It was the end of the longest week Horatio could remember, but it did not matter. It was Sunday dinner, and Archie had just slid in beside him, off duty together until at least the second dog watch. Under the cover of the table, he took the other boy's hand, and in the little code they had devised, reassured himself that Kennedy was well. The first part of the meal was jovial, for Simpson had been kept on deck attending to some trouble with the division. Horatio forgot to be cautious, sitting thigh to thigh with Archie, blushing and forcing a laugh as the imp told the table about his latest landsmen error: diligently obeying a rating's summons to report to Lieutenant Chadd for capstan drill. Even that dour officer had guffawed in his face when he explained his errand, before dismissing him. He had needed Archie to explain the joke. Still, as harassments went it was harmless enough, and Horatio was just glad he had not actually had to go through with the exercise.

Conversation had moved on to other topics, and he was heads together with Archie, listening with a skeptical ear to a description of the Calcutta docks, when on the other side, Cleveland shoved him over so abruptly, he almost knocked Kennedy off the end of the bench. Only a quick arm about Archie saved the boy being dumped to the floor. Horatio opened his mouth to protest Cleveland's rudeness, but a sharp elbow in his side remind him to let go Kennedy and the offense at the same time. Glancing up, he saw Simpson settling into a vacated space with that knowing sneer that never meant well. He was unsurprised when Archie fell silent, hardly picking at the food. After several long minutes, a surreptitious under-table conference agreed on the lightroom as their meeting place. Horatio soon excused himself, claiming his books and slate from his sea chest, and headed off to take advantage of the free afternoon to study.

It was longer than he liked before Kennedy joined him in the tiny, almost airless cubby deep in the hold. Horatio had been nervous to come here at first, acutely aware of the countless casks and combustible dust just the other side of the thick glass window. But few ventured down to the magazine outside of weekly gun practice, and the light room was one of the only places below decks bright enough to read in without strain.

He had come prepared to wait, and was lying on his stomach, scratching out notes in his log book, when Kennedy slipped down the ladder, barefooted, and with a pack of supplies slung over one shoulder. The mid greeted him with one of his favorite smiles, and joined Horatio on the floor, laying sideways, propped up on one elbow where Archie could observe what he was writing.

The room was close, and Horatio found the other boy's proximity damnably distracting, from the occasional brush of leg to the warm smell of sweat after Archie stripped off coat and vest to make a pillow. When Kennedy finally leaned low over his shoulder, pointing out an elementary mistake in his course calculation, it was all Horatio could do not to snap the pen in frustration. Instead he focused for several seconds on that offending digit, on one of the faint dark marks he had so often wondered about, but been afraid to question, until he could ignore the irritation of hot meaty breath tickling his cheek, and respond with reasonable good humor. "Yes, thank you, Mr. Kennedy, I see my error." He carefully scratched it out and corrected the math.

Horatio continued with his figures, now fighting the urge to slap away Kennedy's hands. They had decided to play with his queue, pulling free the ribbon and straightening his haphazard curls. In desperation, he broached a subject he had been afraid to touch for days. "You might be more attentive to your navigation problems as well, Kennedy. You are so close to mastering them, I am sure, and I would... I would be happy to assist you if you wanted further instruction. I am afraid Mr. Chadd is not the most patient of tutors."

"That's very kind of you, Mr. Hornblower." His stratagem worked, and the offending hand left his hair. Archie rifled a small sack, and flipping through a few pages, slid the book under Horatio's nose. The other boy pulled away completely then, leaning against the wall to watch him. Horatio cursed himself for being as aware of the distance now, as he had been of the contact previously, while he tried to decipher the text Kennedy had put before him.

It was another log book, half-destroyed by immersion, and many of the entries re-inked over their original blurry shadows. The page before him contained a rather complex heading correction, made while navigating the straight between Sri Lanka and the coast of India. Horatio checked the calculations on his slate, concluding after a couple minutes that they were entirely correct. He looked up then to catch Kennedy's rueful smile. "You have been giving the wrong answers on purpose," he realized.

"Yes, of course. I'm not as fast as you, perhaps, but I am not a dunce."

"I never said-"

"You should follow my example." That shut Horatio up. He did not want to have this argument again, did not want to argue with Archie at all, to waste any minute of this precious afternoon. So he ignored the accusation, and covered Kennedy's hand with his own in a gentle apology. Archie moved close again, sitting tailor's style now, beside him. The boy wrapped teasing fingers through his hair again, petting and combing so that Horatio had to close his eyes to hide the aggravation of it. Kennedy's voice was as coaxing as the caress. "We might leave off work for an hour or two. It is Sunday, after all, Horatio."

He peaked at the other boy warily. "You don't mean to read me the bible, do you?" Archie had surprised him more than once with some odd expression of faith, and he almost suspected the other mid was a Catholic, but that was another matter he was afraid to ask about.

Kennedy only laughed. "I had a different sort of prayer in mind." Horatio thought that sounded ominous, and rolled over, away from Archie's unsettling touch.

"More of your Blake?"

"If you like." Kennedy carefully capped Horatio's inkpot, shut the log book he had been working on, and collected slate and pencil, setting all these instruments aside. "I brought it, but also a few other books, Shakespeare, Sheridan, this lurid story about Scotland too. Nothing serious, nothing realistic. I wanted to spend the dogwatch completely lost in the fantastical." Horatio had noticed that Archie had an enviably large library, though mostly composed of novels and other mindless distractions. The mid seemed to be emptying half that collection out onto the floorboards, and plucked the top book off the stack, before carelessly shoving the rest at Horatio. "Take your pick."

With seemingly every expectation of being obeyed, Archie flopped flat to the floor, choosing Horatio's stomach as bolster, and squirmed until satisfied with this new-found cushion. Then the maddening boy opened a slim volume of fiction that Horatio had not heard of before, and proceeded to utterly ignore him. Trapped under Kennedy's surprisingly weighty head, he was forced to shuffle through the books from his awkwardly prone position, and so chose one almost at random. It was in French, and he thought he might at least exercise his memory of the language, if not improve it. Stealing Kennedy's coat, since the boy had stolen his body for a headrest, Horatio made himself as comfortable as possible and began laboriously to read.

They passed almost an hour, as best he could judge, the whole time Horatio growing in discomfort, but unwilling to stir Kennedy, who was smiling, and even laughing, over the chosen book with a lightness he could not remember since before Simpson's return to the ship. He was far less satisfied with his own selection. It seemed to be the story of an orphaned girl, who finding herself in a convent, was tricked into selling herself for sordid practices. As soon as he understood the intention of the book, Horatio meant to put it down, but he knew there would be questions from his pernicious reading partner, and he didn't know how he would answer then, so his eyes continued to drag down the pages.

His dancing master's French was not sufficient to the subject matter, sparing him too vivid a description of the narrative. Until he came across a curious phrase, that some of her customers were 'content with the rose' while others wished 'to bring to full flower the bud that grows adjacently'. The meaning was so obscure, Horatio couldn't help but dwell on it, trying to imagine what was intended. His groin gave a sudden throb just as he realized that 'flower bud' was some repulsive metaphor for the girl's arsehole. The image of a man placing his prick there was nauseating. Horatio had heard of buggery, of course. His school mates, knowing he was to join the Navy, had reveled in warning him about a fate they liked to pretend was inevitable. But whatever desperate sailors might get up to when many months at sea, it was a far fouler thing to take a woman so. Yet despite the disgust he knew he should have, Horatio could not erase the image from his mind, now that the filthy book had put it there, and his own prick gave a second sharp kick, prompting him to drop the book, sitting abruptly upright.

Kennedy was dislodged from his stomach and frowned at him in irritation at the displacement. Before Horatio could be queried, however, they both heard a noise from above, and in a few moments, Clayton's hoarse whisper echoed down the ladder. "Kennedy? He is looking for you, and it will go worse the longer you keep him waiting. You're both to go ashore, to support the press." Clayton swung down the hatch, smiling despite the terse summons at the picturesque literary feast spread out below.

"Press gangs on a Sunday?" Kennedy blinked in surprise. "Poor souls." The boy stood hastily, looked about with a scowl, and shrugged with resignation. "I'll be right behind you, Clayton. Horatio, you'll get my books back for me?"

"Of course." He started to gather them all together into a neat pile. "Shore leave of a sort, Archie, enjoy it, even if you do have to share it with Simpson."

It was the wrong thing to say, Horatio could tell by the smile Kennedy returned him, the one that said clearer than any words what a hopeless idiot he was. Archie didn't even bother to reply before following Clayton up the ladder and out of sight, leaving Horatio to collect their belongings, extinguish the lanterns, and make his way back out of the darkened hold.