the way of love

He’d been a servant once, before this business began – not a valet or a coachman or one of the tall bloodless men that keep the household well in hand but a boy only, one of the boys who scrape and sweat alongside the women. Even then he’d had a quiet step, and once by chance he had come upon the housemaid and the housekeeper cozied up together – he’d spied them tucked into a plump sofa with mending work and a stack of letters, the one with her legs thrown across the other’s lap, swinging her heels. He’d never been much for glimpses of ladies’ legs, even then, but the way the two women started away from one another at the sound of a trodden floorboard spoke clearly of something indecent – some mystery not fitted for men.

He wonders where those women are now – still serving, most like, still playing the master-mistress over one another. Captain Crozier’s cheeks are as raw and rubbed as a piece of old lace – Hickey delights in kissing them, feeling the burning color beneath the skin like a hot coal against his lips. Pockmarks, freckles, whiskers, moles, scars – he is positively as rough as an old piece of horsehide. Hickey can’t help caressing him, for the joy of feeling the man stiffen and squirm under his weight.

The captain could be handsome, if he were only in better temper. Crozier casts his eyes on him, doleful and suspicious. He doesn’t trust an amorous touch, nor should he, but his arms are cast around Hickey like an old friend. His hands are on his hip and knee like the fondest of sweethearts. In the thin light his eyes are very blue, and his hair is very yellow. What a soft life, lit up by oil-lamp and patent glass – to sit in a brass-nailed armchair and not to straddle a wooden bench, to take one’s meals at a polished table and not one scarred by the points of dinner knives. To drink from such pretty cut-crystal glasses. Hickey shifts his thighs in Crozier’s lap – he can savor the press of him through the rasp of cloth, his soft surfaces and the hardness of him in the midst of it all. He can feel Crozier’s cock twitch against his own narrow rump.

Service reigns, as surely here as in Grosvenor Square. If they were any two men in any public house, at the Blue Dog or the Old Tabard, he’d carry him off by the hand and do his business. The old captain would have Hickey’s stiff prick in his hand in less time than it takes for a man to say please. But they’re locked away aboard their sinking ship, and Hickey must play-act a tame sort of impertinence for this man’s pleasure. What is to become of the ship’s monkey on Erebus, now that Sir John is dead and gone? A chirruping whiskered thief in a brass-buttoned coat. She’ll be taken out onto the ice and shot.