At Sea

Fiction short. A sailor on a cruise-liner attempts to soothe an anxious passenger.

4.3k, rated M. A gentleman is nervous to travel at sea and is attended by one of the officers.

Note some warnings for references to torture and injury, particularly to drowning.

---

It’s the October of 1922, and Third Officer Samson Sabine has been called to aid a gentleman back to his cabin.

He’s handsome, square with plump hands and thick, red-brown hair, and although they’d picked him up in Southampton, he has an Irish accent and a moderate lisp.

When they’d called for Samson to help a gentleman back to his cabin, he’d assumed it was another of them seasick. They get like that from time to time, and with Samson being as big and strapping as he is, he’s best suited to support them (or sometimes carry them) back to their cabins.

In the meantime, he’s terrified of drowning — he’s scared of the wind, of storms, and in general, of being at sea.

“I was a bit, a bit nervous,” says the gentleman, trembling violently and leaning heavily on Samson’s arm, “and then it went dark out there and I felt my blood go cold. Good God, man, how do you stand it?”

“I’ve never been in a vessel that sunk yet,” Samson tells him.

“Oh, don’t say things like that, what with you being a sailor,” moans the gentleman. “You’ll tempt fate — the universe will think you have it coming.”

They’re slow-going down the stairs, but people don’t spare too many glances their way. It’s not so unusual to see a man who’s imbibed too much being supported back to his bed by a man in uniform.

“And it’s not just the idea of sinking, in any case, I mean,” stammers out the gentleman, “any number of things can go wrong. If the engines fail and we’re set adrift, if we ran out of fresh water, if we somehow got lost, if we got struck by lightning, if we’re accosted by some cetacean — ”

“I don’t think a whale would accost us,” says Samson as soothingly as he can, trying not to laugh.

“A kraken, then!” retorts the gentleman, undeterred. As much as an “s” sound gets stuck in a mouth, an “r” won’t get through his lips at all, so that when he says it, it sounds more like quacken. “You think a kraken wouldn’t?”

“If they existed.”

“And what if they do?”

“There are a lot of other ships making this journey across the Atlantic, one way or the other,” says Samson. “The chances of a kraken picking us and not someone else seem low.”

The gentleman laughs bitterly. “Oh, well, it’s all very well for you, this being your job, thinking you can distract me by being clever and handsome in that uniform of yours — I’m not distracted! I see handsome men all the time! What I don’t do every day is drown!”

Samson bites back his laugh again. The gentleman has been imbibing a little — Sonny, who’d been helping him on deck, had mentioned that he’d been drinking quite heavily, according to him, to make up for what he’d miss entering the States under Prohibition.

“Well, I’m sorry my handsomeness isn’t enough to distract you, sir,” he says. “Should I send an ugly officer to distract you in future?”

For the first time, the gentleman looks properly at his face rather than down at the golden carpet under his unsteady feet. “You’re being ironic with me.”

“I am indeed.”

“I abhor irony.”

“Is there anything you don’t abhor?”

“Peace,” says the gentleman. “And land.”

Samson has one hand under the gentleman’s arm and the other supporting his waist, but he takes the hand from his elbow to open up the cabin door. Only half-supported on his weak knees, the gentleman stumbles a bit as they go inside, but Samson catches him around his middle and keeps him upright.

“I won’t be seduced by this,” he grumbles.

“I was keeping you from falling, not mounting a seduction,” murmurs Samson, amused. He shuts the door behind them as the gentleman collapses into a chair, although the corridor is empty outside. “But that could be arranged.”

“You sailors are a randy sort, aren’t you?”

“With like-minded men, certainly.”

“Who’s to say I’m like-minded?”

“The way you were leaning into my body was a clue.”

“Officer, I am a man under duress!” He is that, too. He’s pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and is mopping his feverish brow with it, his hair soaked with sweat.

“Mr. O’Kinneide,” Samson starts.

“Good God, don’t call me that. I loathe to be mister-ed.”

“What should I call you?”

“My mother called me Brian.”

“Should I?”

“By no means.”

Samson does laugh this time, going to pour the gentleman some water. “Give us a clue, then.”

The gentleman leans forward, putting his head in his hands. “Donnacha,” he tells his shoes.

“Donnacha,” repeats Samson cautiously. It’s a new one for him.

“My middle name.”

“What’s it mean?”

“It comes from the Old Irish — Donnchadh.”

Samson stares at him, and the gentleman gives him a thin, watery smile made all the more watery by the sweat soaking his skin. He takes the glass with a murmur of thanks, and drinks from it before he goes on.

“Donn means brown, or dark. Donn was a god of the dead — he rode a white horse. Cáid, in the old tongue, might mean wise, or pure. Noble. Presumably you have a first name to go with your officer’s title?”

“Of course. I’m Samson. Samson Sabine.”

“Not Delilah?”

“Ha.”

“Heard that one before, have you?”

“Only a few thousand times, sir.”

“Oh, don’t sir me. I can’t bear it. It’s bad enough to be drowned without being sir-ed first.”

“You’re not going to drown, Donnacha.”

“Well, you have to say nonsense like that to keep the peace.”

“The vast majority of ships don’t sink, you know.”

“Thin comfort, that. It’s all very well being in the minority of a thing happening — one doesn’t much care if one’s in the minority or majority when one is suffering.”

“Of course, you’re not suffering.”

“Yet.”

Samson chuckles and lingers for a few moments with his hand on the door. He’d half-expected a valet or some other manservant to materialise, but none had — Sonny had said he was travelling alone, but it’s not usual for a rich man like this, in such fine clothes and in one of the pricier suites.

“Am I alright to leave you, Donnacha?”

“You’ve been very kind, Officer Sabine. Have a good evening.”

It doesn’t pass Samson by that he’s avoided the question, but he doesn’t press the matter. He dims the light for him as he takes his leave.

---

O’Kinneide remains in his cabin the rest of the night. Samson half-expects him to stay there all trip, but the next afternoon he does emerge, and he makes his way directly for Samson on deck.

“Get to it,” he dismisses the two junior crewmen he’d been speaking to and watches them scurry off.

“You’re not the captain, are you?”

Samson smiles at him. “No, sir — uh, Donnacha. I’m the third officer.”

“First officer?”

“Third.”

“Meaning there’s a second officer as well?”

“There is.”

“Am I to take this to mean there’s a fourth?”

“You are not.”

“I’ve never heard of a third officer.”

“You’ve never travelled by sea.”

“And? What’s that got to do with it?”

“I suppose nothing. Nonetheless, third officer is what I am. I keep watches and assist in the navigation, ordinarily — at the moment I’m just assisting the boatswain.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“Not particularly, but I’ve heard more than enough of this seaman’s babble.”

Samson stifles his laughter as the funny little man turns away from him, looking out over the water. It’s beginning to grow dark, and there’s a visible tremble in his hands, which are white-knuckled where they grip tightly at the guard rail.

“Did you not bring a valet?”

“Whose valet would you suggest I bring?”

“Your own is traditional.”

“I don’t have a valet.”

“I see how that might pose an obstacle.”

“I used to.”

“Oh?”

“He walked out. Refused to work with me. On account of my poor humour and my gambling habits.”

“Really?”

“No,” says O’Kinneide. “That’s just what I tell people, as a joke — people unlike us. The two of us were involved, and then we weren’t, you see. So he left.”

“… Ah.”

“You did correctly get the measure of me, though. Last night.”

“I didn’t think I hadn’t.”

“Well, don’t seem too pleased with yourself.”

“I’m very often pleased with myself, Donnacha. Humility is not in my nature.”

“Is that the sort of flaw a boat officer in good standing ought admit to?”

“This isn’t a boat — it’s a ship. In any case, perhaps not — but you’ve admitted something yourself, so I suppose it’s quid pro quo.”

“Ha!”

O’Kinneide stares out over the waters, his hands still trembling, and Samson glances puts his hand delicately on his shoulder, turning him around. “Perhaps you should go down for dinner,” he suggests gently. “Your anxiety won’t be soothed by the coming dark.”

“Why, because the Titanic went down at night?”

“We aren’t the Titanic, Donnacha,” Samson reminds him, and nudges him inside.

He must be thirty-something, a few years older than Samson himself, but he looks younger like this, his eyes wide, his lips quivering, his shoulders drawn up. “My thanks,” is his low whisper before he descends.

---

“What is your business, Donnacha?” asks Samson the following morning, when he’s on watch and O’Kinneide comes to stand beside him. “What brings you to New York?”

“I’m an artist,” says O’Kinneide. His expression is impassive as he watches the shuffleboard players, but his fingers are anxiously twitching at his side, one of them plucking and fiddling with the lower hem of his jacket. “I paint.”

“Oh, I see,” says Samson. “You’re to paint in New York?”

“I expect so. All these Americans want fine European portraits, and my uncle wants me out of Ireland and as far as he can pitch me.”

“Too much sympathy for the rebel cause, eh?” asks Samson, smiling.

O’Kinneide also smiles faintly when he meets Samson’s gaze, but it’s a rather cool, expectant smile, and Samson’s breath catches in his throat. He doesn’t know enough about it to comment, to know all that much about the whole endeavour — he knows there’s fighting, knows there’s deaths, knows it’s civil war.

“Oh,” he says. “I suppose you haven’t much choice about it.”

“Not really,” says O’Kinneide. “He was good enough to give me the choice between America or Australia. India was out, of course — they’re not yet at the stage we Irish are, and he hardly wanted me encouraging them.”

“Sorry, then,” says Samson. “At the very least, it can be said that the Americans have already thrown off the British yoke.”

“The invaders have,” says O’Kinneide. His voice is cold and even, but his teeth have a chatter to them. “What of its natives? They haven’t King George to worry about, the cruel oppression, the violence, the deprivation, remains the same. What matters the ruler, if the rule remains?”

Samson doesn’t know what to say to that. There are slight bags under O’Kinneide’s eyes, and he seems noticeably paler than he was yesterday. Samson supposes he didn’t sleep well.

“Thanks for your apologies,” says O’Kinneide. “I’m sure they’ll be comforting to me tonight.”

“You’re still shaking.”

“I really am quite frightened of drowning, you know.”

“You won’t drown.”

O’Kinneide’s throat bobs as he swallows, drawing in a shaky breath. “I’ve heard that when you fall into the water, the temperature can be so shocking it freezes your limbs.”

“That’s if you fall into the water,” says Samson, “and the shock only sets in if you immediately begin to struggle. Best practice is to give your muscles a minute or two to accustom to the temperature by leaning back and floating, with your head above the water. Then you can commence to swim.”

“I’ll try to remember that as I’m drowning.”

“You will not drown,” says Samson sternly, and O’Kinneide shudders out a breath. “Do you know how to swim?”

“In theory.”

“What does that mean?”

“I was taught as a child.”

“And you think you’ve forgotten how?”

“I’ve experienced the sensations of drowning rather a lot since,” says O’Kinneide. “More than I have those of swimming.”

Samson frowns, head tilting. “How exactly do you…?” The question trails off as it’s half out of his mouth, because O’Kinneide is staring forward, his gaze dead. “You won’t be swimming, Donnacha. Not at all.”

“You were in the navy, weren’t you? In the war?”

“I was,” says Samson. “You were in the army?”

“They didn’t conscript us. They didn’t dare, if they had, the current situation would have struck earlier rather than now.”

“Oh, right,” Samson exhales, wondering how the fuck he can stop putting his foot in it, wondering how to steer the conversation away from Ireland as a whole. “You didn’t miss out on anything you would have wanted.”

“You don’t say.”

Samson wants to touch him, wants to reach out and squeeze his arm, hug him, something. There are too many people on deck at this time of the afternoon, and he knows better than to try.

“Are you on shift this evening?” asks O’Kinneide.

“No.”

“Will you join me for dinner, then?”

“Of course, I’d be delighted to.”

“… Oh,” says O’Kinneide, seeming surprised, and Samson examines him with interest, the look on his face. He seems abashed, almost.

“You thought I’d say no?”

“Of course I did. Here I am, having a conniption beside you over the state of our travel — and various hints I’ve dropped into the conversation might imply I’m not exactly material for any sort of stable dalliance.”

“Dalliances aren’t stable, are they?”

“Mine aren’t, no,” says O’Kinneide.

“Nor mine, then.”

O’Kinneide looks him up and down, and Samson lets himself smile, but doesn’t return the gaze — there remains a crucial need for deniability, after all, and while O’Kinneide is pretty obviously a gentleman of that inclination, the rules are different for him. He’s rich.

“Perhaps you’re uneducated about the state of affairs,” says O’Kinneide in a low voice. “A man more politically savvy than you might have connected certain dots between that which I’ve told you — my experience in drownings, my being rapidly shipped from the country due to my standpoint on the war. I had no position in the Great War, Officer Sabine — this is not to say I haven’t killed men, nor seen them killed.”

“Are you planning to kill me?”

“I don’t suppose so, Officer Sabine, no. Were you still in his majesty’s service, perhaps things would be different.”

“Isn’t it dangerous?” asks Samson. “Telling me that, so openly?”

“We’re off to America now,” says O’Kinneide. “In America, other people’s lives only matter in theory.”

He walks off, and Samson glances after him, then looks forward again.

---

Samson can be expected to indulge a fruit at dinner, but it’s crucial anyone else only sees it as indulgence, not as mutual attraction. He’s grateful that O’Kinneide keeps the flirtation to a minimum as they order their meals.

“Have you got any tattoos?” asks O’Kinneide.

“Covered in them.”

“Really?”

“No,” Samson admits. “I’m scared of needles.”

“Oh, bless your heart.” O’Kinneide is in a far better mood than he was earlier — he managed to eat something at lunch, and Samson guesses he had a lie down in the afternoon, because the bags under his eyes seem to be reduced.

“You’re scared of the sea.”

“It’s sensible to be scared of the sea,” retorts O’Kinneide, buttering a piece of bread. “Drowning has killed many a man. The number dead of tattoos, particularly in the 20th century, is negligible in comparison.”

“How many tattoos do you have?”

“A few.”

“That’s what I said.”

“How many is a few?”

“More than a couple. Fewer than lots.”

“You’re a very annoying man, Donnacha, has anybody ever told you that?”

“It’s a frequently recurring feedback.”

“Well, let me add to that frequent recurrence.”

“I might show you,” says O’Kinneide, a throughline of seduction in his tone, curling about and through the words, curling about Samson too, making his skin feel warm and tight under his uniform. “After we make port, of course. Lord knows I mustn’t tempt you into my cabin where anyone can see.”

“Who says you’ll tempt me when we’re on land?”

“Oh, Samson, please. Give a man something to live for.”

“Is that your only hope? That I might let you seduce me once we’re ashore?”

“I’m not a natural optimist, but a natural slut I most certainly am.”

“And you said sailors were randy.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t randier. Me, I’m very randy. Handy, too.”

“Dandy?”

“Let’s not belabour the point.”

Samson and O’Kinneide share the next laugh, the both of them sipping at their drinks. Samson is aware that some people are looking over at them — his fellow crew, primarily.

“Are your fellows laughing about it?” asks O’Kinneide, as if he knows what Samson’s thinking. “The Fenian fruit having you to dine with him?”

“I expect so,” says Samson. “I assumed you were used to that sort of thing, acting so obviously as you do.”

“I don’t know that I do act all that obvious,” muses O’Kinneide, gesturing with his beautiful fingers. “I’m not blatant with men, for the most part — certainly I’m not ordinarily as candid as I am with you. I just have a lisp, and gesticulate a good deal, and I’m an artist. Something about the way I talk, the way I am… I don’t mean to perform, is what I’m saying.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” says Samson, his voice quieter, more measured, now. O’Kinneide doesn’t sound angry, but he does sound a little sad.

“I didn’t think for a moment that you did. People always knew before I did, that’s all. I tried to quieten my hands, tried to work out the lisp, but my hands twitched anyway, and I could never make my mouth obey. People would only notice other things, were it not for them. I am as God made me.”

“I rather like how you were made, thus far.”

“Do you indeed? You like the anxiety, the irritability, the constant chatter?”

“The latter isn’t so bad. The former two are grating, I won’t lie — the latter is nice. The ship won’t sink, Donnacha.”

“And if it does?”

“You won’t drown.”

O’Kinneide rolls his eyes. “Do you very much like to sail?”

“I didn’t expect so,” says Samson. “I’d grown up swimming often — I used to collect mussels as a boy, but I’d not sailed much before I was conscripted. Now I can’t really imagine doing anything else.”

“What did you do? Before?”

“Oh, I was an assistant in the grocer’s,” says Samson. “Cleaned and moved things about, mostly. You’ve been a painter all your life?”

“I was a library assistant for some years, but I took a heavy blow to the head a few years back. I can’t read any longer.”

Samson takes this in, aware that he probably shouldn’t stare at O’Kinneide but not being able to stop himself. “As in… you forgot how?”

“Fine print in unreadable to me. If it’s nice and big, and clearly printed, I can make sense of some of it, although I can’t sustain concentration for long. My vision blurs. My lisp got worse, immediately after — I can speak well enough, now, although I still get periods of fog from time to time. You can’t see the scar with how thick my hair is, but it’s there.”

“A blow to the head,” says Samson lowly, “and regular drownings without much swimming.”

“You needn’t do your arithmetic out loud,” says O’Kinneide quietly, not without some apparent grief. “I’d rather not hear it, if you don’t mind.”

“Do your tattoos hide scars?”

“Hardly, no. You can still see them easily.”

“I’ve a nasty few on this side,” says Samson, gesturing to his left. “Rather ugly, actually.”

“I’ll decide for myself if they’re ugly,” O’Kinneide declares, and Samson laughs, his stomach giving an excited flutter.

“Will you indeed?”

“Quite, quite. As soon as we make port and you’re discharged from immediate service.”

“I’ve two days’ leave in New York.”

“Excellent.”

---

He assumes — or perhaps, he chooses to believe — that O’Kinneide is over his anxiety, but after dinner he takes a small drink from his glass and his hands tremble, the sherry moving and shifting in the bowl of the glass. They’re on choppy waters, and they’ve moved up from the main dinner hall to a bar on a lower deck, but the ship is still pitching more violently than it was yesterday.

“We’re fine,” Samson tells him quietly. “The water’s just a little rougher than it was before.”

“Yes, yes, certainly,” says O’Kinneide, tension thick in his voice. “Rough seas are ideal for a ship, aren’t they?”

“These seas aren’t rough.”

“Oh, good,” says O’Kinneide weakly. “They might get rougher then.”

The better to distract him, Samson asks, “Will you show me?”

“Show you?”

“A tattoo.”

“You want me to take all my clothes off?” asks O’Kinneide, arching his eyebrows and giving him a playful, if shaky smile. “Here where everyone can see?”

Samson feels a sort of tingling in his cheeks as they warm up. “Would I have to take all your clothes off for this?”

O’Kinneide chuckles, and he undoes his cufflinks, taking them off on each side and setting them on a saucer. It’s quieter down here than it had been in the main dining room, and they’re off to a booth on one side, so they’re somewhat shadowed.

“You’re adept at undressing yourself,” says Samson.

“The compliments allotted rich men and children are often disturbingly similar,” replies O’Kinneide.

Samson chuckles, but he watches greedily as O’Kinneide shrugs his dinner jacket off and hangs it on the back of his chair, then rolls up his sleeves.

“Oh, goodness,” whispers Samson, leaning forward with his lips pulling into an automatic smile.

He has a big tiger’s head on one arm and a lion’s on the other, and they’re just the most prominent in amongst many other tattoos — portraits of women with flowers in their hair, starfishes, mermaids, daggers, hearts, stars.

“I believe this does constitute as lots, Donnacha.”

“Does it? You’ve seen nothing yet.”

Samson knows that he can’t, not here in the bar where people could look over, when it’s his job on the line, reach out and touch — it’s already scandalous enough that O’Kinneide’s rolled up his sleeves like this and put all his ink on display.

Plenty of sailors have tattoos, even those aboard ocean liners like these, and Samson gets around enough to know that O’Kinneide isn’t the only posh fucker in the upper classes with unexpected ink under his skin. Perhaps not this much, though.

And perhaps not the scars, either — on the inside of one elbow is a ragged, torn mark; there are ligature scars at his wrists from being tied up, Samson guesses; across both arms are a series of what he thinks are cigarette burns, round marks that are red and shiny.

Fuck, but he itches to touch, to stroke his fingers up the inside of O’Kinneide’s arm and press on the inside of his elbow — he’s got lovely wrists despite the scars, and Samson would very much like to hold him down by them.

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Oh, life hurts, my dear,” says O’Kinneide softly. “A tattoo isn’t much in the scheme of things.”

“How can a few waves bother you and not a needle passing a hundred million times under your skin?”

“The needle doesn’t go very deep, the wounds are shallow, easy to keep clean. I know how to dress and look after deeper wounds than anything from a needle. My skill with a bandage and a spot of iodine won’t go too far in the middle of the Atlantic.”

“Luckily, we’re in a big boat that’s not going to sink,” says Samson, and his fingers twitch with the desire to touch again, to feel the texture of O’Kinneide’s skin, feel the smoothness of his tattoos in comparison to the scars. “Do you know how to give them?”

“I do.”

“You have?”

“Mm, no. Too much responsibility for me — it’s rather easy to put on another layer of paint or, failing that, throw away the canvas. You can’t exactly do that with a fellow’s arm.”

“I’d let you tattoo me.”

“Thinking with our cocks, are we?”

“I’m certainly thinking with mine.”

“Mmm, I’m sure. Not exactly the usual fantasy of penetration, a tattoo needle.”

“Guess we’d have to penetrate each other some other way, then.”

O’Kinneide rolls down his sleeves, and Samson picks up his cufflinks before he can, putting them on himself. O’Kinneide’s hands are still trembling slightly, and his fingers are slightly cold, his wrist only a little warmer.

“It’s not just nerves, you know. They shake all the time.”

“From the head injury?”

“From all of it, I expect.” Samson holds his hand for just a moment, squeezes it in his own, and O’Kinneide smiles at him before he retracts it.

“It’s worth it, though?” he asks.

“For a cause one believes in? Almost anything’s worth it, Officer Sabine.”

Samson nods his head, and pours him more drink.

* * *

It’s a week of smooth, smooth sailing. The ship, of course, does not sink.

Some six hours after they make port, Samson seeks out O’Kinneide’s apartments, goes up in the elevator, and knocks on his door.

O’Kinneide opens it still damp from his bath, half-dressed with a silken robe on.

“Oh, good,” murmurs Samson as he shrugs off his coat and nudges the door closed behind him. “You’re ready for me.”

“I’ve rather been ready for you since you carried me to my cabin,” says O’Kinneide, chuckling. “You’ll find me a different man ashore to at sea.”

He hadn’t been lying — his hands still tremble, although it’s less pronounced.

“I bet,” says Samson, and kisses him, slides a hand around his waist, leans into him.

“Easy, sailor,” murmurs O’Kinneide. “We’ve got all night.”

“That’s not much time at all,” says Samson, and kisses him again.

FIN.