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When realization finds Billy it practically punches into him, and he fumbles just slightly with the linens in his arms as a result.

“Pardon me, Mr. Gibson,” Jopson hurries, flattening himself more against the opposite wall of the companionway in yield to Billy, who was there first and halfway to Hodgson’s quarters to change the bedclothes. Billy doesn’t move - or, perhaps, will not.

Jopson is holding a flour sack in one hand, bulging with what Billy distantly determines are potatoes as it’s Monday and on Monday Jopson cleans the glassware following Sunday’s heavier service. None of this is particularly unusual. Billy would not be surprised to learn that they bumped into each other at precisely the same time every Monday and he merely never paused to notice till now -

“Is there vinegar in the pantry?” Jopson inquires, anodyne, like he has not happened upon Billy but meant to find him all along.

Billy takes a long, bewildered, look at Jopson, blinking ineffectively. He knows that they’ve stopped toe to toe and are now clogging the narrow passage, but he cannot help tilting his head to properly regard him. He feels like he’s gazing at Jopson lopsided, eyes huge and owlish, because he cannot quite tell if the insipid, stupid little query is to be taken as a gag.

“Yes,” he says, finally, the end of the word trying to lilt up like it is a question in and of itself. Jopson’s closed-mouth smile fans tightly over his face, and Billy flicks his eyes to where he adjusts his heft on the bag in his hand. The fold in his cuff is a bit sloppy, today. Yesterday his shirttails were hurriedly bunched at his waist.  

Oh yes, and the week before Billy had him pestering for blue thread to mend a hole in his trouser leg. Caught on a splinter , he’d said with a simpering little grimace -

“Thank you,” Jopson clips, and then, with a clear of his throat he excuses himself on to where Billy has just come.

Billy turns over his shoulder to watch Jopson duck through the curtain out of sight, a pillowcase from the top of the pile slipping free and falling gracefully to the floor. He stoops to grab at it, knees cracking, and then there is certainly no mistaking it: Lieutenant Edward Little’s cologne is hanging about where Thomas Jopson was standing.

If Billy could see through the invisible air to piece the shape of it he would suspect it would be Jopson’s cloudy twin, and sewn closest round his neck and that blessedly tall issued collar.

Some sort of expression is trying to squirm on his face as he ruminates on it, walking the rest of the way to resume his original task, using his foot to nudge the sliding door open.

Hodgson’s berth, as does Hodgson himself, (and Irving, and at least two of the Erebus’ and half of the Officers he’s ever met and been employed to) smells of neroli. This is because any self respecting gentleman in the Navy knows the most fashionable cologne is Atkinson’s Gold Medal , a tradition hammered into place by His-Most-Holy Lord Nelson long before the likes of Billy Gibson.

They all have it - that same bottle tucked aside for their toilet - and everyday Gibson has it floating about his head in wafts that he can nearly set a watch by: searing the morning with its high waking notes of Bergamot and peeled citrus upon application and then dulling down to a fuzzy-tongued musk by afternoon tea.

That is, save for Lieutenant Little.

Little smells of leather. He dabs the amber liquid from the innocuous bottle on his stand with a dutch silver stopper after he shaves and for those remaining moments as he readies himself the scent is appealingly fresh - a dripping smell that makes him think of squeezing an orange and licking his hand.

By mid-day it has dried off and the heart of it pushes forward. For its not leather in a conventional manner; not the way a boot or belt or glove would be.  It’s something that borders - and Billy still cannot quite wrap his head around it - on vulgar. Furred like Little’s chest, or his legs, and heady in a way that Gibson is deeply familiar with. With Cornelius this note was perhaps rancid , but such things take the florid to task when they appear, all the sour embellishing the sweet till you are sick with it.

As the hours shift it rolls between sweetish and spicy, but never decides on where it will land, sometimes sparkling on the mineral, salty texture of metallic ambroxan when he has been out in the cold. And then back in again, warming and curling to a dark toast in the heat of the ship, redolent with his sweat and mingled in pipe tobacco when he returns from the Great Cabin.

There is a moment each evening where Billy stands quietly by, holding his nightshirt pinched at the shoulder seams, and watches Little pare off each layer so that the waxy, lived-in scent coming off of his skin settles over his cabin like a powder and sometimes Billy catches the hem of the shirt dragging at the floor from where his arms have relaxed on their own.

It is only the cologne, he tells himself.

As an Officer Little is sober and unfettered by the affectations that surround him, and as a man Billy has come to expect the same. To Billy it’s a straightforwardness that is in turn terrifically dull or somewhat impressive in its consistency depending on the day.

He’s heard, on and off, the conversations with a half-cocked ear about the Lieutenant’s great love for horses, and he treats his body in much the same manner as he might those heavy creatures his family is known for. If he’s more quick-witted than the comparison draws he lends little evidence to his steward.

He is not in the least bit picky, scraping his plate clean and leaving no mess, unlike Irving who carves through his food with that dismal look on his face like he is trying to please his mother, or Hodgson who occupies his mouth with chatter more than eating.

He goes from hoof to crown each day with a practiced hand that owns no real flourish, letting his thick hair wave as it will and naturally balanced features speak for themselves. He’s what Billy might call a healthy man, lending more conscious effort to the practical functions of his own pelt than vanity. Billy has even spied him rasping his arms and chest and shoulders with a coarse dry brush when he first rises, drawing the blood to the surface of his limbs and mottling him pink.

Till today Billy supposed the private ritual - bizarre as it is - might invigorate him, but now he wonders if it does better to quell any urges that might otherwise tempt themselves to crawl over the Lieutenant’s body.

Billy strips the blankets off of Hodgson’s mattress and readies the new, the work cramped and awkward with his height, but these developments allow his mind to wander to more interesting planes.

For, certainly, there has been a nagging in his mind over Thomas Jopson as of late. It calls up familiar questions Billy has regarding his companion in the pantry.

When it comes to basis for attraction Billy considers his tastes lean; no gristle to his cuts and the fat skimmed off. There must be something sharper than the poignancy men like Edward Little inspire to make him cast his eye about.

Some, he knows a few in more productive circles of that nature, do have a preference for more robust ideals of manliness, however unfashionable.

Healthy , he reflects, upon further review of his earlier hypothesis, the cologne hitting him again like it’s the first time. He looks at his own narrow hands as they move toward his shoulders and feels the back of his mouth raise as though he’s taken a spoonful of something very hot.

“And where are you off to,” Gibson says, looking up from where he is blacking Hodgson’s boot to give Jopson a half-lidded stare. Thomas is standing in the hallway outside of his cubbyhole quarters, donning his coat, doing the buttons up in the companionway where there is the slightest bit of extra room. It’s the first time in a while he’s allowed himself to be caught doing so.

They’ve been meeting often, Little and Jopson, Billy knows.

Since Carnivale his nose has been prickling with the scent painted all over Thomas and it’s impossible to ignore now that he knows it. The visions of the two of them bat around his head like mayflies and every day he wonders where exactly they parcel themselves away when they fuck.

The store rooms? Billy thinks idly. They’ve been clearing those out. Whatever the case, judging by the picked over skin of Thomas’ nail beds, the need’s been ailing him more than usual.

“Lieutenant Little is dining with The Captain tonight, privately,” he explains, and Billy’s eyes narrow just a fraction as he looks back down to the boot on his knee, turning it slightly to catch the sheen. “And I’m to go and tell him.”

“That must please you,” Billy says blandly, taking the brush up again, rasping it back and forth across the leather. It is busy work. There has been a great deal of busy work as of late, and now there is nothing being done to shield them from it. They prepare slowly, under the guise of certainty and false promises of time.

Packing and moving and rearranging things within the ship so that they may be packed and moved and rearranged later. Billy dreams of folding himself up neat as a shirt, and being posted back to London most every night as a result. 

Thomas falters at the otherwise errant remark, finger slipping as he pushes the button through the hole,

“I suppose you will leave the rest to me,” Billy continues, watching the fumble but remaining listless over the fact that he will be responsible for Hodgson, Irving, and the remainders. More and more the mates and Lieutenants are like jacks dumped out on the table - some kind of pointless pleasure long outgrown. No one on either side is particularly fond of the game still being played, but they can’t very well stop now.

“Since it is only the two of them it will go quickly,” Thomas says, finishing up and pulling his gloves from the pocket to slip them on. “I should have time to assist you with full service…”

“Come now,” Billy drawls, brushing in tight circles. “You might discover I’m only teasing you and that would spoil it.”

Gibson furnishes Thomas with a look and Thomas meets it readily.

They are not the same, but they certainly recognize each other as unfortunate creatures in the same story. Thomas has the air of a nymph who spies a satyr too close to her pool and they regard each other with a wary kind of ambivalence as a result, but when Gibson peers behind the reeds he might find a viper this time.

“Perhaps it doesn’t please you,” Gibson murmurs, not breaking their gazes apart and Thomas’s expression wavers.

“No,” Billy reads. “Not at all.” He feels the horsehair brush go lax in his hand and he runs his thumb along the smooth edge of its handle. He thinks of Little raking at his skin with his eyes unfocused.

Billy’s own lip curls into a smile that he means to be sympathetic but fears must appear very cruel. Pity . He thinks. 

“He’s going to ask him to lead the first party. Your man. You’ve known for some time now, haven’t you.”

There is a split second where Billy wonders if Thomas Jopson is going to strike him for the words which now hang between them, all their meaning very much intact.

Instead, the Captain’s Steward lifts a palm to the part of his hair black very slowly and smooths it along the line.

“Of course. It’s his duty,” Thomas replies, always the picture of composure. Billy is just close enough to catch the hiss of the words through his teeth. “The Captain’s judgement is sound.”

Billy lets his features settle into their usual place, not bothering to point out the obvious.

You’ll be right there to hear every noble, agreeable, word to confirm it. 

“It is,” he concedes at last, eyes falling back to the boot in his lap.

Perhaps the Lieutenant has been trying to kiss it away all this time - the mealy apple of Thomas’ anger.

It’s pointless; Jopson’s got a taste for the misery now, and he’ll never rid it from his mouth.

Billy sees Thomas turn his head away in his mind’s eye, jaw clenched bitterly as the Lieutenant reels him closer into his arms...

If Jopson is sensible enough he'll pray Little dies out there on the ice, hauling some sledge like one of his horses. Billy is kind enough to wish it for him if he's not.

It’s never the same once you know they can leave you.

“I rather hate it,” Thomas says, voice plucking harshly at the air as he adjusts his clothes a final time. It strains. “The smell of that polish.”

“I hardly notice these days,” Billy shrugs, not bothering to watch him as he takes his leave.