Unforgettable cruise

Chapter 83 - (actual chapter 24) ship of friends

[Author’s note: Grateful as i am to be able to share this story here on FF, it is not possible to format this story on this site. The loss of essential formatting greatly dulls the emotional impact, especially towards the end of this chapter. For the full emotional impact, please consider reading this chapter at the source.

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Another extended night of healing sleep did Jayne Plain well: she was healing, her body catching up on all the recovery and repair work human bodies do during overnight sleep. Critical to this for her was being cuddled into Clark Barr. Nude as they were was preferable to them both, though for Jayne with nightclothes on would have been adequate, as long as the physical contact was there.

The morning’s darkness and light rain joined with the warm cuddles and ongoing need to catch up on lost sleep to keep Jayne in bed and asleep longer, into the mid-morning hours. Hunger for breakfast (which in her mind defied reason, given the huge lunch she’d eaten yesterday) and especially the scent and sounds of fresh-brewed coffee brewed to perfection by her (limited?) lover Leigh opposed the sleep-encouraging forces, urging her to wake up and start her day.

She compromised: gradually waking up in the arms of her sexy lover man, feeling so much of him and him feeling so much of her lying facing each other. The slow, tender lip kisses and very gentle slow caresses she received and soon also gave ensured that there was no other place in the universe she’d rather be at this moment, and that her full experiential focus remained in this moment, being present in it.


Leigh came over and joined in, getting the bed moving as her becoming-formidable hip, thigh, and butt fat and the rest of her sloshed up atop it.

“Someone just chonked up the bed” Clark teased.

“You bet I did!” she smiled, caressing and kissing him on the cheek and lips and wherever else she could easily reach.

Jayne lifted up her ceiling-nearest left breast, holding it out towards Leigh, drawing her mouth action off Clark onto this part of her.

Doing better coming to terms with her boob fanaticism, in her mind Leigh was more accepting of having a girlfriend lover, in the limited sexual ways with which they were both comfortable. Wanting ongoing easy access to Jayne along these lines and truly quite liking her as an ever-closer friend, she found herself more accepting of Jayne living with them and sharing her cruise husband Clark with her in every way it was possible to share him.


The coffeemaker made its usual end-of-brew-cycle *blop blop pop blop pop pop* sounds.


“Hey, didja hear that President Trump admitted he made a mistake and apologized?”

“No” replied Clark.

Jayne was far more surprised. “*Really?*”

“Of **course** not! *April Fools!*”

Those who’d been fooled tickled prankster Leigh with reckless abandon until she was laughing near-uncontrollably. Clark wriggled around until he could get his mouth on some of the thickest expanse of her hip fat, giving her a loudly-flupping ticklish mega-blowfish:

**FlupFlupFlupFlupFlupFlupFl up**

Jayne liked the idea so much, she too scrambled around to get her mouth on Leigh’s other hip.

“OK OK OK!” Leigh pleaded between laughs. “I gotta go wee, then CDC wash up and serve us coffee.”

“We could get up and get it” noted Clark.

“You *could* get up, but why would you do that when Squish is here nude in bed with you with her beautiful bedroom eyes, and me with my bedroom eyes will be back soon with our coffee so we can all sit and cuddle snugly sitting up in bed together and try not to get into any coffee and cats moments.”

“How could we get into that when there aren’t any cats here?”

“Are you quite sure about that?” she teased, moving his nearest hand down onto her vulva, with still-waking-up Jayne happily and slightly belatedly mirroring her. “Gotta go, kids” she said as she eased herself back off the bed. “Back soon.”


“What would you like to do today?” Clark asked his newest lover.


She said nothing. All he could see was a glittery gleam in her eyes, and her far-away, contemplative look.


* *
“*Hey Arto!*” Fourth Engineer Billy Bilge called out over the distance towards his boss the Chief Engineer, the two of them at work down in the Engine Room.

“*What?*”

“*I’ve sworn off swearing!*”

“*Really?!*”

“** FUCK** *no!* **Daaah*** haah haah! ***April Fools!**” He was already inserting a dollar bill into the Swear Jar as he spoke, well knowing the price of that particular epithet in isolation, yelled at this volume.


* *
Sapphire Prince Hotel Director Mary Biltmore looked worried as she approached her Reception desk workers Jini and Emmy, each of them wearing masks and keeping their social distance during their in-progress shift change. “There’s something fishy going on with your quarterly bonuses.”

“What do you mean?” asked Emmy, sounding as worried as her boss.

“Word from the Purser’s office is that a new employee named Orca Cetacea reporpoised the money towards a startup opening a comedy club for dolphins, starting with a series of open mic nights. But I’m thinking it might just be bilge out of someone’s blowhole. *April Fools!*”


She handed them each a pretty, colorful sealed envelope, from her gloved hands.

Opening them up, each receptionist found a bonus half again as large as usual.


“Thank you both for your exemplary work during this tough time—no foolin’. Wish I could hug each of you as usual. Maybe next month, or whenever things get back to normal.”


* *
April Fools jokes similar to the above ran rampant all over the Sapphire Prince, in general serving as a distraction from the existential angst of life put on hold and ravaged by COVID-19. So many people were joking around it was challenging to know what was real without verification.

Some jokes appeared online, including internally on the ship’s announcements and messaging arrangements. A few appeared, disappeared, and sometimes reappeared, in the same or differing forms or contexts.

Generally unnoticed as anything unique amongst this milieu, one particular notice kept showing up, more and more often as the day progressed, especially from early afternoon onward. Setting it apart was that it existed both electronically and physically, the latter as terse stickers or small handbills posted or left about various areas of nearly every public (non-stateroom) deck open to the Recovered class of passengers.

Many of the terse ones were of the form:


*Arrrrr!*: COVID-19 Survivors’ Pirate Dance!

Club Troposphere 1 April 6:30 PM orrrr thereabouts

*No Foolin’!*


or:


COVID-19 Survivors’ Pirate Dance

Club Troposphere 1 April abouts 6:30 evenin’ tiiiime

Come as ye *arrrrrrr*


Some of the longer forms of electronic and paper messages took a different tack:


Packed on pounds during the cruise? Come dance a few off or else show them off at the inclusive, fat-positive, people-positive COVID-19 Survivors’ Pirate Dance! 1 April circa 6:30 PM, Club Troposphere (Sky Deck). Dance this Fool Day and disease away!


Variants of the latter proved especially appealing outside of the Grand Promenade restaurant area, and placed around Jimmy’s Buffet up on the Sky deck, very near Club Troposphere.

There were many, many other forms of this basic information, sometimes fragmentary reminders/teases/hints rather than complete messages as above, hidden and not-so-hidden in various places.