"Is this how it is? How it always is?" Archie's voice no longer broke. There was simply resigned curiosity, as if he might be thinking that someday someone other than Jack would lay claim to him. "Every time?"

"No, Archie." Clayton measured his words carefully, not wanting to put too much weight on any one. "With women it is nothing like this."

"And with men? With other men?"

He looked up, somewhat startled. "Men don't do such things, Archie."

"Jack does." Archie shrugged, his irrepressible smile showing a hint of teeth. "And he is man enough that none will stand up to him." His eyes changed, grew challenging. "Perhaps I will stand up to him."

"Your word against his, Archie." Clayton could hear the sadness, the loss in his voice. Don't die, boy. Not for the likes of Jack. "You'll both hang, or worse, just you will."

"And hanging? Hanging's worse than this?"

"You'll live through this, Archie. Maybe find peace. Or vengeance."

Archie's eyes no longer seemed to see Clayton, the smile still curving his lips, though there was something off in it, something wrong. "Hanging is worse than this."

Clayton set the mug in front of Archie, smiling at the wide-eyed wonder shining in the clear blue. The tavern was full of bustle - beer and food, sailors and soldiers and an evening's entertainment all crowded together in the small, smoky spaces smelling of thick air and thicker grease.

"It's like Drury Lane." Archie breathed. "Too many people for one small room." He smiled back at Clayton, picking his mug from the table and taking a deep draught. He coughed, his body shaking with the sudden violence of it as Clayton reached around to pound him solidly on the back.

"Careful, Mr. Kennedy." He took a drink from his own mug. "This isn't the watered down rum you've grown accustomed to."

Shadows darkened Kennedy's eyes and Clayton sighed softly. Archie rarely tasted rum, his ration landing in Jack's gullet, no doubt wishing all the while that every sip would drown Jack, choke him and leave him blue faced and gasping for help, every eye suddenly blind.

"I'll be more careful."

Care was one thing Archie seemed to have in spades, honed by Jack's eagle eye and well-tuned ear. Every loose moment Kennedy found, Jack found him. Clayton had willed the boy silent time and again, hoping that Archie's silence, at least, might spare the boy from Jack.

"Jack's not here, Archie." The younger man flinched at the name, his eyes swinging to the door. "He's aboard Justinian. He's on watch. Take care, boy, but no need to be careful." Archie's brow furrowed and Clayton couldn't help but smile in the face of his confusion. "What he does not see, Mr. Kennedy, he will not know."

Clayton nodded to two of the ladies near the bar, both well-turned out for plying the evening's trade. "Oh." A blush as red as hot shot stained Archie's cheeks. "I could not, sir."

"Don't be ridiculous, lad." He pushed two coins across the table. "Of course you can."

"But I'm…" The blush heated hotter, and for an instant, Clayton was reminded that Archie was only a lad of thirteen. His voice dropped, low and ashamed, cracking on the words. "I'm Jack's boy, sir."

"Not tonight, you're not." Determination flooded through Clayton as he waved the two women over, intent on the boy having his choice. "And Archie?" He waited until blue eyes met his own, the color sharp against Archie's flushed skin. "Call me Clayton. Never call me sir."

The beer was warm and his mug almost empty when the shadow fell across his table. He looked up, expecting Archie, and was surprised to find the girl he'd sent Archie off with standing over him.

"You'd best come quick, sir."

Clayton got to his feet and followed her without a word. They made their way up the dark staircase to an equally murky room. It smelled of animal fat and sex, the faint coppery tinge of blood. "What is this?"

"Beside the bed, sir." She stayed in the doorway as Clayton walked closer to the bed, his blood settled enough now to hear the constant low keen and the scrape of cloth on splintered wood. As he moved around the foot of the bed, he saw Archie's prone form, spasming and twitching violently on the floorboards.

"What did you do to him?"

"Nothing, sir. Just as we're told to. Take off his breeches, hike up my skirts. I laid down on the bed like he paid for, sir, then he knelt over me. Just before he got to business, his eyes rolled back and he started shaking like that, sir. Fell off the bed and hit his head. That's why I came to fetch you, sir."

Clayton sighed and liberated another coin from his pocket, slipping it into her hand. "Thank you. I'll take care of him."

"I need the room, sir."

"Yes," Clayton snapped. "I'll take care of him." He bent down and turned Archie over, pulling each eye open. He leaned down and pressed his cheek against Archie's, his voice gentling in Archie's ear. "It's all right, Archie. I've got you." He repeated the words until the trembling stopped, then got Archie to his feet. He pressed the last two of his coins into the woman's hand for the time and the trouble, and because he knew he'd not find his own pleasure tonight.

Things grew worse on the ship after that. Archie shied away from Clayton, seemed to disappear into himself. He slept little, and when he did manage to drift off, he was prone to fits, falling from his hammock to the floor time and again to the sound of Jack's sharp laughter.

Clayton helped Archie, even when the boy jerked away from his grasp. He held him until the tremors passed, soothing away what he could until Archie's eyes were no longer wild, until exhaustion stole him past where even Jack Simpson could go.

"Are you sure this is the right room?" Clayton glanced around the rather ample space, finally turning his surprised gaze to Archie. "This is far too grand for what two midshipman can pay."

Archie flushed and shook his head. "It's the right room." He shut the door and leaned back against it, his eyes darting into every corner.

"He's not here, Archie." His eyes were startled as they reached Clayton's, the blue transmuted to the grey of a storm tossed sea. "He's not here."

"Of course not." He tried to smile and failed, and Clayton sighed. Archie's smile, somehow, had been the one thing that had remained intact. "He's on a mission for Captain Keene."

"And that mission is not here," Clayton reminded him softly. "There is nothing to fear here."

"No?" Archie asked softly as he moved away from the door. "Then why are both our hands trembling?"

Archie was fifteen now, no longer a boy. Clayton watched him as they ate in their room, enjoying the privacy he knew Archie must have paid for. Whatever the reason for it, Clayton is grateful, glad to be away from people, Justinian, and Jack's eye.

They were nearly down to the end of the bottle of wine when Clayton spoke, his gaze locked on the dark burgundy liquid in his glass. "You once asked me if it was always like that, like it is with him."

He could almost sense the shuttering of Archie's expressive eyes, but he swallowed hard and pressed on. "I told you it was not with a woman."

"I had a woman. It ended badly." His voice was as distant as his eyes as Clayton looked up to them.

"If you'd like…if it would help." He took another drink, draining what remained in his glass. "I could stay here. Be here in the room."

"A talisman?" Archie asked softly. "Warding evil away from my door?" There was no humor in the words, though there was the ghost of a smile on his face. "No, Clayton. Thank you, but no."

"It can be good, Archie."

"It is punishment. For when I step outside my bounds, say too much, think too much, dare know more than Jack." He shook his head and looked away, his finger running along the rim of his glass in a slow circle. "No. There is nothing good in it."

"Oh, Archie. No." Setting his glass down, Clayton moved to kneel in front of the boy, his hands rough against Archie's threadbare trousers. He would need new ones soon, his growth spurt of the last year pulling the fabric tight against his thighs. "No. It is good. When two people love each other, it is…it is good."

Archie's eyes burned into Clayton's, looking for truth, Clayton suspected, though he did not know what the boy might find.

"It is good." Clayton dared a smile. "People would not desire it so much were it not."

"Pain. Punishment." Archie shrugged. "There is no pleasure in it for me. If you wish some though, just say the word. I'll drink downstairs until you're spent. I've no desire to rob anyone else of their pleasure."

Clayton got to his feet with a small sigh, trying to swallow the sound lest it reach Archie's ears. "No, lad. Tonight I'll stay in and drink wine with you."

There was no sound that woke him. Perhaps it was the stillness of the night or of the bed, or perhaps it was the cold distance that stretched across the mattress between them. Or perhaps it was the silence that came from Archie's still form. Whatever the cause or reason, he stared up at the ceiling in the darkness and then turned his head, reaching out to brush the golden strands that fell from Archie's queue with gentle fingers.

Archie's stillness seemed to deepen and Clayton inhaled, holding his breath until something shifted, relaxed, and then he let it go, his fingers moving again. Archie slowly rolled onto his back, bridging the distance between them as he turned further, faced Clayton, his expression blurry with the soft haze of sleep, his skin soft under Clayton's fingers, his lips parted, his breath tasting of anticipation and innocence.

"Archie," Clayton whispered softly, shaking his head even as he brushed his lips across the boy's open mouth. "No."

"You promise me that it's not always like that," Archie returned, his voice tinged with sorrow and desperation. "Show me. Make me see. Make me believe."

He continued shaking his head until Archie's mouth stopped him, his kiss as clinging as the hands that held Clayton's shoulders, pulling him closer. Archie moaned, the sound more pain than pleasure, and shook as Clayton moved over him, holding himself above Archie, his eyes locked on the wide blue gaze of the boy beneath.

"Archie."

"He's not here," Archie reminded Clayton, no doubt reminding himself as Clayton lowered his body against Archie's, let them touch. Archie shuddered, the muscles beneath his skin pulled taut. He stared up at Clayton with a mixture of fear and awe as he felt Clayton's hardness between them, an answering hardness stir to life in him. "Oh. Different," he breathed. "Already so different."

Clayton shuddered at the words, leaning down to bury his face in Archie's neck. The boy trembled beneath him and let his hands slide down off Clayton's shoulders, along his back to his waist. "Archie," he whispered against the salt-tinged flesh, tasting youth on his tongue, though the innocence had long been stripped away. "Oh, child."

His hair, golden in the faded light of the room, whipped against Clayton's face as he shook his head. "No. Not a child." His voice was breathless, tinged with a hunger that echoed in the press of his flesh. "Not a boy. No one's boy." His hands tightened against Clayton's hips, holding him as Archie began thrusting upward, finding resistance and friction in the slide of Clayton's body against his.

Clayton clenched his hands in the sheets beside Archie's head, his head bowed. He resisted the urge to meet whatever emotions might be embroiled in Archie's blue eyes, refused to see the changes in his face as his breathing grew desperate and his fingers dug bruises into Clayton's skin and he spent himself into the thin shift of their nightshirts between them.

Archie's hands loosened and slipped away from Clayton's hips, his voice barely a sleepy whisper as he closed his eyes. "I am no one's boy."

Clayton eyed Hornblower as he interacted with Archie, the closeness of their ages offsetting the vast difference of their experience. With Jack gone off for his lieutenant's exam and hopefully for good, there was a sense of relaxation aboard Justinian, a sense of camaraderie, a hint of peace.

It ended soon enough with Jack's return, bringing with him the darkness that shadow's Archie's eyes. He watched as Hornblower confronted Jack, shaming Clayton in ways he had not ever thought he would know. He remembered the slow encounter so long ago with a kind of self-hatred, a balm where he could not offer a cure, his hands shaking as Archie falls to another seizure in his sleep.

It was not bravery that drove the hand that coldcocked Hornblower, nor shame, but the softly whispered words from Archie's own lips. I am no one's boy.

Clayton had been Jack's boy as much as Archie had in many ways, and ended here. At the age of twenty-eight, Clayton would make himself a man.