katabasis | i'll put some stirring song lyrics here later

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.

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.

i'll put some stirring song lyrics here later

you say that but i bet you'll deeply consider every one

that's the problem - I agonize only to go 'fuck it, these are all varying degrees of bad fits'

i'll use more wig icons will that help

all brown wig icons from here on out ty

blocks u

no subject