Page 108 of Rears & Vices

D’Arcy’s response down was firm, dismissive, gentle: “Nearly.”

Nearly what? Everard wondered foggily.

Vitaliy seemed placated by it; his breathing settled into his usual instantaneous sleep.

D’Arcy glanced up to Everard, assessing, knowing. “All right to walk?”

“In a moment,” Everard said, thinking it truthful; but then he slid to the floor. “No—perhaps later.”

D’Arcy laughed and came over. His head hit the panelling with a thunk as he sat, elbows on his knees. Everard looked him over: the silky, red-brown hair, the thick dark lashes, the all-over flush on his dear, handsome face. The yellow, the blue-green, the odd dense purple center of his bruises. In spite of everything—because of everything—they had to be painful.

“All right?”

D’Arcy slid sideways onto the scrubbed deck. He shifted to lie on his back; soft curls splayed as the heavy, warm head lay upon Everard’s still-twitching thigh.

Everard put a hand on D’Arcy’s chest. “Preston?”

D’Arcy picked it up, kissed it, and kept it. “Better than.”

Twenty-Seven

Nearly what?

Days later, it kept Everard up at night, nearly what.

The Sévère floated hove-to just outside Port-au-Prince. Five bells and the moonlight on the face of the clock on the desk told Everard it was half-three in the morning. Vitaliy slept beside him in the tiered trundle—for the cot did not, in fact, fit three—oblivious, trusting, contentedly fucked out.

On Everard’s other side, limbs entwined with his like a sucking nautilus, D’Arcy was rather less oblivious to his wakefulness.

“Got more sleep doing night watches,” D’Arcy murmured in his ear. He patted Everard on the hip sleepily, and pulled him in even closer, spoonlike. “Tense in all the wrong places. What t’devil’s wrong?”

“Would I could tell you.”

D’Arcy harrumphed into his hair, sounding amused. “As though you’ve secrets.”

He didn’t. But you do, Everard thought. You do.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Everard said crisply, “because I haven’t an idea why.”

“You’re… too happy?” D’Arcy taunted. “Too wealthy? Too well fucked?” He shifted suggestively and kissed his nape. “Can’t remedy that last. Sorry.”

Everard stiffened. D’Arcy harrumphed again, less amused this time, and retreated onto his back. The cots clicked together softly, canvas-on-canvas. Vitaliy didn’t stir. He woke for nothing less than guns or vigorous shaking, sometimes both.

D’Arcy sighed. “What are you worried for?”

“Everything,” Everard said honestly.

Another sigh. “… In order of severity, then? Surely, you’ve nothing but lists in that brain.”

Everard didn’t deny it, though they were more concurrent tallies of time and space, spinning lists going round an infinite axis like a star⁠—

“Ascending or descending?”

“Descending, of course. Ass.”

“Fine! La Corona,” Everard said promptly. Nearly what. “Mutiny. A hurricane.” Nearly what. “The Vuelte sinking in the Gulf Stream, and the crew’s shares for the year with her. Two thousand small arms we’re to deliver to México. Jean Lafitte intercepting us.” Nearly what. “Every time you’re out of my sight, that the next time I see you you’ll be⁠—”

D’Arcy nipped his shoulder. “I told you not to worry.”