Magic

I believe there's magic here in these sails.
In the wake of these old pirate trails…
That cut through the water and the atmosphere
I believe there is magic here.

-Magic by Kenny Chesney-


Eva had never known a touch so satisfying, so enchanting in all of her years.

She had been turned away when she felt something inside of her loosen from its hinge and take a nosedive into the port waters. The simple brush of a man's thigh, of a captain's hip against her backside when she wasn't expecting it, was most cherished even now. She sat sickly and confused in the middle of the deck, a full day later.

He had disappeared completely by the time she had gotten her bearings enough to turn around and find his face. He slithered into his cabin like a ghost, and hadn't been seen for the rest of the day, nor the next. But that didn't mean he wasn't in her fanatical thoughts, the ones she had collected throughout the afternoons as she mopped the deck, and peeled potatoes below, and slept in a swinging bed above a snoring crew, and even as she had spent an hour's fair time in the crow's nest.

It was here that she had grown tired and sick, and had been sent right back down to the ever unsteady, ever restless deck. Her legs wobbled back and forth as she worked between men who grumbled at her inability to mask her inexperience, and those who had no idea that she wasn't a he.

"Elijah, lad…" Gibbs came storming across the deck at her. "…these ere' nets need t' be carried 'cross to the stern. Can ye handle it?"

She looked down at the mass of tangled nets and sun dried seaweed, nodding to keep from opening her mouth at all, for the fear that more than words would come out.

"G'boy!"

Gibbs patted her on the back and she fell forward in her weaker state. She nearly tumbled into the nets before catching her balance and taking a deep breath. She managed to gather a few in her hands at first and begin slowly towards the back of the ship. Not knowing where they belonged, she found an empty corner under the stairs and stuffed them properly out of sight, then swerved and staggered back with a heavy head to collect more.


Jack had never known a touch so rewarding in all of his many years on the sea.

And in fact, they hadn't even left port yet when it all came to him. The boy had been turned from him, and blessings counted for it. To have brushed against one in an opposing direction would have left him only that much more befuddled. No boy, at least no boy or man he'd ever known, had felt so soft that way. It simply wasn't the norm.

It left his head reeling for most of that same afternoon, into the next morning and right down into the afternoon in which he sat now, his head in his hands over a constant, always unchanging map. The more he sat thinking about the touch of his new crew member, Elijah, the more he couldn't stop thinking of the blue eyes.

"Makes no sense at all." He shoved his compass across the table, leaned back and threw his boots on top of the charts angrily.

The spindle had whipped around for a full day, back and forth between the east and west of his room, sometimes even the north and south. He couldn't understand for the life of him why he made the connection in his mind every time he thought of that brush on deck or every time he saw the gasping face of a pleasured girl in an alleyway. How could there be any bridge between that sort of a gap?

Relaxing back, his hands twirling over his lap, he began to sense something stirring below and forced, no begged, for his brain to kick the urge of it away. He wasn't in the mood to bother with what he knew needed done, and as he rested his head further back, he bit his lip to ignore it.

Only for so long.

The eyes came back to him, the tender legs wrapped around a lover's hidden waist, the way her fingertips dug into the half bared skin of a man's neckline and weaved through his hair, just begging to be taken over and over again in the same secluded position. He saw all of the girl. He saw the way she lifted her skirts in the street to outrun her own larceny, the way her palms touched the dirt below her as it were the pounding, sweating chest of a conquest, and the way she hid behind the vines, her cerulean eyes peeking out at him for the whole of a half second.

Jack kept thinking about her until he realized what had already begun. His hand, pushed down into the tightness of his breeches, stroked over the ribbed, sensitive skin that had her still undetermined name all over it. He grasped his thick shaft, as if choking a man to death, and squeezed long and hard downward and back up. He imagined her soft, whimpering pink lips wrapped around him, mimicking the same movement with twice the heat and wetness. He pictured himself glancing down to see a pair of eyes glancing right back, with that oceanic flame set about in the center of them, tensing his every muscle until there was nothing left of him.

"Bloody ell'…unngghh!"

He groaned loudly as he felt himself nearing an end, and grabbed a hold of the smooth sacs. He pinched them hard before releasing again and feeling the stream of warm stickiness cover his fingertips. Suffocated by his tongue for a moment, he let every wave wash over him as he listened to the pattering of feet outside of his cabin doors. The steps were light and unsteady sounding, almost in a drunken slur, which made him dizzy with ecstasy as he tumbled down from the place his thoughts had left him to hang.

His breathing pattern slowly returned to normal and he could hold his eyes open, Jack cleaned himself off with a nearby cloth and then stood to re-adjust everything before stomping toward the doors. He needed fresh air, and sunlight, and to see the real ocean instead of the one that was haunting his mind and member every three and half seconds.

He swung the door back in a storming motion, half expecting to trip of his own accord due to his still blood deprived knees and toes. But instead, as he leaped out into the deck's late afternoon glow, he suddenly fell victim to a pummel of nets as he intercepted someone's path. Jack stumbled back on his boot heels with fine balance, shouting, "Oi!" The opposite man fell to the deck in a heap, nets and ropes covering his small legs. It was the boy, and he knew it right away.

"Need t' find those sea legs o' yours, boy."

Jack shook his head as he graciously knelt to help the boy up, pulling the nets from his legs carefully first. The younger man's head tilted back, his face shadowed somewhat by his hat as he looked at Jack. He half expected to turn and see a pair of dark eyes to match the snippets of black hair he'd noted before. But instead all he could see, was a drowning, magical blue.