It was the dusk of the day, after dinner, before weighing anchor. A pair of lovers had found a moment together, a little bubble in time where nothing existed but their closeness.
Inside that dusk they lay pressed close together in the hammock by gravity, though neither was complaining. Her head lay on his chest, her ear against his slowing heartbeat. It had been quick and frantic before, but as they lay together in the quiet it slowed to its normal rhythm.
"I didn't want to stop," she said, an apology in her tone.
Sinbad's hand rested on her back, his thumb slowly caressing her spine. "That's alright, it's you who's going to have to carry the baby so it's you who gets to decide how far we go."
From the tension in Maeve's body he could make up that she was still unsure. How could he explain to her that he just wanted to be with her? That he wanted to be close to her, to be let into her life? "Tell me something about yourself," he requested, his voice quiet and low.
"What do you want to know?" She asked, lifting her head a little so she could look him in the eye.
He recognised it for the brave move that it was; this girl had secrets, a past she didn't like to share, probably because it hurt too much, and yet here she was, daring him to ask it of her. "I want to know everything, but I'll settle for what you feel comfortable telling me."
He saw the anxiety lift from her face, felt her muscles under his hand relax. She pressed a quick kiss onto his lips and settled herself back into his arms, her head a little higher now, her nose tickling the crook of his neck.
"It's hard you know? To think back… Everything I grew up with is gone, everyone I loved… No that's not right, I have an aunt left but that's it," with one finger she drew lazy patterns on his chest. Sinbad had the sneaking suspicion that she barely even knew that she was doing it.
"You don't have to if you don't want to," he assured her, drawing the woollen blanket up a little higher so they didn't get cold.
"Do you know how much thread is needed for a blanket like this?" Maeve asked him, fingering the material.
Sinbad couldn't help the stab of pain. He had assured her she didn't have to bare herself for him, but he was still disappointed that she had chosen to take him up on it. "No idea," he said, careful to keep his voice light.
"I make really good thread, not too thick, not too thin and very even," Maeve told him. "Back home, whenever a girl had a single moment when she wasn't doing anything else she was making thread. Sometimes, when I'm reading, I catch myself still making the movements with my fingers."
Sinbad took a moment before answering. He sensed that this was a way in, a tid-bit shared about her youth, but he had to walk a fine line between pushing her for more and backing off completely. "I'm not surprised; you're the kind of person who can excel at anything once you set your mind to it."
She snorted but dropped a kiss onto his shoulder. "Flattery will get you everywhere."
He took her hand, the one lying on his chest and brought it up to his lips, kissing her fingers before bringing it back down. "And because your thread was so even you wore the prettiest dress of all the girls in town," he said, trying to make her go on.
He felt more than heard her small laugh. "There was no town, there was barely a village. And my dresses were hand-me-downs from my older nieces. We all got one dress every year. I'll tell you, when I got my growth spurt my dress came nearly to my knees by the time I got a new one. My nana accused me of shortening the skirt so attract the boys."
"Consider this boy attracted," Sinbad said, a smile in his voice. He thought better of making a remark on the hem-line of her current outfit.
"I noticed," Maeve positively purred, sliding up his body once more to thoroughly kiss him.
Much to his own chagrin Sinbad pulled back this time. "I had just calmed down a little, now see what you've done!" he motioned to the rather obvious tent in the blanket.
Maeve flashed him a guilty smile. "Sorry?" she said, looking rather pleased with herself. She settled herself against him again. "Now you, you tell me something about yourself."
"I shared a hammock with Doubar until I was 14," Sinbad confessed a little embarrassed, it had the desired effect on the tent in any case.
Maeve shot up, nearly toppling the hammock if Sinbad hadn't made a quick move to balance them. "Really? Why?"
"I was eight when Doubar took me to sea with him. They often hire boys that young to do the crappy jobs and to keep them from getting underfoot the boys get assigned a minder. Obviously Doubar minded me so I had to share his hammock. Boys don't get their own. So I went from shared hammock to captain's quarters in one go," Sinbad explained.
"You were 15 when you became captain… How did that work?" Maeve asked, curiosity written all over her face.
"Lay back down before you make us both crash to the floor," he gently admonished her. With a little roll of the eye to indicate she was not following orders but happened to want to lay back down herself she did just that.
"Summers we spent at sea and winters with Dim-Dim, so we'd had a pretty good education. One year, we sailed all the way up to the north, to where the pines grow. It's good ship-building wood and very valuable over here. So there I was, on shore leave, wandering through this foreign town when I see some kid fall off the pier. I grabbed him, dragged him out of the water and sent him on his way. The next day, the big-shot of the town comes down to the harbour and describes me, wants to see me. Turns out it was his only son I'd saved. It was him who gave me my first ship, it was a rickety old thing that could barely stay afloat, but he also gave me a good amount of timber and we managed to steady the old tub with those and sail it back in convoy with our old ship. Back home we sold the timber and the ship and then we were pretty much rich, so we bought a better ship and another cargo and sort of never stopped," Sinbad told her, his voice warm with the memory.
"That's a nice story," Maeve said, her mind filled with images of a young Sinbad falling into his fortune that way. "You have the oddest mix of extreme fortune and extreme misfortune in your life," she remarked.
Sinbad had reflected on that topic many a time himself and didn't feel the need to go deeper into it, it would only bring the mood down. "I'm trying to decide if meeting you would fall under fortune of misfortune," he said with a cheeky smile that she couldn't see.
She huffed. "You would probably be dead and buried without me and my magic. Not to mention sharing this hammock with Doubar instead of with me."
Yup, he imagined Doubar in her place right then and it had the desired effect: the tent was completely gone. "I haven't shared my hammock with Doubar since I was a boy!" He protested, more for the fun of having an argument with her then because of a need to defend himself.
"Well I count you under fortune… Though you can be a pain sometimes," Maeve said, because she couldn't think of a retort that didn't sound both wrong and dirty.
He lifted the arm under her neck just a little, bringing her head just a little up, just a little closer so he could drop an affectionate kiss on her hairline. "You definitely fall under fortune. So you'd better not go anywhere," he didn't know why he got that feeling of dread deep in his guts when he thought of her leaving but it unsettled him.
Maeve didn't seem to notice, she just grunted. "Where would I go? We're surrounded by water and I'm not exactly a mermaid," she said, but then somehow, she didn't know how, caught on to his feeling of dread. "Hey, I'm not going anywhere, I promise." She was looking him in the face once again, trying to convince him of her sincerity.
"Fortune and Misfortune, remember? We may not have a choice," he said, the heartbreak of something that hadn't even happened yet already evident in his eyes. He burrowed his way out from under her, getting out of the hammock. "The sea is getting pretty choppy up there, I'd better see what's going on. We might not be able to drop anchor tonight."
Maeve keenly felt the cold void where he had just been, trying hard to find the right words to soothe him. "I'll have you know I'm very stubborn. If I would have let a silly thing like misfortune stop me I'd be an orphan in Eire right now, not a sorceress on a ship." She shot him a pointed look.
It actually did cheer Sinbad up a bit. He came back to the hammock, standing by its side to press another kiss to her lips before resuming his hunt for his clothes.
"What have you done to my pants, woman?" He held up the cloth, a large tear evident right down the middle.
"I might have been in a hurry to get them off…" Maeve drawled, rather enjoying the sight she was getting right now as Sinbad was not exactly dressed yet.
Sinbad noticed her leering and wadded up the pants to throw them at her head. He didn't miss and she giggled. "I'll sow them up for you, they'll be as good as new, I promise," she said, balling the pants up and stuffing them under her head as a make-shift pillow.
Curled up with the blanket she watched Sinbad rifle through his sea-chest until he found what he was looking for. He held up another pair of pants and sighed. "This is the only other pair I have… Talia gave them to me for one of her schemes. She wanted to me play a pirate, I refused of course, but she gave me the pants anyway."
Maeve didn't particularly enjoy hearing about his former girlfriend but she did appreciate him sharing of himself so easily so decided not to make an issue of it. "Put them on, I'll tell you if they suit," she said.
He sighed again, sounding very put-upon, but seeing as it was either these pants or going around the ship buck-naked asking to borrow someone else's pants, all the while not giving away how his last pair got ruined… Well he didn't have a choice, not really, so he put them on.
"They're too tight," he complained, shimmying a little to try and get more comfortable.
"Turn around," Maeve ordered, eyeing him critically though the light was almost gone.
Sinbad shook his head but did as requested.
"Come closer, I can barely see you," Maeve told him, stretching out a hand to him.
He couldn't resist the siren call so he took her hand and once again stood by the hammock where she was still curled up. He had to bite his lip to keep from yelping and jumping away when she deliberately slipped her hand across his leather-clad butt. "You madam, are not a lady," he said, trying to sound affronted even as he took pleasure in the fact that Maeve so obviously enjoyed his body.
"What was the first clue, that I'm naked or that I'm in your bed?" Maeve grinned at him. "I like the pants, but you can't wear it with that loose shirt, you'll look like you're wearing a dress and tights."
Sinbad didn't reply but moved away to light a lamp. "I'll wear the shirt Talia got me to go with it," he was resigned to the whole outfit by now. "But you'd better get those pants fixed as soon as possible." So yeah, being a sailor he could probably sow better than she could but she'd offered and it was her fault the thing was ripped anyway.
"Just as soon as I get tired of seeing your butt like that," Maeve grinned at him.
Sinbad pulled the shirt over his head and added the vest before darting back over to the hammock and pulling away the blanket in one quick move. She shrieked and made a grab for the blanket, but the ship lurched violently and the overbalanced, upending the hammock and with an 'oof' ended up sprawled on the floor.
"That's how I like to see your butt best," Sinbad grinned, leering at her as much as she had been leering at him earlier. "If I had to pick an outfit for you…" he drawled, leaving it up to her to fill in the blanks.
"Sinbad…" the angry growl in her voice was evident as she made her way to her feet, snatching the blanket from his hands and wrapping it around herself. "You just ruined your chances of ever seeing me like that again."
Well that was not part of the plan. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to fall like that and I should've helped you up right away instead of staring at you," he said, trying to look as contrite as humanly possible.
"You're an ill-mannered lout," she accused him, but he could see that the puppy-dog eyes were already having their effect on her as her eyes softened just a little.
"Captain to the deck!" Someone shouted up top and now that he was paying attention to it, the Nomad was rocking heavily and he heard the wind shrieking through the lines of the mast. The storm must have gotten heavier while they were cocooned inside their own little world.
"Continue this later?" He asked her.
"Sure," she said, laying a hand on his cheek and looking at him warmly.
He didn't know how or why she had let go of her anger so quickly but he was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He kissed her quickly, already turning to go as he spoke: "Don't forget to blow out the light, even a protected flame like that can be dangerous in a storm."
"Sinbad," she said, a note of something he didn't understand in her voice.
He turned back around to face her and suddenly she was there, kissing him with an urgency that caught him by surprise. Too soon he drew back, searching her face for answers but finding none.
"You'd better get dressed, we might need you up top," he said and with that, he was gone.
Rain lashed across the deck as he made his way to the tiller, in seconds he was soaked. Doubar had done a good job in his absence, turning the Nomad into the wind and tying down the sails but there was something still off. As an experienced sailor he knew better than to ignore his gut feelings so even as he, Rongar and Doubar struggled to hold the tiller steady his eyes flitted about the deck and mast.
He saw Maeve coming up on deck the same moment he noticed some lines had gotten loose, whipping across the deck, if they weren't secured quickly they could loosen the sails, letting the wind get a hold of them and once that happened bad could only go to worse.
"Maeve! Get those lines!" He shouted through the storm.