The varnished table is cool beneath Goodsir’s back; he is acutely aware of every split and splinter that mars its surface, and he would be so even if he were not lying naked upon it, as stripped and scrubbed as the day he was born. Hickey lifts his right forearm from the table, turning it a little in his grip; the blade of his small neat thumb makes the hairs on the back of Goodsir’s wrist prickle, and it is all he can do to keep perfectly still.

“There’s a good specimen for you,” Mr. Hickey says, to nobody in particular. Perhaps he chats to himself as he works; it would explain some of his duty owing, and he certainly enjoys the sound of his own voice. “A fine piece of meat for the anatomists. He’s kept himself in good form, he’s got all his parts. Such a stiff should fetch ten pound, maybe more. I like the look of him.”

His coarseness gives Harry an obscure thrill. Hickey lets the limb drop, to rest against the table wherever it might fall. That same grip explores the swell of his bicep and the corner of his jaw, mercilessly roving over Goodsir’s body with absolute indifference to all decorum. It is not a man of medicine who handles him now, or a fellow surgeon who sees the function and grace in the whorl of an ear or the swell of a knuckle, but only the coarsest kind of trader in human flesh, who looks at a lifeless human body and sees only the profit it’ll bring him. Harry has never trucked with such men before, not even in his position at Surgeons’ Hall. Though traffic in cadavers certainly took place, it transpired politely out of sight, with a kind veneer of educational intention to justify it. There is nothing polite in how Mr. Hickey paws him.

The horror of such dispassionate touch has his heart pounding in Harry’s chest, and all his blood is in a paradoxical rush; his heart is beating so hard that he is certain it must be visible from outside, betraying his excitement. Goodsir lies very still, breathing as shallowly as he can — the better to maintain the illusion of his passivity, though he can still smell the faint sweetness of Hickey’s breath and the reek of burnt tobacco. Hickey brushes his fingers through the hair on Goodsir’s chest, following the soft ventral line that divides him from collarbone to navel. His hands are warm against the cool scrubbed surface of Goodsir’s skin.

“It seems a shame, putting such a comely fellow in the ground. Waste of good flesh.”

A thumb brushing over one nipple, then a tweak. Hickey teases at his nipples, tracing them in circles with the tip of a finger only to flick at them with the tip of one curt fingernail. As his manipulations become rougher Harry must stifle a groan, and it cannot be lost on the man for he redoubles his efforts.

“What nice tits he had. I hate to think of someone cutting into them.”

The weight of Hickey’s body shifts against him, and he ducks his head low against Goodsir’s chest to suckle at him, plucking at the tender skin of one nipple with his teeth.

The bloom of pleasure rises through him and Harry is helpless against it. Hickey explores his body with both hands, mapping his waist and sides with lascivious touches freer than any he has ever known. Harry can feel that lewd regard roving over his belly, with its coarse black hair, and inching toward the polite drape of cloth that conceals Goodsir’s genitals.

Hickey caresses at his naked hip, tracing the iliac furrow with his fingers down to the tangle of coarse hair there. There, Harry is stirring, despite all his efforts to remain perfectly still and impassive. All the strange buffets and rough handling of this perverse game has stirred him in some indescribable fashion, on some level he can hardly understand.

Hickey gropes at him shamelessly, palming his stiffening cock through the fabric. Goodsir is achingly hard already as if the stillness of his other limbs has left those parts extraordinarily keen to the smallest touch — and Hickey is not gentle with him, he is not deferential in his handling or the least bit concerned with propriety. Even in the operating theater, Goodsir had shown a certain degree of regard for the cadavers on which he learned his surgery. They were men and women once, however poor and humble, and their bodies held the secrets of nature for an attentive student to discover. Hickey has no such qualms, and no such sense of wonder. He positions him as he pleases, and makes coarse jokes as he goes. All the while his vulgar chattering continues. Goodsir’s shameful parts receive the same treatment of callous curiosity: Hickey plays with his foreskin, slipping a deft fingertip beneath it to stroke the sensitized flesh beneath.

“There’s still some life in the old fellow yet. They say hanged men die stiff, but I’ve never seen a cock like this one on a condemned man. It seems a shame, for such a pretty thing to go to waste on a dead man. What a beauty — fit to split you in two, that is. He must have made a first-class fuck. Now, I wonder…”

Hickey spans him with his fingers with an appreciative murmur. The cloth tugs away with a lick of cool air and all modesty is abandoned. Goodsir cannot help himself. He opens his eyes,

Hickey’s face is sweetly devilish as he clambers atop him. The weight of his body is not insignificant, but his small neat body is all control, and his slimly muscled thighs bracket Goodsir’s hips with the grace of a young animal. Mr. Hickey’s tool is shining proud and pert, dark with blood against his flat white belly. His hips grind against him shamelessly, and Goodsir gasps and shudders, bracing his arms against the wooden table-top.

Hickey’s little fingers play over his arsehole, guiding Goodsir’s cock there to rub against the tender portal of his body, but he does not take him inside himself — he holds him there between his near-hairless thighs and rocks forward and back, keeping him pinned in a narrow place of friction and heat.

Goodsir gasps for breath as his hips jerk; he must grope helplessly for some kind of purchase, he must brace himself or the sweat-wet slip of Hickey’s body will batter him to pieces. Their pricks chafe together in a spill of seed, joined together in a ruddy clasp of flesh.

Hickey does not look him in the eye; he no longer speaks. Charm is no longer a part of it, only the interlocking of bodies and the closeness of limbs. Goodsir is only a body to him now, unspeaking and unconscious — and pleasure has chased him beyond articulate thought now. Here on the table Harry is a creature of pure appetite, and he must chase his pleasure to the end; everything else is deadened and cut away.

Hickey spills himself on Goodsir’s hairy belly and keeps going, past the edge of endurance. His body is bathed in a mottled pink flush, and the tight press of his thighs is like a clasping hand, working Goodsir until he groans in a heated rub of flesh, as soft as a woman’s.

Goodsir gasps, "oh, oh," and he cannot help himself from arching back against the sickbay table. He is near his limit, close to the edge. At the last, Hickey arches forward against him, bending low over his chest; he caresses Goodsir’s face, fingering the prickling edge of his whiskers.

“Hold still, Harry.”

Hickey’s hand clamps down over his eyes. When he spends, Goodsir does so in darkness.