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For a minute there, Pete was the luckiest guy on earth. No one ever believes him when he says that, but it’s true.
“Right,” Frenchie had once pointed out, “if you’re such a lucky bastard, why is it exactly you’ve got no hair?”
First of all, fuck you dude. Second of all, isn’t that proof that he’s lucky? To have such amazing bone structure and such striking features that he’s handsome enough not to need hair?
It’s not like it lasted that long, anyway. (The luck part — not the hair.) But for a minute there, half a minute at least, life was pretty good for Pete. Pretty perfect. He was sailing on the high seas, doing badass shit near constantly. His boss was his hero, and was more than a boss — more of a boss-slash-mentor-slash-big brother-slash-best friend type of deal. And then on top of all that, there was this guy.
The day Pete signed on to the crew of the Revenge, the day that he met Lucius, was the day he started to believe in luck. This sudden change in worldview, a drastic alteration of his preexisting philosophies of chance and circumstance, hit him something like god damnit and fuck shit. Luck was real, it turned out, and his was definitely bad.
Like every sailor boarding every vessel, he’d come to the Revenge for a fresh start. New ship, new me, he’d told himself that morning, scrubbing up in the horse trough behind Moe’s Tavern. And now, here he was on the new ship, and then there was this guy, standing beside the captain, this really, really cute guy, who looked up from his clipboard and blew a breath to float away the lock of hair flopping low towards his eyes, clearing it away to gaze at Pete from under dark lashes while Pete thought, approximately, fuck fuck god damnit shit fuck.
“Name,” the cute guy drawled, eyes already flicked back to his — whatever he was writing.
“Pete,” said Pete.
Cute Guy’s feather thingy hovered over the page, and eventually, he looked back up at Pete with the withering stare of one accustomed to dealing with simple people. “Pete what?”
“Just Pete,” said Just Pete. This had never been a problem before. He’d never met another Pete. Supposedly his mom had, nine months before she’d had him, but Pete kinda thought that story might be bullshit. A lot of his mom’s stories were bullshit.
“Mononymous,” Cute Guy said, in a voice that could have been approving or disdainful, but probably meant he didn’t give a fuck. “Like Madonna. Cool.”
“Who’s Madonna?” Pete asked before he could stop himself, but Cute Guy had already moved on.
“The mother of Christ?” said a looming Irish man beside him who was taller than half the men Pete knew even sitting down. “Mary? That Madonna? Jesus — didn’cha ever go to church?”
“Yeah, duh,” Pete scoffed, staring in Cute Guy’s direction. “I knew that. I went to fuckin’ church.”
The problem was, Pete didn’t do well around cute guys, historically speaking. Not that he wasn’t confident — Pete liked himself, you know, like, what wasn’t to like? But he got nervous, and when Pete got nervous, he had a mild tendency to overcompensate.
“Psh, three nipples?” Pete had said a few nights later with a hand of bad cards fanned between his fingers and a communal bottle of rum trapped in the grip of his knees. “I knew a guy who had eight nipples.”
“What was he, a cat?” asked Oluwande, rolling his eyes.
“No, he was a human fucking man,” Pete lied. “He had eight nipples and a little, what do you call it — a vestigial tail.”
A warm laugh, close to his neck, and Lucius (that was Cute Guy’s name) leaned in from behind Pete to grab the bottle. He took a sip, a sweet and dainty thing that didn’t spill a drop, then licked his lips anyway. “You’re funny,” he said simply, and smiled. And Pete thought, for the first time in his life, I’m the luckiest guy on Earth.
He thought it again, the first time he and Lucius kissed. Long, straight teeth tugging on his bottom lip, a beautiful boy clawing eagerly at his chest, and Pete thought, I’m the luckiest guy on Earth.
A raid upon a Portuguese vessel that was going completely to shit, so that Pete was already splattered with blood when he heard Lucius shriek and grab the back of his vest, ducking behind him for protection from the blades and bullets flying. Like he knew that Pete would keep him safe. I’m the luckiest guy on Earth.
The first time he made Lucius come, or the time that Lucius sucked him off in the brig, or the time he got to finger Lucius and hold him pressed against his body while he did it, got to bury his face in the softness of his silky hair while Lucius bit his shoulder and swore and came without even having his dick touched and then panted in the afterglow holy shit, you’re really good at that and Pete shrugged, sort of bashful, but he felt proud, and he felt really fucking good. I’m the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth.
And then there was the time Lucius had crawled onto the mat where Pete was laying with his eyes shut, pretending to sleep. He’d tucked a hand into the deep V of Pete’s shirt, scratching nails against his chest while Pete tried to cage the scared and angry hammerhead of a shark banging up against the walls inside him. “I’m sorry for being such a bitch today,” Lucius had whispered, though probably the others were awake, and maybe they could hear him anyway. “I do love you, you know.” And Pete, abruptly, stopped thinking of himself the way he always had, as just some guy, because he felt for certain he was more than that. He was the luckiest man on Earth.
It only lasted a few months, but Pete knows who he was. And, fuck, even that short span is more luck than most people have in a lifetime. Especially for someone who’s shot a dozen albatrosses in his day — he never actually hit one, okay, he can admit that. He was this fucking close! Like, you could see the feathers all fucked up on their wings! Still, it should come as no surprise when he wakes up one morning to find his arms are empty and his luck’s ran out. Maybe that horseshoe on his belt is facing the wrong way round. Maybe good shit doesn’t last forever, not if it’s this good.
They can’t find Lucius anywhere. It’s easy to hide something on this ship; lots of nooks and crannies on the Revenge, lots of secret passages inexplicably paneled in floral wallpaper. Pete knows about a lot of them ‘cause he and Lucius had found most of them together, or at least had made good use of the space. He doesn’t get a chance to look, though, because Blackbeard — look, there’s a misunderstanding. Blackbeard didn’t mean to leave them there. He’s heartbroken, okay, he’s not in his right mind. Pete understands completely (he and Blackbeard have always shared an unspoken bond, like blood brothers without the actual oath part). He knows how love can grip your heart like a wooden wheel and spin until the spokes are blurred.
So they’re marooned, basically, on this tiny island, which is no one’s fault, really. And not even a big deal, because Pete is working on about a dozen different ways to get them rescued. Fuck being rescued, come to think of it. They could lure in a ship, maybe some innocent little pleasure liner or some shit like that, and they could launch a surprise attack. Pete would lead it, obviously. The other guys could use rocks as weapons, maybe, or Roach’s juggling pins, or those crazy fucking teeth that Buttons has. Pete will use the only weapons he’s ever needed: his keen intellect, his daring spirit, and Guts and Glory.
Guts and Glory are the names of his fists.
But then the captain shows up. Not Blackbeard — fuckin’ Stede, this fuckin’ guy, like he’s doing them a favor or something. He tells them to get in his “ship” and Roach says “Would we call that a ship?” And Wee John says “’s more like a dinghy, I reckon. Don’t even think we’ll all fit in there.” Then Oluwande says “It’s either we get in there, or we starve, or we end up eating Swede to survive, so I reckon we stop arguing and get in the boat.” And Stede says “Well said, Oluwande!” And the Swede asks a little nervously, “You weren’t really going to eat me, were you?” so everyone is reassuring him “No, no, of course not!” which is only slightly undermined by the fact that Buttons still has those fucking teeth in and Roach is massaging olive oil into Swede’s shoulders while he comforts him and all of this is happening and then Stede says — the captain says — “Come on Black Pete, hurry up, we haven’t got all day here.”
Because everyone is in the boat now except Pete. He’s dawdling on dry land, which is strange, considering he’s never been much of a dawdler. Yet, here he is, dawdling, wringing that sandy wig in his hands that he really doesn’t need anymore, but can’t seem to let go of.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Lucius?” he asks, and tries to ignore the way the rest of the crew shoot eyes at each other.
“Lucius?” Stede turns in a circle, examining the men around him and finding the scribe nowhere to be found. “Where is he? Where are Frenchie and Jim? Faffing around having a swim or something?”
“Captain, it’s — it’s a long story,” Olu says a little quietly, like he doesn’t want Pete to hear him. Too bad Pete has the hearing of a bat, or some other equally wicked creature of the night. “Maybe we’d better start rowing, and we can try to—”
“He’ll be right back,” Pete says. “He’ll come looking for us. How’s he supposed to find us if we’re not here?” He hears his uncle’s voice like a swift palm cracked around the dome of his head, too hard to be affection, too soft to be anything worth crying about. You stay put if you get lost. That’s how I’ll know where to find you. Wouldn’t want to cause more trouble than you’re worth, would you?
“Why don’t we go look for him?” suggests Stede kindly. “You’ve always liked to take initiative, haven’t you Black Pete?”
“Yeah,” Roach chimes in, “a natural leader,” and the others too, coaxing and cajoling him until finally he gets into the boat.
They’re right, Pete thinks. This is what a man does. He rows until his palms blister, until his blisters burst, until there’s pus oozing all over the oars so that when he passes them off to the next guy, the next guy bitches and moans about it. A man, a real man takes initiative. When a real man falls in love, he takes care of the man that he’s in love with, tracks him down and keeps him safe and saves his life if he has to, if shit gets rough. A real man would rather flay the palms of his own hands than let go.
Stede has given away all of his money. Apparently it’s supposed to be romantic, although it sure as shit doesn’t feel romantic to be sleeping top to tail with half a dozen dudes fumigating a cellar in a way that makes Pete question whether grown men are meant to consume so much dairy. They take turns sleeping closest to the tiny window, where the hammock faces so that if you crane your neck just right, you can get a good look at a sliver of the moon, and keep yourself awake all night wondering if your beloved’s looking up at the same bright stars.
They work upstairs from where they sleep, at Spanish Jackie’s. Pete’s a waiter, and as with most things he tries, he’s really fucking good at it. He can balance a shit ton of drinks on a single tray and never spill a drop, and he can carry a plate of sizzling fajitas in his bare hand, no pot holder or anything.
There’s a boy who works in the back washing dishes — Pete thinks he’s a boy at first, but he’s not really. He only looks young because he’s willowy and supple in a way that probably makes him pretty, if you’re into skinny guys, which Pete isn’t. His face isn’t bad looking either, maybe, if Pete ever took the time to look at it, but he doesn’t, even if the kid’s already looking at Pete first.
Pete and Roach are shooting the shit on a slow Tuesday, chasing mice around the kitchen on their hands and knees, making ‘em race each other, when Pretty Boy laughs.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Pete snaps, sitting up on his haunches to glare at Pretty Boy while Mice President Whiskers squirms and squeals in his hand.
“You are,” Pretty Boy says with a smile. “You’re funny.”
“Yeah?” Pete says. “Well why don’t you mind your own fuckin’ business.”
Pretty Boy stomps out, tan skin flushed with anger or embarrassment, and Pete feels a little bad, but only a little. He and Roach were having an A and B conversation; Pete only helped Pretty Boy C his way out of it.
“That was way harsh, BP,” Roach says, dangling a chunk of gouda over Cheesus Christ’s head.
“I didn’t come here to make friends,” Pete says, setting Whiskers back at the starting line. “I came here to win.”
On Friday night, they serve drinks until — well, they serve drinks until people stop ordering them — but the kitchen closes down at midnight. Pete stands out in the alleyway with Roach while he smokes, not to partake, just to cool down and get some fresh air after a long and sweaty shift. Roach goes back in eventually, and Pete stays out there, leaning back against the damp bricks and thinking deep and brooding thoughts.
There’s a burst of noise as the door swings open, and a flash of movement as the pretty (allegedly) dishwasher comes out the back. “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t know you were out here.”
“It’s a free country,” Pete scoffs. He should probably head back inside anyway.
“Hey, did I piss you off or something?” The kid is dressed to go home in his jacket, a stupid looking sack of a thing that’s twice as big as it needs to be. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Effrey.”
Pete looks at his outstretched hand, fingers pruny from washing dishes all night, still offering its tender skin to clasp against Pete’s rough calluses, and scowls. “Jeffrey?”
“Effrey,” the boy whose name can’t possibly be fucking Effrey repeats. He lowers his hand when he realizes Pete has no intention of shaking it. “Listen man, I just think, if we’re gonna be working together—”
“No, you listen here, man,” Pete interrupts. “Belfry or whatever the fuck your name is. I’m taken, alright? I’m in a committed, long term relationship.”
Dishwater boy laughs, raising his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I think you have the wrong—”
“We’re super fucking happy together, okay? Actually, we’re the best we’ve ever been.” His stomach twists. Pete hates lying. Nobody would believe him if he said that, but it’s true. It makes him feel sick. “We’re doing the long distance thing right now, but it’s like, nothing to us, you know what I mean? Because when you love someone, you don’t have to spend every fucking minute together. You know? Like, you can be apart for months and months and still feel like the world’s a better place because they’re in it, and you’re a better person because you’re with them. His name is Lucius, by the way. He’s super smart and smoking hot. Everybody likes him. And we’re happy together. The happiest we’ve ever been! So from now on, you probably wanna keep it in your pants, okay pal?”
Effrey stares at him in shock. Pete can hear someone puking down the alley, and has the sudden urge to join them.
“Alright,” Effrey says eventually, shrugging so the shoulders of his coat don’t fall completely off. “Well. Later.”
Pete goes back inside and clears the drinks off tables when patrons’ backs are turned, then finishes them himself. It’s not a lie, what he said to Siegfried or whatever in the alley. None of it was a lie. He and Lucius are still in this, both of them are. So maybe it’s taking longer than he thought it would to find their way back to each other. No fucking problem. Pete’s patient, and he’s loyal. He’s been lucky before, and it stands to reason luck is like a horseshoe, up on both ends with a big dip in the middle. He’ll be up again.
The horseshoe dips a little lower, before it pulls up. Jackie screws them, but what else is new, and then they’re homeless. “Unhoused,” Stede corrects, then yanks at Buttons’ leash to stop him running for the shore again. A storm comes, and Pete collects rainwater in a tin mug and uses it to splash his pits clean. In case Lucius shows up, he wants to smell good.
Stede and Ricky come up with a — wait, who? Who the fuck is this guy? Jesus fucking Christ, okay, Stede and some random dude named Ricky, whose qualifications are fuck all as far as Pete knows, apparently have a plan. It’s a shitty fucking plan, but they need someone strong and stealthy on the ground floor, and that’s where Pete comes in.
For the record, Pete executes his portion of the plan flawlessly. When he and Lucius are reunited and collaborating on Pete’s memoirs (Pete dictating, Lucius transcribing and adding editorial flair), this will make for an amazing story. The fact that the whole thing goes to shit has nothing to do with him.
Not that it’s worst case scenario that their crew is traded off like a handful of marbles. At least this way they’re doing something. They’re back on a ship, a pretty fucking nice one, and maybe the ship is facing in the wrong direction, maybe it’s not, but at least it’s moving.
They get food, and a change of clothes. They have uniforms here, which, like, conformity isn’t really Pete’s thing, but once he makes some minor alterations, takes the sleeves off, he’ll like the way it looks. The blue will bring out the color in his eyes, he thinks. He’s proud about his eyes — when he was young, a girl at church had told him he had pretty eyes, and her friend had agreed. “You’re an asshole,” she clarified, “but you do have nice eyes.”
He’d bragged about this to Lucius once. Of course, Lucius had probably been called good looking so many times that the words had lost all meaning; Pete isn’t trying to compete, or anything, and he knows he never could. If they hadn’t been on the same ship, Pete thinks, if the pickings hadn’t been so slim, Lucius probably never would have looked his way. But he wants him to think — wants him to know. People looked at him once. People liked what they saw. “You know, girls always tell me I have gorgeous eyes.”
“Well, obviously,” Lucius had said like it was a given, pulling Pete’s shirt over his head. “But Christ, forget about the eyes, look at the rest of you.”
He puts the uniform on and goes to get his job assignment. He’s looking forward to it. This chick who’s captain here, she’s sort of a total badass from what Pete’s seen so far. The kind to reward hard work, too, and Pete is a hard fucking worker. If he hustles, puts his back into it, maybe she’ll be inclined to offer him a favor down the line. Information or resources he could use to his advantage, leverage to thrust him forward just a little closer to his goal.
Hard work, his uncle used to tell him, is a man’s rent on this Earth. A man doesn’t expect good things to be handed to him. He grinds his own bones down if he needs powder, he breaks his own back just so he can bend to lay a paving stone. That was how God had made it; rewards were waiting for those who earned them, and it was never too early for a man to start earning his keep.
What Pete’s uncle and the Protestant church and the kingdom of Heaven don’t know, what they didn’t factor in, is luck. God paints dots on dice, and then the universe shakes them up and rolls them. And Pete must be the luckiest man on Earth, because this hotshit captain’s first mate calls for an errand boy to come running from somewhere on the ship, and there, right there, dice on the table, two black dots, snake eyes.
It’s Lucius.
Pete’s on him like lightning on a weathervane, like a poor man scrambling for something shiny in a gutter. He’s got him in his arms, kissing all over his face, his nose, his eyebrows, his beard, and trying for his lips but it wouldn’t do him any good anyway because Lucius won’t shut up, keeps saying “oh my god, oh my god, oh my fucking god, oh my god.” Pete can’t even breathe because the love has all gone out of him in one swift gust; actually, it’s because the crew has piled on top of them, even Stede.
They’re all writhing on the ground, wriggling around like worms celebrating the rain after a drought, when the bossy old lady bangs her stick on the hard wood right by their heads and yells at them to get up and get to work. Zheng takes pity on them and grants them a fifteen minute break, the purpose of which is to “get their shit together.”
Lucius has lost some weight, Pete realizes. Only a little, still soft in all the right places, but even so, it’s hard not to worry. A lot of things have changed, though. He looks good. There’s a new beard, and he’s had a haircut, maybe, shorn a little shorter and worn uncoiffed. Pete finds himself reaching out to pet it absentmindedly, the way one might rub a lucky rabbit’s foot. It’s all a lot at once. He steadies himself by staring at Lucius’s pert nose for some much needed stability.
“I thought you died,” he admits. It’s the first time he’s let himself say it.
But he didn’t die, he’s here, it’s real. He seems kind of — overwhelmed, maybe, which is weird. Lucius doesn’t usually mind being the center of attention. Maybe if everyone wasn’t grilling him so fucking hard. He’s bound to feel a bit shaky when he’s cornered from all sides. “Lucius, how did you fall off the ship?” “Lucius, how did you end up here?” “Lucius, why do they call you Rat Boy?”
And — okay, the Rat Boy thing, that… that’s a little weird too. The image of a rat, beady eyed and shifty, that doesn’t fit Lucius at all. When Pete pictures them as animals, he imagines he and Lucius are otters drifting in a current holding hands, and Pete’s banging rocks against hard shells for clams to offer his beloved. Or the way he envisioned Lucius when they first met, like a ladybug, cute and round and bright, and Pete is the stout and hardy pillbug he hangs out and fools around with.
The nickname doesn’t suit him at all, but then again, Pete knows firsthand how hard it is to get a nickname going, so he vows, privately, to try and be supportive.
They’re each assigned jobs more or less well suited to their skill sets. Pete’s assigned to the armament, which really isn’t surprising. He’s basically an expert in weapons, ammunition, artillery, that sort of thing — after all, he’s packing two guns right between his shoulders and his elbows at all times.
His supervisor is a woman named Jill with a low ponytail and a small mouth. It purses even smaller when he introduces himself as the new recruit. “Cannon wads,” she says, thrusting a stack of ripped muslin into his hands.
“How many?”
She looks him up and down. “Until I say stop.”
No problem. Pete doesn’t mind the work. He whistles through his teeth as he goes, folding and knotting the strips.
“Stop whistling,” Jill grunts.
So Pete stops. “You know a guy named Lucius on this ship?” he asks. “Yea high, brown hair? Charismatic, but also super, super down to earth?”
Jill frowns at her ledger, then scribbles something out. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, nor, frankly, do I care.”
A friendly-looking girl whose dark skin is splashed with patches of light is sorting bar shots near them and chimes in. “You mean Rat Boy?”
“Rat Boy, yeah!” Shit. He really needs to make an effort on this nickname thing. “That’s my boyfriend.”
Jill looks up. “Rat Boy is your boyfriend?” she repeats.
“What? Don’t believe me?” He tamps down that boy-who-cried-wolf irritation at being doubted when he’s telling the truth. Doesn’t manage to tamp it down too far. “I’m not lying! Ask anyone!”
“No, no, I believe you,” Jill says, focusing back on her ledger. “You’re weird. He’s weird. Makes sense.”
“We’ve been long distance for a few months,” Pete explains to the crowded group of girls all sorting cannon fodder. “But we’re back together now, and I gotta say — it’s better than it’s ever been. Like, you know they say absence makes the heart grow fonder? It’s totally like that. I mean, the second we saw each other, it was like no time had passed at all, like we were completely in sync again. We don’t even need to talk about it. It’s just, like, being in each other’s presence, you know? Those comfortable silences where you don’t need to ask the other person a million questions like, ‘What happened while we were apart?’ or ‘Do you even still like me?’ Because you just know, right, you feel it in your gut.”
“For sure,” a girl with thick braids says. “Absolutely.”
“I heard he ate a lobster with the shell on,” says the first girl.
“What?!” Pete says. “No! What are you — Lucius wouldn’t — I mean, Rat Boy didn’t do that!”
She shrugs. “That’s just what I heard.”
An hour or two later, Pete’s on his way for a piss break when he sees Lucius coming down the hall, wheeling a tray of neatly folded towels.
Pete whistles in a horny sing-song pitch like men do at the docks, the kind that straddles flirtation and overt harassment and then grinds down hard against that line. “Woah! Cleanup on aisle sexy!”
“Right,” Lucius chuckles.
“Because of the—”
“Because of the towels, no, yeah, I got it.” His smile’s a little strained. Pete wonders if Lucius is as nervous as he is.
Then Pete tells himself he’s not nervous, because if you say something enough times, eventually, you can make it true. “You know, I saw a pretty cozy looking supply closet down by the gun deck.” He leans against the wall, propped on his elbow, flexing, and lowers his voice. “That is, if my bumblebee has a little honey for his sugar bear.”
Lucius freezes, eyes locked on Pete’s until he yanks them down to focus on his towel cart. “Now’s — uh. Now’s probably not the best time.”
“Oh! Yeah, totally.” Pete straightens up, suddenly mortified. It’s not like he’s never been rejected. Just never by Lucius. “I mean, whenever, you know.”
“It’s not that I’m not interested,” says Lucius quickly, “it’s just I really do need to deliver these towels.”
“Towels won’t deliver themselves! That’s for sure!” Jesus, he sounds like a fucking idiot.
“I’ll find you later, yeah?” Lucius reaches out and squeezes him, a quick pulsing grip around Pete’s wrist, and then he’s gone before Pete can reach back.
They don’t see each other again until their evening meal. Lucius sits apart from the group, which sort of disappoints Pete, but he’s probably trying to be polite, angling himself so the smoke of his cigarette won’t blow in their direction while they eat. Oh, that’s another thing. Lucius smokes now.
They’re enjoying their soup, all the rest of them, and everyone’s sort of, like, ribbing each other. Well. Not everyone. Just Lucius, and just toward Stede. It’s kind of — he’s always had that sense of humor, okay? Dry and snarky; irreverent; a little bit mean. And this is more than a little bit, but, hey, who can say with total honesty that all their jokes have always landed?
“Ohhhkay,” Pete laughs, because someone has to. They’re sitting far apart, on opposite sides of the deck, but Pete wants him to know he’s still in his corner. “Wow. My spicy little Rat Boy.”
People underestimate Lucius. They think because he’s cute, young, breezy, that he’d rather laugh a threat off than bite back. Pete knows better. He knows, because back when Pete was the luckiest man in the world, they used to talk to each other; Lucius used to rest his head on Pete’s chest like it was a safe place and admit all sorts of things about his past. He knows exactly what Lucius is capable of, if he’s backed into a corner, defending himself. Pete just never thought it would be a defense against him.
It happens like a whip. One second, Lucius is lashing out at him, and the next he’s coiled back in on himself. He leaves before Pete has a chance to respond.
It’s a small, generous thing that out of respect for Pete’s humiliation, nobody discusses it. This broth is really exploding with flavor, they agree. The broth must be discussed.
Stede leaves shortly after, taking his bowl with him, and Buttons scoots into the space he’s left behind. He looks up to sky — he looks directly into the sun, actually, he does that all the time, and Pete thinks he’s fucking nuts — then asks, voice quiet, “You two alright?”
“Me and Lucius?” Pete says. “Never better.”
Ask anyone who knows Pete why he said it and they’ll tell you: Pete’s a liar.
The armament is empty, cool and dimly lit. There’s a pile of muslin strips in the corner, so Pete sits down and gets to work. Making cannon wads is easy. Pete’s done it on a lot of ships, because it’s so easy that even an idiot can do it, and a lot of people think Pete’s an idiot. He’s not. He just likes the work. Rolling the cloth — old rags, sometimes, or rope if they didn’t have cloth to hand — into a pellet, wrapping it in on itself, swaddling it so it won’t come untied. Keeps a man’s hands busy and his mind blank.
“Shift’s over, man.” Jill’s standing in the doorway, quill flitting over the pages of her ledger, though this sort of seems to contradict her point.
“You said keep going until you say stop.” Pete shrugs. “You didn’t say stop.”
Jill eyes him, tiny mouth pursing so small it almost disappears. She pulls a stool to sit beside him. “Not the type to give up easy, are you?”
Actually, Pete can think of several instances to the contrary. He’s quit his fair share of bullshit jobs, run off on a handful of people who probably didn’t even notice he was gone. Maybe this could be his new thing, though. Pete who sticks with shit even when shit is shitty. “I guess I don’t.”
They’re most of the way through the stack of scraps when Jill breaks the not unpleasant silence. “Sorry about your Rat Boy.”
Pete swallows, and it feels thick as a cannon wad in his throat. “I don’t think he likes being called that, actually.”
“Makes sense.” She tugs the knot to tie one off, then throws it in the basket. “Fuckin’ awful nickname. Who’d wanna be called that?”
Pete folds wad after wad, and while he does, he wonders if anyone’s ever won the lottery twice. Or won the jackpot, lost the ticket, then found it again. He also wonders what he could have done differently, but since he doesn’t know what he did wrong in the first place, he’s kind of shit out of luck there.
By the time they finish making all the scraps useful, it’s dark out. Or, probably it is — they’re below deck, so it’s impossible to say, really.
“Good work,” Jill says, standing and stretching as Pete throws the last one on the pile. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll give you a real job.”
He’s on his way up to the main deck when he sees Lucius in that same hallway. Ships are fucked up like that. Not a lot of space to lick a wound.
“Oh, hey,” he manages.
“Hey,” Lucius says. “Can we talk?”
Sort of a rhetorical question. As though if Pete says no, that might delay or circumvent this breakup entirely.
“Not that kind of talk,” Pete reassures him quickly. “Not bad. I just wanted to apologize and… you know. Catch up.”
“Sure.”
The wise thing would be to use the time it takes to find a place to actually think of something he can say to make the situation better. Instead, Pete finds himself staring with the focused eyes of a precision marksman at the freckle that’s appeared on the nape of Lucius’s neck since last they were together.
Lucius leads them into a medium sized room; the floors are covered with bamboo mats and scattered cushions, with more pressed against the walls. There’s a porthole letting in a beam of light, so they go there, sitting with their backs against the wood paneling, and a red silk cushion tucked in Lucius’s lap.
“Nice room,” Pete says, when Lucius makes no effort to start the conversation. “Wonder what they use it for.”
“Stretching, I wanna say? Meditation? Honestly — I think those are just code for lesbian sex, come to think of it.”
“Makes sense.” He reaches for a tassel dangling from the corner of the cushion, draped on Lucius’s thigh, and twiddles it. It’s not like he’s touching him or anything.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” Lucius says, sounding flippant in the way Pete knows means that he’s embarrassed. “My little diva meltdown. A tad melodramatic.”
“You don’t wanna be called that, I won’t call you that,” Pete says easily. “Next time just tell me. Doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
“Right. Yeah.” He’s chewing on his lip, and Pete feels a stab of irrational jealousy. “Look, I want us to — we can tell each other things, right? Be honest?”
“Of course,” Pete nods emphatically. “Yeah, like when I told you what happened with the tiger shark.”
Lucius pulls a face, and says, doubtfully, “Welllll…”
“It happened, babe, I told you.”
Pete had definitely, basically, pretty much completely ridden on a tiger shark’s back.
“And the story I told you about what happened on Martha’s Vineyard,” he continues, “that was true.”
“Oh, I believe that one,” Lucius says, wide eyed. “I just need you to promise me you’ll never, ever repeat that story to anyone, okay?”
“Gotcha.”
The fingers on Lucius’s right hand twitch; he reaches behind his ear for a cigarette but comes up empty.
“If this is like,” Pete tries, “if you’re asking if anything happened, when we were apart. I mean, if you did, with anyone, you know, that’s cool! I’m totally cool! But for me, um. It didn’t. So.”
Lucius’s face softens. “That’s not what it’s about. I trust you.”
“Okay. Yeah. Great. Awesome. No, me too, I was just checking.”
“While we were apart,” Lucius says, and it feels like the start of something — a speech he’s practiced, maybe. “There are… there are some things that you should know about. Not those kind of things, but...”
Pete’s not used to being this close to Lucius without touching him, but he’s not sure if it would hurt or help, or what’s even allowed right now. He feels unsteady, like he’s weathering a squall and doesn’t have his sea legs yet. Tentatively, he shifts his hand to brush a finger into Lucius’s wooden one. The movement seems to jostle Lucius back to the present; he takes Pete’s hand in his and squeezes, winding the fingers together.
“When I fell off the ship, I—” He stops and takes a deep, shaky breath, scrubbing his free hand over his face. “I didn’t fall, actually. I was pushed.”
“What?” Pete feels himself heat with anger, pink undertones in his skin flashing red. “Who—?”
“Christ,” Lucius mutters, grimacing at the pillow in his lap, “there’s no way to say this without you freaking out, is there?” He clears his throat, then looks at Pete. “It was Blackbeard. Blackbeard pushed me.”
Has Pete ever been angrier at anyone than he is, in that moment, at himself? Like, fuck Blackbeard, right, but also — forget about Blackbeard. Blackbeard never claimed to love Lucius, never swore to himself that he’d protect him the way Pete did, the way Pete failed to do.
“Pete?” says Lucius cautiously. “Are you — did you hear me?”
Mostly Pete can hear the seagulls circling out over the water whose cries sound like the chirps of mockingbirds, laughing at him. “I’ll kill him.”
“No,” Lucius says, already yanking Pete down where he’s trying to stand up. (To go where, exactly?) “No, let’s not. I mean, you could do, obviously. I’m sure you could. Let’s just leave it though, alright?”
Pete sits back down and lets his head fall back against the wall with a thunk. He’s never made a choice in anger that’s done him any good anyway.
“The reason I wanted to talk to you…” Lucius pulls Pete’s hand onto the cushion in his lap, tracing designs on the palm. He’s such an artist, Pete marvels. So talented. “That name. The one I got so pissed about. I, um.”
“Yeah?”
“I wasn’t rescued by the Red Flag, you know. I was on a few different ships before I came here.” He’s drawing a spiral with his fingertip; it tickles, kind of, but Pete tries to keep his hand steady. “And on one of the ships, there was this dog called Pepper. A little rat terrier, and, y’know, I’m not necessarily fond of animals, but he was sort of like my best friend there. We shared a room — more like a cupboard, really, where he’d curl up with me and we’d sleep together. I would — I would even talk to him sometimes. That makes me sound crazy, I guess.”
“Sweetie, that’s not crazy. It’s nice.” A wave of relief washes over Pete; not a mean, crashing wave, but a gentle tide lapping at his ankles. He hates to think of Lucius scared or stressed or alone — he likes to know that there was comfort in that time.
“Yeeee-ah.” He winces. “Thing is. The dog did… pass away.”
“Oh my god!” Pete cries, aghast. It’s worse than he thought. “What, like, natural causes? Old age?”
“Old age, I think, probably, yeah.”
“Jesus, baby! That’s horrible! How old was he?”
“I wanna say…” Lucius sucks his teeth, looks around. “Thirty?”
“Thirty?”
“Or however old dogs live to be.”
“Usually, like, ten to fifteen years!”
“Yep, yeah,” Lucius nods officiously. “That’s exactly how old he was. Ten to… fifteen. Or so.”
“Jesus,” he repeats, eyes a little damp at just the thought. “I had no idea. No wonder you’ve been so off.”
“It gets worse,” Lucius warns.
“Worse than your best friend dying of old age?!”
“Well, as I said, Pepper was a rat terrier. He’d done his job admirably in his day, but after he was gone, they needed someone to… take up the position.”
“They got another dog?” Pete guesses hopefully.
“It was me, Pete,” Lucius sighs. “I was the rat boy. I caught the rats.”
“No!” Pete shouts, appalled. His last reserves of stoicism have shattered into sobs, and he drops his face into the cushion, kissing Lucius’s palms and knuckles, tears and snot running down and coating the pale skin. “These hands — an artist’s hands, a lover’s hands!” he wails. “These hands should never have been made to do something so horrific as catching rats!”
“My hands,” laughs Lucius nervously, “definitely, yeah.” He extracts a finger from between Pete’s puckered lips and guides him to lay his head down fully on the pillow, clucking gentle noises. While Pete sheds his last few stubborn tears, which takes a while, Lucius strokes his scalp in slow, soothing patterns. “Feeling better?” he asks eventually, once Pete has calmed down some.
“A little,” Pete sniffles. “Was that — was that all you wanted to tell me?”
Lucius wrinkles his nose. “The rest will keep until later, I think.”
“Sorry,” Pete sniffs again, sitting up straight so the mucus gathering in his sinuses will run itself down. “I didn’t mean to, like, have a fucking breakdown. I just hate thinking of you suffering like that.”
“Mmm. Well. Me too.” He sets the cushion to the side and turns to curl himself into Pete’s arms. “I kept telling myself, while I was out there — I’ve survived worse. You know, like, I’ve made it through some really horrid shit before.”
Pete makes a small, understanding noise, something soft and unobtrusive enough that Lucius will keep talking.
“I knew, however bad it got, I knew I could survive. But it’s like… I don’t want to. I’m tired of struggling, and I don’t… I don’t want to just survive anymore, you know? I want more than that.”
“I wanna give you more than that,” Pete says, burying his face in Lucius’s hair. It’s the sort of thing he would have thought was too much, before. Not that there’s anything wrong with expressing himself — he’s not a total pussy, he’s not scared to talk about his feelings. It’s that having Lucius in his life had always felt like having a ladybug land on his shirt, something pretty and lucky and thrilling, and it made him feel honored, somehow, but also terrified to move or breathe for fear of breaking the spell and scaring it off. And that seems stupid, now that he thinks about it. Lucius isn’t a bug, not some flighty thing to be admired from a distance — he’s a grown adult, and he’s a part of this relationship just as much as Pete is, and he deserves to hear Pete’s truth. “I’ll keep you safe this time, okay? I want you to have this… this amazing life.”
Lucius rolls a little awkwardly, tilts his head up so he can see Pete’s face. “Yeah?” A quiet smile curves up, slightly hidden by his beard. “What’d be so amazing about it?”
“Well, you wouldn’t have to lift a finger, first of all. Obviously. I’d work, take care of all the bills and shit, and you could stay home.”
“Oh?” His smile widens. “You’re there, in this fantastic life of mine?”
“I mean, duh,” Pete says, as though his heart isn’t pounding. “That’s why it’s so fantastic.”
“Mmm. Makes sense. And what do I do with myself while you’re off at work all day? Have you got me in a sexy little apron cooking your dinner? Because it’s gonna be a long life of cheese sandwiches, if so.”
Pete will take a life of burnt toast, if Lucius is offering. “Fuck no. That’s what we have the cook for.”
“Right,” Lucius slaps his forehead. “The cook. I forgot. And a maid as well, I assume. As I’m not much for cleaning either.”
“A lady comes and cleans on the weekends. It’s not a big place. It’s… it’s small, it’s like a little fucking… cottage thing. And you’re busy in your studio anyway.”
“I have a studio,” he confirms.
“To work on your art,” Pete explains. “Some personal pieces, some commissions for the rich assholes we know. Illustrations for my memoir.”
“Of course,” Lucius nods. He sort of bumps Pete in the cheek when he does it, because they’re curled so close together, then turns his face to kiss it better.
“Or we have a hammock on a ship somewhere. Or our own cabin.” Pete says.
“What happened to the cottage?” Lucius murmurs, kissing down his cheek, towards his chin, nuzzling against Pete’s sandpaper jaw.
“The cottage is for later.” His breath catches as teeth sink into his earlobe, tugging at his earring. “First, I have to go do a bunch of badass, hardcore shit.”
“So I’ll have something to illustrate for the memoir,” Lucius says, the words a gentle breath caressing over Pete’s skin, his lips, “naturally.”
Whatever Pete means to say next is on the tip of his tongue, except that then his tongue is dipping into Lucius’s mouth, and the words are lost, or given away. Pete doesn’t know if he’s a good kisser, but he likes doing it anyway. Other guys have made it weird — like kissing him might draw attention to his lip, like that would be a bad thing. Making out with Lucius makes him feel like he’s good at it, though; it eggs him on the way Lucius gasps for air in tiny, hiccuping breaths, tilts his head back to offer up his throat and nearly liquefies in Pete’s arms, fingernails digging for purchase in his chest like he’s scared of melting away altogether.
Gently as he can, Pete lays him down. Pete is fucking jacked, obviously, a beast when he needs to be, ripping tree up by the roots and knocking dudes down like they’re bowling pins, but he can be gentle when he wants, when he handles something delicate. Somehow he grabs a pillow to shift under Lucius’s head without breaking the kiss, not until he pulls back to look him over, take him all in. “Fuck, baby. The things I’ve been waiting to do to you.”
Lucius laughs, a shy and breathless sort of encouragement, even as his body folds in on itself, arms crossing over his chest and muscles knotting tight like he’s a piece of muslin turned to cannon wad. Immediately, Pete sits back. That isn’t like Lucius — Lucius, who, in the course of posing and preening over their many encounters, had added words to Pete’s vocabulary like “supine,” “voluptuous,” and “décolletage.”
“We don’t have to, though.” It comes out a little intense, because he wants to make sure Lucius knows he really means it, and Lucius looks up from the proximity of their bodies with a start.
“I do want to,” he says, in a tone that sounds like maybe he does, but also, maybe he doesn’t.
So Pete leans back further, lays down so they’re side by side instead. “Most of the time, when we were apart,” he confides, in what unintentionally comes out as a whisper, “I’d just, like, think about being close to you again.”
Lucius takes a moment to have what appears to be a private conversation with himself. “We can carry on snogging,” he says, his voice small too. “And maybe we hold off with the rest. For now.”
There’s a possessive, protective part of Pete that wants to press the subject only so that he can understand why. Knowing there might be something wrong and not being able to fix it, it’s like seeing a rough patch in wood and not being able to sand it down. Most likely it has nothing to do with him, but Pete still has that drive he always does, the insatiable urge to impress others, to provide for them, to be good enough. He suppresses the urge by thinking about that poor old dead dog, and what the dead dog represents: when Lucius is ready to talk to him, they’ll talk.
Right now, Lucius doesn’t want to talk. He wants to kiss. Pete doesn’t have to be told twice; he wraps a hand around the back of Lucius’s neck, palming the new freckle he knows is back there, and pulls him close. The effects are instantaneous and successful, Lucius mewling into his mouth, pliant in his arms. Pete loves him like this, soft and easy. He tries to show him just how much he likes it, kissing soft and easy too, slow, like there isn’t any rush.
He tastes and smells like smoke, and Pete doesn’t mind. In fact, he kinda likes it. Lucius used to smell fancy, like the crystal bottles he would nick or “borrow” from the captain’s cabin when the captain wasn’t looking and wore like he was wreathed in dusty flowers. It was good, but sometimes they’d be necking and Pete would catch a whiff, and have to stop to sneeze, and Lucius would go “Jesus, do you know, you nearly deafened me?” And Pete would say “I can’t help it babe, I have forceful sneezes.” And Lucius would say, all sultry, “I wonder what other noises I could get you to make, hmm?” and creep his hand down to cup Pete’s half-hard dick through the front of his pants, and Pete would make a funny joke noise, like an elephant or a gorilla, and maybe other guys would have been annoyed or huffy, but Lucius always burst with laughter, and his laugh was Pete’s favorite sound in the world, and then he’d bury his face in Pete’s chest and mumble “Oh my god, I can’t believe I love you.”
But now his neck smells like tobacco smoke and freshly laundered linens, neither of which should be so enticing, yet somehow are. The skin is tender there, and fair, and Pete wonders if his new beard will be enough to distract from all the marks he’s leaving above his collar, now that he doesn’t have that little scarf he used to wear. He notices, after a time, that Lucius is grinding against his thigh, and waits to see if Lucius has also noticed.
Obviously, he has. “Hand stuff would probably be okay,” Lucius suggests in a conversational tone only an octave above his normal register.
“Are you sure?” Pete asks, out of an abundance of caution.
“For fuck’s sake, Pete, if you don’t get your hand on my cock soon, I’ll jump overboard myself, I swear to God.”
“Duly noted.” Inelegantly, he shoves his hand down between them and finds himself tangling up with Lucius, who’s wrestling the hem of Pete’s top like it’s personally offended him.
“Off,” he huffs, “shirt off.”
“Shirt off for hand stuff?” Pete asks, even as he lifts his arms to facilitate its removal.
“Shirt off for everything, all the time,” Lucius demands. “Why do you even wear shirts, you silly, selfish man?”
“I’m sorry,” says Pete, a little helpless now with hands roving over his bare chest and arms. “I won’t do it again.”
Lucius’s shirt comes off too; their loose pants are pulled down only as far as they need to be. Pete spits into his hand and then licks it, spreading the saliva over palm and fingers with his tongue. “Oh, fuck,” Lucius whines as the hand is wrapped around him. “Fuck, fuck.”
“Is that what you wanted?” Pete asks, voice tight through the clench of his jaw.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Lucius replies, a bit hysterical as he bucks up into Pete’s hand. “Was I being too subtle?”
Lucius’s hand is also on-slash-near Pete’s dick, more out of a desire to be included than anything. Not that Pete gives much of a shit, or that he expected any different. Lucius is left handed, and Pete’s right; they’ve never quite found a way to jerk each other off face to face without someone getting an accidental elbow to the gut. As well, neither of them particularly excels at multitasking, sexually, but they’re both patient, and very good about taking turns.
And anyway, Pete’s pretty sure that he could come just from watching Lucius like this. There’s a wantonness he doesn’t make any attempt to hide, flushed and damp with sweat, hungry and open. Pete leans forward to lick and soothe the bottom lip that Lucius can’t seem to stop biting, keeps his wrist moving in steady strokes as he does so. Lucius is so hard, leaking precome with something close to desperation, and Pete wonders how long it’s been since he’s been touched, or touched himself.
“When’s the last time you, you know—?” he asks eloquently.
“Got myself off?” Lucius manages to ask, completely out of breath. “Few weeks. Maybe a month. I dunno. Haven’t got a lot of free time.”
“Wow,” Pete observes, palming Lucius’s ass with his free hand, gripping and pulling to spread his cheeks a bit. “You really needed this, huh?”
“Yes, Pete, fuck, yes.” He buries his face in Pete’s chest, so his moans are muffled. “I needed it. I needed you so fucking bad.”
Pete feels himself throb with some mixture of arousal and pride. It’s nice to feel needed. He lets go only long enough to spit into his hand again, and then he’s pulling Lucius off in firm, deliberate strokes. The teeth that have found their way to one of his nipples dig in just on the side of too sharp that lets Pete know Lucius is close, too close to maintain any sort of control over what he’s doing. He slots a thigh between Lucius’s legs, then angles his knee to press up on the tender spot behind his balls; however much has changed between them, this old trick still works, and within seconds Lucius is shaking and swearing and coming into Pete’s fist.
Pete barely has time to wipe his hand off on a nearby cushion — it’s fine, he’ll throw it overboard later — when Lucius flips him onto his back and scrambles down his body. He hasn’t even caught his breath, and it comes in hot, heavy pants against Pete’s bare and aching dick. “That’s not hand stuff,” Pete feels compelled to point out weakly, as his eyes roll back in his head.
“It’s fine,” Lucius answers in a rush. He slurps loudly at the head, so sloppy that his spit’s already dripping down and soaking the coarse hairs on Pete’s balls. “I’m gonna make you come so fast, it won’t even count.”
Pete should argue that; ask anyone, and they’ll tell you that Pete told them — he has the stamina of a clydesdale. But Lucius has proved the undoing of this too many times before for him to even put up a fight.
(“Did you go to a special academy just for sucking dick or something?” Pete once asked him, sweaty and spent.
“Of course I did,” Lucius had replied smugly. “They don’t call it finishing school for nothing.”)
Lucius can be neat about it if he wants to, but right now, he obviously doesn’t want to. He’s well aware Pete has that sort of mortifyingly masculine approach to sexuality where he can get off twice as fast from having his ego stroked rather than his shaft. Accordingly, Lucius has him stuffed halfway down his throat expeditiously, groaning and messy, drooling down his own chin and generally acting as though Pete is intimidatingly enormous as opposed to pleasantly average. And Pete is watching him, obviously, and obviously, Lucius knows he’s being watched, so he glances up, filthy and coquettish, and bats those stupidly long lashes of his, forces himself down Pete’s length until he gags, and fucking smiles about it. That smile, that fucking grin as though there’s nowhere in the world he’d rather be, is what makes Pete finish, shooting off so far past the back of Lucius’s tongue he doubts that he can even taste it.
Lucius pulls his pants up for him after, tucking him away and looking overall quite pleased with himself. Then he crawls back up to lay against Pete’s chest, patiently waiting for him to do anything other than gape and suck down air like a guppy on dry land who’s also just had its dick sucked for the first time in three months.
“You alright?” he asks eventually, when Pete comes back to consciousness at least enough to thread a hand through Lucius’s hair.
“Never better.” His hair is so fluffy when it’s like this, Pete thinks from somewhere far away. Like an expensive beaver pelt. “What are you doing down there?”
Lucius hums, and continues twiddling his fingers against Pete’s sternum. “I’m braiding our chest hair together so we’ll never have to be apart again.”
“You’re so smart, baby.” He presses a kiss to the crown of Lucius’s head. “So creative. Okay, or, wait, better yet, your beard, my pubes—”
“You’re sick,” Lucius says with a disgusted, delighted laugh, and Pete thinks, I’m the luckiest man on Earth.
They’re quiet for a while, Lucius kneading the doughiness of Pete’s pecs like a contented cat, and Pete thinking about whether he could kick a tin can off of Wee John’s head, if he did a running leap for it.
“I missed you, you know,” Lucius says absently. “I think I was going a bit mad with it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. If I so much as saw a hard boiled egg, I’d go all weepy.”
“You’re such a dick, dude, has anyone ever told you that?” Pete laughs.
Lucius giggles. “I knew you’d find me, though.” He traces what must be letters over Pete’s chest, but Pete doesn’t know any letters other than the ones in his name, so he doesn’t know what it says. “You’re very much the rescuing type.”
Pete’s stomach twists. He wants it to be true so bad, but it isn’t. “I didn’t, really. I didn’t even know you’d be here.”
Lucius turns his face up to hold his gaze with shrewd eyes. “Were you looking for me?”
“Well, yeah, vaguely, but—”
“And did you find me?”
“Technically, yes.”
“I was lost, and you were looking for me, and you found me. Which is exactly what I said.”
“Yeah,” Pete argues, “but you just happened to be here. It was a complete coincidence.”
“Maybe,” Lucius says, laying his head back down and closing his eyes, as though there’s nothing left to argue. “Could be a coincidence. Or maybe I’m just terribly lucky.”
Pete wraps both arms around him, squeezes ’til his arms tingle. “You’re right,” he says. “It’s probably that.”