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The governor’s boy is all angles, sharp edges and scowls at first and spends his first few days onboard slung over the side of the ship, green-faced and sick, with Boyd’s grip the thing keeping him from plummeting into the water. As days, weeks pass, none of the boy’s spikes soften or recede and he remains this prim little thing that demands his tea and demands it milky, but when McCall slings an arm around his shoulders or Lahey pinches him playfully in the side, he doesn’t scream bloody murder about telling his father.
Somehow, while the name Whittemore still earns sneers and curses, the name Jackson starts being equated to crew, even family. And, Peter insists that this is the worst thing that could befall their ship.
Which doesn’t make sense. Laura has had her share of trouble, cursed by her name and the fate of the woman she’s named after. Hell, they are just rolling in bad juju with Erica strutting across the deck and a dead cat in the bilge and Boyd constantly whistling and Lahey shaving every sprout of hair on his chin and McCall stumbling aboard with his left foot. Despite all of that, they’ve managed to stay in one piece for the most part, so this thing with the governor’s son shouldn’t be as much of an issue as Peter is making it. Until it is.
Derek doesn’t consider himself superstitious, but finding Jackson standing outside the Captain’s cabin—his cabin—just fills him with this terrible foreboding. It could be how vulnerable the boy looks leaning against his cabin, head tipped down, his eyes on his scuffed shoes, and is it so strange that the first thing Derek notices is the slight scruff curving along is sun-bronzed chin? It’s only been a month, but the boy he approaches now is so vastly different than the one they’d pulled out of bed, dragged onto Laura on that frantic, wet night.
Is it so strange that he finds himself swallowing back saliva when the Whittemore boy looks up?
Jackson spine snaps ramrod straight. “Captain.” His tone is formal, regal, the voice of any governor’s son.
“Whittemore,” Derek greets mildly, folding his arms. “Last I checked, you had free-range of my ship. No need to hover around my quarters anymore.”
Jackson laughs and Derek finds himself grinning as well. A hostage able to wander about the Laura unchained? What isn’t hilarious about that? “In all seriousness, though,” the boy intones, “There is something I’d like to discuss with you.”
“Which is?”
“My father.” He licks dirty, pink lips; Derek’s caught by the gesture. “Everything.”
That sense of foreboding bubbles up again, and in light of its previous accuracy, Derek truly fears it this time. But, he swallows it with a steeled jaw and motions for Jackson to enter his cabin. Inside in his Spartan quarters, the boy quickly sets himself on Derek’s bunk as usual, allowing Derek to occupy the only chair in the room, worn and mildewed. After a month, they are able to arrange themselves so naturally around each other.
Derek begins to roll the wrinkled map strewn across the table just to give his hands something to do. “So, your father—”
“Will you kill me?” Jackson blurts.
Derek blinks. “What?”
“If—If my father doesn’t follow through with his side, if he doesn’t retract your bounty—” Jackson’s fingers curl into his legs, into the breeches. “Will you really kill me like you said?”
Derek remembers that, remembers the look on the elder Whittemore’s face as he dragged his only son away, arm curled around his chest and a blade to the boy’s throat. He remembers swearing vehemently that if the governor that if his bounty, his face isn’t taken off the walls of every building and wall and surface of everything in a month’s time, he’ll kill the boy under his arm, chop him up and feed him to the ocean.
He remembers meaning the words then; the thought just makes him sick now.
Still, he wishes he was able to say yes, that he would kill him without a second thought, because he knows feeling anything for the boy sitting primly on his bed is trouble. But, he can’t. Derek sighs heavily through his nostrils. “No. No, I wouldn’t.”
Jackson eases back. “Honestly?”
“Of course, boy. Besides, what would I do with McCall moping around without you?” Scott has taken a sincere liking to Jackson, following him like a dopey little puppy on a lead.
Jackson smiles, relieved. “Then, you would let me stay?”
Silence.
“No.”
“But, Scott—”
“He will get over it in time as long as you’re alive.”
“That isn’t fair!”
“Jackson—”
“No, I—I—” Jackson frowns down at his wringing hands. “Don’t you understand? I want to stay here, on Laura, with you and your crew.”
A frown pinches Derek’s brow. “You know that could never happen. You’re a governor’s son—”
“I never wanted to be!” Jackson presses, leaning forward in his desperation. He snaps vehemently, “I never chose to be his son.”
“But, you shouldn’t choose this life. You can’t survive like this.”
“I’ve been here for a month—”
“With the royal treatment,” Derek counters with no lack of bitterness. “You aren’t made for the sea, boy.”
That wounds Jackson; Derek can see it in the way his shoulders sag, his arm drapes across his stomach as though Derek had struck a physical blow. “But—”
“Jackson,” Derek tries, a little gentler, “Think about it. What about your home? Your bed? What about that pretty betrothed of yours? Are you really ready to let that all go?” The boy only stares at him, lost, and Derek knows he’s struck a nerve, the truth. “Either way,” he finishes dismissively, turning back to the map in his hands, “You can’t stay here. I won’t allow it.” That’s the end of it as far as Derek’s concerned and he doesn’t care to look when Jackson eventually stands.
Until the boy is in his lap.
The chair groans in protest at the sudden weight and Derek sucks in a sharp breath in sympathy. “What are you—”
“If I laid with you,” Jackson begins, his eyes searching Derek’s. “If I laid with you right now, would you let me stay onboard?”
“I don’t—”
“I’ve seen the way you look at me, Hale,” comes the hiss across Derek’s neck. “Like I’m meat, like you hunger for me, like you starve for me.”
No, Derek thinks as the boy nips at his jawline, No, that’s McCall. He’s the one that looks at you like that, the one that lies awake at night, aching so badly for you. Derek opens his mouth to declare this, but instead of words, his mouth finds Jackson’s. The dam bursts and their hands turn frantic—tugging, pulling, scratching—as they exchange hot breath and slick tongues. Derek threads both hands into the boy’s hair as they kiss, the boy pressing firmly against him.
They pant and grind and suck and groan and it’s been so long since Derek has done this, since he’s held a body against his like this, and—and he’s never realized how terribly he’s wanted this until now.
But, he can’t. He can’t want this. They can’t do this.
Because Derek knows, even if the situation was explained, even if Jackson declared it himself, his father, Governor Whittemore, would never understand. He would hunt them to the ends of the world to get his only son back. They’d made an agreement, and Derek was obligated to maintain his end as much as Whittemore. He’d never sacrifice his crew—his family—for some spoiled brat’s whims, no matter how much he wants to give in himself.
The look that crosses the boy’s face when he stops the hands that undo the sash on his waist sends a sharp pang to his chest. Still— “Get out.”
Jackson bites his lip and Derek almost moans at how pink, plump it looks. “But—”
“Out,” he grits, shoving the boy off. “You don’t know what you’re asking for, Whittemore.”
The boy winces at the name, staggers to his feet, but goes from kicked puppy to pinched rattlesnake in a breath, prickling with wrath and affront, angles and sharp edges. Derek turns away from the expression, expecting the boy’s outrage, but there’s only a quick inhale, a slamming door. When he finally eases his frantic heartbeat, finally looks up, it’s Peter who stands before him, a finger running across the brim of his showy tricorn hat.
“Looked like he was in a hurry, nephew,” Peter greets, his smirk knowing.
Derek groans and scrubs at his face. “Don’t. Just don’t.”
With a put-on sigh, Peter leans against the door, folds his arms elegantly. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You couldn’t have known that he would—would proposition me.”
“No,” Peter agrees, “But, I did say the boy would be trouble, didn’t I? What do you think he will do now when he returns to his father?”
Derek frowns and Peter clucks his tongue, disappointed, turns to leave. Before the door closes behind him entirely, he croons, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
The words mean nothing to Derek at first, even after he catches Scott pushing Jackson against the wall that night, catches them rutting against each other with Jackson’s legs around his waist, arms around his neck, moans into his hair. It means nothing even when the Whittemore boy’s eyes remain locked on his, blue and biting and bitter. It cuts into him, but that’s all it does, so Derek can deal with that. Pain is an old friend.
What he can’t deal with is what happens days later when they return to port to complete the transaction, to return Jackson to his father. The governor arrives to make the final exchange in a simple ship, trailed by a handful of imposing frigates that outsize, outgun, and outman their little Laura. A plank extends to connect their two ships and Jackson visibly bristles at the sight of his father as he approaches.
Governor Whittemore is as daunting as his ships, tall and stern and so unlike the man Derek had met that fateful night, dressed in his nightshirt and pleading for his son’s life. He’d thought that he’d be able to see the similarities in father and son in the light, but he can’t find the connection at all.
“I’ve upheld my end,” Governor Whittemore barks.
Derek nods resolutely. “Then, I’ll uphold mine.” He shoots the boys beside him a sharp look, and, with this terribly forlorn pout, McCall moves toward his captain, away from Jackson.
There’s a tense moment when Jackson finally breaks away from them and walks forward. However, before he takes that final step onto the plank, off of Laura, he pauses, hovers there. Derek isn’t surprised when the boy turns and levels a wounded scowl on them, but he doesn’t anticipate the sharp strides towards them or the arms wrapped around his neck or the lips melding with his or the, “It was always you,” declared proudly for all to hear.
He does, though, expect the horror that twists the governor’s face and the betrayal that pulls McCall’s. It hits Derek then as Jackson draws away, as Governor Whittemore eyes his damaged son in distress and McCall huffs and pants and shakes with hurt and hate beside him, that Peter had truly been right about the Whittemore boy. With those blue, blue eyes and sun-freckled skin and soft, pink lips, he’d cost him not only the safety of his ship if the governor’s vengeful gaze is anything to go by, but the trust of his family, he realizes, as McCall stumbles away.
And, Jackson’s parting smile is jagged, all angles and sharp edges.