16. Garrett
Garrett
In the ship’s laundry room, I stood in front of one of the machines with a load bundled under one arm and stared at the screen.
The preparation instructions for the submersible dive had been very specific.
Loose, comfortable layers. Warm, but not bulky.
Unfortunately, I had run out of thermal tops, and I didn’t want to subject Nate to my musky smell while we were trapped inside a submersible.
I’d gone to Dexter first to borrow a thermal top, only to discover he had apparently left on a Zodiac outing with Hillary and some of the crew to collect ice core samples.
My brother’s clothing situation was even more dire.
In the end, I collected his clothes and added them to mine.
I checked my watch. I had just enough time to run one quick load before I needed to be on the stern deck.
That was assuming I could persuade the damn machine to wash anything.
I tapped the screen. It lit up with a grid of choices that made no sense.
Why could there not be one ordinary dial marked hot, warm, and cold?
I pressed “Everyday.”
The screen changed. Another list appeared, this one even longer and filled with even more ridiculous choices. I gawked at it in disbelief. It was a washing machine for fuck’s sake, not a rocket launch pad.
I understood machinery. Machinery was literally how I made my living. But this junk had been over-designed to perform the simple task of getting sweat out of fabric.
I selected “Mixed expedition fabrics” in exasperation. The door unlocked with a soft click.
“Finally.”
I pulled it open, shoved the load inside, and closed it again. The machine made a polite chime. I waited, holding my breath.
Detergent choice required.
I looked along the front of the machine for some kind of pullout. It was smooth as a baby’s bottom. I crouched and examined all four sides of the machine. There was nowhere to add the detergent, and I was losing precious seconds.
“Where the hell do you want me to put it?”
The screen offered no answer.
“You know what? Fine.”
I was over this piece of crap. I could hand-wash what I needed. I reached for the machine door and pulled. It would not open. I pulled again. I pressed and held the start button. The message disappeared, replaced by another.
Current selection: Extended Polar Bio Containment Refresh.
Estimated completion: 4 hours 38 minutes.
Panic struck. “No. No, no, no.”
I grabbed the handle and pulled hard. The door remained locked. I braced one foot against the base and yanked again as if the machine might respond better to physical authority. It did not move so much as a fraction of an inch. “You useless, overeducated piece of shit!”
The screen flashed.
Please do not force the door.
I froze. The machine had sensors. Of course it had sensors. For all I knew, the damn thing was recording me through a hidden camera and preparing to send footage directly to the captain with a report titled “Guest attempts to assault laundry equipment.”
I slowly released the handle. Kicking it would probably trigger an alarm. I checked my watch again. Fuck. There was no time to find someone, confess defeat, and wait for them to explain how to wash one sweater without quarantining it until morning.
I rubbed my face. What was I going to do? Then Nate entered my mind.
Nate owned at least fifty million sweaters. I swallowed what remained of my pride and left the laundry room with my tail tucked between my legs.
Our cabins were close together. I knocked.
No answer.
I waited a few seconds and knocked again. I tried the handle only to see whether the door was locked. It opened an inch.
“Hello?”
I pushed the door slightly farther and cautiously stepped through the doorway.
Nate’s cabin was larger than mine. Two bunks occupied one side of the room instead of one, with more floor space between them and a wider desk beneath the portholes.
That made sense. He was a senior scientist aboard the ship, while I was a temporary guest. His cabin was also less tidy than mine.
“Hello?”
No one answered. He must have left already.
I looked around, hoping to quickly find what I’d come for.
Books lay in uneven stacks on the desk. Papers had migrated all across the floor.
I looked over at the beds. Yes! I’d struck gold.
I hoped he would never change his untidy habits.
Two sweaters lay in a jumbled heap across the nearest bunk.
Quickly, I crossed the room and picked up the larger one. It looked loose enough to fit me, though I was going to test the limits of whatever thread held the shoulders together. Once I put it on, it settled snugly across my chest and arms but did not appear in immediate danger of tearing.
It smelled like him, though, and that made me feel a strange sensation in my stomach. Had I ever known the smell of a person before? I stood in the middle of his cabin wearing his sweater like some kind of lovesick thief.
Jesus.
As I turned toward the door, I noticed the open sketchbook on his bedside table. A seal filled the visible page, rendered in quick dark lines. I moved closer and picked it up.
There were penguins on the next page. I turned another page.
Whales. They were only sketches, but every one of them felt alive. Nate was talented. I was oddly proud. I snorted at myself. As if I had anything to do with his talent.
I turned another page and froze.
My own face looked back at me. It was only a few quick marks, yet the resemblance was unmistakable. The set of my mouth. The line between my eyebrows. The way my head tilted slightly when I was listening to something I did not entirely believe.
That’s when I noticed he had dated the page. I flipped backward until I found the first drawing of me. It was dated the first day of last year’s celebration gathering. I knew the date myself because I’d thought about it ad nauseam.
I was everywhere. The more recent pages were full of me.
That strange sensation tightened low in my stomach.
Nate had been watching me. Watching so closely that he could draw the tendons on my arms in excruciating detail.
I couldn’t stop myself from turning pages.
Like a greedy bastard, I wanted to see everything. Every little peek inside his mind.
The next two pages had my face burning up. It was a full spread of extremely detailed art. A knight stood in full armor, broad-shouldered and imposing, one hand resting on the pommel of a sword. It was my face. The knight was me.
There was a problem with the design of the armor. It had a gap exactly around one very particular section of the knight’s body.
His cock hung free.
I stared. It was absurdly erotic. Heat began climbing my neck. On the facing page, the same knight appeared from behind, planted wide-legged in an icy field as though preparing to defend Antarctica from invasion. The knightly grandeur remained. Again, the armor did not.
My bare ass had been rendered with considerably more care than the surrounding armor. Nate had apparently studied the exact curve of both cheeks with the seriousness of a man documenting a newly discovered species.
I slammed the sketchbook shut and fled the cabin.
* * *
On the deck, under the evening sky, the submersible sat beneath the launch crane, surrounded by crew completing the final checks before departure.
I jogged down the helipad and reached Nate, who stood with the captain and crew.
“We’ll remain in contact, as always,” the captain was saying.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Oh, hello, Garrett.” The captain turned to me.
“Evening, sir. I apologize for my lateness.”
“Ah, no worries at all!” He thumped me on the back. “I understand this will be your first descent.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re in excellent hands. Nate here has extensive experience piloting these dives.”
My gaze shifted towards the man whose sweater I’d stolen before I could stop it. He was already looking at me and I didn’t miss the way his eyes widened when he saw what I was wearing. His mouth softened into an O. I wanted to kiss that mouth.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” the captain continued, oblivious to my misplaced urges. “Make the most of it.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Look out there.” The captain seemed to be in a mood.
I glanced past the submersible equipment toward the sea. Dexter would have loved to be here, but his Zodiac outing had apparently already been planned before mine.
“This area is among the least researched and least visited places on Earth,” the captain said. “Very few vessels can reach it. Fewer still can put human beings on the seafloor beneath the ice. For all practical purposes, you may as well be going to Mars.”
I gave him a wry smile. “That reassuring, is it?”
The captain laughed. I liked the guy. A leader ought to have a disposition like his to keep morale up on such an expedition. A brooding captain like those from the old movies would not have cut it.
Beside him, Nate kept quiet, but he hadn’t stopped studying me with an intent gaze. For a moment, I panicked that I’d maybe forgotten to put on pants, so focused I’d been on the sweater.
“Nate hasn’t seen this site either,” the captain continued. “Well, gentlemen, are you ready?”
We walked towards the submersible. The passenger compartment was a sphere—a perfect clear bubble large enough for two people and little else.
There were no separate windows because the entire cabin was the window, including the curved walls and the floor beneath the seats.
The bubble itself sat inside a heavy metal framework that supported the engine housing and the machinery at the rear.
Nate stepped toward the platform beside the submersible. He paused before climbing and glanced back at me.
There was only one opening on the top of the bubble. It seemed to serve as both entrance and exit, which meant anyone boarding had to climb onto the machine and lower themselves through it.
One of the deck crew steadied him as he climbed onto the frame. I could see him immediately through the transparent bubble walls, shifting into the seat and moving toward the pilot’s position. From outside, it looked like someone had placed him inside a glass ornament.
The deck crew gestured for me to follow. Unlike Nate, I climbed onto the platform with all the grace of an ape. Up close, the opening looked smaller than it had from below.
Ah, jeez. I’d better not get stuck.
Nate watched me from inside. I braced my elbows against the thick acrylic rim, shifted my weight, and lowered myself until my hips cleared the opening. There was no dignified method after that. I released my hold and dropped the final short distance into the cabin.
I landed half on his lap and almost tumbled down onto the floor. One of his hands caught my waist automatically to steady me. For a moment, our eyes met and my heart rate shot up.
Somehow I managed to right myself and slid into the seat next to him.
The interior was even tighter than it had appeared from outside.
Two molded seats formed almost a single bench against the rear of the sphere, leaving our bodies pressed close from shoulder to thigh.
Screens and compact instrument panels curved around the cabin wherever there was room, small displays and controls fitted neatly along the edges without obstructing the view.
There was no private direction to look. Through the acrylic, I could see the crew moving around us.
And no matter where I looked, I remained aware of him beside me.
Nate was already busy with the final check-in, his attention fixed on the communication panel. I made sure to touch fucking nothing. I didn’t want the damn hatch to open while we were underwater because my fat fingers had hit the wrong button.
The submersible lifted from the deck. We hung suspended above the deck. I held on to the seat tightly.
“Submersible to bridge,” Nate said. “Primary systems are stable. Internal pressure normal. Life support normal. Communications clear.”
A voice answered through the speaker, followed by a brief exchange of numbers and confirmations I only half listened to.
The crane began to move, carrying us slowly away from the deck and out over the stern.
The ship shifted beneath and behind us until there was nothing directly below us, only very dark blue water.
“Hold position,” the comm speaker crackled. “The external camera feed isn’t syncing properly with the dive recorder. The submersible is fine, but we need to reset the system and run the recording check again before we lower you.”
“Sure.”
“Hang in there, gentlemen.”
Nate leaned toward the communication panel. “We are quite literally hanging in here.”
A laugh crackled through the speaker. “Which is why I couldn’t let the opportunity pass.”
Nate laughed.
“Give us about fifteen minutes.”
“Copy,” Nate replied.
The connection went quiet.
Great. So now we were going to just sit here suspended in this position?
Nate returned his attention to the instruments without looking at me. I peered down through the clear floor at the ocean below our feet.
Nate hadn’t said much to me since we were in bed together.
I felt like I needed to say something. The last time we had been trapped in an unbearable silence together was on the deck.
I hadn’t known what to say then either, but Nate had been the one to make the effort.
He had found the wooden ship voyage story.
He had filled the void with something that mattered to both of us.
It was my turn now. The trouble was, what did a man say to another after spending the past year calling him his enemy, the past several days wanting to kiss him, and the previous night with his dick inside that same man?
“Nice evening, Nate. Sky’s still bright, water’s still cold.
By the way, I woke up this morning with my face in your hair and have not known how to look at you since.
Oh, also, I stole your sweater. It smells of you and I like it too damn much.
I’d meant to ask, but then I saw your sketches.
And now here we are. You’re not talking. But hey, nice job sketching my ass.”