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Hickey is rummaging through Gibson’s belongings with both hands on the table in Gibson’s berth, picking up something, examining it from all angles between both sets of fingers, then returning it and immediately picking up the next piece.
Gibson sits on his bed, one boot toeing a circle on the ground, eyes fixedly fascinated on the movement of Hickey’s arms and hands. Hickey’s not exactly graceful in this moment but he’s Hickey, so Gibson wants to drink him in slowly and thoroughly as fine wine. He smiles even though Hickey won’t see him do it.
“You don’t have to go so fast, you know. It’s still daylight.”
“Yeah, but it’s interesting, isn’t it. I’ve seen every inch of you but I’ve never seen your things. You’re blushing now, aren’t you. I can see it without looking at you.”
Gibson puts both hands on his cheeks. “Yes, probably,” he murmurs. He feels the red on his face, if it’s possible to feel a color. He drops his hands as Hickey turns, but Hickey’s not giving him an, “I knew it” look. He’s just looking, for which Gibson is thankful.
“You look good, Billy.” Hickey turns back to the table.
“You look cold, Mr. Gibson. I’m not being cheeky. Are you cold?” Hickey had asked him during their first encounter on deck. They were acquaintances enough from being briefly introduced and passing each other by but this was the first time Hickey had outright spoken to him. He had been leaning his arms over the ship, watching the glowing band of green light on the horizon, simmering under the navy of the sky. Gibson had been trying to casually amble by, but his arms were ever so slightly wrapped around himself. A bad habit he’d never grown out of, not after all these years on different ships. He’d dropped his arms and adjusted his Welsh wig instead, but Hickey had leaned away from the ships edge and motioned him over.
“I’ve got a game from back home.”
“From Limerick?”
“No. Put your palms up like this.” Hickey had held his hands up vertically. Gibson had copied him and felt alarm as Hickey slapped his palms against Gibson’s. But the small aftershock of Hickey’s hands, even heavily gloved, felt like what Gibson imagined a first kiss might feel like if only Hickey had touched their lips together.
“Again.” Hickey had clapped his own hands and held them up again.
Gibson had clapped his hands too and then held them out and Hickey had hit them again. Gibson didn’t need prompting to repeat the gesture. His blood had coursed warmer and faster and his heart and body had yearned to play this game with Hickey below deck, gloves off, skin on skin.
“Warmer?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s play another game.” Hickey had taken Gibson’s hands and turned them horizontal, palms facing each other. “I chop through the space between your hands as fast as I can and you try to catch me. Ready?”
They’d played hand games for the rest of their time alone, until they heard boots tromping up the stairs nearby. Hickey had walked Gibson back to his berth. He’d discarded his gloves and Welsh wig on the bed, pushed Gibson down next to them, and leaned down to kiss him hard with his whole mouth, not just the surface of his lips. The ecstatic shock had blown up every one of Gibson’s reservations and he’d kissed Hickey back with abandon, with mouth and tongue and his gloves torn off and their warm palms caressing each other’s faces faster than the ships propeller spun.
Hickey now spins a thin matchbox idly through his fingers. “Who’s this?” He puts down the box and lifts a picture in a faded silver frame from Gibson’s table. Gibson joins him and smiles fondly.
“I knew you’d find that eventually. Guess who it is.”
“Your grandfather.”
“On whose side?”
“Mother’s.”
Gibson huffs softly, disappointed. “How could you know that?”
“Obviously I didn’t. I only thought guessing your father’s side would be too obvious. And obviously it was.”
“Obviously you’re clever about everything.” Gibson smiles.
Hickey says nothing but he traces a finger along Gibson’s jaw. “So what’s the story?”
“What story?”
Hickey shakes the photograph.
“Oh. Well. He was the first one of us to go to sea. I never knew him, he died when I was an infant, but my mother was so proud of him. So I like to keep his photograph handy for luck.”
Hickey looks into Gibson’s eyes and widens his own, quirking an eyebrow. “That’s it? That’s the whole story?”
“Oh, it wasn’t so obvious, was it?” Gibson smiles with one side of his mouth as he backs away from Hickey and sits on the bed again.
Hickey stares at him. For a moment Gibson thinks he detects small pieces of flint in Hickey’s gaze and anxiety pinches his nerves. But Hickey places the photograph back on the table without looking at it, tilts his head, licks his lower lip, and then he’s straddling Gibson, arms wrapped around his neck, lips pushing what Gibson suspects is as hard as they can against Gibson’s own.
Please, Gibson thinks as he pushes his lips back against Hickey’s and pleasure dances up and down his spine. When we’re back in England, let’s stay together, let’s never go to sea again. Please.
Hickey breaks his mouth away suddenly. “You have duty?”
“Not until dinner. You?”
“Done for the day. Lower deck. Let’s go.”
“Wait.” Gibson gently unwraps himself from Hickey and moves to the table. He shifts his books around until he finds the small parcel and hands it to Hickey.
Hickey brings it to his nose, sniffs, and blinks. “How long have you had this?”
“A birthday gift from my mother.”
“Birthday?”
“About six weeks ago. Before we boarded. It’s still fresh, from the cold I imagine. Do you want it?”
Hickey looks up. “Why would I want your present?”
“How long has it been since you’ve eaten chocolate?”
Hickey shrugs and frowns in an “I don’t know” manner. “Awhile.” He turns the parcel around in his hands, then looks up at Gibson. He smiles with all his teeth and makes a clicking sound with his tongue. “This will be all gone by the time I’m through with you.”
***
After they’ve gotten their breaths back and sat apart slightly, Hickey opens the parcel, takes the hunk of chocolate, licks it, and then licks Gibson’s lips. Gibson sighs, eyes closed, as he touches his tongue to his mouth and leans back on his hands. The taste is mostly sweet but with the ever so slightest bitter hint of tobacco. He tries to hold the taste in his mouth without swallowing. Even after these few weeks, one of Hickey’s unexpected touches still feels like a privilege, a random jewel dropped in Gibson’s hand.
When Gibson opens his eyes, Hickey is still sitting above him, eyeing the chocolate.
“Are you going to eat that?” Gibson asks lazily.
“Depends.” Hickey moves his eyes from the chocolate to Gibson. “Can you go another round yet?”
Gibson feels himself out. “No. Not yet.”
Hickey folds the chocolate back in the parcel and pushes Gibson’s hands out from under him. Gibson stifles a laugh as he lands back against their nest of clothes. He tries to bring Hickey down with him and Hickey bats his hands away, but Gibson is the bigger and stronger of the two and soon Hickey’s face is against Gibson’s chest. Hickey yanks away, but only to settle his head on Gibson’s shoulder. Gibson tucks Hickey into his side and buries his face in Hickey’s hair.
“You have a preference for men with red hair?” Hickey runs his thumb pad around the hollow of Gibson’s throat.
“No.” Gibson breathes him in. “Just you.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why me, Billy?” Hickey untucks himself from Gibson’s arm, crosses both arms on Gibson’s chest, and leans his chin on them. “It’s not because I’m your only option. We’re not alone on these ships.”
Gibson scoffs as he takes strands of Hickey’s hair between his fingers. “How on earth do you know that?”
“I see other men. I mean I see them. Mr. Peglar and Mr. Bridgens. They think they’re good about hiding it but they’re obvious as the day. Someone really ought to tell them. Solomon Tozer, the marine. He always freezes when I walk by him and his group. Probably that Irving fellow too, the way he squints and frowns at me. I doubt he’d admit it though, if he looked at a man for more than one second I think his prick would go up so high it’d knock the Bible out of his hand.”
Gibson snorts. “I see. So did I look at you too long, is that how you knew?”
“Answer me first. Why me?”
Gibson stops twirling Hickey’s hair and looks at him. Hickey’s eyes are calm but there’s a fervent set to his jaw that Gibson hasn’t seen before. “You’re serious.”
Hickey says nothing.
Gibson touches Hickey’s lips with his fingertips. “Because you took care of me.”
Hickey says nothing but he is very still.
“The time we were up on deck together. I was dying of cold and trying to hide it. You noticed. You actually noticed and offered me a chance to get warm.”
Hickey rolls his eyes slightly. “Maybe I liked your face is all.”
Gibson smiles. “No. You like me. And you did a good-hearted thing, and you pretended you didn’t. I liked that. You could have said that I owed you. But you didn’t. So I know you care.”
Hickey takes one of Gibson’s fingertips in his mouth as his eyes crease. He lets it go and says quietly, “People haven’t been that good to you in life, have they Billy?”
“What?” Gibson shakes his head. “No, they’ve been fine.”
“No. They haven’t.”
“Why? What did I say that you’d think that?”
“I hardly did anything, Billy. I warmed you up, I realized you wanted me, and I let you have it.”
“Cornelius. You cared.”
“Has no one ever cared for you?”
“Yes, they have!”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Well, you should.” Gibson takes Hickey’s face in both of his hands. “You make it sound as if you don’t like it that you care about people.”
Hickey closes his eyes and keeps them shut. “I saw you watching me. You had such a soft look. You’re a soft person, Billy.”
“And that’s what you like about me?”
Hickey opens his eyes. “You don’t think it’s a bad thing?”
Gibson frowns and traces Hickey’s cheekbones. “No. I don’t want to be hardened. Brave yes, but not hardened. I wouldn’t know myself from any other man if I tried not to feel anything.”
Hickey raises his eyebrows. “I wonder if you’ll always think that way.”
“I don’t know why I wouldn’t.” Gibson moves to tuck a swinging lock of Hickey’s hair behind his ear but Hickey swoops down at him first, kissing his lips, the corners of his mouth, his chin. Gibson inhales sharply and hums. He strokes the side of Hickey’s neck. He jolts in alarm as Hickey snaps his body up, but it’s to reach for the chocolate. Hickey rubs it against his fingers, swings his hair to one side, and paints the side of his neck that Gibson was touching. Then he leans back down, a smile ghosting his mouth, and Gibson doesn’t need to be told twice. He tongues long lines down Hickey’s neck. Hickey’s breath catches again and again and he grips Gibson’s shoulder to the point of pain but Gibson ignores it. He loves Hickey’s neck, loves the curve and grace of it, loves feeling Hickey lose control of his body because Gibson is touching him.
They pass the chocolate so frequently to each other that most of it is melted between their hands before they’ve even truly started. Hickey licks circles of it around Gibson’s chest and over his nipples and Gibson makes Hickey sit up and turn around so he can trace chocolate down his spine and lick it off in one straight line. When they’re back to kissing, Hickey reaches down and plays his fingers around the inside of Gibson’s thigh. Gibson arches his lower back as Hickey moves down to lick it off.
Hickey knows Gibson hasn’t been with any other men. Gibson hadn’t the slightest idea what to do the first time Hickey laid him down here, except fumble for Hickey’s cock and hope for the best. He’d felt relief down to his core when Hickey hadn’t laughed at him, hadn’t said anything, had simply taken his hand and guided him. Gibson doesn’t know how any lover could be better than Hickey. It’s as if he had rolled a pair of dice and come up with two one’s, but they’re not snake eyes, they’re two lovers. When Gibson was thirteen or so, he’d resigned himself to a life without love because the chances of finding a man to love and who loved him back seemed as likely as if he drew a picture of a man and asked him to come to life and love him. Ships, expeditions, moving up through the ranks, that was the way he could achieve satisfaction in life. Happiness was doomed. Happiness was dirt under his feet, useful as barnacles on deserted ships. He’d almost even convinced himself that he didn’t want to be happy, because then how could he focus on the things he could actually achieve?
The almost cracked like an eggshell as soon as Cornelius Hickey passed him in the hall and then clapped their hands together to keep him warm.
Hickey doesn’t like “thank you’s,” though. Gibson found that out the hard way, a few days after they were first together, when he had taken Hickey’s hands in his own and said something to the effect of, My life is forever changed. You changed it. I can’t describe what this means. Thank you.
Hickey had pulled his hands away, not ungently, but had moved away from Gibson and rolled some tobacco. “I think you want a perfect man,” he’d said through the paper.
“I don’t want a perfect man. I mean, I’m not trying to say you’re not perfect. I mean…it doesn’t matter. I just want you.”
Hickey had blown smoke out and looked him in the eyes. “Then come here.”
Now Hickey is running his tongue around a spot on Gibson’s thigh and Gibson knows he needs this moment, this two of them, whatever they have together, to be his happiness. He knows this is all he’ll ever be given. No one is this lucky more than once.
“Another round?” Hickey has finished licking the chocolate and is hovering over Gibson’s hard cock.
“God,” Gibson manages before Hickey smiles with one side of his mouth and only touches him with the tip of his tongue. His hands are still sticky with chocolate as he holds Gibson’s hips and Gibson manages to sit up far enough, gasping in pleasure the whole way, to take one of Hickey’s fingers in his mouth. Hickey’s finger is almost as warm as his tongue on Gibson’s cock and Gibson has to let it go lest he come too soon.
“I know,” Hickey says, crawling back up to Gibson’s side.
Gibson feels cold suddenly without Hickey touching him and he frowns. “What?”
“Something new. We haven’t done this yet.” He lies on his back and pulls on Gibson’s hand. “Legs on either side of my hips.”
Gibson moves there and Hickey wipes the last of the chocolate from one hand onto Gibson’s chest. “You know what I’m getting at, yes?”
Gibson doesn’t, for a moment, and then he does and all his body is thrilling as if he’s hearing beautiful music and he’s trying to move Hickey inside him and Hickey is actually laughing and saying, “Wait, wait.” He gently opens Gibson up with his fingers and Gibson thinks he could be splashed with sea water and not be less hard than he is now. He nips at Hickey’s other hand, trying to taste his fingers again, but Hickey keeps them away, then they’re on Gibson’s hips again, both hands.
It takes time – Hickey has clearly done this before and he has to soothe Gibson into moving more slowly than Gibson would like. Gibson isn’t surprised at how quickly he’s become addicted to the idea of Hickey’s cock inside him. The union will be as natural to him as swimming once he’s all the way down to the base, and with a few more hip maneuvers he finally is. He can’t move for a moment because his heart is knocking against his chest so fast that it’s almost painful but he relishes the newness of it, like the first time he saw the sea.
It’s then that Hickey, his own eyes closing for moments at a time and chest nearly heaving, brings his still chocolate covered finger back up to Gibson’s mouth. Gibson sucks the sweet off it while he lifts himself and slowly drops down again. They both make noises almost like weeping but laced with rapturous gasps as Gibson stretches himself as wide as he can and rocks back and forth and Hickey keeps his finger in Gibson’s mouth. Gibson has his eyes squeezed shut for most of the time he’s moving, but as he feels himself close, he opens them briefly and sees Hickey watching him closely through glazed eyes.
“What?” Gibson breathes more than says.
Hickey says nothing, only crooking his mouth to the side as his neck arches as Gibson purposefully rides him harder. When Gibson can’t hold out any more, he lets the bliss take him to what he considers a higher plane of existence for a moment and he realizes only after he’s come that he’s bitten Hickey’s finger, and hard. Hickey hasn’t moved it, so Gibson releases it from his teeth, takes it into his hands, and sees his teeth marks on a knuckle.
“Did I hurt you?” he pants.
“Not really.”
“Did you…before or after me?”
“After.”
“Even through the pain?”
“It was worth it to see your face and know I made it look that way.” Hickey takes a deep breath and puts both of his hands back on Gibson’s hips, holding him steady as they both breathe ragged. Gibson doesn’t move for long moments, trying to memorize every second, Hickey’s size and thickness and goddamn Cornelius Hickey, he doesn’t care, the sheer perfection of him.
There’s a little bit of chocolate left in the parcel. They break it in half and place the bits on each other’s tongues before they dress and leave.
***
Hickey crosses his legs on the edge of Gibson’s bed and shakes his foot. “Look. I can do something in rhythm. I don’t need to be fancy like you.”
“Please. We only have a little time before I have to work. I want to try this.” Gibson holds his hand out to Hickey, who only looks at it, then looks back to Gibson, who sighs. “Look. I thought of it the other day. When we were…we moved together so well. It was like a dance. We fit so well, Cornelius. I want to really dance with you. Let me try.”
Hickey looks down at Gibson’s hand again, closes his eyes and exhales softly, then moves towards Gibson’s open arms. Gibson catches his hand before Hickey has even reached him. He pulls Hickey close to his body and then moves Hickey’s other hand behind his arm and places his own other hand on the small of Hickey’s back. “You don’t have to know any steps,” he whispers in Hickey’s ear. “Just move with me. That’s all I ask.”
Gibson slowly turns to the side and, to the shock of his leaping heart, Hickey shuffles immediately to follow him.
“I’ll give you what you ask then, Billy.” Hickey tilts his head in one of his devil-may-care gestures but his hand is firm in Gibson’s. “You care about me, and I’ll return the favor as long as I can.”
Gibson shakes his head and smiles over Hickey’s shoulder as they complete a circle. “And how long is that?”
“Well as long as you care for me, right? Move your head down to me.”
When Gibson does so, Hickey stands on his toes and kisses him. “There. That seals the deal.”
Gibson swallows through a lump in his throat. “Like a pact.”
“If you want.”
“I want.”
“Then there you are.”
“Here I am.” Gibson picks Hickey’s hand up again and moves them back into the dance position. They sway around and Gibson wants to cry when Hickey laces their fingers together. When it’s time for him to leave and pay attention to the senior officers instead of petty officer Cornelius Hickey, he takes Hickey’s hand and slides one of his fingers in his mouth. Hickey smiles, first with just his lips, then with all his teeth, and waits for Gibson to release it.
“You care, Billy. I’ll be remembering that.” He puts the finger Gibson just let go of on Gibson’s lips, then kisses him with his whole mouth again, and then he’s out the curtain door.
There’s no more chocolate to be had, but Gibson returns to his berth that night with a satisfying pulse in his soul which he knows will last him the rest of the voyage. Just a year, maybe two, it doesn’t really matter. They’ve sealed the pact. Pacts are unbreakable. Maybe they’ll dance again soon, more beautiful than the path of a ship curving.
He lies in bed but he’s not tired. There’s too much to do. Cornelius Hickey on his lips and in his arms every day.
It has to always be a secret, but it will be a perfect one.