The Icewater Dare

My name is Alanna Mathews, I'm forty-seven years old, and I've been a deckhand on the M.V. Orkney Star for eleven years. The Orkney Star runs from Kirkwall to Bergen, six nights across the North Sea, and in late autumn the North Sea is not in a forgiving mood. Neither am I, most mornings.

Here's a thing nobody tells you about working a ferry: you see the same kinds of passengers over and over. The honeymooners. The grumpy retirees. The sad ones, and oh, the sad ones are my favorites, because they travel alone and stare at the water like it owes them an apology.

The man with the museum brochure was a sad one. I found out later his name was Justin Ellison, he was twenty-eight, and he was a junior curator at the Orkney Maritime Museum, which is honestly the most On Brand thing I've ever heard. He'd just been dumped by a girlfriend of six years, a woman called Sienna, and he had that look. The look that says I have recently remembered I am a person and I don't care for it.

I noticed him during the mandatory safety drill, because I was the one running it. There's nothing like shouting MUSTER STATIONS at a crowd of tourists to make you feel like a god, let me tell you.

"Lifejackets on!" I yelled. "Buckles tight! If you can still breathe, it's too loose!"

A woman near the front laughed. Most people don't. Most people look at you like you've personally insulted their grandmother.

But him. He was fumbling with the buckles, and his hands were shaking so badly I could see it from ten feet away. Not cold-shaking. Nerves. The poor man looked like he expected the drill itself to sink the ship.

"You alright there?" I asked, walking over. "You look like you're defusing something."

"Sorry. Sorry. I've never... I don't do boats very often," he said. "Which is ridiculous, I know, I literally work at a maritime museum."

"Ha. You work at the museum and you can't work a buckle?"

"I catalog things," he said, going red. "Things don't fight back."

Well. I'm forty-seven, I've been widowed for a decade, and I had one affair at thirty-nine with a passenger that ended perfectly nicely when we hit Bergen and never called each other. I'm not proud or ashamed of it. It just is. And something about this shivering curator made me feel twenty-two again, in the good way, in the way where you want to be bold on purpose.

So I did a stupid thing. I held out my wrist.

"Here. Do it up for me."

He stared. "Sorry, what?"

"My jacket. Buckle it. You've got the practice one on your own, but mine's a different clip and I want to see if you can manage it." All of that was true, by the way, but it was also a dare, and we both knew it.

"In front of everyone?"

"Everyone's busy fumbling with their own. Go on. Unless you're scared of a buckle."

His hands came up. They were still trembling, oh, they were trembling like anything, and he got the clip on the third try. But here's the part I keep coming back to: he didn't pull away right after. He laid his fingers on the inside of my wrist for maybe four whole seconds, right over the pulse, and I let him, and the whole deck could have fallen into the sea for all I cared.

"There," he said, quiet. "Done."

"Good lad. See? Things can fight back and you survive."

He laughed at that, a real laugh, surprised out of him. I walked off before either of us could ruin it.

* * *

Second night out, the North Sea decided to be dramatic, all fog and long swells, and the passengers mostly hid in their cabins. Which meant the crew lounge was empty when I came off my watch, and there he was, sitting in the corner with a paperback, like he'd wandered into the one room on the ship he wasn't supposed to find.

"That's crew only," I said.

He jumped about a foot. "Oh. God. Sorry, the door was open, I just wanted somewhere quiet, I can go..."

"Sit down. I'm kidding. We're all too tired to care at nine at night." I dropped into the chair across from him and put my feet up on the coffee table, because I'm a professional. "What's the book?"

"It's about wreck salvage. Norwegian coast." He held it up like evidence. "I told you. On brand."

"Did your girlfriend like boats?"

He winced. "She hated them. Six years and she never once came to a thing at the museum. That's... yeah. That was probably a sign."

"Six years. Ouch. You're what, twenty-eight?"

"Twenty-eight. You?"

"Forty-seven. Old enough to know better, which has never once stopped me." I leaned forward. "Justin. Can I ask you something?"

"Probably?"

"Do you feel anything right now? Real anything? Or is it all still that gray sludge you get after a breakup?"

He put the book down very slowly. "The sludge. Mostly sludge. Why?"

"Because I'm about to dare you to do something, and I'd rather you do it because you want to feel something, not because you're numb. Those are different."

"And the dare is...?"

"A kiss." I said it plain, because that's how dares work. "A real one, right here on this ugly sofa, and then we both go to bed and no harm done. Or you say no, and I go finish my tea, and no harm done that way either. Your call entirely."

He stared at me for a moment, his mouth hanging open. Then he said, "You're serious."

"Deadly serious. I've daresayed better men than you and worse."

"That's not a word."

"It is on this ship," I laughed. "So? Yes or no?"

"Yes," he said, and then, quicker, like he was scared he'd lose the nerve, "yes. Please."

"Please. Aren't you polite."

He leaned across the coffee table, which was awkward and involved his elbow nearly in my tea, and then his lips met mine and honestly, the awkwardness lasted about a second and a half. He kissed like someone who'd been holding still for six years and had just been given permission to move. His hand came up to my jaw, careful, and I made a low sound into his mouth that I'd deny under oath.

When we finally broke apart he was breathing hard and so was I, and the fog outside the porthole could have swallowed the whole North Sea.

"That was..." he started.

"Longer than the dare called for, aye."

"Sorry. Was that... I should have stopped sooner, I..."

"Justin." I put my hand flat on his chest, over his heartbeat, which was going like it was a drum line. "It was lovely. Nobody's complaining. But let's get the rules straight before you apologize yourself right out of the room."

"Rules?"

"Rules. One: anything that happens, we ask first. Every step, every time. I ask you, you ask me. Two: you can say stop whenever you like and it stops, no sulking, no begging, and I expect the same. Three: no promises. We dock in Bergen in four days and whatever this is, it doesn't owe us anything after that."

He was nodding before I even finished. "Three rules. That's... okay, honestly, that's the most direct conversation I've had in years. Sienna and I never..." He stopped himself. "Sorry. Not comparing. Rule violation, sort of."

"Half a violation. I'll allow it." I stood up and stretched, making sure he got a decent look, because I'm forty-seven, not dead. "Off to bed with you. Big day tomorrow. Cargo hold's got cars to chain down and I've got a dare in mind."

"You have MORE dares?"

"I have a whole list. I've been bored for eleven years, Justin. You've got no idea what you've unleashed."

He laughed again, that surprised laugh, and gathered up his book. At the door he turned around. "Alanna? Thank you. For the, um. For asking first."

"Goodnight, curator."

And I sat there with my cold tea grinning like an idiot, because I'd kissed a stranger on my own ugly sofa and meant every second of it. Four days to Bergen. I had dares to plan.

The third night out, the fog got thick enough to spread on toast. I found Justin up on the upper deck at midnight, leaning on the railing like a man in a painting nobody finished.

"There you are. I've been looking all over the smoking area, the mess, and one very confused engineer's cabin."

"You looked in a cabin?" He sounded alarmed.

"I knocked. I'm a deckhand, not a burglar. Come here, I've got a dare and the conditions have to be right for it."

He followed me along the deck. The fog was sitting on the water so heavy the ship sounded like it was sailing through wool. You could hear the engines and nothing else. Perfect.

"Right. Here's the dare." I turned him around so his back was against the railing. "I'm going to kiss your neck. Your job is to not move. Not a step, not a flinch, nothing. Stand there as if you were a museum piece. You're good at standing still, aren't you? All that curating?"

"That's not... curating is very active, actually. There's a lot of..."

"Justin."

"Standing still. I can do standing still."

"Good boy. Oh, don't make that face, you loved that."

He laughed, and then he went still, properly still, hands flat on the railing behind him. I put my palms on his chest first, just to let him know where I was, because fair's fair and rule one is ask first. "Still a yes?" I said, and he said, "Yes," very quietly. Then I leaned in and put my mouth just under his ear.

I took my time. I'll admit that. I kissed the side of his neck, slow, then a bit lower where the pulse sits, and I felt it jumping under my lips like a rabbit in a sack. He made a sound. Not a word, just a low helpless noise, and his whole body wanted to shake and didn't.

The cold was getting to him, I could feel it, he was shivering through his coat. But I'd have put money it wasn't only the cold, not by that point.

"Still with me?" I said against his skin.

"Yes," he managed. "Why... why is this a dare? This is..."

"Because you'd never have asked for it. That is the entire point of dares. They give shy people permission." I kissed his throat one more time, right under the jaw, and felt his knees actually bend a little. "There. Dare complete. You didn't move an inch. Well done."

"I moved internally," he said. "Massively internally."

"I know. I felt it. That's the fun part." I stepped back and looked at him, flushed and fog-damp and grinning like he'd won something. "Go to bed, curator. Tomorrow's dare needs you rested."

"There's a tomorrow dare?"

"There's a whole list. I told you."

* * *

The tomorrow dare happened sooner than tomorrow, because that's how these things go. Same night, actually, about one in the morning, when I came off watch and found the lounge light still on.

He was in the same chair, book closed on his knee, not reading it. He'd clearly been sitting there deciding something for an hour.

"You're up late," I said, hanging my jacket on the hook.

"I couldn't sleep. My neck is... there's a lot of nerve endings in a neck, did you know that? I did not know that."

I laughed and sat down across from him. My legs ached from the watch and the sea had a long lazy swell on, enough to make the sofa breathe under you. "Well. Since you're up anyway."

"Is it a dare?" He put the book down. "It's a dare, isn't it. I can tell by your face."

"It might be a dare." I kicked my boots off, because I'm a professional and also my feet were killing me. "This one's bigger. You can say no and nothing changes, I want that said first. Rule two, remember."

"I remember all three rules. I've been lying here reciting them like scripture."

"Then here it is." I looked at him straight, because this one deserved eye contact. "I want your hand between my legs. Under my trousers. And I want you to keep it there, doing what I tell you, until I say stop. That's the dare. Not for you, mind. For me. I want to see if you'll actually do it."

His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"That's... you're sure? You're asking me to..."

"I'm asking. That's the point, I'm asking. Forty-seven years old, Justin, I've done this dance before, one affair with a passenger when I was thirty-nine, ended when we hit Bergen, all very tidy. I know what I'm asking for." I stood up, crossed the little bit of floor between our chairs, and sat down next to him on the sofa. The ship rolled, gentle, like it was helping. "Question is, do you?"

"Yes," he said, and then, because he's Justin, "yes, but can I ask, why me? You must have..."

"Because you're here, and you're kind, and you shake when I touch you, and nobody's shaken in eleven years of me shouting at tourists about lifejackets. Any more questions or can we get on with it?"

"No more questions. God. No."

I took his hand. His fingers were cold and there was a tremor in them that had nothing to do with the deck. I put them on the waistband of my trousers and waited, because rule one, ask first, and this was me asking.

"Go on then. Slowly. You're not chainsawing timber."

He fumbled the button with shaking hands, which I found, honestly, charming. Then his fingers slid down under the waistband