Erik is sitting in the bench that had been Meridian’s berth the night before, and the table is half unfolded so he can lean his elbows and rest a beer on it.

The other side is still folded so that Beau can bustle about, arranging things on the boat.

The Murmuration is topside with their own beer, having a conversation amongst themselves.

In Erik’s left hand is his phone, and he’s gazing at it, contemplating an utter lack of messages. There’ve been no updates to anybody’s accounts on any of his social media since he last checked. It’s been a dead few hours. And nothing at all from Goreth, yet.

He’s stuck on trying to decide whether to follow up on that hallucination.

If his communication with the Murmuration really happened, and he’s now talked to several witnesses who claim it did, then maybe Goreth wasn’t an hallucination. And that possibility kind of freaks him out more than he expected it would when it was happening.

What if it was real, but Goreth doesn’t remember it? How would that make Goreth feel? Does he want to provoke those feelings in his friend?

The conversation they’d had supposedly had given Erik information about Goreth’s day. He could conceivably confirm the veracity of it by asking Goreth about the transphobe they’d said they’d encountered. But is that the way to do things?

In the wake of his most recent episode, he’s finding himself beset by some garden variety Autistic/ADHD anxiety. It’s kind of ridiculous how he has to constantly double check himself to see if his beliefs and feelings are being reasonable. And sometimes it’s easier to just accept it and go with the flow.

He shelves the questions for the time being and puts his phone face down on the table.

“We good?” he asks Beau.

“Yep!” Beau whirls in mid stride to respond cheerfully with his incredible smile and quickly raised eyebrows. Then he turns again to swing into the Navigation seat, out of immediate sight of Erik, to do something there.

“Wow, that smile of yours.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s like cupid firing a fucking ballista at me!”

“Are you asking me to put it away or fire it off more often?”

“Just kill me with it. Put me out of my misery,” Erik says.

“There is nothing miserable about you, Erik,” Beau retorts.

“I have doubts.”

“We all do. But I’m telling you how it looks from my side, OK? Yeah, you can be as wild and rough as the sea, sometimes. But, Erik. I’m the captain.”

Oh, wow, does that line fill Erik with warmth. Holy shit. He even twitches.

He still has to double check, “Can we do this?”

Beau leans over to look around the Nav station’s cabinet at him, spearing him with an even stare, and after a heartbeat says, “I can do this. Are you asking me if I think you can do this?”

Erik is pretty sure they both mean the same thing by ‘this’. He thinks it’s pretty obvious, and Beau is not giving the word any emphasis that sounds like he’s taking it for a euphemism for what the lower half of Erik really wants right now. ‘This’ means ‘all of this, the trip, our plans, our relationship, all of it.’ Beau’s perfectly calm demeanor and even tone seems to indicate that it doesn’t need clarification.

He can’t help but ask anyway, “You’re not even going to ask what ‘this’ is?”

“Erik, I know this conversation well. I know what ‘this’ is. It’s you and me.”

“Yeah.”

“What are you worried about?”

Erik pushes himself back up against the bulkhead, adjusting his seating so that he’s more upright but also supported by the structures of the boat, Trinity, and takes a big breath and holds it a moment.

Beau gets up from his seat and sits opposite of Erik, on the other bench, then reaches down and unfolds that side of the table so that he can lean across it and lay his hands palm up on Erik’s side. But he doesn’t wait for Erik to take them, and doesn’t seem hurt or impatient that Erik isn’t doing so.

“Erik. Let me tell you something. I mean this in the best possible way. If this can be misinterpreted, I’m sorry,” Beau says, looking down at his hands. They are not particularly big hands, but his fingers are long, and they are covered with callouses that are as lovingly taken care of as the teak of his boat. They are thick and protective, textured and storied, and perfectly moisturized. He briefly glances at Erik to double check, but then looks back down at his palms to talk. “There’s an interview with Captain Bill Pinkney, the man I served under to run the Amistade as a museum piece. There are actually a few interviews, but in this one he says a thing I’ve heard him say before when talking to a new group of volunteers. I’m not going to try to get the words exactly right. I’m not good at that. But I think I can get the gist of it well enough, if maybe put my own spin on it. And I can help you find the interview later if you want to listen to it. It’s really good. I never knew him personally as anything other than my boss’s boss. First Black man to circumnavigate the globe.”

Beau stops talking for a while, apparently to gather his memories and think about what he’s saying. He seems emotional, too. Like, maybe there’s some sadness there. Or pride. It’s a hard to read expression, and Erik realizes he’s going to have to wait to learn where it’s coming from.

He gives Beau all the time he needs. It’s an easy thing to do.

Beau lightly clenches his fingers and then lets them relax again, and says, in a slightly different voice, “Sailing is an endeavor that can really teach you about yourself, about where your limits are, and about what you can do. It can be a lot of fun, and gorgeously beautiful, and it takes you away from everything else in the world for a while. But it also tests your limits beyond anything you’ve likely imagined. Especially if you’re sailing the open sea. It can kill you.” He relaxes his hands completely, letting them roll inward a little bit, closing the gesture by default, but leaves them out on the table, and looks at Erik again. “I’m never going to demand or expect that you follow me out across the ocean, Erik. Ever. I’d never do that to anybody, but especially not someone I love. But I’ll help you face it yourself, if you ever want to. I’ll give you the tools and be your best deckhand. You got it?”

That puts a lump in Erik’s throat and he feels his eyes trying to fill with water. He isn’t sure how to respond, but catches himself taking a quick shuddering breath.

“Don’t say anything now,” Beau says. “Just let me know when you do understand what I’m layin’ down for you.”

Slowly Erik starts to nod. He moistens his lips, and closes his eyes, and leans forward to reach out and put his hands into Beau’s hands because he just needs to feel his boyfriend’s fingers in his, to feel their grip around his knuckles, and to sink into that feeling.

And Beau gently adjusts his hands to accommodate with a firm but soft grip.

Erik’s damn mouth won’t take ‘no’ for a smile, twitching and spreading outward. And he can feel his dimples deepening. It’s so annoying, but it also fills him with shuddering happiness.

“Yeah,” he horsley croaks. “I think some of me really does get it. Thank you.”

After a few more heartbeats, he hears Beau ask, “So. Do you think you can do this?”

He doesn’t answer right away. He calms his body and asks his selves the question, and waits for them to answer.

He knows he’s not going to get an inner dialogue about it. Not now. The best he can hope for is a chorus of raw emotions that he’ll have to pick through and interpret as votes.

But instead he feels all the tension in his body drift away like fog over a placid, still lake in the late morning, to let the sun shine deep into the clearest water and touch the lake bed.

He opens his eyes and looks at Beau and asks, “Would you be against goin’ hiking sometimes, too?”

“Nah. I fuckin’ love hiking. Especially up a mountain that has a view of the ocean.”

“Yeah, OK,” Erik grins. “I think we maybe speak enough of the same languages, I can do this with you.”

Beau squeezes his hands and says, “Good.”

“But also. I can’t hold this in much longer. I gotta say it, at least.”

“What?”

“I really want to jump the fuck out of you right now.”

Beau glances up and aftward at the companionway, the hatch the deck, and grunts through a smirk. “Well, Murmur’s an adult and I could close that and let them know to stay out there ‘till I say, I s’pose.”

“Ooh.”

Beau glances impishly back at him and asks, “You aren’t gonna give me cuttlecrabs, are ya?”

Erik lifts both their hands up and pounds them on the table, “Dammit, no!” Then he has a pause, and looks aside for a moment, then spears Beau’s nose with a look. “But, if you want ‘em…”

Beau cackles. And then shakes his head, “Not yet, please!”

—

It’s not like they haven’t already had the best sex ever before. And the v-berth in the bow of Trinity isn’t really the most comfortable place to go about it.

But something about the way the day has gone, what it was full of, their conversation, and the fact that Trinity is Beau’s home, all culminates in one of the most satisfying releases Erik has felt in a long time. And when they’re done, he lies there floating on the endorphins and freshly oxygenated blood for a long time afterward, not saying a thing.

Beau seems adorably proud of himself and equally contemplative.

—

“Are we really going to go up to B.C.?” the Murmuration asks over making dinner.

They’re having bratwursts, sauerkraut, and mashed potatoes. So, it isn’t a whole lot of work, and Murmur’s volunteered to do all of it, to give Beau a break. Which Beau has begrudgingly accepted.

The one job Beau seems to have a hard time giving up is cooking. But, by doing so, he gets to be Erik’s big cushion for a while longer as they both recline on the larger of the central berths. And Erik appreciates he chose that for him.

“You’ve both got your passports, right?” Beau asks.

“Yep,” Erik says.

“Yeah. One of the first things we got before Trump could sour the passport office against us all,” the Murmuration replies. “Ten years, too. To be sure.”

“Same,” Erik adds.

“Then we can if you still want,” Beau tells them.

“I think we do,” the Murmuration says. “This trip has been good for our work, believe it or not. Not the most ergonomic arrangement for it, but mentally? Yeah. You’ve given us a good time and space for it. And Rräoha and the crabs should get to see Puget Sound and the Straight.”

“Mmm,” Beau rumbles, and Erik can feel him nod. “How about you, My Council of Hobgoblins?” he asks Erik.

“We already gave you our votes, Beau,” Erik says. “Just. I think we also all want to take Meridian’s advice. Can we make sure we do that? Go hug a big ass and ancient tree?”

“Sure thing. Let’s plan it out after dinner.”

“Sounds good.”

Erik’s phone buzzes and he pulls it out.

It’s not Goreth. Just some pharmacy spam in his email inbox his phone mistook for important.

He gives a quick sigh.

“What is it?” Beau asks.

“Not what I was expecting,” Erik murmurs.

“Well?”

“OK.” He continues to lie on his boyfriend and stares up at the ceiling of the cabin to consider what to say. “You know how I said I’d hallucinated seeing Goreth in this cabin, like right here?” He waves his left hand through the space where Goreth had been.

Beau and the Murmuration utter, “yep,” at the same time, then they aim finger guns at each other. And Erik finds himself creasing his brow and shaking his head against Beau’s chest at the whole unlikely exchange.

“Well, I made a deal with Goreth that we’d message each other about it later, to see if it had been real,” Erik says. “But they haven’t sent anything, and I’m having trouble getting myself to text them instead. RSD or something, you know?”

“Ooh!” the Murmuration exclaims, “Let me do it!”

Erik frowns at them. That sounded a lot like Rräoha, but it wasn’t gem’s usual kind of demeanor or phrasing. But the novelty of sparking Rräoha’s interest sort of breaks him of any objection he feels he’d have over the idea.

He purses his lips and says, “Sure.”

There’s a dark, mischievous grin, and then definitely it’s Rräoha who asks, “Am I making this expression correctly?”

“I think so,” Beau says over Erik’s head.

“Yeah,” Erik confirms.

“Good,” Rräoha says. “Then inform me. What should I text to Goreth?”

Erik’s had this figured out for a while now, “Tell ‘em I say that the bus stop transphobe can go to hell.”

“I do not understand that, but Shelly knows how to spell it,” Rräoha reports. Then nods, and abandons cooking for a moment to retrieve the Murmuration’s phone from the Nav station. Gem then frowns as gem pecks at the little screen’s keyboard with an index finger. “Just like my tablet on the Sunspot. But too small and too manual.”

“Tell me about it,” Erik says.

“When you have a Tutor, you can just speak to it, and it does everything for you, if you want. And when you don’t have a Tutor, the Network has excellent voice recognition anyway. You just have to work harder to give it the right commands,” Rräoha says. “You can write with your finger like this. Which is good for quiet and privacy. But it’s different. And I was always alone, and I liked my voice.” Gem puts the phone back down on the Nav station. “There. It is sent.”

“Let us all know what their reply is.”

“Of course.”