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Jack Aubrey eyed Stephen Maturin warily as they sat by the fireside in Stephen's room at the Grapes. The doctor seemed unusually peevish this evening. He had snapped at Jack and at the serving girl when she brought them their dinner as well as when it had been taken away. It was a relief neither Killick nor Bonden were there and would not be for another day, having been sent off on errands, as they would be boarding Surprise for the first time in the morrow. Stephen had moved heaven and earth very early that morning in order for Jack to see Sophie in Bath before they left and the strain was evidently wearing on him. They had ridden silently back in the coach to London and Jack had been up before Stephen awoke that morning. Jack did not know if Stephen were unusually tired, professionally disappointed or if he had been forced to bear some insult whilst at Whitehall. Another possibility was his particular friend mulling over Diana Villier's latest cruelty for the thousandth time, Jack thought morosely.
There was also the possibility of physical pain: Maturin was unbelievably stoic, but Jack had noticed that he could become almost churlish now when the barometer dropped and the air was especially cold and damp. Then the pain was all over his tortured body and his memories of Mahón made it all the more unbearable. One thing was certain: there would be no confession. His particular friend in good humour was tight-lipped as one of his exotic bivalves. In foul humour, it was like getting blood from a stone to extract one word from him. Stephen's extreme reticence made Jack feel like a puling baby in comparison, his heart upon his sleeve in everything except when it came to running the ship.
Captain Aubrey turned the page of the latest Gazette and laughed out loud when reading of his former shipmate's promotion. "Remember Howar, who was third of the Ajax, when we were in the Sophie? He has gotten his swab at last! Oh, ho, how capital!" Stephen nodded an acknowledgement. "What are you working at so hard?"
"Revision of a manuscript for a friend's presentation to the Royal Society. I had hoped to be done by this morning, forsooth, but my hands are not cooperating." This was as much of a reference to his torture that Stephen would ever make.
"Lord knows I ain't a clerk, but I should be most happy to bear a hand, my dear fellow.”
"Alas, Jack, I would have to possess a duplicate copy to dictate the changes and I have none. I am only half done." He put the quill down. "Mother of God, I cannot go on," he said with great disgust.
He loosened his dressing gown slightly. The room was very hot with the fire burning brightly. "I find I cannot abide the cold but this heat is so unbearably dry. Jack, pray be so good as to open the sash just a bit?" Jack sprang up, happy to do so. The room was beyond close, it was stifling. The fire burned even brighter with the infusion of cold fresh air. Perspiration ran down Jack's temples into his neckcloth and his face was almost scarlet.
"Do you mind if I should shift? I am damnably warm."
"For all love, do so. There is no reason to you to court apoplexy on my account." Jack quickly stripped off his neckcloth, waistcoat and shirt, sitting in his breeches and second best stockings. Stephen eyed him and said, "Oh, to be in the Med now."
"Malta or Minorca would be just the thing," Jack said, instantly regretting his words as they left his lips.
"I regret pledging this favour," Stephen said, changing the subject."I find I was too confident by half. I have left off my physic to be clear-sighted in this revision, little realizing what an impediment that should be." He gazed into the fire. "The sorrow of the world is the kindness and pity of one's friends. I cannot bear to be so abject."
"Upon my word, no one should ever say that, old Stephen," Jack cried.
Stephen said nothing. He turned and looked at Jack, looking at the scars that crossed his torso, chest and shoulder. He looked at what little was left of Jack's ear. He had seen these scars many times, had stitched so many of them that he could not remember all of them without taking a hands-on inventory, as some were actually hidden in Jack's hair line.
"Your friends are all man of wars men, brother. Perhaps it is different in your service. You seem all the stronger for your wounds. It is not necessarily the same."
"The reaction of your friends is part and parcel of your political work and the necessary secrecy. Every major scratch I have was written up in the Gazette," Jack said, looking at a livid scar across his own shoulder.
Stephen took a sip of the glass of port on the table next to him. "Jack, you are the only person I can stand to be around at length. Even Bonden and Killick look at me with such an expression I cannot abide and then I feel I have been so ill with them. That look is absent only in your eyes, brother and I thank you for it." Jack looked into the fire, afraid of fixing Stephen with whatever expression he found so noxious.
Stephen lifted the glass of port and swore loudly, feeling it slipping through his almost nonexistent grasp and Jack caught the glass and Stephen's hand. He put the glass on the table and looked at Stephen's hand in his, his viciously mangled hand, holding it gently in his much larger one.
"This weakness is most frustrating and appalling. It is bad enough just living with it as opposed to having one's shipmates filled with pity." Jack frowned.
"Pity? Weakness? Soul, no, nothing of the sort..." Stephen's eyes flashed.
"Jack, I saw their faces, I see their faces. As bad off as I was, I saw their expressions, I saw them avert their eyes and look away with pity. And I see them still, every time they take something from my hand. You did not look at my hand so, just now. How do you see it?" he said, flexing his hand in Jack's.
"War wounds, " Jack said, looking at Stephen's hand in his. "More terrible than most, but the hand of the strongest and bravest man I have ever had the honour to know." He held Stephen's hand up to his lips and kissed it very tenderly.
Stephen's eyes burned into Jack's, probing, whilst Jack felt himself hold his breath. Stephen pulled his hand slightly away from Jack and said, "Jack, pray help me rise. My back is quite insensible from sitting so long in this chair." Jack stood and took both of Stephen's hands in his and Stephen rose very slowly. Jack lowered his arms. Stephen did not release his grasp of Jack's hands. Jack looked into his eyes and slowly, Stephen edged closer and closer to him until Stephen's mouth was on his and Stephen was kissing his lips, his hands now steadying himself on Jack's shoulders, his eyes closed. Jack felt his own heart start pounding as he reciprocated, tasting Stephen in his mouth, Stephen's tongue still warm and sweet from the port. Stephen's hands brushed Jack's bare torso and he stepped to the door and made the lock fast.
"I cannot stand long," Stephen said and they walked the few feet to the bed. Stephen sat down on the mattress with Jack before him. He struggled to loosen the girth of Jack's breeches. Jack loosened them with one hand helping Stephen off with the dressing gown. Then he sat on the bed with Stephen.
"Stephen, I do not know how, I have never..." Stephen silenced him with a kiss, his hands going into Jack's small clothes as Jack moaned.
"Jack my dear, please take these off," Stephen said and Jack removed his breeches. Stephen stroked him with both hands. Groaning, Jack struggled to remove Stephen's shirt and breeches until they were lying naked in each other's arms, Jack as hard as rock in Stephen's hands. Stephen sat up and leant over. Jack watched him manoeuvre Jack's erection into his mouth. Aubrey grabbed the pillow and groaned into it.
"Stephen," he croaked in a half-whisper, "Oh, my God, Stephen, please, if you please..."
"Just a bit longer," Stephen said, stroking under Jack's scrotum as he ran the corona of Jack's erection around his lips and tongue. Jack's whole body vibrated and then he gasped, his erection seeming to jump from his body as Stephen pressed a finger in him, into his rectum, pressing against his prostate with his wet index finger.
Jack could not silence his own moans and shoved the pillow around his face. The agony went on for minutes beyond any point Jack could ever have imagined, Stephen literally holding him in the palm of his hand until he decided it was time for Jack to spend and he did.
Jack lay there panting and trembling while Stephen held him and pulled the bed clothes around his trembling limbs. Jack could not speak for several minutes. He could barely catch his breath and looked at Stephen's pale eyes, lit with a look of intense satisfaction. Jack leaned forward when he felt he could breath again and kissed Stephen, tasting his lemony semen in Stephen's mouth.
“Oh, dear God," Jack said quietly. He took Stephen in hand and felt how hard he was. Jack leant over and Stephen looked down on Jack Aubrey's golden head buried in his lap. Jack's unshaven face rasped against his thigh
"Jack my dear," Stephen said, "I ask your pardon, for I find I tire. Pray help me move." Jack sat up and helped Stephen to reposition his body. He handed Stephen the glass of port and took it from him when he had finished drinking. "Thank you."
"Pray tell me; how may I please you best?" Jack said, bending and kissing Stephen's neck.
"Soul, you have excellent instincts. Your pleasure is mine."
Jack brushed across Stephen's body lightly with his fingertips as he kissed his ears, his neck and down his torso. He touched his scars very gently, knowing from his own that sometimes they remained shockingly painful for years after knitting and it was best to proceed cautiously. Each of Maturin's scars he kissed like a benediction, coming to Stephen's erection, lowered his face while looking into Stephen's own. Stephen trembled moaning as Jack held him in his mouth, his trembling right hand stroking Stephen's scrotum, his left hand squeezing Stephen's buttock hard. Jack reached for the bottle of sweet oil on the table and put some on Stephen's finger tips.
"Pray put the oil upon me in the correct manner, whilst I put it on you," Jack said, stroking the oil on Stephen's erection.
"Jack, are you certain?"
"My God, yes. If you please, Stephen." It pleased Stephen very much. He massaged the oil in circles in and around Jack's anus, his own erection fairly starting off of his groin and then motioned Jack to move. He leant across Jack, reaching around Jack and holding Jack's now swiftly re-hardening prick. Very slowly and gently, he penetrated Jack.
Jack gasped moaning in the pillow as Stephen took Jack's ear in his mouth and outlined all of it with his tongue, pulling Jack's ear lobe tenderly with his teeth. Jack writhed beneath him and Stephen finished Jack off as he himself spent, a gush of murmured Catalan filling Jack's ear. Stephen's exhausted body collapsed beside Jack, who pulled him towards him with trembling arms. Jack then pulled the sheets and blankets around them and held him close. The adrenaline tore through Jack. He kissed Stephen's neck very gently, listening as his panting breaths slowed down. Stephen turned to face Jack and kissed him.
"Dearest soul," Stephen said, "how long have these notions been in your mind?"
"I don't rightly know. Lord, I can scarcely believe this, us here and now. I was so afraid of giving you offense, my dearest Stephen." Jack's bright blue eyes dimmed. "When Lively went to the rendezvous and met Maragall and found you'd been taken, I felt the very bottom of my soul drop out. I was so sorry that I had never given you any indication of how deep my attachment was to you. I felt such a fool." He took Stephen's hands and kissed each finger tip very gently.
“Have you tried to tell me?”
“In my way. In my not very good way.”
“I wish you had told me sooner, joy.”
“My God, Stephen.” A long silence. “It was beyond my ability to put into words. I confess, I was afraid. Afraid that you would never speak to me again. Afraid of a complete break. I am so glad we have hours tonight, my dear, dear friend.” He lifted Stephen's hand to his lips and kissed it again.
“Jack, you do me honour. We have all night, my dear.”
Stephen fell asleep in Jack's arms. Jack studied him in the flickering dimness. In repose, the recent continually pinched aspect of Stephen's face was now greatly eased. Seeing this obvious and sensible diminution of Stephen's pain suffused Jack with deep happiness. He was wholly overcome by a wave of relief that he and Stephen were now lying together in bed after their first tryst.
"I could have forced myself to go a lifetime without ever holding you in a lover's embrace but had I lost you without ever telling you that I loved you, the grief surely would have killed me," Jack thought, looking at Stephen's face, so close he could feel his exhalations. Jack fell deeply asleep.