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"It's just that you've got him here already, like you said. So, we can leave. I don't know what we're still waiting for. We should leave."
He can tell he's wearing on Cornelius' patience, the curl of his lip and a flicker of rage in his eyes giving away an otherwise infuriatingly calm countenance. They've been having this conversation for half an hour now, maybe more, and neither of them have come close to swaying the other.
"You've already said that," Cornelius says, words punctuated with his usual, tight-lipped, condescending smile -- a grimace, more like. "Plenty of times, in fact."
Sol is at a loss. He's too exhausted to do anything he should: to pace, to get up and exit the tent, to walk a few paces and break Cornelius' nose. It seems that the only thing he is capable of right now is to sit on the cot and beg. Cornelius has been making him beg so much lately.
"I don't know what else I can say," he starts, trying and failing to keep the tremor out of his voice. "I don't know how to convince you. Everyone here seems to see it except for you. If we stay out here any longer, we're all going to die."
He feels hysterical, even if he knows that what he speaks of is an inevitability, should they not take advantage of Captain Crozier's presence and superior navigation abilities to bring them back to the ships. Away from the vast, vulnerable emptiness of the shale. The retreat is as pragmatic of a plan as they can get, with Fairholme's party dead and Fort Resolution still hundreds of miles ahead. And it isn't as if Sol takes any pleasure in the proposal; he must loathe Crozier more vehemently than any other man here, finding him a liar and tyrant who escaped into his cups while every man under him suffered, a crime that he finds more unforgivable than the sedition he and Cornelius were almost hanged for. He knows, however, that the captain can be of great use of them, his proficiency in the Netsilik tongue and wealth of experience with the polar regions something only he possessed. It was their best, if not only, chance at survival. So, why is Cornelius Hickey, the most self-preserving of them all, opposed to it?
He's keeping something from you , Sol tells himself -- has been telling himself for weeks now. But what, he cannot begin to fathom. It sickens him to realize that, despite having seen every inch of Cornelius' body at this point, his mind remains as opaque to him as ever.
A brief silence passes before Cornelius speaks again. "You told me you trusted me."
Sol is taken aback. What is he playing at?
"I do, I do," he says, a little too quickly for his dignity. "But that doesn't have to do with anything."
"On the contrary, it has to do with everything ." Cornelius closes the gap between them, so quick and light on his feet that Sol hardly registers that he's moving until their knees are nearly touching. "I told you I have a plan. And this plan needs...discretion." He starts to draw circles on Sol's thigh with his thumb, his fingers just brushing the side of his trousers, and Sol is embarrassed to feel himself shiver at the contact. "You didn't lie to me, did you, Solomon? I thought we both despised liars." He juts his bottom lip out in a damn pout, and Sol fights twin urges to either kiss the plush skin there or crack it with his fist.
"I...I didn't. And I do."
Cornelius doesn't appear convinced, and for a moment Sol is afraid he is peering past layers of flesh and into his mind, seeing everything he has been keeping discrete from him, in turn. All of his doubts, all of his regrets. The conversation he had with Tommy and Pilkington. The inexplicable churn of his stomach when he saw they had succeeded in capturing not only Crozier, but Tom Hartnell too, his corpse jostling around in the sled in a way that brings to mind, disturbingly, a doll being tossed about by an unruly child. How his face fell when Cornelius had ordered Mr. Diggle, flippant as anything, to get the salts ready. They'll have more meat than they can finish in the next few days.
"Good man," Cornelius says, nearly cooing, though the wariness doesn’t fully leave the air between them. "Good boy."
The conversation is over, then. Cornelius always gets the final say in that matter. His hands are fully on Sol now and beginning to travel upward to his hips. There's a part of Sol that screams, that demands he run far, far away from this strange, unpredictable man kneeling before him, even if it means starving to death on the shale. That part never wins out, and that part reviles him. It is the part of him that is still a Royal Marine, a beacon of strength for the men who rely upon him, a man of principle and honor. That man has been subsumed, eaten away by his own disillusionment. Instead he sits here a coward, a plaything, slave to his basest fears and urges.
Cornelius may be the mad king of nothing, but he's something worse. His sworn knight, his ineffectual advisor, the moat surrounding his palace and the prisoner locked in his highest tower. His friend. His consort.
Just the warmth of those long, vicious fingers alone is enough to make his cock stir. Since they walked out, he has been deprived of so many things. Of food, of rest, of peace and joy and laughter. At least with this, Cornelius can sate him, if only momentarily.
He's at half mast by the time Cornelius frees him, tugging down his trousers and underthings with a practiced efficiency. The Arctic air chills him for only a second before Cornelius' mouth is on him, overwhelming him with its warmth, and the knowledge that his strong canine teeth are only the slightest movement to the side. He knows nothing of Cornelius' past, but the intoxicating swirl of his tongue and the slight bob of his head suggest that he is intimately familiar with the molly houses – whether as a patron or product, Sol will never know. He will never tell him.
By the time Cornelius works his way down to the base, his somehow well-groomed beard scratching against the sensitive skin of his sack, Sol is leaking into his throat. Cornelius pulls off him suddenly, with an obscene pop , and Sol can't help but to whine at the loss. He doesn't know why he's surprised. Cornelius had made it a point to never finish him off with his mouth, as if he really needed to snatch that last bit of power from him, too.
"Now, now," Cornelius tuts. "It's not a race, Solomon." He tugs Sol's waistband down further, until his undone braces sag to the ground and his arse is bare on the mattress. He crumples up a discarded jumper and places it under Sol's pelvis to elevate him, nudging his knees apart and pushing him back by the shoulders until he is laid out on the bed. "We haven't even gotten to your favorite part."
From the pocket of his greatcoat – Irving's greatcoat, Sol thinks with a sting of hatred, that he had, as all the evidence suggested, snatched from the only lieutenant Sol came close to holding in any high regard, after killing and defiling him – Cornelius produces his tin of wool grease. With how many times they've done this already, Sol is shocked there is still any remaining. He unscrews the lid and coats his index finger, teasing his fundament in featherlight touches.
"Fucking get on with it," Sol finally snaps after a mere minute. Cornelius lets out a single, mocking bark of laughter but doesn't deny him.
Cornelius pushes in knuckle by knuckle, as if he has all the time in the world, clearly enjoying the way it made a man who was supposed to be his superior by every possible metric, in rank and in regard and in ability, squirm under him. When Sol is adequately stretched around the first, he adds a second, then a third, then a fourth.
"Taking it as well as always," Cornelius comments, feigning amusement. "If all the boys in red were as welcoming as this, they'd inspire in me a loyalty that runs as hot as yours did."
Sol catches the insult, the barely-concealed barb – that insulting bit of past tense – but he is too delirious with the combined pain and pleasure to pay him one back. When he opens his mouth, only a single strangled noise escapes, somewhere in between a please and now .
It doesn't take long for Cornelius to free his own prick, dressed as he is in nothing but the coat and his unmentionables – the first visible sign that he'd gone completely mad.
Cornelius slicks himself and Sol prepares himself for the breach, the first entrance always the most shocking. Unexpectedly, instead of pushing in, he hoists himself up on the cot instead, the mattress dipping under their shared weight. Cornelius straddles him and bends forward to kiss him on the mouth. His spit is sweet and slightly salty from the prelude of Sol's release, but there is a metallic tang underneath that belies the twistedness of their whole affair. A recent but quickly devolving history. Their last few, horrible meals. That's Billy Gibson , Sol thinks, and he doesn't know whether to laugh or cry but he has the ability to do neither. That's my taste, mixed with Billy Gibson's .
The kiss is tender, like it always is. Makes Sol weaker at the knees than being buggered does. He always fancied himself a good kisser, making the girls back home in Somerset melt into his arms every time, begging him to stay and show them more. Cornelius puts him to shame in that aspect. He's always on the receiving end now, and perhaps that's what he always meant for, to be wooed and courted and eventually subjugated. Perhaps the dominance he had always worn had been nothing more than a costume. It is the nature of a good soldier to take orders, after all.
Cornelius lifts his lips away just enough to speak. A thin string of saliva still connects them. "Do you want it now?"
"Mm," Sol grunts. He is painfully stiff, and the feeling of Cornelius' own hard piece on his belly only makes it worse.
"You have speech, Solomon," Cornelius scolds him lightly. "Use your words."
"Yes, God, yes," Sol manages. He's never not mortified by how wrecked his voice sounds like whenever they do this. "Please. In me. Need you in me." To that, Cornelius smiles in an odd, beatific way, like an angel granting deliverance.
He readjusts himself, hands not leaving Sol's torso as he does so. Cornelius takes him on his back now, when before he had him on all fours, like the beat dog he was. This recent change in positioning makes Sol realize he is truly, undeniably doomed. The indignity of being on his palms and knees was what made it tolerable. That way, he can paint Cornelius as his corrupter, violating him when he's defenseless – if Gibson's wound was anything to go off, Cornelius had no qualms with stabbing men from behind – using him as an animal would. On his back, laying himself out like feast, a willing sacrifice, such pretenses are out of the question. To Sol, this is the position taken by a bride and bridegroom, a blushing maiden and her eager new husband, two soon-to-be heads of a family. This is a position taken by two people bound together until death. And isn't that what he and Cornelius are to each other, now?
He wonders sometimes if he had ever taken Gibson in this way. Whether he's destined to be the next in Cornelius' lengthening line of doomed, deluded brides.
He can look Cornelius straight in the eyes as he enters him, agonizingly gentle. Those pale blue eyes – sharp and observant, nervous and cruel, just like their owner – are half-lidded with both concentration and desire. Under that gaze, Sol is so warmed.
It doesn't take long for Cornelius to be fully seated inside. His prick is thin as the rest of him but long for his frame, so it feels as if he can reach deeper inside Sol than anyone or anything was ever meant to, flaying him open with the merest roll of those bony hips.
"Please," Sol rasps again.
The grin returns to Cornelius' face, and Sol would slap it off him if he didn't feel almost in love with him. That is, if one could define love as the sure knowledge that the other person's pain would also be yours. That whatever horrible thing you do to them would damn you in equal measure.
"Please what? I'm already inside, like you so nicely asked." He likes being begged, being needed. Sol suspects that arouses him more than any hot touch, any open and welcoming orifice can.
"Please fuck me."
Cornelius accepts that. He leans over again to take another all-consuming kiss before starting to thrust in that slow, steady rhythm that has Sol's eyes rolling upwards into his skull. He expected during their first time together that Cornelius would be as ruthless a lover as he is a person. In reality, Cornelius is gentle, or he can sense that Sol needs gentleness, and reconfigures accordingly. Ever adaptable.
He drives in just a bit deeper, and hits the exact spot that makes Sol moan. He used to throw his palm over his mouth or bite his fist to muffle it, but he's given up any attempt to be silent after Mr. Hoar had walked in on them a week or two ago, opening the tent flap without a hint of warning while they were in the throes of their pleasure. Sol had been immediately horrified, attempting to shove Cornelius off of him and hide his face away, pretend he wasn't there. Cornelius was much stronger than he looked though, and he pinned him down by the shoulders, giving him no choice but to continue. He swore Cornelius was purposely making a show of it, reveling in his audience, gasping heavily in a way he hardly ever did, and throwing his head back as if in ecstasy. Hoar, that bastard, lingered for a few seconds before rushing out. Sol knows he must have told everyone else in the camp, if Diggle's pitying stare, Des Voeux's derisive chuckles, and Tommy and Pilkington's baffled reception of him in their post-supper chat were anything to go by. Those stewards were always a gossipy bunch. If they had any respect for him remaining, he had ruined it then, splayed out on Cornelius' bedroll. Even Tommy, who before had followed him with the eagerness of a pup and a yawning hunger for his approval, could hardly look him in the eye anymore.
He moans another time as Cornelius sticks his hands up his shirt and caresses him, abdomen to chest. This time, it sounds almost like a whimper.
"Never bedded a doxy before, you know," Cornelius says, the playful hint of mockery in his voice filling Sol with dread for what he'd say next, "not to my taste. But I imagine she'd sound just like this, once I get to handling her tits."
The hot mix of shame and arousal that builds in Sol's stomach at that statement is overwhelming. He has to will himself not to come right then. He cannot give Cornelius the satisfaction of watching him come undone at his own degradation. As if he hasn't already .
Cornelius notices – he always fucking notices – and keeps talking, slipping his teasing hands out of Sol's shirt at last.
"Comparison's not that forced. Truly, you're as pretty and pliant as any lass," he says, in a surely put-upon, fond tone of voice, punctuated with the labored breaths of his exertion, "with all the strength and endurance of a man. You possess the best of both, Solomon. Perhaps I should keep you, when all of this is done. I'll give you everything you need, buy you a home. In return, you'll both tend and guard it. Not too much to ask for from a Royal Marine, hm? You'll chop wood for the fireplace and sweep its floors. You'll take pride in it. And if we continue to get along, I'd even let you rear my children in it."
Sol has not lost all of his rationality yet, so he knows that this is an unattainable fantasy. Just another of Cornelius' impossible promises. The man likely has barely a few shillings to his name, and no opportunity for gainful employment once they return. Yet, a part deep in Sol weeps just picturing it.
He elaborates upon the picture, imagining that all the others live no longer than a half-day's walk from their little home. He and Tommy and Pilkington meet regularly to shoot together. He pays the other marines visits and helps build their homes, his old carpenter's skills returning to him along with his strength. He even allows himself to imagine that the ones who didn't survive until the walk-out are there with him. Bryant, who miraculously becomes less uptight with drink. Heather, who remains his closest friend. The only agonizing choice he ever has to make again is to decide which one of them he'll name godfather to his children — his strong, healthy children, who will never know a day of starvation or despair as long as he lives.
As long as Cornelius gets them out.
"Mean it," Sol grunts, dangerously close to tears. "Say you mean it."
Cornelius is taken aback by that. He can tell by the small stutter in his hips, a break in the rhythm.
"Yeah," he says after a long moment. "I mean it."
Something sparks inside of Sol in that moment, a fire he thought had long been snuffed out. By the crack of the cat-o-nines. By Heather’s loss. By the severed heads arranged neatly on the snow. With Mr. Collins' soul. With his first taste of human flesh.
He props himself up onto his elbows and wraps an ankle around Cornelius' thin waist. He uses the heel of his foot to push Cornelius further into him. He's the one setting the pace now. Faster, harsher than ever before between the two of them.
He can feel Cornelius try to resist him, wrest back the control he had so securely held only moments ago. Sol won't allow him. He grabs a fistful of his hair with one hand and keeps the other secure on his upper back, burying Cornelius' face into the crook of his neck, as if daring him to bite out his throat. All the while, he keeps on driving them, thrusting and clenching down and refusing to relent until Cornelius does so first.
It doesn't take long for Cornelius to muffle a groan into his jaw and spill inside of him. Sol follows him shortly, the friction of Cornelius' woolen underthings on his bare prick – and the image of the oddly handsome torso hidden underneath it – too much to bear.
Still, he can claim this victory. He made him go his way. And he outlasted him.
They do not separate for a while, out of exhaustion, and perhaps something else. The sense of a shift between them. A return to the way things were before all of this, before he had gotten his claws in Sol. Cornelius has grown soft inside him, and he is able to shift just enough to extricate himself, Cornelius' spend dripping out of him – his pathetic medallion, one that only he knows the value of. For once, he's not awash with self-pity when he takes a cloth and wipes himself clean.
Both of their shirts are filthy with Sol's seed. Without discussing it, they throw off the garments; Cornelius now bare on top, and Sol in his woolens. Once the warmth of their coupling has worn off, they take one of the scratchy blankets and spread it on top of themselves, pressed chest-to-chest underneath. Out here, huddling for warmth is a practicality, Sol reasons to himself. He overlooks the wild thump of his heart.
Cornelius mutters something he is too distracted to hear.
"Huh? What's that?"
"I said," Cornelius repeats, removing a hand from the blanket to stroke the side of Sol's cheek, tuck an errant strand of shaggy hair out of his face, "one more day. Can you do that for me?"
"Alright. I can," Sol answers. He has been praying so much lately he's sure God has grown sick of him, but he hopes if little else goes through, this orison he is mouthing now does. Don’t let Cornelius see through this lie. "One more day."
To the rest of the men in their camp, it appears as if Cornelius never sleeps, energized by their fear and desperation alone. But although Sol is nowhere close to knowing Cornelius fully, he must know him better than anyone else alive now. He knows that Cornelius is just a man, and a man must steal away an hour or two to rest, even if rarely.
He will wait for Cornelius to fall asleep before he springs into action. He will find Des Voeux — the man most prone to pulling a trigger when threatened — first and separate him from his gun. He will find the captain and free him, on the condition that he pardons Sol unequivocally, and that he will help them in the trek back to the ships. Crozier will accept. He will take Crozier, Tommy, Pilkington, Diggle, Hodgson, and Goodsir – although the surgeon's mind is as unreadable as his captor's nowadays. He will take all the arms and supplies that can fit on the sled and be carried on their backs. He will lead them back. He will save them, like he believed Cornelius would save him.
And they will take Cornelius along with them, unconscious and rope-bound if need be, and Sol will convince him that this way is better. That this way, they both can live, and though they will never attain the idyllic life Cornelius had carelessly evoked, they can have an honest shot at something close. Sol will.
For now, though, they have made this bed, and he will lie in it for as long as Cornelius Hickey will allow him.