( estrada’s quarters / the night of the mutiny, late / @intrepidim )
elias has often thought that he’d make a good scriptwriter. not a figurehead, no, not one to face outwards, to lead the rally cry. but to spin the words themselves, weave them into something to pull at the heartstrings, to fasten the knot at the throat? yes, he thinks he could become good at that. he thinks, given enough nurturing, he might have a sort of knack for it.
which is to say: he knows how to pull out an emotion. coax tears and rage in equal measure. he knows how to move the hearts of men, in one direction or another. what he doesn’t know is when to stop.
he makes his way to the vice-admiral’s quarters with the fluidity of the drunk, even as he has never felt more sober. eyes too bright, smile too placid. he wonders, idly, what estrada’s rage will taste like. a blow to the jaw, perhaps, to set his head ringing, ringing, until it empties of all else. how lovely. or perhaps: he’ll fasten him on the spot, hold him down until he goes numb with it. the cool, blanketing weight of another to force him into sleep, force him into peace. it doesn’t sound at all that unpleasant, now, not compared to what he knows of waking life.
elias enters the room without knocking, without greeting. estrada is seated at the small table in the captain’s former room, the space made to entertain groups of the most intimate guests. papers lay about like abandoned thoughts. the steward approaches him, passes over the chair nearest, the chair across from the man. slides, instead, into the one directly next to him. sets his elbows on the table and leans into them, into estrada’s space, setting his chin in one hand and looking at him appraisingly.
“did you know pippa?” elias says, suddenly, in lieu of a greeting. not giving the man a chance to ask any questions, like: what the fuck are you doing in my room, because he has a piece to say tonight, and he intends to get through it before he gets whatever is coming to him. “the dead girl. she was so lovely, in life. i knew her in london, distantly– a friend of a friend, dearest of a dear one. too busy being lovely to spare me the time of day, but i’d never blame her for it, not an inch. an afternoon in her presence would have been an honor to me, frankly. though i suppose that’s off the table now.”
as he speaks, he drops one hand. traces a pattern in the wood grain with it, following the line of the table until he reaches vice-admiral’s own palm. traces over the lines there too, around the wrist, up the forearm. stares him down, eye to eye, like a deer to a lantern. “she was still warm, you know. even in all that cold. warm up until the moment she was taken from me. warm when she was laid down in the infirmary bed. might still be warm, considering…” he wonders if his eyes are glowing. it feels like they are. it feels like he’s on fire. “such a recent tragedy. i don’t suppose there’s been enough time for the blood to pool, you know? not yet. not in the wrists…” he taps the base of estrada’s palm. “or the elbows…” his hand snakes under the vice-admirals, until it reaches the hinge of the arm. presses once. “or…”
the hand holding up his chin suddenly falls, flickers like a leaf to land on estrada’s leg. slides down, down, curls under the flesh there, even as he never breaks eye contact. “the underside of the thighs. all the normal places for a corpse. but you didn’t wait that long, did you? couldn’t wait until her body was in the ground–”
he leans forward, boxing estrada in now, the fingers on his forearm digging in, the hand under his thigh leverage to pull himself closer to the man. “before you had to stage your fucking mutiny. a person is dead, and you couldn’t wait for her to be put to some semblance of rest, before– what, changing our sailing route? but no, no, of course not. the murder of a lovely thing isn’t enough to stop the plans from ticking along, no? not for men like you.”
It’s funny, how the steward slinks forward. Funny, how save for Sohrab, whose hand he had led across the deck and into the lap of victory, no one has touched him in quite some time. Before the mutiny. Before her. Funny, how the intruder didn’t even think to change a shift of clothes. How he had gone through an afternoon without someone ordering him out of that coat is beyond the captain’s understanding. The mulch on his boots fastens to the floorboards. Funny, that, too. Not funny enough to deter Estrada from thinking, of course, the unending mental insignia: someone will have to clean that, come morning. Still - it’s funny, the sight Elias cuts.
It’s a proper carry on, this one, until it isn’t. Oh, he nursed no illusions: he still remembers the boy took a shine to Dowling, a shine and a stiff one, who’s there to judge? Old Malachy could still draw the colts to him, that’ll likely never change, unless he gets himself a bullet wound smack in the middle of his head. No, Marcus expected the boy is here to give him a telling off. A how dare you, stamp of honour, stomp out. The rigmarole. Again: funny.
But then he goes and mentions Pippa. The name is barely out, doesn’t have time to slide out from the stupid hole that births it, and Estrada’s body rears up. His nostrils flare. Around them, the colour goes out, seeps as if someone punctured it. On the table, everything stills. Underneath it, his lungs fill with something viscous. Like phlegm, like bilge water, he cannot think through it.
Oh, Elias Shaw, for this I will tear you apart.
❝ Make the plans stop? ❞ It’s a good thing the other drew so closely. This way, Marc can smell the sweat and ice on him, the grief coming in vapours. This way, he can curl his nose, a lever of disgust, and then laugh in his face. At all of it. Touch, and feeling, and litany too. ❝ No, no. No way about it, boy. The death of a lovely thing? That’s what makes plans tick into motion. That’s what makes the best of them succeed. ❞
The Arctic?, Pippa had asked. Tell me more, oh, please tell me more! He can almost hear it; smell it. It overlaps with Shaw, with the fucking grime on him. She was drinking champagne, they both were Marc remembered how it put him in quite the tight spot, having to pour it for her. Risk her getting hot in her cup, or risk facing her wrath. Christ’s sake, the mouth she had. The temper. Ever since the nursery room: she was ten, twelve, and already could talk him red in the face. He had thought she could win over empires. He had wished she’d never have to.
The steward’s eyes stick to him like resin. It’d be just as easy to pop them. Like breaking a seal.
He settles for breaking him instead. ❝ But tell me where were you when your friends legged it? Walked out to meet death, shake its hand? Brave, traitorous, the lot of them. Foolish, too. Don’t mistake me for agreeing. Yet also quite… efficient. It got all of us where we’re standing now. But you? What tight nook did you crawl into that night? You certainly weren’t in the surgeon’s room. Or the salvage party, perhaps? Did you go out of your way, made an awful run for it, and saved something in particular? No reports mention it. It’s like you never took part at all. ❞ His lips pull into a smile. They’re so chapped, and so drained of blood, that they feel the inside of a scar. The white-worm of it, unhealed. His voice is close to that. Close, worse. His voice is the sound the hull was making when the ice petrified, when their ship was stranded. A thing trapped, now entrapping.
The Captain leans into Elias.
❝ Watched all of it, did you? Wrote it down, too? The saga of some scruffy boy, a nothing from nowhere—and all the things he could not save. Please, kid. You bore me an awful sort. Go break into the pantry, rummage through all the sludge. Drink ‘til you can’t walk straight again, by all means. Foaming around the mouth at the first lick of good champagne. That’s how it gets you by the throat, no? The taste of what you’ve never had? Tip tap, then. Fuck off to Devon Island, if you’re keen on it. The tawdriness of courage. You’ve got the flapping of a fish about you; just as much slime, and just as little guts. That’s more like the poem I’d seen in you, way back when. Go spill your glass, or your guts, on someone else’s trousers. I’m not the man who’d think twice about it, now, before bleeding an apology out of you. ❞
On his thigh, Estrada’s hand clenches around the steward’s. Yanks it to him, closer down, draws it over his crotch. ❝ It’s no surprise that in whatever backwater you come from, you’re used to solving grievances on your knees. But my cock isn’t twitching. See? There. Not even a jump. So you can keep your hands in your pocket, lest you lose a finger or two. You might need them, to rub off whomever can keep you safe. It won’t be me. If you make anyone hard at all, Elias, it’s not for the right reasons. Who’d want to get in bed with a stray? A thing that leaves droppings of mud all over? Go on, scaredy cat. You can be someone else’s hole for the evening. ❞
turnnoffyourmind
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
yousharknotpass
