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“My aim’s fine, Mr. Hickey. I’ve shot smaller hawks than you.”
It’s a stretch to even call the weaselly caulker’s mate a hawk. A rat, more like, like the greasy, squeaking ones Thomas used to chase out of the captain’s storeroom on Terror . He keeps his mouth shut, though, refusing to stoop even further than he already has.
The rustling of fabric has Thomas glancing in the weasel’s direction. He regrets it immediately. Hickey’s splayed out on the dirty mattress like he’s lounging by the seaside, one arm slung lazily behind his head, the other creeping steadily down the front of his trousers. A sneer curls his lip, creases the sides of his eyes.
A wave of disgust overwhelms Thomas and he looks away. Disgust encompasses much of what he has felt for Hickey as of late. Disdain. Not wanting to give Hickey the satisfaction of feeling anything in particular about him, Thomas retreats behind his characteristically placid expression. He hopes Hickey will simply run out of steam, like a petulant child will when ignored.
Has ignoring the little rat ever discouraged him, though? When Thomas found Hickey and the willowy officers’ steward skulking out of a dark corner belowdecks, Hickey hadn’t blushed in shame, had instead leered up at Thomas, challenging him to reprimand him. When Thomas caught Hickey looking the marine sergeant up and down at the washbasins, he hadn’t frozen like a rat in a trap, had rather held Thomas’s eye as he stripped his own shirt. No, the more Thomas ignores him, the more it invigorates him.
When minutes go by and the rustling of fabric is replaced with the sound of flesh on flesh, accompanied by an increasingly heavier breath, Thomas’s revulsion overcomes his feigned indifference.
“You’re making a fool of yourself, Mr. Hickey,” Thomas says, grip tightening on the rifle in his lap. “Anyone could come in.” His voice is tighter than he’d like, less polished. He immediately wishes he hadn’t said a word as he practically hears the rat’s smile broadening.
“Oh, yes,” Hickey agrees breathlessly. “Crozier, even, to whisk me away to the gallows.”
Thomas feels his eye twitch at the blatant insubordination. Hickey refusing to call Thomas by his proper title, that he can stomach. But to allow this mutinous refusal to owe his captain what he’s due? No, that wouldn’t be conduct befitting a good steward— a good lieutenant , now, he reminds himself.
“Touched a nerve there, did I?” Hickey croons.
Thomas’s stomach flips. He silently damns his body’s betrayal. “I haven’t the faintest clue what you mean.”
Filthy, slick sounds accompany the slow stroke of Hickey’s fist. “Course— ‘course you don’t. Crozier’s pretty little steward,” he breathes. “Sorry, pretty little lieutenant …”
Thomas can feel the rat’s glittering black eyes on him, vying for a reaction. It’s abhorrent, really, this desperate plea for attention.
A whimper, then, high-pitched and keening. Bile rises in Thomas’s throat as heat floods his cheeks.
“Steward, lieutenant, lapdog … it’s all the same to him, isn’t it?” Hickey pauses, always theatrical, letting out a contented sigh. “Tell me, Jopson,” he continues, a nasty sneer creeping into his tone, “when he has his way with you, do you blush as pretty for him as you’re doing for me now?”
Thomas grits his teeth so hard he thinks they might crack, then forces his lips into a placid smile. He finally casts his gaze upon Hickey.
“That’s quite enough, Mr. Hickey. I’ll remind you which one of us is holding the gun in this tent.”
Hickey’s cheeks are flushed, mouth half-open as he looks coquettishly up at Thomas through his lashes. Thomas’s eyes flicker inadvertently to the hand moving in his trousers. His own hand clenches the rifle, shifts it around in his lap, revulsion jolting through him when it brushes against his groin.
“A shame— ah— that Crozier isn’t here, really.” Hickey accompanies this with a wanton sound that sends a shudder down Thomas’s spine. He despises the way his captain’s name sounds when accompanied by this detested man’s ecstasy.
Thomas’s finger slips over the trigger. He might save his captain the trouble of exterminating the loathsome little rodent, and end this here and now. He might put a blessful end to the vulgar pants coming from Hickey’s lips, from which Thomas cannot tear his eyes away.
“A damn— shame,” Hickey continues, words punctuated by breathy gasps, “I’d so like— for him to see you watching me like this, his favorite pet— despoiled .”
The opposite of attraction, Thomas discovers then, is not, in fact, disgust.
Shame and arousal pooling hot in his gut, Thomas launches himself upwards, grabbing Hickey’s arms and pinning them behind his back in one fluid motion. The man’s slender wrists fit neatly in one of Thomas’s roughened hands and he squeezes, cruelly, revelling in the protesting squeak he wrenches from Hickey in doing so.
Thomas brings his lips to the shell of Hickey’s ear. “I’m going to release one of your hands, Mr. Hickey,” he intones, with another mean twist of the man’s pinned arms, “and you’re going to remove your braces.”
Hickey squirms against him like a rat in a trap as Thomas hauls him to his feet. The feeling of the caulker’s mate’s wiry body against his elicits a simultaneous surge of revulsion and a twitch of his prick in his smallclothes.
“That’s right,” says Thomas as Hickey’s protestations turn half-hearted. He lets one of his hot little hands go, which he belatedly realizes is still slick with fluid. Surprisingly, Hickey unclasps one of his braces without much outward objection. His trousers sag, revealing a jutting hipbone and a strip of pale white flesh, paler even than the skin on his wrists, now dotted with bruises in the shape of Thomas’s fingerprints. A raised, reddened scar marks the alabaster skin of Hickey’s backside. Thomas’s own back aches in answer.
“What are you going to do with me, Jopson?” Hickey asks. Thomas despises the hint of mirth creeping into his voice. “Tie me up and flog me again?”
In response, Thomas wrenches the brace from Hickey’s grasp. With practiced ease, he ties Hickey’s hands behind his back, the knot tighter than perhaps necessary.
He chuckles, though it comes out rougher than was his intent. The image of Hickey bent over, legs spread, tied down, makes the same lightning bolt of arousal shoot through him as did that night on Terror . A speck of Hickey’s blood had landed on his shirtsleeve. Though the stain would have been easy enough to remove with some soap and warm water, Thomas hadn’t elected to do so.
“No,” Thomas says, giving the knot one finishing tug. “You’d like that too much.”
“And you wouldn’t?”
To his horror, Thomas feels Hickey palm him through his trousers, where his prick is achingly, shamefully hard. Any plausible deniability of his intentions disappears along with his integrity as Hickey wrenches a pitiful moan from deep within him.
“That’s what I thought,” Hickey snickers, fingers trailing over the incriminating bulge. “ Lieutenant Jopson, singing for me like a dockside whore. Do you give it up this easily for all the offic—”
And then Thomas is jerking the caulker’s mate around to face him, and a sharp crack echoes through the tent as Thomas’s open palm meets the skin of Hickey’s cheek.
Up until now, he wasn’t certain what he was going to do once he had the little weasel tied up, but Thomas has never started a task he didn’t intend to finish.
Hickey’s mouth falls open in disbelief, his cheek coloring a darling shade of pink. Thomas takes advantage of his disorientation and pushes him down, bony knees colliding roughly with the shale beneath the tent floor.
This is an ill-advised course of action, Thomas thinks distantly as he holds Hickey down with one hand and feverishly undoes his flies with the other, but the little rat is finally, blessedly silent.
Thomas shivers as he threads his fingers through Hickey’s greasy blond locks, as he feeds his cock into Hickey’s waiting mouth. He holds the other man’s head in place as he thrusts in, not awarding him the decency to move at his own pace. He feels the head of his prick bump against the back of Hickey’s throat and it contracts around him deliciously.
Hickey is well-practiced, Thomas realizes. He breathes calmly through his nose, barely gagging as Thomas fucks deep into him. Thomas spares a glance downwards, and despite the tears in the corners of Hickey’s eyes, despite the mess of spit dripping down his chin, despite the painful death-grip Thomas has on his hair — Hickey smiles up at him, sharp teeth brushing the skin of his prick.
Thomas swears, low in his throat — he’s never particularly vocal — but this sight draws it out of him. He pistons his hips, setting an unforgiving pace, undoubtedly bruising the back of Hickey’s throat. His head tips back in pleasure as he feels Hickey convulse around him.
Hickey moans then, sending vibrations up Thomas’s cock. When he looks back down, Hickey’s hips are moving, rutting against Thomas’s boot. He doesn’t stop under Thomas’s disgusted gaze, shamelessly seeking his own pleasure like a dog in heat. His trousers have come down even further and the head of his prick protrudes, flushed and swollen, leaking onto the polished leather of Thomas’s boot.
“You disgusting rat ,” Thomas scoffs, withdrawing his boot from Hickey’s reach.
Hickey smiles and bites him.
A gasp is punched out of Thomas’s chest as a white-hot flash of pain surges through him. “ Fuck — Hickey—”
He forces a thumb into Hickey’s grinning mouth, yanking his jaw open and withdrawing himself before Hickey can sink his teeth in further.
Hickey blinks up at him, the very picture of innocence, but for his spit-smeared lips and undone trousers. Thomas wants to slap that expression off of his face, but doesn’t currently trust any appendages near his mouth. He has half a mind to retrieve his rifle and shove it down Hickey’s throat, loaded, finger on the trigger, watching him squirm as he brings himself off with the other hand.
“Best not do that again,” Thomas says, voice hoarse. “Unless the next thing you want in your mouth is the barrel of a gun.”
Hickey’s hips twitch, prick bobbing aimlessly in the air. A pitiful whine escapes his lips and Thomas realizes he’s barely plumbed the depths of this rat’s depravity.
“What were you hoping to gain from this, Mr. Hickey?” Thomas continues. “To worm your way into my head?”
Hickey cocks his head then, like a dog with a bone. “Have you ever been flogged, Jopson?” he manages. His voice cracks. Any satisfaction Thomas might get from that dissolves when Hickey’s gaze travels to Thomas’s side, knowing he has spotted the bloodstain there.
Thomas was a good, observant steward. He’s watched Hickey for years now. There’s never a cracked door that the little weasel doesn’t blithely barge through when he gets the chance.
1841. Antarctica. Thomas Jopson, captain’s steward, is lashed for drunkenness while on duty.
He feels those lashes, all thirty-six of them, every day now that the scurvy has begun to dissolve the web of silvery scar tissue covering his back.
Hickey thinks they’re the same, Thomas realizes with a shock of revulsion. Two weeds growing out of the same trodden pavement, two men who have felt the same captain’s lash.
Thomas takes Hickey by the nape of his neck then, bending himself nearly in half so that their faces are level. His voice is rough, unpolished. “I’d take those lashes twice over if it means I get to tie the noose around your neck with my own two hands, Mr. Hickey,” Thomas hisses. He straightens and returns his boot to its original place, to the juncture of Hickey’s thighs. He presses down hard, harder than would be enjoyable, but Hickey does not seem to mind, brows furrowing and arching into the contact.
“The same— ah— pleasure you might have gotten from my flogging?” He looks up at Thomas, darkened eyes fixed on his. “Your darling captain probably got from yours .”
When Thomas goes rigid, Hickey leans forward, mouth open, and licks a stripe up the underside of Thomas’s half-mast prick. It returns to attention with alarming speed, especially as Hickey squirms uncomfortably beneath the increasing pressure of Thomas’s boot.
“Did you put on a show for him?” Hickey swirls his tongue against the head of Thomas’s cock, then pulls off again. “Did you make a spectacle of yourself, in front of the entire crew—”
Thomas cuts him off there, mercilessly fucking into his hot, slick mouth, and Hickey flattens his tongue for him. Obscene, wet sounds escape his spit-slick lips, accompanied by breathy gasps as he ruts against Thomas with increasing ferocity.
Thomas closes his eyes, envisioning his captain appearing at the lip of the tent, arms crossed, eyebrow raised in amusement. He knows this expression, this gaze well. Each thrust into the wet heat of Hickey’s mouth is as sharp as the crack of the cat o’ nines. His captain’s hawklike gaze follows each movement, takes in each lewd choking sound that emerges from the rat’s mouth.
That’s a good lad , his captain would say, a refrain of the words he spoke to Thomas years before. You’re doing so well .
Thomas brings a gloved hand to his mouth, stifles a moan as he thinks of that intimately familiar rumbling brogue urging him on. It is Hickey’s hands that are bound at the wrist now, Hickey who is stretched out and at their mercy. Crozier lashed obedience into Thomas; he lashed it into Hickey once before and Thomas, good , dutiful Thomas, wouldn’t allow his captain to degrade himself by having to do it again.
His hips jerk erratically, he clamps his hand desperately over his mouth as keening whimpers are drawn from him. For his captain, he’ll gladly stoop to the rodent’s level, gladly drown in the same filth as Hickey, gladly, gladly —
He feels Hickey’s tongue against the underside of his cockhead, and then he’s done for, he fists a handful of blond hair and shoots off down Hickey’s throat, feels the other man’s whiskers scrape the soft skin of his inner thighs. His hips stutter once, twice, and he dimly realizes that Hickey is shuddering similarly and spilling over his boot and the cuff of his pants, he’ll have to clean that up—
Thomas comes back to his senses a moment later, and with them, the ever-present cold wash of disgust that chills him to his very bones in the presence of Mr. Hickey. The man remains kneeling at Thomas’s feet, eyes glittering with indignance, and he maintains eye contact as he clears his throat, then spits Thomas’s release onto the floor.
“Was that the worst you could do?” he asks, breathing hard, chin smeared with spittle.
Thomas redoes his flies, buttons up his greatcoat. He daintily wrinkles his nose at Hickey’s seed congealing on his boot, but other than that, forces his expression back into the ever-present mask of detached professionalism. Turmoil on the inside needn’t show on the outside. Doing the most to still his heaving chest, to steady his weak knees, he wipes his boot on Hickey’s already-filthy blanket.
“Clean yourself up,” Thomas says, resuming his position at the lip of the tent. He aims the rifle squarely at Hickey’s chest, as if the past fifteen minutes had never happened.
“How do you suggest I do that?” Hickey sneers, hands still tied firmly behind his back.
“I’m not your fucking steward.” Thomas’s tone is as pleasant as he can make it. “Figure it out.”
Later, when Thomas places the noose around Hickey’s neck, when he tightens it like he would a captain’s cravat, the scars on his back ache.