Chapter 14 #3
The bunk is not designed for two men, particularly not when one of them is Eskil's size.
He has to angle himself, pressing his back against the wall, and even then there's barely enough room for both of them.
But barely is enough. He reaches for Indrie and pulls the smaller body against his chest, and the cold of Indrie's skin against his own is shocking, a full-body flinch, every nerve protesting the contact, his skin recoiling from the chill the way a hand recoils from ice.
He overrides it. He pulls Indrie closer, fitting the smaller man against him, Indrie's back to his chest, and wraps his arms around him and holds on.
The shaking is violent this close, Eskil can feel every tremor, every convulsive shudder, transferred directly through the contact between their bodies.
He tucks Indrie's head beneath his chin, presses his chest flat against Indrie's spine, and winds his legs through the younger man's to maximize the surface contact.
He wills his body to do what it does best. Burn. Generate. Give.
And his body, being a traitorous, unmanageable bastard with priorities of its own, does exactly that, and then some.
Because the thing about pressing your naked body against another naked body is that the body doesn't care about context.
It doesn't care that this is survival, not seduction.
It doesn't care that the man in his arms is unconscious and half-frozen and in no condition to be anything other than a recipient of warmth.
It doesn't care about power dynamics or ethical considerations or the fact that Eskil is supposed to be saving this man's life, not–
Indrie shifts against him. A small movement, unconscious, his body seeking heat the way a plant seeks sun, pressing back into Eskil's chest, his hips settling into the cradle of Eskil's, his spine arching into the warmth.
The motion is slight and innocent and it drags Indrie's body flush against Eskil's groin and Eskil's cock responds with an enthusiasm that is wildly, catastrophically inappropriate.
Fuck. No. Absolutely not.
He grits his teeth. He shifts his hips back, as far as the narrow bunk allows, which is approximately two inches, not nearly enough, and thinks about cold water.
He's been in cold water. He was just in cold water.
He should still feel the cold water. But his body has moved on with an efficiency that borders on spiteful, blood rerouting from survival mode to something far less noble, and the heat pooling low in his belly is not the kind he's trying to share.
Indrie makes a sound. A soft, unconscious hum, barely a vibration, and presses back again, seeking, and his skin is still cold but it's warming now, slowly, the chill receding under the onslaught of Eskil's body heat, and the place where their skin meets is becoming something other than a survival tactic.
Indrie is smooth against him. Smooth and slight and fitted against Eskil's larger frame perfectly, every curve and hollow of his body corresponding to a plane of Eskil's, and Eskil's cock is fully hard now and pressed against the swell of Indrie's lower back and this is a problem.
He thinks about Gunnar's stew. He thinks about the rat in Halvar's bunk.
He thinks about the Kalkoan treasury ledger and the refining costs of low-grade copper and every unarousing thing he can dredge from the depths of his mind.
None of it works. His body knows what it wants and what it wants is the man in his arms, and the fact that every shift and sigh and unconscious press of skin brings them closer together is not helping.
Eskil holds still. He locks his hips in place, clenches his jaw until the muscle screams, and does not move.
He does not press forward. He does not let his hands wander from the safe, neutral territory of Indrie's arms and chest. He does not follow the impulse, and it is a screaming impulse, primal and demanding, to pull those narrow hips back against him and grind into the warmth.
He is a king. He is in control. He has mastery over himself and his impulses and his body obeys his commands.
His cock disagrees. His cock has never obeyed a command in its life and it's not about to start now, and it is aching, pressed hot and hard against skin that doesn't belong to him, and Eskil is going to need to have a very serious conversation with himself when this is over.
But the shaking is slowing.
He notices it by degrees. The violent, convulsive tremors ease into something less urgent, still there, still present, but no longer the bone-deep, involuntary contractions of a body fighting for its life.
Indrie's teeth stop chattering. His breathing changes, the shallow, stuttered gasps deepening into something more regular, more rhythmic, unconscious rather than dying.
The blue tint recedes from his lips. Color returns to his fingers, faint but present, and when Eskil presses his hand flat against Indrie's chest he can feel the heartbeat beneath it: steady, strong, alive.
The relief is staggering. It washes through Eskil, loosening muscles he didn't know he'd been clenching, easing the vise that's been locked around his chest since the moment Indrie went over the side.
He drops his forehead against the back of Indrie's head and breathes, long, slow, deliberate, and the smell of Indrie's hair is salt and sea and beneath that the herbs and warmth that Eskil has come to associate with the healer specifically and the concept of comfort generally.
Indrie is warm. Indrie is breathing. Indrie is alive in his arms and the storm is raging outside and Bohdi has the helm and for this one moment, this one stolen fragment of time in the middle of chaos, Eskil holds the man he pulled from the sea and lets himself feel the magnitude of what almost happened.
He almost lost him.
The thought is quiet now, drained of the frantic energy that powered it earlier, and in its quietness it is worse.
He almost lost him. To the sea, to the cold, to a tangle of netting and bad luck.
He almost lost this man whose name he learned two weeks ago and whose laugh he's heard a handful of times and whose smile, directed at him just once in the moonlight, rearranged something fundamental in his chest.
Indrie stirs once more, a small sound escaping his lips, something that might be a word in a language Eskil doesn't speak, and then settles, truly settles, his body going heavy and pliant in Eskil's arms as true sleep takes him.
The warmth between them has equalized, Indrie's skin no longer cold but not yet the healthy warmth it should be.
Getting there. His body doing the work it needs to do, now that it has the heat to do it with.
Eskil doesn't leave.
He should. The storm is still howling outside and his place is at the helm and Bohdi can handle it but that's not the point, the point is that the captain's place during a storm is with his ship.
He should extract himself from this bed and this man and get dressed and go back to work and be the king his crew needs him to be.
He doesn't move.
He stays. He tells himself it's because Indrie's temperature isn't stable yet. Because the cold could return if the heat source is removed too soon. Because the practical, medical reasoning that got him into this bed hasn't finished justifying his presence in it.
He stays because he can't make himself let go.
His arms tighten fractionally around the sleeping man.
His forehead rests against the back of Indrie's head.
The lamp swings gently with the ship's roll, casting shifting patterns across the ceiling, and the storm outside is a distant roar, muffled by the cabin walls and the warmth between two bodies and the sound of breathing that has synchronized without either of them deciding to.
Eskil closes his eyes. His body aches, arms, lungs, the deep-muscle exhaustion of swimming through a storm and diving into the dark and coming back with something precious. The ache is earned. The warmth against his chest is earned.
He sleeps eventually, still holding on, still wrapped around the man he pulled from the sea, a barrier between Indrie and everything else in the world that might try to take him.
The storm rages. The ship holds. They hold.