another morn than ours

With Tozer on watch and a rifle slung toward the both of them, it’s difficult to get much rest. Has Tozer shared this man’s bed, in the intervening weeks and days? Will he, when Crozier is gone? Crozier lies very still, and lets his wind-scraped eyelids fall closed.

Mr. Hickey fairly glows with heat, like the coals in the belly of a patent stove. God knows how he finds it in himself to stay warm, traipsing around in the open with his stolen greatcoat flapping around his legs. Some miracle he hasn’t lost fingers nor toes yet. The trunk of him is trim and light with muscle, and there’s scarcely any padding on the bony points of his body – knees and elbows, shoulders and hips – but the bitter wind slashing at the canvas around them and the unnatural furnace-warmth of that body sends Crozier creeping closer despite himself.

He is being kept close, so that this treacherous knot of mutineers can detain him at a minimum of effort. Close enough to throttle the little bastard, if he could close the hinges of his fingers into a fist without a constellation of pains taking his breath away. Close enough for the man to skewer him without difficulty. Close enough to share one sorry bed, to lay their heads on the same sorry pillow. He can hear each breath whistling in the cold air, and feel the phantom prickle of whiskers.

Was it Ross the elder who never shut up about his surplus of healthful corporeal heat, or some other insufferable sort? It’s impossible to be so close to this man and not remember flogging him. Having him flogged, anyway, Crozier would scarcely have the strength to lift an arm against him now. The stripes must have burned – hot with blood, smarting with shame. Wounds steaming in the cold. Christ, it’s no wonder this man hates him so, and all the more unfathomable that he still looks to Crozier for tokens of approval. He looks to him with the memory of calling him sir.

How would it have gone between them, if Hickey hadn’t broken from his orders? If Crozier had done nothing to check the worst of his vices, if he’d settled for drinking gin in low company like a coarse and common Irishman and all the while such a ghoul as this had crept closer. A full glass and a flattering remark, an insinuating hand – and Crozier so stung with vanity that he would have taken such attentions greedily. Rosy cheeks and pert good humor and that sleek muscled body, not yet flogged. He’d have made a pet of him.

Hickey makes a pet of him now; a dog. His arm is crooked over Crozier’s shoulder, and his sharp pert face is pressed into the dry windburned crease of his throat. His breath and his body are so warm that Crozier is sweating – stiff with fear, with aching hips and aching knees, wanting to draw still closer and not daring.