Chapter 16
“Watch out!”
Henri shielded his face with his arm as Fox ran and leapt into the blue waters next to him.
It did almost nothing to prevent the resulting tidal wave from slapping Henri in the face.
It was a rare hot day, the days before still battling between late spring and early summer.
And it was perfect. Henri splashed Fox as he resurfaced, sputtering and grinning.
“Did I get you? Sorry.” Fox didn’t seem sorry at all.
He’d aimed his jump to land directly next to Henri.
He was still sticking close to Henri, Rowan, and Logan ever since the Sweet Mercy had departed with Gael on board, but had been especially clingy to Henri since Henri and Robin weren’t exactly on speaking terms at the moment.
“Of course you got me, you rat bastard.” Henri splashed him again, but he couldn’t help but grin back.
Around them in the water, several other crew members who’d rowed out to the rocky outcropping and its shallow sandbar were laughing and chatting while they rubbed sand into their skin before soaping up their bodies, washing away the grime of the past few days.
None of them had gotten a proper bath since leaving the Teeth, only able to scrub themselves down with soapy rags and dump buckets of water over their heads.
But today, the heat, the sun, and the sandbar made the perfect day for sea bathing.
It would probably be their last chance till they reached proper land again.
Henri ducked low in the water, so only his neck and head were above the gently lapping waves.
He quite enjoyed sea bathing, even if he wasn’t looking forward to washing the salt out of his hair later.
He scooped up a handful of fine sand and scrubbed it over his arms and shoulders, as Fox did the same.
“Where’s Robin today?” Fox asked in that innocently searching way he had when he was sniffing for gossip.
Henri grimaced. “Probably with his brother.”
“Sea bathing too homosexual for them?”
“Probably,” Henri snorted. He cast a glance at the other crew members sitting around them, all of them stark naked regardless of gender, their clothes tucked safely into the beached rowboats.
He didn’t want to think about the kinds of things David was whispering in Robin’s ears these days.
David was rude to everyone, refused to do the work assigned to him—or did it so badly Rowan didn’t dare assign him those tasks again—and it was isolating Robin by association.
Every time Henri saw Robin around the ship, he had David at his elbow like a guard dog.
Robin didn’t even perk up when he saw Henri anymore.
He looked lonely, and Henri wanted to go to him and make up.
But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it just yet.
Robin was still hiding him, and letting David terrorize them all with his bad attitude on top of that.
“Pity, David could use a good wash,” Fox quipped, earning another snort from Henri.
It was true. Every time David said or did something rude and Rowan got wind of it, he assigned David to duty on the bilge pump.
Which essentially involved standing in a foot of fetid, brackish water and turning a crank to pump the water out of the bowels of the ship.
It was smelly, back-breaking work, but instead of subduing him, it had only made David hate them even more.
“When are you gonna make up?” Fox asked, accepting a lump of soap from one of the other crew members and scrubbing it through his hair. “I hate seeing my favorite couple at odds.”
“We’re your favorite couple? I’m flattered.” Henri didn’t have the answer to the question/ He preferred instead to indulge Fox’s banter.
“Of course you are. You’re the most stable.” Fox paused, his mouth twisting thoughtfully to the side. “Or you were.”
“Wow, thanks for your vote of confidence.”
Fox waved him away, soap suds flinging off his hand. “I’m sure it will work out. You haven’t seen how he looks at you these days. The level of yearning is sickening, honestly.”
That somehow made Henri feel all the worse. This was his first romantic relationship, and their first actual fight as a couple. He was out of his depth. Knowing Robin was suffering too put him on edge.
“I’m waiting for him to say sorry,” Henri mumbled. Fox passed him the soap.
Fox took a deep breath and leaned back to dunk his soapy head. When he resurfaced, he leveled Henri with a stern look that did not sit well on his face. “Judging by how you’ve been acting, he probably feels like he can’t talk to you.”
“How I’ve been acting?”
“You look like you’re gonna throw up every time you see him.”
“I do not!” Henri flicked water at him half-heartedly.
“Yes you do. You get this weird, uncomfortable look on your face! He probably thinks you hate him.”
Fox was a little shit, but he wasn’t wrong.
Ever since their fight, Henri had been avoiding Robin.
Partly because he was still mad and hurt by his cowardice, partly because every time he was reminded of their fight, he got this raw, anxious feeling in his diaphragm, like it had been scraped over some rocks and no longer had the strength to drag air into his lungs.
Still, he didn’t want Robin to think he hated him.
He just couldn’t stand that Robin was hiding him.
He’d thought a few times of just marching up to David and telling the truth straight to his face.
But that would probably hurt Robin even more, so he stayed away.
They both knew David would never accept Henri.
There were too many prejudices in the way.
Strike one, Henri was a pirate. Two, he’d grown up in Talva, their country’s enemy.
Three, and probably most importantly, he was a man.
“I don’t hate him. I just want him to acknowledge me.”
Fox gave him a sympathetic look.
“Is Rowan gonna let David go, or are we stuck with him forever?”
Henri shrugged. “Last I knew, Robin was going to ask.”
“And if David leaves but Robin doesn’t tell him? Would that solve anything?”
They’d certainly be able to go back to openly being a couple, but Henri thought the hurt would still remain under the surface. He shook his head.
“Oi! Let’s go!” The other crew members, having finished washing, were wading toward the rowboat.
Fox waved to them to show he’d heard, then stood and patted Henri on the shoulder. “Good luck.”
The Siren was almost ready to depart when the little contingent of freshly-washed crew returned.
Henri made his way down to Logan’s room to change clothes, not realizing until it was too late that his feet had carried him toward his and Robin’s shared room out of habit.
Sighing, he turned to go back, and came face-to-face with Robin.
Robin, without his gloomy brotherly shadow.
He seemed just as surprised to see Henri. A faint smile curled his lips before he remembered they were fighting, and it dropped away.
“You’re back,” Robin said, clearly trying for a neutral tone.
“Yup, I just needed clean clothes…” Henri trailed off, picking at a hangnail. Unsure what else to say. The antsy feeling had returned to his chest, threatening to overwhelm him. He moved to push past Robin just to get some air.
“Wait.” Robin reached out, but didn’t touch him. Because he was afraid David might see? Or was he respecting Henri’s boundaries?
“What?” Henri asked, exhausted already.
“It’s wash day right?” Robin said, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “Do you…want help?”
Henri blinked at him. Was this his way of apologizing, or was he just trying to go back to their usual routine like nothing had happened?
What had started out as Robin helping Henri bathe due to his injuries when they first met had morphed into a comfortable weekly ritual between them.
Ever since he was a kid, Henri had found wash day to be a tedious chore.
It annoyed him to spend time washing, drying, and oiling his locs when his friends could wash quickly and go out to play.
He was already different from them, and back then, he resented the necessity of this care.
His feelings worsened after his mother’s death.
All those months bathing her by hand as she slowly got weaker and frailer, until that final wash to prepare her body for burial.
And all of it he’d done taking special care with her hair because she’d have wanted that.
Caring for his locs properly left a sour taste in his mouth after that, but he’d never been able to bring himself to cut them off.
Maman had always loved his hair this way, and several of the beads were gifts, so he kept it.
Since Robin had begun helping him, most of Henri’s anxiety around it had eased; he could simply lay back, talk and joke, and enjoy the ministrations of his lover’s hands.
He contemplated Robin’s question for a moment.
Even though he had just returned from bathing, he hadn’t washed his hair yet.
He’d already been trying to muster up the motivation to do it since he’d stepped back on the Siren.
He was still upset at Robin, but if he delayed too long, the salt would dry in his hair and get itchy.
“If you’re offering,” Henri agreed. Maybe being pampered by Robin would actually make him feel better.
Henri pulled his shirt off over his head in the privacy of their shared room as Robin fetched a bucket of rain from the cistern. He knelt next to his sea chest and dug out the bar of soap and a little bottle of hair oil.
Robin slipped back into the room, hauling the wooden bucket.
Neither of them said anything as they set up with practiced movements.
When everything was ready, they both settled onto thin cushions on the floor.
Robin’s long legs wrapped loosely around the base of the bucket.
His gentle hand cupped the back of Henri’s neck as Henri leaned back, guiding him to rest his shoulders against Robin’s thigh so his neck could rest on a rolled up cloth on the lip of the bucket.