poor skeleton steps out

The lad can only be a virgin: shining-eyed and doleful, fresh from the graveside and in need of a friend. Billy ought to feel guilty for it, only he doesn’t — he wasn’t much older himself when a fellow showed him the ropes, and he won’t ask half as much of a ship’s boy as he’d rendered up then. It seems an age ago, a whole bygone era. Here on Beechey Island they’ve time to kill.

“How should I do it, sir?” Young’s thin face is all surprise, all shining eagerness.

“Like this,” Billy says, coolly critical. “Don’t call me sir. Like you’d do to yourself, see? I’ll handle you.”

He takes pego in hand and shows him how to do it. David Young sighs and draws himself in small, as if trying to tuck himself under Gibson’s arm for greater ease of frigging.

Once Billy has been at him for a while, pulling him off in strokes, Young asks, “Would you kiss me?”

“Oh—” Gibson frowns.

“Would you kiss me, please?”

Who could deny such a request? Young’s small mouth carries the tang of metal, and when his hand slips into the flies of Gibson’s trousers it is pitifully cold.