The Captain’s Clerk

Erotic short. A new sailor is curious about the captain’s kept man.

Just a short taste of something. 1.2k, rated E, M/M. Adapted from a TweetFic.

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Bernardt isn’t much of a talker.

That was what Ruiz had said when he’d welcomed Pharon aboard — he’s been on pirate ships before, but Captain Des Voeux had picked him out in the tavern and brought him only recently aboard the Vista, and he’s still getting used to the space. It’s small and cramped and busy, and he’s missed it, work at sea — after he’d broken two of his fingers, he’d decided to stay on land until they healed, picking up work in the tavern instead.

It’s warm and it’s intimate and it’s comfortable — it’s hard fucking work, but he’s made for it, really. Part of the reason he’d gone ashore to heal up was because he couldn’t stop himself from still throwing himself into the fucking work and kept making them fucking twinge and ache. He likes the wind in his face, likes the feeling of sweat and seaspray on his skin and soaking into his hair, likes the roughness of the ropes through his hands and the ache in his muscles after a hard day…

And he likes being with the other sailors. Likes seeing other hard, filthy men, other rough-handed men with muscle stacked on their shoulders, their thighs — likes seeing the tears in their clothes hemmed and messily darned, likes seeing their scabs and bruises and grazes heal over time.

The exception?

Bernardt.

He’d noticed him in the tavern, and on the street with Des Voeux, but he’d not actually spoken to him or talked to him — it hadn’t even occurred to him that the two of them were connected, that Bernardt was in any way attached to Des Voeux, let alone that he was a member of the Vista’s crew himself.

Most of the sailors are loud, brass fuckers who talk and fucking talk — they rib each other, shove each other and laugh, shout, drink, cheer, sing.

Bernardt doesn’t say a word, not that Pharon’s heard — and it’s not just that. Bernardt isn’t an astonishingly small man, but he’s of average size: five feet and eight, decently plump, square at the shoulder. He dresses in darker clothes than some of the other sailors, and wears a brimmed hat — he’s almost untouched by the sun, and there’s a creaminess to his white skin, lacking the unhealthy pallor some people get from avoiding the sun’s kiss. He shaves his face — or perhaps is just naturally barefaced — and he keeps his clothes in neat repair, no tears or rips in the fabric, his cuffs always neatly hemmed, every button always in place.

It’s hardly that the man is actually pristine — he’s as human as any of them — but in contrast to every other man aboard, even Captain Des Voeux himself, he seems pristine. In comparison, the man seems utterly untouched.

“Oh, here he is!” the cook jibes when he steps into the galley, and Pharon hears and sees all of the other sailors react — hears them whistle and whoop, hear them shout “Mr Bernardt!” and “Here’s our fucking boy!”

The same thing happens when Bernardt comes up above decks, and what’s incredible is that he barely fucking reacts to them — occasionally he’ll give a faint smile or a nod of acknowledgement to a particular man, but mostly he just walks through the shouting crowd of sailors, easily picking his way through them, and goes directly to whatever officer he wants — the captain or quartermaster, the purser or master gunner — where he speaks seriously, and then disappears once more below decks.

“Why does the captain need a clerk for?” Pharon asks one evening over cards. “Couldn’t he do all that paperwork he does, or whatever it is he’s used for, when he’s obviously no sailor?”

“Mr Bernardt’s an unmatched navigator,” says one of the older men faintly. “He’s good with a sextant and he keeps good charts.”

“Captain likes to keep him close, anyway,” says another of them, and the rest of the table laugh. “You’ll see when we make land.”

* * *

They careen her on an island, and as part of the crew go off in search of hogs to pass to the cook on the beach, Pharon helps him set up his spit and get ready the vegetables and what will cook with them. When the sun goes down, everyone’s laughing and singing, tipsy.

Pharon doesn’t know where the sudden tension comes from at first, looking around at the crew as they all go quiet and look in the right direction — Des Voeux is coming down, his hands in his pockets, and Bernardt is walking ahead of him, the younger man stripped of every thread.

Pharon stares at him, stares from the footsteps his bare feet make in the sand up his legs, the curling hair over his crotch, his soft belly and softer chest, the distantly contented expression on his face. His body is pale, like his face, but certainly not pristine. There are marks up his side from blade cuts and stabs, a few more mottled wounds — one of them, Pharon’s fairly sure, is a gunpowder burn; a compass is etched over his navel; tattooed rope twists around his thigh, demonstrating various knots; two inked swallows dive down one of his arms.

He doesn’t seem old enough for all that — ten thousand miles of sail? — but then, he doesn’t seem old enough for all the scars and other tattoos he’s accrued either.

“Welcome to the new quarter, gentlemen,” says Des Voeux cheerfully, and he shoves Bernardt forward, sending him stumbling hard into the gunner’s lap, making him laugh. Bernardt’s cheeks are flushed, his ears too — he’s not looking at any of the rest of them as all the crew begin to cheer, but he leans directly into the gunner’s crotch, mouths at him through his trousers.

Pharon’s so hard his head spins, because Bernardt’s thighs are slick and shining.

“Him and the captain are married, see,” murmurs a sailor in his ear, “matelots since Eden. See that pistol shot on the edge of his arm? Captain took most of that in the hip and thigh — can’t get it up anymore. The crew takes care of his husbandly duties.”

“But only once we’re ashore,” says another of his elders as the younger sailor tries to concentrate on what they’re saying instead of the wet noises of Bernardt on his knees, his greedy moans, the sweat shining on his back over a tattooed narwhal so its grey blubber looks slick and real. “Won’t stand for distraction.”

“No,” growls Bernardt when the boatswain’s mate touches his lower back, the loudest Pharon’s ever heard him speak. “Let the new man come first, if he wants to.”

Pharon’s breathless, hot all over — he won’t last half a second in the wet heat between Bernardt’s thighs, but his whole body trembles with the weight of Bernardt’s finger pointed at him, the stares of the rest of the crew.

“Yeah,” he says anyway, so desperate to take his place as he scrambles forward that he stumbles in the sand. “Yeah, yes, please, thanks, yeah — ”

He’s never heard Bernardt laugh before — the sound is as wooden as the rest of him, but no less compelling.

When Pharon grips his waist as hard as he dares and tries to fuck him into silence, the captain’s clerk only laughs harder, and it makes his cunt clench and flutter around Pharon’s cock.