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"Are you much repelled, Stephen?"
"Never in life, joy. I had supposed that it was you who would be dismayed."
It was true that Jack loved women. No one could miss his brightening expression when in the presence of any handsome woman. Still, Maturin was unsurprised that Jack was a true sailor, enjoying congress both "fore and aft." Stephen savored the nautical expression to himself. Fore and aft.
Jack's penis had always grown turgid when Stephen administered enemata. That happened with many patients--the sensation of the warm water in their vitals was perhaps part of it, though he suspected that the rigid tube in the rectum was more to the point.
Now, indeed, Jack was waiting in a similar attitude, his rosy, plump English buttocks presented over a bed rather than a mere chest, ready to do his duty. True Jack's buttocks were more fulsome than in years past, but like the rest of Jack they promised a willingness to please and to be pleased.
Stephen found the blue glass jar of the best hog's lard, smuggled to the inn wrapped in his wig. There was not a moment to lose. He began to lubricate the peccant parts--his own penis and Jack's anus--thinking of how lucky he was that their places were not reversed. Indeed, he recalled the sound of sailors spitting on their hands and the near immediate gasping pained intake of breath from the partner being buggered. It was a difficulty for him as a ship's surgeon, that he could not tell men who could barely walk that they must come to the sick bay to have their affected parts treated. Jack's prick was as large as the rest of him, thick enough around when erect that Stephen thought he might need to use two hands to stimulate him. Jack's unlubricated prick in Stephen's smaller entrails would create problems that Stephen could not imagine explaining to a surgical colleague.
Jack's prick, now there was a wonderful thought. Nearly everyone who'd ever served under Jack had wondered what it would be like to...serve under Jack. To say nothing of male and female passengers, prisoners of war and other assorted persons who had seen Jack naked. No sailor was so indifferent to the bodies of other men to ignore the Captain's substantial genitals as he emerged dripping from the ocean near the equatorial latitudes, his yellow hair streaming with water, and his large well-built if cut-about body shining with health. Even during those times when Stephen was most miserably in love with Diana, most addicted to laudanum and therefore least susceptible to the charms of any woman or man, he could not fail to notice Jack's body.
With a sigh, he sank, prick first, into Jack, and rested there, his forehead against Jack's shoulder. He had to breathe deeply in order not to achieve his final release in the first moments, and perhaps Jack needed the time to adjust to the rude intrusion into his person.
"There's a good fellow," Jack's voice rumbled through his back. "That does feel--"
"Therapeutic?" Stephen said, trying not to pant.
"Yes, quite," Jack said. "Must you stay still?"
"No, not at all." Stephen began the rhythmic movement, bringing his meager hips back and snapping them forward. He pretended that he was fencing, trying to strike a target with a slightly curved blade. Jack's sighs and grunts told him he was touching the target, the prostate gland for all love. He reached around and found as large as Jack was, one hand was sufficient to stimulate him, which was fortunate as he needed the other to brace himself. Each push inside the larger man was heaven itself. How he longed to give himself over to it.
"Soon," Stephen said, "You should feel a release in tension. Did you laugh, my dear?"
"No, no," Jack said, breathing heavily. "I think I am familiar with that release--oh. Oh!" His voice a deep growl, he cried out as Stephen hit the spot repeatedly. With his free hand, Stephen tugged on the long unbraided mane of yellow hair, bringing his cock as deep into his friend's body as he could, and frigged for all he was worth. Jack's face was suffused and red, his eyes an even brighter blue. He shut them, his muscles moving and squeezing involuntarily as he experienced the little death of orgasm.
Stephen's own vision clouded and he stilled, his harsh grating voice joining Jack's deeper one involuntarily. It felt so good to surrender himself for just that moment.
He leaned, panting, over his friend's back in a sort of embrace.
"Thank you, Stephen," Jack said. He smiled sweetly and drifted into a doze with Stephen still inside him.
"No snoring now, brother," Stephen said, but Jack was already insensible and breathing more heavily than one could wish. He sighed, and withdrew slowly.
Jack could sleep through anything. Stephen bathed his parts with water and decided to take the air in the square outside the inn. He had been shaved that morning and his small clothes were reasonably clean. He dressed and slipped from the room.
It was still light out in Bridgetown when Stephen arrived at the main square. Suddenly he was clapped on the back, and from a familiar face, a roundheaded, friendly Naval face, issued the words, "Dr Maturin, upon my soul!"
"William Richardson, joy." Stephen said. The younger man, formerly a midshipman whose unfortunate acne earned him the sobriquet Spotted Dick, embraced him heartily. The fellow had become a beautiful young man, though Stephen remarked to himself that he hardly seemed to know it.
"But how do you come here?"
He found that he didn't have to explain Jack's difficulties and removal from the List. Apparently the entire Navy knew about the trial. Richardson patted him on the shoulder and assured him that he knew it was all stuff and invited him to join a few of his shipmates for a drink.
In happier times, in Valetta, Stephen had sat under grape arbors, listening to the jests of sailors. Here in Barbados, where it was warm year round, the yard of the tavern was filled with tables of sailors, drinking sweetened punch. There were snatches of song and laughter.
They attempted "Ladies of Spain," and Stephen thought it was the shame of the world that Jack wouldn't sing since he had been struck from the Navy lists. These younger men had pleasant enough voices, sure, but there was none of that glass rattling that he recalled from hearing the song in the past.
"So you're the famous Dr. Maturin," someone said behind him. He rose and bowed to another sailor, this one dark and ruddy complected. Stephen had met him, he was sure, or another choleric specimen of the same sort of sailor. Captain Goule, surely. "The famous buggering sodomite Irish bastard."
That was coming it a bit high, wasn't it? Richardson blanched and put his hand on Stephen's arm. "He's drunk."
"That seems to be the case, yes," Stephen said.
"Perhaps you might ignore him," Richardson said. He seemed anxious.
"The admiral's own pretty bum boy telling Jack Aubrey's bastard Irishman to ignore me, that's rich."
Richardson flushed.
"It is not against the rules of honour to demand satisfaction from a man simply because his wits are impaired by drink," Stephen said.
"Rules of honour! From Aubrey's man! Did you recite the rules of honour to him when he was pelted with dung in the stocks!"
Though that had not been the reality of Jack's ordeal, at all, at all, though every shipmate in the whole of England had come to salute and protect Jack on that occasion, Stephen could not stand to hear Jack so used. He grasped Goule's wrist where it hung at his side and twisted it behind his back, then butted his forehead like a goat against the bridge of the man's nose. It was a manoeuvre he had learnt from his cousin Fitzpatrick. The drunken man groaned.
"Perhaps when you are sober, you will send us each a letter of apology," Stephen suggested amiably. Then he kicked the man in the arse, so that he stumbled out of the tavern yard, blood streaming from his broken nose.
Richardson expressed concern and offered Stephen another glass of punch. Stephen made the appropriate demurrals and sipped his punch, which was excellent. The taste of sugar cane was sweeter than sugar itself.
As he made his way back to his room, he reflected on the irony of it. Of course he was Irish, a bastard, and had just been involved in buggery. Though he was not a sodomite, not a lover of men.
He was not Jack's lover in the usual sense. He'd never had a lover who'd treated him in such an innocent and unjealous manner. Diana would never have asked him to enjoy her favors in such a way, as though inviting him to a game of chess or a ride in the country. No. Loving a woman, loving the sort of brilliant, brave and mercurial person he did, could never be as fine and wholesome an experience as buggering Jack Aubrey.
It pained him to think of Diana and Jagiello in the same breath, but he did--he thought of Jagiello asserting that women were "the yews of the world," the laconical helots, for all love--that men couldn't trust women after mistreating them for so many generations. It was a metaphor with a false bottom.
Not that he thought Diana had succumbed to Jagiello's charms--his youthfull beardless face and curling hair. Perhaps she had. There was always a possibility that she might cuckold him, though she never thought of it in that way, he was sure.
He liked Jagiello. He liked Diana, come to that.
He loved Jack.
Jack was sitting up at the desk, fully clothed, looking gravely at some charts. "Stephen!" he said. "You have returned, I find."
Stephen smiled inwardly.
"You have blood on your shirt," Jack said.
Stephen shrugged. "It isn't mine," he said. Killick's temper would be foul.
"Have you been fighting?"
"Not precisely."
"Didn't kill anyone, did you?"
"No."
"Come have a look at this," he said. "Let me explain the position to you, and then we'll have some supper. I have bespoke a lobster at the inn downstairs. Tomorrow I must see to our provisioning."
"With the best will in the world," Stephen said.
"Change your shirt, then, old Stephen," Jack said fondly. "There is not a moment to be lost."