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"Listen," Clarke says, hands on her hips, standing next to the wheel. She looks magnificent like this, rigging and the wide ocean behind her, but Bellamy values his tongue and neck enough not to say it. "We're heading to Tortuga. We haven't been in ages and the men are getting restless."
Bellamy rolls his eyes. "You just want some Tortuga ale. Don't lie to me."
She pouts now. "Do not, Bellamy Blake."
He reminds himself why he agreed to co-captain with her: half the crew is on her side. It had been a split near two years ago, and a lot has changed since then, but Bellamy remembers the day clearly: deep blue skies, the type of blue that hurts, clouds scudding the horizon, and Captain Jaha had been shot by mutinous crew member Murphy. Bellamy had been First Mate, but only for his skills; he didn't have full support of the crew. Clarke, who had been a stowaway at first and only kept for her handiness with a knife and ability to shimmy all the way up to the birds nest, had the rest of the support as Jaha's best friend.
Two years later, they are co-captains who are amicable part of the time, bitter enemies part of the time, and lovers the rest of the time. It works.
"After Barbados. Maybe."
The look she gives him is gleeful; it confirms his earlier statement. No one really likes Tortuga; they like cheap ale and cheaper prostitutes. “You’re the best,” she says in as an off-hand comment, passing by him with a squeeze of his shoulder.
He watches her go, eyes settling at her hips and going up, liking the loose shirt and the belt holding her favorite firearm and cutlass. There are more hanging in their quarters, as there’s only one Captain’s Quarters, and he also knows that there are several knives hidden all over her body: in her boots, under the waist of her trousers, and a small one that hangs around her neck. He doesn’t know the story, but Griffin is engraved upon it and he figures it’s a keepsake from family.
Bellamy doesn’t mess with family keepsakes; Octavia is out there, somewhere, and he carries her portrait around his own neck. Clarke has seen it and given him a level look and seemed to understand— what, exactly, she understood he doesn’t know.
“Are we really going to Tortuga?” Miller doesn’t sound too pleased, but Bellamy knows what his game is: terrible. He grins.
“What, don’t like the ladies strewing themselves all over your body? Dashing pirate Miller with the scar and stiff mien.”
Miller gives him the look that has everyone swooning; he’s First Mate and was Bellamy’s choice. Two years ago Clarke had stood toe-to-toe with Miller and they stared for a long time before she smiled and agreed that he was a good choice. Bellamy doesn’t know how Clarke got to be so good at the pirating business, what with her landlubber background, but sometimes the predatory smiles she gives people makes him shiver.
“You like it even less,” Miller reminds him.
He sighs. “Maybe, but you’ve learned that there is little I can deny her.”
“It’s dangerous, being attached to someone like that.”
Bellamy searches for Clarke on the deck; she’s shimmied up the main mast and is clinging to the ladder and some ropes as she peers out through a telescope. This far, Bellamy can’t see her expression, but he knows what she’s like afterwards: exhilarated. She likes heights in a way Bellamy doesn’t understand; he’s been too close to near falls and seen a man fall onto the deck and break all sorts of bones. He had to be killed.
Then a cry is rung out and his breath catches because it’s coming from Clarke. Striding forward and taking the steps to the quarter deck and to the gangway. Clarke is already halfway back to the deck and jumps the last few feet. “A ship,” she shouts, looking up to Bellamy with a self-satisfied expression. There’s another cry from the birds nest; it confirms what Clarke has just told them.
“How many?”
Clarke shrugs, tucking the telescope into a holder hanging on her belt. “Just one, I think.”
He hums and then grins; Clarke’s grin starts when she sees his and soon the entire ship is grinning and chuckling with each other.
Jasper hits the deck a few minutes later, gasping. “I saw their flag. It’s a merchant ship.”
Either way, navy or merchant or even another pirate ship, it’s going down.
(Later that night, Bellamy and Clarke are sprawled on the small bed that sometimes they fight over, sometimes one of them takes a hammock and swings from the ceiling and pelts the other with crumpled bits of paper or grapes or other small objects. Bellamy carefully traces the bandage around Clarke’s arm and tries not to think of how close someone had come to impaling her when they boarded the merchant ship.
The fight had been easy. The captain says they hadn’t been expecting anyone in this area and gives up their cargo after a fight that left them thoroughly beaten. They tie the crew up and leave the ship afloat. It is Clarke’s orders, for though she can be the blood-thirstiest of them all, the one with the plans that have the most devastating effect, she is the most humanitarian as well. Bellamy just tries to keep up with her. He’s not sure how he does it most of the time.
She is fast asleep now; her breath is warm on his chest and their skin is hot where they touch. There is still blood on her face, but she had waved the wet cloths with an impatient gesture and had cupped his face and kissed him solidly. Her mouth had tasted like iron and he had followed her lead when she pushed him onto the bed and when she stripped him, divesting herself of her own clothes.
He had been one to apply the ointment and the bandage to her arm; Bellamy is the only one Clarke allows to do it. It is not distrust of their own ship doctor, but simply because, as she said, she likes his hands on her. Sometimes it feels like punishment, like her telling him not to try and control her so much. Sometimes it is a reward and he presses soft kisses around the wound and sometimes it is professional because they have work to do. Sometimes it is loving and sometimes he does it roughly, because he is angry at her for putting herself in danger.
The ship needs her; Bellamy needs her. Pirates aren’t supposed to love, but Bellamy thinks that’s more of a guideline than anything.)