Page 43 of Rears & Vices

Everard stared, suspended, bewildered.

Ought he join him? Sleep in the armchair? Find a hammock belowdecks? That last was not very mate-like, at least to crew eyes.

“And cold feet,” Vitaliy breathed, already half-asleep. “I object those.”

“Er,” Everard began, “d’you wish that I… sleep… um…?”

“Oh, no. You can sleep where you like.” Vitaliy roused slightly, and squished himself, broad shoulders and all, further into the side of the cot closest to the wall. It swung more with the movement but didn’t creak. “Only, please you will keep in mind?” he murmured.

Everard supposed he had his answer. One of them, anyway.

“Cold feet,” he replied, and cleared his throat. “No, of course not.”

Vitaliy smiled, and fell immediately to sleep.

Everard woke first. It was still raining, a light tapping on the deck four feet above his left ear. The sun wasn’t yet up, not that it mattered; once awoken, he would stay that way.

Beside him, Vitaliy seemed as though he would stay asleep. The slow sway of the cot had pushed them together in the night, and his warm naked back was practically stuck to Everard’s front, both of them sheened with sweat. Last night’s air had been the muggiest Everard had experienced yet in the Gulf. He hoped it would only improve. He missed the crisp snap of early Canadian fall.

And snow. He missed snow, after all. The first occasion that he and Vitaliy had slept beside one another, in the fur trader’s cabin three years past, sharing warmth had been a necessity, a delight. Not a consequence.

Best not think of those memories now, pressed up against so much of the man as he was.

Everard slowly unglued himself, groaning, and rolled onto his back. He bent his right leg to keep Vitaliy from falling into him; for other reasons, too. A hank of olive-oil-soap–smelling blond stuck to his cheek. He hooked it gently free.

I don’t wake for much, Vitaliy had said. That had been the truth.

Above them, the rain spattered louder against the deck: one of those rolling rains that sometimes preceded a hard gale. It meant Everard really ought to get up. Morning storms at sea were the most dangerous, as no one could see what manner of clouds had come towards them in the dark. But as a floating base, practically a village unto itself, the Sévère was already hove to, far enough from shore and sheets backed to let her go whatever unsteered way she would in the Gulf.

He should still get up, but Vitaliy was breathing deep next to him, the cot swayed comfortingly with the roll of the ship, and he didn’t even have a particular need for the head; so he was unusually tempted to fall back to sleep.

Everard compromised. He put an arm behind the pillow, took a minute to think.

He didn’t know why he was there.

He knew his own motivation towards saying yes to such a ludicrous arrangement—extreme curiosity, loneliness, novelty, sheer lack of option—and knew Vitaliy’s given one: his reputation. But he didn’t have an idea why Vitaliy had not only given Everard charge of a three-deck Santa Ana–class but had also signed the necessary papers to make Everard his legal inheritor to her. Nor why he had shrugged away the potential appearance of another lover, then made room like Everard belonged beside him regardless.

On the one hand, it seemed monumental; on the other, it seemed like nothing. It was either a lot of baseless trust or very little care. Everard wanted to entertain neither option.

The wind was in fact picking up, and crests were buffeting the ship irregularly now, so high that Everard could hear them slapping even there within the stern. The cot swayed more and more on its ropes. The whole ship heaved, bow up, and the desk chair scraped across the floor an inch or two: a telltale sound that would have woken Everard in a moment had he not already been alert and listening.

Vitaliy, however, was dead to the world.

Everard raised up on elbows, mindful of the low mosquito net, and looked over. Vitaliy’s sleeping profile, barely visible in the dark, was as beautiful as ever.

He whispered, “Vee?” and raised a hand to nudge⁠—

Sitting up had been a mistake. A sudden lurch turned gravity sideways, and sent Vitaliy’s bulk flopping back as the cot swung, sent Everard bodily into him. “Oof.”

Vitaliy began to grumble and stir, hands reaching, groping⁠—

“Sorry,” Everard said, “hang on—we’ve heeled a bit, it’ll come round⁠—”

An arm came round his waist, clutched him close. Held him there, strong as an iron band. Everard froze.

“Vitya?”

“Mmm.” Vitaliy shifted restlessly, still holding Everard close. His other arm wrapped around, almost in a hug—and all at once he used the sway-roll momentum of the ship heeling back to larboard to shimmy his body further beneath Everard’s. He fit Everard’s hips neatly over his own, and made a deeply pleased noise, low in his throat.