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Disguised as a British naval captain, on a warship teeming like a wasp-nest with His Majesty’s Navy and the God damned Marines, Ray’s both more and less frightened than he’s ever been.
More, for the obvious reasons, and because the lie that got him aboard is paper-flimsy (“I was told the prisoner’s transport wasn’t to happen until later, sir? Midmorning?” “Change of plans. We received intelligence that the man’s crew is planning an ambush. We move him now, quietly, under cover of dark, and have him in a cell on the mainland before they ever get in firing range.”) and because he can’t be sure—he can’t be sure.
Less, because he’s so close. In a moment he’ll know if any of this matters.
The officer leads him down into the cargo hold, stairs creaking under their boots. He hasn’t noticed that Ray’s boots are unpolished, the shirt under his dark blue jacket yellowed with sweat and wrinkled. It’s a black night; clouded moon. The first time in three weeks Ray’s felt lucky.
“This way, sir.”
Through a padlocked door. The air thickens with the stench of piss and sweat and shit and sickness. Evenly spaced along the walls, revealed by the officer’s lantern, are fat coils of rope like sated snakes. Then the traveling ball of lantern-light swings forward to illuminate the far shadows of the hold and Ray knows that shape. He knows that shape. He knows that shape. The sweep of that bowed head, those shoulders. Those sleekly muscled arms and those hands and those knees and those fine-boned bare feet and those ears, those ears of which there is nothing singular at all but for the fact that they belong to him. To him, to Pete. His face is buried in his arms. He’s alive. Ray is grateful for the thick murky dark of the hold, which persists even so close to the lantern’s gold pool; he’s not sure he can fully school his face. Pete is alive.
“I’ll—” He has to stop and clear his throat. “I’ll need to confirm it’s—the right man.”
“...Sir? Shall I have him stand, sir?”
“No,” Ray snaps. “Can’t you see his ankles are bound?” They are, with thick ropes tied to an iron loop on the floor. It’s a struggle to keep his voice even. “I’ll see for myself.”
“Er….” Pale eyes dart. But Ray squares his shoulders, not-so-subtly letting his insignia catch the light, and the matter is settled. “Of course, Captain.”
Pete hasn’t reacted to their voices. He hasn’t even twitched. New terror is cold and clammy in Ray’s stomach like a wet hand; he thought Pete was alive, but—oh Jesus—is he?
He’s giving himself away, he knows, but fuck it; so soon it won’t matter, and if Pete is dead then it doesn’t already. One way or another, Ray’s not leaving here without him. He crosses the last dark gap and drops to a crouch before Pete, never so glad for the size of his own body as in this moment: how it’s blocking Pete entirely from sight.
“Pete,” he breathes. “Pete. Peter. It’s me.”
No response. The hand in Ray’s stomach slides up to grasp his heart and squeeze. Pete’s breathing, if shallowly, but there’s plenty you can do to a man that leaves him breathing but good as dead anyway.
“Pete. Please. Please, it’s me. Pete, it’s Ray.”
Pete’s brow flickers.
Watching him come alive is somehow like watching a spread hand curl into a fist: a sort of gathering, as if there were parts of him floating, drifting, in the air and now, with great effort, he is pulling them all back in, packing them back into his chest and gaining color. Ray didn’t realize how insubstantial he looked until something invisible returns to his body and he is made solid. It happens in a heartbeat, and without Pete shifting a muscle, and yet when it’s over he is so thoroughly transformed that Ray’s scared all over again, aware as a prey animal of the teeth at his back. Then Pete lifts his head and in the face of that new emotion the fear is obliterated. Wiped off the map in an instant like Gomorrah. That new emotion is bigger than God, and white-hot.
“Hi,” Ray says, and can’t help it: he takes Pete’s face in his hands. “Hi. Hi, Pete. Oh, shit. I got you. I got you, man. Hi.”
Pete stares. His mouth moves, soundless.
“Yeah. That’s right. We’re gonna get you out here.”
“What is this? What’s going on?” The officer’s voice is sharp behind him. Ray ducks in and presses his forehead briefly, hotly, against Pete’s, then lets him go and stands up and walks back to where the officer’s hand is uncertain on his sword, whatever instincts that are shouting at him Something’s wrong! helpfully muzzled and set to heel by his Navyman’s training, his higher brain’s refusal to draw on a superior officer. Ray never stops moving, gets in close and grabs him about the ears and hauls him sideways and headfirst into the wall. There’s a noise like a hardboiled egg hitting the floor. The man crumples. Ray goes back to Pete and takes the knife out of his boot and gets to sawing through the hairy ropes around Pete’s ankles.
“Ray?”
Pete’s voice is tiny. It hits Ray like a giant’s wallop anyway. His hands falter, a splinter pricking into the meat of his palm. He takes a hard breath and then another. Jesus. Oh Jesus. “That’s exactly right, Pete. Are you—can you walk?”
“Yeah,” Pete says, a beat late. “Sure, yeah.”
It hardly fills Ray with confidence, but it’s not like they’ve got a choice. “Good. Good. Almost done.” The last rope snaps under his knife. “Okay, Pete. Up and at ‘em, sweetheart, time to go.”
“Yeah,” Pete rasps. Ray wishes he could’ve brought a waterskin. “Yeah.” But he doesn’t try to get up, and Ray can’t tell if he’s actually aware of his surroundings or not, and they don’t have time to spare. He gets his hands under Pete’s armpits and heaves him to his feet.
The lantern’s on its side next to the dark slump of the officer, glass cracked and flame sputtering, drowning in wax. Ray kicks it as they hobble past, his arm tight around Pete’s back to take his weight. It rolls and shatters against a post. Fire drips onto the wooden floorboards.
“Let’s go, Pete.”
That he manages to essentially carry Pete out of the hold and back through the dimly lit halls is testament to the power of adrenaline. Beside him Pete is nauseatingly silent, head down, bobbing. Ray’s heart thuds in his ears so hard it feels like someone’s pinching his eardrums between finger and thumb. Whenever they pass through the scant light of a lantern his eyes rove Pete’s body, every bit of it he can see, searching for wet blood, a mortal wound, a swelling on his skull. There’s only long-dried stains on his shirt-collar and down his front from where they cracked him across the face with the butt of a musket, when they got him. Ray was there for that one. He saw it happen. It was the last image he had of Pete until tonight. It might’ve been the last he ever had.
-
Three weeks ago, in the waters at the edge of the Sargasso Sea, the Rabbit’s Foot was accosted by His Majesty’s Navy. It was night and the weather was poor, an unseasonable storm; they didn’t see her coming until she was upon them, and then it was a fight in the black and the rain, Marines swarming the deck in droves like ants.
They were hunting for something, some object or document; Ray never found out what. Something valuable enough to attack without provocation, tear the Captain’s quarters apart, and retreat as quickly as they’d arrived, as if being pursued themselves, not even capturing the ship. What they took instead was a consolation prize. Ten men, arbitrary, just to make a point. Whatever they were hunting wasn’t pirates.
They took Pete.
It was Ray’s fault.
He hadn’t seen Pete on the deck. It was one of those nights they were on different sleep shifts; Ray’d been assigned dog-watch and Pete would’ve been down below in his hammock. All through the fighting he kept looking for Pete and not seeing him, his quick shadow in the smoke or lit up by mortar-fire, and then it was over, a gun to the Captain’s head, and the British captain’s orders rang out and Ray stole belowdeck and ran through the dark rolling corridors and rounded a corner and found Pete panting and spitting bile, clutching his bloody sword.
Pete hated killing. Ray didn’t like it either, got no joy from it the way some men did, just a cold frightened feeling in his gut. But Pete really hated it. He avoided it to the point where it got him hurt sometimes and the men called him Saint Peter. Ray’d asked him once: Pete, what are you doing here? The hell are you doing here, man? And Pete had looked at him hard, then down at himself, pointedly, and said: This ain’t the worst place in the world I could be, Ray. And Ray never asked him again after that.
“Pete!” he said, and Pete turned, his wide-eyed relief at seeing Ray so stark that Ray almost said it then, the thing that’d been living in his head for months. “Pete, it’s over, Cap’s surrendered, we’re fucked, they’re not taking the ship but they want prisoners—”
Down the hall a door slammed open. The drum of boots and clanking swords came. Pete took one look—one last look, it was so obvious, but Ray’s a fucking moron—at Ray, black eyes all pupil, hot and bright as coals—and shoved him backward through the open galley door. Ray’s foot caught on something and sent him sprawling. By the time he’d scrambled upright Pete had bolted the door from the other side and the officers had got him.
“No!” Eye pressed to an old bullet-hole, Ray watched helplessly as Pete dropped his sword and didn’t struggle; they hit him, still, and forced his head down and his arms behind his back. And dragged him away. And never looked back, even though Ray was shouting then, and banging on the door.
Three weeks of not knowing. Of nearly crying out when the Captain said they’d pursue their captured men, that if the Navy wanted to make a point then they’d damn well make a point right back; they wouldn’t abandon ten of their brothers. Of barging into the Captain’s quarters and saying I want to do it, if you’re choosing men to go after the crew let me be one of them, please, I’ll fucking go myself if you don’t let me, and the Captain standing there, stiff-backed as always—he held himself unsettlingly like a trained Marine—though of course that was impossible—and appraising Ray with the sort of bloodless lizard’s gaze that allowed him to command men twice his age.
“Garraty and McVries,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s how the men refer to you. Like two halves of one thing. You didn’t know?”
“I mean,” Ray said, thrown. “I did, I just—I never really—sorry, what does it matter?”
The Captain leveled at him an articulate look. It said: It is one of the great mysteries of our time that a man could be this stupid and be alive. He allowed the look to speak for itself, then added, “Yes, Garraty, you’re going after McVries.”
Of giving chase, dogging the Prize from Hispaniola to St. Augustine, lying in wait beyond the horizon for days while the Prize’s captain took audience with the governor—the Rabbit’s Foot diverted south to send a trio of men ashore without being spotted, but what little they were able to learn of had to do with the nature of the governor’s meetings—the mysterious object; Ray couldn’t give a fuck if he tried—not the fate of their crew. Until they heard the Prize was now bound to set sail for Charles Town, and there was only one reason you took a hold full of pirates to Charles Town.
Of giving chase again. Of long hours in the Captain’s quarters, coming with a plan, Ray and Baker and Parker and Olson and the Captain and the twitchy little accountant Harkness who was there to write things down. The disguises were Baker’s brainchild and the distraction Parker’s, and Olson had an encyclopedic knowledge of Charles Town despite never having been there, and Ray for the most part was fucking useless. He just sat there seeing it over and over again: Pete’s head snapping sideways, the spray of blood. The way he didn’t look back at Ray. He didn’t look back.
Ray was so angry he could kill; he was so angry he could die. He could burn up from the inside like a mast been struck by lightning. He thought he’d reached the outer limits of anger when they killed his da but it turns out he was wrong. There was a whole new world of it. It was all he could do to keep his hands from shaking.
Then Carolina, a fuzz on the horizon. Then a day of waiting, of arrangements. Then hearing that, at dawn, nine prisoners would be transported ashore. The tenth would be escorted the next day, alone. They wanted to make his walk a spectacle. Peter McVries had killed a senior officer.
-
At the foot of the stairs leading abovedeck, Ray stops and grips Pete by the arms to keep him steady. Jesus, he’s lost weight—muscle and fat—his arms, his collarbones, his cheeks. He’s lean enough normally that even a few days of hunger shows. “Pete,” Ray says urgently. “D’you think you can swim?”
Pete blinks. His eyes are slow to focus, distant, as if their dark cores are tunnels and he’s peering out from somewhere on the other side.
“Pete.” Ray clutches at the front of his shirt and tugs, helpless, a child at ma’s skirts. “Answer me. Please.”
All of a sudden Pete’s hands fly up to cover his. Just for a moment, cool fingertips light on Ray’s knuckles, before jerking away as if swatted. He squeezes his eyes shut. His whole face scrunches up with it. Then he opens them and this time they fix on Ray’s face and blow wide. He says, "Ray?"
“Yeah.” He could cry. “Yeah, it’s me. Hey. Hey.” He flattens his hand over Pete’s chest, feels his heart thump once and twice. “Hey. We gotta go, Pete. Can you swim?”
“You know I can.” He sounds stunned.
“I mean right now, are you hurt, can you swim? There’s a dinghy—Pete, can you swim?”
“Sure,” he says. “I’m good. I’m good, Ray.”
“You are not,” Ray gasps, and claps a hand over his own mouth to shut himself up. “Fuck. We gotta—”
The whole ship quakes. Lanterns swing wildly all down the corridor, and there’s an ominous splintering sound nearby. Above their heads the shouting starts and the thundering of boots.
“That’ll be the boys,” Ray says. “Now!”
“The—?”
“Now, Pete!”
He hauls Pete up the stairs and out into a night on fire. Smoke rises in a billowing column from the prow, the Navy’s in chaos, and as Ray grabs Pete’s wrist and pulls him stumbling toward the railing there’s another boom and the deck bucks so violently they’re nearly thrown right off their feet. Jesus, Parker, Ray thinks, having fun, are we? They reach the railing and he frantically searches the black water far below for signs of debris, deadly tangles of rigging.
“We gotta jump,” he tells Pete grimly. “Baker should be down there in a dinghy, he’ll pick us up. You ready?”
“Course, compadre,” Pete says, no hesitation, and grins—crooked and smaller than usual, like the muscles are out of practice, but still white as a slice of moon and the best thing Ray’s seen in his life. The very best thing. “Count of”—the deck rocks a third time, Jesus, Parker—“one?”
They brace their hands on the railing. “One,” Ray says, and together they hoist themselves over the side of the ship, into free air.
-
The first time he ever saw Pete was also his first day aboard the Rabbit’s Foot.
He’s certain a lot happened that day, it must have; learning the ship and meeting the boys and watching the white shore fall away, replaced by blue. But mostly what he remembers is seeing Pete. There was a gust; the foresail billowed, canvas snapping in the wind, and a man leapt onto the ratlines to secure the ropes.
He was laughing, Ray remembers, whether at an unheard joke or just the joy of setting sail. Pete hated killing but he loved the moments in between. He was laughing and it stopped Ray in his tracks. That broad bright grin. The spark in his eye like sunlight on the waves. The man’s arms were bare, the muscles stark and gleaming, and he scaled the lines with a grace like he could walk on air. He secured the foresail, shouted out to someone, and swung back down, landing neatly as a cat. He straightened up and his eyes slid over Ray, and then snapped back.
It took Ray a good three seconds to realize he’d been caught staring. He quickly averted his eyes, but it was too late.
“Hey.” It was just loud enough to carry over the ten paces between them, to be heard over the sea and the ship and the sails and the men. “We met before?”
They obviously hadn’t. The man’s voice was neutral but with an undercurrent to it, like a hand casually displayed near the hilt of a knife; he wanted to know why the fuck the new guy was staring and if it was going to be a problem and if he needed to quash that problem right now. All that was clear, and still the only thing Ray managed to blurt out was, “No, I’m—I’m Ray Garraty. You can call me Ray.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. He walked right up to the man and stuck out his hand.
The man’s eyebrows climbed. He’d tensed as Ray came forward; now his flinted eyes flicked from the hand to Ray’s face. Evidently he decided Ray was serious. He poked his tongue into his cheek, shook Ray’s hand—grip strong, palm broad and dry—and said, “Pete. Peter McVries.”
“Good to meet you, Pete,” Ray said helplessly.
“Sure,” Pete said. His mouth was starting to crook into a smile—a little perplexed but real. “Pleasure’s all mine.”
-
But it wasn’t. It was Ray’s as well. It was Ray’s so often and so intensely that it felt like he’d been drifting in the Doldrums all his life without knowing, without even knowing something so fundamental as a sea-wind wasn’t there. He’d been becalmed. Now: motion.
-
From the water to the dinghy to the shore to the ship is a fever dream, disjointed moments shuffling like cards: hitting the water with a jolt that rattles his bones, cutting desperately over to Pete, who was just barely managing to keep his head up, shouting for Baker—him and Baker dragging Pete up into the dinghy—climbing in after him and collapsing in a wet heap at the bottom—rowing hard as the Prize’s foremast snapped in half behind them, the sound echoing across the water like the first crack of a frozen Northern lake—reaching the marshy banks of the Cooper and being instantly swallowed by fog—and there, at last, the Rabbit’s Foot, her enormous silhouette arriving triumphantly around the marsh’s jutting hook, Hank fucking Olson monkeying down the rope ladder to help them up. By the time Ray’s half carrying Pete to the doctor’s cabin the sky is beginning to blue with coming dawn.
“Jesus, you really got him, Garraty!” Doc Pearson says, then catches the look on Ray’s face and wisely shuts his trap. He lays Pete out on the table and bustles around him in circles, cleaning the crusted blood off his skin and checking his nose and ribs and prodding his belly and inspecting his head and asking him questions like Any injuries you don’t remember getting? Any dizziness? Nausea or vomiting? Blood in the urine? Gut pains? Chest pains? Trouble on the shitter? to which Pete shakes his head silently, jaw tight.
Finally Doc Pearson says, “Well, McVries, we all knew you were a tough sonofabitch. You’ll be alright. I’ll have ol’ Barkers bring you some broth and water, and if you keep that down you can go back to eating regular tomorrow. Till then, doctor’s orders are to rest up—go on and take the bunk, it’s all yours. Keep an eye on him, Garraty, will ya? Good man. Now if you’ll excuse me, fellas, some of our other patients ain’t as hardy as McVries here. Ronnie’s got the shits like you wouldn’t fucking believe.” He picks up his bag and bustles out.
Then they’re alone, Pete sitting with his legs dangling off the table and Ray hovering frozen where he’s been for the last hour, waiting for some horrible prognosis that never came. Pete’s hunched into himself, shoulders rounded. He hates being doctored. One time Ray caught him trying to stitch up a cut on his own hip. He outright refused to see Doc Pearson, so Ray ended up doing the job for him. It was terrifying: not stitching up the simple cut, but touching him, his warm bare skin, holding him steady, kneeling at his feet.
“You don’t gotta keep an eye on me,” Pete says now, staring at the floor.
“Shut up,” Ray says, “shut up, you fuckin’ asshole, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up,” and crosses the cabin in two strides and sweeps him into a hug so hard it knocks the breath from both their chests. He shoves his face into the crook of Pete’s neck and squeezes him desperately, a grappler’s hold, clinging on with all his might. Pete’s stiff and shocked for a moment. Then all at once he hugs Ray back, clutching him round the middle, blunt fingernails scrabbling like he’s trying to claw his way inside.
Ray gasps—sobs. Pete smells sour even after their plunge in the sea. It’s remarkable for the fact that he’s normally a meticulous groomer, happily a little vain (and who could blame him!): his teeth, his skin, his hair, even under his fingernails. Ray gasps the ripeness in, fills himself of it. He crushes his mouth to Pete’s shoulder hard enough to hurt the both of them, teeth and lips on bone, presses there and moves and presses to the side of his throat, nose digging in, smearing snot and tears and spit.
“I’m fucking furious with you,” he chokes out.
Pete lets out a sharp breath. “Yeah. Knew you would be.”
“Then why’d you do it?” Silence. “Was it…was it ’cause you knew I’d come get you?”
“No,” Pete says, sounding startled. “No, Ray, I—I didn’t know that at all.” His lovely hands frame the sides of Ray’s head and lift it up like handling an animal, an ox or something. Pete’s face is wet. Ray didn’t realize he was crying. He makes a hurt noise when he sees it and rubs the tears away with his thumbs, and all the while Pete gazes at him, dark shiny eyes flicking all over his face. “Tell you the truth, Ray, I didn’t really think I’d ever see you again.”
“I don’t get it,” Ray says. “We coulda gone together. I coulda been with you.”
“You think I want you in a place like that?”
“You didn’t give me a choice. Fuck you. How could you—” His chest is tight, like all the hurt is knotted up inside it. “How could you—”
“Ray—”
“How could you leave me?” he says wildly. “You’re my—my brother, my—”
A rap on the door. They jerk apart. Pete scrubs his hands over his face and sniffs hard, trying to collect himself. Ray doesn’t bother. There’s nothing to be done in the next two seconds that’ll make it look like he hasn’t been in here, losing it over Pete.
Barkovitch ducks his yellow head in. “Broth ‘n’ water for the patient,” he mutters, resentful as always for being prevailed upon to do his fucking job. His pinkish rat’s eyes dart to Pete’s back, to Ray’s face, and skitter away.
Ray takes the bowl and waterskin with a curt nod. Barkovitch scowls and slinks out, shutting the door with a rattle, and Ray locks it behind him without thinking—or, rather, just thinking he doesn’t want Barkovitch sticking his nose in again—but when he brings the broth and water over, Pete’s looking at him sort of strangely.
“Here,” Ray says, feeling flush. “Here, Pete.”
Pete visibly tries to go slow, but the broth’s still gone in a matter of gulps. He gasps and wipes his mouth and grabs the waterskin, drinks deeply of it, head tipping back. His throat is shiny and brown-gold in the low candle flame, flexing in one long line, from the curves of his jaw to his Adam’s apple to the dip between his collarbones where sweat pools in the hot sun. Ray knows he’s staring the way he’s not supposed to be staring but Jesus, he can’t help it, can’t stop, not now. He can’t not look at Pete ever again, he thinks. Pete swishes water around his mouth and lowers the waterskin and Ray’s still looking. Pete’s mouth is wet. He’s got water dripping off his bottom lip, glinting in the patch of fuzz under his chin that never grows longer than a three-day beard no matter if he shaves it or not. Ray just adores him, is the thing. Ray just adores him.
He shuffles forward and pushes at Pete’s knees until he makes space for Ray to stand between them. He loops his arms around Pete’s back and holds him tight again, their chests and bellies flush, and presses the sides of their faces together and says, in a small voice, “I missed you. Pete, I missed you. I was—” Angry. “I was so—afraid.”
“Hey. Ray.” Pete touches his hair, tentative. When Ray holds still he starts to pet him, first gently, then working his fingers into Ray’s hair, stroking, picking at the tangles. He tugs a little and Ray shivers and slumps heavily against him, sighing. Pete takes a long, deep breath, his chest expanding against Ray’s.
“It’s okay,” Pete murmurs. “Ray. My—” Another breath. “My Ray, it’s alright.”
“It wasn’t.” Ray turns his head so his nose skims over Pete’s cheek. “You were gone; it wasn’t.”
“I just wanted you to be safe.”
“I wasn’t safe.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I really am. But I—I couldn’t let ‘em get you, Ray. Not you. The thought of you in that—cold place—when you’re so—” He shakes his head hard. “You can hate me, but I can’t take it back. I won’t.”
“Yeah? What if I’d been too late, huh? What if the plan hadn’t worked? You’d be a day in some sham fuckin’ trial and then—then you know what then. And what am I supposed to do? If you’re not here, what the fuck am I supposed to do, Pete?”
“Go on living—”
“Fuck you,” he says, voice quavering. “I’d walk straight to the jailhouse in Charles Town and turn myself in.”
Pete jerks back, as appalled as if Ray slapped him. “No the fuck you wouldn’t.”
“Pull another move like that and we’ll find out.”
“Ray, for fuck’s sake—”
“No!” he snaps. “No! You for fuck’s sake! You! You don’t get to fucking die for me! We die together or not at all!” He’s crying again. “Pete, please, if you like me even a little, you won’t do it again, you won’t. You’ll take me with you. Fuck, how would you feel if it was me? If I locked you in a room while they hurt me and took me away and you couldn’t stop it? And you knew I was going to my death? How would you feel?”
Pete’s face is bloodless.
“No, I mean it, answer me. How would you feel?”
He says finally, scraped-out, “I can’t imagine.”
“Well, a hundred times worse than that is how I felt.”
Pete’s expression wavers, strange. “A hundred times…. Ray, I don’t think that’s true.”
It is, but it’s fine. “Just please don’t,” Ray says pathetically, knuckling the tears out of his eyes, until Pete catches his wrist and does it for him, fingertips gentle. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make you promise. Please, please don’t.”
“I won’t. Come here. I won’t.”
He’s gathered up in Pete’s arms again, the hand back in his hair. “I kept—kept looking for you. At meal-times, on the ropes, at night—there was a school of whales—a yellow moon—I looked for you. I knew you were gone. But I’d—I’d forget, and I’d look, and then I’d remember. And I saw a future where we didn’t get you back. Where I’d keep looking—ten times, twenty times an hour—whenever there was a joke, whenever Hank was ridiculous, whenever Art was sweet, whenever a cloud looked like an animal, whenever I missed you—but you’d never be there, ’cause you wouldn’t be anywhere. You wouldn’t be anywhere in the world. I could search every room on every continent. I’d never find you. I’d never find you. And that future was—it was unbearable. Pete, I don’t—I know I’m not—I just want you to know. If I had to choose. I’d rather be walking to the gallows with you than free without you. I can’t think of a better last thing I could see.”
By the end of that Pete’s holding him very tight. He pets Ray’s hair and squeezes him with all his limbs, knees tight around his hips, and rubs his cheek against Ray’s head and says, after a long time, “Alright. I promise.”
It’s like he’s been carrying a lead coffin on his back for three weeks and now he’s shed it.
He leans his weight against Pete and luxuriates in the feel of Pete stroking his hair. He feels like a cat in the sun.
“Ray,” Pete murmurs. “You know I’d—you know I’d be looking for you too.” He winds a lock of Ray’s hair around his fingers. “...You came to get me.”
“‘Course I did.” He feels warm and indistinct, the edges of his body blurring like a shoreline into fog, its borders fraying, wisping. He could just spill right out of himself, he thinks, all over Pete. “And I won. I got you,” he says, slurring, not with the sloppy harshness of a drunk but like someone half asleep, half in a dream. “I went ‘n’ got you and now you’re back. ‘N maybe I’ll even forgive you someday.” He wriggles yet closer, sticking his hands up the back of Pete’s shirt to feel his smooth hot skin and the planes of his back, like Baker’s pencil-drawings of seagulls: the twin convex curves of wing dipping down to join with the body, in this case the spine. “Don’t hold your breath, though.”
Pete shudders. “How the hell’d this world make you, huh, Ray? How’d you happen, honey?” His mouth touches Ray’s hair above his ear. He’s got a firm hand on the scruff of Ray’s neck now. He brushes a kiss, recognizably a kiss, the shape his mouth makes, to Ray’s temple. “Missed you too,” he says. “You can’t—can’t even know.”
“I can too.”
“Okay, contrary.”
“Fuck you. I can,” Ray says, and kisses his cheek, the part that’s more hollow than usual, then his cheekbone, then the crease of his nose where his tears’ve dried tacky. “I think I can know it better than anyone in the world, Pete, don’t you? I haven’t slept in three weeks. I yelled at the Captain. I yelled at—um, a lot of the boys, if I’m honest. I was a nightmare, if I’m honest. You know what Collie said? He said: Fuck me, we gotta get McVries back, if only so he can call off his fuckin’ dog. And that was the only time I felt sane in three weeks, hearin’ him call me your dog.”
“Good God,” Pete says, and fists his other hand in Ray’s hair. Head buzzing, Ray tips his forehead against Pete’s cheek. It puts his nose right in front of Pete’s mouth and Pete kisses him there, on the bridge of it where it’s always sunburnt, under which the skin is so densely freckled it just looks tan. Pete kisses his nose again and Ray shifts and Pete kisses his mouth, glancing, accidental, until they open their mouths at the same time and push them together messy and Ray sobs. Pete sucks a kiss against him and pulls away with a noise like water smacking the hull and says, “Hey, hey, don’t cry. Don’t cry when I kiss you. Gonna set me off again, Ray, and I just stopped. Don’t cry, honey; you’ll break my heart.” He kisses Ray on his upper lip and teeth and says, in the voice he uses for no one but Ray, “You’ll break my heart.”
“I’m sorry,” Ray says thickly. “I’m sorry, I’m s—so—” He shakes his head and shoves his mouth against Pete’s. It’s not a kiss; it is, but it’s not, it’s the same thing his hands are doing, his stomach and heaving chest, it’s just trying to get inside, get back inside, like he was taken from Pete’s rib; it’s just trying to make it true, what the Captain said: how they’re two halves of one thing. He gasps for air and their tongues touch, hot and slick, and he feels it course through him to the soles of his feet. “Oh,” he moans, shocked, and touches his tongue to Pete’s again, and says, “Oh. Oh.”
“Come here,” Pete says, as if there’s anywhere else to go, and slides a wiry-strong arm around Ray’s back, the other hand still tight and gripping in his hair. He fits his mouth to Ray’s so firmly that when it opens it forces Ray’s open too, and their hot breaths crash and Pete strokes his tongue over Ray’s in a long broad lick like a cat grooming, and Ray goes from half-hard to desperately throbbingly hard in an instant. Pete tastes like salt and water. His bottom lip is rough and cracked, a texture like callouses on palms. His tongue is so—so hot.
Ray kisses him back clumsily, half on his teeth, and Pete catches his mouth and does something, it feels like sucking but it’s not, it’s a pressure, a nuzzling; it feels so good Ray jerks against him; he’s that startled. Pete moves his hips and it puts his cock against Ray’s belly and his cock is hard, in his thin dirty sea-stiffened trousers it’s hard, and the fabric’s still damp and cold from their impromptu swim but his cock is hot as blood, firm as a muscle; it feels like a heart wrapped in bandages. It rubs up on Ray’s navel like it knows it’s supposed to be in there. It could sink right home, glowing iron in water. He starts trembling. His whole pelvis feels liquid.
“Touch me,” Pete murmurs into his mouth, “feel me, I’m aching for you—”
Dizzily he takes a hand out from under Pete’s shirt and puts it on his thigh. The muscles jump. He can’t stop shaking. His mouth’s just hanging open, he realizes; he’s not kissing, and Pete’s noticed. Pete’s leaning back.
“Ray,” he says, “don’t take this the wrong way, but you ever done this before?”
He’s not even got the mind to be embarrassed. “No, no.”
“You ain’t never been with a man before?”
“I never been with anyone before.” He tries to get at Pete’s mouth and is held back by the hand in hair. He whines, but Pete doesn’t let up, and that makes Ray blink a few times and look at him.
Pete’s face for some reason is blank, a little cuffed-about-the-ears, sort of stunned and sort of like he’s holding something back on purpose. “You—” He wets his bottom lip, the pink tip of his tongue like candied rose-petal in a confectioner’s window, like dawn clouds. “You—never?”
“Um. No.” Now he is starting to get embarrassed. “Not, not really, no.”
“Not really?”
He tries to duck his head but Pete just tugs him right back up. “Pete,” he says, squirming. “Drop it.”
“I thought you had a girl. Before.”
Ray shrugs.
“You never fucked your girl?”
“Pete!” He’s shocked. Pete never talks about women like that. He’ll laugh along when other men do but he never joins in. Ray thought it was sort of noble, until one day he mentioned it to Olson and Olson said: Garraty, you fuckin’ dumbass, your boy’s a sodomite. You know where he goes when we make port, right? He goes to get buggered every fuckin’ which way. Jesus Christ. And Ray couldn’t look Pete in the eyes for a week. Picked a fight, even, a dumb argument. He just couldn’t stop thinking about Pete fucking men. Pete fucking men, and Ray not knowing. Not having any idea. He felt so—stupid, so betrayed. They were friends, weren’t they? Real friends. Yet the entire time Pete had been going off and—fucking men. And not telling Ray. Not telling him, so—so at least he’d know. At least he could’ve avoided feeling stupid.
“You never—not even at a whorehouse?”
“I said never, the hell do you think never means,” he mumbles.
“God,” Pete says, and kisses him like he can’t help it. He stays close, mouth moving warm against Ray’s as he says, “But you want me to kiss you.”
Ray’s exhale is shaky. He manages a nod.
“Lemme hear it.”
“Huh?”
“I wanna hear it. Lemme hear it.”
“I….”
Pete’s tongue dips into his mouth, touching the tip of his before retreating. Ray’s eyes flutter shut as they roll back in his head a little. How is it that just their tongues brushing makes him feel like he’s about to fucking come?
“I want you to kiss me,” he whispers.
“You want me to fuck you.”
“Oh, Pete, I….”
“Go on, be a good boy and lemme hear it.”
His breath comes faster. “Why?”
Pete looks at him. The way he’s sitting on the doctor’s table, with Ray standing between his thighs, reverses the usual difference in their heights: now Pete’s the slightly taller one, head tilted back to gaze down his nose at Ray. Then he leans forward and puts his mouth to Ray’s ear. “’Cause I want you to,” he says. “I want you to say it. I want you to hear yourself say it.”
“Say….”
“‘I want you to fuck me, Pete. I want you to put your cock in me, Pete.’”
“What—what else?”
Pete’s hand tightens in his hair, making him shudder. “Fuck. I want you to fuck my ass, my throat. I want you to take me on my belly, and on my back. I want your mouth on my tits, I want you to suck them like a husband sucks his wife’s—I want you to suck on my little tits, on my hot little nipples, and fuck me till I’m coming all over myself. I want you to come inside me and lick it all back out.”
“Oh,” Ray gasps. He’s panting, bright red, smearing like drool in his Navyman’s breeches. “Oh God—”
“Say it.”
“Fuck me. Fuck my ass, fuck my mouth.” He can’t remember all of it, his brain’s as hot and pulsing as his cock. “Take me—take me. Suck me. Suck on my tits. I want you. Come inside me. Lick me out, Pete, lick my pussy, please, fuck me, I want you to fuck me, I missed you, I missed you, I—”
Pete stops his mouth, a devouring kiss, deep eating motions starting at the jaw, strong thrusts of tongue like stoking coals. He grips Ray’s head in both hands and angles him the way he wants him, and thank God: it’s all Ray can do to let him in, to moan and shudder around him, to be thoroughly taken and to meet him tongue to tongue and lip to lip. Pete’s clever hands start working at Ray’s buttons, of which there are many more than usual; he’s already undone the dark blue jacket in the dinghy, hating the cling of wet wool, but beneath it there’s a white waistcoat and a black shirt under that. “I’ll lick your pussy,” Pete says, “I’ll lick you open, I’ll spread you, honey; I’ll come inside you till it’s dripping out and lick you nice and clean. That what you want? How ‘bout it?” He shoves the jacket off Ray’s shoulders and the shell-halves of the waistcoat and yanks at the shirt until the tiny black buttons go pinging everywhere. “God Almighty—your pussy! You’ll knock a man dead, Ray, where’d that even come from?”
“I dreamt it,” he moans, dazed—lightheaded, the rush of working your lungs to their limit and then coming up for air. His cock is so hot and fat in his breeches. He can’t stop rubbing it against the table. “I dreamt I was a—a girl in the houses, only I wasn’t, I wasn’t a girl, I was me, but—but you came and—and paid and—and I took you upstairs and—”
“Tell me, tell me.”
“And you—told me to get on the bed and—and lift my s-skirts and—Jesus, you kissed me there. You kissed me like it was my mouth.”
Pete pauses in undoing the front of Ray’s breeches and drops his head to Ray’s newly bared shoulder and heaves a breath. “You really dreamed that?”
“I woke up and I’d…I just had to hope no one noticed.”
Pete’s mouth opens against his shoulder in a silent moan. He turns it to a kiss smeared across Ray’s collarbone. His hand comes up to cover a breast, the pale nipple right at the center of his palm. He rubs a thumb over the upper swell, where it rises and falls with Ray’s breath, and turns his face further to look: at his own hand on Ray’s breast. Ray presses his mouth to Pete’s hair and breathes him in, sour and unwashed, the skin at his hairline greasy with sweat, and shakily undoes the buttons of Pete’s shirt while Pete gropes at him, pinching and rolling his nipple between finger and thumb, tugging lightly at it, working it to a peak. It’s like there’s a nerve—hell, maybe there is—running directly from his nipple to the root of his cock and Pete is plucking it like a string, zingy vibrations thrumming through him.
No one ever touched me there before, he almost says, but it’s not true. The few times he got further than chaste kissing with Jan, she’d put her hands on his chest to steady herself, she being in his lap. She hadn’t played with him like this—nor he with her, not under the clothes at least—but she’d touched him, and he remembers feeling a bit girlish about it. His tits, flattened under her hands.
Maybe it’s not true to the letter, but it is at heart. He says, “N—No one ever touched me there before.”
“You’ll kill me,” Pete says at once, “you’ll kill me,” and lips his way down to take Ray’s breast into his mouth. His cheeks hollow; he seems to be trying to fit as much of it in as he can. The sight of his nose pressed to the flushed, freckled curve, his eyelashes two dark sweeps, his expressive brow drawn up in helpless pleasure, for some reason has Ray back to the brink of crying. Then Pete slides off him, leaving the skin pink and shiny-wet, and laps at him and suckles at his nipple.
“Oh, fuck—hhah—”
Flicks it with his tongue. Plucks at the other one in time, squeezing the breast, and it’s—Ray humps his cock against the sharp edge of the table and comes, in long shuddering pulses, grabbing at Pete’s head and pushing his breast harder, harder, against his hungry mouth. Pete’s moaning, muffled; Ray is silent, not even breathing, his whole body a fist, clenched up—and then releasing.
He slumps forward when it’s over, lax and spent. Pete’s arms come up around his shoulders. He’s murmuring in a tone Ray generally associates with gentling horses. He’s petting Ray’s hair.
With effort Ray lifts his head and blindly finds Pete’s mouth. He kisses him, licks into him the way he wasn’t bold enough to do before. He kisses him the way Pete kissed the slick dark parts between his thighs in his strange dream: like eating a peach, a mango, sealing your lips against its flesh and pressing your tongue forward to collect the juice before it dribbles down your chin. Spit drips between them anyway.
“Sorry,” Ray whispers after a minute, ears hot.
“Hm? What for?”
“For, y’know.”
Pete kisses him soundly.
“But will you—will you still—the things you said?”
“God,” Pete says. “You know, Ray, I’m starting to think I’m still on a Navy ship, and this is all a dream. I ain’t never seeing Heaven, but I dream about you all the time.”
Ray flinches away. “That’s not fucking funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“You’re not on that ship. You’re here.”
“Hey—hey, I know. I know. I’m sorry.” He hugs Ray to him. “Hey, I know this is real ’cause of how bad my ass hurts.”
“What!” Ray wriggles out of his arms. “Why didn’t you say!”
“Man, it’s not broken, it just hurts. I been sitting on it for three weeks, that’s all.”
“Well, Jesus shit, Pete, there’s a bed.”
Pete blinks at him a little. “I suppose there is.”
“C’mon, then.” In response he gets a shifty look. “What—what?”
“Nothin’,” Pete says, and slides off the table and immediately buckles. Ray manages to catch him before he hits the floor: a feat he will be privately proud of for the next six weeks at minimum. “God damn it, okay, it was somethin’.”
“Mr. McVries,” Ray says severely.
Pete loops his arms around Ray’s neck like this was his ploy all along. “Mr. Garraty.”
“Man, do I need to get Doc Pearson?”
“Fuck no. You wanna help me? Get me outta these clothes. That’s a bed over there, not just a hammock. I won’t dirty it up…alone.” He does his ticky laugh that makes him sound like a bird with a bad cold.
“Jesus,” Ray says, blushing furiously, and hugs him and rocks him side to side in place.
Together they pull Pete’s shirt up and over his head and peel him out of his damp trousers, Ray holding him steady and providing shoulders to brace on. Then Pete is standing in the warm flickering light, bare as the day he was born, and Ray’s seen him naked before, it’s impossible not to with the way the crew all live in each other’s asses, but not like this. His cock is thick and full and sticking straight out. His other scar is like a vein from throat to heart. He steps in and presses the whole length of his body to Ray’s, their bare chests melding, sticking. “Alright. Your turn.”
Ray fumbles his breeches off, the mess at his crotch cooled and jelled and stringing in his nest of hair. Pete stays draped against him the whole time, hands drifting over his back, his sides, his belly. Their bare cocks brush, Ray’s mostly soft, making them both shiver.
“Hey,” Pete says, nosing at Ray’s jaw.
“Hi.”
“Missed you.”
Ray’s eyes prick. “Yeah. I really, really missed you.” He helps Pete to the narrow bunk in the corner, tips him onto the mattress and watches him wince and wince harder when he stretches his legs out.
“I’m fine, Ray, honest,” he says. “Just stiff is all.” He leers. “You wanna be my doctor? Help me loosen up?”
Ray huffs and joins him on the bed. “Scoot over. I swear to God if you got some horrible injury and you don’t tell me ’cause you’re horny and you hate Doc Pearson.”
“I don’t hate Doc Pearson.”
“Right.”
“…He’s too friendly.”
“Too friendly, right.”
“I’m just saying! He’s annoying.”
“I’m friendly and annoying and you like me just fine.”
“You ain’t that friendly.” Pete sniffs.
It dawns on Ray. He pushes up on his elbows and stares at Pete in astonishment. “Are you jealous?”
“No,” he says, and then, “I think he could stand to be less obsessed with you,” and then, “I’m obsessed with you for good and honorable reasons.”
“Like what?” Ray is fascinated.
“Like I damn know you!” He sounds so offended. “If he knew you like I do he’d be insufferable, Ray. I tell you, I’d be beatin’ him off with a stick.”
Ray hides his face in Pete’s chest and laughs and laughs. “You don’t hafta beat him off with a stick.”
“Maybe not yet.”
“Him or anyone else.” Pete’s hands falter where he’s been stroking Ray’s back, smoothing warm palms over his bare skin. But he doesn’t stop, and it makes Ray brave. “I get jealous of you ‘n’ Collie,” he says into the divot of Pete’s sternum.
“Me and—Parker? Really?”
“Mm.”
“There’s no need to be.”
“Alright.”
Pete’s heart pumps strongly under Ray’s cheek, steadied from its wild thumping but still quicker than is normal. “Him or—or anyone else.”
Ray draws in a breath and holds it till his lungs ache. “Alright.”
“…I never thought you went for sodomy.” Pete’s voice is very quiet.
“I never thought you went for me.”
“Of course I do.” Strangely almost wounded.
“Well…. Sometimes I think my heart must be a mirror of yours, or yours of mine. So whatever is in one is in the other.”
Pete abruptly stops stroking his back. When Ray looks up, his hands are covering his face. His chest hitches once, tamped down, his body tense. He’s silent otherwise.
After a minute or two, Ray adds thoughtfully, “Although, I don’t know if I count as a sodomite yet. I haven’t been sodomized.”
“Fuck,” Pete chokes out, a laugh and a sob, and scrubs at his face and pulls Ray into a kiss that goes on and on, their bodies twining together in the center of the narrow bunk. Hugging, on their sides and naked. Pete’s warm bare skin is everywhere. He seems to like touching his tongue to Ray’s with every parting of their mouths, sometimes gently and sometimes sweepingly—tilting his head and stroking luxuriously through Ray’s mouth—and sometimes in a hard hot thrust like he wants to fuck every part of Ray with every part of himself.
Ray never spared a thought to the act of kissing, never conceived of it as fucking in its own right and not just a sort of lead-in to be quickly abandoned in pursuit of more obvious pleasures. He finds himself now thoroughly diverted. He’s not sure if it’s always like this, but kissing Pete both blurs his mind and sharpens all his senses: touch, of course, his hands on skin, and taste—the salt-tastes of broth and seawater long gone, Pete tastes like mouth-at-rest, like breath and spit, and Ray can’t stop thinking his tongue, his tongue’s on mine—and smell—the sourness, thick and delicious proof of life, and under it the warm scent of his skin—and sound—his breaths, his body shifting on the straw mattress, the slick catchings of their mouths, and most of all the quiet noises Ray’s desperately trying to draw from his throat—and sight—he keeps sliding his eyes open just to see Pete’s brow furrowed an inch from his own—
Pete’s looking back. They both blink, startled, and Pete snorts, but to Ray it’s not funny at all, not yet: that he can open his eyes and find Pete looking back. He feels desperate all of a sudden, single-minded, like he’s back on the Prize being led through her corridors and not knowing what he’ll find at the end. He grabs Pete’s face and kisses him and pulls back and drinks him in, his dear face, Peter, Peter, dark pretty eyes and crooked mouth and scar, his chin and jaw just visibly flushed near-purple from the beard Ray hasn’t bothered to trim in three weeks. Ray kisses him and looks at him and kisses him again and looks at him again, and between the lookings Pete’s expression goes from hungry to bewildered to guarded. Not only guarded. Shy. He says, “Stop it.”
Ray lets go of him. “Sorry. Sorry.”
But Pete says at once, “I didn’t mean that. Fuck. I didn’t mean it, Ray,” and pulls him in again. Emboldened, Ray’s hand finds its way to Pete’s cock, hot velvety skin drawn full and tight under his fingertips. Structurally it’s just a prick, no different from his own, but it’s Pete’s and as such alien and gorgeous—and the way Pete’s reacting to his touch—minute reactions, little shifts and arches, hitching breaths…. He skritches his fingers in Pete’s pubic hair and rubs and pets his balls. And Pete takes him in hand in return, and they’re kissing and lightly playing with each other and it’s the most wonderful thing Ray’s ever felt. Until Pete shudders and says, “I wanna be inside you,” and then that is.
“Yeah,” Ray says breathlessly, “yeah yeah yeah, Pete, do it—”
He expects—based on glances down dark alleys, dirty pictures—for Pete to turn him over right then and stick his cock in. Instead he brings up a hand between their faces and presses two fingers to Ray’s lips. “Open up.” Confused but obedient, Ray opens his mouth. The fingers slide, salty, over his tongue. “Good,” Pete says. “Now get ‘em wet.”
He makes a questioning noise.
“Even a virgin like you,” Pete says, not unkindly, “must know a cunt gets all wet when it wants something. A cock or a hand or a tongue. But your cunt”—Ray’s eyelids flutter—“ain’t never done this before. It don’t know how. So we’re gonna teach it how.”
Ray pulls off of Pete’s fingers, trailing spit. “Oh fuck, you don’t—you don’t hafta—” His face is burning, he’s burning all over.
“You think just ’cause I fuck men means I don’t want your cunt?”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“I just want you,” Pete says, plainly, and bites his lip. He puts his fingers back at Ray’s mouth and Ray sucks them in, pooling his spit so Pete can scoop it up. His cock bobs between their bodies like a red tubular creature in a tide pool.
“Get a leg up on me,” Pete says after a moment, and draws one of Ray’s thighs up over his hip.
It spreads him. He’s acutely aware of how naked he is; he can feel the sweat cooling on the backs of his balls and in his asscrack, exposed to air. Pete takes his fingers out of Ray’s mouth and reaches around and gently pets over his asshole and presses a fingertip inside.
Ray jerks like he’s been struck. He instantly starts panting. It feels like everything behind his navel just turned to wobbling jelly.
“Wait,” he says, frantic, “wait, what if it’s, y’know—dirty—”
“You think I give a fuck? I’m sure it is.”
“Oh, my God.” He hides his face in Pete’s neck.
“Just won’t lick my damn fingers after. Jesus, I don’t care.” He’s working the finger in deeper, little nudging motions. It sort of itches and feels weird, not bad but not good either. “Fuck me, you’re tight. Do you shit string?”
Ray moans, “What the fuck.”
“Moment we get to Nassau I’m buying oil. Hey, you don’t suppose the doc’s got oil in here?”
“Um.” He can barely think. “Um, I don’t, um—tinctures?”
“The fuck is a tincture?”
“Herbs. In, in oil I guess. He might have oil, I dunno. Oh Pete.”
“Go look in his cupboard.”
“What—now?”
“Yes now. You’re so—so tight. I just wanna make it good for you. Go on.”
Ray makes an incoherent noise and gets up on watery legs and paws through Doc Pearson’s medicine cupboard until he finds a bottle with plain oil in it. When he looks over Pete’s watching him, gaze hot and dark as smoke. His body in the lantern-light looks like it’s carved from gleaming wood. Ray gets back into position, curled into Pete with his leg hitched up. His cock’s so hard he can see and feel his heartbeat ticking in it. “C’mon,” he says bravely, as Pete pours oil onto his spit-wet fingers, “c’mon, Pete, you made all those big promises, when are you gonna—uhhhnn…”
With the oil Pete’s finger sinks in all at once. It’s strange; Ray’s body clamps around it, not used to being open there. But the moment he goes lax, it’s not enough. The slender intrusion of a finger is like drinking water when you’re starving: it fills you up but not the way you want. He works his hips experimentally for more. Pete’s saying something but Ray can’t make it out through the pulsing in his ears. A second finger, a slick push, and now a spark of pain: a slight burn at the rim of his asshole where the skin is tightest. But it just swirls into the rest of it, satisfying, like the ache of stretching a sore muscle.
Everything narrows as Pete opens him up. Ray’s got his eyes closed, his forehead pressed to Pete’s temple, just deep-breathing against his cheek. After an unknown time he realizes they’re no longer on their sides; Pete’s on his back and Ray’s crawled on top of him, thighs spread wide over his lap. He opens his mouth to ask if it’s alright and what comes out is a rasping moan.
“I know,” Pete says, “I know, I know what you need. I’ll give it to you.”
But his fingers slide out. “No,” Ray keens, “no, no, no.”
“Just for a second. Just for a second, I swear. Fuck me, I can’t believe nobody ever fucked you before, you’re made for it—” Oil drizzles directly onto Ray’s asshole. Pete’s fingers push it into him before it can drip down to his balls and then keep fucking into him, sinking into his body harder now, over and over, relentless. “You feel that?” Pete says roughly. “You feel how wet you are? You hear it?” He pulls out and taps his fingers over the outside of Ray’s asshole, wet little clicks. “You hear how slick your pussy is?”
“Pete, Jesus Christ—”
“It’s running down your thighs and I ain’t even fucked you yet. God—I wanna lick it off, I’ve thought about it, I—I try not to, but Ray, half the time you’re sleeping next to me I got thoughts in my head of my mouth on your cunt. Yeah? Yeah. Shit. Licking over you all deep and slow. ’Cause Ray, you need it, I can fucking tell, I always wanted to tell you: just let me do it, honey, c’mere and get up on me, I’ll make you feel so God damn good. First time I ever saw you. I thought he’s got kind eyes. I—I want him to keep looking at me.” His fingers touch something in Ray that sends a bolt of pleasure through him so intense it leaves him lightheaded, hips shivering uncontrollably. “There you go,” Pete says, “yeah, there you go, you like that? Like it Ray? I knew you would. Oh God, I wanna feel you come against my face. I wanna suck your pussy till you wet yourself—”
“Pete, stop, I can’t, ‘m’onna—” Ray hears himself being fingerfucked. It’s obscene. He’s squirming, riding Pete’s thigh in desperate doglike humps, cock drooling. He’s so close it feels like he’s about to piss. “Just fuck me, man, please, God, I want it, I want it—”
Pete kisses him; they moan into each other’s mouths. He pulls his fingers out and grabs Ray’s hips in both hands, one greasy with oil. In one slick movement like the sheathing of a knife he bears Ray down and fucks his cock inside. Ray starts coming immediately, like it’s being pushed out of him, in hard pulses all over Pete’s belly and chest. “Oh Ray,” Pete says, in a stunned voice, “oh, oh Ray,” and grips the backs of his thighs and fucks him, cock pulling almost all the way out and then fucking deeply back in with every stroke. Ray feels half-conscious, animal and shameless; he braces up, trembling, just enough to feed a breast into Pete’s mouth, to let him suck and tongue at it, face rapturous and glossed with sweat, throat craning.
“Fuck me,” Ray says, “Pete, fuck me, fuck me,” and nonsensically, “I can’t stop coming—”
He shakily reaches down between their bellies and swipes his fingers through his own come, smears it over his nipple for Pete to lick off. Pete stares at him, eyes black, and does, sticks out his come-streaked tongue. Ray wriggles down and rolls their tongues together and reaches back and smears the rest of his spend all over Pete’s balls and the base of his cock where it’s stretching Ray’s rim. Pete makes a crazy noise. His cock throbs; Ray can feel it. Pete’s hips start rabbiting in hard deep fucks that Ray just takes and takes; it’s like Pete said, he’s made for it, he’s made for it. His face is hot and wet, he’s crying silently. He’s so full everywhere, but he can hold it all; he’s made for it. He was made to be exactly whatever Pete wants. By God or by nature or simply by himself.
“Come in me, Peter, I love you,” he says blurrily, “I love you, I’ve loved you—”
Pete goes silent when he comes, cock fucking in the deepest yet and stilling. He’s clutching at Ray like they’re dying, arms tight around his back. Ray experiences the very strange sensation of being filled with a man’s semen: it’s so hot, he knows it’s thicker than water but it feels like hot water inside him, or like blood. It just keeps pulsing out. It warms him. He’s so full.
He mouths at Pete’s jaw, lazy, until at last Pete’s cock stops twitching and his hold on Ray begins to loosen. His chest is heaving. He is trembling: his hands and thighs. It’s another long moment before he turns his face toward Ray’s and opens his eyes.
He’s so handsome. He looks young and sweet and wondering, a little awed, a little raw.
“Can we stay like this?” Ray says. “For now?”
Pete hums and blinks once, slow. “...I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No, uh-uh.”
“That’s good.”
“You’re good,” Ray says. “You’re good. Of course you didn’t.”
Pete’s arm shifts under him. The hand that isn’t covered in oil comes up to stroke Ray’s hair, brushing his sweaty bangs off his forehead. Ray’s watching him the whole time, so he sees it when Pete’s mouth trembles and his nostrils start flaring, trying not to cry. Ray nudges into his touch and closes his eyes and thinks I love you I love you I love you, I’ll love you all my days. Maybe later he’ll make it beautiful for Pete, who loves every poem Ray’s got memorized and when all the men are singing. Maybe later he’ll say something about silence and loneliness, rage and grief and desire; how all these things fill an empty chest as well as any heap of gold. Something about red. His blood, his want. For now there’s only the raw heart of the thought, no flowers. I love you. I love you. He doesn’t say it aloud again, but he lets it show on his face. He feels it warm his features like a candle-light brought close. And Pete, who has always known him, tips their foreheads together and nods, and says hoarsely, and very quietly, “Yeah.”
They stay like that for a long time, drifting in and out of sleep. Ray knows they’ll have to get up eventually, work minor miracles to make themselves look less fucked-out, emerge to the sea air and the crew and the open horizon, the course set for Nassau. But for now the door is locked and no one’s knocking, and Pete is alive, Ray got him back, and there’s no reason to take his eyes off him just yet.
END.
