Held captive by pirates, Wicks and Poole struggle to rely on one another.
A little bit of adventure, romance, and queerness in the 18th century Mediterranean!
An adaptation of my TweetFic, Gerald Poole & the Pirates. This part is 10k in length.
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV
Content warnings: consent issues throughout and sexual threats, violence, period-typical racism and homophobia, self-esteem and identity issues. In this chapter, choking.
It was colder in the little room that had been set aside for Wicks’ imprisonment than it had been in the mess, crowded as it had been with people, and as Cotton turned the key in the lock behind them, Jack saw that Poole huddled down slightly in his jacket, his arms wrapped around his chest.
He looked nervous when Jack approached him, but Jack ignored it, tilting up Poole’s face with his hands on his cheeks to get a good look at his face. “Are you hurt?” he demanded, and Poole glanced away from Jack’s face and down to the floor.
He shook his head, and Wicks inhaled softly, sliding his thumbs once more over the delicate skin of Gerald’s cheeks before he drew his hands back.
“Take the lower bed,” said Jack. “I can sleep on the top bunk, I doubt you’d be able to reach.”
Poole watched him walk away — not that there was far to walk, in their little cell, its being small enough that Wicks could easily touch each wall with his arms outstretched one way, and could accomplish the same facing the other way by leaning one way and then the other — without saying anything at first, as Wicks unbuttoned his jacket.
Jack’s skin was burning with a painful, indignant heat. Part of him, a part of him he was wholly disgusted with and quite ashamed of, had thrummed with need and desire at the way Poole had surged to meet Thwaites’ hands, the way he’d wriggled under his touch.
What did that say of Jack Wicks, that he should see a man so molested, so abused, by a pirate captain, and that his cock should stir at the sight of it?
“Aren’t you angry?” asked Poole in a small voice, and Jack glanced at him.
“Furious,” he said, hearing the rumble in his voice. “Were it that I could do anything, sir, I would, but I can’t — he’s touching you to provoke me as much as to humiliate you, and were I to react more candidly, I’m sure it would make it worse.”
Poole rocked forward slightly on his toes, and said, “You kissed my hand. And held me.”
Jack felt as though he’d been plunged into ice water, and his stomach roiled as he looked back at Poole, at his pressed-together lips, his wide eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, taken away with shame. “Better that they think us involved, I think, that we keep up the charade — I think it does serve to create some restraint in Thwaites, even to a minor extent. I do try to keep my touches chaste.”
“You needn’t,” said Poole.
“I wouldn’t debase you further,” said Jack. “What I do now is enough.”
“I’m not debased,” said Poole, seeming abruptly very offended, and Jack looked at him in bafflement, at the sudden anger that curled his girlish lips, his eyebrows furrowing. “I’ll have you know I’ve been touched far more openly and by far better looking men than you or Captain Thwaites.”
Jack, struck dumb, stared at him.
“I am handsome,” said Poole, his lip curling further. “And I’m intelligent, too, far cleverer than any of you are giving me credit for — lots of men desire me, in the circles I walk about. Just because you don’t doesn’t mean I’m debased. I’m — I’m in demand, and desired. Not debased.”
Jack turned his head sharply away, focusing on taking off his jacket to set aside, although he almost hesitated in undressing himself.
They’d said of Poole what he was, and Jack himself had seen Poole react to Thwaites’ wandering hands, had heard Poole’s flirtation — he knew that Poole was like as not a molly, and had known it, but… But it was one thing for a man to hold his vices, to carry them with him, and quite another to talk about them as though they were something to be proud of, something —
Natural.
As if what kept Jack from performing any sort of attraction for him was because he was not sufficiently handsome, and not that he was a man.
“Now are you angry?” asked Poole as Jack kicked off his boots.
“No,” Jack said, almost whispered the word, although it was very loud in the little room.
“You could have fooled me,” said Poole. “I’m not stupid.”
“I don’t recall saying you were.”
“But you thought it,” said Poole. “All of you, you thought about how stupid I was, no matter that I’d just wiped the floor with all of you at cards — if any of you could do what I do, perhaps you’d win. That’s the only reason it pleases you to think I’m a fool, because you’re deficient where I’m not.”
“I did not call you deficient,” said Jack irritably. “And nor did I call you stupid.”
“Do you really not think me handsome?”
“It’s not for me to say!” snapped Jack, turning to glare at him, and Poole withdrew somewhat, his large eyes almost filling with tears, as though he really were a girl, and Jack clenched his hands at his sides. “It’s not right, asking me to… I’m no — I’m not like that. Like you. I would never.”
“But you’d want to?” asked Poole, and Jack clenched his teeth.
“Just get in bed, Poole,” he said.
Poole crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes glistening, and he drew up his head, drew himself to his full height, which wasn’t very tall at all. “I wish he’d let me sleep with him,” he said venomously, and Wicks wrinkled his nose in disgust, not knowing what to make of that.
“Bed,” he repeated.
“Not alone,” said Poole challengingly, taking a step forward. “It’s too cold.”
Jack released an irritated growl of sound, making to pull himself onto the second bunk, and Poole rushed forward. He wasn’t strong enough to really shove Jack with any strength, but Jack didn’t want the temptation of Poole’s hands on him, didn’t want Poole to touch him, to clutch at him, to…
He withdrew his hands right back, his wrists and his shoulders against the wall, and Poole stared at him, examined each part of his body where he had withdrawn himself from Poole’s reach, and Poole looked angrier and angrier with the moments that passed.
“Is that why you’ve been so taciturn since first we made our acquaintance?” he demanded. “Because you didn’t dare say a word to a molly, lest you encourage me?”
It was so incredibly, impossibly self-obsessed, utterly ignorant of the truth and of his surroundings and of Wicks as his own man, that Jack almost wanted to shout back at him exactly how stupid and foolish he was proving himself, but to reply would only encourage Poole further, and Jack didn’t want to touch him.
The blows of Poole’s fists against Jack’s breast all but bounced away from him, Poole punching as hard as he can and making no impact whatsoever, and Jack said nothing.
“You’re frightened of me,” said Poole coldly, almost savagely, as though it were the worst insult in the world. “What, you think I’ll overpower you? That I’ll force you to touch me, to embrace me, to kiss me? As if I’d want you to. I expect you’d like me hanged.”
When Jack still said nothing, leaning back against the wall, Poole’s fury glittered in his teary eyes and glistened on the teeth bared by his snarl, which was anything but threatening. “I thought it was me,” he hissed. “I thought it was — I thought it was me, that I was rude, or entitled, or too loud or irritating, and I felt so awful wasting your time that you had to act as nursemaid for some seasick rich boy who’d never done a day’s work in his life, and you thought me a sodomite just desperate to — “
“Be quiet,” said Jack, not wanting to hear any more of the self-pity, the narcissism, and Poole, in a move utterly unsurprising, actually stamped his foot on the ground.
“No!”
“Be — “
“No! No, I won’t! I’ll prove you right, shall I? My family is having me sent to some villa in the middle of some infinite olive grove like a sodomising minotaur, that everyone be spared the sight of me, and I’ll pick olives instead of men’s hearts!”
Jack leaned further back as Poole came closer, his elbows shoved up against Jack’s breast, hands fisted in the lapels of his shirt.
“Because I’m not good at hiding it,” he said furiously, wetly. “Because I’m not good at hiding anything! Does it please you, that I am stupid after all?”
Jack wanted to be sick. He hated that part of him was offended at Poole’s misinterpretation, that he wanted to defend himself — that he wanted to say that no, Poole, it had nothing to do with you, my anger was with my situation, the treatment I received through no choices of my own, unlike the choices you made… He knew there was no point in it, that Poole would never understand, that he’d never try to, that he could never conceive of something not being about him, but this —
As if Jack hated him.
As if Jack would care what the fuck Poole thought of other men, if he only kept his hands to himself, if only he could shut the fuck up.
“If I wasn’t hanged,” said Jack, his mouth moving without his permission, “I would be discharged. They’d jump at the chance to discharge me already — hanging would be a certainty. A hard hanging, too, an executioner who would jump at the chance to make it slow and drag it out, the knot loose enough that I hung and choked instead of broke my neck, and very public, with a large audience. Not everyone, Poole, has a noble family backing his predicament, ready to pay for his retirement to some winery where tributes of young virgins might be sacrificed from a distance.”
Poole’s grip on his shirt loosened.
“And,” Jack went on, “I might point out that my discharge from the navy is guaranteed regardless, because of the deception I played thinking it might prevent your kidnapping.”
“Well,” Poole said bitterly, “hasn’t that worked a treat?”
“A moment ago you were talking at length about how you’re not the sort of noble who should tantrum if he doesn’t get his way,” said Jack, “about how you went to such lengths not to inconvenience me. It seems to me now, Poole, that your colours are showing.”
He said it very coldly, more coldly than perhaps he knew he was capable of, and Poole stumbled back and away from him.
“To bed, then,” said Jack.
“Together,” said Poole, and Jack’s skin burned. “It’s too cold.”
“No.”
“Why not?” demanded Poole. “You’re to be discharged either way, you said.”
“Whore yourself out all you like,” growled Jack, gripping the top edge of the bunk and hauling himself up. “I’m not going to fuck you because you’re upset our captor hasn’t.”
“I’ve not the least interest in being fucked by some sailor who thinks he’s untouched and holy because he’s too scared to fuck men even though he wants to,” said Poole, and Jack whirled on him, but didn’t pull himself down to face him. Poole was looking up at him, all defiance, his hands clenched at his sides. “You’re worse than what I am — at least I know what I am. At least I’m not a coward.”
“You’ve not the slightest idea what bravery is,” said Jack. “Forgive me if I don’t take accusations of cowardice very seriously when they’re posed by a pink-lipped little boy who squeals whenever the ship tilts underfoot and cries for help if a parrot looks at him funny.”
Poole stared up at him, and his teary eyes did not come over dry, but something in them hardened, and he set his emotion aside for a moment to ask, “Think about the colour of my lips a lot, do you?”
Jack almost choked, feeling his own cheeks burn although he knew they wouldn’t colour, and he turned himself over on his side to face the wall, ignoring every attempt Poole made to cajole him and to climb up to the top bunk with them, which he couldn’t manage, lacking a ladder.
Jack’s fury lulled him into a sleep that came with tense and angry dreams.
Gerald laid for a long time in the darkness of the room, glaring at the wall, before he finally slept. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair, none of it was fair or right at all, that he simply couldn’t be trusted to carry on the way he had been because they were just certain he’d be arrested or killed or something this time, just for having a bit of fun, just for existing.
If he lingered in the places where the appropriate people were, if he went to soirées with the family or attended business meetings or came into his father’s shops and warehouses, he was doing the wrong thing — he was being too loud, too tactless, putting people off, no matter that he knew more about the trade than any of his brothers, no matter that whenever he was in the room they asked him before they asked each other because they knew he knew.
If he went to anywhere people might be fun, if, God forbid, Gerald went into places where people might like him — coffee and ale houses, silly little fairs, parties and circuses, then he was bringing everyone into disrepute just by being elsewhere.
The only thing he was good for was to be locked in an office, doing paperwork he couldn’t stand, or lounging about in the house and getting into arguments with his mother, because even then, he was making too much noise.
What was the point?
And now, now, he was finally getting shipped off because they’d simply had enough of his doing the wrong thing, no matter that the wrong thing was always suspiciously similar to the right thing everyone had suggested he do ten minutes before, and it would be just the same.
He woke at the turn of the key in the lock, and he glared fiercely up at the bunk above his head. He’d shivered through the night, and what’s more, he’d heard Wicks shiver too, no matter that with all that blubber and muscle on his body he ought have been warmer — talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
When the door opened, Gerald took to his feet, and walked with purpose, although not without glancing to make sure that Wicks was awake, and watching what he was doing.
He had to stand on his tiptoes to reach, but Thwaites’ lips were warm and soft — he used some sort of butter on his lips, Gerald suspected, to keep them so lovely — and his beard bristles tickled Gerald’s mouth.
He tried to lean further into it, tried to part his lips and invite Thwaites to kiss him more deeply, but Thwaites gently pushed him back with two fingers against Gerald’s chest. He was smirking, his handsome lips curved into the smile, and he said in amused tones, “Good morning to you too, Mr Wicks. Might I assume you will pose a similar greeting, Mr Poole?”
Wicks, who was sitting up on the top bunk, his arms crossed over his chest — he was awkwardly positioned, too tall to sit up straight, and one of his legs hung over the side — rolled his eyes.
“Why would you want him to?” asked Gerald coolly, and Thwaites arched an eyebrow.
“Why indeed,” he said richly. “Perhaps breakfast will soothe everyone’s hurt feelings.”
“I expect a stiff kick would too,” muttered Gerald, making to step past Thwaites and into Thwaites’ office, but Thwaites’ hand shot out and kept him in place, preventing him from moving.
“Something tells me, Mr Poole,” he said, addressing Wicks, “that our servant’s devotion has been forgotten.”
Wicks released an irritated harrumph of sound, and before Gerald could even think, let alone say a word, Thwaites had him twisted around and pinned against the door frame by his throat. He was more than on his tiptoes now, scrambling for purchase as he choked around the grip of Thwaites’ handsome hand around his neck, and Wicks hit the floor like a solid weight as he jumped down from the bunk.
“I expect I can teach him a lesson,” Thwaites said, in casual tones, but he had to raise his voice over the sounds of Gerald’s choked, sharp noises of fear and protest — he had taken a dagger from his belt and was holding its honed blade directly in front of Gerald’s face, tilting the tip forward and toward his eye.
“Let him go,” said Wicks sharply, “let him go, Thwaites, it’s nothing — “
“Nothing?” repeated Thwaites innocently, tapping the flat of the blade against Gerald’s cheek, and Gerald let out a whimpered sound when he tilted it, so that its sharp edge met his cheekbone. “Mr Poole, why, the disrespect, the brattiness — this is hardly becoming of a good valet, is it? Should I cut out his tongue?”
The blade dropped to Gerald’s mouth, clinking quietly against his teeth, and Gerald’s eyes overflowed with tears — he’d managed to hold back last night, prevented them from brimming over with sheer anger, but there was no anger now, only terror, and his tears were wet on his cheeks. He tried not to sob because it made his lips quiver and his tongue jump, and the tip of the dagger’s blade was very cool and surprisingly heavy against his lower lip.
“Please,” said Wicks.
“Please?” Thwaites repeated softly, and still, he wasn’t looking at Gerald, was keeping his gaze on Wicks and treating Gerald as though he almost wasn’t even there, even as Gerald tried to kick his feet underneath him and stop the constriction on his throat, terrified to move his head unless the blade cut him.
“I do entreat you, Captain Thwaites,” said Wicks seriously, “please let him go.”
Thwaites withdrew the blade before he dropped the grip he had on Gerald’s throat, and Gerald dropped hard onto the floor. He buried his face in his hands, his knees drawn up in front of him: he was breathing heavily, hauling in gasps so ragged that they cut at his bruised throat, and his head was spinning, his heart thumping in his chest. He couldn’t stop himself from sobbing, rocking in his place on the floor, and Thwaites, to Gerald’s startled horror, crouched beside him.
“There there, Mr Wicks,” he said softly, his expression showing no regret, but no cruelty either, as he pushed Gerald’s hands away and stroked his thumbs through the tears on Gerald’s cheeks. “No harm done.”
Gerald was sniffling as Thwaites proffered his handkerchief, and he took it quickly, hurrying to wipe it over his cheeks.
“Treat your toys better, Mr Poole,” said Thwaites in a voice as thick and sweet as molasses as he stood to his feet, tugging Gerald up with him. His hands moved over Gerald’s rumpled clothes, now, straightening his blouse and his jacket, and the tenderness wanted to make Gerald sob anew, but he managed to hold himself back. “Or someone might think you don’t want them any longer.”
Gerald inhaled reedily, trying his best not to cry any more, and he risked a glance at Wicks, whose skin had a chalky pallor to it, glistening with anxious sweat, and whose expression was a mask of scarce restrained anxiety.
“Come join us in the mess once this little drama is concluded,” said Thwaites, and his boot heels tapped on the floor as he walked out into the corridor.
A few seconds of silence ticked by between them as Gerald tried to catch his breath, rubbing at his sore throat and swallowing down his tears. He looked a mess, he knew, even after he’d wiped his eyes clean and blown his nose, and Wicks just stood there and watched him.
“Are you alright?” he asked finally.
“As if you care,” muttered Gerald, and made to follow the captain.
They sat elbow to elbow in the mess, only because when Wicks sat beside him, Gerald made to get up, and Mr Cotton grabbed him by the hair and shoved him back down again.
“I begin to dislike you, Mr Cotton,” said Gerald.
“That’s good,” said Cotton good-naturedly. “I like a head start.”
The day passed in tense and irritable silence, the two of them made to sit on the top most deck beside the helm — whenever Gerald attempted to wander off and observe the crew, as he was ordinarily permitted, someone would usher him back again, and perhaps they’d have done the same to Wicks if he’d only bother to move.
“Such a sad thing,” said the captain merrily from the helm, his hat pinned into his hair, his handsome brown skin shining almost like gold in the morning sun, “when two young boys come to quarrel.”
“We aren’t quarrelling,” said Gerald, at the same time Wicks said with some anger, “We’re not boys.”
Gerald glared at Wicks, who didn’t even do him the respect of returning his hard look, and when Gerald got to his feet, a passing gunner shoved him down again.
Thwaites looked back at them wryly before turning back to the sea. “Ah,” he said, with some cheer. “To be young again.”
“As opposed to very old, like Greybeard,” muttered Gerald under his breath.
Thwaites turned his head back to retort, but before he could, it was Wicks that smacked him upside the head, and hard.
“Ow,” said Gerald plaintively.
“Hold your tongue before I hold it for you,” growled Wicks, and Gerald leaned back from him, his cheeks burning. Wicks held his gaze for a second before he, too, seemed slightly embarrassed, and turned the other way, so that they were at angles facing away from one another on the bench.
“I begin to see why so many of my headmasters abandoned the occupation,” remarked Thwaites to Cotton, who laughed.
“If we are boys, Thwaites, that makes you Laius of Thebes,” said Wicks.
“Oh,” said Gerald coolly, “how well read he is.”
“You think I won’t strike you again?”
“Strike me harder. See if I care.”
“Why, the better to pleasure you, perverted creature that you are?”
“You can pleasure me by drowning.”
Wicks leaned in toward him, eyes hard, but Gerald didn’t budge. “You first,” said Wicks.
“I’ll go right now.”
“Will you?”
“Of course,” snapped Gerald, leaning in closer, so that his nose almost brushed Wicks. “I will throw myself from this vessel and let myself drown, all the better to please you — unless of course, so bound up as you are with duty, Second Lieutenant, feel compelled to rescue me?”
Behind them, Gerald was aware of Cotton loudly sighing, and the sound of a flint lighting.
As the captain lit up a cigarillo, leaning up against the rail — Mr Cotton had taken the helm from him — Cotton muttered irritably under his breath, shaking his head, although he wasn’t muttering loud enough that Gerald could hear.
“A bet is made with two parties, Paul,” said Thwaites.
“Seems the parties are more often yours than anyone else’s, Ced. Left pocket.”
“Thank you,” said Thwaites. As Gerald and Wicks both stared, Thwaites blew out a small cloud of dark smoke, and reached into Cotton’s pocket with the familiarity of one who did it often, fishing out three coins.
“A pleasure doing business with you, as always, Mr Cotton,” said Thwaites, leaning in close to almost murmur the words in Cotton’s ear, threatening to put his hand in his pocket again.
A part of Gerald was almost jealous, until Cotton staunchly replied, “Go get fucked by an octopus.”
“What?” asked Gerald as Thwaites looked down at them, and Thwaites took another slow drag of the cigarillo before he exhaled more smoke, the sound of it an indulgent sigh.
“Pray,” he said, sort of airily, as though he was trying to hold back his laughter before he told the punchline, “of the two of you, valet and gentleman, which holds the rank of Second Lieutenant?”
“Oh, fuck,” said Gerald.
“Hell’s bells,” muttered Wicks, and put his head in his hands.
“Are you called Justin, sir?” asked Thwaites.
“No, sir,” said Wicks defeatedly. “My name is John William, sir.”
“And are you a Johnny or a Bill — your last name is Wicks, I take it?”
“It is, sir, but I’m neither a Johnny nor a Bill. I’m a Jack, sir.”
“Very good,” said Thwaites, and looked expectantly to Gerald.
“Well,” he said sharply. “You know my name.”
“You lied to me,” said Thwaites, shrugging his shoulders. “Perhaps, young man, I’m wounded.”
“You lied about your name,” said Gerald, and Wicks turned his head to glance at him, even as Thwaites frowned and furrowed his brow.
“I did no such thing.”
“You told me your name was Orion Thwaites, as it says in your logbook, but he just called you Ced.”
“And were your Christian name Orion, young man, I expect you’d go by your middle name as well.”
“I’d choose to either use it or not, but if I did use it, I’d not tattoo it on the back of my neck.”
Thwaites opened his mouth, then closed it. “Well,” he said to Cotton, “we know the young man is not an astronomer.”
Cotton laughed.
“The constellation on by back is not Orion, Mr Poole, it is the Argo, and the one over my heart, if you were interested, is Pisces.”
Interrupting this conversation, apparently bored of it, Wicks demanded, “Did you bet money on how long we’d keep up our deception?”
“We did,” grumbled Cotton.
“Mr Cotton had faith in the two of you that you’d keep up your deception for three days and nights,” said Thwaites, curling one of his hands around Cotton’s shoulder, and Gerald watched the way Cotton didn’t draw away, barely even reacted, apparently so used to his casual, affectionate touch. Something in him stirred. “I flatter myself, however, that I know two hot-headed young idiots when I see them.”
“You knew?” asked Gerald. “From the very beginning?”
“My dear child,” said Thwaites, “you have hands so soft that you might have been born yesterday, and whilst I confess, the handsome hue of your skin makes it difficult to discern a sailor’s tan in you, Mr Wicks, you are more than at home upon a ship, and one can see in your eyes your knowledge of the vessel about you and its workings. If anything, Second Lieutenant sounds like a curiously low rank for you to be in possession of.”
Wicks set his jaw. “Why bother, then, in taking both of us?”
“Leverage, as I told you from the outset,” said Thwaites. “And I rather wanted to tie one of you up, but I couldn’t possibly tie up a gentleman.”
“Yes, you could,” said Cotton.
“Alright, yes, I could,” said Thwaites. “But what a joy it was to see you wriggle your way out of it, Mr Wicks — we shall try Poole next, and see how he fares.”
Wicks raised his head, sitting very straight upon the bench. “You’re to kill me, then,” he said, and Gerald, alarmed, jumped to his feet and stood at Wicks’ shoulder, between him and Thwaites.
“You mustn’t,” he said. “I won’t allow it.”
Thwaites, almost leaning on Cotton now, the two of them touching at the shoulder although they faced opposite directions, took a thoughtful drag of his cigarillo. After puffing out his smoke, he asked, “Could you have been a headmaster, Paul?”
“It would depend,” said Cotton, “on if I still had possession of a flintlock pistol.”
“I don’t think so, Paul.”
“Then no, Ced, like as not, I couldn’t’ve.”
“How old are you, Lieutenant Wicks?”
“Nine and twenty, sir,” said Wicks. “Almost thirty.”
“Very good. I’m very glad neither of you is called Justin — not the sort of name a man can cry out in ecstasy. Now, Mr Poole.”
A loaded pistol was pointed into Gerald’s face, and he froze, gulping hard. He didn’t pull away from Wicks, but leaned further in front of him, one of his hands on Wicks’ shoulder.
“Do you care to elaborate,” asked Thwaites in slow and deliberate tones, “to elaborate on that Greybeard comment you made a moment ago?”
“You’re going to throw away all that ransom money over a comment on the grey in your hair?” asked Gerald, trying not to let his voice quaver, and failing.
“I would be no poorer than I am right now,” said Thwaites dangerously, the constellations gleaming like hot honey in his eyes, “and last I checked, there is no grey in my hair.”
“You need a new mirror, then,” said Gerald. “The silver at your temples shines very obvious in the light.”
“Christ’s mother, Poole,” hissed Wicks, “would you sit down?”
“If he wants to shoot me over vanity, let him,” said Gerald, and for all he was shaking like a wet poodle, he didn’t break his gaze away from Thwaites for even a second. He didn’t even feel like crying, although he was fairly certain things might be different had he not been crying an hour before.
Thwaites’ frightening scowl became a sly smile, and he lowered the gun.
“See how steady he is, Mr Cotton?” he asked as he put it away.
Relieved beyond measure and quite surprised to be alive, Gerald felt his knees go weak, and he fell back into Wicks’ lap.
Cotton, facing the other way, said, “No,” very pointedly.
Gerald expected Wicks to shove him out of his lap, back onto the bench, but he didn’t, keeping a loose grip around Gerald’s middle to hold him steady.
“Do you think me very stupid?” asked Gerald miserably as Thwaites descended the stairs.
“Well, I don’t think anyone for miles thinks you smart.”
“You didn’t realise I’d called you the wrong thing until he said,” said Gerald. “So it’s not just me.”
“Of course I did!”
“Liar.”
Wicks leaned back from him, lip curling. “Molly.”
“I am, so it happens. What are you, a virgin?”
Wicks’ face whipped directly to the side, almost as though Gerald had slapped him, and Gerald crowed out a noise of victory.
“Point to Poole, I think,” said Cotton.
“Must you listen?” demanded Wicks, irritable, but Gerald felt — and he did feel — that he wasn’t irritable all over.
“’Til your bickering nonsense renders me deaf,” said Cotton. “Not to worry, I feel the levee is soon to break.”
“Get off me,” said Wicks, shoving Gerald onto the bench, but then he leaned forward like a schoolboy to hide his excitement, and Gerald laughed at him as he pressed his knees hard together.
“Not to worry, lad,” said Cotton. “There’s many a man older’n you who’s yet to get his cock wet.”
“No there isn’t,” said Gerald.
A moment passed.
“Aren’t you going to argue with him?” he asked, sounding almost hopeful, and it was really so sweet and genuine that Gerald almost felt guilty, except that he didn’t.
“Tried my best,” said Cotton breezily, not sounding sincere at all, and whilst turning his face away to keep from meeting Gerald’s gaze, Wicks crossed one of his legs over the other.
Poole, predictably, began to chatter after a few minutes of silence, and Jack sat apart from him, leaned slightly forward even after his erection had becalmed itself, and was no longer a visible bulge in the front of his trousers. It was humiliating beyond measure, for a man his age to react so to a man in his lap — a skinny, infuriating, unbearable piece of fruit, at that.
Poole didn’t look at Jack, looked away from him quite intentionally, and asked Cotton question after question.
“Have you been sailing very long?”
“Since I was nine.”
“You like it?”
“I’m a sailor. Don’t know it ever occurred to me to like it or not. It’s what I do.”
“Do you like being at the helm?”
“On a day like this, sure enough. Nice, clean waters, warm sun, good wind in our sails. Not much fun in a squall like yesterday.”
“Mr Creed seemed to like it.”
“Mr Creed’d enjoy if we sailed into a maelstrom.”
“What’s the worst storm you’ve ever been in?”
“Edge of an hurricane. We were sailing to Port Royal, and the squall as ran over us was like nothing you’ve ever seen — waves was higher than palaces, the sky so grey it was purple, kept cracking across with lighting. We got turned right over, twice, were wrecked on some nameless island. We’d lost two masts of four, and half the hull — not to mention half the crew. We were wrecked two months before a French navy ship came by, and a rescue made. That was when we were merchants still.”
“What did you trade in?”
“Whatever was selling. Spices, silks, powder, iron.”
“Did you enjoy that?”
“It was a job.”
“Do you like this better?”
“Until now.”
“What’s different now?”
“You won’t stop fucking talking.”
Jack sniggered, and ignored Poole’s indignant look, looking to Thwaites as he came back up to the helm.
“Are they behaving?” he asked.
“No,” said Cotton. “Don’t know that they know how to behave, not in each other’s company. He won’t shut up, and he won’t say a fucking word, but at least they’re not sniping at each other any longer.”
“Well, what’s a bit of misbehaviour between handsome young men?” asked Thwaites, and cupped Poole’s cheek. Poole looked up at him, leaning into his palm like a dog pleased to be pet by its master, and when Thwaites reached for Jack’s face to touch him in the same manner, Jack caught him by the wrist and held him fast.
“Would you prefer I use my mouth?” asked Thwaites in a soft purr.
There was an allure in him. It was a dangerous allure, Jack could see that — Poole wanted to be fucked, that much was clear in him, was pleased to be made use of, treated as a girl, but Thwaites wasn’t girlish in the least, and Jack didn’t know what to make of him. He was genteel and calm and collected, seductive and smooth, and Wicks pressed his feet down against the deck surface to keep from clenching his hands or his jaw.
“I’d prefer you keep your distance,” said Jack.
“It’s a small ship.”
“It’s big enough,” Jack replied, and Thwaites put his second hand on Poole instead, sliding his thumb down the length of Poole’s throat, pressing delicately on his Adam’s apple and, when Poole smiled, Thwaites smiled back.
Thwaites’ fingers were tracing over the dark red bruising he’d left earlier on — Poole was so ridiculously pale that he bruised as easily as anything, and there was a ring of burgeoning bruising where Thwaites had gripped him earlier.
And yet, here Poole was, spreading his legs, parting his lips, inviting Thwaites to fuck him, Thwaites who only this morning had lifted him by his throat and threatened to jam a dagger down his throat.
Jack was powerless to do anything more than watch in disgust.
When Poole reached to touch Thwaites back, reaching for his belt, Thwaites took him by the wrists and turned his hands over, facing them up toward the sun. He slid his thumbs over Poole’s palms, squeezing and pressing on the meat there, and it made Poole sigh as though this, too, were pleasurable.
Thwaites was massaging Poole’s hands, almost, his thumbs pressing and squeezing and making Poole wriggle a little, and Jack wondered what it felt like.
“You mean to tell me you’ll pick olives with these hands?” asked Thwaites.
“I like olives,” said Gerald.
“You’ve never picked olives before, though. It’s all very well eating something, young man, but harvesting it is another matter,” said Thwaites. “What was it you used to occupy yourself with before this, hm? Cards and whorehouses?”
“Men,” said Poole, with a spiteful look at Jack, and Jack rolled his eyes.
“Any hobbies beside cock and poker?”
“I paint some,” said Poole. “Play the harpsichord, a little, and the harp. Hunt — with traps and tracking, not on horseback. And I like to knit, though I’m no good at sewing.”
“You can skin a rabbit?” asked Thwaites.
“Yes.”
“Pluck a bird?”
“Of course.”
“Scale a fish?”
“Yes,” said Poole, and Jack watched him for a few minutes, somewhat surprised. In all the chatter he had heard from Poole these past weeks, none of this had come up. He found it difficult to imagine Poole sat quietly at an instrument or getting on with knitting, let alone committing himself to being so useful for a few minutes that he could scale a fish.
Poole shivered as Thwaites pressed down on his palms.
“Were you very badly behaved at school?” asked Jack, wanting to interrupt this back and forth before it went on, and Poole gave him a scornful look.
“I was often conspicuously absent, actually.”
“What, bent over behind the garden sheds?”
“At least I went to school,” said Poole, and Jack raised his eyebrows.
“I think you just said you didn’t,” said Jack.
Thwaites turned back, and asked, “Is it charming or irritating, Mr Cotton?”
“Irritating,” said Cotton. “But I don’t want to fuck either of them, so perhaps I’m biased.”
“Not even me?” asked Poole, and when Cotton shot him a funny look, Jack muttered, “Good God.”
“Oh, he’s charming,” said Thwaites. “It’s sweet.” His hands were moving up Poole’s wrists, playing over the delicate flesh there and making Poole shiver. “Want to kiss me?” asked Thwaites.
“Of course,” said Poole, and Jack pressed his lips fast together.
“But you think I’m old?”
“Not as old as Mr Cotton.”
Cotton threw a nasty hand gesture over his shoulder, and this made Thwaites laugh very loudly — he had an astonishingly loud and joyful laugh, when something really amused him, and there was something very beautiful in it, the way he gave himself over to the laughter when it took hold of him. He’d tip his head back, showing the tattooed lines of his handsome throat, his silken hair bouncing with the movement and making it shine in the light, including the grey that showed at his temples.
Jack looked away as Thwaites took Poole by the cheeks and kissed him. It was a hard and bruising kiss, open-mouthed and aggressive and clearly audible as he backed Poole up onto the bench, Poole moaning softly into Thwaites’ mouth. Thwaites’ hands were sliding further up Poole’s arms, and Poole’s hands at first ran clumsily all over Thwaites’ chest, but when they went to the buckle of Thwaites’ belt, Jack interrupted.
“Not in broad daylight,” he kissed, slapping Poole’s hands away. “At the damned helm.”
“Doesn’t it satisfy you dictating that I can’t touch you, no matter that you want me to?” demanded Poole. “Saying I can’t touch him either?”
“It seems without my restraint you’d touch every man you saw,” growled Jack. “No wonder your family need to exile you to an olive grove — your appetite is a menace.”
Poole scoffed, not seeming as hurt as Jack had hoped, and retorted, “But not allowing so much as a hand down your trousers, that’s normal, is it?”
Thwaites asked, “Do I take your objection to mean, Mr Wicks, that in the privacy of a cabin, you should be content were I to bugger young Mr Poole here to kingdom come?”
Jack looked at him disgustedly, and Thwaites smiled at him. He had thickly lashed eyes, some of the thickest eyelashes Jack had ever seen, and Jack bit down the disgust he felt with himself for noticing.
“Hm,” said Thwaites. “Curious, that. What if I let you watch?”
Jack set his jaw.
“Cedric,” started Poole, and Thwaites gripped him hard by the jaw.
“Ah,” he said, as though scolding a pet. “No, I don’t think you’ve earned that.”
“What if I — “
Poole caught him by the hand before he could go for Thwaites’ belt loop this time, and Poole let out a childish groan of frustration at the denial.
“If you exercised,” said Jack, “perhaps you’d have healthier appetites.”
“My appetite is tremendously healthy, thank you,” said Poole coldly.
“I don’t know,” said Thwaites in mild tones. “I think your second lieutenant here might have a point.”
“Point?”
“Oh, Mr Creed!” called Thwaites over his shoulder, and Mr Creed, the tall helmsman, came to stand on the stair, leaning against the bannister and taking in the scene.
“Hullo, Captain,” said Creed.
“Hullo, Creed. Are you very busy?”
“Always, Captain.”
“You are a consummate pedagogue, are you not, Mr Creed?”
“My grandmother was a pedagogue, Captain: I am just an educator.”
“Would you like to educate young Mr Poole?”
“Which one?” asked Creed, and although Jack managed to hold back his surprise, Poole’s face fell.
“I believe they’ve stopped trading faces for now,” said Thwaites. “In any case, I believe Mr Poole should like to be educated in almost everything.”
Jack frowned slightly, watching the expression on Poole’s face, disbelieving and strangely eager as he looked between Creed and Thwaites.
“In sailing, you mean?” he asked, getting to his feet. “And — and carpentry, and rigging, and all that?”
“I’ll teach you to swab the deck first,” said Creed.
“Alright,” Poole agreed readily, and Jack resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Now?”
“Do you know what swabbing the deck is, Poole?” asked Jack.
“Yes, of course, but that doesn’t mean I know how to do it,” said Poole. “Properly, I mean, so it works and keeps the wood right, and to make up what you swab it with, and what exactly you use to — oh.”
Jack was on his feet, his hand fisted in the back of Poole’s jacket to keep him from following Creed.
“You can’t make him swab the deck,” he told Thwaites.
Thwaites blinked, his beautiful eyelashes seeming even more exaggerated by the expressive movement. “I’m sure I could,” he said, “but I don’t need to. He’s raring for the off, as you can see.”
“But — but you can’t,” said Jack, imagining passing back Poole and showing him worked to the bone and tanned, imagining how the fuck he might explain it to whatever commander interrogated him as to his conduct whilst supposedly protecting this hostage in the name of the king, the ways he’d be blamed. It was one thing if they set him to work — he knew how to work, wouldn’t be wrecked by it, but Poole? “He’s a gentleman,” said Wicks. “You can’t just put him to work.”
“I like work,” said Poole.
“See?” asked Thwaites. “He likes work.”
“You don’t want me to fuck, you don’t want me to work, what am I meant to do?” demanded Poole, whirling to glare up at him. “Do you want to hang me on a shelf in a glass casement?”
“Your hands will be sore,” said Wicks. “You’ll cut them, get callouses, work them raw.”
“I’ll get used to it.”
“You’ll tan in the sun.”
“Like everyone else.”
“You — “ Wicks inhaled, and set his jaw, clenching his hands at his sides. He looked at Poole, pale Poole with his frail features, thin as a rake, scared of parrots and liable to come over dizzy and ill in the face of little more than a mildly aggressive swell. “Forgive me for saying so, sir, but you aren’t fit for this. My orders when you were assigned to my charge were to keep you safe and well, not have you crawling on the deck and hurting yourself, playing at being a sailor.”
It will affect me too, he almost said, and didn’t. Don’t you understand, you arrogant, self-absorbed little toff? Don’t you understand that I’ll be held accountable for the condition I return you in, assuming we get out of this alive?
“I won’t forgive you,” pronounced Poole. “You prick.”
“Mr Poole, I just want to — “
“No, I’m bored,” Poole said plaintively, dragging himself out of Wicks’ grip. “I’ve gone fifteen years without a nanny, I hardly need one now.”
Jack powerless, could say nothing more, although at least he thought he saw the barest sign of guilt on Poole’s face, twisting his lips, before Poole rushed after Creed, almost skipping to follow him.
“You really want to swab the deck?” asked Creed.
“If you tell me how,” said Poole eagerly.
“You’re a funny one,” said Creed, patting him on the back, and they walked further down the deck.
“Let’s you and I go down to my office, Mr Wicks,” said Thwaites. “No sense worrying yourself up here that Mr Poole might get a splinter.”
“I’ll be blamed for how he comes back,” said Jack. “If you want someone to work, let me work — I can pull more than enough weight for each of us.”
“But it’s not you who’s desperate to do so,” said Thwaites softly, spreading his beautiful hands.
Every inch of him was beautiful — not in a girlish way, not in the way Poole was pretty, but in a noble way, beautiful in the way of a statue — beautiful in the way you imagined the subject of those statues must have been, before they were wrought in bronze or marble. There was a sense of eternity in Thwaites’ charisma and his beauty, as if it would last long after all of them were gone.
“You mean to return us for a ransom,” said Jack. “Return him for a ransom — me, I’m just extra cargo. But after we are returned, after the bounty is paid, it’s me who’ll pay the further price. I’ll be blamed for everything awry on his person, for a crease on his shirt, a hair out of place, let alone scars and sunburns and exhaustion, particularly if I, in comparison, seem untouched. Is that what brings you pleasure, Captain Thwaites? To bring that fragile creature to ruin, and know I’ll suffer the consequences?”
“It does occur, Mr Wicks,” said Thwaites deliberately, “that it is not yet decided that I should let you live at all. As you say, you’re not needed for the ransom we’ll demand. Perhaps you’d rather I run you through and toss you overboard now?”
“You might as well,” said Jack. “If I don’t die on this deck, and you work him like a mule, I’m liable to be quietly discharged, set aside — and I won’t take another commission, even on a merchant ship. I’d be lucky to get work as a labourer. So yes, why not kill me? Let Poole call me a hero when he goes ashore, if he remembers my name to do so, rather than let him ruin my life more than he already has.”
Thwaites leaned back against the rails beside the helm, watching Jack a moment, and Jack slowly sank back down to the bench, looking between Thwaites and Cotton both.
“My father,” said Thwaites, “was a merchant trader. He sold tea and spices, ferried them from Madras home to England — and ferried my mother, as well. Such a price he paid to put me on ships for my education as a sailor — they all thought I was quite mad, hot-blooded, a young and bestial thing. Blamed everything they could on me — although admittedly, I was never as buttoned up and well-behaved as you seem to be. My colleagues rarely had to make things up to blame on me, as I’d done rather a few things worth bringing up.”
“Captain Thwaites,” said Jack, “if you believe I am even remotely interested in your attempts at empathising with my situation, you are very wrong.”
“I’m not empathising,” said Thwaites pleasantly. “I am pointing out that you aren’t the only handsome young man to serve at sea alongside men who despise your mixed blood.”
“And how that soothes me,” said Jack coldly, “knowing that if Poole casts my life into ruin by virtue of working himself to the bone, that there are like as not other men much like be suffering on other ships.”
“He is dramatic, isn’t he, Paul?”
“Pot, black,” replied Cotton. “Kettle, black.”
“Why am I alive?” asked Jack.
“What an excellent question,” said Thwaites. “One for the philosophers.”
“I’m not asking the fucking philosophers,” said Jack. “I’m asking you, the man who didn’t kill me.”
Cotton laughed quietly, and when he turned his head to glance back at Jack, Jack saw the glitter in his eyes, the curve of his mouth. He didn’t actually look all that much older than Thwaites — they were each of them, Jack would guess, in their late forties, perhaps their fifties, but they looked healthy for it, made hale from keeping at their sailing life.
“You like him,” said Thwaites.
“I like hearing someone else tell you you’re a fucking prat,” said Cotton. “It’s only natural.”
“We’ve known one another quite a while, Paul and I,” said Thwaites. “Since we were but young men — a little younger than Poole, I was.”
“I hope you’re not keeping me alive because you think I’m going to let you fuck me,” said Jack, and Thwaites’ lips curved into a deeper, more dangerous smile, his eyes glittering.
“It occurs, Lieutenant Wicks, that your letting me might not be my biggest concern,” Thwaites replied, and Jacks repressed the urge to swallow around the lump in his throat. “Perhaps I don’t want to fuck you, in any case — perhaps I simply want to fuck your man Poole where you can watch.”
“He’s not my man,” said Jack. “And nor am I his. Captain Lewisham was asked to ferry him, and to humiliate me, he all but assigned me his batman — said that if even the tiniest thing upset their treasured guest, I should be whipped for it, and held to account.”
“You’ve taken duty rather far,” said Thwaites.
“Is it duty for a man to tread water instead of drowning?” asked Jack. “Is it duty for a man to look away from cannon fire or pistol shot? To stamp out a fire instead of letting it burn him alive?”
“Is that what Poole is to you? An anchor about your neck? Perhaps I should kill him now.”
“And kill me with him,” said Jack. “Because if he dies, I’ve no defence at all.”
“There’s something to be said for optimism,” said Thwaites. “Even if we sent you back in the best of conditions, well-fed, well-rested, Poole with a handsome ribbon around his neck, do you really think they’d hail you as a hero?”
Jack crossed his arms over his chest, and said nothing.
“Not an optimist, then,” said Thwaites.
When he led the way this time, albeit with reluctance, Jack followed him down below decks, and sat aside in his office as Thwaites did his paperwork.
The skies were darkening overhead when Gerald finally limped down the stairs.
He was sunburnt, his shoulders ached, his lips were chapped, and his fingers were stiff from gripping the brush; sweat soaked him down to his skin, his shirt transparent, and his hair was stuck wet to his head.
“Have a nice day?” asked Thwaites, at the same time as Wicks, visibly horrified, looked at him and said, “Good God.”
“Yes,” said Gerald. “Thank you.”
“Bet you’re hungry,” said Cotton.
“Starved,” said Gerald, and responded with profuse thanks as Cotton pushed him a bowl of stew.
“I don’t know what you were worried about,” said Thwaites to Wicks. They were each half-finished with their meals as Gerald ate greedily, surprised by how much his body suddenly craved nothing more than to eat as much as possible. “He seems a great deal happier now.”
“He looks destroyed,” said Wicks.
“Well, he isn’t actively begging for cock,” said Thwaites. Around a mouthful of salted pork, Gerald made to speak, but Thwaites interrupted him and said, “Yes, Poole, we assumed you’d still like some. Keep eating.”
Gerald chewed and swallowed.
After they were through eating, Wicks said, “Give me your hands,” and Gerald hesitated before he did, hissing when Wicks commenced to press and rub at his aching palms, rubbing the soreness from his fingers. It hurt quite a bit, but there came a relief after Wicks finished with each section he massaged, doing what Gerald had done to him before.
Wicks seemed to notice for the first time the scars on Gerald’s wrists — not from cuts, for the most part, but from places where he’d previously been tied and the ropes had cut the flesh, and up toward his elbow, one ugly scar where he’d had a rather unsuccessful encounter with a manacle.
“I don’t know what possessed you,” said Wicks.
“I dislike to be idle,” said Gerald.
“Idle is what you’re made for,” muttered Wicks.
“It isn’t,” said Gerald. “You’ve not the slightest idea what I’m made for.”
“You’re not made for this,” said Wicks. “Sailing. I was born and raised to sail, no matter how hard it is, no matter what difficulty I might face, because it runs in my veins, my bones. You’ve no such draw in your blood, Poole. It’s blue as anything.”
Demonstratively, Wicks pressed his thumb against one of the blue-purple lines of the veins that showed under Gerald’s skin, at the inside of his elbow.
“You’re meant to be better than the likes of us,” said Wicks. “Sailors. You’re meant to be satisfied with the life of leisure laid out for you. Almost nobody has the option to indulge it as you do.”
This bothered Gerald for a reason he wasn’t sure how to define, and he looked at Wicks’ face, at how serious and concentrated it was. He kept on massaging Gerald’s hands, thumbs pressing hard into the meat and soothing away the ache.
“I’m not better than anybody,” said Gerald. “I don’t want to be better than anybody. I just want to be left in peace is all.”
“Labouring before the mast is your idea of peace, is it?” asked Wicks.
“It’s natural to want to do something with one’s hours. Wouldn’t you go mad, sitting about with nothing to do all the time? Were you discharged out of the navy and you told you couldn’t work anywhere else, wouldn’t you hate to be idle? Ow, Lieutenant, that hurts — !”
Wicks’ grip on one of his fingers had suddenly become very tight, and Wicks now withdrew his hands, laying his palms flat against the table.
“Would I become a slut, you mean?” asked Wicks coldly.
“I don’t fuck men out of boredom,” said Gerald. “I do it because I like it, and it doesn’t harm anyone except me, if I ask for a pleasant harm.”
He reached up, touching the bruises Thwaites had left around his neck earlier. They were sore, but it was a pleasant soreness when he brushed his fingers over them, and Wicks looked at him in a very foul way.
“And what about God?” asked Wicks.
“What about Him? Last I checked, He’s never been in my bed.”
“You don’t think it’s a sin?” asked Wicks. “Man made in the image of God, and woman beside him, and you would set one aside?”
“By that logic, I’m less sinful than you are,” said Gerald. “Only wanting to fuck the image of God, and not wanting to fuck anything less.”
Wicks stared, and Thwaites, who had been walking past, laughed so hard that he wheezed as he went on.
“I want for men the same way I want for food and water,” said Gerald. “It’s not a sin to be hungry or thirsty or tired — it shouldn’t be a sin to want a fuck.”
Wicks took his arm back, sliding his thumbs up the length of Gerald’s arm, tracing his veins.
“Didn’t you want me?” asked Gerald quietly. “On the — On the Ambition, perhaps you didn’t want me then, but don’t you want me now?”
“My orders were to keep you well and healthy,” said Wicks. “Keep you from being hurt or distressed or offended. That last was made the most difficult, given that you kept throwing yourself in amongst the sailors, given how they talked about you as soon as you walked away.”
“They talked about me?” asked Gerald.
“Within your earshot at times, not that you noticed. Some of them figured you for a molly from the outset.”
Gerald didn’t know what to make of Wicks’ expression, and he tilted his head slightly. “That bothered you?”
“You recall Robert Foyett’s blackened eye?”
“I recall Robert Foyett. He was quite handsome.”
“He called you a faggot,” said Wicks coldly.
“He wasn’t wrong.”
“And implied that I had been put in my position that I could service you.”
Gerald turned his head away, curling up and then straightening his fingers, feeling how much easier they moved now, not so stiff. “I’m sorry for that,” he said softly. “I had no idea you had punched another sailor to defend my honour.”
“I had yet to learn you don’t have any.”
“I do,” said Gerald. “I can show you, if you like — it’s between my legs.”
Wicks looked down, bowing his head, and although he seemed bashful, Gerald almost caught a glimpse of his strange, muted smile — an elusive thing, but very handsome.
“I didn’t mean for you to fuck me,” said Gerald. “Last night. I was cold — and what’s more, you were cold as well. It just seemed foolish.”
“You won’t be cold again,” Wicks promised.
“I don’t see what you have against me working. You stopped me on the Ambition and here, but you know I’m bound for work anyway, once I’m at home in Italy.”
“I won’t be responsible for you at that juncture,” said Wicks.
“I don’t want you to be responsible for me,” said Gerald sharply. “Who asked you to be responsible for me?”
Wicks, slowly moving his jaw, said, “The way I see it, some men are made to toil, and others to manage that toil, and others still to sit by idle.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Gerald. “I don’t believe that you believe that.”
“It’s a natural truth of the world,” said Wicks, although he didn’t seem happy about it, his lips drawn into a deep frown. “It doesn’t matter if we like it. It’s just the way things are — a truth we’re all made to live with. Just as men and women are meant for one another.”
“Truth is a personal thing, I think,” said Gerald. “I’ve yet to meet a truth of life that universally applies.”
“Perhaps some truths are applied more rigorously to some people than others,” said Wicks.
Gerald furrowed his brow, not knowing what to make of that, but he could see that Wicks seemed unhappy. He turned their hands around, stroking Wicks’ wrists, his forearms, and Wicks closed his eyes a moment, exhaling.
Thwaites came up behind him, and just as Gerald loosely enclosed Wicks’ wrists with his hands, not even remotely managing to enclose them wholly, Thwaites put his own hands on Gerald’s shoulders, and put his fingers hard into the exhausted, stiff muscle he found there, making him groan sharply in mixed pain and pleasure.
“Ever had two men at once, Poole?” asked Thwaites as he pressed down in ways that made Gerald’s flesh turn to jelly, making gasp and moan, though he tried his best to keep it pitched low.
“Mm,” Gerald hummed, and his cheeks flushed slightly red even before he saw the scandalised expression on Wicks’ face.
“Interest you, that idea, Wicks?” asked Thwaites.
Wicks said nothing, but there was a new expression on his face that Gerald hadn’t seen from him before. His lips were parted, his eyes wide, and under the table, his knees brushed against Gerald’s as he pressed them tight together.
“Look at that,” said Thwaites softly. “It would seem I’ve found a cog.”
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