Series summary: Stuck in a life you don’t want, your only way out is a deal with a pirate, and that’s how your journey on a ship of outlaws toward a new life begins.
Series mastelist
You woke before Noah.
At first you didn't move, the cabin was dim, and for a few seconds you simply enjoyed the warmth beneath the blankets and the distant sound of the sea outside.
Then, you turned your head slightly, seeing the man lying in your bed was still asleep.
The sight of him like that still felt strange in the best possible way. During the day Noah was rarely still. He was always doing something, fixing something, giving orders, arguing with somebody, worrying about something he pretended not to worry about.
Sleep took all of that away.
His dark hair was completely disordered, falling across his forehead in every direction imaginable. It had grown a lot over the last few months, and now it almost touched his shoulders.
The blankets had slipped low during the night, leaving his shoulders and part of his tattooed chest uncovered, and one arm rested lazily across the mattress between you.
You slowly sat up against the headboard, pulling the sheets slightly higher around yourself.
For several minutes, you simply looked at him.
You found yourself studying details of his face once again: the shape of his nose, the way his eyelashes cast shadows against his cheeks, the faint freakles on his skin, the tiny lines near his eyes that were more visible whenever he laughed but still there.
It was almost unfair how beautiful he was. You wondered if he had any idea.
Your fingers absentmindedly found the shell resting against your chest, turning it gently between your fingers while you continued looking at him.
You were so distracted that his voice nearly made you jump.
“I know you're staring.”
You blinked immediately.
His eyes remained closed.
“You were asleep”, you said.
One eye opened, “You've been looking at me for at least five minutes.”
A little laugh escaped you, “Maybe.”
The second eye finally opened as well, and Noah looked up at you with the slightly confused expression of someone who had only just remembered where they were. His voice was still rough with sleep, quiet.
“That's honestly a little scary.”
You tilted your head.
“I was appreciating the view.”
He let out a tired breath and slowly pushed himself upright, rubbing a hand through his already ruined hair and somehow making it significantly worse.
You couldn't help laughing.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
You reached forward before he could object and placed both hands gently against his face.
Noah fell quiet immediately.
His skin was still warm from sleep, and you could feel the slight roughness of his jaw beneath your palms. For a moment you simply looked at him.
“What?” he asked again, although this time his voice had become softer.
You smiled.
“You're very pretty.”
His eyebrows immediately lifted.
“Pretty?”
“Very.”
“I don't think that's the word pirates are supposed to hear.”
“Too bad.”
He looked genuinely offended.
“Handsome. Dangerous. Mysterious. These are acceptable.”
You considered it seriously.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. You're pretty.”
He shook his head slightly.
“I've truly lost all authority.”
“On me? You never had any.”
That made him laugh quietly.
The sound was still soft from sleep, and something about it made you love it even more. He looked younger like this, sitting beside you with messy hair and tired eyes, no captain, no responsibilities, no crew to take care of, simply Noah.
You moved one hand upward, trying to flatten some of the strands of hair falling over his forehead, looking at him for a moment longer after that.
He leaned forward then, resting his forehead briefly against your shoulder. A few seconds later his lips brushed gently against your skin, first your shoulder, then your neck, the kisses soft and absent-minded, as though he simply wanted to be close to you.
You felt his hand find yours beneath the blankets.
Neither of you spoke for a while.
Outside, somewhere above the deck, you could hear footsteps and distant voices, someone was already working, someone else was probably arguing over breakfast. Life aboard the ship had started again hours ago, but neither of you seemed particularly interested in joining it yet.
Noah still sat close beside you, his cheek resting against your shoulder, while his fingers remained intertwined with yours beneath the sheet. Every now and then his lips brushed your skin absentmindedly, as though being close to you had become something natural, something he did without thinking.
And as you looked down at him, at his messy hair and his sleepy expression, you suddenly felt something settle quietly inside you.
You were so happy you had stayed.
Not just because of him, although he was certainly part of it, but because you had finally allowed yourself to choose.
You thought back to that night on the beach, to the lights of Saint Marlowe waiting for you only a few steps away. You had truly believed that walking into that city was what you were supposed to do. It had been the sensible decision, the respectable one, the life everyone would have expected you to want.
And yet the moment you had turned around, the moment you had run back toward Noah, something had felt right in a way very few things in your life ever had.
The crew certainly seemed to think so.
When the two of you had returned to the ship together that night, hand in hand and both looking far too happy to hide it, the reactions had ranged from relief to complete lack of surprise.
Davis had looked at both of you for approximately three seconds before announcing, “Finally.”
Jesse had apparently lost money.
Jolly had won money.
And somehow several members of the crew had confessed that they had been betting for months on whether you would eventually kiss each other, without knowing you had already done it.
Nicholas had only shaken his head and said, “This took much longer than I expected anyway.”
You had been horrified.
Noah had looked deeply offended.
The memory still made you smile.
Apparently the two of you had not been subtle at all.
This was your place.
Not because you had nowhere else to go, not because you were trapped, not because of duty, but because this was where you wanted to be.
With Noah.
With the crew.
With the open ocean around you.
You thought about mornings like this one, waking up beside him.
You thought about the mornings when he woke first and disappeared for a while, only to return a short time later and lean over you with a little smile.
“Wake up.”
“No.”
“There are dolphins.”
Your eyes would open immediately.
“There are?”
“Yes.”
“And you waited?”
“No. I knew you'd kill me if you missed them.”
And of course you always followed him onto the deck, still half asleep, while he stood beside you watching the water because he knew exactly how much you loved seeing them.
You thought about the afternoons spent practicing with swords alongside the others until your arms hurt, laughing whenever Noah offered completely useless advice from the sidelines.
You thought about evenings sitting together on deck while the sun disappeared beneath the horizon.
About arriving somewhere new every few weeks.
Seeing new cities, new islands, new markets, new people.
You had loved traveling long before you had met him.
You had loved maps and the ocean and distant places before you had ever stepped onto the Specter. Perhaps that had always been part of you, you simply had not realized that this life could belong to you too.
Noah finally lifted his head slightly, studying your expression.
“What are you thinking about?”
You looked at him.
At his tired eyes.
His cute hair.
The way the morning light touched his skin when he stoop outside.
And you smiled.
“Nothing.”
He narrowed his eyes immediately, “That's usually a lie.”
You laughed softly, “Just that I'm happy.”
Something in his expression softened, he reached up and gently brushed a strand of hair behind your ear.
“Me too.”
Outside, someone shouted Noah's name from somewhere above.
Neither of you moved.
A second later another voice yelled that the captain was being lazy.
Noah closed his eyes.
“I suddenly understand why many people become hermits and not pirates.”
You laughed.
“They'll survive five more minutes.”
“That's what I keep telling them.”
He leaned in again, his lips brushing your shoulder once more in a quiet, lingering touch, before he lifted his gaze to you and kissed you properly on the lips.
It was slow and warm, like you both knew you had all the time. When he pulled back, he moved, guiding you down with him until your back met the bed and the blankets gathered around you in soft folds.
He followed immediately, careful not to put his full weight on you, one arm braced beside your head while the other stayed around your waist, keeping you close.
You let out a small breath of laughter against his shoulder, half surprised, half entirely not, and he gave you that faint, tired smile again, the one that always looked like it belonged to him more than the sarcastic grins ones ever did.
You just stayed there for a moment, feeling his breath against your skin.
Eventually, your hands moved without thinking, sliding up to his shoulders, then to his arms, and then further along his back as he settled more comfortably above you.
Your fingers found his tattoos first, tracing them slowly, following the dark ink as it curved over his skin.
Noah didn’t stop you. He didn’t tense or pull away. If anything, he seemed to relax more, and you loved that.
“You have too many of these,” you murmured after a moment, your fingers pausing briefly over a line of ink near his ribs.
He let out a small, almost sleepy sound. “Not enough. I have some spaces left.”
You shook your head faintly, continuing your slow tracing, moving instead to a faint scar along his side that was partly hidden beneath another tattoo, your fingertips lighter there without you even consciously deciding to be gentle.
“How did you get this?” you asked quietly.
His eyes flicked down for a second before returning to your face. “I remember this one. It's from a fight in a port, around two years ago.”
Then he shifted your hand slightly, guiding it a few centimeters away, to another mark higher up, thinner, older.
“But this one… I don’t,” he admitted after a moment. “I have many, it's hard to remember how I got all of them.”
You didn’t press. You just nodded, your thumb brushing lightly over it once before moving on.
There were others he told you about without hesitation, brief explanations spoken against your shoulder, while some he genuinely seemed to have forgotten how he got.
Your fingers continued wandering slowly across his skin, following the lines of ink and the faint marks hidden beneath them. Most of the scars were small, almost invisible unless you knew where to look, softened by time and partially concealed by tattoos.
Then your fingertips paused.
There was another scar on his chest, slightly higher than the others, close enough to his heart that your hand instinctively became gentler as you traced it. It wasn't particularly large, just a pale line that cut through part of one of his tattoos.
“You remember this one?”
He nodded.
“Yeah.”
For a moment he was quiet, his fingers absentmindedly playing with a strand of your hair while he looked somewhere past you, toward the ceiling.
“We found a slave ship. It was a few years ago,”
You stayed quiet.
“There were dozens of them below deck. Men, women, children. Most of them had been there for weeks. Some were sick. Some couldn't even stand.”
Your hand remained against his chest.
“We attacked them.”
“What happened afterward?”
“We freed all of them. I still remember one little girl stealing food from our kitchen all the time during the travel.”
You smiled faintly.
“I assume Davis cried.”
“He absolutely did.”
You laughed softly.
Noah's eyes lowered for a moment.
“It was one of the few times I felt like we had done something that actually mattered.”
“That was a good thing to do.”
He was quiet, and after several seconds he spoke again.
“I wish we did it more often.”
You looked at him, and he was staring toward the ceiling again, his expression thoughtful.
“There are routes. Ships people know about. Everybody knows some of them exist.”
He swallowed.
“I've always thought about trying to track them down. Find more ships. Stop them.”
His fingers absentmindedly brushed against yours.
You didn't know whether recent events had brought these thoughts back to him or whether he had always carried them with him. Perhaps it had always been there. Perhaps seeing his past so closely again had simply reminded him.
Either way, you understood immediately that this mattered to him.
“We can work on it.”
He blinked.
“What?”
He turned his head slightly toward you.
“We have maps,” you continued. “We could collect information when we stop somewhere, work on it, I don't know.”
Your fingers gently tapped against his chest.
“If these ships follow certain routes, then routes can be found.”
For a moment he simply looked at you.
“You'd help me with that?”
You looked almost offended.
“Obviously.”
He gave you a little smile. “Alright... thank you,” he said quietly.
For a while neither of you said anything else. The sounds above deck had become louder now, footsteps crossed overhead, somebody laughed, and somewhere Davis was almost certainly shouting at someone for eating too much breakfast.
And then something suddenly occurred to you.
“Oh.”
Noah blinked. “What?”
You turned your head toward the small bedside table.
“The drawing.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
“What drawing?”
You had almost completely forgotten about it. After returning to the ship that night, after deciding to stay, after the crew nearly celebrating your return, you had unpacked your few belongings inside the cabin that now belonged to both of you. Bryan's drawing had ended up inside the drawer beside the bed and had remained there ever since.
You stretched one arm toward the table, opening the drawer and searching through the small collection of folded clothes, loose papers and random objects that had already somehow become shared possessions.
“There it is.”
You carefully unfolded the paper.
Noah shifted slightly beside you as you held it between both of you.
For a moment he simply looked.
The drawing had survived perfectly. The pencil lines still captured that afternoon on deck, your hand reaching upward to steal his hat while both of you smiled without realizing somebody had been watching.
Noah stared at it for several seconds.
“…Bryan did this?”
You nodded.
“He brought it to me the night before Saint Marlowe.”
His eyes moved slowly across the page, and he seemed genuinely impressed.
“This is awesome.”
“He has an incredible amount of talent.”
Noah nodded slowly.
“I look amazing, I'll have to thank him.”
You immediately pointed toward the hat.
“Except for the hat.”
He looked offended.
“The hat is fine.”
“The hat is terrible.”
He glanced at you.
“You're still doing this?”
“Yes.”
“It has been weeks.”
“And it remains an ugly hat.”
He laughed quietly, shaking his head.
“You are genuinely the only person on this ship who dislikes it.”
“Because apparently I am the only person here with functioning eyes. Or the only one who is not scared to tell you the truth.”
He pointed toward the drawing.
“Look at me. I look like a proper captain.”
You rolled your eyes, and there was a moment of silence before he spoke again.
“It's nice seeing that moment from someone else's perspective.”
“He drew you looking very fond of me.” you said.
Noah glanced at the picture once more.
“That's because I am.”
Before you could answer, voices suddenly echoed from above.
“CAPTAIN!”
Noah closed his eyes.
A second later: “NOAH!”
He sighed.
“I think they might need me.”
“You think?”
You laughed as he finally sat up properly, very reluctantly.
The blankets slipped lower as he stood, revealing his shoulders and the tattoos covering his back and arms, and you found yourself watching him without even trying not to.
He stretched slightly, still waking up, before reaching for his clothes that had been abandoned across various parts of the cabin the previous night. He pulled his shirt on first, slowly fastening the buttons while his hair still fell into his eyes. Then his belt. His coat.
You sat against the pillows simply watching.
He eventually noticed.
“Appreciating the view again?”
“Exactly.”
Noah shook his head, though he was smiling.
Once he had finished dressing, he crossed the room toward you again. He leaned down, one hand resting against your cheek as he kissed you softly, slowly.
When he finally pulled away, another shout came from outside.
“CAPTAIN!”
“I'm coming!” he yelled back.
A pause.
Then quieter, to you: “Unfortunately.”
He turned toward the door, and then stopped, noticing his hat was sitting on the nearby chair.
You watched him look at it, then at you, and you already knew.
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
He picked it up and placed it carefully onto his head.
The expression he gave you afterward was almost entirely serious, except for the small smile threatening to appear at the corner of his mouth. He stood there with his hands at his sides as if waiting for your judgment.
“See? It looks good.”
You couldn't help but laugh again.
“I'll convince you eventually.”
“We'll see.”
He opened the door.
Sunlight spilled into the cabin from outside, along with voices, sea air, and the sound of the ship continuing forward toward somewhere far.
“Try not to miss me too much while I'm gone.”
“I'll do my best.”
He grinned, then he disappeared onto the stairs leading to the deck, and the door closed behind him.
For a few moments you remained exactly where you were, the blankets still warm, Bryan's drawing resting beside you, the shell against your chest, and the sound of Noah's voice already carrying faintly from somewhere above.
gracieabrams
ellievsbear
areudirty
titsay
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
2087
jacobvanloon
