Page 49 of Rears & Vices

Everard put his hand on the stanchion rail, looked up. Vitya was still there in the foretop, leaning on elbows, hair loose and blown back by Gulf breeze. Tireless.

“Ya veo como es.” León sighed. “Vale. Best I go.” He put a hand on Everard’s elbow, drew him back away from the rail. “Don’t climb the shrouds as you are, friend. You will not convince him to come down tonight, anyway.”

“What is he vigilant for?” Everard muttered. “Men overboard? Jean Lafitte? It’s two in the morning.”

León laughed. “Sometimes he is just like this, man.” He saluted. “Drink water. Sleep. Find your lieutenant, maybe. Vee will see you at the rendezvous.”

He was probably correct. He’d had it from Vitya’s own mouth.

Sleep where you like.

After some enquiring, leveraging social clout he didn’t feel he possessed, and a little outright bribery, Everard eventually found D’Arcy: asleep in the old teniente’s quarters two decks below. How the devil D’Arcy had acquired the use of an officer’s apartment on a ship of two hundred pirates he didn’t know but didn’t care, so long as it didn’t harbour fleas. Everard crawled in top and tail; D’Arcy murmured his name and curled a hand contently around his left knee; and that was that.

Until: the hand on his leg tightened, and fingers wiggled underneath, scritch-scritched in the soft hollow.

“Gah.” Everard squirmed sideways. “D’you mind?”

D’Arcy laughed huskily. “You’re drunk,” he whispered. “How novel.”

“You’re not,” Everard retorted. “How novel.”

“Mmm.” Less amused.

“Why not join in?”

“I’ve watch at eight bells. Also, didn’t feel like it.”

“You and Vee both.”

“That surprises me not at all.”

Everard frowned to the darkness. “You’re still angry with me.”

A pause. A long breath. “Yes, rather.”

Everard made a hesitant noise, a squeaky, beginning-of-sentence noise.

“No,” D’Arcy interrupted him. “Not right now, Ev. Sleep it off.”

Everard was still for a moment. Then:

“Budge over?”

D’Arcy sighed. “We’re not nineteen, Everard—this is a single-wi— Oof.”

Everard hummed happily. D’Arcy didn’t wear drawers or a nightshirt to bed; he was sleekly fuzzy absolutely everywhere.

“I hate when you’re tipsy,” D’Arcy whispered, resigned. He put a hand up to Everard’s head, left it gently there, curved over his skull.

“No, you don’t.”

Sometime in the night, D’Arcy had maneuvered them into opposite positions, so that Everard was to the outside, one arm hanging, and it was D’Arcy who was squished against the apartment panelling, draped halfway over him. Everard lay awake in the dark predawn, sober, sweating all over, with silken curls in his face and drool on his shirt.

“Preston,” he whispered.

“Mmn.”

“Preston, you’re angry with me.”