When Jason entered the wheelhouse, Bruce had out the notebook that meant he planned to conduct a suprise search of the crew's quarters. Jason hadn't noticed any strange behavior from anyone, so he wasn't sure what Bruce expected to find.

Or, judging from the way Bruce jerked open the notebook and shoved it at Jason, he had already done an inspection.

He looked down at the notes, but nothing immediately jumped out at him. Survival suits were listed as being where they should be, nothing illegal hidden in the bunks, hell, even all the beds were made-

Oh.

Shit.

"Are you fucking the greenhorn?!" Bruce looked torn between anger and disbelief.

Jason considered denying the charge, but that would only delay the inevitable, even if he was able to somehow convince Bruce that, no, he was totally sleeping in his own bunk, he'd just suddenly developed a taste for making the bed each day. Yeah, that had about the same chance of working as an unbaited pot. Plus, the shared mark on his and Roy's wrists would give them away sooner or later no matter what answer he gave now.

Still, he hoped he could avoid having a serious conversation about this, or at least put it off until they were on land, and not in the tight quarters of the boat. "Well, about half the time, yeah." He managed to deliver the line deadpan, and the appalled look on Bruce's face was worth the effort.

Bruce glared at him. "No, I don't want to hear anything more about what my son is doing with my greenhorn. We'll talk later about how irresponsible this is. Out. Now." Bruce pointed at the stairs out of the wheelhouse, and Jason happily obliged.

….2 Months Earlier…

From his position by the stove, Jason had a decent view of his four crewmates- Roy, his brothers Dick and Tim, and his sister Cassandra- and the two cameramen-sans cameras- who were sitting around the kitchen table, waiting as he made the final touches to the meal. They were comparing marks, arguing over whose was the most interesting, and trading light barbs about any embarrassing connotation they could find for the images that graced the other's wrists.

When Roy rolled up his sleeve to show a better view of his, Jason was suddenly very glad that Bruce, who had known what Jason's mark looked like since the day it appeared- on Jason's 16th birthday, naturally-, was still upstairs in the wheelhouse. As it was, he very nearly dropped the heavy pan that he had been transferring across the counter, barely saving it only at the last possible moment.

The mark on Roy's arm was an exact match for his own; a fat red King Crab with black wings that matched the ones painted on the side of the Northern Batfish. At the sight of it, the crew made all of the requisite 'crabs' jokes that Jason had heard himself a thousand times before, as well as making one comment that maybe the wings meant that Roy's match was a vampire.

Jason himself stayed quiet, instead focussing just enough on the food to not burn himself as he considered this discovery. Despite the initial shock, he wasn't entirely surprised that Roy was his match; they got along well, they cared about each other, and he couldn't deny that Roy was pretty easy on the eyes. Well, at least when he wasn't covered in fish guts. That had a tendency to drive just about anyone a few points down the scale.

By the time the food was ready, the group had thankfully moved onto the next person's arm, and Roy had rolled his sleeve back into its original position, which hopefully meant that Bruce wouldn't have the opportunity to see the mark.

Jason made sure his own sleeve was firmly in place before carrying the food to the table; he was pretty sure his mark had been visible to his siblings at some point before, but with any luck they would have forgotten it's exact details in the years he had been covering it to prevent the camera from catching it, and there was no need to remind them of those details now. Except, as Jason approached the table, Dick gave him a knowing look, and he belatedly realized that, shit, Dick knew just as well as Bruce what Jason's mark looked like, having been there when it had first formed, and during Jason's initial phase of fascination with the mark that had included leaving it uncovered as often as possible. Jason looked back at him, silently pleading with him not to say anything to anyone else. Dick nodded almost imperceptibly, and Jason heaved an internal sigh of relief.

He'd tell Roy next time they had a chance to talk alone, preferably in port, but for now they were at sea, and their matching marks would remain a secret from everyone but Dick. It wasn't that he thought that anyone would react badly, necessarily, but fishing tended not to mix well with surprises, especially of the potentially life-changing kind.

Downstairs, Jason spotted Roy easily, and came up with a quick excuse to get him down to the engine room. It was pretty hard to have any conversation alone on a crab boat, especially one that came with a camera crew, but everyone knew well that they were not to enter the engine room without his direct say-so, and the camera crew had had the foresight not to even attempt leaving a stationary camera in there.

Jason closed the door behind them, and turned to Roy, who looked almost to actually be excited at the prospect of the routine maintenance that Jason had used as an excuse for their trip to the engine room. In any other circumstances, Jason would have felt at least a little bad about deceiving him like that, but the situation called for it. He picked up a set of wrenches and handed the smallest one to Roy, pointing him at a machine that possibly, with some imagination, needed it's bolts tightened. Jason grabbed a second wrench and started checking the neighboring machine for loose bolts, and tried to figure out how to tell Roy about his unexpected conversation with Bruce.

After two minutes, in which neither of them found a loose bolt, Roy broke the silence for him.

"Not that I don't appreciate learning the machines, but why are we really down here? We tightened everything three days ago, and right now you're tightenging air."

Startled, Jason looked down at his wrench. Roy was right, the thing wasn't even near to touching any part of the machine, let alone the bolt he was supposedly tightening. He put the wrench back in it's case.

"Bruce did a bunk inspection today."

Roy looked confused. "...and, what, he's shocked and appalled by the lack of proper corners on the sheets? Aren't bunk inspections usually pretty uneventful?"

"Almost the opposite. He called me up because my bunk was properly made, still." Jason let Roy process that for a moment, and he could see the exact second Roy realized what that meant by the horrified expression that crossed his face.

"Bruce knows." It wasn't a question, but Jason nodded anyway.

"Yeah. But I don't think he's figured out our mark's yet, just that we're sleeping together."

"Oh, fuck, your Dad's going to kill me, and no one will even know I'm missing until we get back to port. Did he say anything? Should I start swimming for it now?"

"I couldn't get a good read on his reaction yet- we didn't really discuss it beyond him telling me he knew, then he threw me out of the wheelhouse because he didn't want to have to think about his son's sex life any more."

Roy screwed his eyes shut. "Yeah, OK, I wouldn't want to think about that either, I can see his side on that one." He opened his eyes and looked at Jason. "What are we going to do?"

…...2 Months Earlier, less one day….

They were in port waiting on a part that had to be flown in from Anchorage, and the crew had been given the night to go into town and enjoy themselves. For most of the crew, as well as the two cameramen, that meant heading straight for the bar.

Jason, however, had other plans; informing Roy of what he had inadvertently discovered the day before.

He pulled Roy aside before the younger man-thankfully the last to be ready to leave- could head for the bar, and asked to speak with him in private. Roy looked concerned, but agreed.

They headed for the wheelhouse, which was empty with Bruce at the bar, and which afforded them the best privacy on the ship short of locking themselves in the engine room. Actually, the engine room would probably be more private, since no one would even try to enter it, but it seemed like the wrong location for this kind of conversation; it was cramped and narrow, and the last thing Jason wanted was for Roy to think that Jason was trapping him into this. No, the wheelhouse would do far better, and Jason shut the door behind them when they walked in, but left it unlocked.

For a moment they both stood facing out the window towards the sea, enjoying the view of the unusually placid waters. Then, hesitantly, Jason pulled up the sleeve on his sweatshirt.

Roy looked down at the mark, looked up at Jason with disbelief, then stared back down at the mark. He pulled up his own sleeve again, showing his mark to Jason, and holding it next to it's match.

They both looked down at the pair, and then at each other, and then, before Jason even knew what was happening, they were kissing, wrapped around each other in ways that should have been impossible. Jason was incredibly grateful that there were no boats angled in a way to see into the wheelhouse, because he had no intentions of stopping any time soon. He wound his fingers into Roy's hair, knocking his hat askew and pulling him as close as physics would allow.

A few moments later, the pair stumbled into the tiny room that contained their two bunks. Unwilling to step apart long enough to climb into the top bunk, they fell together into the lower bunk- Roy's- and started divesting each other of their clothes.

The boat was cold even when fully dressed, and by the time they were down to their boxers the temperature seemed near freezing. They pressed close together, fighting off the chill with shared body heat, and revelling in the feeling of the contact. Still, their actions had a hurried edge to them, driven by both the cold and the thought that someone could return to the boat at any time looking for a forgotten wallet or, worse, one of them. Jason trusted that Dick would at least pretend to believe whatever excuse he or Roy managed to come up with, but he couldn't be sure that anyone else would be willing to buy it, especially since right now he was too distracted by the person pressed against him to think of anything better than 'we tripped'.

It was an almost embarrassingly short time later that they both came, their orgasms intensified by the thrill of finding their match. They collapsed side-by-side onto the narrow bunk; while it certainly hadn't been designed to accommodate two people, Jason found he didn't particularly mind the squished space so long as it was Roy that he was squished against.