” said the stranger. “I suppose I am not that, but a witch I may be, and one sponsoring your travels. Other men might beg for that service, and what have I taken, but two men’s senses for no more than a week between them?”
“And their honours,” said Warren.
“Honour,” said the stranger. “What knows a barbarian of honour?”
“No less than a witch at sea,” said Warren, and the stranger cupped his cheeks. Held between his palms, Warren felt as though he were being seared, the brains in his head soon to boil in the heat of it, but he did not flinch, and he did not pull away.
“You do not pledge yourself to gods or spirits,” said the stranger, “and yet so superstitious are you.”
“A good captain is cautious,” said Warren. “I needn’t believe in that which could do my sailors harm to go without provoking it.”
“Sensible,” said the stranger, purring as much as his cat. “What a rare thing that is in a barbarian.”
“If you lend us your wind,” said Warren, “that is your passage paid — your passage paid already. You need offer nothing else, but your discretion and your silence.”
“I stand for adoration unreturned, Captain Warren,” said the witch in his ice-cracking voice, with his rosewater sweetness. “Desire is mine, yes, but the only love I might play between my fingers is that which goes unrequited — thus why it is my belief I have trespassed, between you and sailor Coates.”
“Do you know all our names?” asked Warren.
“All of them,” said the stranger. “Even those you know not yourselves.”
“Oughtn’t I know yours?”
“I will sell it to you.”
“In exchange for what? Your passage is bought, as I have told you — I would not offend a witch when I have my crew to consider.”
“For a kiss,” said the stranger.
“In exchange for your name?”
“For my trespass,” said the stranger, and didn’t wait for his answer: his lips were as incandescently hot as his hands were, and Warren knew he wasn’t imagining the steam that burst from his lips as their tongues slid against one another, because he felt it cloud past his eyelashes.
His mouth felt preternaturally cool when the stranger withdrew, and whispered, “Himeros.”
Dawn was breaking when the witch pulled away, and Warren stood still on the deck and watched the golden mists ahead of him, watched the witch’s cat disappear into the fog even as the sun’s shine threatened soon to dispel it.
Below decks, Warren found that Coates had regained his senses, and looked to the captain with as much fear as recognition.
“Do you recall the man’s seduction of you?” asked Warren.
“He was very beautiful,” said Coates quietly. He looked overdrawn and tired, but no more than Trevor had been when he’d come out of his own comatose state. “He became hesitant, when we embraced — I did not understand why. The world was dreamlike, where we met, seemed hardly to be the ship we stand on, but I did go willingly. Doctor Reid seemed to be concerned about that.” He paused a moment, considering, and then looked to Warren. “Are you angry?”
“No,” said Warren.
His lips lingered with a ghost of roses and heat, but it didn’t compare to the taste of Coates’ lips, the way his laughter felt when it was muffled against Warren’s own mouth.
Thus was the trespass, as Himeros called it — there was no unrequited band between himself and the sailor before him, although no band that might be discussed, even in the queerest company.
“That’s a rare change then,” said Coates, not without affection, which Warren ought have scolded him for, but he didn’t. His eyes were heavy-lidded, and as much as he was lucid, it was plain to Warren that he was still exhausted, and had need of another day’s rest at least — as Trevor had needed, too.
Warren said nothing more, his diligence having been done, and retired to his quarters.
There was no more sign of the witch until they next made port some months later, and Warren saw once again the golden mists abound, meeting the docks before they did, and then evaporating in the light.
In the next week, he and Coates would arrange to meet in some rest house, each in apparent ignorance of the other — and for a night, at least, there would be peace.
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