Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of the characters from the anime. I own the plot and the Tide Whisperer. Enjoy! Review!
A/N: I usually can't quit writing once I get on a roll, so some days I might update two or three times, and others only once.
AnzuFan: I'm glad that you're liking the story. I love to know that I'm not just writing this for my own sake. Thanks for reviewing.
Chapter Three – Pirates
When one spends years out on the sea, one tends to learn how to appreciate true beauty. It was odd that a pirate could think such a thing, but this was the man's excuse for why on God's green Earth he found him desirable.
Seto stood on the deck of his precious ship, the Tide Whisperer, overseeing the crew rapidly preparing to set sail, every now and then barking an order to the ones who started slacking off. He soon heard someone coming up behind him. He turned his head to see Atemu approaching, and then quickly turned away when momentary appreciation triggered a physical response.
Gods it should be a sin to look that good…what the fuck?
"What do I get to do?" His voice flowed over me, and I turned halfway to face the teenaged renegade.
The clothes that Seto had taken from Ryuji's trunk fit Atemu as if he had been born to wear them. The ensemble consisted of a plain white, long-sleeved, cotton tunic, a pair of dark brown leather pants, black, knee-high boots, a wide, black belt, and a crimson, midriff vest he had left unbuttoned.
The tunic accentuated the young man's broad shoulders and his tapered torso to perfection. The vest punctuated those exotic scarlet eyes of his, and the pants were a bit too tight around the boy's thighs. He was a virile, lethal creature, and Seto found that Atemu Santiago did suit the boy better than Yamir.
Atemu was a tall - not as tall as Seto, but still at least six feet in height - lean, lithe young man whose body was molded with muscle from years of hard labor, his medium olive skin glistened from beneath the light of the various lamps that lit the deck, smooth skin peeking out from under his collar. He had wild, naturally spiked hair; made from three different colors of long, jagged, golden-blond bangs and a few thin golden streaks ran through ebony silk, and crimson tinged the ends of his spikes.
"What do you mean?" Seto questioned stupidly, still sounding dazed by the full impact of the younger man's appeal. Now I know how that damned prince felt.
"You don't expect me to sit around here collecting dust, do you? This is a pirate's ship, not a pleasure cruise, and I expect to earn my keep." Atemu replied, crossing his arms over his chest.
Shouldn't that be something I would say?
"Your hand-"
"Will heal in due time, but I'm not going to let it handicap me." Atemu cut him off.
He should be angry at Atemu's bantering, or at the very least annoyed that he was pulling out all the stops until Seto had nothing to fall back on. But at the same time, he was strangely relieved that Atemu wouldn't stand to be lazy.
"Go help unfurl the sails, then."
Seto watched as Atemu rushed to climb the foremast, bracing himself as he grabbed a rope and began loosening the slack on the main sail.
A motion in front of him on the deck tore Seto's attention away from the perplexing teenager and he glared at a golden-blond man who lay awkwardly over a pile of ruined canvas and pieces of a broken wooden crate.
"Damn it, Jounouchi, get your act together!" Seto snapped.
"Aye, Captain." The blond mumbled pathetically before he moved to clean up his mess.
Seto took his place at the helm, steering the Tide Whisperer out away from the harbor and into open-ocean. Before long, they were traveling full speed ahead, Spain becoming a phantom as it slowly vanished into the blackness of the night.
The low roar of the water slapping against the hull of the ship, the cool, slight breeze that slithered over his skin and threading through his hair, these were some of the many things that Seto loved about being out on the sea.
The crew had all gone back below deck, either to go back to bed or to wait in the galley until Ryou finished cooking their breakfast. As Seto navigated across the ocean, he spotted the silhouetted figure of Atemu as he swabbed the deck. The man didn't want to stop working after they finished preparing to set out, and Seto had needed a new cabin boy. So, he had gone into the galley and emerged with Atemu's two new best friends, the mop and the bucket.
Atemu had been less than thrilled at the assignment, and even now continued to express his distaste with Seto's twisted sense retribution for the boy's bout of laughter at Seto's expense earlier. He could hear snatches of Atemu's deep voice float toward him as he grumbled and swore under his breath.
When Atemu accused Seto of being a "waterlogged goat-herder", Seto was torn between rushing down the stairs to rip the boy's head from his shoulders and being impressed by his creativity.
He figured, in the end, that if giving the boy a task that would keep the kid out of his hair for a few hours, Seto could take a little murmured bashing. The teen has been taking his time, being extremely thorough to make sure he had mopped every inch of the deck. By the time he was finished, dawn began to break, the sky began to lighten in an array of reds, golds, and coral.
"Hey." Seto called, and Atemu whirled to give the captain a heated look. He probably thought that Seto was about to give him another stupid, simple task, like polishing his boots even while Seto was wearing them. "Go get some sleep."
Atemu's scarlet eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"I don't want you agitating that cut. The crew quarters are a level below the captain and first mate cabins."
Atemu studied Seto from his lower position on the deck.
"Get going before I tell you to pluck the barnacles from the hull."
Atemu cursed Seto viciously; well, Seto didn't actually hear it, but judging by his body language and the snippet of his tone of voice, he could more than assume that it had been a curse. Atemu dumped the dirty water over the side of the ship and put the bucket and mop up against the wall of the galley before he disappeared below deck.
After the adrenaline from last night's escape had worn off, Atemu had felt thoroughly exhausted. When Seto had told him to go sleep, he had wondered if his sleep-deprived mind was playing some cruel trick on him.
"Go before I have you pluck the barnacles from the hull."
Now Atemu knew he wasn't imagining things, his pride took a brutal blow and he swore vehemently before ridding himself of the accursed mop and bucket and ducking inside before Seto could change his mind.
The crew quarters weren't hard to find once he retraced his steps from earlier and continued on from there. The crew quarters were actually three large rooms housing twenty-five individual hammocks, each with a thin blanket for warmth. Atemu had chosen to settle down in the third room, where only seven other men were snoozing away in their bunks.
Atemu chose a hammock far from the other pirates; he dropped into the bunk, and just barely pulled the blanket over his middle before he drifted off into a deep slumber.
"…Who is he?"
"…Yeah, he was that guy…"
"I don't know. Should we…"
Atemu caught snatches of jumbled conversation before he slowly opened his eyes to find five strange faces hovering over him.
He started, and tried to jump away from them, but he had temporarily forgotten he had been sleeping in a hammock. His legs got tangled up in the cloth of the hammock and…
Atemu was spun twice in a full circle before he was dropped hard, facedown, onto the cold wooden floor.
"Gods." He hissed as a shooting pain coursed up his left arm before he rolled to pin the strangers with his most venomous glare, "What the hell do you think you're doing? Has being out on the ocean so long made the lot of you forget that it's rude to watch a man while he's sleeping?" He demanded as he shoved himself onto his feet, threading his fingers through his golden bangs to hide the slight coloring in his cheeks from his embarrassing, uncharacteristic clumsiness.
"You're new here." A sandy-blond haired man that Atemu remembered was known as Malik, commented unnecessarily. "We were trying to figure out where you'd come from."
"And you had to be that close to figure it out?" Atemu snapped, and then he turned his attention to his left hand, inspecting the wound to be sure it hadn't started bleeding again.
"Curious." The man named Jounouchi mumbled.
"Haven't you heard the expression, "curiosity killed the cat"?"
"Well, at least you're a cat this time and not a dog." A black-haired, green-eyed man prodded, causing the blond to snap indignantly.
"Ignore them." Came the voice of a smooth, English tenor. A young man, maybe a year older than Atemu, with long white hair and doe-brown eyes said smiled at Atemu, "I'm Ryou Bakura."
An Englishman on a Spanish ship, with a Spanish captain, and half of the crew is also Spanish…I guess weirder things have happened.
"Atemu Santiago." He replied dutifully. "Now, I'm going back to bed, so do me a favor and bugger off."
Instead of feeling insulted, like normal people would've been, Ryou and his four companions all shared wide grins before they filed out of the room. Atemu climbed back into his hammock and fell asleep quickly.
It was mid-afternoon when Atemu finally stirred from his rest by the insistent growling of his stomach. He got out of his bunk and ventured out into the corridors heading for the deck to look for the captain. It wasn't a difficult feat, since he had only been about to open the door to go out onto the deck when Seto opened the door first on his way below.
"It's about time you got around." He grumbled, and then he gestured toward the galley on the other end of the deck, "Ryou just made supper."
"Thanks." Atemu replied before brushing past the pirate.
"Oh and after you're finished eating, the mutt made a mess below deck in the cargo hold. I need you to clean it up." Seto said, much to Atemu's irritation.
"As you say, Captain." He mocked under his breath as he continued toward the galley. Even the obnoxious Seto couldn't spoil Atemu's appetite.
It was well past sunset when Atemu re-emerged back onto the deck after spending the latter part of the afternoon cleaning Jounouchi's mess. The blond had bumped into four crates of food - bread, pickled onions, and jerky - and they had shattered on the ground. Apparently Seto hadn't allowed Jounouchi to clean it up, and left it for Atemu.
Atemu slid down the outside wall to the crew living quarters beside the barrels that served as chairs, bending his legs up to prop his elbows on his knees. It was a clear night, and the legions of stars were completely visible. It was really a breathtaking sight, listening to the lapping of the waves and smelling the musky, salty breeze…even if he had to put up with Seto's backhanded threats and his apparent need to work Atemu to the bone, Atemu was happy he was here.
He could've gone on in his life completely ignorant to how this might have been like. He could've married, become a master blacksmith, start a family, and live his life to the fullest…but how is it living life to the fullest if you don't know anything better? It couldn't be to the fullest if one is trapped in a never-ending cycle of work and family, with no way of knowing that there was an entire world out there, just beyond the range of one's sight. And here he was, Atemu, the lowly son of peasants, was living a life others could never even hope to imagine.
In his musings, Atemu dropped his eyes from watching the sky to look out into the distant blackness of the night. It was only then that he noticed a white silhouette skating across the black water, coming directly toward the Tide Whisperer, and fast.
Atemu launched to his feet and rushed below deck. He pounded on Seto's cabin door until the tall brunet finally opened to glare impatiently at Atemu's intrusion.
He was naked from the waist up, barefoot, and only his black leather pants covered his body. Atemu didn't have time to admire the captain's glorious body…Did I just think that?...and looked him in the eye, "Enemy ship heading straight for us, so get some clothes on and give me a sword."
Seto didn't have time to deal with the indignation that came from Atemu's order.
He had awakened to the boy trying his best to make sawdust out of his door, and he had been less than pleased. And then he saw the expression on his face, that of some ancient warrior…or some feral beast, and he demanded a weapon to fight.
Seto turned at the sound of Mokuba's door opening, "Wake the crew. We're under attack."
Mokuba hurried to obey and Seto vanished back into his cabin to shrug into a black tunic and slip on his boots. He grabbed three cutlasses and two multi-chambered pistols, and opened the door to see that Atemu hadn't moved an inch.
Seto pushed one of the cutlasses and a pistol into Atemu's chest and watched as the boy strapped the weapons around his waist. Seto started toward the deck, with Atemu right on his heels.
Outside, the enemy ship had gotten much closer, and from here they could see the enemy's flag fluttering in the wind.
"I can't make out the colors." Atemu confessed. "But it looks like an English caravel."
Seto grunted in reply before running to the helm and grabbed the wheel from Tristan, who appeared to be half asleep.
He turned the wheel sharply, maneuvering the Tide Whisperer until it was in attack formation.
By now, the crew started to pour out onto the deck, and Seto turned his attention to them, "Malik, gather together a team and head to the cannons." Malik chose sixteen other men and went back below deck. "Everyone else, man your stations."
Some of the men climbed up onto the masts, others spread out along the width of the deck, covering it from stem to stern.
Atemu stood near Seto, his right hand hovering over the hilt of his cutlass as they watched the enemy ship draw ever closer.