Eyebrows lift in a wry display, equal flavors of incredulity for the expression and understanding of his struggle. He is, Thomas assumes, a pirate, if only because the universe has dictated everyone he encounter in the Bahamas must be so. There are other occupations for him to have, of course, but the particular aesthetic and the way he isn't at all concerned with the traffic around him speak to a certain kind of confidence he's found to be recognizable.
Further recognizable are the same lines of tortured inventory he spends his days intimately familiar with. Even upside down in chicken scratch with details indecipherable. But then there's the attendant to speak to, and Thomas asks for water and whatever she suggests to eat (sparing anyone the labor of trying to overhear a menu recited from memory). His comprehension and vocabulary are just fine even if his pronunciation is mired in the empire he's been severed from.
"I hope it's just a matter of tedium," he says, of the problem worthy of being likened to losing an eyeball, "and you aren't mid-economic collapse."
He huffs out a laugh, lifts both eyebrows and hefts the glass by a degree. "Not so bad as that. But you'll have to forgive me for not going over the particulars." There's a joke in there somewhere about how it's because he doesn't yet know them, but it's also as simple as things like ship books being halfway sensitive. Not that he's too worried about the interests of the man across the table conflicting with his own. Sorts like that are the ones given cause to be concerned by him, not the other way around.
Anyway. He's done torturing himself with this.
"Far from home, are you?" He thumbs back to the front of the ledger - the scrawl on the page changing hands a handful of times the farther forward he goes, most irregular and crooked with the exception of a few steady markups written in the margin - and snaps it shut with a thunk of its heavy cover.
Thomas should be concerned by everyone, lately. But here he is. Either an oblivious fool or, impossible to guess, a man too jaded by months of close work with Charles Vane to find other potential dangers worth worrying over.
(Could he recognize handwriting, after five years? If he really saw it, read it, traced his fingers over it, would he realize they're meters away, separated by quickly reconstructed walls and little more? That they could just reach out--)
There's no point in carrying on conversation about the ledger, as his business is his own, so Thomas just says, "Not anymore." A little dry. England is not home, and hasn't been since he was taken to Bethlem. Maybe it wasn't even before; it's not hard to look back now and wonder how he wasn't expelled sooner, a clear outsider.
Where would he say is home, if asked? The Ranger? Nassau? Somehow both seem a little presumptuous despite having signed articles - what would Gwen say. Probably both. There's no stopping the way she's growing into this life.
"Right place to get away from it," he agrees, a flash of good humor in his big face. "Though you've landed yourself in a place where you're outnumbered, haven't you? What's an English gentleman left doing here with so many French?" Because that's exactly what Thomas looks like - some man who once knew money washed up with one of the hurricanes or earthquakes that plagued the island and left here with his good posture and crooked pronunciation. It's a good thing he's dressed so nondescriptly or someone might get the idea he was worth robbing.
(That too seems as unlikely as half a dozen things which are actually true. Maybe later Gates will say something to the effect of 'Damn, I should have checked his pockets.')
From the look on his face, it's clear Gates knows it's an intrusive, barreling forward kind of question - better thought than said given the chilly reception of the first. Equally so, that he means nothing by it. If there's a point to being somewhere less familiar than the back of his hand and sitting down with a stranger that isn't making conversation, he doesn't know it. And if the company doesn't like it-- Well. There are other tables where he can go practice his French.
"Irritating so many French with my accent," is quick, a little dry but not offended-- casting into doubt any perception of a chill. Hard to tell with English gentlemen, proper diction and table manners favoring a certain aesthetic over emotional displays. Thomas is at ease.
Two things occur to him: he has no reason to be coy about what he does now, in this place, in front of this man, and that it's a little dazzling to be at ease. When he thinks about it, anyway. Sometimes when he wakes up from one night terror or the other, there's a moment of panic, but the state of things on the Ranger is so unlike any other he's experienced that he's pulled into reality immediately. What would it be like instead to attempt to readjust somewhere more generic? Would he fall apart with nothing but silence and soft 'recuperation' to fence him in all over again? How much worse would his nerves be? Absently, he touches touches his thumb to the cheap, ugly ring he bought in Nassau, worrying it in absence of another. It is calming.
"I was rescued, actually."
Why not go with the truth. It sounds like a lie.
"From a shipwreck. And as I have nowhere to return to and no ransom value, here I am."
Save that detail it would just be a pretty story, wouldn't it. Something for a wretched English gentleman to say to pass the time and either to make himself a more appealing conversation partner to some old sea salt, or because sure - why not? And sure any privateer, merchantman, or child in a bloody dinghy could peel someone from a sandy beach. But ransoming? Well, it's either the most salacious version of this lie told to the wrong ear or, wildly, true.
He laughs, a delighted inhale across the lip of his glass. And then again, louder and truer and even more vibrant. Because there are only two pirate crews in Saint Kitts today and he would've noticed if they'd sidestepped into the rescuing business. Because the idea of this man and Charles Vane in the same hemisphere is funny, but the same ship is fucking hilarious.
Clear blue eyes widen a little in what could be faux-scandal, chin now propped up on the flat of his knuckles, free hand splayed on the table. (His shirtsleeves are long enough to cover the rings of scars. Thankfully.) "Do I seem like someone who would barrel right into telling lies?"
Probably, yes. Everyone does when you know humans at least a little, and more specifically, Thomas looks like someone clawing back to life after fever and god knows what else, who may indeed being spinning outlandish stories to win a free meal off someone who ends up entertained. Even highborn men can twist words with the best of them.
On the other hand, he seems so nice.
The girl running about the tavern floor shows up with a bowl of something edible and a mug of fresh water, and he thanks her with a grateful smile. Could be a lie, he's not even drinking alcohol to numb the pain of his reality. Could be the truth, who wants to be tipsy around Charles Vane?
Still chuckling, Gates gives him a sideways look that's all crooked smiles and a good natured implication of Ha ha, don't think I'll take the opportunity to make myself look dumb later by committing one way or another now. He takes a drink, then sets his glass on top of the happily forgotten ledger. Does it really matter whether he's being told stories? Not in the slightest.
"In that case," --the one where his new friend is either lying fabulously or telling the most ridiculous truth-- "Excuse my French, but what the fuck has the Ranger got you at because I know it isn't working aloft or hauling lines."
Those sleeves don't hide the fact that Thomas looks about as fit as a half drowned cat.
He wonders at the weight of each - is it more ridiculous that he may have been signed to a pirate crew at all, or just Vane's? Or is it both, with one amplifying the potential absurdity of the other? He's almost dressed the part, and there are aristocrats in the profession, he's aware. Surely everyone starts somewhere, and the Ranger has hosted green crewmates before.
"There have been threats of being taught," he admits, because what else is that to someone who isn't a sailor besides a threat. Thomas participates in grunt work same as anyone, when he can. But:
"Bookkeeping."
Which is funny, see, because you're beside yourself over yours.
"That lucky bastard. Here we are sailing from one end of the West Indies to the other with an eye for someone with half a brain and the Ranger just fishes an accountant out of the sea." Couldn't he be keeping the books of an inn or tavern or a fishing boat? It'd make it easier to steal him away in the night. "I don't suppose you're looking to jump ship. Our money's good and it's been a while since we lost one of our own down a hole."
The joke is all of it. The ship, the crew, the circumstances, the pitch, the part where he's heard about Hamund but not about this. Everyone starts somewhere, but aristocrats do so with a feather in their hat and a ship under their command.
"Oh, you haven't met Captain Vane?" is cheerily conversational and an oh-so-obvious nod to him telling the truth after all, because only someone who's spent time with Charles would know so intimately the suicidal foolishness of abandoning his vows on the Ranger for another crew-- but most of all the Walrus. The history of animosity between the two entities is a complete mystery to Thomas, but the fact that it exists is plain as day.
In short, he is In on the The Joke. But he's going to gloss over the hole bit, because that's not anyone's business-- and he wouldn't want to discuss it even if it were. Which is perhaps telling, being so unmoved about that incident, whatever it was.
(He eats what cooked vegetables he can find first. Carefully picking what has the best cross-section of easily digestible and most nutrition, in the event his insides rebel before he gets very far in the meal. It still happens sometimes.)
Edited (decided to add more flippancy AND THEN forgot half of what i wanted to write don't look at me ) 2017-09-06 04:33 (UTC)
He shrugs, so broad a gesture that it says Worth trying all on its own. Honestly, even if the man wanted to crawl aboard the Walrus over such a flimsy pitch, it'd take a long conversation with Flint to convince him of the need. To balance the inevitable retaliation with their shortage of a good man (Flint's urge to dismiss Vane as irrelevant while snapping in his direction given any opportunity).
With a wave of the hand, Gates brushes away the whole concept. Nevermind then. He's right - not worth the blood on either deck. Better to drop dead over balancing the books alongside Flint than from the stress of managing both him and Vane.
Instead, he nods to the bowl and takes his drink back up. "How is it?"
No point in asking about the Ranger - how he finds that, how those books are, where he came from prior to being dumped into the sea, a thousand other possible questions that will just get (rightfully) talked around.
There's more he could say. That he travels with a woman and it's non-negotiable, that Vane is - and here's where someone chokes on his rum - enlightened in a way that's been unexpected. He permits women to sign articles if they can hold their own, he does not deal in slaves or any form of human trafficking, he puts up with the likes of Jack Rackham and he did not slit Lord Hamilton's throat and dump him overboard when intelligence returned to indeed prove him a useless ransom. All things Thomas understands are far from universal for pirate captains.
He is still violent and unpredictable and engaging in a lifestyle of mayhem and crime. But Thomas is all too familiar with the things that go on in civilized society, and honestly, it's all the same-- at the worst. At best, piracy is honest about the awfulness, and done on a micro level, opposed to the macro kind of wiping out whole civilizations. After what he's been through he has to pick his battles - and accept that he's harder to morally distress, these days.
"Very acceptable," of the food. Does Thomas even remember what fine food tastes like? Can he remember what his favorite dish was in London? There was a time when the starvation was at its worst, and he found his mind consumed with thoughts of everything, anything, to the point of near-hysteria, but after the first time it became so distant. Everything is quite lovely, anymore.
"I have to admit I'm curious." Treading back to subjects there are no point in discussing. "Why Vane bristles at the very outline of that other ship in anchor."
There are men who wouldn't answer that question with anything resembling honesty - particularly not from an able hand he's unabashedly envious of (ask again later if he's still alive in six months, some background part of Gates is already thinking) -, but he isn't that type of quartermaster and wasn't that type of man before he had his votes. What's the point in hiding the obvious, what anyone with eyes could see if given the misfortune of witnessing the two of them stuck in the same room together. Besides, there's a kind of pleasure to talking shop with someone who might not know any better.
"Have you ever seen two dogs square off? Not ones being set on each other, just similar sets of teeth deciding to get sharp at the other." He lays his thick forearm along the edge of the table and rests the glass bottomed cup on his wrist. "I believe your captain and mine share a fundamental difference of the spirit. They could set themselves at the same task for the same reason and find something to bark at each other about. Simple as that. Only of course being on the account makes disagreement a prickly business."
A sharp business. Occasionally a bloody one.
"But it isn't anything that isn't usual. Hunting similar game, dealing with similar people and getting different results. We takes a prize that pays, someone gets shirty over it and fights, which then comes back to those telling them what to do. My captain gets along with Miss Guthrie; yours--" Well. Different kind of getting along.
He shrugs affably-- "Bookkeeping." --and takes a drink.
Thomas listens, skims his consciousness between the lines as if to lift implications of probably non-existent details from the chosen imagery. He wonders in exasperation at himself-- the fact that Bedlam hasn't managed to destroy all the romance in him after all, sitting here having a hard time thinking of these pirate captains as fighting dogs. Surely Vane is something more wild than that. Less able to be trained. A tiger or a lion, and what does that make the mysterious Flint? A bear or, heaven forbid his flights of fancy, a dragon?
Growling and barking at each other, though, that he can imagine. Territorial and snappish. There's so much unchecked masculinity in this realm, it's not surprising to think that alone might be the crux of the grudge. Could it be deeper? Possibly. Even probably. But where might one find a straight answer.
Thomas smiles. (Blue eyes and the emotive crinkling around them; years ago he might have even been handsome.) "I suppose some people just don't work out, no matter how similar they are." A beat. "Or because of it."
What a thing to say. Fortunate that neither are in earshot.
He hums, a small noise that falls perfectly between debating the point and agreeing with it. That's part right, Gates thinks. Neither of those men like being told what to do; it's an unarguably shared trait. But the fact that Vane's accountant is willing to say as much is-- funny? Interesting? Says more about Charles Vane than Flint would ever give him credit for, that much Gates is certain of. But he's certain it's not something most of the Ranger crew would say neither.
"I've heard that about some people," he says, as magnaninous with his good humor as he is with gossip.
He finishes off his drink, then fishes after the pouch on his belt. "So tell me, since you don't find the work objectionable," -- if he did, the rail thin man would be halfway across the island by now. Or have tried it. Pressed men with objections always try once -- "Is all this anything like how you thought it was?"
Thomas has yet to come down on the dark side of his captain's anger, but he doesn't scare easy as a rule, for starters, and for further mileage, he did just weasel the whole Ranger out of being over a barrel with regards to their cargo. They shall see how things fall if he spies his accountant fraternizing with The Enemy; perhaps Thomas will regret this whole conversation.
"Mm," he says, of objectionable work. What else is a dead man to do? Not that anyone is aware he's a dead man.
"I don't know what I thought it would be like. I thought mostly about the men involved, I suppose, if I thought about it at all. I figured there would be those with very personal reasons to be doing it, and those who simply found it to be work, because people are people. And as it turns out, that's correct. I believe I've met more honest people in the Bahamas than in London, which I don't think is actually a surprise, either. But honesty is neither good nor bad."
Perhaps this man is asking after the violence, and not the philosophy. Alas.
Nonsense. He's asking after the man's opinion. That it has nothing to do with violence (of which he knows for certain the he's seen something of his the rumors are right) says as much as anything else. A good quartermaster knows a thing or two about what men don't speak of as much as what they do. And Gates is, he thinks, comfortable in that role. Comfortable enough anyway. God help him of he didn't know how things worked after this long at it.
Which is why he doesn't ask what he'd like to know of the Ranger - how long it's due there in the harbor and her heading when she goes. Nevermind Charles Vane. If he knows Jack Rackham, that won't be something the bloody accountant has any grasp on.
"Well. I can't say that's a ringing endorsement, but I suppose I didn't ask for one." He'll take honest though. As the gebtleman said - it's not bad and Gates hasn't the constitution to be a pessimist. The work's exhausting enough as it is.
He shills a few coins out onto the table for his drink and the accountant's meal. A little money in the right direction never hurt a new friendship. "If nothing else, I'm glad enough to hear there's another level head to be found over there." Then he offers his hand across the table. "Hal Gates. Quartermaster of the Walrus."
The violence is what most everyone seems preoccupied with, when they realize he was once highborn; fascinated with a man who came from a world rumored to be cloistered from it, eager to shake severed heads and oozing wounds in his face to see if he squirms. It had exasperated him at first, but then - painfully - it reminded him of James and the gallows. And he's tried to take each instance since as a learning experience.
This, too, is educational, filling out his opinion of pirates are just men pleasantly - Hal Gates is temperate man, and interesting. (For as gracious as Thomas is concerning pirates, there is unsurprisingly little variety aboard the crew he's a part of. Rackham and Bonny are the standouts for puzzling uniqueness, but mostly, it's a lot of violent idiots.)
"That's very kind of you," he says, of the coin. Thomas takes his hand, his own free of ink but littered with small scars (god knows what) and callouses (adjusting to work?), grip firm. "Thomas Barlow." He just about doesn't waver on that one. Private self-congratulations. And uh, oh. Right. "Ranger."
Gates' handshake is as credible as the rest of him - sturdy, off the cuff, nothing at all to prove. Most importantly, there's no moment of hesitation over the man's given name - not in his grip anyway. Maybe his head cocks by a degree, the shape of a question shifting just out of sight there under the surface-- not Are you sure?, but maybe Are you fucking with me?. The trace of it evaporates faster than it appears though, there and gone as he reaches for the ledger.
Coincidence, probably. There's no rule in the world that a name can't be shared (tell that to the two Matthews they've on board at this very moment). And what does he know of the woman Flint keeps on New Providence, really? (Enough to be certain that James Flint will want to know about a shipwrecked English gentleman who calls himself by the same name currently working the account under the Ranger's flag, is how much.)
"Good to know you, Mr Barlow," he says. It is - never hurts to be able to identify most of a room when he walks into it. "Now unfortunately, as much as I'd prefer to sit here all afternoon in conversation it seems I've quite the list ahead of me. You'll have to pardon my running off to see to it. Keep that offer in mind though, won't you?" He flashes Thomas a grin. It's a joke and it isn't one. "Should you care to jump ship the next time we share a berth, I guarantee we could keep an accountant hidden for the time it'd take tempers to cool."
Years ago, Thomas would have been able to catch that split-second glimmer - and maybe he'll be able to again, someday - but now, holding himself together through sheer stubbornness and staying awake for days on end, he misses it entirely. (And honestly, Thomas can sound so awkward, so out of practice being a human, would he think anything of it if Gates did look at him strangely?)
"I'll remember," he says easily, and he will-- though only to laugh about it with Gwen later, perhaps, after she tells him about meeting Captain Flint. Certainly not kept in his mind with any seriousness. Thomas has no ambition for himself in this raw and bloody profession, and wouldn't even if he didn't have Gwenaëlle. His future is no so potentially promising that it's worth risking crossfire over, no matter how strangely lovely that ship continues to strike him.
(And being rescued leaves a powerful impression on a person's psyche. Thomas is aware some of his loyalty to Vane is thanks to that animal imprint, but awareness doesn't make it go away.)
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Further recognizable are the same lines of tortured inventory he spends his days intimately familiar with. Even upside down in chicken scratch with details indecipherable. But then there's the attendant to speak to, and Thomas asks for water and whatever she suggests to eat (sparing anyone the labor of trying to overhear a menu recited from memory). His comprehension and vocabulary are just fine even if his pronunciation is mired in the empire he's been severed from.
"I hope it's just a matter of tedium," he says, of the problem worthy of being likened to losing an eyeball, "and you aren't mid-economic collapse."
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Anyway. He's done torturing himself with this.
"Far from home, are you?" He thumbs back to the front of the ledger - the scrawl on the page changing hands a handful of times the farther forward he goes, most irregular and crooked with the exception of a few steady markups written in the margin - and snaps it shut with a thunk of its heavy cover.
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(Could he recognize handwriting, after five years? If he really saw it, read it, traced his fingers over it, would he realize they're meters away, separated by quickly reconstructed walls and little more? That they could just reach out--)
There's no point in carrying on conversation about the ledger, as his business is his own, so Thomas just says, "Not anymore." A little dry. England is not home, and hasn't been since he was taken to Bethlem. Maybe it wasn't even before; it's not hard to look back now and wonder how he wasn't expelled sooner, a clear outsider.
Where would he say is home, if asked? The Ranger? Nassau? Somehow both seem a little presumptuous despite having signed articles - what would Gwen say. Probably both. There's no stopping the way she's growing into this life.
"I don't miss the cold."
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(That too seems as unlikely as half a dozen things which are actually true. Maybe later Gates will say something to the effect of 'Damn, I should have checked his pockets.')
From the look on his face, it's clear Gates knows it's an intrusive, barreling forward kind of question - better thought than said given the chilly reception of the first. Equally so, that he means nothing by it. If there's a point to being somewhere less familiar than the back of his hand and sitting down with a stranger that isn't making conversation, he doesn't know it. And if the company doesn't like it-- Well. There are other tables where he can go practice his French.
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Two things occur to him: he has no reason to be coy about what he does now, in this place, in front of this man, and that it's a little dazzling to be at ease. When he thinks about it, anyway. Sometimes when he wakes up from one night terror or the other, there's a moment of panic, but the state of things on the Ranger is so unlike any other he's experienced that he's pulled into reality immediately. What would it be like instead to attempt to readjust somewhere more generic? Would he fall apart with nothing but silence and soft 'recuperation' to fence him in all over again? How much worse would his nerves be? Absently, he touches touches his thumb to the cheap, ugly ring he bought in Nassau, worrying it in absence of another. It is calming.
"I was rescued, actually."
Why not go with the truth. It sounds like a lie.
"From a shipwreck. And as I have nowhere to return to and no ransom value, here I am."
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Save that detail it would just be a pretty story, wouldn't it. Something for a wretched English gentleman to say to pass the time and either to make himself a more appealing conversation partner to some old sea salt, or because sure - why not? And sure any privateer, merchantman, or child in a bloody dinghy could peel someone from a sandy beach. But ransoming? Well, it's either the most salacious version of this lie told to the wrong ear or, wildly, true.
He laughs, a delighted inhale across the lip of his glass. And then again, louder and truer and even more vibrant. Because there are only two pirate crews in Saint Kitts today and he would've noticed if they'd sidestepped into the rescuing business. Because the idea of this man and Charles Vane in the same hemisphere is funny, but the same ship is fucking hilarious.
"Oh, please tell me you're being honest."
It'd make his month.
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Probably, yes. Everyone does when you know humans at least a little, and more specifically, Thomas looks like someone clawing back to life after fever and god knows what else, who may indeed being spinning outlandish stories to win a free meal off someone who ends up entertained. Even highborn men can twist words with the best of them.
On the other hand, he seems so nice.
The girl running about the tavern floor shows up with a bowl of something edible and a mug of fresh water, and he thanks her with a grateful smile. Could be a lie, he's not even drinking alcohol to numb the pain of his reality. Could be the truth, who wants to be tipsy around Charles Vane?
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"In that case," --the one where his new friend is either lying fabulously or telling the most ridiculous truth-- "Excuse my French, but what the fuck has the Ranger got you at because I know it isn't working aloft or hauling lines."
Those sleeves don't hide the fact that Thomas looks about as fit as a half drowned cat.
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"There have been threats of being taught," he admits, because what else is that to someone who isn't a sailor besides a threat. Thomas participates in grunt work same as anyone, when he can. But:
"Bookkeeping."
Which is funny, see, because you're beside yourself over yours.
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"That lucky bastard. Here we are sailing from one end of the West Indies to the other with an eye for someone with half a brain and the Ranger just fishes an accountant out of the sea." Couldn't he be keeping the books of an inn or tavern or a fishing boat? It'd make it easier to steal him away in the night. "I don't suppose you're looking to jump ship. Our money's good and it's been a while since we lost one of our own down a hole."
The joke is all of it. The ship, the crew, the circumstances, the pitch, the part where he's heard about Hamund but not about this. Everyone starts somewhere, but aristocrats do so with a feather in their hat and a ship under their command.
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In short, he is In on the The Joke. But he's going to gloss over the hole bit, because that's not anyone's business-- and he wouldn't want to discuss it even if it were. Which is perhaps telling, being so unmoved about that incident, whatever it was.
(He eats what cooked vegetables he can find first. Carefully picking what has the best cross-section of easily digestible and most nutrition, in the event his insides rebel before he gets very far in the meal. It still happens sometimes.)
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With a wave of the hand, Gates brushes away the whole concept. Nevermind then. He's right - not worth the blood on either deck. Better to drop dead over balancing the books alongside Flint than from the stress of managing both him and Vane.
Instead, he nods to the bowl and takes his drink back up. "How is it?"
No point in asking about the Ranger - how he finds that, how those books are, where he came from prior to being dumped into the sea, a thousand other possible questions that will just get (rightfully) talked around.
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He is still violent and unpredictable and engaging in a lifestyle of mayhem and crime. But Thomas is all too familiar with the things that go on in civilized society, and honestly, it's all the same-- at the worst. At best, piracy is honest about the awfulness, and done on a micro level, opposed to the macro kind of wiping out whole civilizations. After what he's been through he has to pick his battles - and accept that he's harder to morally distress, these days.
"Very acceptable," of the food. Does Thomas even remember what fine food tastes like? Can he remember what his favorite dish was in London? There was a time when the starvation was at its worst, and he found his mind consumed with thoughts of everything, anything, to the point of near-hysteria, but after the first time it became so distant. Everything is quite lovely, anymore.
"I have to admit I'm curious." Treading back to subjects there are no point in discussing. "Why Vane bristles at the very outline of that other ship in anchor."
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"Have you ever seen two dogs square off? Not ones being set on each other, just similar sets of teeth deciding to get sharp at the other." He lays his thick forearm along the edge of the table and rests the glass bottomed cup on his wrist. "I believe your captain and mine share a fundamental difference of the spirit. They could set themselves at the same task for the same reason and find something to bark at each other about. Simple as that. Only of course being on the account makes disagreement a prickly business."
A sharp business. Occasionally a bloody one.
"But it isn't anything that isn't usual. Hunting similar game, dealing with similar people and getting different results. We takes a prize that pays, someone gets shirty over it and fights, which then comes back to those telling them what to do. My captain gets along with Miss Guthrie; yours--" Well. Different kind of getting along.
He shrugs affably-- "Bookkeeping." --and takes a drink.
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Growling and barking at each other, though, that he can imagine. Territorial and snappish. There's so much unchecked masculinity in this realm, it's not surprising to think that alone might be the crux of the grudge. Could it be deeper? Possibly. Even probably. But where might one find a straight answer.
Thomas smiles. (Blue eyes and the emotive crinkling around them; years ago he might have even been handsome.) "I suppose some people just don't work out, no matter how similar they are." A beat. "Or because of it."
What a thing to say. Fortunate that neither are in earshot.
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"I've heard that about some people," he says, as magnaninous with his good humor as he is with gossip.
He finishes off his drink, then fishes after the pouch on his belt. "So tell me, since you don't find the work objectionable," -- if he did, the rail thin man would be halfway across the island by now. Or have tried it. Pressed men with objections always try once -- "Is all this anything like how you thought it was?"
He asks if genuinely curious. And maybe he is.
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"Mm," he says, of objectionable work. What else is a dead man to do? Not that anyone is aware he's a dead man.
"I don't know what I thought it would be like. I thought mostly about the men involved, I suppose, if I thought about it at all. I figured there would be those with very personal reasons to be doing it, and those who simply found it to be work, because people are people. And as it turns out, that's correct. I believe I've met more honest people in the Bahamas than in London, which I don't think is actually a surprise, either. But honesty is neither good nor bad."
Perhaps this man is asking after the violence, and not the philosophy. Alas.
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Which is why he doesn't ask what he'd like to know of the Ranger - how long it's due there in the harbor and her heading when she goes. Nevermind Charles Vane. If he knows Jack Rackham, that won't be something the bloody accountant has any grasp on.
"Well. I can't say that's a ringing endorsement, but I suppose I didn't ask for one." He'll take honest though. As the gebtleman said - it's not bad and Gates hasn't the constitution to be a pessimist. The work's exhausting enough as it is.
He shills a few coins out onto the table for his drink and the accountant's meal. A little money in the right direction never hurt a new friendship. "If nothing else, I'm glad enough to hear there's another level head to be found over there." Then he offers his hand across the table. "Hal Gates. Quartermaster of the Walrus."
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This, too, is educational, filling out his opinion of pirates are just men pleasantly - Hal Gates is temperate man, and interesting. (For as gracious as Thomas is concerning pirates, there is unsurprisingly little variety aboard the crew he's a part of. Rackham and Bonny are the standouts for puzzling uniqueness, but mostly, it's a lot of violent idiots.)
"That's very kind of you," he says, of the coin. Thomas takes his hand, his own free of ink but littered with small scars (god knows what) and callouses (adjusting to work?), grip firm. "Thomas Barlow." He just about doesn't waver on that one. Private self-congratulations. And uh, oh. Right. "Ranger."
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Coincidence, probably. There's no rule in the world that a name can't be shared (tell that to the two Matthews they've on board at this very moment). And what does he know of the woman Flint keeps on New Providence, really? (Enough to be certain that James Flint will want to know about a shipwrecked English gentleman who calls himself by the same name currently working the account under the Ranger's flag, is how much.)
"Good to know you, Mr Barlow," he says. It is - never hurts to be able to identify most of a room when he walks into it. "Now unfortunately, as much as I'd prefer to sit here all afternoon in conversation it seems I've quite the list ahead of me. You'll have to pardon my running off to see to it. Keep that offer in mind though, won't you?" He flashes Thomas a grin. It's a joke and it isn't one. "Should you care to jump ship the next time we share a berth, I guarantee we could keep an accountant hidden for the time it'd take tempers to cool."
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"I'll remember," he says easily, and he will-- though only to laugh about it with Gwen later, perhaps, after she tells him about meeting Captain Flint. Certainly not kept in his mind with any seriousness. Thomas has no ambition for himself in this raw and bloody profession, and wouldn't even if he didn't have Gwenaëlle. His future is no so potentially promising that it's worth risking crossfire over, no matter how strangely lovely that ship continues to strike him.
(And being rescued leaves a powerful impression on a person's psyche. Thomas is aware some of his loyalty to Vane is thanks to that animal imprint, but awareness doesn't make it go away.)
"Good luck."