[We Interrupt Your Usual RP to Bring You... International Talk Like a Pirate Day!]

[kirktastic]

It was morning on the Enterprise, and it came with the slow creaking of wood deck around him, swelling in the heat of the morning, the sound of waves against the sides of the ship. Definitely a damn good way to wake up.

Even better was waking up between two warm bodies, one pressed to either side of him. On one side was his cabin boy, a young buck with a foolish head but a pleasing face and tongue. On the other, his first mate, a smug, stoic, uptight, ridiculously intelligent bastard who he had finally talked into ...sharing his bed. At least in the physical sense. He'd won the argument that the captain's bed was the most comfortable place on the ship, but anything beyond that was met with a pointed look and a reach for the sword hilt.

It was a damn good life here on the Enterprise.

He was Captain James T. Kirk of the pirate ship Enterprise, the most feared name on the open seas. He ran his crew with a mixture of charm, command, and the point of his sword. He was a good swordsman, a better brawler, and decent with a flint lock.

[OOC: This will be the ONLY pirate thread everyone, no multiple posts on multiple journals! Post just in here for this! Today only!]

Comments

[kirktastic.livejournal.com]

His first mate was a strange one, to say the least. Kirk knew some of his past but not all, guessed uncaringly at the rest. People became pirates for money, people became pirates for fame, people became pirates because they wanted or had to get rid of their old lives.

Spock, he was fairly sure, was one of the last.

He was one of the first two categories. From the first day Captain Pike had revealed himself to him, the legend himself, and spared his life... he had wanted everything about this life. He had changed from a boy in an adult's uniform in the military, brilliant but otherwise a complete unknown. In just a few years, he was captain of his own beautiful ship that was quickly becoming a legend of its own.

And now the scent of tea was drifting past his nose.

It made Kirk sit up, nudging aside Harold and letting his cabin boy sleep for now, and twist his body to look across his cabin. He yawned, scratching at his ribs, and planted his feet on the floor squarely before standing. "Mornin', Spock." He rumbled, stalking across the cabin and flopping into the chair opposite of his first mate. Needed a bottle of rum to start this day off...

[cso-spock.livejournal.com]

Spock watched his captain flop with the briefest narrowing of his eyes and the tightening of his jaw, vague distaste before it was replaced with his normally impassive mask. "Good morning, Captain." He took a small sip of his tea (little finger not quite up but neither down because habits were hard to stifle no matter how many times Kirk smirked at him), and then placed the cup down gently in the middle of the saucer with a tiny chink.

"Would you like some tea?" A gesture over the bare-bones set he had assembled, placed as if there were dishes missing from the ensemble, such as the creamer and the small cake stand. Spock would always, at the least, offer some alternative to alcohol. He found it distasteful to consume hard liquor so early in the day, and would tell Kirk this in various non-direct fashions. Not that it was ever effective. "Breakfast should be arriving shortly."

[kirktastic.livejournal.com]

"...halfa cup." Kirk would fill the other half with rum, as he went scourging for a bottle. He had long since gotten used to Spock's weird habits. People from the country far north, Vulcan, were always damn weird according to the rumors, though Spock had been the first one he had ever met in person.

Some of the habits might have been brushing off onto the captain, and visa versa. Sometimes, Spock almost reminded him of being home.

"We should make port today. Crew's restless fer some time on land to go drink away their booty." Kirk grinned widely.

[cso-spock.livejournal.com]

"One would think," Spock said as he poured half of a cup of tea, plus a minuscule more into the empty teacup reserved for Kirk. Less room for the rum. "That for all the alcohol they are supplied on board, they would prefer to spend their profit on another activity." He knew of the preference that came a close second, of course (he had spent his fair share of time in port cities), but neither did that make much sense, either.

He would concede that gambling, infuriating half-drunk pirates with loaded flintlocks, was not the safest or sanest way to spend an evening, either, though he had indulged in it often in the past. Not in the present, though; one glance at his reflection, one glimpse at his scar, would remind him why he didn't bother anymore.

So instead, he planned to invest in some decent silverware, and maybe get a quiet bed to himself for once.

[kirktastic.livejournal.com]

Kirk never stopped Spock from spending his hard earned loot on whatever he wanted, but it never stopped him from teasing his first mate about it as much as he could get away with. Despite Spock's vow on his honor that rainy day long ago, it equally didn't stop them from occasionally ending up in fights that rang across the deck.

And damn, Spock was a fast one with his rapier in hand.

Finally he came up with a bottle and grinned, pulling the cork out with his teeth and pouring the liquor into the tea cup, dropping some sugar into it, then giving it a stir with his finger. He sucked the mixture off his finger with a smack of his lips and sat back, holding the cup in a surprisingly graceful manner that hinted at a very different past.

"Let 'em enjoy themselves." Kirk took a slow sip of the rum-tea and sighed with it. "We'll find us a good poker game and win twice what we put in, aye?"

[cso-spock.livejournal.com]

He had only seen Kirk act different from his ruffian and pirate self on very few occasions. Spock suspected he was the only one on board who could identify the little things that tipped one off to a less-than-common upbringing, such the way he held that cup, or how he read the sea charts, or the very nature of how Kirk charmed women (and men, he supposed, though Spock would never admit he'd been charmed) into his bed. It was never going to be a topic Spock brought up on his own, though, for manner's sake.

"Twice, if the evening is unfortunate." A sip of his own tea. He could be described as ruthless when it was necessary--and profit was always necessary. "Four times if you limit your liquor consumption."

[kirktastic.livejournal.com]

...Kirk totally charmed Spock.

"I'll try." Kirk didn't quite promise with his voice, eyes bright under messy sleep-rumpled hair that hung in light waves around his face, usually held in place by a piece of cloth. "It'll be a damn fine night."

He leaned back in his chair, staring across the cabin towards the sleeping figure on the bed. "Maybe we'll get lucky and find some fools off tha island n' be able to get some quick goodies while they're hung'er and fat and lazy."

[cso-spock.livejournal.com]

Kirk would like to think that, wouldn't he.

Honour tickled annoyingly at the back of his mind where he usually stifled it for his profession's sake. If he was going to take something from someone, Spock usually preferred to do so while they were mostly conscious and able to try to stop him (usually with a low rate of success).

"Luck is hardly in question when you are present, Captain." He expected the knock on the door right after he finished his statement, and rose to answer it. Less than a minute later, he was seated across from Kirk again, with a healthy serving of eggs and potatoes between them, along with several biscuits (none of that hard tack nonsense), salted pork, some cheese, and three oranges already peeled and diced, one for every person in the cabin.

Spock went for his serving of fruit first, picking the nicest of the three forks available, all the prongs present and a simple pattern inlaid into the silver.

[kirktastic.livejournal.com]

There were several advantages to having brought on board the man from Vulcan, and without a doubt this was one of them. Originally, it had come down to a fight between Spock and Jim about fruit. Spock had been babbling about something about deficiencies and vitamins and whatevernot, getting a long angry look from the captain, until the other had simplified his statement and said that if the crew ate fruit twice a day, the rate of sickness that passed through the crew would drop immensely.

The problem was simple - fruit was a waste of money. It went bad quickly and was useless later on. Spock had convinced Kirk that he could keep fruit long enough for it to be eaten and not rot. On the grounds of wanting 'I told you so' rights, Kirk had agreed to buy two crates of fruit at their next port.

...Dammit if Spock hadn't gotten those rights in the end. Somehow the man had managed to find ways to keep the oranges from rotting, and now the crew enjoyed a mixture of fresh and dried fruit twice a day and as promised, the rate of sicknesses passed among the crew had dropped to almost nothing.

Plus the rest of their food supplies were doing amazingly well. They even had a few chickens and a single rooster below deck to provide fresh eggs.

"Oi, Harold! Wake up yer lazy arse and get o'er here." He called across the cabin. "Or it'll be me eatin' yer breakfast and not ye!"

[haroldlee.livejournal.com]

Harold did his best to open his eyes before standing up. Didn't quite work. He forced himself up like a shot, not about to disobey.

He didn't rub his eyes as he trudged to Kirk's side. Just blinked. "Yessir."

[kirktastic.livejournal.com]

"Sit n' eat." Kirk gestured to the third chair, popping a slice of orange into his mouth. He splashed a bit of rum into a cup and nudged it in Harold's direction. "Hair o'tha dog."

[haroldlee.livejournal.com]

"Yessir," he repeated. Truth be told, Harold hated rum. But it did the job, so he drank it. He obeyed, sitting and keeping his eyes to his food, a little awed still at being told to eat aside the Captain.

As he popped a bit of fruit into his mouth, he tried not to sneak a glance at the Captain and his first mate out of the corner of his eye. He kind of failed.

[cso-spock.livejournal.com]

Just as he didn't enjoy Kirk drinking rum every meal and/or continuously throughout the day, Spock didn't particular agree with him pushing the option on the rest of his crew. He did not voice his opinion, instead continuing to eat his fruit.

"There are those items we recovered from the cove north of here." A simple reminder as he progressed through his breakfast to the eggs. "Do you wish to sell them immediately upon reaching the port, or some time later?"

[kirktastic.livejournal.com]

"Sell 'em. No use in keepin' that sort of heavy mess on ship and we be needin' supplies. Soon as we get on shore we'll sell off the mess and deal with supplies 'fore we hit the nearest inn!" Kirk gave a wide grin at Spock at the promise of having a night of gambling and rum and probably some gorgeous ladies.

[cso-spock.livejournal.com]

Spock nodded once at the proposed plan, sound as it was. At least up until the implications he knew Kirk was tagging on to the end--women and liquor. A proven recipe for disaster. He would stick to his cards, thank you.

"Hopefully it will be that simple." It never was.

[kirktastic.livejournal.com]

"We can only hope." Kirk shook his head, grabbing a scroll of paper from nearby and unrolling it into any bit of clear space on the small table. His eyes traced over figures quickly, scowling for a moment, then nodding. "We should get a pretty penny for the last lot. There's an old miser I trust the judgment of on Risa, he be where we can go fer a sure knowledge on it."

[cso-spock.livejournal.com]

Mentally, he cringed at the butchering of grammar and language. Standard was a fine language, easy to learn and not so hard to understand with various accents (his own included), but it was also easy to twist into this awful vernacular Kirk, his crew, and most of their like-minded professionals preferred using.

It made him cringe even more because he knew perfectly well that Kirk was capable of proper constructs. Would he be any less of a pirate if he didn't speak like one?

"As long as we are able to adequately resupply our stores." The trust slid, implied, at the end of his statement, and he took another sip of his tea. He always allowed Kirk to deal with whoever to gain their rightful profit, sometimes accompany him on the sale if the environment made him uneasy. Spock preferred to avoid those that might recognize him (though he hardly blended in), and when dealing with money, the probability always increased tenfold.

[kirktastic.livejournal.com]

Kirk, as Spock had heard in the past, could speak a perfect, clean Standard that was almost equal to a noble when he had to, but immediately fell back into this way of speaking.

"I've used this old one 'fore. Ye've seen the lot down thar, far more then the crew's share and ours. Might even be able ta spend it on some repairs ta the ship n' some comfortables."