Best Foot Forward

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Gabriel is still limping by the end of his watch.

Likely it's barely noticeable to anyone unaccustomed to observing him closely and at length, but a limp nonetheless. Injuries come from all sides in this world, so what ails him could be blister or rope burn, bruise or broken toe, battle injury or something borne of the myriad inevitable hazards of life aboard a ship.

What's certain is that, despite his chin kept firmly up, it's hindering him.

Hugo watches as Gabriel pauses to speak with Vidale on the quarterdeck, silhouetted in the boiling sunset. His weight is on the rail, one foot flat to the deck and the other lifted, toes only just touching the boards in a way that Hugo finds irritating, fairly or not.

With a nod and a gesture, Vidale moves on. Gabriel leans down to scratch at the sole of his foot and visibly flinches. If Hugo were in earshot, he assumes he'd be treated to an imaginative combination of obscenities, but all he can hear from his vantage in the crow's nest is the roar of the ocean and the snap of canvas, the noises of his crew calling back and forth, the shape of their words eroded by the wind.

Not that he needs to hear Gabriel cursing to see that he's in no hurry to visit the surgeon. All in all, Hugo takes a dim view of his freshly-appointed first mate's decision to malinger.

The Squall surges onward back to the Cove, weather and water ever in her favour. Hugo spares a glance to the merchant ship left in their wake, stripped of its cargo and sinking in graceful tribute, and then once more back to Gabriel loitering at the rail. With a sharp sigh, Hugo lowers his spyglass and collapses it into his palm, then swings down onto the ladder to steer this issue onto a more satisfactory course.

Gabriel still hasn't moved by the time Hugo sets down on the deck, six foot and then some of dereliction of duty. The rapid retort of his heels must signal his intent to deliver a dressing down, as Gabriel arranges his face into careless nonchalance as he approaches.

"Captain," he says.

Both the greeting and the hot rake of his gaze dance perilously on the edge of disrespectful, as is his standard. So far, Hugo's attempts to bring him in line have been somewhat counterproductive. Enjoyable, certainly, but with scant evidence of the desired result, though he suspects Gabriel himself is getting exactly what he wants out of it.

Time will tell if his reflexive insubordination will become a problem, personally, politically, or with the crew's morale, but for now, he's a mistake Hugo's content to keep making.

He gives Gabriel a thorough once-over from head to toe in return—sun-rich skin salty with perspiration, his braid looped over one wide shoulder, dried blood smeared up his arms and in the valley of his chest from a hasty post battle wipedown. His hips are canted, injured foot laid flat but not pulling its weight. That he's trying to hide it is a further attempt on Hugo's patience.

"Whatever reason you have for not taking yourself down to the surgeon's quarters, I assure you it's a foolish one," Hugo says. "Get that seen to right away."

Gabriel shrugs, amiable in the face of Hugo's discontent. "This ain't my blood, you realise."

"I'm aware of that." Hugo takes a step closer to lightly rest his boot over Gabriel's bare toes, rocked back onto his heel so the sole barely kisses them. "I mean this, as you well know."

It's a threat mostly without teeth, but for a man who ploughs head first into battle with fearless abandon, Gabriel has his tender spots.

"It's nothin'. Splinter from the deck of that merchant's shitty windjammer. Hadn't seen a stoning in at least five Risings, by my reckoning." He gingerly extracts his toes from beneath Hugo's boot, more cautious now that he's realised a round of flirting isn't on the cards. "It'll work its own way out."

Ridiculous. Hugo stares at him. He stares back, intractable until Hugo braces two hands on his mountainous shoulders, dark leather of his gloves spread over the undulations of his bondmark, and shoves him.

It's brazen enough of a trespass that Gabriel tips his bulk onto his lame foot in shock, and promptly yowls like a shipcat that's had his tail stepped on. Anger thunders from him as he makes a grab for the rail then aborts in an attempt to save face.

"It doesn't look like nothing to me." Hugo digs his fingers into the stout muscle of his biceps, holding him steady as all the fuming in the world won't stop his knee from buckling. "It looks to me like you can barely stand on it, much less have my back if we encounter hostilities. What it looks like, to me, is that you're making a liability of yourself, Berthelot. And for what reason?"

Pride, of course. Gabriel jerks his arm out of Hugo's grip, his rage simmering down into a wounded sulk. With his immense presence, it's easy to forget he's so very green still. A wicked urge floods Hugo's veins, one that wars between offering him a soothing word and driving him further into his temper.

"You know I ain't a liability. I can take care of it myself, just had my hands full till now," Gabriel insists. "Don't see why I ought to waste my time sittin' in Michele's chop shop so xe can poke and prod at me for no reason."

Now they were getting to the crux of the issue. Gabriel may be headstrong and confident—overly so, by all accounts—and able to draw on the Fury's magic with such strength and aptitude that he can turn a storm to his whim and the tide to his fancy, but he is still a man, and one who is as likely to baulk at incongruous things as any other. And devotees of the Honoured Demise are, in all fairness to him, unsettling.

"If you're afraid of our surgeon, you can see a physic next we make port. In the meantime, you'll be relieved of—"

"I ain't afraid. And you ain't relieving me of nothing."

Hugo pauses neatly. "Am I not?"

It's emphatically not a question. Gabriel clearly has an answer for him regardless, though in an unexpected fit of tact, or perhaps his instinct for self-preservation, he doesn't voice it. That is some improvement, at least. He sets his shoulders square and draws himself up to his full height, a magnificent grimace of pain crossing his face as he settles his weight across both feet.

"I ain't afraid of nothing," he says instead. "Not even a corpse whisperer with a bone saw."

"Good. Xe won't take your whole foot for the sake of a splinter. At least, not if you remedy it right away. I can't make any guarantees once infection sets in, so sooner is better than later."

Clearly not a prospect he had considered, and one he doesn't enjoy now that he has. Hugo watches a variety of emotions churn across his face: stubbornness, frustration, uncertainty, and a brief but intense resurgence of anger that settles into deeply resentful defeat.

He glances around, then inclines his head close to Hugo's, oiled braid sliding over his shoulder and dangling in the space between them.

"You do it," he says, halfway between a question and a demand, pitched low as if he fears being overheard. He's so surly that it makes Hugo's mouth twitch at the corner, and that's enough for him to finally take some mercy on his bruised pride.

"A wiser choice than forcing me to drag you to the surgeon by the ear," he replies in similarly conspiratorial tones, though even the undercurrent of fondness he can't quell doesn't keep Gabriel from pulling a face over it. He pats him on his blood-streaked chest. "Let's see to it, then."

---

Gabriel keeps a straight back and a steady pace as he follows Hugo to his quarters. The only indication of his discomfort is in the tight line of his jaw and the tendrils of hair sweated to his temples and his thick neck. He looks no different to any other time Hugo's pulled him aside for admonishment, but he assumes it's incidental more than an attempt to cover from prying eyes in this instance.

As soon as the door closes behind them, Gabriel lets out a long, hearty string of swears and sits himself behind Hugo's desk, the dipping sun casting fire into his hair and igniting his jewellery as he makes himself comfortable. Also not dissimilar behaviour, though if he thinks Hugo is about to kneel at his feet while he's enthroned in the captain's chair, then he has misjudged the situation quite severely.

"Anchor-humping, bilge-chugging, gods-fuckin'-bedamned spelk." Gabriel rests his ankle over his knee and grabs his foot with both hands, attempting to wrestle it around to inspect his sole. "Feels the size of your bleedin' rapier."

"It would justify all your rouspéter if it were, but somehow I don't imagine it's the case."

There's a bottle of spirits in Hugo's top drawer, the contents of which are barely more than firewater. He sets it on the desk while he shrugs off his coat and turns up his shirtsleeves. It is, of course, immediately commandeered. Gabriel turns the bottle in his hand, briefly losing interest in his foot to squint distrustfully at the turbid contents. They glow a sinister red with the final embers of the sunset.

"What's with the swill?" he says, uncorking it and giving it a sniff. He grimaces. "You're always purloinin' the good stuff for yourself and this is what you're gonna pour me?"

"Oh, standards all of a sudden? You'll be pleased to know this isn't a situation that merits a fortifying drink, then."

Hugo unknots his cravat and smooths it between his fingers. It's a golden cream, which was always going to be a risky choice of colour. Indeed, the Squall's last engagement has left its mark and rendered it fit only for burning, though it has one last task to fulfil first.

He gestures with a gloved hand for Gabriel to get up and move. "Now, if you could stop stewing in your own misfortune for half a turn, I want you over here for this."

Gabriel follows his pointing fingers and smirks.

The captain's bed is a grand affair, carved and jointed into the ship's timbers, well-layered with blankets and furs and framed by heavy velvet curtains that gather to either side. They've fucked more since that first heady smoke-and-water night at the revel: in the wreckage of an ill-fated tavern room; in Gabriel's bunk with a hand clapped over his loud and filthy mouth; right here, Gabriel wrestled over the desk, one arm pinned behind his back and legs wedged apart—but not yet in Hugo's sheets.

Gabriel's injury is suddenly only a minor inconvenience as he follows Hugo's direction, bobbing over like an untethered buoy to beach himself in the blankets, his generous body as desperately inviting as Hugo thought it'd be amid the embroidered covers. With a contented grunt, he tucks one hand behind his head, the other tipping the bottle to his mouth despite his frank opinion of its contents.

His calf dangles over the edge of the frame, wounded foot presented as though Hugo's any more likely to kneel here than he was at his desk.

A sight to behold. If torturing him with a light hand wasn't in the offing, Hugo would be inclined to skip the wound tending and have him right now—but it very much is, so he sits next to Gabriel and hauls his leg around until his heel is propped on his thigh. He's not particularly helpful about it, and becomes less so at Hugo's first exploratory touch. He makes a stifled noise and tries to tug away, foot flexing inward like it's trying to protect itself.

Hugo clicks his tongue.

"Tickles, don't it," Gabriel says, accusatory.

"My apologies," Hugo replies with an acid crispness. It's not necessarily his intention to make the surgeon seem like the preferable option in future, but it perhaps wouldn't be an unwise outcome. He tugs off his gloves with his teeth and tosses them in the general direction of his desk, and takes a vice grip on Gabriel's ankle.

Without warning, he brings his hand down in a short arc and with as much force as he can, laying a slap along the underside of Gabriel's foot so hard it makes his palm sting.

The report echoes off the walls of his quarters.

A brief, shocked calm falls over Gabriel, his broad chest rising as he fills his lungs, then for the second time that day he treats Hugo to an agonised bellow. Hugo holds him fast through his struggling and cursing until he settles down once more, each futile kick feeding the slow burn of his desire. When he runs his fingertips along Gabriel's foot again, the muscle of his calf tenses solid, but he restrains himself from further fight.

"Better?"

"No, 'cause now it's on fire, asshole."

"Then gird yourself, because this isn't going to get any more pleasant," Hugo says, rescuing the bottle of spirits from where Gabriel flung it into the bedclothes. He jams his wadded-up cravat to the neck, upending it long enough for the liquor to wick through the silk.

Gabriel bares his teeth as Hugo presses the fabric to the underside of his foot, but the pain mustn't be as bad as he was anticipating. Certainly nothing worse than the slap. The snarl relaxes off his face as Hugo sets about wiping the everyday grime away patiently and thoroughly, sluicing off grit and blood and pitch stains first from his heel, then the tough curve alongside his arch, and then the ball of his foot. When he runs the silk between each toe—not a few of them crooked, despite all his blood and thunder over a mere splinter—it earns him a hitched muttering, though no further complaints of ticklishness.

But if Hugo is on the brink of finding some meaning in cleansing the dirt from his sole with silk and spirits, something devotional about it, almost, then leave it to Gabriel to sully the moment.

"May as well do both while you're here." He nudges the outside of Hugo's thigh with his other foot, a knowing leer making its way out from beneath his rancour. "Since it looks like you're getting real into it and all."

As though Gabriel hasn't some interesting appetites of his own. Hugo digs his thumb into the meat of his foot until he winces and considers the virtues of stuffing the cravat into his mouth, though decides to exercise forbearance. Likewise, he stifles the urge to dissemble. It's not that it's Gabriel's foot, which is hardly beautiful on its own merits even if there is, as ever, dangerous allure in the perverse, so much as it's Gabriel's foot, and thus as worthy of Hugo's attentions as every other inch of his body.

Whether he's 'getting real into it' or not—that's besides the point. The point is that there's no sign of a splinter in the calloused parts of Gabriel's sole, so he knows where it must be. He refolds his cravat into a clean square and soaks it, then presses it into the arch firmly enough that the cool alcohol trickles down his wrist.

Gabriel heaves like an undersea quake. "Fury fuckin' help me, Hugo—"

At least that wipes the smirk back off his face, but Hugo could do without the kick that narrowly misses his own, and the spatter of liquor that doesn't. He licks a drop of it from the corner of his mouth, then viciously pinches the tendon above Gabriel's heel until he calms down again, if the murderous glower on his face can be called that.

"If you're done indulgin' your depraved and wicked inclinations, can we get on with this?"

"Depraved? I haven't even threatened to break any bones yet." Hugo pinches his smallest toe, amused at the way he hastily wriggles it free, and sets the cravat and liquor aside. As the alcohol evaporates, a different scent pervades the air. A familiar, enticing one, though by appearances, Gabriel's not going to be forthcoming about having any further stake in this.

So Hugo lifts his foot and inspects it instead. He can see the splinter now: at least an inch long and thicker than he expects, needled into the soft skin that hasn't been toughened by rope and deck and rock. It's almost completely embedded, its dark and bloody length visible under the surface of his skin, but ought to be simple enough to excise with the application of a keen edge.

A simmering anticipation settles low in Hugo's belly. He draws his belt knife and wets his lips.

"Hold very still," he says, knowing with acute pleasure that Gabriel will not.

"Hells, no." Gabriel recoils, his objection vehement enough that he manages to jerk his foot entirely free of Hugo's grip. He cradles it protectively, knee drawn up under his chin. "Godsdamn—if I wanted it carved out I would've gone to Michele to begin with."

"Then I'm not sure what else you expect me to do," Hugo says, terse only to disguise his stymied desire. He taps the flat of his knife against his palm and then reluctantly sheaths it.

"I don't know, but it ain't that!"

"Well, Berthelot, my solution is your only option if you can't come up with one of your own." Hugo exhales through his nose and summons a more measured tone. "Let me take another look, then."

After a brief but sulky struggle, Hugo gets a hold of Gabriel's calf and reclaims his foot once again. On some instinct that is somewhat murkier in intent than his affectionate cruelties, he rubs at the outer edge of Gabriel's sole, his instep, along the bony length of his toes, before returning to his arch.

It gentles him enough that he stops trying to pull free again, and he lets Hugo run his thumbnail firmly over the buried splinter. If he can force the end at least partway out, then he can worry it the rest of the way with his fingernails and spare the knife's bite for places Gabriel finds less objectionable.

The splinter does not emerge further, but a bead of blood wells up from the wound—and a soft groan from Gabriel's throat.

His foot goes tense in Hugo's hand, toes curling tight, and he falls deathly still. Hugo raises his eyebrows in question, but Gabriel is looking everywhere but at him. The scent of his arousal is difficult to ignore. A droplet of sweat slides down his cheek and into the dark gold of his beard.

Hugo takes a slow breath, eyes falling half-closed, heat unfurling deep in his belly and quickening into a deluge as he digs his thumbnail against the embedded end of the splinter again. The scarlet bead of blood overflows its bounds, streaking down Gabriel's sole and onto his thumb.

"I hope you're not in too much pain," he says.

"Bullshit you don't." Gabriel flinches, foot twitching, but he controls his reflexive pulling away, if not his mouth. "The way you're having a fine godsdamn time gettin' off on proclivities old and new? Bet you could drown me between your legs right now."

Hugo smiles wolfishly, lifting his thumb to his mouth. "And I will, if you gainsay me one more time."

The metallic tang on his tongue makes his cunt pulse voraciously, but Gabriel is the one who swallows. His eyes are dark, face flushed, chest rising and falling shallowly. Just as gratifyingly, the tip of the splinter has breached the surface of his skin. It's detectable when Hugo passes the pad of his thumb over it—each stroke makes Gabriel jolt as though he's charged with the Fury's magic—but it's still not exposed enough to get a grip.

He tries anyway, stretching the skin and trying to nip it between his fingernails, but he only succeeds in getting his fingers tacky with blood.

Without stopping to think about it too closely, Hugo hoists Gabriel's foot higher and ducks his head. The curve of his arch fits neatly against his lower face. Salt and blood on his lips, the astringent bite of the liquor, the heat of his skin—Gabriel is a man who bares himself in defiance and in pride, but he so easily lets Hugo have him by the tender undersides.

Hugo stares at him over the slope of his foot. Gabriel, who gives passing thought to consequence but rarely to propriety, holds his gaze while he plunges a hand beneath the waist of his slops. He seems satisfied to simply press his fingers over his cock so it's not borne of a desperate need to bring himself off; proof he's enjoying himself as much as Hugo is despite his grousing, even if the glint in his eye dares him to say anything about it.

He can have his way; there are more devastating things Hugo can do with his mouth at present.

He focuses on the hot ridge of skin irritated by the splinter's invasion, feeling out the raised length of it with the tip of his tongue. He works at it with firm strokes, each pass echoed by a brush of his thumb over Gabriel's instep, and he's soon rewarded twofold. Gabriel makes a strangled sound, toes curling tight and brushing Hugo's cheek, fingers circling under his pants, and one last probe of Hugo's tongue coaxes the splinter free enough that he can catch it between his teeth.

Or, could, if he weren't consumed by Gabriel's quickened breathing, his clenched jaw, the way he's fighting to keep his hips from rising off the bed. There is sanctity in his suffering, and Hugo's lust surges anew, towering like a wind-wave. His trousers are rough where he's drenched, his thighs aching with the radiating intensity of his arousal.

Possessed by an urge bordering on savage, he squeezes Gabriel's foot and feels the bones and tendons strain. He drags his teeth over his largest toe, runs his tongue along the curve of his sole and then bites hard enough to leave indents in the tough skin. Each attack startles an uneven noise out of Gabriel that founders between confusion and craving.

He's in fine company. Hugo finds himself fighting a tight kind of breathlessness as he buries his face in the arch of Gabriel's foot again, nose pressed flat and lips parted, heated pleasure pounding between his legs as he worries at the splinter. Gabriel's skin is damp with salt-sweat, Hugo's condensing breath further wetting his sole in sharp huffs as he scrapes at the splinter with his teeth, taking blood into his mouth and letting it linger on his tongue, gnawing until he manages to catch it and prise it free.

A heady satisfaction grips him as the fragment tears free, echoed by a low, long groan from Gabriel that's laced with both relief and pain.

"Godsdamn," he says, watching spellbound as Hugo rolls the splinter from one side of his mouth to the other then spits it carelessly into the rumpled bedding. He laughs, rough and low. "If you'd told me you were gonna do it like that, I'd figure you were yankin' my chain."

Hugo shoots him a lean smile as he shrugs his shirt and waistcoat off, then hitches Gabriel's foot onto his shoulder. Gabriel offers no resistance, though he catches his lower lip at the reappearance of Hugo's knife.

Further reward for this nonsense. He flips the knife into a reverse grip, tucks it into Gabriel's waistband, and rips his slops open like he'd gut a captive.

"Son of a bitch—" Gabriel's hand is spread in the darkened, damp curls of his crotch. His cock juts between his first and middle finger. "I just made those and you ruined em." He shoves at Hugo's cheek with his big toe. He sounds more breathless than angry, but still angry enough.

"Seems you ruined them before I had a hand in it." Hugo stabs his knife into the bedframe and pointedly drags his fingers through the wetness smeared between Gabriel's generous thighs, the hair there slicked into whorls.

"Like this ain't your doing as well—"

"Are you going to complain about it?"

Hugo shoves Gabriel's hand aside so he can make himself intimately familiar with every tiny tremor and clench, fingers gliding through damp, coarse hair to find velvety blood-hot flesh. He's beautifully, obscenely wet. He rolls the heel of his hand over Gabriel's cock, just to hear the soaked noise it makes and to feel him pulse against his palm.

"You should be thanking me for doing a surgeon's work for your benefit, considering it falls far outside both my expertise and my responsibilities as captain."

Gabriel sucks in a breath through his nose. He's got nothing clever to say for once in his life, instead intent on slipping the brass buttons of Hugo's breeches. He frees trousers and underclothes alike from the clinch of his sashes and belts with a single fierce yank. A seam rips somewhere, but Hugo's relief at peeling the damp fabric from his skin outweighs his annoyance in the short term.

"This ain't exactly a captain's duty either," he manages to dredge up. His insufferable smirk resurfaces, so he must consider it a sharp enough riposte; one he's rewarding himself for by running his hands over Hugo's bared hips and down his thighs, hooking his fingers into the rumpled folds of his breeches.

In the spirit of cooperation, Hugo helps work them the rest of the way off. "You're right, it isn't, though I doubt you appreciate the special dispensation."

"Seems to me that's just a fancy way of saying you're takin' advantage of my grievously wounded state."

"Tch. I'll give you grievously wounded."

Gabriel grins up at him, glowing with a terrible affection, and gods, it makes Hugo want to hurt him in the most breathtaking ways. The impulse moves through him like the slide of dark silk, like curling anise smoke, blood threading through brine. Something to be savoured.

He cradles Gabriel's ankle, turning his head to scrape his teeth on the curve of it. Slow warmth drips onto his shoulder, gathering with perspiration to trickle down his back, anointing his bondmark with their salt price combined, the first offering of the evening. The room smells of blood and sex and liquor and salt, every inhalation stoking a base demand that refuses to be ignored.

With a sharp breath, Hugo hitches Gabriel's ankle higher up his shoulder, slings a leg over his other massive thigh and presses his cunt to the apex of Gabriel's legs. The slick, blood-flushed contact is electric, the effect immediate: Gabriel curses up a loud, filthy storm. Hugo swears he can feel the clench of him against his lips.

"Oh, you finally gonna fuck me proper, then?" Gabriel's pulse shudders in his throat, beneath soaked hair that's plastered in waves to his neck. A glorious wreck ripe for the sinking.

"You could say that," Hugo says, and gouges his thumbnail into the wound on Gabriel's sole.

His first mate may have further unflattering things to say about him, but Hugo digs in his thumb and his bilge prayers scatter into a beautiful howl, his back arching under this sudden return to pain. It inspires little sympathy and even less mercy, only fuelling his desire; Hugo cants his hips and weathers his bucking, a sigh guttering from his throat as he feels the firm ridge of Gabriel's arousal part his folds and slip between them.

The way Gabriel chokes on his own animal noises sends further torrents of lust thundering through Hugo's veins. More potent still are the spasms of pain that turn into instinctive, fervent rutting, and the open-mouthed rapture on his face as though nobody's pinned him down and ridden his cock before.

Hugo angles his thumb, parting the gash with his nail and pressing deeper into the wound, into the wet, hot shallows of his flesh, and he thinks about that.

"Fuck," Gabriel loudly says, having apparently exhausted his more elaborate repertoire of oaths and curses. He clutches for Hugo's waist, and with one last heaving thrust that almost unseats him, comes apart under him like a hull bursting on jagged rocks. His toes curl and catch strands of Hugo's hair, his thighs and chest quaking as he spends.

Hugo's cunt clenches as he's caught in the savage grip of his own approaching release. Every powerful twitch he can feel between his legs draws him taut, each low, pained moan that spills from Gabriel's lips urging him towards climax. One last dig of his thumb has Gabriel's face contorting in equal parts bliss and agony, lost in his perfect torture. Hugo drinks in the sight as he bears down on him relentlessly, relishing the way Gabriel jolts and groans as he grinds against his tender cock.

Blood trickles down his arm, and as the first drops spatter onto Gabriel's belly, Hugo comes viciously, his cunt pulsing in driving, torrential waves.

The aftermath is a slippery mess of panted breath and trapped limbs. Gabriel's heavy as an anchor; a willing sacrifice at the altar of Hugo's cravings, but a shiftless one now he's had his fill. He shoves Gabriel's thick thigh off him without ceremony, and with careful regard for the perilous slickness of their skin as well as his own watery knees, extracts himself to fetch his basin and ewer.

He spares a glance at Gabriel as he pours. He's the picture of unabashed contentment, slow sticky pleasure enshrined amongst his blankets. Lanternlight dips into the base of his throat, clings to the curve of his biceps and the sweat-glazed slope of his chest. He catches Hugo watching him, and has the temerity to smirk about it.

It's obvious he's inclined to moor himself here for the evening. Hugo finds he's not as averse to the idea as he should be, but it's far too early in their... whatever this is, for that kind of intimacy. He steels his resolve as he sets the basin by the bed and wrings out a washcloth.

"Don't get too comfortable," he says.

"Sendin' me back to my own bunk, Captain?"

"No." Hugo lets Gabriel luxuriate in the reassurance for a minute or two while he wipes his arm and shoulder clean. "I'm sending you to Michele."

"What!" Gabriel scrambles to sit upright, making it convenient for Hugo to grab his foot once more and scrub mercilessly at the blood going tacky on his sole. "Aw, c'mon—ow, godsdamn, watch it. After all that?"

"Watch yourself, Berthelot. Get this salved and dressed before first watch tomorrow. You'll be standing it if you don't."

"So much for relieving me of duty on account of my unreliability."

Hugo should toss Gabriel the cloth and let him clean himself up. Instead, he pushes his massive, damp thighs apart and kneels between them. "I thought you found that decision objectionable."

"Threat, you mean. And yeah, but only 'cause of the aspersions you were casting."

"Do you want first watch?"

"Hells do I."

"Then if I check the binnacle list," Hugo says, sitting back to rinse the cloth. "I expect to see your name on it."

Gabriel sighs. "And the surgeon writes the binnacle list," he says in a sarcastic sing-song. "Even though you get as much say. Thought you'd be feeling more generous after a good fuck."

"Has that worked so far?"

Gabriel's eyes gleam. "Thought I'd keep tryin' till it does."

An idle flirt, but Fury help him—the promise of it. The compass of Hugo's heart veers wildly toward Gabriel, marks him a cardinal direction, and he takes out his despair at this palm-cut idiocy by snapping the washcloth against Gabriel's inner thigh.

"Get out of my bed," he says.

Gabriel's laugh is the rumble of distant thunder. "Ow, all right, all right," he says, though he hardly takes the command to heart. In fact he doesn't budge in the slightest, instead flinging an arm around Hugo's shoulders to pull him down into a slack and lazy kiss.

His chest squashes opulently against Hugo's own, and the careless hand he spreads over the ink on Hugo's shoulder is enough of a temptation to permit a moment's more indulgence. Though not so much that Gabriel will think it's this easy to get his own way: when his hand begins a journey south, Hugo heads things off with a firm bite to his lower lip.

"You know that ain't a discouragement, but I can take a hint." With easy humour, Gabriel pushes himself up off the bed, hobbling about to locate his sash and sword belt and attempting to rig his torn slops into something passably modest with them. Despite Hugo's attentions, he's in satisfying disarray still, his hair pulled halfway out of its braid and an unmistakable flush to his face and chest.

"Then I admire your persistence in the face of several blatant ones." Hugo tosses the cloth into the basin, and before he can second guess himself, draws his first mate to attention before he can leave. "Berthelot."

Gabriel pauses with a hand flat against the door. He's lifted his injured foot, toes brushing the board, and the fact that Hugo exacerbated things this time doesn't mean he can't remain annoyed by it.

It helps him keep it brisk, at least.

"Since you are about to report to the surgeon, so you will have time on your hands tomorrow," he says, approaching to stand toe-to-toe, "I expect to see you here shortly after reveille. I'll have something to keep you gainful."

Unabashed as usual, a grin slants across Gabriel's face. "Resorted to bribery now?"

"I have faith that one of these days you'll successfully identify an order."

"Well, order or bribe, sounds like it's in my interests."

"It very much is," Hugo says, though no matter how stern his delivery, Gabriel still grins like it's the highest praise. He gives his first mate an encouraging kick to the ankle. "Go."

Gabriel sketches a deliberately sloppy salute and laughs, finally taking his leave with a spring in his step.

---

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