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It took two weeks for Bass to give up watching the horizon through the porthole in his cabin (or was it cage) and admit that Miles hadn’t been bluffing about Jeremy. There was no squadron coming for him, nor even a single rogue ship, captained by a concerned subordinate who would do anything to see him home. The horizon stayed clear, and help did not appear.
It stung in the worst way – Jeremy Baker had been his right hand, his most reliable captain and a good, steady friend; he’d fallen quietly in line after Miles’ defection, always stalwartly on Bass’ side, ready to hunt Miles down and bring him home, or to justice.
(Bass let himself imagine that it was the rocking of the ship that gave him the queasy sinking feeling in his gut and not the idea that maybe – even after all this time – Jeremy’s long-denied soft spot for Miles had allowed Bass to be betrayed, again.)
Two weeks he brooded and watched for sails on the horizon, but after a fortnight of nothing but rolling ocean, Bass had to concede that he was on his own. Against an entire pirate crew.
And Miles.
And Nora. God, Nora. He’d heard she was dead, killed in a firefight in the shallows off North Carolina; the she-devil was swallowed by the sea, the Naval commander had said, tearing the wanted-poster of her (complete with a poorly rendered sketch) down from the wall in the officer’s lounge. And good riddance.
But every night, there she was, framed in the doorway of his room, carrying a tray laden with a sailor’s fair portion of food – hearty soup, bread, even an orange, and a cup of water – balanced carefully with one hand, and wielding a pistol with the other. She always put the tray down on the table, served him and never said a word – but the way she tracked him out of the corner of her eye and the way her grip on her pistol never slackened told Bass what he needed to know.
She hadn’t forgiven him then, for what happened in Philadelphia.
That, he supposed, he deserved.
Still, he was going stir crazy. Two weeks he’d been aboard Miles’ ship, and not since that first conversation in the haze of his hungover confusion had Bass laid eyes on the captain himself.
Some things could never be unlearned. A lifetime of knowing what Miles needed, wanted, thought – that was one of those talents Bass had yet to lose the hang of.
Miles was avoiding him.
And Bass knew why.
(The memory of Miles’ lips brush his, the words I never forgot caught between them like a shared breath – it’s a flicker-flash behind Bass’ eyelids, vivid and yet still somehow dream-like; a moment of tandem delusion.)
Bass wet his lips briefly and pushed the image away in favor of inspecting the door to the private cabin with a degree of consideration he was sure it didn’t warrant. Mostly because he’d studied it every day since he’d come aboard, and nothing had yet changed. It remained locked, barred from the outside – undoubtedly on Miles’ orders (or Nora’s). But the hinges – half-pin barrel hinges – were on the inside.
Bass wasn’t naive enough to think that was accidental. Nora might have been the one to order the door barred, but he would have been making himself at home in the brig were the choice actually hers; no, Miles assigned the cabin, and that meant the very obvious opportunity for escape was probably a calculated risk. Or a dare.
Knowing Miles – a bit of both.
(Bass had considered it briefly, in that first week; making a break for it, escaping to sea in one of the longboats the moment he spotted his squadron near enough for viable rescue. It would save them the messy seabattle; Miles’ ship was heavily armed and quick in the wind, but ultimately slowed down by the weight of her cargo; she couldn’t outrun the fastest ships in the Navy. It would be a fairly swarthy turnabout, a helluva way to catch Miles Matheson at last.)
(Jeremy never came.)
But – there was still Miles; Miles and his convoluted, cryptic reason for bring Bass aboard in the first place; for gambling so much for (seemingly) so little a pay off. Kidnapping a prominent Naval officer was bound to bring the full weight of the Service down on him, and yet –
And yet.
Bass eyed the door for several long minutes longer, then flicked a glance sidelong at the table across the room – that unnecessary and very conveniently placed table.
He’d never turned down one of Miles’ dares, not even as a child.
He wasn’t about to start now.
Miles was at the helm when Bass surfaced above-deck for the first time.
In the hustle and bustle of the crew – shifting the rigs, swabbing the deck, going about all the thousand and one small chores that keep a good ship in condition – it was probably easy for the lone figure standing just outside the mouth of the companionway to go overlooked, but Miles had been Bass’ shadow for most of their lives; he had a sense for him ground in deep, like salt in his bones.
The moment Bass stepped out, blinking into the sun, Miles had eyes on him.
(If he was honest with himself – and he made it a habit not to be, not without booze – Miles might own up to having anticipated Bass eventual ‘escape’ from his cabin, and to how much he’d been kicking himself for allowing it. Bass was a necessary evil on the ship, but he was a distraction and one Miles couldn’t afford. Not yet at least. There was too much history, too much to talk about – and then there was the rest of it, the matters they didn’t talk about. All of that. One big distraction.)
But it didn’t do anything to stop that tight feeling from blooming in his chest when Bass lifted a hand to shield his eyes against the glare, and turned – unerringly, like a compass needle – to find him at the wheel.
(Knowing it was a bad idea didn’t stop Miles from lifting his head in a wordless acknowledgement – or keep the coil of anticipation from sneaking through him when Bass set off across the deck at a slow but purposeful amble.)
(Yeah, bad idea – written all over.)
Bass mounted the stairs to the quarterdeck like he did it every day – and maybe, Miles admitted, he did; but only on his own ship, not on Miles’ rogue vessel. On a pirate ship, the old rules applied and only officers were allowed to walk the quarterdeck, and the way heads swiveled around all across the main deck to look was a not-so-subtle reminder.
The curl of Bass’ mouth – less a smile, more a smirk – told Miles that he didn’t need reminding; he knew exactly what he was doing, what kinda message he was sending.
Miles arched a brow but said nothing, arms draped casually over the wheel as he leaned carelessly against it.
Bass fired the first shot (so to speak) before he even had both feet on the quarterdeck.
“Helluva a ship, Miles. Where’d you steal her?”
Miles bit, even knowing the hook was baited.
“Liberated, Bass; I liberated her from a greedy Corsican off the Cape of Hope.”
“A pirate’s answer if there ever was one.”
Miles shrugged. “What were you expecting? It’s pointless to deny the obvious. This is a pirate vessel, which does – occasionally – engage in acts of piracy. She’s crewed by discharged sailors and old sea-dogs, and captained by an outlaw.”
Bass’ mouth twisted, just a little, the way it always did when he heard something he didn’t like.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That. You know what.”
Miles did. Know. And it made him weary, and a little homesick, but not for Philly, just for Bass. It was easier than it should have been, giving up his life back there; easier than it should have been to find his footing in the ever shifting wash of the pirate life. Loyalties, alliances, double-crosses; routes, winds, maps, shares – all a cakewalk, in comparison.
So yeah, he knew. He’d always known Bass; always would.
“I am an outlaw. There’s no changing that.”
“Only because you won’t try,” was the sharp reply.
“Yeah,” Miles drawled, eyes moving over Bass’ face. “Exactly.”
Silence followed for a long beat after, and Miles leaned against the ship’s wheel and took the brunt of it, braced himself against it like a stiff wind. Bass’ eyes were always too blue, too bright in his face when he was angry – or impassioned. Miles remembers the first time he realized he could gauge him that way, read his mood through the barometer of his eyes.
(They’d been boys, and in love with the same girl. And each other.)
(It felt like a lifetime ago.)
(Maybe because it was.)
A minute passed, maybe two; then Bass made a sound, his breath gusting out in an aggravated sigh between his lips. Miles’ own lips twitched into a reluctant smile. It wasn’t the end of the argument, by any means (they’d been having it for years now, in one vein or another, every time they crossed swords) but they’d both had a lifetime of arguments to learn that just because Bass pushed didn’t mean Miles would relent.
So when Bass moved to lean against the quarterdeck’s railing beside him, arms sort of crossed in front of him, Miles took that for the temporary cease-fire it was.
“What’s she called?”
He hesitated, because sentimentality had never been his forte (or so he told himself), but Bass was likely to find out eventually; after all, there was only so much information you could keep from a man, when he was aboard the ship in question.
“The crew call her the Grey Lady,” he said carefully, with a nod toward the dove-grey sails. “Before we took her, the Corsican called her La Dame Lune -- we figure on account of all the silver.” He rapped his knuckles against the thin thread of filigreed silver beaten into the railing and gave Bass a sidelong look, remembering with a brief flare of amusement that Bass’ French was (had always been) terrible. “It means—”
“I know what it means, Miles.” And Bass, damn him, knew when he was hedging. His hands did something vague and restless where they dangled out beyond the railing. “And you,” he prompted, “what do you call her?”
Miles glanced out over the decks and the gleaming silver railings, over the heads of his people; at the spray of the swells crashing against the bow, and the rise and dip of the horizon even further beyond -- an always escaping dream.
(Sentimentality was not his forte, but –)
“Rachel’s Revenge,” he whispered, the words fitting themselves heavily in his mouth. “That’s her name, but…” He rolled a shoulder, made a gesture with his fingers toward the decks below. “The men. The ship’s theirs, just as much as it’s mine. So, Grey Lady it is.”
He didn’t look at Bass, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw him go still – perfectly still, like the sea sometimes lays flat and motionless in the eye of the storm. Miles watched Bass’ hands with an absent interest, and watched them fold themselves very deliberately against the railing, carefully harmless.
Something unnameable raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Bass, what do you–”
“Miles!”
Whatever he’d been about to say (ask, demand) slipped off his tongue, back down his throat, and settled down in his belly like a stone. Damnit. Miles straightened off the ship’s wheel, biting back a low curse as he turned to meet Nora’s furious gaze where she was steadily approaching (marching) toward the foot of the quarterdeck’s stairs. He paid no mind to the naked blade in her hand.
“Not now, Nora,” he pre-empted, trying to convey not now, not in front of the crew, I don’t want to have this argument here, and also there was something I needed to ask, not now, not you.
“I’m afraid, Captain,” she grit out, painfully pointed, “that your prisoner has escaped his quarters. And that he’s strolling around on the top deck, out in the open. Where anyone might see him.” She cut a glance at Bass. “Or where he might dive overboard.”
Miles saw Bass start to open his mouth – probably to ask where, precisely, he was supposed to swim to after he dove over – but Miles jabbed an elbow into his side and Bass’ near misstep fizzled out in a startled huff.
“I let him out,” Miles lied, “and asked him to join me abovedeck. Catching up, old times. You know.” He found the drawl he was looking for, that one bored tone that said, I know exactly what I’m doing, do you? and he leveled a carefully careless glance down at her. “So you can put the sword away, any time now. You’re making the boys shifty.”
Nora – unshakeable, hell-cat Nora – gave him one long, unimpressed look, but she very slowly slide the sword back through her swordbelt. The twist at the corner of her lips made it clear there was a we’ll talk about this later being left unsaid, and Miles sketched a nod, like he was looking forward to it.
(He was not. Not by any stretch of the imagination.)
“Was there anything else, First Mate Clayton?”
“Aye,” Nora breathed, and this time there was a sudden vicious light in her eyes. “Second Mate’s looking for you. Says she wants a word about some unexpected cargo we took on at our last stop.”
“Jesus.” His crew – or rather, his officers – were going to mutiny, or he was going to throw them overboard, one or the other. (He had yet to decide which route would spare him the most headache.) “Fine, tell her I’ll be there shortly.”
Nora snapped a sharp (and frankly insolent-looking) salute, and stalked off for the companionway.
There was a heartbeat of silence, no words spoken; there was only Joey’s off-key singing of a bawdy tavern song by the bow, and the creak of the ship, and the crash-whisper of the sea.
And then a beat later there was Bass, arching an eyebrow, and saying, “You know what they say about women on a ship.” And it was not a question, per say, so much as a reminder -- an age old joke, older than both of them.
Miles grinned and winced all at once, and rubbed at the back of his neck like perhaps Nora had put a kink in it by sheer presence alone. “It’d be far worse not to have her,” he said absently, “or – well, them.”
Bass’ low whistle said it all. “More than one? Have you lost your mind?”
“Probably.”
“Definitely.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“I just call it like I see it, friend.”
“Mhm,” Miles hummed noncommittally, casting a final look out over the decks, then over at Bass. “If I leave you topside with all this glorious sunshine and sea-air, are you going to make a go for the railing? Swim for the nearest coast maybe?”
“And prove Nora right?” Bass’ grin was brighter than sea-sun diamonds, could blind a man – but Miles drank it in, even as he arched a brow. “No, no,” Bass added, “I don’t think so. I’ll just stay here, keep an eye on things.” And the way he cast a glance upward to eye the rigging – like a kid with an idea – made Miles’ heart clench, and his lips curve up into a smile he didn’t bother to fight.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Bass shot back, all innocence.
“You know what.”
That earned him low-chuckle and another smile, and the warmth of both followed Miles (against his better intentions) off the quarterdeck and down into the dark of the lower decks. It took him a little longer than it should have, to put his smile away.
He resolutely did not look back at Bass, standing so innocently on his quarterdeck.
(And because he didn’t look back, Miles didn’t see the smile melt off Bass’ face, or catch the hopeless glance he focused on the filigreed banister in front of him.)
(Because he didn’t look back, Miles never saw the the strange, restless way Bass suddenly seemed at a loss for what to do with his hands.)