Page 45 of Rears & Vices

Above their heads, the rain came again, a sheet of it falling down, and then another, in unmistakable rhythm. Vitaliy looked up, eyes wide. “A storm?” His expression twisted, and fell into flat, bitter understanding. “Tell me. What have I done?”

Everard stared. “What you’ve done?” he said, incredulous. “Nothing. It was me, my fault. I’m truly sorry. I didn’t realise at first that you weren’t aw⁠—”

“Nothing?” Vitaliy said. He looked down to his still hard, linen-concealed stand, as if he didn’t recognise it, his expression strange. “I did nothing?”

“Well, there was…” Everard was torn between the truth and reassurance. Because it was definitely not nothing, what had happened, but, in Everard’s eyes, it was also nothing serious, what Vitaliy had done. What he had, though…

“You were… er… I was… I believe you wanted me to…”

“Oh,” Vitaliy said, relaxing slightly, “like that?” His shoulder dropped as his hand groped low, beneath him, exploring.

“No!” Everard’s face burned. “Jesús,” he cursed. “I wouldn’t have— I didn’t— Nothing happened.”

Vitaliy exhaled. “Nothing.” His eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

“Er.” Everard blinked. “Because you were…” Too insistent? Not insistent enough—in the proper way? “… asleep?”

Vitaliy’s knuckles on the rope were white knots of tension as he pulled himself out of the cot and swung gracefully down. Half-naked, still hard and unconcerned for it, he walked to the night-black windows. The rain whipped the six-panes with pitter-patter drops and shining rivulets.

“I should apologise,” Vitaliy said slowly. “Not you. I should’ve… warned you. It doesn’t happen often, only when storms are imminent, or I am extremely tired.” He grimaced. “When I have not been with someone for a long time, too. I don’t ever remember the act, so it is easy to forget it happens at all.” He crossed his arms around himself, big shoulders slumping. “I did not think it through. I’m sorry.”

Everard didn’t know what to say. He was—and this was putting it mildly—horrified. And not on his own behalf.

Vitaliy looked over his shoulder from within a curtain of hair. He pushed it behind one ear and peered at him anxiously. “I did not do anything you did not like? Or…” He swallowed, “… Did not want?”

“No!” Everard said hastily. “I liked all of it, up to the point I realised you were completamen—completely—insensate. That was the only part that was… objectionable.”

Vitaliy nodded again. He seemed relieved. “In past episodes, I have usually been the receptive party.”

Episodes. Everard felt sick. It had happened before, and Vitaliy didn’t remember it? Remember men taking advantage of him? Rolling him over, pushing up his legs, making him whimper and accommodate them?

“No one’s ever woken you? Never?”

Vitaliy turned halfway. “One other, once. No one else much minded I was asleep, no. Not enough to tell me they did. I do eventually wake,” he added, with an uneasy smile. “And it hasn’t happened in… years. A decade. Longer.”

Everard did a quick calculation. A decade, more: from what he’d said three years past, ten years before had been Vitaliy in the Marines, Vitaliy pressed into the Navy.

“God. I’d like to give them all what-for⁠—”

There was a hasty knock, and the greatcabin door swung open. Thom stuck his head in.

“Storm, sirs” was all he said before popping back out.

“Shite,” Everard cursed.

The rain was in fact hitting the deck harder, and voices and footsteps of the hands abovedeck had grown tenser, louder with alarm. A hard gale, at the least.

Everard went to his trunk and pulled out knee breeches and a waistcoat. One leg in, he was obliged to crouch and clutch at the trunk, as another sharp heel of the ship to starboard almost sent him sprawling.

“Gah. It’s a storm, all right.”

Against the roll, Vitaliy had only leaned, thighs tensed, arms raised to take hold of the rafters above. He, better than Everard, knew the heel and heave of his ship, felt every push of water and wind in his centre. He offered his hand as the ship righted; Everard took it.

“I’d run her, won’t you?” Everard asked, pulling his waistcoat shut. “We’re out far enough.”

Not that any sailor with half a brain would dare put a Santa Ana–class between a lee shore and the northeasterly trades, and have her at risk of running aground. They had more than plenty of room to open the sails and flee the storm, using its own gale.

“Yes,” Vitaliy said softly. “Put her out before the wind. She can take it.”