The next day, Kathyn did not surface all at once, but by slow degrees of inward lightening, wallowing for a warm while in the shallows between rising and slumber. What finally drew him into the waking world was not birdsong, or church bells, or anything so romantic as that, nor even the more prosaic intrusions of hawkers or street traffic. It was his brother's prick invading his arsehole.

At first he was only conscious of a large, warm weight at his back, and the small involuntary sounds that signify the presence of another human. He was suddenly afraid, wondering where he was, or who had come into the house, and how, and why.

Then the stranger spoke—spoke his name, and he relaxed because it was all right, it was Willym. He wasn't sure how Willym was here, or if he was there at all, whether it wasn't just a dream, which, now it occurred to him, made the most sense. If it was a dream, let it be a good one, he thought and he settled back into his cosy drowsiness.

He was naked between the sheets, which wasn't at all right, but, of course, why shouldn't he be, in a dream? Because it was a dream, he let himself enjoy the sensation of the soft cotton gliding over his skin, particularly when he half turned onto his front to let his privates quicken against the cloth. As his breath sped up Kathyn found himself canting his bottom back like a slut. And why shouldn't he be that, either, in a dream? The answer came when his arse met something that was decidedly not soft. A fat, familiar length, nudging up against his hole, which puckered in anticipation. Dream-Willym ran his longboat up the deep fjord of Kathyn's buttocks, his tingling flesh parting like the waves before Moses' staff. The veins were so pronounced he could feel them drag over his puffy ring.

Mmm. Definitely a good dream. Lord, the size and heat of him.

A warm breath on his shoulder. `You asleep, my love?'

Kathyn mumbled an incoherent affirmative, and Willym chuffed in amusement.

The next instant, however, Willym's head popped in, rapidly followed by the rest of his cock and Kathyn was all the way awake all at once.

`Ahhh. Ow!'

This was no dream.

He tried instinctively to squirm away, but Willym held him to the bed with his heavier body, rolling him onto his front and shoving his prick in harder as if to emphasise that Kathyn was not getting out of this. That he was going to get imperially fucked this morning, and there was nothing he could to about it. And that thought sent feverish chills of arousal sparkling up his spine, made his toes twiddle and arsering clench, massaging Willym's cock as it hurtled in and out of him. He felt so much in this position—it was probably his favourite, if he'd had to pick one. And something about being held so close to Willym's body, so tight in his strong, strong arms—it was, he had to admit, even as he winced and whimpered, the perfect way to start the day. Being bred by his blood and master. Being claimed and owned like the brother-bitch he was, so that all through the rest of the day his aching arse would never let him forget it. Lord above, he'd missed waking up like this.

From the firm chest at his back, to the legs wrapped around his like woody-stemmed creepers, to the hands that held his arms immobilised by the elbows, even the mouth full of foul breath that sought out his own, and, when denied that, ravaged his neck instead: all of it was stunningly real--too much reality, too much relief. As Willym slid up him to the hilt, and fucked him in small, grinding motions, plumbing his dimmest depths, keeping every inch of him pulled tight against the brazen furnace of his body, happy tears spilled from the points of his eyes.

For the waking had been the hardest of late. Knowing that all over the salt-stricken city men and women and horses and swallows were rising to their work or leisure, and he was in his bed, alone, trying to prepare himself to face the desolation of the day.

Kathyn found himself staining the mattress in an embarrassingly short time, and Willym wasn't far behind him, pulling out to spray all over his back. After he'd whacked out all that was coming, Willym stuffed himself back inside Kathyn's hole without ceremony. Then he cleared his throat and spat over the side of the bed. Kathyn could feel his insides bunching up like a ball of paper at the sound. It seemed his saucy sailor-boy would take some re-schooling in the ways of civilised folk. But he had to admit, part of it turned him on as well.

Willym, for his part, was so turned on he hadn't wilted one inch in the minutes after painting his brother's back the colour of the clouds. Those few giggling, grappling seconds when Kath had been trying to get away from him had thrown some lever behind his bollocks that just wouldn't go back down again. He was probably fucked for thinking it, but he wanted to do that again. He couldn't quite say what it was that was so arousing about having something alive and warm and wriggling on your cock. Having a fuck be a fight at the same time. Miles better than banging away at some half-wasted slip of a slut lying limp beneath you on a fuckhouse pallet. Not that Willym ever had, or ever wanted to—but he'd heard all about it, in prick-tingling detail, from his mates. He didn't believe even they believed all the guff they sang about the pleasures of cunny purchased with coin or beaten to a quivering pulp. He well knew that the happiest sailors were those who had fat but faithful wives with whom they meant to live ashore as soon as they could afford it. Sailors were, beneath all that ink and oaths, as sentimental as they were superstitious. It was wives they wanted, not whores. And wasn't Willym fucking lucky to have Kathyn, with the virtues of both: meek and modest as a churchmouse, but in the bed as wanton as the cheapest guttercunt. In his bed, and no one else's, ever. He believed that. He trusted his brother implicitly. If for an instant he hadn't there'd have been murder. But for now the only murder he was going to do was to his brother's hole. It was just begging to be brutalised, the gorgeous little thing, and besides, there was still some sleepiness that needed to be fucked out of him.

Kathyn nurtured fond hopes of re-entering the house of slumber, but Willym put paid to those with a firm snap of his hips.

Outside, the town was stirring to turbid life while inside Willym was stirring him up like a copper full of clothes. Sometimes he moved in quick, short jabs that took his breath away, other times in deep rolling lunges that sent every nerve-end sparking with pleasure. Through fast and slow, deep and hard, he lay there and took it, though after having just come the sensation was on the torturous side of too much. Sometimes he felt he could live like this; at others he felt if Willym didn't finish soon he would throw up. Once he made the mistake of opening his eyes, and was met by the sour-milk stare of an ancestral portrait on the wall. He quickly squeezed them shut again, yet he couldn't escape the feeling that the whole Meadowbrooke family tree were watching him get reamed to within an inch of his life.

He tried to focus on the sound: the fierce pleased noises Willym made when Kathyn moaned and growled take-it's when he fussed, the little wet slaps when crotch met cunt, the screech of the bed over the wooden floorboards as it was jolted by the force of Willym's thrusts, and the feeling—of Willym's hand fisted in his hair and gripping his throat, of his body, warm and firm beneath the film of coarse canvas, chafing over his, of being filled over and over, filled so immensely that he could not remember what it was like to be empty, or how he had lived three years without his brother's prick completing him. Then at last the huge cockweight dragging out of his hole and the slick tip running up his neck like an unusually sprightly snail, nestling into the hair at the join of his head and shoulders, where it unloaded its copious cargo. For some reason Willym was always oddly fixated on that spot.

It was so odd, the places Willym like to leave his spend, and it felt odd, too. What hadn't dripped down his neck remained clogged in his hair and he knew (from experience) if left it would form a horrible sticky crust, a nightmare to wash out.

`Clean me up, Willye', he said, unable to raise his voice above a pebbly whisper.

Willym gave his neck and back a cursory swipe with the sheet and fell heavily on top of him. Kathyn endured this for a few minutes before huffing and whining, `Can you move? You're squishing me.'

There was no answer. For Kathyn was indeed wide awake, but Willym, the brat, had gone back to sleep!

For some hours then Kathyn was left alone with the snuffling husk that remained when the soul went out to wherever souls go during slumber. He himself did not sleep but lay where his brother's weight held him, stifled but relaxed, not thinking much, absorbing Willym's heat and the ticking of the clock and other unaccountable noises of the house when all else was silent. Feeling a deep, deep gratitude and contentment that slowly and sweetly swelled to cleanse the desolate years from his heart.

Thank you, Lord, he kept saying to himself. Thank you, Lord, for bringing him back.

After some hours Willym began to whuffle and shift, and Kathyn thought he was waking up. But in fact, only one part of him was waking.

He opened his eyes and mouth wide as Willym's prick stirred against his back, stiffening to steel once more, and Willym, still fast asleep, but moving by an instinct no doubt as automatic to him as breathing, attempted to mount him.

Kathyn did his best to evade with his limited range of movement, feeling pleasantly playful. He would catch the bobbing pole in his thighs, stroke it between them for a bit, then release it; let the slick head just kiss his pucker, open for it ever so slightly, then cant his hips up and feel it slide away. Every time this happened Willym would make noises of frustration and Kathyn would have to laugh into the pillow. Even asleep he was just too adorable not to tease.

Eventually Kathyn felt sorry enough for him to hold still. A grave mistake, for no sooner had the hole-seeking pizzle found its mark than it stabbed in swiftly, brutally boring his man-shaft. If he'd been awake Kathyn would have begged him to slow down, but sleeping, Willym pressed unthinkingly towards his goal, merciless in his unconsciousness. From there Kathyn found himself subjected to the strangest tupping he'd ever had, Willym's bulk weighing him down, his hips moving unevenly but as powerfully as ever, while over Kathyn's head his mind still wandered in whatever dreaming palaces of pleasure his fancy had conjured, and no word he spake or sound he made but heavy, guttural sighs.

When he felt Willym's body compressing above him, the deep breathy grunts shunting closer together, he gently eased forward, letting Willym's cock slip out to spill on his thigh.

Willym sighed and nosed at his cheek and for a moment they rested in semen-scented bliss. Then Kathyn felt something brush against his foot. Something with fur. Something alive.

He screeched and threw off the blankets.

`What is it?', Willym said, alert and awake in an instant. `Burglars? No.' Seeing where Kathyn was looking. `Bed-eels?'

`There was a horrible hairy thing and I touched it. It—look, there!' He kicked at the covers, then gasped and retreated further up the bed.

`Oh, that's not a horrible hairy thing. That's Mortimer.'

Willym picked up the black furry ball and snuggled it under his chin, upon which it unfurled itself into a large, sleek rat the colour of an ink bottle. `Naughty Morty. You oughtn't to go scarin nice Kathy like that.' Turning to Kathyn he said, `He was in my sack; must have come in bed with us fer company.'

`For company?'

`He gets lonely', Willym said complacently. On seeing how pale Kathyn was looking, he added. `It's all right, ee's fine to run about the place. Won't go scamperin off or nothin.'

`That is not what I am worried about. This is my house, and I am not having a dirty, disease-ridden rat—'

`Dirty? Disease-ridden?' Willym said indignantly. `They're cleaner than uz, I'll have you know. And very intelligent—you'll hurt his feelings, carryin on like that.'

`Hurt his feel—oh, dear Lord.' Kathyn was convulsed by memories of the grubby little urchin who had considered all the creatures of the sailortown sewers as temporarily estranged companions. `Just take him out of the bedroom, please', he finished faintly, and Willym, mercifully, complied.

He left with the rat and came back with his canvas sack, which had been lying unheeded by the door where he'd dropped it amidst a scattering of autumn leaves.

From this he took a tobacco pouch and a pipe which opened out like a telescope till it was about as long as Kathyn. `Fer underwater breathin', he said to Kathyn with a wink, and leapt back into bed, worming under the covers before the mattress had time to get cold.

Kathyn turned away with his arms folded.

`Ah, don't get all fratchy', Willym said. Kathyn harrumphed, having a mind to stay in a sulk for at least the morning.

But Willym was having none of it. Quick as an eel diving, he drove his arm under the covers to grab Kathyn by the cunt, stabbing thick fingers into his hole and gripping. Kathyn gasped and squirmed and got very hard very quickly.

`Now stow that, love, or I'll have t'nonk thee again.'

And Kathyn had to snort at that. It was both a serious threat and it wasn't. That is, there was no doubt Willym would do it, but there was very much doubt whether Kathyn would mind. Punishing someone with sex was like punishing him with cake—just not very effective as a deterrent.

Willym pulled his hand away (and Kathyn couldn't withhold a disappointed whine) to pack his pipe. Kathyn put a corner of the sheet over his nose. First rats in bed and now smoking! But Kathyn forbore from reproof when Willym was home. Let him have his comforts. Lord knew he was entitled to them.

Willym, after he lit the pipe, opened the window beside the bed, and by virtue of its telescopic stem was able to have the bowl of it outside while he was in bed. It was both impressive and ridiculous at the same time. Kathyn snuggled in close for refuge from the crisp morning breeze, and also hoping he'd put his fingers (or something better) back inside him.

`It's a nice place, this', Willym said after several deep drags, looking around the room in surprise, as if seeing it for the first time.

`At any rate nicer than a ship, I suppose.'

Willym snorted ruefully. `Too damn right. No lie-ins at sea, even when there en't no work to do--they always find somethin to keep you busy. You're baked during the day and froze at night, with hardly a mite of rest for days on end. But I always says to meself, at least me Kath is safe and snug in his own house in Damson Court. And then it's all right.'

Even as this reminiscence moved Kathyn, it amused him to realise that to Willym the name `Damson Court' appeared to signify a residence of some distinction. Once it would have embarrassed him, but Kathyn had stopped being anxious over Willym's commonness once he had grown tall and comely enough that people found it charming. If you were tall and comely the world would forgive you about anything. Indeed, marry a low brow and a fair face and ignorance became innocence and social ineptitude was credited to you as sincerity. Would Kathyn--could Kathyn have loved Willym as he did if he had been scrawny, or ugly? That was one of the questions that must not be asked.

As for houses, Willym's life in the country had come too early and been too brief to hold in his memory. And compared with a hammock in the bowels of a ship, anything with four walls and a floor that didn't move must seem a palace.

Well, let Willym have his pride. Kathyn supposed in a way his life was as leisurely as that of any burgher's wife. Aside from the house, his only real labour was the needlework he did, more from a surplus of time than a deficit of income, which was ample enough with Willym's pay. That was one thing you could say for the Commonwealth Navy: she paid her men well, even if she used them like animals. And Willym, unlike most sailors, was generous with his allotment, sending the full half that was allowed. Indeed, if he had been able, Kathyn was sure he would have wanted to send home all his wages in monthly remittances.

They lay together, Willym's arm around Kathyn's shoulder and Kathyn's face nuzzled into the crook of his neck, every now and then a hand dipping between his legs to stroke him off, until the sun was too high to be seen through the window. Kathyn had got used to spending more time in bed than not when Willym was home. But everything had his limit. He could feel the first morning tiredness returning. He would have to get up now or risk falling asleep again.

Noonday bells were sounding as they both rose for a much-needed wash. Willym insisted on washing Kathyn himself, as if needing to become more thoroughly re-acquainted with every inch of his body. While Kathyn never let his hands stray too far from their ostensive purpose, a great deal more water, and laughter, was spilled than strictly necessary.

Willym dried him off and Kathyn slipped on a plain linen shift, while Willym slipped out of his shirt and bell-bottoms. Kathyn's eyes went round. Willym's body as he stood in the sunlight seemed livid with colour, as if he'd swum through a rainbow.

`Well. Some of these are new', he said, cautiously reaching out to touch his brother's chest. Willym grinned and flexed his new-gotten muscles, making the tattooed figures ripple.

There were the usual nautical patterns: the mermaid (or rather, a merman with a face not unlike Kathyn's— `The bugger wanted to give im tits', Willym said scornfully), the mariner's cross, the rope around his wrist.

On his right shoulder was his first ship with her name, the Deliverance, on a scroll beneath it. And on the left shoulder was his first capture, the Æris. Everything had changed after Willym got his prize money for her. It had been a fortunate first voyage for a novice seaman—the kind wharf-brats worlds over dreamt of. Kathyn wasn't sure what a powder boy's percentage of a million pounds came to in the end, but it had been enough for the deposit on the house, furnished, and for Kathyn to give up his job at the Commodore Sparrow Inn. Willym had been as glad of that as he. The landlady and senior servants had been forever drubbing him for not hearing or mishearing orders, and the lodgers had used to get handsy in a quite different way. And no matter that it was in the Uptown of Highmouth, for gentleman, he had found, could be as bad in that regard as sailors, or worse, being more used to having their own way.

`Look at the back', Willym said, and spun on his heel.

`Oh!' Kathyn exclaimed. `Willye, that isn't decent.'

For there was the Deliverance and the Æris again, only this time they weren't ships, but people: a man and a woman, to be exact, and the man was giving the woman a rough boarding, in a graphic reimagining of the famous naval victory.

`All the men got it on the five-year anniversary. Even the captain--and the chaplain! Or they said he did, anyroad.'

`How would they know? What was under his clothes, I mean.'

Willym looked sly. `Oh, they know. Holy Joe's en't all that holy, you know. Specially our one. Wouldn't put up with im otherwise!'

He moved Kathyn's hand to a new addition: the initials KM inked over his breast, not in the traditional love-heart, but in the centre of an elaborate compass rose. It was a symbol that needed no elucidation. Kathyn pressed a kiss into the warm skin. My true love hath my heart, and I have his...

`Look.' Willym scrambled over the bed and pulled the heavy drapes together, shuttering the room in shadow, save for the shining star on his chest.

Kathyn had heard of this. The tattows were done with iridink, made from the phosphorescent coral of the Irised Sea. They illuminated nothing beyond themselves, but the blue glowing lines were described as cleanly in the room's dark as those on a sea chart.

Willym opened the curtains again and moved back over to him. `Know what you need, love? A matching one.'

Kathyn touched his own breast.

`Not there.'

Willym knocked him over onto the bed, tipping him on his back. `Hold yer knees', he ordered. Kathyn held them.

The fact that Willym, now full-grown, could pick him up and carry him about without any discernible effort; could fold him in half just like that, as if he were a wool-padded puppet from a children's show. It—Heaven help him, Kathyn couldn't tell what it did to him. But he could feel it, humming beneath his skin, heating him from the belly up. And lower than his belly.

Willym spread his arsecheeks, and ran his index finger around Kathyn's hole. `Round `ere', he said huskily. `Me name. I'll do it meself. Not letting no other man touch you there, or look at you.'

His nail was short, but it still scratched a bit and Kathyn quivered. Suddenly there was a fierce, burning itch under his navel, where he needed Willym to put his cock right now.

But Willym was putting his legs down again, and moving up to straddle his waist, holding Kathyn as easily with his legs as he had with his hands. He slid Kathyn's shift up till it was bunched around his neck like an Elizabethan collar. `Or little flowers there'—he flicked first one nipple, then the other, making Kathyn yelp— `and there.' Marking the body was a sin, even for sailors. But could he refuse if Willym asked him? The thought of Willym marking him up—he couldn't deny it had a most wicked appeal.

`There's one more.'

With his face only inches from Willym's poured-bronze torso, he could see that a line of ink ran from the elongated southernmost arrow of the rose. It flowed through the cleft in the muscles of his abdomen like a brook through a mountain valley, circumnavigated his belly-button and flourished at last into a thicket of scrolling vines that seemed to grow from under Willym's tangled thatch of netherhair. It reminded Kathyn of the patterns he used to find in the margins of Willym's copy-book.

And it didn't stop there. There were black letters etched into the pinkskin of Willym's cock, running down from stem to tip toward him, K-A-T-H-Y-N. He breathed on them, and they moved a little further apart.

`My mate, ee got a sea serpent, and I thought that weren't a bad idea. But then there was all them scales. He said it splikked him so var he swebbed clean out halfway through, and when he wake up the needler had run off wi his coin, and his dick were only half-done. We called him Stubby the Sea-snake after that.'

It was at once the most vulgar and the sweetest gesture of love Kathyn could think of, and it summed Willym up perfectly. Now, he told himself sternly, you're not going crying again.

`Think he thought it were a girl's name. Was gunny put "Kathryn", but I stopped him when he got to t' "R".'

Come to think of it, the `Y' did look a bit funny. Kathyn handled the swiftly-stiffening member with wonder. `It must have hurt.'

`Like hell itself. But `twas worth it for that.'

Kathyn glanced up to meet Willym's intense, heated gaze. `For what?'

`For that look on yer face', Willym said, his expression as full of wonder as Kathyn's.

Kathyn didn't know what to say to that. Their eyes remained locked together until the head of Willym's cock, now at full mast, bumped into the underside his chin. He looked down.

'Ee's knockin. Wants t'come inside.'

`Hello', Kathyn murmured, and started peppering it with kisses, and little lapping licks, and kisses that had so much tongue in them they were like both mixed together. No insubstantial thing was Willye's johnson—it gave you plenty to be getting off with. This, he reflected, as his kisses became sloppier and more passionate, and Willym stumbled forward, crowding him against the bed with his stout thighs, would be far less satisfying if Willye only had some pencilly wisp of a willy.

As he was about to swallow the whole thing, or as much of it as he could in one go, another thought occurred to him. `The ink won't come off, will it? I mean, when you're...'

Willym guffawed. `Well, that depends my love, on how wet ye be.'

Kathyn huffed.

`Eh? How wet do I make yer?'

`Oh, don't be silly, I was just... Anyroad, don't get too many of these, will you, my lad? I like your body the way it is.'

`Never have guessed, love', said Willym, and he fed his length briskly down Kathyn's throat, grinning with his tongue between his teeth as Kathyn choked and gurgled ecstatically.

It was all he could do to keep his teeth clear as Willym bashed his crotch into Kathyn's face, holding Kathyn by his hair and rolling his hips to drive the slimy hard meat direct down Kathyn's gullet. The noises this drove out of him only seemed to up Willym's randiness, and it wasn't long before he was pulling out with a growl, cockshaft already swelling and shrinking and pisshole dilating.

Kathyn shut his eyes and put out his tongue. Willym grunted, and fairly unleashed on his face, hailing down long white ribbons of sperm, of which not more than a fraction fell in his mouth. When the hot rain dried up, Kathyn cocked an eye aslit.

He was met by his favourite view in the world: Willym's titanic cock filling up his vision, and above, Willym himself gazing down on him from distant Olympian heights, eyes like windows into the abyss, golden hair a halo of fire in the light from the window, perfect and implacable like some young fair god, and Kathyn was a worshipper at the altar of his phallus.

He swallowed what was in his mouth, then sponged up what was still dripping from Willym's smooth bell-tip with reverent strokes of his tongue.

Then he moved to wipe himself off, but Willym seized his hand. There was a full-length mirror standing against one of the walls and Willym dragged him in front of it.

`Look', he said breathlessly. `Just fuckin look at that.'

They both looked at the faces in the mirror.

Kathyn's soft blue eyes blinked back at him out of a mask of unmitigated debauchery. Willym's come was everywhere-- globbed in his eyelashes, clinging to the contours of his nose and cheekbones, streaking in pale scarlines over his mouth and eyes, jangling in sticky icicles from his hair. There was more white than pink to be seen. It looked like ten men—or ten horses—had used his face as a spunk-cloth. Willym looked like he'd seen an apparition and couldn't decide whether it was God or the Devil.

Kathyn arched his brows and stuck his tongue out the corner of his mouth to catch a gobbet that was sliding down toward his chin.

Willym made a wounded sound. `God, Kath. You ruin me.' And though it was obviously the other way around, Kathyn knew just what he meant. He should have rebuked Willym for his blasphemy, but it would have been ludicrous to sermonise with his face dripping sperm. Besides, he somehow couldn't care when he was this turned on.

`Now, hold still while I rub it in. From now on whatever goes on yer stays on yer, or in yer. I'll not have thee wasting me seed.'

Willym rubbed and rubbed, helped (or hindered) by Kathyn's lapping tongue, which darted out to lick his fingers whenever they came in reach, but there was far too much for Kathyn's skin to absorb. Instead, it formed a kind of tacky patina that was already drying into a glaze. He felt like a basted grouse, but he could bear it— until he could get at the washstand alone, whatever Willym said.

`Your freckles don't show up so much as they used', Willym mused, holding Kathyn's jaw between his two big hands.

Kathyn rubbed his thumb over mirror-Willym's nose. `Your whole face is one big freckle, now', he said. But what he thought was, he's so handsome it hurts. Next to his brother's tan healthful glow, Kathyn had the grey-white complexion of a shut-in.

`So pale, love.'

`It's because I never go out if I can help it.' He felt ashamed as he said it, thinking of Willym sailing the wide seas, seeing all the uncharted places of the world, and the worlds beyond, while Kathyn rarely stirred outside his rooms, and almost never beyond the court. Indeed, he hardly needed to, for the shops in the ground floor arcades between them stocked practically everything he wanted.

What a dull, miserable thing I am. How can he possibly want me when he well knows he could have any woman just by looking at her?

Willym kissed the sensitive spot just behind his jaw. `Good. I don't want anyone lookin at you. Not in this Christcursed town.'

At the same time as one hand was fondling Kathyn's neck and the other had moved to make little circles on his hip, he was alternately sniffing and nibbling at Kathyn's hair, and humping his very much a proper hard-on, now, up and down his bare back. Even his feet were crowding into Kathyn's. But his eyes never left Kathyn's reflection in the glass.

`I ought t'put ye in a big veil, all black from head to foot, like a Sultan's wife.' A grin crooked slowly up the side of his face, as if, now he'd thought of it, the idea pleased him very well. `I will too, one of them days.'

Quite honestly, Kathyn wouldn't mind it if he did. He hated the feel of the world's eyes on him whenever he went in crowds. He knew it was all in his head—there was probably no one less likely to attract attention than a drab little house-mouse like him. But knowing that and feeling it were two quite different things, and somehow Kathyn hadn't contrived to bridge the gap. Avoiding it probably didn't help, either, in the long run. But what did that matter? Willym had always been the only one for him, the only one in whose company he could feel completely at ease. And what a mercy that was.

`Do whatever you like with me, love. I'm yours to do with what you please. Use me as you will.' He hooped an arm over Willym's head to pull it down, and stood up on tiptoe to kiss him. Willym surged into the kiss, making those little involuntary noises that were like an aphrodisiac to Kathyn; shoving his tongue as far into Kathyn's mouth as it would go and forcing his own tongue down in a micro-play of domination and submission, then pulling back to take little sips from Kathyn's mouth, which felt bruised and raw.

`How is it thou always knowst just what t'say to—you'll drive me crazed, Kath, I swear it. You'll have me madder'n a March hare. Do what you like with me. I wonder just how many men ever heard that from their lasses?'

`None, I should think. That's because your big brother's already mad, my boyo. Mad as a May rabbit. They'll be carting me off to Bedlam Isle before the moon changes.'

`Hmmm. You in a madhouse, eh? Almost think I'd like that. Mebbe I'd be one o' the doctors.'

Kathyn snorted. `Aye, and I know what your notion of treatment'd be—a round dose of cock, administered twice daily.'

`Only twice? Yer dreaming, love. I'd never let you off it. Forget about straitjackets—I'd stuff ye down the front of me coat and carry you round like a meat-muff.'

A hot wave ran over him from his head downward, leaving him dizzy with desire. Lor sakes, they were supposed to be getting up for the day, but now he just wanted—no, he needed—Willym to get in him again.

`I almost wish we were two different people, just so I could find you all over again and fuck you. Mmm, and that's just what I'd do, my sweet. No matter what or where we were, if you was a schoolmaster and I was your pupil, or if you was the Queen herself, and I was your royal guard, I'd find you and before you came out with a la-de-dah or how-de-do, I'd have my cock all the way up yer tight little cunny. All the way fuckin up in ere, my sweet little comehole.'

Kathyn quivered at the visions Willym's talk was conjuring in his head, the sensations they were producing between his thighs. It was so wrong, the way he was talking. And yet, the idea of millions of worlds with Willym and Kathyn together in every one of them, of infinite destinies and every one ending with Willym hilted up to his heart, felt so deeply, intoxicatingly right.

Willym grabbed a handful of flesh at Kathyn's middle, where, he had to admit, there was ample for the grabbing, and jiggled it. Even something as simple as his sun-gilded hand splayed possessingly over Kathyn's white belly was intensely erotic. Maybe his soft, silvery body wasn't so bad when paired with his brother's firm golden one. The contrast was breathtaking.

`If I were a pirate, and I took ye prisoner at sea...if I were a hunter, and ye were a little fox...if ye were a rich man, and I your poor servant. Or a highseaman, eh? "Yer body or yer life." If ye were my own mother...'

`Oh no, Willye, no!' Kathyn had been enjoying it so far—he'd never known Willym could be so fanciful--but this was going too far. Brothers was one thing, but parents—that was sick.

Willym was undeterred. His eyes were bright and fey, like he was drunk on his own wild words. `Yes, Kath. If ye were me own fuckin mother it wouldn't stop me from cunting you up and breeding you like the bitch you fuckin are.'

On this last pronouncement, which came out in a voice more animal than human, Kathyn found himself shoved forward by the neck, face mashed into the glass. And that was how Kathyn ended up getting railed in front of his own reflection.

`You were my own mother—I had none other, none worthy of the name. Kath, my brother, my mother, my wife—mine. Mine.'

Caught between the cool surface of the mirror on his face and Willym's hot breath panting in his ear, his insides were a fever-storm of tropic and pole as Willym hauled his arse back onto his fuckclub over and over again. His cock went in so slickly, so easily, now, but it was still impossibly large, impossibly long and it burned just right. He felt his mind mushing up as if it were his brain Willym was pounding. He felt himself untethering, dissolving into a warm sugary soup of pure pleasure.

Willym's prick slipped out and up between his legs, the head stabbing into his peritoneum, then riding up the curve of his arse. Willym let out a sharp exhalation of air through his nose, and it was only that and the warm spurt of wetness in the middle of his back that told Kathyn he was coming. He could feel spray after spray scattering over him from his shoulders to his buttocks. He didn't think Willym had ever come so much. He didn't think he'd ever come so much. It was cascading down the mirror like a waterfall, and the real come and the reflection of the veritable deluge that was slipping down his thighs merged together in one mighty sperm-river.

`Good bitch. Proper fuckin bitch. Perfect bitch. Perfect breeding hole. Now, on yer knees and clean it up—with yer tongue, mind—bitches en't got hands so neither have thee. Start with me cock and go on from there.'

After he'd cleaned off Willym (which had a false start, as Willym blew again when Kathyn put his tongue to him) and the mirror, Kathyn was forced to crawl around the floor on his hands and knees, lapping every visible speck of white off the floorboards, while Willym rode his arse doggy-fashion, squatting over him with his hands on his waist, only letting him move a few inches between each bone-quaking thrust. Trying to crawl while somebody was fucking him was an experience like nothing else Kathyn had known—and with Willye as his mate that was saying something.

It wasn't just hard to move, it was near-impossible to concentrate with Willym splitting him open over and over again, cock so wide he felt himself tearing at the seams with each thrust, so deep he felt it fucking the breath from his lungs. He'd just about finished when he tensed up around Willym's length and came for the second time in as many minutes. And, of course, he had to lick that up, too.

Finally, Willym came, flattening him to the floor with a brutal thrust before spraying another coat on his neck and shoulders. After this he was permitted to clean himself, for the second time that morning, and, with an absolute veto on Willym's `help', he was even able to get dressed, donning a light skirt and blouse and his second-worst apron. No point getting more dressed than that with Willye about.

Then he went down to the parlour, only to collapse onto the chaise (one of the fee items of furniture not made from the twisted driftwood), exhausted, even though he'd technically just got up.

But Willym had decided that after a full evening and morning of almost non-stop stupping, he wanted his tea after all, or rather his luncheon, for they had missed breakfast.

He knelt on the arm above Kathyn's head. He had a tar-smelling shirt on but was sans trousers. He slapped Kathyn across the face-- lightly, for him, but being him it still hurt. `Git up. Want food.'

Kathyn raised his arm and made a rude gesture.

Willym made a sound of shocked delight. He grabbed the hand that was giving the one-finger salute and shook it in faux-outrage. `Excuse me, Missy! Excuse me, Miss Peg-puff, wherever did you learn such a wicked, dirty thing as that?'

`From a wicked, dirty sailor that turns up at my door every three years', Kathyn retorted.

Willym took himself in hand and put the gleaming length to the side of Kathyn's head, letting him feel its size and firmness, smell its thick, rammy smell. Like baiting a lure and Kathyn turned his head, breathing, pressing his tongue against it and tasting.

But no sooner had he done this than Willym withdrew. `Yer not gettin this in ye till I get food in me.' He'd gone from threatening him with cock to bribing him with it. Kathyn hated that it worked.

While Kathyn rattled grumpily around the house's compact kitchen, Willym rested his bum on the bench, slowly wanking, as if to spur Kathyn on or something, the idiot. Or like every sailor boy just un-blimmin-able to leave himself alone, even though it'd been how many times already? And that was just this morning! Kathyn's sphincter was screaming at him every time he moved.

Nonetheless, for whatever reason Willym felt the need to whack off in the kitchen, it was probably a mistake to watch him do it while standing on a rickety stool to reach the top cupboards. He strained forward to grab a bowl, eyes anchored on Willym's pumping hand and pulsing member, misjudged the distance and felt the stool wobble, then fall, and then he was falling too. Before he could so much as cry out, he was on his back on the floor.

Willym was on top of him in less time than it took to catch his breath, swearing vociferously—not at him, Kathyn realised, after a horrible interval when the bottom of his stomach dropped out, but as an automatic reaction to the situation in general.

Once he'd satisfied himself there were no mortal wounds, he picked Kathyn up by the waist and carried him into the parlour, depositing him on the chaise again. Now it was his whole back, not just his backside, that was on fire, but he still enjoyed Willym's worried fussing over him (and his stiff cock prodding him as he was carried).

`It's all right, lad. I'll live.' He put his arms round Willym's neck and tried to lean up for a kiss, but Willym shoved him back onto the chaise.

`You can't—don't you realise you've got t'take care of yerself, love.' He saw with a small and not wholly unpleasant shock that Willym was genuinely agitated.

`I'm no fainting flower, Willye. You know that. How on earth d'you think I managed all these years if I can't even open a cupboard on me own?'

`Well, you dinna have t'manage anymore. I'm home now, and you must ask me to do anythin dangerous. You hear me?''

Kathyn rolled his eyes, but his heart was hot with happiness. `Yes, Willye.'

`And you'll obey me?'

`Always, Willye.'

Willym almost wrenched his mouth off with a kiss. `Fuck, I love you.'

`Don't swear, or you'll get no supper.'

`Don't scold, or you'll get no screwin. Now say aahh.'

Kathyn opened his mouth and Willym put his tongue inside—not a kiss, just his tongue jabbing between Kathyn's lips, flicking in and out in a proper mouthfucking.

While their faces were sealed together Willym slipped something into his hand. It was a large sturdy envelope, and when he took it, it rustled.

`Me pay', Willym explained, wearing an expression of mingled adoration and pride, just the same he had worn when he came home and dropped the first handful of coins he ever earned in Kathyn's apron. Not in Mam's apron. In Kathyn's. And even if Mam had snatched it all as soon as she saw, with many a clout between them for their trouble, it hadn't spoilt anything. It wasn't the money that had made him happy.

Now it was Kathyn's turn to claim Willym's mouth. He leapt up into Willym's arms, trusting his brother to catch him, and they fell to it again, each trying to suck more of the other into himself, hair falling into each other's eyes, their mutual noise between laughter and a moan. The envelope fell unheeded to the floor.

Not for the first time Kathyn wondered whether excess of love could kill. And quickly he arrived at the same answer he always did: if it could, he would have died long ago.

His legs circled Willym's waist, and each time he slipped down Willym's jutting cock kissed his hole, which was bare and dripping beneath his skirt. It took only a little positioning to have the fat head breach him and then sink down until they were quite literally joined at the hips. Willym was strong enough, and Kathyn light enough, that he could support him with just one hand under his arse, while the other kept their mouths pressed together as he bucked into Kathyn's constricting passage. Kathyn was sure at least half his weight was on Willym's manhood, sturdy fleshpillar that it was.

 

A little while later, after a brief but very passionate coupling, Kathyn was laying out what was by then what Grandam would have called andersmeat, an afternoon luncheon. For having to make do with what was around the house, it wasn't bad. There was pickled crab, plum-pudding, eidelberry pie and large quantities of potato sliced thin and baked with onion, cream and cheese—Kathyn's own variation on a dish Grandam had used to make with mutton.

Willym looked puzzled after Kathyn said Grace Before Meat and there wasn't any. `No meat?'

`I don't eat it.'

`Still?'

Kathyn nodded gently. `I'll get some for you, don't you worry. Can't have my big sailor-boy starving.'

He would have to go shopping later on. Willym would want to be well fed while he was home, and he deserved to be. Kathyn knew the sort of slop they served on ships.

The rat sat on Willym's shoulder and daintily accepted the morsels that were passed to it. When Willym saw the expression Kathyn was wearing as he watched, he sighed and placed it on the floor. The rodent went agreeably enough, trotting off with a piece of plum in its mouth. Lord knew where in the house it hid -- there were cracks and crannies enough. Kathyn didn't, and didn't want to.

`I dinna mind this', Willym said, after demolishing most of what was on the table. `At sea, course, you dinna git nowt like it—no veggibles. Just salt pork, salt beef, what they call `sea-beef', which can be anythin—whale if yer lucky, and horse if you en't. And sea-biscuit.'

Kathyn made a face. He'd heard plenty about that particular nautical delicacy, and the extra...seasoning it came with.

`You can do the washing up', he said. `While I'm out.' And in response Willym gave exactly the same groan he'd given at that news since he was ten. Kathyn left the house feeling brighter, despite the twinging of his spine, than he'd felt in years.

 

When he got back from the shops Willym was balanced on the back of a chair with his feet planted on the arms. He was holding a long curved white thing in his hand, and was scraping at it with a jack-knife.

For once, it wasn't his cock, but appeared to be a tooth or tusk of some kind. When Kathyn walked in he laid it aside and jumped up to help with the stores. While he was busily putting everything in the wrong cupboards (Kathyn would have to do it again later), Kathyn set out the bottles of liquor (he didn't know what it was; he'd just asked the man for whatever would be a treat for a sailor on shore leave) he bought at the arcade with the other necessaries. He never enjoyed going out, even as far as the shops. His world had shrunk in the three years he lived alone. But having Willym back made it more manageable. Somehow just the thought of his brother at home waiting for him was like a fortifying presence at his back when he was forced to go out into the world, with all its hidden tests and unforeseeable perils.

`Now, you know my views on drink, Willym', he said.

Willym nodded solemnly, though one side of his mouth quirked up a bit.

`But. I know that to ask a sailor to go altogether abstinent would be too great a hardship. So, I only ask that you don't get drunk under this roof.'

`Dinna ye worry, lass. Steady does it.' He picked up a bottle, pulled the cork out with his teeth and, not bothering with a glass, took a long (too long, Kathyn thought, for "steady does it") swig. Then he stuck his tongue out and looked sort of cross-eyed, just like a wee one tasting something for the first time, deciding if he likes it. Kathyn smothered a laugh in his apron.

`Tastes queer, like. Not bad, though. Sweeter than sailor's grog.'

Kathyn left Willym to his liquor and his carving while he set about giving the house its long overdue morning clean. After that, remembering Willym's sexual appetite was matched only by his actual appetite, he cooked an early supper. Or rather, tried to. While he was chopping onions (with a piece of bread in his mouth to stop the tears—a trick Grandam taught him, and it worked pretty well, though he had to remind himself not to eat it) Willym came up behind, lifted his skirt and attempted, clumsily and without preamble, to insert himself into Kathyn's rectum.

`Willym!' he exclaimed through his mouthful of dough.

`What?'

He chewed and swallowed. `I swear, I don't know what I'm going to do with you. You're as bad when you were three-ten.'

`En't my fault', Willym said bullishly. `'s this fuckin shit you give me.'

`Willym! Don't swear.'

`Sorry. It's this fuckin stuff you give me.'

When he turned around his brother was regarding him with intense but unfocused desire. One hand clutched his groin while the other clutched one of the brown bottles by its neck. By the sound it made as it sloshed it was almost empty.

Kathyn snatched it away. `This was supposed to last you your whole visit, and here you are trying to drink it all in one night.'

Willym blinked for a few seconds, as if trying very hard to understand what he was hearing. He shook himself, then flailed blearily forward. Kathyn wasn't sure if he was trying to get at the bottle or his bum (or both), but he wasn't having either. He stepped smartly out of Willym's reach.

Willym gave a mournful groan. `For Christ's sake, stand still.'

`Willym, don't you dare! You cease your blasphemy or I'll box it out of you!'

`Just stop moving!' Willym pleaded, erection bobbing ruddy from under his shirt in a manner that would have been comical if it weren't so menacingly large.

`Why?'

`Because I'm trying to fuck you', he said, in a tone of such innocent exasperation Kathyn had to laugh. And while he was laughing Willym pounced, barrelling him to the floor in an alcohol-scented embrace, like a drunken horny bear.

The liquor went on the floorboards; Willym's prick went in Kathyn's cunt.

`Oh-ohh', Kathyn said, and had to work very hard to stay annoyed.

They missed supper. The liquor, if it increased ardour, did not increase stamina. Willym fucked him on the floor until Kathyn climaxed, then picked him up (without unsheathing), started to carry him unsteadily to the bedroom but got tired and fucked him for a bit on the stairs, finally made it to his room and dropped him on the bed, pulled out, came all over him with a grunt, rolled over and fell briskly asleep.

Kathyn did not find it so easy.

When he tried to get out of bed, Willym's hand grasped at his wrist. Kathyn gently shrugged it off, kissed it, and laid it on the mattress. It curled into a loose fist, still trying to hold onto something that wasn't there. Kathyn took the money and a candle from the bedside table and went into the parlour to stand in front of the fireplace.

In pride of place on the mantel stood a handsome full-rigger, about the size of a tea chest. Willym had made it for Kathyn's twenty-first birthday out of spare bits of rope and timber and other rubbish he'd scrounged around the docks. He'd worked at it for four years. The hatch in the deck opened to reveal a hollow interior, and that was where Kathyn kept his money. He put Willym's pay in there now, and—bless the boy—he had trouble stuffing all the thick pound notes into the miniature cargo hold.

Beside it was a scrimshawed whale-tooth Willym had brought back from his second voyage. He'd carved it himself, and with surprising skill. Like the tattow, it was a merman with Kathyn's face, sitting on a rock and singing to a sailor with Willym's face. On the other side of the whale's tooth the merman had left his rock and was coupling with the sailor on the ship's deck. Mer-Kathyn—small, dainty and long-haired, with a tail that began, improbably, below a fulsome arse, and each scale lovingly carved— was a mere figment of an under-occupied and oversexed imagination. Kathyn knew this because when they had lived by the Chieling docks he had seen a real one. She had been bound with rope to a wooden spar, carried on the shoulders of a gang of more than usually rough-looking men. Although the men were moving as fast as the heaving crowd would let them, the mermaid, with a great long tail like an eel—smooth, not scaled—had to be several times as long as a man, and they took a few moments to pass Kathyn. It was enough for him to see that coming off from the spar at an angle, like a limb from a tree, was a thick stake that went right inside her where a woman's parts would be. So raw. It made him think of the wet, bloody carcasses one saw at the fish markets.

But she had still been alive, gills flapping in the moist dockside air, blue lower lips clenching and slackening, weakly but perceptibly, around the stake. He'd never been able to get that out of his head.

Someone had called out a halloo to one of the men, and the man called back; there had followed a brief and incomprehensible exchange. But Kathyn remembered the last thing the fisherman had said. `She's for the block, ole matey.'

Of course, he'd comprehended nothing at the time, and even now he was unsure just what the poor creature had been destined for—only rape... or worse. He had heard there were establishments whose menus offered mermeat as a delicacy. The more exclusive, folk said, allowed their patrons the privilege of personally raping their hapless victim-cum-meal before she was carved up and cooked in front of them.

Mermaiding was illegal, same as the hunting of any of the higher creatures. But the seas were wide and England was far away, and the administrators of her law had more pressing cases to concern them. It was not as if merfolk could come out of the sea to seek justice in any landlubber's court.

He'd spewed up on Mam's dress, and hadn't felt sorry for it, though she'd boxed his ears all the way home, where he had refused to eat anything that came from the sea, subsisting on bread and potatoes while his mother cursed him for a fussy, dainty brat. But he had been sorry for the mermaid. It was a vicious world, in more ways than could be known. Sometimes, when he failed to ward his thoughts, he almost despaired. But then he had Willym. And Willym was all the goodness he needed.

Kathyn rubbed his ear absently. He had been somedeal deaf ever since that beating. It had stopped being the awful grief and shame it once was, though he was still and would always be self-conscious about it. He'd become good at reading lips and eyes. But it was a part of why he preferred his own company, when he couldn't get his brother's. It was a part of why he relied on Willym so completely. Dear, sweet Willym. He had never mocked or snapped when Kathyn had to ask for the third or fourth or fifth time for something to be repeated, or had to be tapped on the shoulder or tugged on the sleeve to get his attention. It had only made him gentler to Kathyn and more fiercely protective of him from others.

But that was not how he was in Kathyn's dreams, when he remembered when he had been a merman, hunted from his home and hoven out of the briny depths by Willym's ship, strung up in a net for men to poke their pricks through the gaps, or caught on a cock-shaped hook and tied to the mainmast for the use of passing sailors, or scaled with a knife, like a fish and carried home in a sea-chest with a hole at his mouth for his food and Willym's prick, and at his arse for his waste and Willym's prick...

He put the scrimshaw back, taking care to keep the obscene side facing the wall. He never had visitors, but still. The only other thing on the mantelpiece, beside the anniversary clock, was the storm-glass. How many anxious hours had he spent watching the ice-mist form and fade and form again? He ought to have been praying instead, but—it was a perverse thing, but when in the furthest grip of anxious desperation, when prayer was the one thing needful, Kathyn found it would not come. Instead, he just sat staring at the thing into the chill hours of the early morning, mind numb and full with the absence of the unasked question: is he alive or dead?

And that week, that second week of September. Kathyn couldn't believe even the Lord could still such storms as there had been then. That week had been a black one for all sailor's wives and sweethearts in the Far Seas, and that was what it was called as well, the Black Week, on account of the number of women on Ingelsea who had been wearing black in the wake of that wind.

It may seem strange that Kathyn was dwelling on such thoughts when his brother was slumbering in his bed, the spot beside him where Kathyn had been cradled in his arms still warm. But it may help to say this: there are two kinds of illness. An ordinary illness one forgets as soon as it's over. When one is ill one longs to be well, but when one is well one cannot imagine being ill. Happiness never draws attention to itself except by its absence. But there is a kind of sickness that is so painful, so protracted that health is never again something one takes for granted, but something one savours, and is grateful for. And afterwards when one is sick, or circumstances otherwise provoke resentment or self-pity, one says to oneself, `At least it isn't like that.' The same is true of any great trauma. Kathyn's grandam, who lived through the Red Winters, had always taken a simple but profound pleasure in having a pantry well stocked that was both touching and painful to observe.

When one has felt what Kathyn felt when the rumours were flying through the town that the High Fleet was entirely lost, all ships, all hands, all gone down to watery graves, it is not something that can easily be forgotten. The pain was gone, but his soul would ever after be sick with the memory of it.

So, even as Willym slept safe in his bed, Kathyn wept, but quietly, lest the sound should wake his brother.

 

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