Peril & Hazard

Hickey’s hooks have slipped into him without any pain – little smoke-tendril fingers, influence so sleepy and subtle that Fitzjames had hardly noticed it over the last long year. That influence hangs over them now in the narrow cabin, tangible as another man besides.

“You say he struck you,” Hickey says. There is a queer look in his eyes, a light.

Captain Crozier has done worse than that. The unauthorized requisition of spirits rather pales in comparison. Fitzjames has received far more staggering blows in his time, but it’s the principle of it that’s bruised him – the damned cheek of it.

“The man was well stitched-up before I’d even arrived. He’ll answer for it when he’s sober. Though the Lord only knows when that will be.”

It hardly seems right and fitting to rank his own fleeting grievances over twenty undeserved lashes delivered on the bare breech. Hickey is still bleeding – the trudge over from Terror has opened up his stripes afresh, and left the blood to run. There is no room for the pair of them in Fitzjames’ narrow bed. James stands before the mirror, touching his fingertips to his scraped cheekbone, and Hickey reclines gingerly on the bed in nothing but his shirt. The sight of his bandages sends a queer dart of pain straight to the heart.

“You’re a commander. I’m nothing more than a caulker’s mate. Are you really going to let him use you thus?”

“Captain Crozier is not himself.” Or he is more himself than ever – unhappy, tedious, and wearing on the nerves. Drink only makes a man more of what he is when sober. Fitzjames pauses before the basin, rubbing his still-damp hands over his aching face.

Hickey’s face is gone opaque, unreadable in the mirror and no more so when Fitzjames turns to face him. “Captain Crozier is mad.” There’s a faint acidic tinge in his voice.

“Mind what you say.” Nothing said here in this berth can incriminate them, except to one another. “The man is still your captain.”

“Any man aboard Terror can see it. Have you considered what you’ll do if it comes to the worst?”

“Terror can’t do without a captain.”

“Terror is failing. We need only one captain. You should think on it, James.”

Hickey rises up on his knees, drawing him back against the sorry mattress, and Fitzjames lets him. Both of them are lying, and they both know it. The chain of command is not so inflexible as all that. If Crozier were to become incapacitated, then Lieutenant Little would take the captain’s role. Fitzjames cannot make do as a solitary authority, but mediating Crozier’s sour temper is arguably worse than hacking it alone. His waistcoat is unbuttoned, and the woolen jumper underneath has gone from necessary on the upper decks to stifling below. Fitzjames tugs at the hem of it, snorting, and struggles his way out from under the woolen monster only with difficulty.

Hickey helps strip the jumper from his back, tugging stiff hands out of tangling sleeves, and Fitzjames in return tries not to jostle a wounded man too badly. Hickey is a proud man, and the disfiguring blow to his pride will linger long after the scabs have gone. From beneath Hickey is lovely and sharp and rosy-cheeked – though his seaworthy whiskers hardly suit him. Some young ruffian, an escapee from some house of correction. Proud, revengeful, jealous – this is the man in whom Fitzjames has placed his confidences.

Fitzjames had been present at the flogging of all three men, with his face a stiff mask of decorum and his eyes locked on Crozier’s face, searching for some recognition of the gravity of the order. All he’d found there was spite. Crozier had made the order, and Hickey had suffered it without once breathing Fitzjames’ name – though he well might have. Would Fitzjames have done as much and drunk a bitter cup to its dregs, without invoking some connection that might have the slimmest chance of permitting him to escape punishment? He can’t say as much. Is it sullen fellow-feeling that fuels Mr. Hickey’s convictions, or simply the long wait for a more advantageous season? Even if the pair of them were discovered in an uncontestable clinch, it wouldn’t be Fitzjames at the wrong end of a cat o’ nines. There can be no equality between them.

Fitzjames has not protected him from this treatment – he cannot protect him from its consequents, not even from the pain. Hickey has asked no such thing of him, and he must know it as well as Fitzjames does. On some absurd level below conscious cognition it’s as if Hickey has been flogged for Fitzjames’ honor alone, on some careless suggestion Fitzjames had made in an idle moment. What’s done is done – he cannot take the stripes for him, but he can shield him from Crozier’s anger and his own poor judgment. A dozen-odd months they’ve been rubbing bellies, in the dark and the cold and the unbroken tedium – and so long as that Hickey has looked on him with love, and bruised compassion. Now blame has entered into the matter. Fitzjames cannot think of blame.

Hickey’s small sharp fingers rake through his hair. Fitzjames rests his head against Hickey’s lap, like a schoolboy. Whatever there is between them – a convenience or an attachment – he will not see it interrupted by any man.

“I won’t send you back there until I’ve the assurance you’ll be treated decently.”

Crozier will hate that, he’ll storm and bluster about mutinous contamination running through the crew of Erebus like dysentery, but Fitzjames owes him nothing now. Reaching back, Fitzjames can brush the prickling gooseflesh of Hickey’s bare leg with his fingertips – gentle, gentle.

“I’m grateful to you for that, James.” Hickey’s voice is queerly strained. He rubs an affectionate hand over his chest, charting his scars between his fingers.

Fitzjames shifts beside him, seeking a more favorable angle for their bodies, and not for the first time he is pleasantly reminded that despite Hickey’s slight frame he has no compunction about pressing Fitzjames into just such a position as pleases him. How many times has that callused hand found him and made him stir?

“May I avail you?”

Hickey kisses his lips, and guides his hand beneath his shirttails. Fitzjames tugs him off in soft strokes – he has a beautiful body, a beautiful ruddy cock that flushes and stiffens in Fitzjames’ palm. The bandages are slipping down past his thighs, linen-white and rust-red.

When they first came together like this it was a matter of wary haste. Now they have all the time in the world, and Hickey can settle back in the commander’s own bed with its scrolling bedrail and its ledges heaped with books and journals and permit such a gesture as this one. The tension eases from his legs, and Fitzjames must draw the curtain on his own amorous stirrings to keep from clinching him too roughly – Hickey’s one arm is thrust around his waist, crossing over his back like an iron bar, and the other fumbles in his undershirt for the seat of hs pounding heart. Fitzjames brings him off as carefully as he can – like an apology.