Chapter Thirteen #2
Nick tossed the dirty shirt on the floor and took a handful of soap flakes and rubbed them into the washcloth. He ladled in just enough cold water that it was bearable and began to wipe every inch of skin. “Do people not get pierced where you’re from?”
“Not through the cock,” Kit said, that horrified note ringing true.
“And not so many –” A distressed rumble cut off his words.
“Why do you leave them in? Is it too difficult to cut the metal when it is close to your sensitive part? I have pliers I can use to help remove them. I swear to be careful.”
Nick got a second wash cloth soaped up and handed it behind him without looking. “Do my back if you’re going to stick to me.”
Kit took the cloth. “I can get a numbing agent from Anna to ease the pain when we remove them. They probably are the true cause of your headaches,” he said with a note of certainty.
Nick groaned, exasperated. “They were put in there by a trained professional. They are perfectly safe, so long as I keep the metal clean, which I do, and they don’t cause any harm of any kind. I got them because they feel good.”
Kit’s agitated exhale accompanied the warm cloth rubbing a line down Nick’s spine. The water, just too hot, was bliss against his skin. Kit’s touch was gentle. “If you keep them in to please someone in particular,” Kit said carefully, “then you are safe to remove them here without consequence.”
Kit successfully snuffed out the last of Nick’s ire. Kit’s mind had jumped immediately to sexual coercion.
“I got my first piercing done when I was eighteen,” Nick said as he wiped carefully over his sensitive arms. “It was a graduation present to myself. It stung going in, but I kind of liked that. So after the first one healed, I went back to get another, and then another after that, and then another… It was all one at a time, except the ladder. For those, they stuck in the five bars all at once.”
Kit’s hand trembled against Nick’s back. “They really do not cause you pain?”
“Really.”
“And you were not forced –”
“I wasn’t forced.”
Nick dunked the cloth back into the water.
He twisted to face Kit, whose eyes snapped up as he turned.
He stared hard at Nick’s face, as if he was trying to detect a lie.
His expression became muddled as he realised there was no deception to find.
“I do not understand why one would…” Kit’s face reddened.
His eyes were half-lidded as his gaze slipped down, looking at the front of Nick’s trousers. “Feel good how?”
Nick watched Kit. His tail was hooking, brushing against Nick’s calf—that was a friendly thing. Kit had lost the coldness of before, but Nick’s emotions hadn’t followed Kit’s back to calmer waters. Exhaustion clung to his body, a wrung-out feeling that fed a simmering resentment.
“What colour were their tails?”
Kit’s tail twitched. His shoulders tightened, and his crystalline blue eyes flicked up to meet Nick’s. Kit’s expression closed off as he straightened, body leaning away from Nick, even as his tail feathered against his thigh.
“They were too far,” Kit replied stiffly.
Nick stared at Kit, leaning against the table, shirtless, smelling of sweat and iron. Feeling more alone than when he’d first woken up on the ship.
Kit’s hands slid behind his back and clasped together, the water from the washcloth dripping onto the wooden floor as it was squeezed. He couldn’t meet Nick’s eyes. “There are no eyepieces, and the sun reflects off the ocean to create the illusion of different colours. It’s impossible to tell.”
Nick turned away from him, angry and hopeless.
“I don’t know,” burst suddenly from Kit. “Don’t make such an expression. Please. Blue, I think. And the other was the colour of a red sunset.”
“Pale blue?”
“Perhaps,” Kit said, but this time it wasn’t to stonewall Nick. He met his eyes; it was an honest reply.
“And copper?”
“Yes.”
Bee and Dew, Laurence’s friends and co-conspirators.
Nick didn’t know them well since Adonis despised them and chased them away whenever they came near Connor, and a few weeks ago, they’d been banned from the house by Trevor after they aided Laurence’s attempt to try and cross through The Tear on nothing but a windsurf.
“You know them?”
Was denying that of any benefit to Nick?
None that he could see. “Bee and Dew. They’re the ones that goaded Adonis into cracking hulls at Vi’s party, and they convinced my little brother it would be a good idea to try to windsurf through The Tear.
” Trevor must have genuinely believed that Laurence had learned his lesson and wouldn’t try anything so dangerous again, or else he’d still be grounded.
Nick dipped the washcloth into the basin, the water still hot enough to sting.
“I’m going to wash up,” Nick said. He gestured to the door.
“Mini is within hearing distance if the pain returns.” Kit hesitated in the doorway. His tail quivered unhappily in the air behind him. “I apologise for my behaviour.”
Nick didn’t look at Kit’s face; he watched that revealing tail.
“What part? Threatening to physically harm me? Making me expose myself?” The black, lean limb curled tightly around Kit’s own leg.
“Or are you apologising for all of it? Kidnapping me? Getting ready to hand me over to the council? You won’t even tell me why you took me. Are you sorry for that?”
Kit’s tail spoke of shame and guilt.
“Just get out.”
Nick was the prisoner. Kit could have got pissed off at the order and locked him up in the brig—and Nick had found the exact room that was meant for him during his explorations of the ship.
It was dark and dank, sitting low in the deepest bellows of the ship.
It was cold, with no sunlight or bathroom. Not a place he wanted to be.
Instead, Kit left without a word.