to serpentine and spiralise

With a tool like that it ought to be Hickey there, whimpering. Irving’s sweet arse is split for him like a summer peach, or some other image from a rural idyll; Hickey rubs the two middle fingers on his hand up and down the cleft of him, playing with the tight furl of his hole. He’s greased himself up nicely with the lieutenant’s good pomatum, leaving deep finger-marks in the white and fragrant surface of the pot’s contents, and now it’s all for him to make his choice of assaults on the terrain before him. The lieutenant is face-down and quivering, with his shirttails pulled up past the small of his back and the territory of his skin is white and uninterrupted. He has taken off his beautiful waistcoat, he has doffed his beautiful gilt buttons, and all for Hickey’s pleasure.

Hickey rubs his prick between Irving’s buttocks, giving him a little tap or two. Irving gives a gasp as if he hasn’t managed to stop his mouth in time. It would be easy to finger him open, right here — his hole is tight and flinching but all too ready to respond, to open up like a flower. His maidenly nerves are out of step with his appetites, and such is the way of all hypocrites. Saving perhaps Sir John, whom it is impossible to picture doing anything more fleshly and debauched than giving his doting wife a good seeing-to once a month and never on the Sabbath.

Hickey lowers his voice, letting it broaden. “Like a bitch in heat, you are — come round to beg me for it.”

Irving sounds close to tears, even as he arches his back, squirming into Hickey’s touch. “It isn’t like that, it’s no such thing—“

“Then why have you come sniffing around my door again, lieutenant? You’re the one who cornered me here, knowing full well what sort of man I am. You’re the one who told me what you wanted. It’s only in my nature, sir."

The smell of iron is in the air, and the smell of coal; men work hot metal here, they hammer it into shape to meet their purpose. Irving is quiveringly eager underneath him, spreading himself with his hands — he protests but he wants this so much, he wants what Hickey has to give him.

“Oh, don’t — don’t say such things, please.“

“Why not? You know what you’ve come here for. I’d like to plough you like this in the middle of Sunday service, with the whole crew gathered round to watch. I’d lash you to the ship’s wheel, bent over, and have my way with you. Would you like that?”

Irving cries out in quite reasonable horror, as if this is the most obscene thing he can imagine, though it’s not even the most obscene thing Hickey can come up with off the cuff. It’s not even the most obscene thing he’s going to do — the good lieutenant had made his more earthy desires very clear, and Hickey is fairly bursting for a piss, so long has Irving kept him waiting down here in the coal-scented dark. He slips out his yard, rubbing his thumb around Irving’s reddened hole — how he’d like to stretch him apart with his fingers, and see how far that yielding part would yield. Some men deny themselves so much that the moment they allow themselves the slightest taste of pleasure they turn glutton — Hickey likes the little sounds the lieutenant makes when he thumbs into him, just to tease.

“What a good little maid you are. How I’d like to fill you up. If you’re very good and you hold yourself open for me, I won’t have to spill a drop. Will you be very good for me, John, and take your medicine?”

Irving’s sweat-dark head bobs up and down. “Please — please, yes, please.”

It can’t be possible — but Irving doesn’t need to know that, this man who is so confounded by his own pleasure that he will accept acts he never knew existed. John Irving gives his assent quicker than lightning; he is agonizingly diligent and desperate to please. The pair of them could be standing around a public urinal in Trafalgar Square — more than once he’s caught a man watching him relieve himself with an eye for more than prick,

“That’s right. Be good for me now, John.”

Hickey presses in with his thumb, rubbing at the tender muscle— Irving’s arsehole spasms and opens around Hickey’s fingers, as if its owner is willing it as wide open as he can make it. Once John had been so frightened and so strait-laced you could hardly get a finger into him, and now he is greedy for what Hickey can give him, greedy to comply. Hickey palms at his tool and brings it in just short of that hairy little portal.

The first spurts of piss run down the crack of Irving’s arse, painting his stones from the root. The stuff is so hot that it ought to be steaming, here in the dark — Hickey eases the tool of his prick into Irving’s quaking hole, and once he’s snugly ensconced in the most private part of him he lets his stream of piss go.

Irving is as good as his word, and the muscles of his hole go stiff against the hot gush of intrusion. If Hickey had meant for a fair challenge he’d have pissed in his mouth — Irving had begged him for that, had begged him for the taste so earnestly it had been funny, how greedy a man might be for what another man would throw away. Hickey makes a fist in Irving’s shirt, pressing into the small of his back as if he might suddenly spring up and raise the alarm.

Irving’s face is scarlet with need and shame — he has turned his head as if to witness his own degradation and one might fancy there were tears on his cheeks. Hickey’s piss soaks his shirttails and trousers, splashing over his hairy thighs — John Irving is a pleasingly hairy man, a little wriggling animal grubbing around in the dirt for some scrap of pleasure. The hand that isn’t holding Hickey’s cock strokes Irving’s flank with sincere affection.

Out of curiosity, he presses his cock into him and thrusts a little, just to see how it will feel — Irving’s greedy little cunt is only too ready to suck him in, for wet as it is, it is snug and tight. He thumbs against Irving’s dimpled hip, pressing into him with more rhythm — the wet strike of flesh against flesh grows quicker, and the splash of his own piss dampens his flies. By the time he reaches his short strokes, Irving is panting like an animal, whimpering like a pup from pleasure and surprise — to hear such a prim fellow grunt and whimper under him half-undoes Hickey already.

He brings himself to spending, half with a hand and half rubbing away in the mire — when he pulls out just enough to ejaculate, a splash of piss escapes Irving’s needy little hole, making Hickey laugh. Irving must feel it, for he cries out so sweetly, shuddering from head to heel. His balls jump between his legs and his hips give a convulsive jerk. This pitiable man is no authority, no leader of men, not bent over here on his belly. He is only a man, and he is all appetite.

“There you go, sweet Johnny, sweet boy." Hickey presses a hand beneath him to squeeze Irving’s softening prick. He must have spent himself before, judging by the sticky mess in his already-wet drawers, but the stout length of his prick is still something astonishing. What could a man do with such a thing if he weren’t terrified of his own pleasure? Hickey would swallow him to the root and choke.

But then there is still his hole to attend to, fucked pink and fluttering. Hickey stuffs his prick back inside, keeping it there as it softens like a cork inside a bottle. How simple it all is, how painless, how pleasant — there are few joys in life more satisfying than emptying your bags or having a much-deserved piss. These are animal joys, and high-flying holy Irving must envy them with a passion. Hickey has often taken pleasure in bringing haughty men low, and in showing them they are no higher than the beasts they scorn, and Irving is the haughtiest of all. He’ll never respect himself again — he’ll never touch himself without thinking of Hickey, he won’t be able to take a piss without remembering just what he asked for. This memory will last him in his fantasies until his dying day.

When Hickey draws himself out again Irving gives a pitiful little moan of deprivation. Hickey bends in low against Irving’s back — the smell of his own piss does not disgust him, and to the contrary, he feels a sort of affection for it, as for anything that is his own. Irving is all a-tremble, fumbling up his soaked drawers, and for a moment it looks as if he will faint with joy. His sweet bearded face is fairly glowing with release, and it suits him better than sour condemnation.

It is a sweet thing to see a man so far past self-disgust that he has arrived at joyous abandon. Hickey rubs a tender circle against Irving’s back, and murmurs to him like a lover:

“You’ll think on this, won’t you,” Hickey says, “in your little cubbyhole at night. You needn’t feel guilt. I’ve washed it all out of you.”

Let him hobble his way back to his officer’s berth and soak in his tender humiliation, let him turn over in his mind the memory of pleasure until it is well-worn with revisitation, let him explain this state of affairs to his steward if he can — that’d be Billy, wouldn’t it, Billy Gibson with his brush and his pot of soap.