Riptide (PirateJunkratXFem.Reader)

#8=Oxygen

(Or lack thereof...)

The entire venture back to Gonâve island to deliver the requested siren canine to Selkie, again, was to take you about one week if the sea decided to play its part and if the winds blew in your favour. Regardless, it was a rather long voyage, one on which you happened to have to majorly spend on a uncomfortably tight space with someone who you would rather have avoided like the plague itself.

Seeing as after your blood loss induced mental haze had worn off, and your mind was back in a rational, logical self in light of your full consciousness, you instantly came to the conclusion that it might just be the wiser decision to eschew the captain for a while. Why? Simple, really, because you were still alarmed by Jamie's every quirk, and you just couldn't bring yourself to trust him.

Be that due to the mildly uncanny way he grinned, the hysterical laughter, the constant dander, the cruel habits he displayed on the daily; or even the sick delight he took in his own sadism. All of it was just a prescription for disaster.

And no matter how devilishly breathtaking that man may be to look at, and no matter how pleasant he could be, you still remembered the soreness he had caused you without a flinch of sympathy, and it terrified you; because you knew that history had a frustrating knack for repeating itself.

However, you had to give the dubious pirate that much, he took you being a woman prodigiously well. He didn't lose a single word to the crew, strangely enough, as he normally ran his mouth like nothing good; and he didn't really treat you all too differently either.

Something you appreciated, no doubt, but it also made you cautious. You didn't trust the peace of a dormant volcano. The longer it remained placid, the more vigorous it's eventual eruption.

Either way, he had advised you to remain in the cabin for a while, just until you recovered from the wounds a bit, he had said. But you knew that wasn't why the Aussie wanted to keep you there, it was painfully obvious that he wasn't one to take great pity on one's poor state of being. No, it was merely a ruse, a ostensible reason to keep you at an arm's length and well away from the crew; a way to assure you to need him more than anyone by default.

Which would have been halfway acceptable if he had possessed the decency to give you a replacement for your tattered blouse or blood crusted trousers, but Jamie had souls excused his lack of gallantry with not having any fitting spares. Which you knew to be a dumb excuse, but at least you still had your undergarments and an abundance of sheets to curl up in.

But of course, that was nothing but inept excuses, too. You didn't have to be attentive to catch those deep, longing stares rest on your frame for minutes at a time, especially when you told your stories; those amber eyes visibly trailed off, down your neck and lower shamelessly. And you soon noticed something peculiar, no, eerie, about Jamie; as he did so on a painfully regular basis, and so seamless it didn't interrupt you to study the path of his gaze.

Something you couldn't quite distinguish, or even comprehend when you first took note of it, but it scared you too much to question as soon as you put two and two together. As it appeared to you that he wasn't, as you had expected, staring at your exposed chest, but rather following those bloody, still relatively fresh lacerations the Siren had give you.

And you knew that it wasn't worry, or even empathy in his countenance as he did so, it wasn't even plain, aesthetic enjoyment of the gory display on your slim torso; it was pure lecherousness. Which rightfully terrified you to your core.

-

On about the third day of your journey, it was one of those peculiarly frigid nights in which the winds mercilessly flogged across the ocean like Neptune himself had decided to call forth a nasty tempest, and the spume from the salty waves was thrashed up like a additionally freezing rain until late into the night.