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Ishmael had continuously thought of himself as a well built short of lad, having been shipped on a number of merchant vessels and pulled his weight just fine, finer, if he shall be so bold, than a number of his fellows.
But that was before his stint as a school teacher, a rather sedentary business, in which he had rather quickly lost track of the passing of months. And, often, the passing of hours elapsing between meals. Or how much his wallet could stand another volume or several of books on just the most fascinating of subjects before he’d reduced it to naught but an empty rag.
He’d never been much good at keeping track of anything by himself, and many where the nights he spent curled up with a candle and a good book and a gnawing pain in his stomach working in tandem with the nagging feeling of danger, that so often came after sundown in all the long years before he’d met his soul’s mate, to keep him from any semblance of rest.
Being easy enough to ignore the loosening of this clothing, he’d never been one to pay much mind to fashion, and the jutting of his ribs and collarbone, for he was not vain and saw no reason to assess his own body whence it was not wounded in any bloody sort of way, it was not till he’d shipped once more that he’d truly known the tole those nights, and books, and hours, and months, had taken on his earthy form.
So it was to come that he had found himself, as the first evening on the Pequod dipped into night, under his bosom husband’s massaging hands, frail form making protestations in every aching muscle, for he’d been forced into overexertion on only their first day of laboring
Normally, such close attention from those firm, calloused digits would excite him, but given the circumstance, and his exhaustion, they tipped him further towards the autoclave of despair.
Queequeg may have seen the deep worry cress his husband’s face, or else sensed it in the way Ishmael had oft read true soulmates can feel the emotions in their counterpart, for he brought their foreheads together as he was of the habit of doing when his affection swelled beyond what his somewhat rudimentary grasp on the English language would allow him to express. Perhaps, beyond what any spoken word would ever allow even the most eloquent to express through it alone.
Sighing as he leaned in, Ishmael felt, as was so common in his lover’s company, a degree of worry melt away. Tormented he still was, yet the future already felt less certainly a mountain of trouble looming ahead of him. Surely, with Queequeg at his side, he was not to be cast off or met with some other unspeakably dreadful fate for his bodily weakness.
“Tomorrow, I bring food from harpooners to you.”
Ishmael nodded against him. Of course, Queequeg’s superior statues as a harpooner granted him superior access to food. And if he was to grow stronger, his best bet would be to eat more, and better than his meals his own simple sailor statues granted him, which where hardly more than gruel. “But what says the mates won’t catch wind? I can scarcely say the risk-”
“No risk.” Queequeg smiled his rueful, deadly smile. “They want catch whale, they keep me happy.”
Ishmael met his simple with his own, thin lipped and pleased. There where certain benefits to a marriage to the greatest harpooner most hands on board had ever clapped eyes on he did not predict.
“Tomorrow, you eat good.” Queequeg declared, and so vigorous was Ishmael’s responding nodding that their heads where knocked apart.
With a laugh Queequeg brought them together once more, this time by the lips, nipping Ishmael just enough to prick his bottom lip, his own personal variety of a teasing love bite.
They slept well that night, both of them, certain of their future’s path. That it could hold nothing that together they could not face and surpass.