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He wasn't quite sure when the change had occurred.
It wasn't in the first few months of the journey. Back then he'd watch Cornelius with amusement, watch him do basically anything other work. He'd find sometimes Cornelius was watching him too, that smile on his lips, his stare slightly too brazen. Billy would always break eye contact before he did.
In those days, his mind would often wander to the caulker as he prepared himself for bed in his berth. It always starts with humorous musing on how he could be quite so clueless about everything being on a ship entailed. Usually every day gifted him a new confident blunder to ponder over. A lot of the time, those thoughts would develop into fantasies, only about half the time would his mind and body have enough energy to delve into them.
This was before they had reached the ice. Sometimes these dreams involved vague reasons they had to be detained in port of some island, usually a vaguely sketched combination of several Billy had visited in the past. Him and Corneilus would walk away from the ship, talking of nothing, then suddenly he'd feel the caulker hands on him, pushing him down into the sand. He'd be rough and brusque, kneading his exposed flesh, gifting him with bruises that would last weeks.
Other times these dreams were set in England, meeting Corneilus the night before he'd set off, in some pub of ill repute. He'd start the dream out slowly, thoughtfully, then find his brain skipping ahead to the alley round the back where Hickey would be grabbing him roughly by his hair, shoving him to his knees.
He had no plans of acting on any of these daydreams. His job was too important, too precarious. Somehow setting all these fantasies off ship felt like a way of mitigating the risk. They weren't too close to the bone, were impossible to recreate, to stumble into.
He wasn't sure what it was, exactly, that made him change his mind. He had been repairing Lt Irving’s button, work he could do in his sleep, and was watching Cornelius fail completely at tying a basic knot. There was something endearing in how wrong he was getting it. Some illogical part of his brain grew, overtook the rest of it, shouted fuck it.
‘Mr Hickey, I could do with your help in the orlop.’
Cornelius just smiled.
They hadn't spoken that many times before this. Billy had been avoiding conversation with him, not liking how Mr Hickey looked at him, not liking how he was sure he was looking back.
Hickey followed him through the dark. While his navy experience was questionable, Billy was sure he had this kind of experience. His blue eyes stared out with too much bravado to belong to someone green.
When they'd reached the dark corner Billy had already sussed out, Billy grabbed Hickey's middle, turned him slightly, pushed him to sit on one of the small crates. He could still see Hickey's eyes glinting in the gloom.
Gibson sank to his knees, worked him silently and efficiently with his mouth. Hickey's hands roamed his shoulders and head, stroking his curls.
He was gentler than Gibson would have guessed. More surprising though was when Hickey had finished, he, without catching his breath, slid off the crate, knelt with one knee between Billy's thighs, and got one hand on him. The other was at the back of his neck.
And afterwards he continued to sit with him, anchoring Billy with hand on his neck, head resting against his chest.
No he wasn't sure when it happened. But one day it had- he was unable to dream of anything outside the ship.
At first it made sense- he recalibrated his fantasies to more attainable ones. They weren't completely grounded in reality, Gibson's berth was too small for pretty much anything, too small for just himself let alone another person. But on days when he couldn't get his hands on him, he'd lay awake picturing Hickey sneaking in, hand over his mouth-
But this spread and soon it was all his thoughts. Like the ship was a border he couldn't cross, even in his mind. Just as the ships couldn't cut through the ice, neither could his dreams.
He had mused, admiring a bruise across his hip in the small mirror of his berth, quite what it would take to get Hickey to really let go. His behaviour, by most men's standards, had gotten pretty wild- he clawed at Billy, biting into his neck, shoving him, all which made him completely weak at the knees.
But Billy could tell that this was on some level a performance. This filth he hissed into Billy's ear, his front flushed against Billy's back- wasn't the typical thoughtless blabbering that Billy was prone to. It was barbed, considered.
Billy had noticed once, having finished a minute ago so his head was clear, that Cornelius reached his crisis with his eyes open. Obviously he was enjoying himself, that couldn't be faked. And he couldn't comprehend why he'd have Billy do those things, and so often, if he wasn't getting something out of it.
Billy suspected he kissed him with his eyes open as well.
Maybe it was just the environment they were in. While the risk certainly excited Hickey- Billy often having to bat his wandering hands away in public. Their first kiss had nearly been their last because of this. Billy had been standing in his berth, waiting for Hickey to walk by. He dragged him in, planning to arrange a meeting. Hickey had just come down from the deck, his cheeks flushed, looking up at him through his eyelashes, his smile crooked and Billy had kissed him reflexively, with less thought than blinking or breathing took.
It was hard and short, the cold of Hickey's face barely having seeped into Billy's skin before he broke away, his brain having caught up with his body.
Cornelius had just grinned and kissed him again, sharing his cold. Then ruined it by shoving him hard against the wall of his berth, making a loud, hard to explain sound.
Billy had pushed him out through the curtain for that. Hickey's cold lingered on his lips like wine.
When they met next in the orlop Billy had chastised him for his carelessness but Hickey had kissed him and Billy forgave him and found himself bending over for him for the first time. Cornelius was surprisingly gentle with him, stroking the small of his back.
But he continued being careless. Well no, that wasn't the right term. He continued to very carefully push Billy's boundaries- touching his thigh and rubbing their legs together when people could have seen them. It was tempting for Billy to label these things as Cornelius having the same wildness for Billy that Billy had for him, to think that he made him reckless with desire. He knew deep down it wasn't that.
It had occurred to him when he had ended it. He hadn't touched himself for about two weeks, feeling like it crossed some sort of line. He pushed past this illogical thought, one evening when he had retired early, the officers away on Erebus.
He lay on his bed and tried to luxuriate, flicking the crew members through his mind to think of which one he found most appealing. He'd given them limited attention with his mind focusing on Hickey so often. Even now he found his eye drifting towards the caulker- he was sure Hickey had noticed him still staring even though he was doing a good job pretending to ignore him.
Unfortunately, with every handsome face he considered, his brain piped up a Hickey comment about them. Cornelius had shared a lot of opinions on the majority of the men on board. Billy had never quite understood what response Cornelius wanted from him, when he was hissing some obscene comment about Fitzjames of Jopson or Goodsir into his neck during their throws of passion. Billy would have struggled to speak a response even if he had one.
Maybe Hickey just did it as a way of marking all these men, leaving no one untouched, letting no relationship form between them and Gibson without him looming over it.
Well, if that was his intention, then it had worked. Billy tried to cast his mind back before the Terror and Erebus, away from ships altogether, back to a night off he'd had in London, some years ago, where some lads had dragged him to a mollyhouse against his protests. He tried to take himself back to the air, thick with smoke and want and-
It was no use. It was like his imagination was tethered to the ship, tethered to Hickey.
What would it take for him to stop performing, Billy wondered. This was after Hickey had given him that ring from god knows where.
There had been a second of genuine surprise, he recalled, when Billy had shrugged Hickey off him after their first time properly together. Cornelius, after the kissing, seemed surprised that Billy was brushing him off so quickly- it flickered across his face for a second, but then he smiled, allowed Billy to get off the crate properly and watched him rearrange his clothes.
Before they parted Hickey had placed his hand on shoulder and Gibson had squeezed his fingers.
So he was capable of surprise. It felt like when Gibson went off his imagined script, Hickey would just change course, catch up, sprint ahead of him. Any advantage he had was only for half a second then snatched away.
If they ever had the time and the space and the privacy, Billy bet he could really take him apart.
They deserved more than the cold, dark orlop now. After everything they'd been through, they deserved to celebrate their coming back together, somewhere nice. And warm.
He thought of the term marital bed and it made his stomach drop so hard he had to hold the washbasin for support. But that's what they deserved. A wedding night, a marital bed. But there was just this ship, heaving, agonised in the ice.
One time Cornelius had badgered him for details of the captain's berth, and was quite disappointed to find it wasn't much larger than Billy's.
‘Why not?’
‘Why would they be? They're not designed to be shared.’
Cornelius had smiled and pulled him in and started whispering sweet nonsense about how he'd make sure there was enough room for two. Billy hadn't really cared at the time, he could cope with the orlop, he would've just liked a bed long enough to actually stretch out in, not wide enough to share.
It made his heart ache now. He found himself picturing the captain's berth, sitting in his nightgown on an impossibly large bed, a real mattress, goose down pillows, waiting.
And Corneilus Hickey walking in and kissing the ring on his hand and nuzzling into his neck and Billy laying down, like a bride and Corneilus taking him, gently, like a groom, and them sleeping entwined and waking up to each other and-
Jopson was giving him a strange look. Billy moved his sewing onto his berth where he could continue to think unobserved.
In this fantasy world, in that fantasy wedding night, there, then, he could really get Cornelius’ walls down. In that room, immune from anyone who could overhear them or interrupt them, they could really take their time. He'd watch Cornelius undress completely for the first time (how odd that the most he had ever seen of Cornelius’ body was at his flogging?), kiss him all over his alabaster chest and each of the scars down his thighs.
And Corneilus could give him the kind of touch he had been craving. The gentle caress of a lover. Not that Cornelius hadn't ever been gentle and sweet to him- before it all went wrong- but when they were down in the orlop, there was limited time, limited skin available- they couldn't lay, side by side, and really savour each other.
He wanted them to lie together, face to face, eye to eye, with Cornelius’ weight on him, their fingers interlocked, pulses in their wrists melting into one.
And Corneilus could just be. No performing, not testing, just trusting and enjoying.
And God how nice would it be to wake up warm, not alone, to Cornelius’ smile and his skin and his hands.
A large groan from the ice returned him to reality. They'd have to settle for re-consummating their relationship in the orlop- a wedding night of whispers and crates and darkness. He'd bring a lamp and insist on facing Hickey though, their eyes and mouths meeting being something he wouldn't compromise on. There were so few luxuries available to them but that was the most important thing- to give himself over, mind, soul, body.
There was just one dream now. He wasn't sure if it was the landscape or the hunger or the illness, but only one image was available to his brain.
He was on his back in the snow. Hickey was over him, dark eyed and red-mouthed, biting at his throat, tearing at his clothes.
He couldn't tell if he was still alive or had died and gone to hell, because hell looked exactly like this place- the grey sharp ground, the blank sky. It was only when Hickey got off him, taking the last of his warmth, he knew.