There's a story told by Aristophanes about what primeval man once was. He was round with four hands and four feet, one head with two faces looking in opposite ways. So terrible was their might and strength, so great the thoughts of their hearts, that they might have dared to scale heaven and lay hands upon the gods. In order to restrain man's insolence and ensure their worship of and sacrifice to the gods, Zeus said, 'I will cut them in two and them they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.'
He feels it now in the Walrus' greatcabin before the stern windows as in front of Miranda's hearth, as keenly on the road to and from the interior as in Nassau. It's the sensation of being split down some new seam, of being asked to balance on one, alternating leg all while watching himself struggle to remain upright. In rooms above the tavern, he is both himself and a witness to his own shape from some remote vantage - accessory to and observer of the moment Miranda appears at the top of the stairs as white as a sheet to see her husband again. He is both watching and being Flint while he says (Fuck you), What exactly do you think it is you're owed? to Charles Vane in what is Eleanor's crowded back room.
"Are you listening to me?" Gates asks. Flint fetches his attention back -- (on the other hand: there's a danger that when the divided soul finds its other half, they might cling so desperately to one another that they starve in want of any other nourishment; is there any way to be certain which it is?) -- and studies the packet from Port Royal lying between. It contains the course details of two fat prizes, easily intercepted a week ago and rapidly slipping out of their reach at present. "I said, the men won't be happy with a delay on top of everything else. Not when they already know perfectly well--"
"I heard you." Flint tugs at the corner of his mustache, the short hairs at his chin, then folds up the packet and all its promises of good hunting. Standing, he says, "See to it that provisioning resumes - at the double, if that's what they really care for."
Gates snorts. "Meanwhile, am I to assume you have business elsewhere?"
"While you're at it, if there's any madeira to be had on the island make sure it finds it way on board. To make my gratitude obvious."
"They'd rather have extra casks of rum."
"Fine."
In Nassau there is a room that the woman in Thomas's company pretends to keep, but when Flint finds his way to it he's reasonably certain she won't be there. Or that it won't matter if she is. Or that he will let himself be only frustrated by her presence instead of hating it, annoyed only as she's tied pieces of Thomas to Nassautown and that fucking ship instead of leaving him free to go where he belongs. Regardless, he doesn't ask after her - only confirms with the house's girl that Mister Barlow is in when she makes a halfhearted attempt to intercept him on the stairs.
Poor Gwenaëlle whose devotion and willingness to die for the man who's become her partner affords her no leeway; perhaps it's just that there are some people for whom giving an inch is fundamentally impossible. Certainly if so, the point where Captain Flint and James McGraw overlap has is that trait.
(It can't be lost on him, not completely, that without Charles Vane and the Ranger Thomas would be somewhere in the American colonies in chains, and that without his young lady, he'd have listlessly given up at some stage instead of adapting?
But hearts beat as they please.)
There is only one occupant in the room, today. It's a wreck of attempted tidiness around pilfered books (Thomas), magpie hoarding of all things shiny and strange (Gwen), and desultory regard for order (Miranda). Trinkets and swords and the odd bottle, a beautiful dress and cloak as gifted from one woman to another draped over a chair, battered ledgers piled in order of urgent business. And Thomas, sitting with knees beside him on the bed, looking up from a pamphlet when there's noise at the door.
All this chaotic mess and color and he should be dizzy with it, but as is so often the case, he's found it muted and distant by himself. Blue eyes find green and the world saturates again-- relief and joy so plain in the smile on his face, so brightly genuine it almost causes something to ache in his chest. These separations are hardly worth complaining about compared to his years in Bethlem, but still-- being without him is like suffocating.
Thomas is up on bare feet before the door's closed behind his lover, arms around him in time with the sound of it meeting the frame. Hair a little damp still from a bath, shirt untucked, it's a minor miracle he's dressed at all.
"There was talk the weather might not see you back until tomorrow," he says, muffled with his face against James's.
It's easily shared enthusiasm. Never mind the strange, fragmented feeling that has shadowed him in the interim since they last saw each other, which he'd been aware of as recently as stepping foot onto the beachhead. Thomas's happiness and the way his own heart leaps after it is so brilliant that for a moment it consumes every detail of the room, every concern that might itch out from under his skin. If Thomas and the realty of his being on the island has served to divide his attention while he's been away, then what chance does anything else have when they're together? To the point of starvation, he might still think later. But in the moment, his hands find Thomas's neck, fingers lacing at the base of his skull. James leans into the presence of him.
"We captured a sea breeze beyond Hog's Island, then managed to ride the tide into the bay." As if the details could possibly hold any interest. As if the technicalities of sailing have anything to do with what he thought he might mention in this instance.
Because he's thought of plenty that he wants to say to him. There are things that warrant, no demand, discussion (how striking out from Nassau is an obligation if the crew is to be retained - which it must at all costs be -, but how directionless and untenable it now seems; how things must change; that the ship is to be reprovisioned and then dashing away again--), but it's easy to say none of it. To instead be fixed by the warmth of his breathing and the texture of Thomas's drying hair under his fingertips, and how mercifully alone they are (a rare fucking miracle). It's far simpler to just kiss him instead, dissatisfied restlessness transforming naturally into want.
Thomas just says, "Mm," a dismissive noise, completely unconcerned with who might have tried to sway is faith in schedules. "No one I believed." For you see he's here, and alone. This is not the setup of someone who thought Captain Flint might permit himself to be delayed.
(It was probably Rackham.)
He should ask: how was hunting? Is your crew unhurt? Was anything that looked like the Royal Navy skulking about? because it's all important, and he does care about it. But Thomas finds himself bumping his nose against James's and kissing him, like he'll drown without it. Once, in Nassau, he'd stood outside a tent and advised soaking Charles in rum so that he looked the part of drunkard instead of heartbroken, and reflected to himself that he'd never find his own heart or body moved by anyone ever again. Something in him wounded too deeply, shattered too thoroughly.
This isn't the business he'd spoken to earlier as he'd disembarked from the ship or even the thought which had driven him straight up the beach and directly to this room, so yes - he can stay. Only he should be making use of this time to say what he means to first to Thomas, then in maybe a half dozen other conversations across the island that could be necessary after. There are only so many hours.
But time was saved by managing to catch the tide (Rackham might have been right but for luck and skill), and there can be no pretending that this could be put aside. There must have been considerations made just for wanting Thomas, because when has that not been a part of everything?
"I will," he says, all but against the corner of Thomas's mouth.
Can doesn't need to be a factor. Instead he breathes in the clean tang of Thomas's skin, kisses him again as the option is available, and reaches between them to draw the pistol from his belt and set it there on the cluttered sideboard. What a bright, blinding kind of satisfaction.
'I will' shouldn't be so stirring, and yet. And yet. The freedom to decide they will or won't, shrugging off can or can't, is brilliant, fire, perfect. Something sweeter and more vital than Thomas can put words to; if they spend time with each other, it's irritable companions and jostled schedules that wait in the wings, not gallows or asylums.
(And you wanted the navy to do away with them, Thomas had said one night, in those days of learning again how not to flinch or leave his own mind while held, his smiling voice almost lost completely in the chaotic din of voice. Kiss him, kiss him chanted by drunk pirates about the Ranger's blacksmith and his very male paramour, and Thomas who can't stand rum but who had had an awful lot of it anyway, saying did you know- that reminds me of Alexander, and Bagoas- it's really very beautiful--)
"I'd have you stay in this room with me for the next week," he says, hands finding their way into the layers of coat and shirt, so sparse compared to the layers he first battled with on this form, and yet still entirely too many, "The next year." Thomas pushes the coat from his shoulders, guides it down and off, letting it fall to the floor and capturing his lover in a kiss after. Belt, next. James tastes like salt and sweat and sun, god only knows what else, surely gunsmoke and blood and liquor. More bitter than the taste he remembers. But the depth of it - of him - is one Thomas prefers, infinitely.
im just going to start randomizing icons theyre all equally useless for this lmfao
The speed and alacrity of this staggers in ways he can only measure by comparison - how halting this has been, how strangely colored they'd both been by some desperation for tenderness. A year ago, weeks ago, this could almost seem equally unbeliveable: Thomas strips him of his coat, his belt. Thomas is under hand and doesn't tremble apart as James kisses him, laughing low against his mouth and reaching for the loose hem of Thomas's untucked shirt.
"I'll stay, I'll stay," is an easy thing to murmur in that place. It's surely a mutually understood lie, though the kindest kind.
(It seems strange to think that there must be a point where he will come into this room or another like it and they won't feel the immediate, visceral need to touch one another. The instant need to minimize the space between them to centimeters will diminish. They will pick chairs that aren't neighboring. They will look at one another and he won't feel both blunted and sharpened just at the sight of him. This thing between them will become more plain because it has the luxury of being so.)
But for now he does - need to touch him. Slide his hands under fabric and lay his sun and work warm hands over Thomas's ribs.
you say that but i bet you'll deeply consider every one
This thing between them. They will learn to mediate their nearness like an artist learning clay, or marble, they will adapt to appear less desperate before others. But that feeling-- like light burns from inside, like having all air stolen and being brought to life at the same time-- never, never.
Thomas is only a little scraped up beneath his shirt, not near the wear and tear of some pirates (Thomas Hamilton, a pirate) by virtue of his non-combatant position, but some perils are unavoidable. But he prefers shrapnel and sunburn to being a medical experiment; the sun has begun to bake fine surgery lines into visible ones, and Thomas hates them, is quietly comforted when some other injury places more ragged scars overtop. But - does he look like anything but some lost, ruined nobleman? Will he ever?
James's belt thunks to the floor and for a moment, Thomas finds himself holding still with arms around him, hands pressed flat against the small of his back, foreheads together. Just feeling him, his breath and his heart and their hands on each other. "I love you," he says, something about it so light and sunshining in its sincerity. "Did you know that?"
Shut up, Thomas. He steps back and tugs James with him, towards the bed covered in papers and silk robes and someone's heeled shoe.
that's the problem - I agonize only to go 'fuck it, these are all varying degrees of bad fits'
He knows it. He'd known it before, in London bright and shining, and had carried the white hot fired ore stone of it across the sea in his palm - burning and held so tightly that the shape of his hand had altered for it. But here it is again outside his grip: an incandescent happiness despite so much scarred flesh. I do, he might say, but it seems unnecessary. Instead, James grins slowly against Thomas's mouth and follows him to bed.
In a different place, he might route Thomas to the edge of the bed and press him backwards until his knees gave. A rare instance of managing to corner the taller man in his shadow, to take his face in both hands and lean down to kiss him. But here, he breaks off kissing him. He catches Thomas by the hand, a loose one handed grip on his fingers as he braces against the wall and clumsily levers his boots off. It's better when Thomas can do as he pleases.
"Is there something wrong with the desk?" The one by the narrow window which apparently doesn't warrant being worked at given all the debris in the goddamn bed. He nods toward it, fixes Thomas with a crooked look, and rasps out a self-satisfied laugh.
"I didn't like the angle of the light," Thomas says airily, using the hand that isn't being held to sweep through his pirate captain's copper hair. Nonsense, the light is definitely worse deeper inside, and Thomas's eyesight has been damaged by years trapped in the dark, but despite the way the world has carved him, he is still who he is; Miranda's husband, James's lover, a man who prefers laying around indecently to a desk.
"Why, would you prefer it?" An innocent (haha no) smile before he steals a quick kiss and then slips away, kneeling on the mattress so he can gather up the errant papers and deposit them elsewhere, shove the one lone shoe onto the floor. He's not even sure who that one belongs to, as he's never wearing another heel or wig again so long as he bloody lives.
Thomas looks forward to the day when James can push at him with more aggression and not be baiting the echoes of Bedlam, but he doesn't dwell on it now. Things are as they are.
A different version of James might counter with a sharp line - 'I might,' - but this one just lets his crooked grin twitch wider as he works rings from his fingers, dropping them into his boot where he'll have no choice but to remember them later. There are only two parts to this: an impossible, bursting fondness and a pervasive, clinging want. Neither cleverness or patience finds much leverage in the moment; he pulls his shirt free and strips that off too before climbing after Thomas into the bed.
There are still papers in it, something crunching between the mattress and his knee, but it's Thomas's mess. He has no responsibility to manage it and so instead slides his thumb into the waist of Thomas's trousers, fingers splayed at his hip; moves the collar of his shirt to kiss his shoulder, his neck, to grin and breathe at the tickle of his hairline across the nape of his neck.
"It seems if you worked at the desk, there'd be less need to tidy the bed." Just throwing that one out there.
('How is your work?' 'What news is there since I've been away? 'Where's Miranda gone to?' seem like such non-vital questions.)
"I'll take that under advisement, my darling." No he won't. Thomas takes his face in his hands, just holding there for a moment as James presses in against the curve of his shoulder and neck. I missed you, that touch says. He pulls the other man's face up and presses a kiss to his mouth, deep and ungentle and all those things they should learn to mediate (but won't). I miss you whenever you're so much as out of my sight.
There's playfulness in how he pushes James over onto his back, but he's intent in how he kisses him, along his jaw, his throat, to his chest. He could-- still be shattered into a million pieces, if he let himself. He could find this impossible. He doesn't want to. He can't be the person (or the lover) he was in London, but he can remake himself. He wants to so badly - as much as he wants James. Thomas only pulls back to sit up and drag his own shirt off over his head, skimming hands up James's belly and chest after, finding him so beautiful. Something forged in fire and tempered in salt-water. Something his, under his hands, alive and together.
Giving to Thomas is easy. It's a fixed point - a keyhole through which some other place with the same kind of happiness is as visible as this one. But his hands and his mouth and the ruddy lines of Thomas's tanned skin and the simple weight of his presence are all electric, warming present tense. He is so lovely, so sturdy and real, and loving the disparate and familiar shape of him is simple.
(Imagine a different version of this, a constant thought murmurs: there is no storm, no wreck, and the ship carrying Thomas reaches its destination and the man is swallowed up by the Americas, and they are both ghosts to each other, and--) He catches Thomas's hands, drawing one to his cheek. To kiss his palm. To trace the lines of fine bones and swollen knuckles. To cradle his fingers, to take the edge of Thomas's thumb gently between his teeth and press his tongue to calloused skin.
Maybe the reason this works despite how divided his attentions should be, despite Thomas's fine stark scars, is because this can be enough.
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He feels it now in the Walrus' greatcabin before the stern windows as in front of Miranda's hearth, as keenly on the road to and from the interior as in Nassau. It's the sensation of being split down some new seam, of being asked to balance on one, alternating leg all while watching himself struggle to remain upright. In rooms above the tavern, he is both himself and a witness to his own shape from some remote vantage - accessory to and observer of the moment Miranda appears at the top of the stairs as white as a sheet to see her husband again. He is both watching and being Flint while he says (Fuck you), What exactly do you think it is you're owed? to Charles Vane in what is Eleanor's crowded back room.
"Are you listening to me?" Gates asks. Flint fetches his attention back -- (on the other hand: there's a danger that when the divided soul finds its other half, they might cling so desperately to one another that they starve in want of any other nourishment; is there any way to be certain which it is?) -- and studies the packet from Port Royal lying between. It contains the course details of two fat prizes, easily intercepted a week ago and rapidly slipping out of their reach at present. "I said, the men won't be happy with a delay on top of everything else. Not when they already know perfectly well--"
"I heard you." Flint tugs at the corner of his mustache, the short hairs at his chin, then folds up the packet and all its promises of good hunting. Standing, he says, "See to it that provisioning resumes - at the double, if that's what they really care for."
Gates snorts. "Meanwhile, am I to assume you have business elsewhere?"
"While you're at it, if there's any madeira to be had on the island make sure it finds it way on board. To make my gratitude obvious."
"They'd rather have extra casks of rum."
"Fine."
In Nassau there is a room that the woman in Thomas's company pretends to keep, but when Flint finds his way to it he's reasonably certain she won't be there. Or that it won't matter if she is. Or that he will let himself be only frustrated by her presence instead of hating it, annoyed only as she's tied pieces of Thomas to Nassautown and that fucking ship instead of leaving him free to go where he belongs. Regardless, he doesn't ask after her - only confirms with the house's girl that Mister Barlow is in when she makes a halfhearted attempt to intercept him on the stairs.
no subject
(It can't be lost on him, not completely, that without Charles Vane and the Ranger Thomas would be somewhere in the American colonies in chains, and that without his young lady, he'd have listlessly given up at some stage instead of adapting?
But hearts beat as they please.)
There is only one occupant in the room, today. It's a wreck of attempted tidiness around pilfered books (Thomas), magpie hoarding of all things shiny and strange (Gwen), and desultory regard for order (Miranda). Trinkets and swords and the odd bottle, a beautiful dress and cloak as gifted from one woman to another draped over a chair, battered ledgers piled in order of urgent business. And Thomas, sitting with knees beside him on the bed, looking up from a pamphlet when there's noise at the door.
All this chaotic mess and color and he should be dizzy with it, but as is so often the case, he's found it muted and distant by himself. Blue eyes find green and the world saturates again-- relief and joy so plain in the smile on his face, so brightly genuine it almost causes something to ache in his chest. These separations are hardly worth complaining about compared to his years in Bethlem, but still-- being without him is like suffocating.
Thomas is up on bare feet before the door's closed behind his lover, arms around him in time with the sound of it meeting the frame. Hair a little damp still from a bath, shirt untucked, it's a minor miracle he's dressed at all.
"There was talk the weather might not see you back until tomorrow," he says, muffled with his face against James's.
no subject
"We captured a sea breeze beyond Hog's Island, then managed to ride the tide into the bay." As if the details could possibly hold any interest. As if the technicalities of sailing have anything to do with what he thought he might mention in this instance.
Because he's thought of plenty that he wants to say to him. There are things that warrant, no demand, discussion (how striking out from Nassau is an obligation if the crew is to be retained - which it must at all costs be -, but how directionless and untenable it now seems; how things must change; that the ship is to be reprovisioned and then dashing away again--), but it's easy to say none of it. To instead be fixed by the warmth of his breathing and the texture of Thomas's drying hair under his fingertips, and how mercifully alone they are (a rare fucking miracle). It's far simpler to just kiss him instead, dissatisfied restlessness transforming naturally into want.
But, also: "Who told you otherwise?"
no subject
(It was probably Rackham.)
He should ask: how was hunting? Is your crew unhurt? Was anything that looked like the Royal Navy skulking about? because it's all important, and he does care about it. But Thomas finds himself bumping his nose against James's and kissing him, like he'll drown without it. Once, in Nassau, he'd stood outside a tent and advised soaking Charles in rum so that he looked the part of drunkard instead of heartbroken, and reflected to himself that he'd never find his own heart or body moved by anyone ever again. Something in him wounded too deeply, shattered too thoroughly.
"Can you stay?"
Look how much James has healed him.
no subject
But time was saved by managing to catch the tide (Rackham might have been right but for luck and skill), and there can be no pretending that this could be put aside. There must have been considerations made just for wanting Thomas, because when has that not been a part of everything?
"I will," he says, all but against the corner of Thomas's mouth.
Can doesn't need to be a factor. Instead he breathes in the clean tang of Thomas's skin, kisses him again as the option is available, and reaches between them to draw the pistol from his belt and set it there on the cluttered sideboard. What a bright, blinding kind of satisfaction.
no subject
(And you wanted the navy to do away with them, Thomas had said one night, in those days of learning again how not to flinch or leave his own mind while held, his smiling voice almost lost completely in the chaotic din of voice. Kiss him, kiss him chanted by drunk pirates about the Ranger's blacksmith and his very male paramour, and Thomas who can't stand rum but who had had an awful lot of it anyway, saying did you know- that reminds me of Alexander, and Bagoas- it's really very beautiful--)
"I'd have you stay in this room with me for the next week," he says, hands finding their way into the layers of coat and shirt, so sparse compared to the layers he first battled with on this form, and yet still entirely too many, "The next year." Thomas pushes the coat from his shoulders, guides it down and off, letting it fall to the floor and capturing his lover in a kiss after. Belt, next. James tastes like salt and sweat and sun, god only knows what else, surely gunsmoke and blood and liquor. More bitter than the taste he remembers. But the depth of it - of him - is one Thomas prefers, infinitely.
im just going to start randomizing icons theyre all equally useless for this lmfao
"I'll stay, I'll stay," is an easy thing to murmur in that place. It's surely a mutually understood lie, though the kindest kind.
(It seems strange to think that there must be a point where he will come into this room or another like it and they won't feel the immediate, visceral need to touch one another. The instant need to minimize the space between them to centimeters will diminish. They will pick chairs that aren't neighboring. They will look at one another and he won't feel both blunted and sharpened just at the sight of him. This thing between them will become more plain because it has the luxury of being so.)
But for now he does - need to touch him. Slide his hands under fabric and lay his sun and work warm hands over Thomas's ribs.
you say that but i bet you'll deeply consider every one
Thomas is only a little scraped up beneath his shirt, not near the wear and tear of some pirates (Thomas Hamilton, a pirate) by virtue of his non-combatant position, but some perils are unavoidable. But he prefers shrapnel and sunburn to being a medical experiment; the sun has begun to bake fine surgery lines into visible ones, and Thomas hates them, is quietly comforted when some other injury places more ragged scars overtop. But - does he look like anything but some lost, ruined nobleman? Will he ever?
James's belt thunks to the floor and for a moment, Thomas finds himself holding still with arms around him, hands pressed flat against the small of his back, foreheads together. Just feeling him, his breath and his heart and their hands on each other. "I love you," he says, something about it so light and sunshining in its sincerity. "Did you know that?"
Shut up, Thomas. He steps back and tugs James with him, towards the bed covered in papers and silk robes and someone's heeled shoe.
that's the problem - I agonize only to go 'fuck it, these are all varying degrees of bad fits'
In a different place, he might route Thomas to the edge of the bed and press him backwards until his knees gave. A rare instance of managing to corner the taller man in his shadow, to take his face in both hands and lean down to kiss him. But here, he breaks off kissing him. He catches Thomas by the hand, a loose one handed grip on his fingers as he braces against the wall and clumsily levers his boots off. It's better when Thomas can do as he pleases.
"Is there something wrong with the desk?" The one by the narrow window which apparently doesn't warrant being worked at given all the debris in the goddamn bed. He nods toward it, fixes Thomas with a crooked look, and rasps out a self-satisfied laugh.
i'll use more wig icons will that help
"Why, would you prefer it?" An innocent (haha no) smile before he steals a quick kiss and then slips away, kneeling on the mattress so he can gather up the errant papers and deposit them elsewhere, shove the one lone shoe onto the floor. He's not even sure who that one belongs to, as he's never wearing another heel or wig again so long as he bloody lives.
Thomas looks forward to the day when James can push at him with more aggression and not be baiting the echoes of Bedlam, but he doesn't dwell on it now. Things are as they are.
all brown wig icons from here on out ty
There are still papers in it, something crunching between the mattress and his knee, but it's Thomas's mess. He has no responsibility to manage it and so instead slides his thumb into the waist of Thomas's trousers, fingers splayed at his hip; moves the collar of his shirt to kiss his shoulder, his neck, to grin and breathe at the tickle of his hairline across the nape of his neck.
"It seems if you worked at the desk, there'd be less need to tidy the bed." Just throwing that one out there.
('How is your work?' 'What news is there since I've been away? 'Where's Miranda gone to?' seem like such non-vital questions.)
blocks u
There's playfulness in how he pushes James over onto his back, but he's intent in how he kisses him, along his jaw, his throat, to his chest. He could-- still be shattered into a million pieces, if he let himself. He could find this impossible. He doesn't want to. He can't be the person (or the lover) he was in London, but he can remake himself. He wants to so badly - as much as he wants James. Thomas only pulls back to sit up and drag his own shirt off over his head, skimming hands up James's belly and chest after, finding him so beautiful. Something forged in fire and tempered in salt-water. Something his, under his hands, alive and together.
no subject
(Imagine a different version of this, a constant thought murmurs: there is no storm, no wreck, and the ship carrying Thomas reaches its destination and the man is swallowed up by the Americas, and they are both ghosts to each other, and--) He catches Thomas's hands, drawing one to his cheek. To kiss his palm. To trace the lines of fine bones and swollen knuckles. To cradle his fingers, to take the edge of Thomas's thumb gently between his teeth and press his tongue to calloused skin.
Maybe the reason this works despite how divided his attentions should be, despite Thomas's fine stark scars, is because this can be enough.