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The gale had been building all day but waited until the middle watch to blast into the Renown like a carronade. First Lieutenant Bush had been forced to reef sail completely and keep two mates wrestling with the wheel. The lantern behind him swung crazily providing counterpoint to the flashes of distant lightning. The lightning illuminated swells grown to hillocks and the flooded bow of the Renown pitched and yawed enough to make the oldest hand reach for the rail. Rain was forcing its way into his ears and soaking his wool pea-coat until it felt like he was swathed in cold wet lead. It was calming now somewhat and the ship had managed to hold together. Thus it was with a clear conscience and relief that he handed the chart to the relieving officer.
“A wild night, Mr. Browne, Mr. Upland.” Bush acknowledged his midshipmen. They waited for his dismissal as if they were standing in clear sunshine. Bush cast about for a way to subtly let them know he was pleased. “Have we lost anyone then? Save us some prayers…” He clasped his hands behind his back. “And where is Mr. Kennedy?”
“Said he’d go in forrard, sir.” volunteered young Mr. Browne. “Said that hatch could stand a look.”
Bush turned casually away to hide his expression. “Hmmmm, if only the two of you were as conscientious. Well, your berths are waiting. Get a move on now.”
Bush waited until the youths had scurried belowdecks before nodding to Lieutenant Hitchens and trying to edge off the poop deck muster casually. Bush oriented himself against the forward lantern and slowly descended the broad ladder down to the main deck. Gusts of rain swirled in waves over the glistening planks. He plodded carefully along, leaning his weight on the outside edges of his feet.
From his own experience, he knew that his form would vanish within a cable’s length of the wheel until the lightning struck. He was free to prowl about before the mast and rest assured that no one would be discussing his eccentric behaviour in low voices on the morrow. He had a feeling that Archie was up to something and a shiver ran through him that owed nothing to the cold.
The lines had not yet been flemished down after their previous mad activity so every step he took was placed with care. It would not do to go tumbling off one of these pitches. He passed the chicken coops, the captain’s messenger boats and was swallowed in the darkness and damp. When Bush squinted in a futile effort to improve his view the thin sheen of rain on his face squeezed into his eyes. The deck was still swaying rhythmically under the pull of the swells and he found himself suddenly gripped by anxiety. What had happened to Archie in the ten minutes since Bush had seen him last? Archie seemed to have vanished utterly. Bush took a moment to collect his thoughts, bracing himself against the forward portside lifeboat.
Bush barely suppressed a yelp when his cold hand was unexpected gripped. He tore away and stared at the disembodied hand that extended from underneath the laced canvas covering the lifeboat. Bush was an intensely rational man, but he stared, horrified, desperately trying to find some rhyme or reason to explain this sudden madness. When the canvas was whipped back to reveal the missing Second Lieutenant, he felt as if his heart had suddenly been dropped carelessly back into his body.
“What are you playing at?” Bush snarled. The only part he could really see of his friend was the glow of his grinning white teeth.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” teased Archie. “It’s almost dry under here.”
“Almost?” Bush was skeptical. “Is that like almost dead?”
“There’s not an inch of this ship that’s perfectly dry,” Archie managed to be speaking perfectly clearly despite the near constant rumble of breakers. “But these inches are private.”
Under the soaking, stinking wool of his pea-jacket, Bush was rocked by a shudder of heat. Privacy. An almost impossible notion on a ship of the line populated by almost 750 souls. He hesitated only a second before vaulting himself over the edge of the braced lifeboat beside his laughing friend.
When had he become this person? This person who would risk life and limb for a few stolen seconds between hard wood and wet canvas? The person who waited for the minute brush of Archie Kennedy’s fingertips when he passed a map or a logbook? This person who indulged his need for touching? They were touching now.
Archie was twining his hands through the gaps of Bush’s coat, pushing the buttons free of the swollen fabric. He peeled the coat off and spread it across the gunwales. In the narrow space under the tarp they couldn’t help but be pressed together. Bush was momentarily stupefied by the rush of sensation that accompanied Archie’s desperate kisses. Archie took advantage of Bush’s spellbound state and pushed him back over the newly padded gunwales. The darkness was perfect. If he hadn’t felt the wood hard beneath him, Bush wouldn’t have been able to tell which way was up.
Archie blindly unlaced Bush’s shirt muttering his need for skin like an incantation. He pressed his lips into the hollow at the base of Bush’s throat. Bush was astonished by the heat that spread over him with the pressure of those lips. A mere half-hour previously he had been thinking that he’d never get warm again. He struggled to shed his remaining kit like a snake casting its skin. When he was bare, the warmth flowed between them like a current.
The contrast of Archie’s hands, so hot against his cold skin made him shiver. Archie pressed his bare chest into Bush’s while his hands stroked Bush’s shoulders, cupped his neck and twisted the water from his bedraggled tail of hair. Archie paused for a second, resting his head in the cradle between Bush’s jaw and shoulder.
“You want this,” Archie murmured.
“You know I do,” Bush said between heaving breaths. Archie pulled back slowly onto his knees and again Bush fancied he caught a glimpse of that blinding smile gleaming from the pitch black. Not being able to see Archie made every touch a delicious torment, all his skin electric with anticipation.
Archie knelt in the bottom of the lifeboat like some old hand splicing cable. Bush was braced with his head and back against the planks of the gunwale, his knees bent framing Archie. Archie’s hands spread over the inside of Bush’s thighs, his thumbs stroking all of Bush’s most intimate places. When he felt Archie’s hot breath against the velvet skin of his balls, Bush was wracked with a deep shudder that rolled passion through his body like a wave. It was like being confronted with a feast after weeks of short rations, his hands slid roughly over every inch of exposed Archie, his shoulders, his neck, the firm curve of his jaw.
Archie was mouthing his balls now, dragging just the edges of his teeth over the thickening skin. He rubbed the slight stubble of his chin over the tender flesh of Bush’s inner thigh and let his tongue find a path up to lap at the head of Bush’s cock. Bush gripped folds of the dripping canvas in an effort not to grab at Archie’s bobbing head. He felt bereft that he couldn’t embrace his friend while they got their fill of each other, but that thought left him with the pressure of Archie’s tongue and twist of his fingers.
It was amazing how the heat of their two chilled bodies warmed this tiny space. Already it was warm enough that Bush’s muscles, tensed against the chill, began to loosen. All the tension in his body seemed to swell into one point that Archie was stroking to a fever pitch. Archie’s hands pressed him down while his mouth and tongue urged him up, up, up. The heat and pressure building between Bush’s thighs was growing almost unbearable.
A single freezing raindrop broke free of the canvas and landed in the middle of Bush’s straining chest. The cold water felt like an arrow piercing his skin and he was suddenly gasping and coming with a surfeit of sensation. The icy drop was mixed with the warmth of his release and he melted completely. He lay back, blaspheming.
It was strange. Bush could now feel the smile on Archie’s face.
Archie muttered something into the side of Bush’s knee and then stroked stiffened fingers along the ridges of Bush’s chest. Those fingers gentled on the ridges of his scars touching them as lightly and softly as lips. Bush managed to stutter out, “Kiss me.”
Archie abruptly rocked up onto the balls of his feet to sprawl forward over Bush and kiss him without drawing breath. With his hands braced on Bush’s shivering shoulders, Archie licked up Bush’s throat, chin and lips with a flat tongue. Archie spread lavish kisses over Bush’s high, spare cheekbones while using one hand to rub his full cock in the wet warmth on Bush’s belly.
“Can I?” Archie started delicately.
Bush responded by pulling at Archie’s hips with the tips of his fingers and tilting his pelvis upward shamelessly. Archie made his entire body caress Bush as he slid back down to his knees. Again, he spread Bush’s thighs with gentle fingers, stroking his thumbs lightly across Bush’s opening, pushing inward with lips and tongue. Bush grabbed the canvas between his teeth and attempted to bite a hole in it. They could always put it down to rats and it would keep him from wailing like a banshee. Archie did his best to drive Bush insane, pressing inward and upward with long, clever fingers. At long last, he positioned himself during a slight lull in the constant rocking and used the rush of the next swell to slide himself inside. Bush brought his hands up to stifle a yell, but flexed his feet and knees to impale himself further.
Archie was straining with his knees wide for balance. The constant shifting of the ship underneath them upset the rhythm enough to be exciting. It felt almost as if the sea were a third, playful partner. His strokes were perforce short and deep; he thrust without pausing and Bush moaned in time with the constant tingling rush of feeling. It seemed to go on forever; they would catch a rhythm, then lose it. Archie would push in as deep as he could and worry Bush’s nipples with his teeth. The third time this happened, Bush growled, braced his feet against the sides and began pushing back. Tightening around Archie’s cock, he felt a sudden intake of breath. Archie convulsed and drew Bush tight against him. Bush gasped as his most sensitive skin was pressed against the soft hair and hard muscle of Archie’s stomach. When Archie gripped him lightly, Bush recovered himself enough to press one kiss on Archie’s collarbone before he was also gasping and convulsing in his release. Archie slumped on Bush’s heaving chest as their breath slowed.
A small eternity went by before they felt resigned to jerking on freezing, wet clothing.
Bush slipped down from the lifeboat landing noiselessly on the balls of his feet. A quick glance told him that the watch had passed off to the starboard and they had ample time to make it to the forward hatch and down below unobserved. Archie dropped behind him and as they made their way to the forecastle, he paused at the rail and looked out over the shifting seascape.
“Ten days,” Archie breathed against the space under Bush’s ear. Bush couldn’t help his involuntary swallow. In ten days, barring more wind and weather, they would make landfall. The Renown was scheduled to be de-commissioned with the outbreak of peace. Archie would return to his family and Bush would be at the tender mercies of his sisters. Life would continue among people who hadn’t the vaguest notion what they did out here. And the vagaries of his Majesty’s service would ensure that their continued relationship would be one of infrequent correspondence. Bush had a vision of the storm-tossed ocean around them, winking in and out of the infrequent light. He envisioned this roiling sea frozen, as he had seen in service in the Baltic, frozen and silent with slow drifting ice floes, radiant chill.
“Ten days,” Bush rasped and squeezed Archie’s shoulders.
It would have to be enough.
The end