Silks for a Sailor

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The last rattle and thuds of a battle won drifts into the merchant vessel's stateroom, an accompaniment to the bubbling croaks of its soon-to-be former occupant—who, having met the wrong end of a cutlass, is thrashing out his last moments all over the scrubbed floorboards.

Annoyed by his noises, Gabriel cracks the captain's skull with the hilt of said cutlass, reads good portents in the results, then sees about cracking the lock of his sea-chest with similar finesse. Most of the haul will be in the hold, but fortune favours the shameless and there ain't a captain on the Fourfold Seas that doesn't keep a trinket or two in his private collection.

He paws through the contents, humming under his breath. All he turns up is an icon of Sitis that's the wrong heft for real gold and whose fat red rubies are clearly paste. Gab mutters in colourful disappointment, tucking it his sash anyway and kicking through some of the linens he'd heaved out onto the floor instead. On the bright side, the merchant ship captain is—Gab glances over at the blood spreading from his prone form—was about his size, and since both captain and quartermaster of the Squall are always on his ass about dressing proper, he may as well finish up here in style.

He shakes out a cream shirt and pulls it on, ignoring the red flower that blooms over one biceps as he buttons it, then hefts his cutlass and gives a few experimental lunges and parries. The fabric strains to accommodate his arms but doesn't gape much across his chest. Not bad. The deep green longcoat's a mighty fine fit too, and all kinds of fancy with its turned cuffs and lapels, trimmed in gold galloon and rows of shiny brass buttons.

Gab steals the captain's boots off his twitching feet and is hunkered down fastening a buckle at his calf when the door is unceremoniously kicked open. Hugo, naturally, sweeping in on a plume of gun smoke with rapier drawn, blood and a grimace on his face. Wisps of his dark hair have escaped the stranglehold of his tail and his cravat is awry, but otherwise it seems he's in his usual fettle.

"Berthelot." His eyes are on the merchant captain's corpse, regarding it with faint annoyance as he steps over it, sheathing his blade as he goes. "There are captives on the foredeck that need handling. Why aren't you with the rest of the—"

Gab hears the click of Hugo's teeth as he cuts himself short, and grins as he draws himself to his full height with a jangle of buckles and buttons.

"Figured you had things well enough in hand. I was seeing about comportin' myself as pirates do, but he didn't have anything worthwhile in his sea-chest."

Whatever reprimand his captain was about to bestow upon him is waylaid by a new irritation, judging by the way Hugo clenches his back teeth hard enough to make a muscle in his cheek flex. Slowly, he comes to stand toe to polished toe with Gab, sizing him up from crown to heel and back again, exhaling audibly through his nose. When he makes eye contact, his gaze is as dark as fury even if Gab can't smell anise on his breath.

"What do you call this?" he says.

"Clothes," Gab says. "Something wrong with your eyes, Captain? Maybe got blood in 'em?"

"Take it off." Hugo is quietly contained in a way that rouses Gab's sense of danger as sure as the skin-prickle of a brewing storm. A familiar wild tension flares in him; his dick acknowledges the situation with a gentle throb.

Still, it's aggravating that Hugo's decided to get in a snit over something as ordinary as some casual looting. Or maybe it's the mainland cut of the coat he doesn't like. Well, tough titty for him. Gab squares his shoulders and lets his head loll to one side.

"Nah. I found it, so I'm takin' it as part of my share."

"Take it off. Now." Hugo almost makes a grab for the coat's lapel before he visibly restrains himself, spreading his gloved hand on the ornate basket of his rapier instead. "Report to my quarters immediately when we're back aboard the Squall. Bring all of..." he indicates Gab's clothes with a jerk of his chin. "All of this with you. Do I make myself clear?"

He could go for a few rounds of insubordination over this, if it were a better time and place. But it ain't, so Gab curls his lip and musters a barely respectful, "Aye, Captain."

"Good." Hugo's stance relaxes a fraction though his face remains stern, observing as Gab sheds his finery swiftly but resentfully until he's pared down to his usual bare chest and bare feet. Mollified enough, he turns on his heel and strides to the doorway, pausing to cast a glance over his shoulder. "With me, then. The captives will have decided among themselves who's to take the brine and who is for haruspicy by now, and it would behove you to assist in their dispatch. The Fury awaits her due."

"Don't she always. Call me behoved, then." Gab tosses his bundle of clothes aside to collect after the rituals are done, and follows Hugo out into the blood-red sunset.

---

Gab doesn't bother announcing himself beyond a rattle of the door-handle before he lets himself into Hugo's quarters, but his captain's saturnine moods being what they are, he pauses a moment on the threshold to see what colours he's flying tonight.

Enthroned behind his heavy desk, Hugo's got a relaxed poise to him that promises carnage of some sort or other, long booted legs stretched out and his chin propped on one hand. The dissecting gaze he's fixed Gab with is considerably less permissive. No doubt he can tell Gab's been simmering over whatever the godsdamned problem is here and is about to be even more of a prick about it.

He makes it three paces before Hugo lifts a hand for him to stop.

A vicious frustration flares through him. He's tempted to storm over and dump his apparently unsatisfactory clothes onto Hugo's desk, overturn his ink pot and sending him scrabbling to rescue his precious maps and charts and dog-eared rutters. But that would guarantee a fight, and for all the filth in the look Hugo's giving him, if that were the main point of this bullshit he would've cut to the chase already.

Nah--he's got something else up his fancy sleeves. So Gab will play his game for now, halting as commanded to tread water in the centre of his quarters.

With a tilt of his chin and in a tone that successfully gets Gab's back the rest of the way up, Hugo says, "Put them on, then."

Some kinda game, sure. Gab closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and opens them again. Hugo is still looking down his nose at him.

"On or off, make up your godsdamned mind," Gab says. "Always calling me indecisive, I swear on the Depths you're just as bad."

The corner of Hugo's mouth turns up. "Put them on," he says again, with a raise of his eyebrows to go with his raised chin. His voice is dangerously warm, but Gab still ain't hearing a please.

He snorts and drops the bundle of clothes at his feet. "How about you whistle for it."

"Berthelot." Hugo doesn't ask again, and he also doesn't say 'don't make me ask again', but Gab hears it loud and clear.

Gab swallows a few choice words back down whence they came and sullenly scoops up the shirt instead, shaking it out and pulling it on over his broad shoulders. Hugo advances from behind his desk while he fumbles with the buttons. With hands clasped behind his back, he circles Gab with a slow, even pace and a critical eye.

He makes an admonishing noise when Gab reaches for the heap of longcoat.

"Boots first, then the coat."

With a grunt, Gab acquiesces, tucking his loose slops into the tops of them and tugging the laces and buckles tight. He straightens up to find Hugo holding the coat open for him, watching him with a trace of professional interest and a whole lot of unprofessional, and things suddenly make sense, kind of. Of course Hugo would get off on something weird like Gab putting more clothes on. A small part of him wonders if he'll ever reliably tell when he's furious and when he's turned on as all hells or if there's even a difference worth marking, but the rest of him is baying excitedly at the direction things are liable to go from here and so doesn't care.

He gets one arm into the coat and then the other, pulling the heavy garment into place. Hugo resumes his circling. His hand traces the wide line of his shoulders, the swell of his biceps, and Gab swears he can feel the heat of his touch right through the layers of leather and wool. He halts when they're face to face again. With a neutral expression at odds with his carefully measured breathing and the flush creeping up his neck, he pulls Gab's braid over his shoulder and unties it, methodically untwisting each section of hair until it's in a loose, wavy cascade over one shoulder.

"Well?" Gab cocks an eyebrow at him. "How do I look?"

The green of Hugo's eyes is practically eclipsed by his pupils, but all he does is press his lips together and say, "Hmm."

Gab weighs up the merits of being offended by that, but before he can come to the decision to be a sacred pain in the ass about it, Hugo tugs the cravat from around his own neck, drawing it from his collar with a sound like distant rainfall. It exposes the delicate bird skull of his focus, suspended from a necklace of burnished beads and scrimshawed fragments of mother-of-pearl.

The silk is warm from his body heat and clings when he loops it around Gab's roughly-shaved throat. He nudges Gab's chin up so he can knot the cravat loosely, the crease deepening between his brows as he fusses at the collar of Gab's new shirt, tugging and tucking until it meets his godsdamned particular standards. The luxurious texture of the silk and the scent of Hugo's shaving oil on it, the kiss of supple glove leather against the underside of Gab's jaw and the unwavering intent on his face—it sets off a melee in him.

Hugo dips two fingers into the neck of Gab's shirt and eases out his bone-and-shell prayer beads, running his fingers over it in a way that makes some terrible emotion bubble up from the tar-pit of Gab's soul. He's seen his focus between Hugo's teeth, felt its bite as it flogged the backs of his thighs, had it pulled like a garotte around his neck. It's bound his wrists to a bedpost while Hugo fucked him so pitilessly that every muscle in his body strained with effort so it didn't snap.

But the reverence with which Hugo arranges it on the dark silk of his cravat somehow feels more profane than any of the wickedness they indulge. It pisses him off a bit, even if he can feel his heartbeat in his dick.

Eyes dark as trance, Hugo curls his hands into the lapels of Gab's new coat and yanks him in close, satisfaction in the curve of his mouth and in the taste of it when he kisses Gab with a gleaming hunger. His hands roam beneath the heavy oiled wool, fingers dragging at the cotton of his shirt and smoothing it out in turn, following the coiling paths of Xeheia's mark it conceals as sure as he knows it by heart, then sliding down over Gab's chest and catching his studded nipples through the fabric.

Gab inhales sharply through his teeth.

"It almost suits you," Hugo says.

"Could've told you that." Gab will soak up even the most backhanded compliment, but he has no opportunity to bask in it this time as Hugo is intent on coercing him across the cabin with a series of ungentle tugs. "Don't know why you got all pissy about it."

Hugo releases his grip on Gab's piercings, instead flattening both palms against his chest and shoving him into his berth. Gab goes down willingly if not easy; he bunches his fist into Hugo's coat as he falls back, bringing him down with him. Hugo straddles him smoothly, a perfect weight atop Gab's aching dick, his eyes fixed on Gab's face. He taps his finger against a pearly shirt button, then unfastens it.

"Because you were shirking and you know it."

"Shirking? I was taking care of the captain, Captain."

Hugo walks his fingers to the next button, slipping it from its hole. Gab's tits threaten to spill out of the loosened fabric. "And because I didn't want you preening in front of the crew."

"I ain't as half as distracting to them as I am to you."

His mouth sets into a sour moue, and he moves on to the next button. Gab snorts, waiting on his third complaint.

Briskly, Hugo yanks, the button pinging off into his quarters someplace. Revenge for the number of times Gab's ruined one of his handsome waistcoats the same way, no doubt. His gloved hands are warm against his exposed skin as he spreads Gab's shirt open, framing his heavy chest in layers of white cotton and green wool and golden trim, dark silk and beads and bones. His heart's pounding is twin to the throb in his groin when Hugo arches over and grinds down on him, his neck so bare that Gab could bite it.

Gab licks his lips. "And?"

"And," Hugo says, slipping his hands into the layers of Gab's clothes, in turn smoothing and bunching them as though he can't decide whether to button him back up or tear them off him. "Because nobody gets to see you like this but me."

"Now you're forbiddin' me to dress decent in public? Like I said, indecisive."

Hugo must know he can't deny the fact of it, because he ignores Gab's triumphant smirking and shifts himself back to run his hands over the worn fabric of Gab's slops instead.

"These ruin the look, though," Hugo says.

"Real judgy from a man who dresses how a nighthouse boudoir smells. I've seen that waistcoat pattern on a one of the bedsprea—agh!"

"They suit you well enough, just not with those boots," Hugo continues calmly, sharp godsdamned fingers digging into Gab's thigh muscles hard enough to make them cramp.

"Maybe you should divest me of 'em, then. Just a suggestion."

"Hm. Noted and disregarded."

Gab opens his mouth to complain, but Hugo fixes him with a bright, piercing look, and descends between his legs.

Alright, fine by him. More than fine, in fact, when Hugo nuzzles into his crotch, shoulders rising as he huffs in a deep breath. He lets it out again in a gust that warms Gab's skin beneath his slops and curls humidly against the insistent ache of his dick. The fabric is rough where he's steadily dampened it over the course of their bickering, and when Hugo flattens his tongue and drags it over his hard-on, the texture makes sparks fly behind Gab's eyes.

He tucks a thumb into his sash to loosen it. Hugo clamps a hand around his wrist. Talk about sparks—Gab makes another attempt with his other hand, and as anticipated, Hugo cuffs that one, too, anchoring him down.

"Something fitted would be a fine notion." The faint quirk of his eyebrow would give him away if Gab couldn't already tell he was having him on. "I know a tailor."

"Ain't a tailor on the Hollow Coast that could handle this magnificent ass."

That draws a throaty chuckle out of Hugo, who finally makes good on all the menace he's been slinging about and envelops Gab's dick through his slops, sucking him hard through the fabric. No danger he's gonna get a dry mouth from it: Gab's thighs shake from that first vicious draw, and sure as a full moon makes the tides deep and high, the pulse of his arousal soaks things generously.

With a feral narrowing of his eyes, Hugo sinks his teeth into the fabric, and Gab's heart slams into his breastbone when he tears. Adrenaline blazes up his spine, kicking his pulse into a gallop. He ain't forgotten the times Hugo's severed a foe's artery with those teeth, even if his dick has.

He's having some difficulty gathering his wits enough to complain about the damage being wrought to his lovingly hand-stitched slops and how the repair is gonna be a pain in the ass, compounded by Hugo letting go of his wrists to shred the material with his godsdamned bare hands. The edges bite into the soft flesh of his thighs, a seam of pain that sends him towering on a wave of agonised bliss.

He comes crashing with the searing heat of Hugo's lips around his dick, the hungry glide of his tongue along his length, and the terrible, thrilling, dangerous press of his teeth.

Ain't nothing like a good threat to get a man off. Gab groans his approval while Hugo makes his own rough sounds between Gab's thighs, his hands bunched in the ruined material of his slops.

He relaxes with arms folded behind his head while he enjoys the sweep of Hugo's tongue, his nipping and biting, his canticles of worship. "So, I'm gonna keep the coat."

Hugo looks up, fingers kneading Gab's bared thighs. His chin is slick and gleaming with spend, which undermines his assessing glare probably more than he realises.

Gab grins merrily at him. "And the shirt."

"But not the boots?"

"It's like you said, they don't go with the pants. So what say you and me send 'em to Xeheia. I figure they've seen a drop or two of the salt price tonight."

"What's the catch."

"That's mighty unfair of you, Captain. Maybe I'm just takin' your fashion advice."

Hugo pinches his thigh. "And maybe the sea tastes as sweet as molasses, Berthelot."

Gab laughs and gives him a friendly kick out of reflex. "All right. If I throw my boot further, you gotta wheedle some urchin-dyed linen out of Hervé for me to make new slops with."

"And if I throw mine the farthest?"

"Well, then I guess the sea's as sweet as you say."

"Hm," Hugo says, like he's considering it, then takes a hold of the ruined fabric of Gab's slops once more. He yanks ruthlessly.

The crisp tearing noise rises in harmony with Gab's laughter and pained gasp, the rustle of oiled wool and the tick of his coat buttons against the Squall's carved bedframe. Hugo covers every inch of him with mouth and tongue and hands—and if that's how he wants to measure the yardage, then Gab will gladly leave it to his expertise.

---

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