Chapter Text
At midnight, when the sun had safely disappeared and the river trash had retired to their cabins for another night of uneasy dreams, Damon Julian held court on the deck of the Ozymandias.
There was a time people would have called Sour Billy Tipton river trash as well, but if they did it here, he'd have stuck them good and thrown them in the boiler. All his newfound confidence, though, wasn't enough to still the shiver as Julian and his men and women filed gracefully around the table.
Men, women – they weren't either, of course. Their pale skin all but glowed under the lamplight, their well-turned bodies forever young. Even the lights were only there out of quaint tradition; they could see just as well without them. They waited for Julian to seat himself. He did, shifting his hand just slightly enough to beckon Sour Billy. The shiver was gone, and Billy's self-regard soared anew: he wasn't just any officer, he was Julian's right-hand man, worthy of sitting at the table right beside him. And that was only now, while he was still human.
The seat to Julian's left remained empty as the others arranged themselves. Everyone knew who Julian was waiting for, his absence as conspicuous as his presence would have been.
As a timid, silent waiter set their plates, Julian's gaze went straight through the meal, straight through Billy... maybe through the whole boat, to things Billy couldn't see. “Do you think I'll have to send you up to fetch our dear Joshua?”
“No,” said a voice behind them.
Sour Billy turned and scowled. Once he'd been changed, Joshua York wouldn't be able to sneak up on him like this, descending the stairs oh-so-quiet in his fine white suit. As it was, York ignored him and took the seat that Julian offered, eyes locked on the ground the whole time. “Thank you, Damon,” he said stiffly. It was hard to remember how much louder that voice had been when Julian had first come aboard the Ozymandias – or, more rightly, the Fevre Dream – and York fancied himself some sort of king. Well, Julian had put paid to that.
“The pleasure's mine.” Julian tipped his head towards a glass on the table. “Would you care to pour a drink?”
The scowl turned to something nearer a smile. York's face had gone flat, hard, like a man who'd found himself on the edge of a crevasse and was deciding whether to jump. His grey eyes darted upwards, meeting Julian's with the force of an ice floe against a granite cliff. But just as quickly, they dropped again. That was Julian – strength, power, cruelty. York's shoulders slumped, and he pushed back a shirt sleeve, exposing the pale wrist underneath. Without hesitation, he tore into the flesh with one nail, letting his blood patter into the glass. It clotted so quickly that he had to dig into his wrist twice more before he had enough to satisfy Julian.
York's blood looked like port wine in the lamplight, and Julian rolled it around the glass like a fine vintage before tasting.
“As lovely as you are,” he said finally. York's eyes were still low as he rubbed at his wrist, and wiped the excess blood onto a napkin, and turned down his sleeve again. All the others, who had been watching keenly, busied themselves with their knives and forks.
Around the table, Sour Billy heard smatterings of conversation: a piece of gossip here, a bit of speculation about the next port there. But Damon Julian did not speak, and he did not eat, once the glass was dry. He merely sat with his hand curled loosely around it, so quiet he might have been a posed corpse presiding over a ship full of coffins.
York didn't eat either, but that was like as not more out of sullenness than anything else. In the weeks since Julian had found the Fevre Dream and bested him, he'd come slightly out of his torpor, but it all seemed to flow back whenever Julian broke and bled him. Now, he looked at an empty plate, absentmindedly touching the healed wound.
“Not hungry for cattle food?” Julian asked abruptly, as though woken from a sleep. “It's a pity you burned that last man, Billy; we might have had some use of him. Joshua doesn't seem offended by... hideous meat. Were you saving Captain Marsh, perhaps?”
On the table, York's fist clenched, his eyes burning into the table. “Be careful,” he said, voice low and dangerous. “You're more dumb animal than he was.”
Julian gave a tooth-baring smile. “Ah, of course,” he purred. “But I wonder what that would make you? Less than either of us, I'd think, by your estimation.”
That seemed to quiet York, for a moment. He glanced down at the rest of the room's faces – hard, cool, predator's faces, jaundiced in the lamplight. Valerie and a couple of others looked down, as if pretending not to see him. The rest returned his gaze.
Julian put a hand on his shoulder. “Do they need their pale king? You look the part tonight,” he said. “But only... look. Give me your neck.”
York stiffened. “You already have my blood,” he said.
“And I'll have it again. As many times as I want, if I choose to. Isn't that right?”
The hand slid up York's white lapel, and to the skin above it, barely darker. It settled under his chin, lifting his face towards Julian.
“Look at me.”
For a moment, York's eyes lit with such fury that Sour Billy's glass nearly slipped from his hand. There were years in them, years of unspeakable horror and transcendent beauty and arcane knowledge. Even Julian's weren't quite like them. But Julian's were ancient and hungry, the eyes of a beast. And no man, no matter how clever, could cage himself up with a beast and live.
York trembled. His hand clutched the table until Sour Billy wondered if it might break. And, finally, he relented. “Yes,” he said, jerking his head away and exposing his neck. “Do it. Master.”
Julian toyed with the top button of York's jacket. “No need to ruin a good suit,” he said.
York nodded listlessly. Slowly, he stripped off his jacket, loosened the buttons of his starched shirt. His expression, now, was one that Sour Billy knew perfectly well. He'd seen it in the eyes of pretty slaves he took to bed – helplessness, resignation, and a vague look of disbelief, as if York barely understood how he'd gotten to the table. Julian might not hit or chain him, but this was its own kind of control, and its own kind of lust.
York pulled his shirt off one shoulder and closed his eyes, flinching as Julian's teeth found his neck. Julian drank deep, as though he might never let go, as though he had drawn a lover into a kiss. When he withdrew, he dipped his fingers to the rapidly healing wound, collecting the blood he'd left behind. He touched it to York's pale lips, slipping his fingertips between them. York's eyes opened slowly, their gaze far away. Sour Billy understood now why Julian called the man beautiful.
“He is wonderful like this, isn't he?” said Julian, raising his head to look straight at Billy, as if he could read minds – could they read minds? “All the more so when you feel how much he loathes this submission. When you imagine how it must feel to be used like a slave in front of the people who once called you master.”
York's hand clenched on the table, until Billy thought he saw blood under the nails. But his expression did not change.
“I think dear Joshua may want to be alone for a while. Or... nearly alone. Would you care to come up and dine with me, love? You must be getting thirsty.”
This time there was no battle of wills. York simply nodded blankly, pale neck still exposed to the night air.
“Oh, and Billy – come up, when you can. I think you might find it entertaining.”