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It was one of those nights where only a pistol shot to the temple would have successfully put him to sleep, thought Lucius. He couldn't seem to find a comfortable position for all his long limbs at once, for example. Not that his bed was to blame – his stretch of pallet between Black Pete and (usually) Fang was normally a heavenly abode bracketed by two or more of his favorite people.
However on a night like this he became all too aware that Fang often snored and Pete had a tendency to kick in his sleep.
Then there was the murmuring overhead that indicated Captain and Blackbeard were still in the wakeful portion of their own regular little sleepover parties. Lucius sighed and rolled his eyes but not without tolerant affection. God knows he was first to admit that the process of two people figuring out they were deeply, passionately, tragically in love with each other was fucking adorable – but the growing aura of sexual tension scintillating around the pair completely unrelieved by mutual blowjobs could grow a bit noxious.
Even on the best of nights, which this was most decidedly not.
And then there was the measured boot-heel clicking that marked Izzy Hand's nocturnal tours of all decks and holds, on his never-ending mission to prove to anyone happening to glance in his direction that he was the most piratey pirate to ever have pirated. He'd already passed by four times during Lucius's sleepless vigil, and here came those firm strides a fifth time.
Only this time, when they reached the doorway of the alcove that Lucius and mates used as a regular sleeping den/personal rec area... they paused. The unseen man then pivoted on one heel and walked away, instead of completing the circuit in the same direction as he'd done four times previous.
Lucius realized that he wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep – and a warm darkness oozed from the shadows of the night into his skin and pooled in the pit of his belly.
A heel-turn, a swift reversal, a midnight volta...
One bout of insomnia was a travesty; two might be something else entirely. Anything can be a dance, if you can only find a partner.
Gently he began to extricate himself from the cuddle pile; Fang rolled over with murmured dream-dialogue but Black Pete stirred toward waking and reached for his lover with a groggy hand.
“Y' alright, sweethear'?”
Lucius soothed him back onto the pallet with a caress to the curve of his shaved head.
“I'm fine, darling – just can't sleep. I think I may take a little walk, see if I can't make some trouble.”
Pete, still more than half-asleep, giggled wickedly – they both knew exactly what Lucius meant when he said that.
“Come back wi' a story,” he answered, reaching for Lucius's pillow to snuggle in its owner's absence.
“You know I always do...” One more stop searching in his satchel for a small bottle he slid into his trouser pocket, then he was away into the darkness.
The Revenge was oddly filled with twisty little corridors, so much so that the interior dimensions of the ship didn't seem to fully align with the exterior, but at least it meant on a night like this there were a number of choice places in which to lay in wait for the next patrol of Izzy Hands, and the tense, desperate, sharp bolero of the little man's boot-heels.
And the best was just there across from the ball-room – whose door Lucius nudged open with a foot. There was one shielded lamp still burning inside it (Captain being a fool with the lamp oil as usual, not that Lucius typically minded a little light on his assignations) and the dim glow cut the gloom enough that someone coming the other way unaware might find their night vision temporarily blinded.
Lucius leaned back into the little storage niche and bided his time.
When the staccato footsteps echoed down the hall once more, he slid directly into their path. With the lamplight in his eyes all Izzy would have seen was a tall dark shadow moving in the night.
His hand went to the grip of his sword.
“First Mate Hands,” said Lucius softly, but this evening with no trace of teasing or derision.
Izzy's lips beneath his salt-and pepper goatee twisted into a snarl.
“Move,” he commanded... but all Lucius did was sway toward him, bending his face to one sharp earlobe.
“Say 'move' again, or anything like 'leave' or 'no', and this interaction is over,” Lucius informed him in a firm whisper. “Otherwise you can find out if perhaps I have a fix for your insomnia.”
For a long moment Izzy didn't turn his head or so much as lift his gaze. Lucius would have thought the man hadn't heard him, except his breathing had gone suddenly hoarse.
Slowly, Izzy reached out with just the tips of his fingers... and pushed the ball-room door open wider. The shuttered lamp illuminated Lucius, standing too close for comfort and certainly for safety.
But Izzy didn't move, and didn't look up.
“You first,” Lucius said. He'd made sure Izzy had some basic vocabulary of safe-words with his previous statement; now the first mate would have to actively board the rollercoaster if he really wanted the ride.
His gaze still averted, Izzy sidled into the ball-room. Lucius followed and pulled the door shut behind them. He put his back to the one seat in the room, a half-sized barrel that had once held rum or gunpowder, and turned to face the still carefully recalcitrant older man.
“On your knees.” It wasn't an order, but also wasn't quite a request.
“But--” Izzy Hands began and, before another word could struggle forth Lucius had one hand slid into the silver mane at the nape of his neck and caught a firm fist of his hair, tugging on his scalp.
Lucius could have said “Trust me,” although he knew Izzy was pathologically incapable of trusting anyone.
Lucius could have said “Do you want this or not?” even though Izzy himself probably didn't know.
Instead, very evenly, he said “I've got this. On your knees – or else say 'no' and leave now.”
A trembling exhale escaped Izzy's clenched teeth. He sank to his knees with Lucius's hand still in his hair.
After a moment Lucius released Izzy and shoved his loose trousers down with both hands before settling back onto the barrel... making Izzy take two kneeling steps toward him, if he still wanted to ride the ride.
And he did so, lowered gaze glittering darkly as he moved into the half-circle cove of Lucius's parted legs. The erection before his face was generous in length, of good girth and excellent knob if Lucius did think so himself, although general acclaim seemed to support his opinion.
But Izzy lay his hands on the bare flesh of his thighs and waited, as if for instruction.
Lucius studied him for a long moment, then slid his grip into Izzy's hair again... and knew it was the right move when the man thawed somewhat, and his lips parted almost instinctively.
“I've got you,” Lucius said, with no inflection to either soothe or brutalize. “Go down on me.”
Izzy moved one hand – to reach back and press over Lucius's closed fist. His gaze sought the younger man's for a bare instant but the need in it was a palpable message: don't let go.
The flicker of vulnerability in that glance might well have added a 'please'.
Then Izzy opened his bitter mouth and silently gave suck; Lucius could have said “I always wondered if you'd have any skill at this,” or he could have said “Fuck – you give better head than I thought you would” or even “God, baby, that feels so goddamn good”...
But all he actually said was “Take off your glove; I want you to use your hands on me.”
All the while, even though his voice grew taut with arousal, his tone was neither sweet nor cruel nor enticing. The words stayed as unemotional as a weather report.
Izzy's mouth was hot and wet like a tropical rainforest; his lips and tongue continued their work unabated as one hand divested the other of its leather glove and dropped it to the boards.
Then his long fingers were on Lucius, a brief few strokes of his cock-length before caressing down to his balls, where he circled the sac in one loose fist. The grip tightened the flesh for the attentions of the other hand: Izzy raked short fingernails gently in circles and spirals and figure-eights on the vulnerable scrotum. The organ thus treated grew even more sensitive, so it was a fair state of bliss when he fit the restrained orbs fully into his mouth and held them there, laving them with his tongue.
What a pretty picture, thought Lucius, groaning quietly – Israel Hands with my balls in his mouth and my dick in his fist.
I should sketch it someday. If I dared.
What he said aloud was “Good boy,” not derisive or sarcastic or condescending, but carrying just a hint of true warmth and approval. His free hand molded Izzy's cheek nicely in its palm as the man came back up and ministered diligently to the tingling cock-head again. The light caress of his thumb across Izzy's temple could easily be dismissed by either man as unintentional.
“If you keep going like that, I'm going to come,” he continued in that almost conversational tone. “So if you don't want my first load of the night down your throat, pull back and I'll feel it, and we'll decide where to put it.”
Izzy's face had been a journey of emotions during those few sentences, expressions surprisingly unguarded while the lion's share of his focus was elsewhere: initially satisfaction with his own skill, then moderate disappointment tinged with a sense of betrayal (spend in his mouth like he was a dock-side bang-tail, giving him nothing in return?). Then he registered the non-verbal 'out' Lucius was giving him, considered taking it – and at the last instant his mind seized on that all important modifier: “my first”.
Lucius saw the realization hit. “Yes, clever boy” – dry and factual, not disrespectful or unduly familiar. “I can orgasm and keep going. So there'll be plenty left for what you need. Pull back or swallow, but decide soon.”
He had to say this for the older man: when Izzy Hands committed to a course of action, he would never be swayed from it.
He also took the “down your throat” part quite literally, as Lucius felt the head of his cock ease into Izzy's esophagus. He unclenched his fist a moment – then immediately reseated his grip in a slightly different location, seeing Izzy's eyelids flutter at the renewed possessive pressure, a tremble of lust rack his frame.
Still the soft stroke of Lucius's thumb high on Izzy's cheek, over the X tattoo by his eye – random and undirected enough to be safely ignored as anything but tenderness.
Because it wasn't tenderness. Of course.
Everything Izzy was doing was right, every friction and warmth and touch served his mounting arousal until Lucius managed “Good boy, I'm going to give it to you... take it, take it,” and hissed as felt the throbbing pulse deep in his groin rise up and spill over into Izzy's body.
The man didn't move so much as a muscle until the spasms faded. Then he very gently pulled back and Lucius released him – but he went no further than to sit back on his heels with his hands resting lightly on his own leather-clad thighs.
He did lick his swollen lips, perhaps unconsciously.
The two studied each other across the short distance; Izzy's expression was closed once more.
Two can play that game though, thought Lucius behind his own carefully blank poker face. He gave his sensitized cock one slow firm stroke and was pleased to see it wasn't going to make a liar of him tonight.
“For the next bit, I'll want you to have your clothes off.”
Izzy contemplated this statement for a few long seconds. “Why?” he asked at last.
Careful to avoid any of the negatives that might signal safe-wording out just yet, Lucius noted. This was promising.
He could have replied “Because I want to hold you, feel your skin on mine, watch how your body changes the closer you get to climax.”
Or “Because I want your thighs wrapped around me, and you can't hardly do that with your pants wadded at the top of your boots.”
But that was too close to something real, something deep – and more than Izzy Hands might ever be able to accept. Better to stay more clinical.
“Because the way I like to take my lovers would be impeded by so much kit still on,” he said instead, gesturing with his free hand to indicate all the leather armor that Izzy still wore.
Izzy's dark eyes touched Lucius all over, with pointed glances at the shoved-aside shirt and vest, the trousers in a puddle around his feet.
“You too,” he said at last, and Lucius nodded acceptance of the terms.
Then Izzy Hands drew his knife.
Before the younger man could gasp or flinch, he thrust the blade into the door jam just above the latch at an angle that wedged the door closed: a crude locking mechanism to better secure their privacy while they were otherwise vulnerable. Lucius inhaled hard through his nostrils, the awareness growing in his soul that Izzy Hands was about to bare himself in perhaps more ways than just the physical...
He held his poker face however, and gave him another appreciative nod.
Izzy undressed a bit like a child, he thought as he shrugged out of his own garments and retrieved the bottle of oil from his pocket. You'd think a man so obsessive and wound up all the rest of the time would fold each piece of clothing into a neat stack, and maybe he did in his own berth.
But now with down-cast gaze and gangly limbs he disrobed and let each item drop silently to the floor behind him, revealing a painfully slim body limned in scars and tattoos. He even hesitated a moment with his kerchief and the gold ring that bound it tight to his throat – then removed them also and placed them with slightly more care atop the pile.
Lucius studied his body language and the uncertainty it expressed – all except Izzy's own hard-on, long and with a graceful curve to it that suited the rest of the man, its tip already oozing with unsated lust.
The leash by which a frightened dog might be gently led...
But in this game you must actively choose, Lucius thought. In the absence of comfort and safety and familiarity, silence is not sufficient consent.
“Come to me,” he directed. “Put a foot up here.” He patted the top of his left thigh.
Izzy did as he bid, then deliberated, and reached out to rest his hands on Lucius's shoulders. For balance, obviously. But Lucius hid his smile anyway.
He poured some of the oil onto his left hand, slicking two fingers. “I'm going to get us ready. I'll take as long as we need to take. If you need me to stop, say 'red' or 'stop' and we'll stop to figure it out. If you need me to slow down, say 'yellow' or 'slow'. If I check in and you're alright, say 'green' or 'yes'. Do you understand?”
Izzy nodded.
“Say the word aloud. Whatever it is right now.”
“Yes,” he breathed.
Lucius hooked his other arm around Izzy's waist – for balance, obviously – and the other threaded through his spread legs to find the slit of his ass. The first mate unclenched with a visible effort but still gasped “yes” again, mostly to himself.
Ahhh, here's where some of his obsessiveness was a virtue: Izzy's person was nearly as clean as if he'd just risen from a bath and who knows, maybe he had. Perhaps a quiet bath of the type that Captain and Blackbeard enjoyed (occasionally and very carefully ritualized in each other's company, even) had contributed to the bout of insomnia and its hectic energy tonight...
Lucius's fingertips circled his tight opening and lubricated it. “Is this your first?” he wanted to ask. “If it's not your first... has it ever been bad, when someone else touched you here?” he wanted to ask.
Instead he said “Such a good boy,” almost purred it – and pretended to ignore how Izzy moaned, how his prick dripped need on Lucius's naked abdomen.
He pressed upward and Izzy's spine arched, eyes closed and mouth open in a soundless 'oh', but he bore back against the intrusion as if he knew what to do and who knows, maybe he did.
“Such a good boy,” he said again and finger-fucked him in slick aching increments, gratified to see quivers in the muscles of his thighs, his arms, his eyelids – watching the first mate come gradually undone in a way probably no one else on the ship had seen, not even Blackbeard.
(That aura of unrelieved sexual tension was even more noticeable, and infinitely more awkward, when it was so agonizingly one-sided.)
Izzy's cock stood unflagging even though unattended, and for a moment Lucius considered licking its carved ivory length. No, not yet, he decided. Izzy's pleasure would have to be carefully managed in this – a move wrong enough might send him charging straight out through the closed door, improvised lock or no.
“Checking in; what color?” he murmured.
“Green,” the first mate sighed in a whisper, almost hypnotized by sensation.
Lucius gradually stilled his thrusts, then withdrew his hand from the hot interior of Izzy's body. He uncorked the bottle again and this time lubed his own erection. Izzy was panting slightly and his eyes were open to dark slits, watching Lucius, waiting.
Does he remember he's supposed to be disgusted by me? Lucius wondered.
“Straddle me,” he said aloud, “and get on this.”
Izzy hesitated.
“I'm too heavy,” he answered a moment later.
For the barrel? For Lucius's lap? For a hard cock that wanted his ass? Not a 'no' or a 'stop' or a 'red', though, Lucius noticed again.
“I've given Fang a rogering he won't soon forget on this barrel,” he wanted to answer. “I've held Pete bodily onto my cock by the back of his knees,” he wanted to answer.
“You think I'm a weakling but I could take you and break you right now, bare-handed,” he thought about answering.
(you eat like a bird, like you begrudge yourself even the pleasure of a full belly of peasant food, and I can count your ribs through the net of your scars, a part deep in his soul said silently)
“I've got you,” he said instead of all else. “Get on and I'll prove it. Or at least I'll prove you one hundred percent right about something for once.”
And at that First Mate “Or God As Far As You're Concerned” Izzy Hands, mother-naked, cock-standing, ass lubed like a barrow-boy – actually fucking chuckled.
Just the once, very softly, almost covered by a snort that in other situations would have been derisive.
But he had, truly, and Lucius felt a flush of emotion that in other situations would have been growing affection.
Nearly got you now, my clever boy.
Izzy hooked one leg over Lucius's thighs. “Step up, you're not going to break me.” Lucius suited action to words by bodily lifting him with slippery hands on his slender hips, shocking Izzy into tightening his grasp on his shoulders.
But once the issue of relative positioning was sorted at last, the younger man fisted his cock and held it steady against Izzy's ass, waiting with supreme patience for him to choose to move, to sink, to take it in.
Izzy's attention focused inward; he bit his lip charmingly as he navigated the sensations of opening to this new intrusion.
Lucius kept still, and watched his face, and wanted to kiss the lines of concentration on that brow, and didn't dare.
“Fuck,” Izzy said when he felt his hole dilate.
“Fuck,” he said again, sinking halfway down and letting his legs grip around the other man's waist. When he was fully impaled there were no words at all, only shudders that claimed his entire body.
Lucius took a slow, carefully even breath. “Checking in,” he said, and the words even sounded perfectly calm, at least what he could hear of them under his pulse drumming in his ears. “What color?”
“Fuck, Spriggs,” Izzy grated.
Fucking what? Fuck me? Fuck you? Fuck off? Only God knew, surely not Lucius and probably not even Izzy Hands.
But there was something of the sensual yowl of a well-mated cat in the rough voice's answer, so Lucius continued to hold the reins on his patience...
And leaned in and nipped the vulnerable flesh of Izzy's throat.
“I said what color, Hands,” he insisted in a low growl, breath hot in Izzy's ear.
“... g-... green...”
“That's my good boy,” Lucius whispered, and for a thrilling moment thought Izzy might come just from the praise alone.
Once the body in his arms steadied again he continued, hands on Izzy's hips to keep him still. “Here's what to expect. Once I've gone off once I can go all night if I want. I might pop off little fireworks two or three times after that, but I'm not done until I decide I'm done.”
“... how... the fuck... are you still able to talk...”
Lucius wondered that a bit as well, since there couldn't have been much blood left in his brain for the conversation. “Lots and lots of practice.” He leaned back against the wall behind him, causing Izzy to look up into his face involuntarily. Whatever he saw by the shrouded lamplight, no revulsion or dislike appeared in the first mate's expression. Only lust and fear and a terrible, forlorn, hungry hope lingered there.
“But I told you I might could help with your insomnia and that's what I intend to do,” he murmured. “To that end I'm going to give your body just what it can take. You control how this goes, what happens. You hoist the colors.”
Izzy stared at him.
Close enough to properly kiss. But possibly too far away to ever kiss.
“I want to play with your cock,” Lucius said.
Izzy's gaze flicked away, then back. “Yellow. Slowly.”
Ahh, now we're getting a partnership and not simply acquiescence.
“Clarity: do you mean don't touch you just yet, or that I can touch now but to go slowly?”
“Touch me slowly.” The words were on the merest exhalation.
“Thank you...”
His fingertips sought gently between their bellies. When the first gentle caress found his member, Izzy flinched.
Ahh, you're one that can get over-sensitive, Lucius thought about saying.
Does being stimulated like this cause you to come too quick, or stop you from coming at all? Lucius thought about asking.
Did someone use this type of contact to break you somehow? Lucius wondered within the sanctity of his innermost soul.
But Lucius felt the tremors throughout the slim body speared on his cock, and embraced him with his other arm. “Lean all the way on me; I have you,” he promised him, instead.
And wonder of wonders Izzy Hands did as invited, his forehead against Lucius's temple, his ragged breathing a symphony in Lucius's listening ear.
He fisted that glorious and needy erection, stroked it leisurely, firm enough to feel but light enough to glide, from the root to the tip and back again, his own flesh encased in the secret heat of a man who was threat and rage incarnate in the sunlight but here under the light of the single lamp clung to Lucius blindly, as drunk on sensation as any ingenue being romanced for the first time.
There were so many conflicting, wonderful, and deeply horrifying thoughts half-formed in the younger man's mind, struggling to find enough cohesion to be examined (and then carefully discarded in favor of something more conservative in this dangerous dance of unknown quantities) but what stumbled first and fully onto his lips was “Oh beautiful boy, I'm going to come again. Feel it. Feel it inside you.”
And he let the little fireworks shake him and blushed at how raw his confession was, and prepared for Izzy's bad reaction, maybe even his murderous anger.
But the slender man in his arms moaned in harmony and flexed against the tiny thrusts of his climax, and the side of Lucius's neck was dampened with silent tears.
Oh you beautiful... you beautiful, wonderful thing – oh, but this time he kept it safely behind his teeth until the orgasm faded and the urge passed.
Then Izzy was moving in distress, hands slipping down to bat Lucius's strokes away before he could manage to vocalize “red – stop!”
Lucius raised his hands in empty air to his shoulder level, seen and not felt, open palms to soothe and not threaten. Izzy stilled, his face averted.
“It's okay,” Lucius whispered gently. “Do you need help getting up off me?”
Izzy froze; 'yes' wasn't the right answer but 'no' was a safe-word out of the entire scene and he wasn't quite ready to pull that rip cord. Lucius read it in the stiffening of his slim shoulders and cursed the necessarily rough-shod means of this mating. There was so much he didn't know. There was so much that Izzy Hands lacked the ability to tell him.
“Stay,” Izzy said instead.
Lucius could hear the plea in his rough voice, the tears not yet shed.
Oh, go so carefully now...
“Clarity,” he began. “All else the same, but we're no longer touching your prick?”
Izzy nodded, and hesitantly slid his arms back around Lucius's neck. Lucius tightened his embrace, hands stroking the prominences of Izzy's spine and shoulder blades comfortingly, and leaned to place his own forehead in a place of voluntary vulnerability against Izzy's jaw.
“Is this green?”
“Green,” Izzy confirmed in a sigh.
“My best boy,” Lucius whispered. “Thank you for telling me how best to treat you. Thank you for letting me touch you and then setting a safe boundary for yourself. I'm proud of you.”
He turned and kissed Izzy's cheek – felt him tense, then relax, then tense again. “Yellow... do you have any of that bottle left?”
“Yes.” He passed it over. “Add it wherever you need it; I can get more.” He clenched his jaw when Izzy's long fingers passed between their bodies and encircled him, dripping with lubricant.
Izzy shifted somewhat to test it, then nodded. “Green,” he said again.
Lucius gazed up at him, met his eyes. There was a moment when they were somewhat themselves again – two people aware of their usual personas and of each other's, not strangers and not friends, but not yet bound back into their former roles.
He saw the tracks of Izzy's shed tears, knew not to touch them or comment on them. This was not the first time he'd trod the measures of this dance, though never with so exacting a partner, nor with such potential consequences of failure.
He saw Izzy seeing him, seeing the tears.
He reached up and cradled Izzy's naked neck in both hands, felt the intimacy and vulnerability of the contact drop the slender man very nearly all the way back into submissive head-space; he shut his eyes and lolled his head like a kitten in Lucius's grip, the angles of his body melting in the flush of resurging desire.
“I think I want to come hard, this last time,” Lucius murmured. He moved his hands and Izzy fell into him; he covered that exposed throat with demanding kisses. He even reached up once to press his lips to the corner of Izzy's mouth, a move that felt as dizzyingly sacrilegious as drinking a full bottle of communion wine.
“I think I want to fuck you nice and slow until we come. Would you come like that, do you think?”
“I don't know,” Izzy admitted, in a voice slurred with fatigue and arousal.
“Shall we try?”
“Yes.”
“My best boy... Hold onto my shoulders, my neck... lean back. I'll take you the rest of the way.”
He saw and felt Izzy obey; he moved his hands to his hips and held him to meet each thrust, to stretch the friction in each withdrawal.
“Like this?”
Izzy bit his lip again; Lucius felt a blaze of lust on the idea of biting it for him.
“A little faster...”
“Like this.”
“Fuck,” Izzy moaned and Lucius gave his desire full reins and a touch of the whip. Izzy swooned in, yes and yes and yes in his breath in the rhythm of his lover's thrusts; his body tightened, quickened in that particular way of seeking and waiting before at last finding that Lucius had seen a thousand times in a thousand forms and found endlessly endearing.
“Yes,” and his hands were catching the back of Lucius's head, fingers in midnight waves of hair and gripping, blind with need, drawing down as he drew himself up. And “yes” again and “fuck, yes” and the dart of Izzy's sleek tongue in Lucius's mouth, driving down onto the the anvil blow that drove up and he spilled in gasps that he muffled in Lucius's lungs, in gouts that painted tortured ecstasy on their chests.
“oh, love – oh God, fuck,” Lucius was answering in the last of his tidal exhalation, feet braced and toes curled, fingernails momentarily cruel explorers on the dark-moon landscape of Izzy's back. The last ejaculation felt total, incredible, as if Izzy's body was taking hold of and claiming some soulful expression of his also, freely given but forever thereafter missed.
Lucius blinked hard to clear his eyes, make them focus, bring some sensibility back into his brain. He slowly became aware that Izzy Hands was trembling like a leaf, beyond orgasm yet still denied a final release.
He slowly withdrew from Izzy, curled the unresisting body up on his lap, then wrapped him up tighter in his arms. He found a fresh spot in his hair to grip, high up on the crown, that drove the older man's focus back inside his own head.
“Purge it, love,” he whispered in his ear. “Like lancing a boil. All the way out.”
And dreadfully obedient in this final extremity, Izzy buried his face against Lucius's collarbone and wept in deep but silent sobs – an ability that bespoke of some abusive necessity, to cry and to never let anyone catch him at it.
Lucius's other hand stroked him from shoulder to flank with deliberate caresses. He made no noise either, except to take each deep breath in a steadying cadence: a trellis of aether upon which Izzy Hands could reassemble his fractured self.
Eventually Izzy did steady, and released his grip. He pulled back and stood up on the floor boards, and Lucius let him go.
They stared at each other, very nearly themselves in the cathedral silence of the room.
“I never knew,” Izzy said slowly, “that you were strong enough to lift... that much... that easily.”
“If you'd ever found out,” Lucius answered just as deliberately, “you would have put me to harder chores.”
Izzy laughed again: one short and hollow noise, like a cough.
What could be said? He was right.
Lucius stretched his legs, stretched his shoulders, shifted on his seat, then settled back in and closed his eyes. The deliberate withdrawal of gaze permitted Izzy some privacy in which to manage dressing himself again and he did so, marveling at the deftness of Lucius's manners.
Izzy wanted to say “I had never been touched with this much gentleness before,” and didn't.
Izzy longed to murmur “This is too rich for me, too good, like white flour cakes made with cream butter and cane sugar; I'll never deserve this and I can't accept it,” and didn't.
Izzy thought about admitting “If being loved feels something like this, I finally understand why I've always craved it,” and didn't.
Izzy briefly considered murmuring “Thank you, for doing this and not using me during it,” and didn't.
The words “I'm sorry for all I've said before tonight, and for all I've done” crossed the awareness of his soul as he dressed, but he didn't speak them, either.
Instead as he picked his last garment off the floor – the kerchief, its golden ring – and held it clenched in his fist, feeling the oil and Lucius's orgasms finding a heavy level in his gut, he said “This... never happened.”
Lucius opened his eyes and looked up at Izzy Hands. He was bone-tired, balls drained, without a stitch of fabric between him and God above; his arms and back and abdomen ached abominably, but his ass-parts had actually gone all the way to pins-and-needles sleep on the hard planks of the damned barrel. He was covered in come and lube, and the very concept that High Lord First Mate Izzy Hands could stand there and try to deny every move they'd made together since that door had closed behind them – could with three words attempt to erase the fact that he'd dared to fly the colors aloud, that he had come apart in the safety of Lucius's hands and wept on his chest and been held and comforted...
But when he looked up he saw it all acknowledged in Izzy's dark gaze, and bit back every sentence of justified recrimination.
He put his last gift to Izzy in his own eyes and firmly, evenly, replied, “I've no idea what you mean, First Mate. I've been asleep on my pallet all night.”
And I'll take it to my grave, my clever, damaged boy. If that's what you require of me.
Izzy Hands nodded, once. He pulled his knife from the door jam, sheathed it, and left the room without permitting himself a single backward glance.
Lucius sighed hard, then scrubbed his face, then made a grunt of disgust when he realized that his hands weren't exactly spotless at the moment. He spent a moment letting himself covet a hot bubble bath in the big copper tub but that was in Captain's quarters and silence from the floor above convinced him that perhaps His Nibs and the dread Blackbeard had finally lapsed into slumber, parted physically but still close.
Still longing toward each other, even in repose.
So it'd be a quiet bucket of saltwater in the bilge for him, as thorough as a rag and a sliver of lye soap could do in the dark, and then off to his bed once more.
He hoped he'd be able to invent a suitably salacious and entirely fictitious story for Black Pete before daylight, should Pete remember to ask.