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“…and that was how I managed to steal Ser Aiguille’s date out from under his nose. Such a deeply satisfying night— and her company was delightful, too.” A pause, a laugh. “Carefree times, lost to a sea of duty and honour and whatnot. A pity.”
“A pity indeed,” said Sicard, thankful that Emmanellain was talking more at him and not to him, facing out to sea while the pirate — privateer? — rolled his eyes and adjusted the ship’s course by a few degrees. “An’ what did a whelp like you get up t’—“
“A whelp,” the lordling repeated, indignant. “I may be a youth, but certainly someone of my repute could nary be considered a whelp! Sweet Halone, Sicard, think of my reputation!”
“Aye, me judgement stands.” Sicard reiterated. He snuck a glance out of the corner of his eye to see if Emmanellain was so indignant as to actually face him; he was not. “Green as grass an’ faffing about like ye haven’t a care on the star; ye need some discipline afore anyone’s like to consider ye grown.”
“F-f-faffing about?” Now he was, in fact, facing Sicard, arms folded and eyebrows raised. “I’ll have you know, good Captain, that I’ve never done anything of the sort! All of my perceived gallivanting has been precisely engineered to—“
“To get ye laid?”
“Sicard!!” The captain couldn’t help but chuckle, turning to Emannellain. “I resent your informality on the topic— the noble art of courtly love is nothing short than a calculus of the highest order. It is not through idle pleasantries that one receives the greatest of earthly delights—“
“—that’s how I’ve done it, an’ it’s worked out fine for me. Ye may be a bit o’ a dandy, Emm.”
“I— I—“ he sputtered, flushing pink. “A dandy.”
“Aye, what with yer furs an’ ‘Ars Romantique’ an’ carryin’ on. Do they not just— swive, in Ishgard?”
Emmanellain recoiled as if Sicard had just cursed his own mother’s name. “I’m— I’m sure some people do, but to do so myself— goodness! It’d be a tremendous breach of decorum! Not to mention a waste of my considerable talents—“
“Far as I can tell, yer talents seem to be nothin’ but skirt-chasin’ an’ recounting said skirt-chasin’. Mostly the latter. Least that’s what ye’ve been doin’ the entire time on my ship.” Sicard watched Emmanellain colour further, his initial flush of pink deepening to a truly embarrassed cherry-red. “An’ while I don’t expect someone who’s never so much set foot upon a skiff t’ make himself useful—“
“What, pray, would you have me do instead?” The lordling sounded profoundly desperate suddenly, which Sicard raised an eyebrow at. “Given that my histories are clearly falling upon displeased ears, and my status as guest upon your vessel.”
Sicard thought about it for a second. “How good are ye at sums?”
And so Emmanellain de Fortemps, third in line for head of his House, notable dandy and ladies’ man, became the bookkeeper for the privateer ship Astalicia. Much to his own confused chagrin.
===
They were three days out from dropping anchor in Sharlayan, skirting up along the northern coast of what had once been Garlemald, when Sicard got a bad feeling about things. It’d started when the bosun, a burly Sea Wolf named Ahldrael Greintoumwyn, had gone missing for a bell and a half, emerging from her quarters with her hair mussed and a just-visible bruise on the side of her neck. The bruise, Sicard didn’t give a damn about. The time he’d spent picking up her duties, however, was another story. “Where’ve ye been, ye gods-swived pickaroon?” he yelled across the deck, dropping a jib line in a neat coil.
“Overslept,” she shouted back, already falling back into step with the rest of the crew.
Not an excuse to raise eyebrows, sure, but Sicard had worked and fought and drank alongside Ahldrael for years. She was a morning person, woke up at the crack of dawn most days unless she’d imbibed a little overmuch the night before. Last night he’d seen her stride off to her hammock before midnight. Something was up.
He caught up to her once the course had been set, sails bowed with wind and the mid-morning sun peeking through heavy clouds. “Oy, I know better than to believe ye about ‘oversleepin’. You’re no fool— what’s afoot?”
“Ah, I, um,” she stuttered, clapped a hand to the bruise. “Private matters, Cap’n. Won’t happen again.” Sicard peered up at her, caught the slightest bit of a blush on her green-grey cheeks.
“So long as I won’t have t’ round up the crew myself, we’re in the clear.” It wasn’t unheard of for his privateers to shack up together, and it wasn’t his business besides. Yet, among the crew, there didn’t seem to be anyone else the worse for wear after their evening activities. Curious.
That night, a few flagons of ale deep and stuffing his face with fresh sardines and stale hardtack, Sicard noticed Emmanellain out of the corner of his eye. The lordling had taken, since his appointment to the crew, to sitting with everyone for meals, sharing stories about fancy parties and whatnot. The rest of the ship seemed more amenable to hear about his sordid activities, and Sicard was thankful for his no longer being Emmanellain’s sole audience, but it set him uneasy for reasons he couldn’t explain.
He sighed, finished his ale. “I’m turnin’ in early,” he shouted across the table. “See ye on the morrow, crew.”
“Aye, cap’n!” came the unified response, and Sicard couldn’t help but grin.
===
The next day, it was Merilla who sheepishly appeared around midday and slid into the galley like Sicard wouldn’t notice she’d been missing all morning long.
“Oh— ah—“ she stuttered when Sicard had stuck his head into the room, one eyebrow raised as if to say explain yourself. “Ye know I get a mite ill when we hi rougher seas—“
“Merilla, it’s been smooth sailin’ all morning. Out with it.”
“Cap’n, ye do like to give us privacy, for certain affairs.“ She winked. “So leave me be, an’ know your brekkie’ll be timely on th’ morrow.”
“Yer treadin’ thin ice, lass,” said Sicard, but retreated up to the deck. Two crewmates in as many days, indisposed by amorous affairs. He’d never noticed it happen so often; maybe he was just paying better attention these days, what with being under the grander aegis of Limsa Lominsa and the pressure of the Admiral looming in the back of his head.
Or. He also hadn’t seen one other crewmate, though calling him that was a bit of a stretch. And, come to think of it, he hadn’t seen him yesterday morning either. Curious.
===
When Beryl didn’t show for her late watch that night, Sicard felt the last thread of his patience fray and break in an instant. He left his post, stalked down to the fo’cs’le, opened the bulkhead door with no small force, stomped down the hallway, and stopped before Emmanellain’s chamber door. The thought that he should listen against the door as not to interrupt anything crossed his mind before being immediately shooed away; he kicked it open with a flourish.
“C-Captain!” said the lordling, scandalized. Beryl said nothing, embarrassingly occupied as she was; Sicard turned to allow her the privacy to, ah, disengage. “I didn’t take you a man to burst in on a couple in flagrante delicto, sir.”
“I don’t speak Garlean, so that’s lost on me,” said Sicard, shaking his head. “More importantly, Beryl, you’re late for watch— an’ you, my friend, have a lot o’ explanation t’ do.”
Once Beryl had (ears laid flat, blushing so deeply Sicard feared she’d burst into flames) redressed herself and exited the room, Emmanellain simply sat prim and proper as anything upon his cot. His hair was mussed, and he had a distinct line of lipsticked kiss marks trailing down under his collar, but otherwise he was much less rumpled than one engaged in his prior activities would expect to be. “I don’t believe I, ah, am aware of what crime I’ve committed. Unless making several women very happy is now a crime.” He buffed his fingernails against the hem of his shirt, regarded them.
Sicard pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ye thrice-swived gods-damned dunce of a man,” he sighed. “Me crew’s a tightly-wound, well oiled machine, and yer throwin’ off the whole thing. If a lass’s favourin’ your advances, I won’t stop ye— but she, and you, have jobs t’ do.”
“Oh. Right. About— about that.” Emmanellain looked sheepishly up at Sicard, who could feel the barest hint of a headache begin to settle against his temples. “I, er, took a look at the books so far, and frankly can’t make head nor tail of them. I fear I’m simply not cut out to be an accountant, but I pray that—“
Sicard’s hand darted out and grabbed the other man by the collar. “Ye mean t’ tell me that for the last couple weeks you’ve been doin’ naught but bandyin’ about, distractin’ the rest o’ me crew, bein’ a gods-forsaken lech, and have shite all t’ show for it?”
“When you put it like that, it certainly does seem a lot more troublesome than I’d been imagining,” said Emmanellain, subtly shifting his weight away from Sicard.
“I ought t’ toss you off the ship,” muttered the captain. The hint of a headache had blossomed into a full on pounding at his temples. “Nay, I ought to toss you into an underwater gaol.” He took a deep breath. “But I won’t, because yer just a moron, an’ there’s nothin’ under the firmament that can change that.”
As soon as Sicard let go of his collar, Emmanellain scrabbled out of his reach. “Your mercy, sir, is deeply appreciated. Ahem.”
“Don’t thank me, lad. Thank the Twelve I’ve enough sense not to do somethin’ stupid.” Sicard turned, went to leave Emmanellain alone to stew in his guilt, but paused. “Say— why’d ye suddenly start all this bandyin’ about?
“I beg your pardon?”
“Ye were chaste as a monk afore I appointed you your task. What got into you?”
Emmanellain, for all his (fragile) poise, abruptly grew first a pale pink, then a bright red. “Ah— You, er, remember our conversation? On the deck, when we were leaving Radz-At-Han.”
“Aye,” said Sicard, an eyebrow raised.
“You were, erm, asking about the… Ishgardian habits.”
“…Out with it, I can’t remember a conversation we had weeks ago off the top o’ my head.”
The lordling looked like he was about to spontaneously combust. “Swiving. You asked me if anyone in Ishgard simply— went at it. No ars romantique, no courting, no chaperone. I thought about it, and, ah, came to a conclusion.”
Sicard stood there, for once in his life completely at a loss for words. He shut the door behind him. “Ye mean t’ tell me,” he finally said, “I inspired you t’ become some kind o’ harlot?”
“I don’t— Maybe not that far,” Emmanellain corrected. “But, ah, as someone more used to a… subtler kind of wooing, it was certainly illuminating.”
Sicard had, in the moment between Emmanellain finishing his sentence and him closing his mouth, a sudden idea. A very horrible, evil, troubling idea. He stood there and rolled it around in his metaphysical hand, weighed its pros and cons. It had been a while. And he was owed something, he figured, for the weeks he’d shirked duty. And it wasn’t like Emmanellain was too far outside of Sicard’s tastes; he’d always cast a wide net. By the time he’d come to a decision, the other man’d been awaiting his reply for an uncomfortable amount of time— oh well.
“Emm,” he said, in a lower register. “If yer lookin’ for illumination— I could help ye. With somethin’. An experience, if you want.”
Emmanellain stared. “Are you— are you offering what I think you’re offering?”
“Depends on what ye think I’m offerin’.”
“I—“ He retreated for a moment, collected himself. Looked up at Sicard like he was cringing for a blow he knew was coming. “If. We’re on the same page— I’d have you.”
“Same page indeed,” said Sicard, and abruptly realized he’d forgotten to figure out what to do next. It felt, he mused, rather like catching a fish much too large for one’s boat. But he was a pirate (er, privateer), after all, with all the swashbuckling romantic implications that it entailed, and so it was only a matter of moments before he’d pulled himself together and turned to Emmanellain. “Have you done this before?”
“I daresay you’ve just walked in on me performing much the same—“ he started, cut off by Sicard tilting his face up with a thumb under his chin. “Ah. Do you mean— with another—“
“Aye,” said the captain, the hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth. “Exactly.”
Emmanellain swallowed. “When I was a younger man, yes. ’Twas only boyish nonsense, nothing particularly, er, involved.” His eyes, Sicard noted absently, were incredibly blue; the blue of the sky, not the more familiar of the sea.
“Allow me t’ give you a refresher course, then,” said Sicard, then leaned down and kissed him. Soft, at first, but still insistent, until Emmanellain made a tiny noise into the kiss and relaxed into it, his lips going pliant, a give-and-take established.
And by Llymlaen, if he wasn’t good at it. Sicard could barely believe it, honestly, having assumed that the lordling’s previous successes had been borne out of desperation rather than any true merit, but he nearly found himself moaning into the kiss as it grew deeper, then deeper still. Soon he’d straddled Emmanellain, who still sat upon the bed, Sicard’s arms around his neck.
He broke the kiss, panting. “My!,” he got as far as saying, before Sicard realized he definitely did not want to hear whatever Emmanellain considered dirty talk and kissed him again. This was an admirable effort, but he was foiled; Emmanellain broke the kiss again, nuzzled down the side of Sicard’s neck. “I- If you would, perhaps, avail yourself of other uses for that devilish tongue of yours, I’d be much obliged.”
“I’ll be happy to so long as ye promise t’ never utter th’ word ‘avail’ in the bedroom again,” muttered Sicard, but took Emmanellain up on his request: nipped at his jawline, kissed down his neck none too gently. He paused, regarding one of the lordling’s ears. “’Sit true what they say about Elezen?”
“Hm? In what sense?”
“Your ears,” said the captain, tucking a lock of Emmanellain’s hair behind one. “That they’re awful sensitive an’ whatnot.”
“I’ve heard a large array of thoughts on the stereotype, though I must confess more often the assumption I hear regards a piece of anatomy much further sou— Oh, oh Fury have mercy oh—“
The oath, of course, was because Sicard had had enough of listening to Emmanellain outline what was definitely the commonly-held belief that Elezen men were endowed in a manner proportionate to their height and had bit, none too gently, on the tip of one of his ears. More oaths followed his exploration, nipping and licking around the edge of the point, along the shell of his ear, pausing at the clasp that decorated it before starting again. These ministrations seemed to be doing a lot, given that Emmanellain was past coherency: he groaned, hips twitching upwards, jerking away finally and panting, looking up at Sicard wild-eyed.
“Over-- overstimulation is a thing, my good man,” he panted, bright red across the cheeks. “Not that I’m complai— by Halone—“
Once Sicard had effectively reduced the man under him to a pile of panting, involuntary shivers, he fully relented. While it’d been fun to take advantage of this particular quirk, he was starting to get antsy. Especially given that Emmanellain had so far neglected to touch him. “Feelin’ alright?” he asked, watching the other man shiver again, blink his eyes.
“Fantastic,” he murmured, pulling himself back together. “I can’t help but feel as if I should perform some exploration of my own. If you would oblige me?”
“Stop sayin’ oblige and just go for it,” groaned Sicard, but let Emmanellain pull him flush and kiss him again. This close to the other man he could feel that Emmanellain was, in fact, very interested in the goings-on (if the unrelenting bulge grinding his ass was anything to judge by). He grazed his hands down the other man’s back, settled around his waist. He was thin, not quite scrawny, but the build of someone who had learned to fight out of a sense of obligation, placed the art down, and only picked it up on special occasions. A nobleman’s build, but a young and spry one. Singularly different from his own wiry frame, and rapidly becoming something he wanted to see bare.
Emmanellain seemed to have similar ideas, working his hands under the hem of Sicard’s chemise and pulling the rest of the linen out from his waistband. “May I—“ he asked, which came off as very sweet.
“Just get th’ whole thing off me,” growled Sicard, and disengaged long enough to do just that. He watched Emmanellain drag his gaze down from his face to his chest, the various scars and light fuzz there, down his stomach, back up to meet his eyes. “I’m not the worst thing ye ever seen, eh?”
“Far from it,” said the other man. “I’m, ah, quite taken with what you’ve brought to bear, as it were. Shall I join you in your dishabille?”
Sicard let his fingers do the talking, and undid Emmanellain’s buttons for him. When his shirt had been duly thrown across the cabin, he looked over at Sicard and, strike his heart in twain, made eyes at him like some kind of— of strumpet. Where in the seven hells did he learn to do that, thought the captain, and then decided that was a conversation that could wait for a later date. For now, he leaned down and pressed Emmanellain down against the mattress, kissing down his (very soft, somehow) chest with all the intention of sucking him off immediately.
He got to the second button of Emmanellain’s fly before the other man stopped him. “Ah— If I may,” he stuttered, then when Sicard paused and raised an eyebrow, continued: “If this were, um, an educational venture as you insinuated, would it not be more appropriate for myself to— to perform a service for you? Of a certain kind.”
“You want t’ blow me?”
“Very much so.” He didn’t even blink an eye at the slang. “If you’ll allow a first-timer; though I dare say the other explorations I’ve had lately have indicated I’m a very swift learner.”
“I sure as hells won’t be turning you down,” said Sicard, and rolled off of Emannellain to sit next to him on the bed. “Help yourself.”
“My deepest thanks,” he replied, and winked. A real, genuine wink. Sicard wanted to regret his decisions, but was having a difficult time of it given that the result of said decisions was nipping and kissing his way down his neck, undoing the laces of his trousers at the same time. He knew he must’ve sounded desperate when Emmanellain finally got his hand around him, momentarily hesitant before stroking him confidently, and he couldn’t help but groan. It had been a while.
It had been a while, and Emmanellain was going at him with all the exuberance of anyone’s first time (first-ish time, Sicard internally corrected). Which was, he realized as Emmanellain kneeled between his legs, his shoulders nudging his thighs apart, going to make it very difficult for him to keep his composure. Sicard steeled himself. Then threaded a hand through Emmanellain’s hair, because there really was no reason to not fully enjoy himself.
Emmanellain pulled Sicard’s trousers down, below his knees so the captain could kick them off, and leaned in. “This is— agreeable, yes?”
“You’re doin’ fine,” said Sicard, worrying at his bottom lip. “No need t’ keep stallin’.”
“I’m not stalling, I’m simply, er, working up the nerve. I— You’re— quite endowed. It’s intimidating.”
“Flattery’ll get you nowhere, but I’ll take it.” Sicard was about to add some other glib remark when Emmanellain, having apparently worked up the nerve, leaned forward and licked a warm stripe up from the base of his dick. Instead he groaned, the hand in Emmanellain’s hair pulling gently. “Ah, I’ll take that too, if you’re givin’—“
He was cut off not by anything pressed to his lips, but by Emmanellain leaning in and seemingly effortlessly swallowing his dick down to the root.
Sicard couldn’t think, couldn’t see for a second, overwhelmed as he was; he heard Emmanellain hum around his dick before he felt it, the warmth like electricity up his spine, nearly too much already. The other man was already setting a rhythm. Sicard could not believe it.
“There’s— there’s no way ye haven’t— seven swiving hells, Emm—“ he groaned, trying his damnednest not to thrust up into the other man’s warm, yielding mouth. Emmanellain just sped up, eyes closed, humming with every moan and muttered expletive Sicard couldn’t help but let escape. Eventually the captain’s restraint ran out— he gasped out a quiet “Fuck,” before he began to fuck up into the other man’s touch.
Emmanellain moaned, though Sicard could feel himself well past where his gag reflex surely would have kicked in. It made no sense— it was divine— it was the best head Sicard had ever had. He had only enough time to realize this before abruptly his hips were stuttering, the coil low in his stomach pulling taut, and he gritted out “Emm- I’m going to—“ before he came the hardest he had in weeks.
And came. And came; his orgasm flattened him with its pleasure, made him unseeing unthinking unknowing for just a moment, until Emmanellain made a plaintive sound and Sicard realized he’d pulled him down to bury his dick as deeply as he could. He released the other man, and after a cough or two Emmanellain looked up at him, panting, with a quiet grin. “I trust that was amenable?"
“I don’t know how ye did that, an’ frankly I’m not convinced it wasn’t some dark magic. Gods in heavens, Emm. You’ve got yourself a talent.”
“Full glad am I to hear it,” he said, his breathing steadying. “Would it be presumptuous of me to assume that you’ll return the favour?”
“Aye,” grinned Sicard. “Let’s see if all that elezen proportionality talk rings true.”
(It did.)
(Sicard learned a great many things that evening.)