Chapter Text
The whole matter was forgotten the moment the wind began to lap at the royals, stirring a breath of life into the Boadicea’s sails and, in turn, its captain. The anticipation and likelihood of his commodore’s pendant and later the minutiae of paperwork, the matter of making peace between the captains under his command and making war against increasingly unfavorable odds filled Jack’s whole existence, leaving precious little time even to sleep. Stephen similarly found his time fully occupied with diplomatic matters, and it was only Clonfert’s invitation to see a mermaid that brought the occasion back into his mind; even then, it felt like little more than a half-remembered dream. The arrival of Sophie’s news and the promise of a plum upon their return with the Admiral’s report had Jack’s spirits as high as ever, and it was with a certain gleam in his eyes that he agreed to Stephen’s request to take the skiff out to the first little uninhabited island they found after passing the Cape.
Performing an examination half-submerged while on the ship would be impossible, especially considering the delicacy of the matter in regards to its crew. The island’s many stony outcroppings provided little of interest to any but the doctor, so they were to be left quite alone. There had been a few questions about Jack's going as well, but with such precious little to do aboard the Boadicea and the general high spirits of her crew, it was clear that her captain should not be missed too badly for a few hours. Bonden watched their departure with a quietly knowing grin, grateful to be spared the task of carrying the doctor’s many bags and boxes, which he would almost certainly fill with any number of unpleasant creatures.
It was only a short distance to the small cave chosen to act as examination theater, but to reach it involved crossing an expanse of treeless beach distinguished by a series of jagged rocks that discouraged anyone following after them. Jack dearly wished to avoid the superstitious panic that would occur if his tail was seen by the more gullible members of his crew; it was enough that he had to see it himself. He had no interest in being made into a public spectacle.
Jack eagerly shed his clothes; the sun blazed in the sky above them, and despite the dappled shade of the plants growing along the cave’s mouth, the heat of the day made wearing anything more than shirtsleeves unpleasant. He was grateful for the opportunity to swim, and waded out into the cool, clear water. Small fish darted between his ankles, scattering flashes of light where his shadow fell as he loosed his hair from its queue. The good humour that filled his heart grew to a bright joy, and he leapt forward into the water with a great splash. He surfaced moments later, throwing his golden hair back in a dramatic arc of salt spray and beamed at Stephen, who stood in shadow, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his expression inscrutable.
After a brisk swim, Jack hauled himself up onto the cave’s tiny curve of beach, his tail carving a long groove in the sand. He pulled himself up alongside Stephen, standing ankle-deep in the shallows, his shoes and stockings placed beside the careless bundle of Jack’s clothes. A series of wicked-looking metal tools gleamed to one side of him, and Jack felt a tinge of uneasiness creeping into his mind.
“Do make yourself comfortable, joy.”
Stephen looked at him with a familiar intensity, the look of a physician seeking the source of an as-yet unpresented injury. Determined not to displease him, Jack took a deep breath and relaxed against the sand in the cool of the shade. He heard a bucket fill and sighed comfortably as Stephen poured cool water over his lower half.
“Shall we begin?”
Jack nodded, submitting to Stephen’s familiar, professional touch—palpating his scalp and neck, gently pressing at the edges of faded scar tissue. “No alteration to cranial features…” Stephen’s hands traced his shoulders, briefly swept over his scapulae, and continued their path down his arms, brushing golden hairs plastered down where his skin was drying, sticky with salt. Stephen carefully inspected his broad fingers, calloused by a lifetime of hauling, pumping, and fighting. “No alteration to upper extremities.”
Stephen remarked on each sotto voce, and the familiarity of the routine examination soothed Jack’s murmuring anxiety. He leaned in close, pressing his ear to Jack’s chest to listen to his heart, and the scruff of his short-cropped hair tickled Jack’s skin in an odd contrast to the smooth warmth of his cheek. With a satisfied nod, Stephen pulled back and continued his manual examination, taking care to check the puckered edges of each of a lifetime of scars, his hands warm and dry against Jack’s skin.
Jack relaxed further under his gentle touch, and opened an eye to peer at Stephen as he did so. A mistake, as in that moment, Stephen traced the edge of Jack’s hip where skin met scale, a startlingly odd but definitely pleasant sensation. Jack gasped, loud in the near-silence of the cave, and Stephen’s eyes flashed to his.
“Is it very painful?”
“Oh, no.” Jack’s face flushed red, his heart’s pace picking up to accommodate. “Not painful at all.”
Stephen turned away, and Jack felt a pang of disappointment.
“Here, if your skin is that of a fish, it must be kept damp.” Stephen turned back with a tin cup in hand and poured cool seawater over Jack’s hips. The relief was immediate, and cooled his blood a bit. It wouldn’t answer to get so worked up over a medical examination, unusual as the situation was.
“Thankee, Stephen.”
Stephen nodded, returning to his task. His fingers returned to the delicate skin of Jack’s hips, where the vee between belly and thigh marked the boundary between pale flesh and golden scales. Each scale was roughly circular, the width of two of Jack’s fingers, thicker at the center and tapering to an edge like a crudely-stamped coin. Stephen tapped one with his fingernail and then reached back for a pair of forceps.
“Hold still—”
Jack had barely enough time to open his eyes before a pinprick of pain blossomed at his hip.
“Ah—!”
“A slight pain is a good sign. I trust it is no more than that?”
“It doesn’t really hurt, no. Nothing like what caused these scars. But what is it?”
Stephen held the plucked scale up to see it more closely, peering at it through his spectacles.
“I generally hear them referred to as scales, brother.”
Jack frowned at him, and Stephen held out his hand. In the center of his palm lay a shining yellow circle, bright as the full moon of a spring tide. Jack took it, turning it over in his hands, but a sailor as experienced with taking prizes as Jack could have no doubt as to its composition. It had the subtle heft of gold, the regularity of a half guinea worn smooth by generations of hands, and he was admiring the warmth of its color with something like amazement when he felt another sharp pinch.
Stephen held up another scale in his forceps, soothing the place from which he’d plucked it with his thumb.
“Is it never gold, Stephen?”
“I cannot be certain, but I can perform a test when we return to the ship. For now, we shall see if they grow back.” Stephen gently lifted the adjacent scales to expose the raw, pink flesh beneath.
“Most fish can regrow their scales, given time. I must also inspect your limbs for damage when you return to your natural form.”
Jack nodded, still staring at his palm with wonder.
Stephen shuffled around, pocketing the scale and pouring another cup of water over Jack’s tail. Jack looked up at the renewed pressure of Stephen’s hands at his hips, pressing into the generous flesh over his hip bones right at the border between belly and tail.
“Pelvic bones seem unchanged...”
Jack willed himself to calm as the pleasant sensation began again, a warm tingling that stirred in his loins, no matter how they were currently shaped. This wasn’t the first time he’d been aroused in Stephen’s presence, what he assumed was a natural result of the heat of battle, the relief and joy of victory mingling with the gentle touches of the ship’s surgeon and his particular friend making sure he was well and whole in his care. Jack’s face flushed again, recalling the close, shared glances, leaning together in a crowded sickbay, the floor slick with blood and sand and the simple reassurance of touch, the pleased, almost proprietary quirk at the corner of Stephen’s mouth when he found no major wound, no dangerous flow of life blood. Safe.
The tips of Stephen’s fingers burned trails along his hips, and he could feel their heat through the scales of his tail. He sucked in a breath as Stephen pressed down, feeling for the bones beneath.
“And now for the other matter.” Jack forced himself to meet Stephen’s eye, to pretend that nothing was amiss as his blood pounded in his ears.
“The membrum virile does not present as in the human male, though surely such a configuration would be disadvantageous to an aquatic creature. The Dear knows it is delicate enough.”
Blushing deep red, Jack shot upright, abruptly struck by the enormity of the situation. “Virile—you don’t mean my… my prick, Stephen?”
It hadn’t occurred to him before as he could hardly bring himself to look, but—he looked down at a smooth expanse of scales stretching out from belly to fin tip—and stared in horror. Not only had he been transformed against his will, but to be so unmanned he was quite beside himself. No amount of gold could be worth what had always brought him so much pleasure, even if it also brought him occasional consequences.
Before the panic could truly set in, Stephen pressed his shoulder.
“Nothing is amiss in your natural form, and your ability to have relations should not suffer. The venerable whale has no outwardly visible parts until the act of copulation. It is possible that this case may be similar.”
“During copulation, you mean when it… it—” Jack flushed darker, his blush spreading down his neck and shoulders.
“Emerges from within the body, yes.” Stephen pressed on, perpetually astonished at Jack’s schoolboy embarrassment about sexual matters when not presently engaged in the act.
“Oh.”
Leaning in close, Stephen swept his hand over the front of Jack’s tail, the scales cool and smooth beneath his fingers. Beginning just below the curve of Jack’s ample belly, his fingertips teased that sensitive perimeter, and Jack’s sharp inhale did not go unnoticed.
“That intense sensation you described, is it never pleasurable, joy?”
Jack struggled to meet his eyes, and nodded silently, unable to speak over the pounding of his heart and his sudden awareness of Stephen’s close proximity, the warmth of his hands, and his utter inability to escape and maintain the pretense that his appreciation for his best friend was entirely platonic.
“Hmm.”
Stephen continued to trace his fingers over the delicate skin, beginning his examination at the top of his hips (a mild reaction as Jack’s racing pulse began to stabilize) and skimming downwards to the lowest point still flesh (an increasing tenseness in Jack’s whole frame, quickened breaths, dilated pupils).
“There, soul, relax.”
Stephen’s fingers stroked lower and encountered a narrow, vertical seam, now visible between scales as the flesh swelled and parted. Stephen’s other hand was an anchor, warm and solid against the flesh of Jack’s side.
Jack couldn’t take his eyes away from the look on Stephen’s face, the quiet look of fascination that accompanied each new discovery.
“Just as I thought. The presentation is different, sure, but you are no less of a man for it.”
Stephen traced the edges of the seam and Jack’s breath hitched in his throat, as the sides of the seam swelled and opened, and the flushed head of his organ emerged. Stephen hummed thoughtfully. “If anything, the size of this form is more impressive than your usual endowment.”
Jack stared at him, wild-eyed, as the realization struck that Stephen had admired before, and was still admiring. He caught the slight movement of Stephen’s tongue as it darted out to wet his lips.
“Stephen, you never—”
Stephen continued to stroke the skin as Jack’s prick, thick and flushed a healthy red, continued to emerge from the slit. He stroked his thumb up the underside from base to tip, examining its generous girth and length, comparing the difference to his prior professional observations and to other, previous glimpses, snatched somewhat guiltily in the dark of their shared cabin as he reached desperately and often fruitlessly for sleep.
Jack caught his wrist, stilling the motion of his hand. Stephen looked into Jack’s flushed and astonished face, his pupils distinctly wider than usual and his breath coming in shallow pants.
“Hush, my dear. Allow me.”
After a moment, Jack nodded, and loosened his grip on Stephen’s wrist, his thumb brushing the delicate skin there in an almost equally intimate gesture. He slowly lowered himself back onto the sand, allowing the touch, though his chest still heaved with the force of his breaths.
Stephen’s own interest was growing more difficult to ignore, but he spared not a thought for it as he stroked Jack with one hand, spreading the copious drip of pre-spend forming at the tip. Curious, he leaned forward and pressed his tongue to it, cataloguing the bitter-salt of it, feeling the smooth texture and innate heat and adding them to his mental journal of sensations classified as Jack.
Jack cried out, a groan that sounded in no way pained, and Stephen shifted his weight forward and enveloped the tip in the heat of his mouth.
“Stephen—!”
Jack threw his head back, his whole body convulsing with a wholly unexpected wave of pleasure as Stephen gave his full attention to the act of tasting, and while his proficiency with foreign tongues was well-known in the right circles, Jack had no notion of his talents extending so far as this, an act with which Jack himself had fond associations, if not recent familiarity.
Jack trembled like a ’cello string, played expertly with such exacting touches as to render his body a perfect instrument of desire. He lay fixed in place out of sheer will, knowing on some base, subconscious level that a careless thrash of his tail would end this. Jack’s face and chest flushed hot with passion, his fingers clawing lines into the wet sand, and he trembled with the effort required to keep still.
“Stephen…” he breathed, hardly able to reconcile the act itself with his best, dearest friend. He could hardly stop the growing pleasure, the aching need building in his hips as he clenched the muscles there to hold back—it would only slightly delay the inevitable conclusion.
“Stephen—!” Jack cried aloud this time, with a certain degree of urgency, and the doctor pulled away, fixing him with a sharp glare blunted not a bit by his shining, red-stained mouth.
“What is it, for all love? Will you not allow me to finish?”
Jack gaped at him, yellow hair sticking up all around his head like a golden halo. “You don’t mean to—” he nodded, gesturing with his head, and Stephen caught his meaning at once.
Stephen gave him that same cool, somewhat predatory glare, though it thawed after a moment into fondness. “I certainly do; do not hold back on my account. I pray you will not interrupt me again, for this is a critical measurement and one that is, I am led to believe, highly sensitive.” With that, Stephen ducked down and resumed his activity.
Wet heat enveloped Jack again and his body, well familiar with the act, relaxed despite the intense whirl of activity in his mind. It was as though his mind was caught in a squall, unattended thoughts flying by at an immoderate pace. This tempest swept away any embarrassment at the speed with which he achieved his release, and he lay panting, breathless and more at ease in his body than he could long remember.
He drifted to consciousness sometime later to the familiar sounds of muttered commentary, of pencil on paper as the doctor scratched away in a little journal. Jack sat upright, blissful relief flooding into him at his body’s return to its natural state.
“There you are awake, soul,” Stephen said, smiling. “Are you well-rested? I should very much like to consult my books, and you will be wanting your supper.”
Stephen pursed his lips thoughtfully, and Jack gaped at him, face reddening as memory rushed in unbidden.
Had it all been a dream?
He would be inclined to believe so: nothing could be further from the province of good sense, though the gold coin resting on the sand beside him suggested otherwise.