The rugged sailor’s fist connected with Spike’s face with a sickening crack. All around, the crowd of sweat, gin-soaked naval grunts drew back. Emaptheti “Ooohs!”, grimacing, and a generous “That’s gotta’ hoit!” accompanied what should have been a clean K.O.
In the cargo hull of the S.S. Merlin, drunken mariners circled the combatants in a makeshift arena comprised of freight, card tables, and chairs. The onlookers winced at the sound of fist and skull. The six-foot-two sailor, suspenders over a bare chest (that looked more like a bear’s chest), shook his sore hand and smiled, waiting for the glass-jawed pretty boy to fall to the floor, cold as dead fish.
And though it certainly looked like the lean, clean-shaven sailor’s head had been turned around with the blow, the blue eyed charmer cracked his jaw back into place, spit blood at his rugged opponent’s feet, and whistled.
“Harder, daddy.”
Snickers and knee slaps from the crowd. The rough-and-tumble sailor stared at Private Spike Waterford in disbelief before he himself couldn’t help crack a smile. “Son of a bitch,” he said—either in anger or amusement. “Guess I’ll go harder then.”
Spike, five-foot-eight and looking like if the statue of David had his growth stunted before Michelangelo had gotten around to carving him, wiped spittle and a trail of blood from his cupid’s bow lips. He was shirtless, abs and pillow-like pecs on full display (damn, what did the Navy feed this kid?). Turns out, one’s glyph influenced their metabolism as well. Call it luck.
“Harder is my middle name,” he said, trying to sound tough. He spit on the floor again, right between his opponent’s boots. “Actually, it’s Anthony.”
Garrison blinked, adjusting the single strap of overall that looked like it was about to snap right off him—speaking of big pecs.
But this swishy kid really thought he sounded intimidating! “I’m gonna knock the teeth out your damn head,” Big Garrison growled back, stripping sweat off his fur, muscles bulging, and reeking of man (Spike’s holy trinity, right there).
“And I’m gonna knock that fuckin’ face off your face!” Spike barked back with a rough, feminine, Brooklyn drawl.
The men were at it again, two caged animals shrouded in a nicotine mist, trading blows. The other boys—sailors both bulky and lean, in sweat-soaked shirts or topless—smoked, drank grog, played cards, played with each other, whatever vice of choice Friday night had thrown at their feet. Some threw down money, hedging their bets. Big Garrison hadn’t lost a fight in months and had sent guys bigger than sister-boy Spike to the infirmary. Spike was a scrapper, sure enough. A real ‘pocket titan.’ But he was also one of those guys who’d never ditched their baby-face looks. His hair was too curly, his face too pretty, and he hadn’t a strand of chest hair to speak of. One of those guys you couldn’t decide if you wanted to punch in the face, or kiss, or both. He looked like an athlete, maybe even a fighter, but men like Garisson ate guys like him for breakfast.
And it looked like the feast was about to begin.
Sick of toying with his prey, Garrison dove and practically picked the twenty-two-year old off the ground.
“Not so big now, are ya?” Garrison said. He didn’t care if he anyone was watching—he’d been waiting all night for a chance like this, reaching up between Spike’s legs to check the merchandise.
“The only thing little about me,” Spike grunted in reply, “is my attention span.”
“That doesn’t even make sense! I’ll kill you!”
The other boys whooped and hollered, ready to see Garrison crack the kid’s head on the steel grating like a fresh egg.
Wham. An impressive body slam if there ever was one. The impact reverberated throughout the cargo hold. The others held their breath. His eyes were closed. Was this a knockout?
From his position on the floor, Spike groaned. The onlookers leaned in.
“I thought I said, ‘harder’?”
Snickers from the peanut gallery. This time though, Garrison wasn’t messing around. He thrust his giant, calloused hand—more of a claw—down and grabbed the ‘boy’ by the throat, pulling him clean off the ground. He raised the skinny, smart-mouthed fairy into the air and handled him there like fresh kill. A pull back with his free hand to gather momentum, and then one final blow…
Spike’s lips, wet with spittle, curled into a smile. “Here…” he gurgled with his last reserves of oxygen. “Just relax and let me show you how it’s done.”
Garrison didn’t even register the knee that collided with his hard stomach until the air had already completely escaped him. It was like someone had rammed a steel beam into his gut. Spike pulled back his knee and landed gracefully on the floor, on his own two feet, watching the giant crumble to the floor in front of him.
A hush fell over the room, all drunken murmurs and raucous laughter stifled. Spike thought he heard a cigarette fall out of someone’s mouth, and only the groan of the ship interrupted the calm after the storm.
Spike ran his hand through his feathery hair, sighed, and then gave Garrison a solid left hook to the jaw. Something collided with the far wall, probably one of the big man’s front teeth, but the sound was drowned out by the thud of the man’s massive frame on the cold steel.
But Spike wasn’t done yet. He waited, in dead silence, as the crowd watched—the whites of their eyes so wide that they lit up the room more than the assorted, crank-opped lamps. Garrison, shakily, unsteady, face dripping with a cocktail of blood and sweat, got back onto his heavy boots. All the while, Spike circled him like a young lion hunting prey.
Garrison’s lips swollen, and blood gurgling from them all the same, he uttered one final jibe. “You’re…just…pretty.”
To which Spike only smirked. “Damn right.”
He moved like lightning. In a blink, he caught Garrison’s back and wrapped his sizeable forearms around his waist, squeezing them tight. The big man let out an “oof,” his stomach already sore from the previous blow.
Maybe Spike was being too cocky. But, better to give these boys a lesson before they got too big for their boots. Summoning strength, he hoisted poor Garrison into the air, before gently grazing his lips against the bear’s broad back.
“Night, night, daddy,” he whispered, as threw the big man behind him like a sack of rotten potatoes, smashing him spine first into the steel grating in a brutal, clumsily performed (yet effective) suplex.
The hull of the ship rattled, and all was silent again.
Then, the roar of applause, groans, cursing, and glasses of swill clinking together at the culmination of a wicked fight. Spike stood, dripping sweat from the valleys between his muscles, and attempted a weak-hearted bicep flex for the boys. Half groans, and a smattering of wolf-whistles. Typical.
Somewhere behind him, a drunken sailor threw down a fistful of dollars in disappointment, while Spike’s buddies gleefully raked in the cash. Two big men rushed to Garrison’s side, one to help mop up the trickle of blood leaking from his mouth, the other to try and bring the giant back to life. The rest of the boys roared and enveloped Spike in a frenzied mob, hoisting the attractive sailor into the air, and giving congratulatory slaps on the back.
This was his element. Not so much the fight, but the posturing before and after—the showmanship of it all! Spike leaned back like a showgirl being carried down a line of suited gentleman, and let the crowd carry him to the card table in the back of the makeshift bar/arena.
“I’m ready for my close-up Mr. Dumile,” he cooed, placing his hands behind his bed, going from prize-fighter to Hollywood starlet in a blink.
But really, Spike like to think he was both.
Another night of adoration, Spike thought, as he let his fellow seamen light him a cigarette, give him their well-wishes, and pour him a glass of cheap rum.
“Give the ol’ fag a fag,” one sailor called out amiably.
“Language!” Spike shot back. “You call me that again, you punk, and I’ll punch your fuckin’ lights out too!”
“As long as you give me long-hard pin after, gorgeous!”
Spike exhaled a long, impressive trail of smoke. “It’ll be a face pin! Ten counts!”
“Make it one hundred!”
Again, roaring, whooping, and hollering followed.
“Put on a shirt, you priss,” one of the boys called out.
Spike laughed. “Not on your life!” He politely denied the swill. “No, please. Caffeine and nicotine is fine for now, boys.”
Thankfully, Micko—an affable water magi from Queensland—was there to give Spike the requested cup of brew.
“You big poofer; congratulations!” He shoved the warm, chipped mug into his hands. “Here’s a cuppa.”
“How’d you make it?” Spike asked, plucking the cigarette out of his mouth and putting it instead between the lips of a drunk sailor he fancied, sending him off with a kiss on the cheek of course.
“Strong. With a heap of sugar—just like you.” He laughed. Micko was good people. “You got one mean south paw on ya, mate!”
“What?” Spike blinked, dead serious. “I don’t have a paw. I have a hand. Is this like, an Australian thing?”
“No, I meant your left hook. They call leading with your left ‘South Paw’”
“But that doesn’t even make sense. If it’s my left hand, shouldn’t it be called, like, ‘west paw’?”
“Oh, geez.” Micko sighed. The kid was good for some one-liners here or there, but Harvard he was most definitely not. “At least you’re pretty...”
Around him, the fellas laughed. Spike grinned. Tonight was a good night. The coffee was bitter and tasted like mud. The nicotine in the air, mixed with scents of testosterone, sweat, and sea salt, was simply intoxicating. What more could be better in life?
While the other men shoved each other or poured themselves mor liquor, or took each other back to their cabins, Micko tightened his sailor cap and pulled moisture out of the air with his fingertips, forming into a little marble in his hand. He ran it through his fingers, and Spike—easily amused—watched the trick with a boyish glee. Even after all these years, magic never ceased to amaze him.
“That’s the second lug you’ve nailed in the last two nights,” Micko observed. He passed the water marble from hand to hand.
Spike took a sip of the mud coffee and reflected on his wins. “And he won’t be the only man I lay down flat tonight if I play my cards right.” He winked at Micko, but he knew the sailor was immune to his charms. Some sadly were. “Of course, I got my ass handed to me by a certain Aussie a few weeks back, didn’t I?”
Micko shrugged, eternally modest. “At least it’s a proper cute arse.” The faux flirtation was, of course, entirely in jest. Their comradery ran deeper than that. “Now, how is it a scrawny bogan from Cairns can wallop a baby-faced titan like yourself?”
“Ah, that’s just the problem,” Spike said, pointing to the marble. “So…hmm. Can I ask a dumb question?”
“Better than anybody else I know.”
The jab went over Spike’s head. “Uh…right. What’s the magic thingy inside us magi called, again?’
“You mean your glyph?” This was, of course, magic 101.
Spike snipped his fingers and looked as if he’d just solved the most difficult math problem ever seen by man. “Yeah, that’s the one! So, my glyph, right? It gives me the power to absorb energy. Or at least that’s what the docs told me when I a squirt.”
“You’re still a squirt,” Micko said. “But go on.”
“My magic is being able to take a hit and dishing it back twice as hard. But spring the elements on me and…” he shrugged, poking Micko’s water sphere with his index finger, causing it to dematerialize. “I fall apart. You’re pretty rough with your magic, you know.” He smiled. “Bet you’re rough with other stuff too…”
Micko laughed. “If I am, you’ll never find out.”
“Micko, you know me too well.” Spike looked down into the black ooze, like how the old magicians of Alban would consult their black scrying mirrors. “It’s funny though. I’m starting to get…I dunno, bored? Fighting is real fun. I mean, who doesn’t love beating up a stud? But…something’s off. I feel…I feel stuck.” He smiled. “Lost at sea. Isn’t that funny? You know, because we’re sailors at sea.” He shook his head and returned to the comfort of his drink.
Still, Micko was more perceptive than most. It was a gift of those water magi, Spike thought. They were always tuned in to other’s emotions; navigators of the sea of the soul just as much as the literal ocean.
Right on cue, Micko took a look around at the drunk sailors, arguing, cussing, and even kissing. He nodded and pulled Spike into the back of the room, a little ‘galley’ where someone had abandoned a poker game and a few empty bottles of beer.
Micky lowered his voice but was loud enough for Spike to hear, crystal clear. “Have you been back to the boys home?”
Leave it to a water magi to sour the mood, Spike thought with disdain. The highs of victory were always too short lived and confronting one’s emotions so…deeply unpleasant. Spike almost wished he could take up the drink as a hobby, the way some of his fellow sailors did, but the truth was that it affected his magic in such an unpleasant way that he’d be totally useless.
And if there was one thing he couldn’t ever accept in himself—it was weakness.
Better to go with the truth then, if only to get poor, sweet Micky-blue-eyes off his back. Spike shrugged. “Yeah, it’s not in great shape, mate.”
“That old bat nun still there?”
Spike laughed. “Sister Patience? She must have made a deal with darker forces, and not the Goddess, because the woman has aged spectacularly. The home though, not so much.” Now Spike really did want that cigarette back. He poured out the last of the coffee into his mouth and sat the cup down at the card table.
“Yeah, I heard some talk from the other guys,” Micko said, tip-toeing around an accusation. “I hear you been...er…raising money?”
Spike looked behind him, in part to avoid meeting Micko’s stare, but also to make sure Garrison was back on his feet. He hadn’t killed one yet, and he didn’t want tonight to be the nigh. Sure enough, one of the boys with healing magic was tending to the man’s jaw, buried under a coarse beard. He would be fine. Good. Spike liked Garrison.
“Oh, I don’t do gossip,” Spike deflected, as easy as dodging a punch. “I’m much too clean-cut for that.”
Micko wouldn’t have it. “I’m serious, mate, you’re gonna’ get in trouble. You know how the Navy frowns on skimming the cream off the top.”
Spike leaned against the doorway, making sure the muscles in his arm were visible. “I assure you, Micko, I have enough cream to go around.”
Of course, Micko was frustratingly straight, and the posing had no affect. The sailor rolled his eyes. “I’m serious, Spikey. The boys say you’re doing contraband stuff.” He looked around, even though nobody was even remotely paying attention to them. He whispered. “Is it drugs?”
Spike grinned wickedly and returned the dramatic whisper. “Worse!” He laughed, shaking Micko by the shoulders. “Far, far worse!”
But Micko eyes flashed with concern. Not a smile to be found on that handsome, stubbly face.
What a wet blanket, Spike thought, sighing. He thought to say something assuring, if only because he couldn’t stomach the thought of Micko looking so damn sad, but just as he opened his mouth, his ears picked up a dreadful sound.
The sound of his own name.
The crowd parted. Voices hushed. Men looked askance and scattered. The fun was over. The party broken up. The ‘man’ had decided to make an appearance.
Or ‘woman’, rather. The sound of Officer Arcella’s boots on the metal staircase accompanied a wave of fread. It was a sound that stirred up primitive emotions. Fear. Flight.
Dark haired, with painted lips and an icy stare, Arcella had earned herself a few unwarranted nicknames—or so Spike thought. Most considered the tall woman, only a year or two older than Spike, to be somewhat of a ‘ball breaker’. Spike knew she was just doing her job. And doing it well. To wrangle all these idiots and co-manage a whole vessel was not easy work. He admired her just as much as he feared her.
The queen of the ship stood, towering over the men, now shrining away like little boys. It was like back in the orphanage, Spike thought, bemusedly reflecting on how little had changed over the years. Another great, fearsome woman in charge of men who probably didn’t deserve her care or attention. Another role model.
Silence fell, but there was strength in numbers. There were too many men breaking code to discipline properly, and so Arcella couldn’t single out any one of them. Well, almost any one of them.
“Waterford?” Arcella said quietly, which was worse than loud, Spike thought. “Is Waterford down here?”
Suddenly Spike was ten years old again. Micko looked at his friend as if he was about to be marched off the deck of the ship. For all Spike knew, he could see the night ending just like that.
There was no use hiding from the Officer. Spike had a better shot outrunning death. He sauntered out into the middle of the crowd and then coughed to get her attention.
Arcella’s eyes narrowed at him, like a hawk spotting prey. But the anger quickly turned to embarrassment. “Goddess, Waterford,” she groaned. “Put on a damn shirt and report to the CO’s office. On the double.”
_____
The well-kept office of Commanding Officer Haggar was unremarkable. For a naval officer’s station, it held the bare minimum of furnishing. Just a single bookshelf—likely an afterthought, or at the suggestion of his wife—to illustrate out how sparse the office looked. Only a scant few placards and trophies lined the top shelf, and the books—Spike keenly observed—looked like a smattering of manuals and histories. Nothing beloved or well read.
“Explain this,” the ruddy man with the impressive moustache said, slamming a magazine-sized photo down on his desk in front of Spike.
Spike stood at attention in front of the desk, with his hands at his sides. His eyes travelled from Haggar, then to Arcella—trying and failing not to look visibly flustered—and the gray Manhattan skyline observable through the porthole. Spike looked down at the photo, and himself.
It wasn’t his best. Avery, his favorite photographer, had done more creative spreads than this one. But there indeed was Spike, in decadent monochrome, dressed as—what else—a cowboy. Well, dressed in the boots and hat of a cowboy—there wasn’t anything else covering him. With his back, and backside, facing the camera, Spike stood contrapasso against a prop fence, smiling coquettishly over his shoulder at the viewer. If not for the obvious anchor tattoo covering most of his lower back, and pointing down suggestively at his best feature, Spike would have lied about this identity.
Wow, that attractive man with the fantastic bubble butt sure does look a whole lot like me, don’t he?
Haggar raised his eyebrows, meeting Spike’s stare head on. “What is this?”
“Um,” the sailor started in a bored drawl. “That would be my ass, sir.”
Haggar, a man who had seen plenty of violence and destruction in his time, shook his head with disappointment. “This is a disgrace.”
From her corner behind him, Arcella coughed. “Respectfully, sir, it’s actually pretty nice…”
It was in his best interest not to smile, so Spike suppressed a mischievous grin. At the very least they could have used one of my better shots.
If Haggar was trying to hide his blush, he was doing a shoddy job of it. He slammed down another photo, like trying to squash a fly with a swatter. “And THIS?”
Spike looked down at himself. There he was, leaning over with one bicep flexed, gloriously nude with his own sailor’s cap—not a prop—on his head, smiling for the camera.
Much better, Spike thought. Though he’d put on a bit more mass on the arms since that was taken. If there was any crime here, it was that Haggar hadn’t the decorum to go with a more recent photo.
“Pinups?” Haggar spat, as if the word was a war crime. “Who do you think you are, Private Waterford, Betty Page?”
“No, sir,” Spike shrugged. “I think I’m better.”
Well, if he was going to go to Hell for this, might as well go down spectacularly—in a flaming corvette.
Spike watched a vein in Haggar’s neck pulse, but his face remained unchanged. Worse than anger and the fury of a pissed of C.O., Haggar resorted to something far worse—cold, quiet, disappointment. His voice was barely audible.
“You’ve made a mockery of your station with this little side gig here. Not to mention the fights, and other rumors…of which are too shameful to address!”
This was maudlin. Spike shrugged off the accusation. “What can I say, sir? I love being covered in seamen.”
“Do you think this is a joke? What I should do is have you court marshalled!”
Military prison couldn’t be worse than this dump, Spike thought, even though he recognized he was being juvenile. Besides, Haggar just tipped his hand with that ‘should’. There was an ‘out’ here, Spike knew. It just had yet to present itself.
Balance a check book? Spike had no idea. But the one thing he did possess was street smarts.
In his childhood, when Spike was called into Sister Patience’s office for a tongue lashing, he found himself always fixating on a part of the room while the anxiety inside him stewed. Right now, it was the minimalist clock hanging above the portrait of President Dewey. Even in his older years, Spike always thought the man looked like a little boy wearing a fake moustache.
Haggar tapped his pen impatiently on his desk, waiting for Spike to give him an excuse.
“Yes, it’s exactly what it looks like,” Spike said, neither confident nor bothered. “It’s called ‘physique photography’. Go to Europe, this stuff is on the newsstands.”
“Lad, need I point out that THIS IS AMERICA. And I wouldn’t point to Europe as the gold standard of morality these days.”
There was little point in playing politics here, or making a defense of art. Plain and simple, whether there was artistic merit to these pictures or not—and Spike genuinely believed there was—it didn’t stop a bunch of scared, horny men from purchasing them through dubious, mail-order means.
“I was just trying to raise money for my old home,” Spike said, which was mostly the truth. “I was trying to do some good.”
The broad-shouldered officer sat back in his office chair, winced, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Behind him, Arcella looked down at her shoes. Spike knew where this was going.
“Good?” Haggar echoed, though the iciness in his voice had thawed. “Is being part of the most powerful navy on the planet not ‘good’ enough for you, private? I know my men. I may not have an ounce of magic running through my veins, but I like to think I’m a good judge of character.”
All of that was technically true, Spike thought.
“This isn’t just about raising money,” Haggar started up ahain, with sigh. “Simply put, you’re bored. Yes, bored. I’ve met my fair share of men like you. Young, good looking guys like yourself who come aboard for the adventure. To see the world. To run away from something, or run towards something—and with you, I must admit I’ve never quite figured out which. But serve? No. You have no interest. The last time men like you were interested was when we had a war on. Times have changed.”
Spike couldn’t discern whether Haggar lamented peacetime or what peacetime meant for recruitment. Hard times and hard men and all that.
Still, this conversation had gone better than anticipated. And if this was a time for honesty, then Spike figured it best to let it all out. “Sir, I don’t feel like I’m doing much of anything these days. I don’t think I am any help.”
Anger flashed across Haggar’s eyes. “Serving your country is not nothing, private.”
“You see those towers out there?” Spike said, pointing to the skyline with all its skyscrapers and skyways and dirigibles coming in and out of port. “That big city?”
Haggar gave Manhattan a passing glance. “Yeah? What are you playing at?”
A parting shot before the sentencing. If Haggar wanted honesty, he was going to get it. “Look, I may not be the brightest bulb in the shed…”
Arcella and Haggar exchanged mildly embarrassed glances.
“Or whatever! But look outside that window over there,” Spike said, in a collected voice he almost didn’t recognize coming from himself. It was an odd thing these days, being serious, speaking from the heart.
“No, really take a look. For the last ten years or so, those towers, those skyscrapers—even the colossi that hold those highways on their shoulders—have gotten bigger and bigger. But my old neighborhood? Still in the shadows. In a worse state than when I was there. What are we doing to help all of that? We’re not at war anymore. What are we doing?”
The room fell quiet, save Haggar’s rough breathing.
“You’re outspoken,” Haggar said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the proclamation. “I will give you that.”
Surprising Spike most of all was Arcella, who jumped into this verbal dressing down to defend him. “If I may, sir. This isn’t just about boredom or lofty ideals. Waterford, you’re a tremendous hedonist. But we are not running a pleasure cruise. Now, I know you’re making money for a good cause. I believe that. But it’s not about just that, is it? The fights. These cheesecake pictures.” She gestured to the literal naked truth spread across the mahogany desk. “You crave attention, don’t you? Admiration.”
Court marshalling was suddenly a much more attractive prospect than having to endure another moment of this dissection. Spike glanced at his photos and felt somehow more nude.
His mouth went dry. But he mustered the sass, like always. “I plead the fifth.”
Haggar and Arcella knew this was as much as they were going to get out of him.
The C.O. folded his hands gently on the table. “Well, despite your…proclivities, of which I do not condone, you have demonstrated valor. I am also aware of the sacrifices your parents made during the war. None of that, nor your talents, are lost on me.”
All very kind words that were nothing more than window dressing. “While I sincerely thank you for your candor, Sir, I suspect a ‘but’ is coming.”
There was no way he had learned the word ‘candor’ on his own, Haggar thought, contemptuously. “No, what was coming was having you thrown into a military prison for about a year or so until you shaped up. Instead, I am putting you ashore. Dishonorable discharge.”
“Great,” Spike said flatly. He sniffed. “Fine. I didn’t really want to fight this country’s next war anyway.”
“Keep talking like that and I will change my mind.”
Spike toyed with his fingers, behind his back. “My apologies,” he said, head bowed. “Is that all, sir?”
He was ready to throw himself overboard at this point, if only to break the tension.
Haggar looked at him like an animal discarded on the side of the highway. Pitiful. And no longer his problem. “You have ‘til dawn to pack your bags. We’re docking in Manhattan. Consider yourself dismissed.”
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