Loose Lips by Joseph Brennan

Author:Joseph Brennan [Joseph Brennan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hard Crossing Press
Published: 2022-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

Foredeck sleep-outs became their routine. And during the day, he would visit Harris on deck when he could. Where Harris would teach him the basics of American football. He started to see Elizabeth in a different light, with a glimpse of her original intention, as a pleasure liner, as his Queen once more. And as with any pleasure dash, any more than A to B, any holiday, soon enough the fear of it ending, of it being over, would cloud in – as did Robert, now that his memory was shared between them. And as if the world at war sympathised with this… on their last night at sea before reaching port, the sky souped over, the wind blistered. Compounding the impending end and sense of dread, that morning, as Harris delivered him a meaty bottom breakfast, their heaving bodies running ruby red, this was reflected in the pre-dawn sky.

Red in the morning, sailor’s warning, he remembered.

Something Robert had told him – a sign the ancient mariners had taken to mean rough seas were on the way.

“Aye oan fur th’ nicht?” He asked, accent thicker with nerves and the setting sun.

“I’ll be there,” Harris said in his usual deep-assurance tone. “Hell or high water.”

As the voice of Robert had predicted… that night, the seas were rough, giving her a heavy roll. But the skies were strikingly calm and clear like the ocean swell had been stirred up by forces from far buried. True to his word, Harris was there, on time. There was a sad finality to seeing him emerge from the hatch for the final filling, to follow him over to their bed-for-the-night… for the last night.

“Don’t lea th’morra.”

Olli blurted it out.

The plea came as soon as they were safely on their blankets, out of view. Before even they had kissed hullo. During the day, he had thought of all the manners in which he could make it work, all the places on board that they could stow away, all the way back to New York and to safety. He would even let him go back to Alice, and start that family ranch, just as long as he was safe.

I couldn’t bear to lose you too, he thought.

But instead of all this, he put forward a simple, more selfish plea.

“Stay wi’ me.”

Harris just smiled; that calm, caring, in-control smile of his, and cupped Olli’s face in his hands and kissed him.

“I have to go, Olli.”

Sex, suddenly, did not matter to him – a profound upset of the order of things. All Olli wanted was to spend the night with his captain, whatever shape that took. As if, again, he could see into Olli, Harris slid his hands beneath his shirt and slid it up and over his head. Conditions on the foredeck were not ideal, but he would not trade being there for anything. Harris steadied them both. He was an immovable bulk that Olli, now chest-bare, clung to like a ship-wrecked sailor a solitary beam of debris. He

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