oh but… Stephen and Jack sharing a bed in an inn or smth between posts…
Stephen goodnaturedly complaining that Jack is so massive as to take up all of whatever bed he might lie in, and Jack, embarrassed and ashamed, immediately insists he must sleep upon the floor, to which stephen rapidly winds his arms around his waist and tugs him back
“jack! i should not worry for your great size - i am a small man, aren’t i? i might fit happily into the gaps you leave”
“how can a man sleep in the gaps another man allows for on the bed?”
“happily, when the other man is quite so warm as this one, and with so comfortable a breast to lay one’s head upon”
and jack, torn between being even more embarrassed and just. chortling, as he does, smacking at Stephen’s hands
cut to jack who wakes up in the night to find that Stephen is fucking Sprawled on the bed, with jack curled up against his side and taking up barely any of it, and he just. laughs privately to himself and curls his hand in Stephen’s hair where it’s crammed against jack’s chest, and goes back to sleep
really can’t emphasize enough that the main plot of HMS Surprise is that Jack rescues a fragile and sickly Stephen after days of brutal torture at the hands of the French and attempts to nurse him back to health only to spend the rest of the book in steadily rising panic as Stephen climbs the ratlines, does drugs, calls his ex, gets his dick out in public, starts a duel, buys a sloth, gets shot, proposes to his ex, blows his cover, drinks bird shit, kills a man, gets marooned, breaks the law, and almost adopts a nine year old
