Chapter 22 #2
Henri’s tongue invaded the warm interior of Robin’s mouth, sliding against Robin’s tongue as Robin hastily pushed his hands beneath Henri’s shirt.
Henri rolled on top of him again, one elbow braced beside Robin’s shoulder.
He rolled his hips forward, smiling into their kiss as Robin gasped.
Robin’s hand slipped down Henri’s hard stomach and beneath the waistband of his pants, to cup his hardening cock.
“Robin? I—What the fuck?”
They both jumped, Henri nearly toppling off the bed, as the door to their room crashed open. Hands grabbed the back of Henri’s shirt as he righted himself, trying to yank him away from Robin.
“Davy, stop!” Robin shouted. Henri twisted in David’s grasp and managed to shove him hard enough that Henri’s shirt ripped in his hands.
David stumbled into the opposite wall, murder in his eyes, and Henri braced himself for another charge.
But Robin was suddenly between them, shielding Henri’s body with his own.
“I said, stop!” Robin yelled. His back was to Henri, standing at the end of their bed while Henri still knelt on the mattress. His chest rose and fell rapidly with panicked breath.
“I’ll kill him,” David snarled, hands clenched, white-knuckled, at his sides. “Get out of the way, Robin.”
“No.” Robin held out one arm to ward his brother off. “It’s not what it looks like.”
A pang of hurt hit Henri’s heart, before he realized what it actually must look like to David.
David’s innocent, misguided brother pinned to the bed beneath a murderous pirate.
All Henri could do was stand back and let Robin handle this.
If he stepped in, it would look like Robin was under his control.
And if David attacked Henri again, he’d have no choice but to defend himself.
He didn’t want to hurt someone Robin cared about, no matter how much pain that person had caused both of them.
David took a threatening step forward, eyes locked on Henri. He paid his elder brother no heed.
“You low-life, dirty, f—”
The crack of Robin’s slap across David’s face dropped the room into dead silence. David’s head snapped to the side. His hands came up to cradle the already reddening mark on his cheek.
“Don’t you dare insult him.” Robin’s voice was as sharp as his surgical knife, no longer carrying its usual gentleness.
It sounded wrong coming from him. He was always so calm, even when faced with broken bones, bleeding wounds, burns, and fevers.
Now Robin’s shoulders trembled with anger, and Henri could see his palm and fingers reddening from the sting of the slap.
“Listen to me, David, because I’m only going to say this once. I’m never going home with you. I’m in love with Henri. If you can’t accept that, I don’t want to see you again.”
David’s eyes widened, hands dropping away from his face in shock.
“That’s not true.” David’s voice shook.
“It is true.” Robin reached back to take Henri’s hand, tugging him off the bed so they could stand side-by-side, Robin’s shoulder slightly in front of Henri’s, as if to protect him.
“You’re fucking lying.” David’s eyes filled with tears, whether from the slap or the revelation, Henri couldn’t tell.
Robin sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with the other hand. “Why the hell do you think I ran away from home in the first place, Davy? For fun? It’s because I didn’t want to be forced to marry a woman.” Henri and Robin’s fingers threaded together, and Henri squeezed, lending him courage.
“They wouldn’t have forced—”
“They betrothed me without telling me! Look how you’re acting right now just because the person I love is a man. You don’t think it would’ve been ten times worse if our parents knew? Henri loves me. I don’t have to hide myself from him.”
A stunned silence settled into the room, broken only by David’s hitching breath. His hazel gaze finally slid to Henri, and Henri’s breath caught to see such hatred in eyes that looked so much like Robin’s.
David spit at their feet and stomped out.
As soon as the door slammed behind him, Robin slumped against Henri’s shoulder.
“You okay?”
Robin let out a shaky breath, and they both sank down to sit on the edge of the bed. “I’ll be fine.”
“You were so brave, love.” Henri petted Robin’s hair, as Robin leaned further into him.
“He was gonna hit you,” Robin sniffled.
“I think I could’ve handled it.”
Robin looked up at him. “It’s just…when he started calling you those awful things, I couldn’t stand it.”
“Thank you for defending me, mon cher.” Henri kissed the furrowed patch of skin right between his eyebrows. They sat cuddled up for a few minutes as Robin’s sniffles slowly subsided.
“How about we go to sleep? Maybe you’ll both feel better in the morning, and you can talk it out.”
“Maybe,” Robin mumbled.
They changed into loose, comfortable clothes and slipped beneath the covers. The heated mood of earlier was long gone, but Henri was content just to hold Robin. They settled into each other’s arms like they were always meant to fit there.
Henri’s mind was just starting to drift when Robin said, “Tell me about your family. Are they waiting for you somewhere?”
Like Robin, Henri’s family wasn’t something he liked to talk about much. Sharing the sad, gory details of their pasts wasn’t something most pirates chatted about over a mug of ale and game of dice. But this was Robin, cozily wrapped up in his arms in their bed.
“My parents are both dead.” He’d mentioned it in passing to Robin before, but hadn’t gone into detail.
“How did they die?”
Henri tried not to think about it too much. On beautiful spring days it still hurt to remember his mother’s funeral. The warm sun on his face, cold dirt in his palm. But still, Robin had been so open with him the last few days, it was only fair that Henri did the same.
“Both of them were pirates.” He heard a soft intake of breath, but Robin didn’t say anything, so he continued.
“My maman retired when I was born, and my father would visit every winter with…” Henri cleared his throat.
“But when I was a teenager, he stopped coming. Maman got sick. She slowly wasted away over the years and died when I was twenty-one. The last time I saw my father, I was nineteen. He was acting strange, convinced that everyone was out to get him. He was even suspicious of Maman, who could barely walk by that time. He gave me the key he always used to wear around his neck. I wore it for a few years, hoping he would come back or I’d be able to find him.
” Even now. he could almost feel the warm brass where it used to rest against his chest, and the smooth bit of old leather his father had feverishly insisted should never be parted from the key.
“Why don’t you wear it anymore?” Robin asked.
“A little while after I joined the Siren crew, I found out he’d died. Wearing the key seemed a bit pointless after that.” He didn’t even know what it was meant to unlock.
“I’m sorry.” Robin hugged Henri closer, one arm around his waist.
“Don’t be. My maman was a good and loving mother, and I made peace with my father’s death long ago.”
“There’s no one else? No siblings?”
Henri buried his face in Robin’s already bed-mussed hair. “Let’s go to sleep. You must be tired.”
He wasn’t ready to talk about that just yet.
May 24th, 1668
At dawn, when the bosun’s whistle woke Henri to return to duty and prepare the Siren to depart Kadling Kay, he kissed Robin’s warm temple and climbed out of bed.
Robin mumbled something in his sleep and rolled over, one arm and one leg hanging over the side of the bed.
Henri tucked him back in, then pulled on some clean clothes.
It had been five years since his father’s death.
Henri riffled around his sea chest, and after a minute, drew out a small leather pouch and tipped out its contents.
A tarnished brass key on a leather cord fell into his hand, along with a small square of strange, dappled gray leather.
He rubbed his thumb over its smooth surface, then slipped the cord over his neck so the key and leather settled against the center of his chest. He tucked it into his shirt before hurrying up onto the deck to help the others catch the tide.