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Summoned by the sight of a familiar banner at port, Arthur materializes on the gangplank of Antonio’s ship, squinting against the Caribbean sun, nose burnt as red as the coat on his shoulders. They barely exchange ten words. They have more important business here, but they are also men with needs and an opportunity. It is commonly understood: any port in a storm, after all. The weeks at sea are relentless and good company is nearly impossible to come by.
Not that Antonio considers Arthur to be good company. But unlike most sailors, he is clean and reserved; more importantly, he'll happily agree to things that would cost a small fortune at the portside brothels. He doesn't mind — prefers it, even. He emphatically believes that a closed fist and a sore spine is the righteous path to oblivion. It is one of their few compatibilities.
Their venue of choice is an unimpressive room in a dingy inn, the main floor populated by an amateur set of musicians and an unruly crowd.
“Awfully noisy, isn’t it?” Arthur notes, but means it as a commendation. Their private room comes at no small cost, but discretion is rarely inexpensive. They each have a turn at the wash basin in the shared antechamber, scrubbing off sticky humidity and sweat with lye soap. The air is heavy, hot, and theirs is the only room in the inn with a padlocked door and firmly closed window. When Antonio returns, he finds Arthur standing in nothing but an undone shirt, neatly folding the rest of his clothing.
He is thin, wiry, under all his brocade and cotton. His knees and elbows are pink, knobbly, awkward; despite four months at sea, his skin is pale, with copious freckles everywhere the sun has touched. “I just can't understand it.” Antonio muses, half to himself, thinking of saccharine French praise.
“Funny, I was going to say the same thing.” Arthur returns the appraising look. For good measure, he takes a long drink from a flask retrieved from his pocket. “But…,” a hiss of liquor in his voice: “I suppose you'll do, in a pinch.”
“You can go, if it's such a chore for you.”
“I’ve already spent the reales.”
Antonio steps closer. “That's not it. You want this. Admit it.”
Arthur narrows his eyes resentfully. “Not nearly as much as you, I'm sure,” he accuses. “It must be difficult for you. This is no Alsatia. They take the crime of buggery quite seriously in these colonies of yours.”
A low provocation. It is almost never easy with him. Arthur will uphold pretenses with tooth and nail and any vile word he can conjure up. After all, the struggle for power between Spain and England does not end the moment they call each other by their first names; it merely becomes personal.
Admittedly, Antonio looks forward to it. A good fight is almost harder to come by than a good fuck.
He snatches Arthur by the collar and shakes him like a pesky stray. The shirt seams give way, a sharp rip undoing all the labor of some fine London seamstress, so he twists the fabric in his hand. Frantic, Arthur reaches for a fistful of his hair and pulls fiercely, as if he intends to take his whole scalp in one go.
“Fucking son of a bitch—” Antonio swears, flinging him to the floor. Naturally, he scrambles to return to his feet faster than Antonio can move to stop him. “Why don't you stay down and do something you're good at?”
“Oh, my, what a compliment,” Arthur grins, immediately before landing an unexpected blow to his left cheek.
He stumbles, pain crawling through his skull; momentarily in disbelief, then yielding readily to the rage that boils up in its place. However, his hit foregoes the mercy of an open palm and Arthur is knocked backward, sprawled on the floor once more, and Antonio is upon him at once.
They struggle, thrash, writhe, bite and spit, exploiting every possible opportunity to gain the upper hand. Antonio has height and strength in his favor, but Arthur makes up for those shortcomings in demented willpower. He is impossible to anticipate, and even harder to pin down, managing to always just barely manoeuvre himself out of a loss. At times they are seemingly evenly matched and gridlocked into motionlessness, heaving unsteady breaths and staring hatefully, until one speaks a scathing remark that drives both their tempers ever higher.
“Come on now, is that all?” Arthur asks, ridiculously, his head to the floor and a reddish welt on his jaw.
Impulsively, Antonio clamps a hand down onto his throat. He watches his face go a terrible shade of crimson before finally relenting. He expects some haughty statement of outrage at his overstep, or for Arthur to lunge at him once he gains his strength back, but instead he receives an expression he cannot interpret.
“Worn out after all?” Antonio taunts him.
“Why did you stop?” Arthur croaks. When Antonio freezes, confused, he adds: “Gone deaf?”
This time, he doesn't hold back. Both hands wring the column of his neck. Arthur’s hands encircle his wrists but he does not fight them; his eyes roll back and his bleeding, split lips part slightly. Antonio wonders what noise he would make, if he could, if he would scream. Blood vessels burst around his eyes in a vibrant display of ruby pinpricks. Just before he crosses the threshold of unconsciousness, Antonio releases him. He does not want to. An animalistic, frenzied feeling courses down to his shaking fingertips; he just barely resists it.
Arthur gasps, coughs, rises his hips from the floor to rut aimlessly against him, as if all three are a natural consequence. Antonio recoils, agitated beyond belief by the loss of self-control that overcame him.
“What was that? What’s wrong with you?”
“What? You choked me.”
Disgusted, horrified, and yet unable to deny it, Antonio dispenses with the last of his clothing and passes his own palm briefly over himself. Arthur watches smugly, pressing his knees together to invite Antonio into the soft crevasse between his thighs. Antonio fails to resist. Just like that, Arthur has acquiesced to being passive, but somehow still retains his own power.
“And you got off on it.” he points out. “So… whatever is wrong with me is also wrong with you.”
“That’s impossible.” Antonio takes hold of his legs, brings him closer. “You're nothing but a cesspool of depravity. You drag everything you touch down with you.” Despite his words, he is nearly mad with need, tempered only by bitter resentment.
“Yes, yes, you're the pinnacle of virtue when I'm not around.” Arthur laughs, reaching up to tug on Antonio's crucifix before his hands return between their bodies. “Come to think of it, are you this rough with your little concubine at home?”
Antonio seizes a handful of blond hair and wrenches his head back. He wants to drag him up by it, bash it through the wall, throw him down the stairs — but he laughs too, instead. “I should have let you pass out. At least I wouldn't have to hear your mouth.”
Arthur sneers.
Without warning, Antonio flips him to lie prostrate. He kneels heavily onto the back of Arthur's legs, securing the blond in place. Undoubtedly, the rough unfinished floorboards bite into the skin of his knees and shins. Antonio spits, letting it drip from his lips.
“Much better. I hate to look at you.”
Arthur utters an impatient sigh and demands: “Get on with it.”
“If you insist…”
He pushes in two fingers at once. Arthur protests; after a few seconds, his body does not. A third finger, a handful of gratuitous pulses, and mere moments later, Antonio aligns himself instead. As far as preparation goes, it is abominable, but he does not habitually spare niceties on the undeserving.
“Who taught you to—” Arthur quickly swallows the next words, uttering a shocked gasp instead as Antonio attempts to move.
“Stop tensing up.”
“I'm not!” he retorts sharply, but Antonio watches him take a deep breath, the sinewy muscle over his ribs relaxing. “You can’t really expect that to be enough?!”
For good measure, the Spaniard spits again, and then sinks in, little by little, persisting through tiny sticks of friction that make Arthur curse and writhe away. Antonio pushes down on the side of his head, pressing his cheek to the floor.
“Fuuuck,” he groans sharply, sounding nearer to torture than pleasure. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”
Antonio does not relent until he is deep to the hilt, entirely enveloped by the heat of Arthur's body. It is impossibly tight around him, uncomfortably so. He grits his teeth, reconsidering whether he should have taken more time, for his own sake.
“Don't— don't move. Give me a moment—”
“Beg.”
Outraged, Arthur glares over his shoulder. “You have to be joking!”
“What? You're too proud?” It is Antonio's turn to wear the twist of a grin, leaning close to Arthur's ear. “After you laid down like a whore for me? Beg.”
“Fuck off.”
He starts to pull back, and Arthur chokes out a stifled wail into the floor. Still, he stubbornly, adamantly refuses to plead for mercy. That is the final noise he makes. He silently bears it then, trembling, painful whines narrowly escaping from between his clenched teeth until his body softens. He opens up nicely, after a few minutes of effort and only minor bloodshed.
To have this absolute power over him is intoxicating, and when Antonio is at last unhindered, he is unable to stop a low groan of pleasure.
“Ahh, ” he breathes. “Finally.”
“God damn you.” Arthur rasps. “Go to hell.”
Antonio laughs — he really can't help himself. “I'm already in it, no?”
Their mutual dislike keeps them from having much interest in anything but their own needs, but it is impossible to miss how Arthur acts when he starts to enjoy it. As much as Antonio rationally feels indifferent, his instincts respond in kind.
Arthur's spine bends to accommodate him, moving against him, adjusting the rhythm as he likes. Antonio drags him upright by a hold of hips, leveraging them against his own.
“Mm, good—” Arthur starts, and then resumes his low breathy whimpering as if he did not speak at all.
“What? You like that?”
Nothing.
“No?” he prompts, picking up an unforgiving pace. Arthur commits twofold to his vow of silence, but his fingers curl tightly into fists.
A genuine attempt to be magnanimous is entirely wasted on him. Frustrated, Antonio decides to force a response if it will not be given up willingly; once again, he vises both hands around Arthur’s neck. This time, the sharp cartilage of his throat is bobbing beneath Antonio's fingers, thumbs carding through the downy blond hair at the nape of his neck. He realizes at once that this simple action lets him effortlessly control Arthur's whole body, to pilot him exactly where and how he wants him. Arthur is helpless to resist, even if he chooses to fight. Remarkably, though, he doesn't: he goes docile and compliant, now allowing himself delighted, strained, moans.
“You're even worse than I thought.” Antonio snarls. Vicious hatred rises like bile in his throat. Where he feels a pulse beneath his fingertips, he pushes in hard, his shoulders and back tensing with the effort of it. Soft cartilage cedes to the pressure with a palpable crunch, and Arthur kicks and thrashes to free himself, but goes nowhere.
Then, he whines through his nose once, a thin and strangled sound, and comes without warning. It racks through him hard, as if he was not expecting it, his limbs seizing and his hands grasping at nothing. All the while, Antonio maintains the clasp over his throat, forcing him to breathe shallowly and ride out the duration of it. Arthur falls entirely limp beneath Antonio, then, and he thinks in a frenzy that he must have gone too far — he must have broken his neck. Hardly conscious of himself anymore, he unclasps his hands and lets Arthur slump to the floor. He pulls out of the slackened body, stroking himself through the approaching inevitable.
Arthur blinks wearily, turning glassy eyes toward him to watch him come.
They lay there, comfortably spent, for a moment. Not touching, not speaking, enjoying their relief separately because they would prefer not to acknowledge its source.
Arthur eventually manages to draw himself up on shaking legs. He retrieves a pipe from his coat and fills it with the fragrant, fresh tobacco that can only be found on this side of the world. His neck blooms with violet and red bruises, the worst of which appear where Antonio's rings left deep impressions.
“Maybe…” Antonio starts, but he decides not to follow through. Arthur does not need to know that he briefly thought he might understand François’ fascination, just a little bit. He has always liked such things — vibrant contrasts, the beauty in the macabre, pride disgraced.
“Hm?” When Arthur looks at him, one of his irises is encircled with a striking bloodshot ring. It is deeply unsettling, and Antonio looks away, gesturing with an open hand. Strangely, he feels guilty.
“Nothing. Give me that.”
They redress in silence. As it turns out, a starched collar does a tremendous job of hiding filthy habits. Antonio’s distaste rises immediately. All at once, he forgets whatever it is he might have seen.
“Alright, I'm off.” Arthur informs him. His voice still sounds ragged around the edges.
“Why are you telling me? Just go.”
“Oh, right,” Arthur pauses in the doorway, as if he forgot something. “If you see your brother, give him my best. I heard he'll be in port this month, but I'll just miss him. Good-bye now.”
The last glimpse of him is a wide smirk thrown over his shoulder, the door closing just in time for an oil lamp to shatter against it.