Articles are not eternally binding; they, as it turns out, only reach as far as the initially signed terms, even amongst the wildest wilds of the Ranger's sociopolitical climate. Thomas Barlow never transforms into an adept sailor. Or even an adequate one, really. Opinions split in disparate directions on his qualities as a pirate (which is different than being a sailor), but no matter what else he is, he's at least profitable. Enough so that he can work just fine from the shore - a move that surprised a fair few, who had anticipated a revolving door sign with the Walrus.
(He might have - could have, perhaps even would have, if not for the sizeable piece of shrapnel that had skewered his left hand and required some back-on-the-island surgery to save its mobility. His calm silence during the procedure had made Miranda cry so furiously in sickened realization, and it snapped a fault line in his heart, broken in so many places already. I didn't want her to know, he'd whispered to James, safe in the near-dark candlelight. Because James knows enough of the real worst of the world to understand Bethlem's torture without being drawn a picture, but Miranda is too practical to have imagined it on her own.)
The future isn't set. He may well sail under Captain Flint after all. Or if he gets too precious about it, there's always Charles Vane. Thomas' young mistress is on that crew, after all.
There's no air of French mistress from the man half-lunging at him and the book he's holding. It's all half-growling, half-laughing, masculine literature snob-in-pirate's-clothing charm. James misses in his attempt, his target gracefully side-stepping, but Thomas has suspicions about him trying very hard. Even though what he's reading is truly awful.
"Her busom did then expand, annointed with shimmering wet jewels from her eyes as pure as the Lord Savior's," he recites, as serious and deeply melodic as if he were reading scripture. "And against his, for he dost-"
"This is plainly mutinous," James says, finally snagging him around the middle. Thomas lets him, though he extends his arm up and away to prevent the offending book from being swiped. There's so much new poetry and art to experience and it really is impressive how gratuitously horrible some of it is. Thomas delights in both the best and the worst.
"Mutinous? I'm hardly a member of your crew, captain." It's too difficult not to smile. They're both a little wobbly. Almost over-warm; just enough. James gives up trying to grab the book and wraps both arms around him, which is an unfair tactic, as Thomas is powerless to resist that embrace.
"Maybe not on paper," James is murmuring, so close to him.
"Maybe not." The book thuds to the floor, the sound as distantly inconsequential as the noise from downstairs, the sound of the ocean, the pressure of the past. "And maybe not at all, have you considered that?"
"No."
They've navigated so many storms. The days of careful, brittle touches, and days of desperation. Thomas likes right now the best: comfortable and easy and smiling as James presses his mouth to his, two people who are here and now and themselves. The past is a map, not an open wound.
His breath hitches, his fingers curl in red hair, he steps back to allow himself to be pressed against the old ornate vanity in the small chamber. Thomas loves the taste of him, tinged with wine or smoke or nothing at all, wonderfully human and ordinary and familiar, from salt-chapped lips to the warm inside of-
BANG.
He'd jump if he hadn't gotten so used to cannonfire; probably the same for James, who's looking up adorably peeved instead of alarmed.
Perhaps there are conflicting interpretations of that look on Flint's face.
It's a Walrus man, one of the girls, God-knows-who behind them. For one muddled heartbeat the world is nothing but owl-eyed crewman faces and grasping at straws - is there an alternate explanation? For this? Thomas with his shirt mostly off, grappling intimately with James who has one hand inside the waistband of his trousers and the other peeling away the rest of his shirt.
There's not. So,
"Room's paid for," Thomas says magnanimously, before reaching out to slam it shut in still-shocked faces. (Not the most shocked, but still. Somewhere, Charles has a headache.) "Ah, damnit, the latch is-"
His complaint is cut off by laughter, incredible and beautiful, James pulling him back towards the bed, falling onto it, dragging him with.
Yes. He does much prefer this, to all else. Here, now, and themselves.
The latch is stuck open. It is stuck closed. They'll have to climb out the window to escape the room when they're finished with it, or someone will come to the room again only they'll knock this time. What does it matter? Which makes easier sense to the world past it - collaborating behind a closed door with a man who used to crew with Charles Vane and now does his business at the edge of the sea inside of on it, or Captain Flint with his hand down the pants of the only man on the island with his nose as high in the air as his own?
The latch is fine, no matter its state and neither question has much bearing on the hour as it's James pulling Thomas into bed with his two sturdy hands and grinning mouth. And it's James who kisses him without the urgency, unconcerned because more will follow, and groans as if shot when Thomas makes the arch suggestion that the book be recovered before they get too far along and lose their place.
"I'd rather you kept me here," he can growl, false challenges without any delicacy as he finishes getting Thomas out of his shirt because they've navigated the terms of this already and because it's a more rewarding impulse than the urge to look back over his shoulder at anything else.
This - this is absolutely doing business at the edge of the sea - it is demonstrably collaborating -
(So many long months of plausible deniability flung out the window, down the stairs; everyone likes to talk about matelotage as if it really were that common, and maybe it was, in differently-colonized waters. Less so, here, but who's going to show up to drag one of them away to a hospital? Who would risk their lives over something so frivolous, when they could go back to their own vices instead?
Not rhetorical questions, but answers for another day.)
Thomas' hands don't shake anymore, not even the one with the terrible scarring, not even while laughing and prying off James' gaudy belt. "Oh, I have no intention of letting you get away. Whether it's for-- this or that." For further psychological torture of bad poetry, or?
Or, much preferable. Thomas crowds him back and kisses him, letting him feel the way hunger has begun to tug at him, now that there's space for it. Metaphorical space. But physical space, too; they didn't get a room just to coyly read poetry.
Or, is like a habit they've formed, despite the opposite being more real. Careful months consisting of not - not looking at him, pretending not to share the direction in which Thomas' thoughts bend, to not set a hand at his elbow as the man comes up over the Walrus' side - evaporate given any exposure to Or. They become the rise of his hip to allow the heavy belt to be stripped free, and the deft work of fingers (which have been educated and trained and required to be clever and able) undoing buttons and laces.
"This?" Is something cheap women might ask, blinking and coy in some grey dockside rooms. James asks it into Thomas' mouth, grin pulling against the taste of him (warm and pleasantly sharp, the acrid ghost of burned coffee), with his hand pressing between them - grip firm.
Thomas reminds himself, sometimes, that even if they were of socially acceptable coupled genders, or if they were accepted without caveat, that they would not observably behaving so differently. His occasional expressions of affection with Miranda were somewhat scandalous, Bonny and Rackham are hardly kissing around every corner, and it's not as though he and James are the type.
He laughs, bright and breathless, manages not to punch his bicep for that coy look. "This."
Or are they not the type. They've never tried - and acting out the same, fatal charade here in this lawless world as they did in England is sometimes too much to bear. There is something viciously freeing in having slammed that door with no attempt at defense. This it not something that needs justification, and they are not in fucking England.
Trying to peel James' shirt off while horizontal is slightly clumsy work, but as always, he falls into being practiced. Familiar shifts of posture and expanses of skin, with new scars, and freckles baked differently in the sun. It's not fair that James, ginger, tans even a little better than Thomas, who does nothing but burn horribly. Absurd. Beautiful. He pushes into the hand between them. Mm. (He doesn't think of the past, but he does think it's very nice that his sexuality returned after Bethlem, eventually.) With his weight on one elbow, Thomas skims one hand up James' chest and throat, pressing his thumb over his mouth as he shifts to scrape teeth along his jaw so he can murmur near his cheekbone, low and quiet, "I feel every way with you, my love, unraveled to the barest limit and still.. given pause over.. what to do with you."
And has been prone to thinking them elsewhere, and in more inconvenient instances than flat on his back in a bought room with a cracked plaster ceiling and a door which either latches or doesn't.
(Before the trouble with Thomas' hand, say, when the Ranger's accountant had yet been operating as Charles Vane in fiat; the intrusive quality of watching Mr Barlow in the waist of some captured ship brusquely going about the business of taking the account as wreckage from the shattered foremost rigging is being cleared away from about him, and being suddenly aware that his interest has more to do with the line of Thomas hip and the flush of activity or sunburn on the back of his neck than it is to do with any show of seeing that Mr Barlow not somehow fuck them.
—Well.
There is something to be said for having Thomas here, on shore. Things like how he doesn't have to be sick with nerves when they are running down on some merchantman who's refused to strike her colors; how Miranda deserves her husband; how Thomas is maybe just marginally less likely to find himself in a position where he might be stabbed for being too fucking well bred in Nassau than on the deck of an unsecured prize. But it also means more than once being stuck on the Walrus at anchor on the harbor, snapping and surly over the ship's business keeping him there instead of finding some quiet, private place to reacquaint with Mr Barlow.)
So maybe he has an idea of what he wants as he takes Thomas' thumb into his mouth, humming some low note around it in time with the pointed squeeze of fingers. And maybe the real absurdity is anyone pretending that this is at all different or particular from every other hour of the day, when really the suggestions he makes with his tongue and the edge of teeth are as premeditated and sly and expectant as any other tactic. There's a basic self satisfaction in it; an insistence toward action. Getting the weather over on some prize isn't really so far removed from sucking Thomas' fingers into his mouth while he has the man's cock in his hand.
Perfectly logical, natural, like breathing, like ocean water during a storm. Thomas' breath catches on a quiet laugh, and he follows it by worrying a spot behind James' ear, sure to leave a mark. Tips of fingers - elegant still, despite becoming more and more work-rough - press against the soft curl of his tongue, thoughtlessly indecent. Here, he doesn't need the confining pretense of thought. If there are spiderwebs of insecurity (I used to talk so much more, I used to look so different, I used to shape my beliefs in another way), they're burned away by this simple feeling. Connection. Want. Love.
--Increasingly impatient desire. Thomas pushes up - leaving his fingers where they are only long enough to duck in and place them with his mouth, his own tongue, claiming a deep, artless kiss - to get better leverage to start shuffling two pairs of trousers off. Something downstairs happens to prompt screaming cheers from what must be the whole company, hardly noticed in this heated chamber. Thomas rakes blunt fingernails down the crest of hip to pelvis to wrap his hand around James' erection, palming him, stroking upward and shifting to hold them together, in a tangle of laces and all else. Bright heat on such delicate, silky skin, the rough edges of fabric tugged only half-away, glassy eyes caught between the sight of it and his lover's face.
That's fine; patience comes more easily alongside warmth and the press of skin, Thomas' sure hands, and the look in his face when he's looking at him. There should be some inherent contradiction in it - unmitigated want shouldn't be a thing that satisfies too. But there is so much effort in it, so much of the world rearranged in desire of it, that seeing it plain in Thomas is like tasting the thing that makes the mouth water.
So never mind whatever inconsequential thing is happening downstairs—(What brought the Walrus man to door in the first place?, he doesn't think; Christ, let that din be over something easy like a pair of tits out)—, he's engaged with the bare line of Thomas's neck and shoulder under his fingers, and the heat of him against and between them, and first returning that kiss with his own hungry mouth then setting teeth and tongue to the sensitive skin of Thomas' throat.
Maybe the mark will be pleasantly obvious. Maybe, with the Ranger presently at large, it will be difficult to attribute it to Mr Barlow's French mistress.
The sting of James' teeth makes other parts of him jolt, and Thomas tips his head back to let him make whatever mess of it he wants - Mr Barlow's French mistress is on a ship on the sea somewhere far away from his throat, and besides, her little shark fangs never find his skin in the first place. He hopes James feels an ache in the back of his teeth in perfect satisfaction against the frustration of every time they've had to pull away, tug up collars, be so very careful.
What's the point of being an anarchist outlaw if you're still being strangled to death by propriety. (What's the point of stealing and liberating and disrupting if you aren't doing it to fight back.)
The arch of his spine, the exhale from his lungs; Please. Fingernails (at his side, from the hand not on his dick) (Thomas has manners) rake against him. Leave every mark. There's no pain or attraction to suffering; only reality, and excess, and actually tasting the damn thing.
Unless James is actually going to draw blood and turn both these threads into surprise horror, Thomas is going to properly sit up and drag his trousers and all else off. Manhandling him where he wants him (briefly thinking how different sweat and heat smell when it's from lust than fear, how something can be so different) and only offering a brief detour to set teeth against the inside of his thigh, then his mouth is on his cock. Not as practiced as he once was, but still. If James meant the other way 'round he can lodge (hah) a formal complaint somewhere.
There is, for whatever record is being kept of this moment—so none; as this matters only in this room and between them, and to no one else in the whole fucking world, which would irritate if it weren't something so firmly possessed or they were expected to leave this room still pretending otherwise—some brief sound of protest. Because actually, yes. He had meant--
"Christ."
Which is half frustrated laugh, fingers shifting in pale hair, and half the lines of muscle and sinew which sharpen toward the heat of Thomas' mouth. Because it's good regardless. Because for all that this is an uninterrupted line drawing straight back to steps outside of Parliament, and for all the careful touches and arrangement of hands and laces and pale scars since, it's still true that they both fallen free from the habit of asking for what they want.
That might rankle too if the thing mattered more than person. But Thomas can do whatever the fuck he pleases with his mouth and it'd still be right.
Thomas makes a low-toned noise, self-satisfied, and just a hint of No, just me. And they are asking, anyway, aren't they. Learning to read each other's minds now that they've learned new languages inside of them, learning to read everything outside of them, too. Every stuttered gasp and clench of muscle and flush of skin. Or maybe-- it's that asking is too painful, because asking implies the answer might be no, and even the possibility between them is something to be disdained.
There's no answer to that, because there's no question, because Thomas' entire reality is James hard and overheated in his mouth, pressing his tongue to the underside and moving his head, moving a little slower than he'd like but quicker than would be reasonable for 'appropriately regaining bearings' or 'teasing'. He wants this, the push at the back of his throat, the fullness of his own breathing, the way he presses down on his lover's hips to hold him and not just hold him down. When he pulls back he presses his head just-so and encourages Jame to pull his hair, push him where he wants. Not much of a respite, only long enough to do that and send a look up at him, crystal-clear blue eyes as bright as they've ever been with desire so stark and deep. A teasing threat of teeth at the base of him, one hand moving between his legs to touch lower, kissing back up his cock to suck him down again.
The heat in that look travels the whole length of him, lodging like a full blunt shape behind his ribs and briefly disorienting him from anything that isn't Thomas' hair between his fingers, or the weight of him against his thigh, or his mouth and how intentional he is. For a moment, propped up on one slanting elbow to look, there is some urge to keep his hand light just to feel how Thomas drives himself without any prompting. But it's an impulse there and gone, thought in the same beat this his grip tightens and he presses into Thomas' mouth - up against the welcome set of fingers.
The line that neck and shoulder draws as Thomas takes him in is such a keen shape. He could map that; measure its trajectory and curve and put it down on paper--
(Speaking of gratuitously horrible writing.)
"Fuck." Which is partly just noise, hissed out. "Look at you."
He still moves as he wants (as he needs to, captive, his own desire like a knife at his throat, on the verge of desperate for how badly he wants the other man), and it's a blessing to want the same thing. There is something divine in the curl of fingers, in the tensing of iliopsoas muscles, in that rasping exhale of fuck.
Thomas' thumb stokes down, curling over the warm weight of James' balls to the skin beneath, pressing with barely-there pressure, a small counter to the abandon with which he sucks him. Taking care only to manage teeth and little else, Thomas pushes forward until he can feel himself choking-- withdrawing in a hurry to drag in a breath, his quiet laugh rough with it. Look at him? He thinks he must look a mess. And deliriously happy.
Pulling off like that means his brain has a second to consider something besides James and his bitter taste and the pulse he can feel, and his own arousal punches into the forefront of his awareness. Fuck, indeed. He shifts up, one hand digging into James's side, lopsided smile on his face. "Kiss me."
He does. As if he even needs the invitation (demand? They have both gotten so good at telling). And God, is it good to taste him - and to taste him -, and to grin roughly into the shape of his mouth instead of kissing him with tongue. "Her busom did expand," he quotes, laughing low and thick and pettish. He has always been good at recall - lines he hardly knows floating to the tip of his tongue at the slightest provocation. And there is his hand between them, catching the silk heat of Thomas' erection in his firm grip like they are boys without any consequence.
(And why should there be?)
"Are you going to fuck me?" James breathes into his mouth. It's not really a question. It's all his most deliriously pleased parts pressed firm against all of Thomas' familiar ones. Like he means to memorize the knots of his knuckles.
This grinning kiss is fine, and good. It means when Thomas closes his teeth to bite James for dredging up that awful muck, he only gets the side of his lower lip. Laughing, lighting up with it, filling every atom. They're enclosed here in jewel-toned candle-lit darkness (where it is safe, where all things happen, whether they're ever brought forth or not), but everything feels bright.
"Mm?" Am I, or am I just going to rut into your hand, like a teenager, like a student, like the fumbling, desperate men we were when the scales first fell off after that stupid dinner. "Of course I am." Another kiss, and he shifts up even further to match him, one knee pressing into the back of James' thigh to nudge him where he wants him - will want him, in a moment. "Permitting--"
Permitting, if all the baubles and jars on the bedside table aren't perfume or things long gone rancid. Pirate or not, spit's not going to do.
The bedside table is within the reach of his arm, so he tries that first - unecessarily coaxing Thomas along with one hand while trying to kiss him and blindly feeling at the assortment of--
"Shit."
It's growled, laced with high spirits and the warmth set deep in his chest, as he twists half out from under Thomas and fumbles with more dedication through their options. If there's nothing here, he'll go out onto that gallery in nothing but his fucking coat and order something be fetched. Fuck pretense; now there is something to win favor with the goddamn crew.
(Thomas' bare side is so warm against the inside of his knee.)
"At least take your trousers off. For fuck's sake." That second part on behalf of a second box of strong smelling cloves and dried citrus peels.
What a sight that would be. Odysseus casts himself instead as Dionysus. Thomas laughs again, low and breathless, and hums in satisfaction at the feeling of James twisting around beneath him. He only hinders his movements a little, hands dragging down his bare sides and around his hips, and then, yes, finally, he rids himself of the rest of his clothes. The both of them left with only decoration; little slips of curved metal and scar tissue.
"Let's see," he sighs, settling atop James's chest like some overgrown housepet unconcerned with his positional comfort, and reaching out to help snag a few vials. He ejects one into the void of the room immediately, denied, pries open the stopper on another to investigate. Pinkish liquid smelling of nothing in particular tips out onto his skin and Thomas rubs fingers through it, over wiry ginger hair, circling one nipple.
There is something specific in the sprawl of Thomas' weight and the points where he's heaviest on top of him that's like clean linens after two months at sea, as warming in to his center as a hungry mouth or pressing fingers. With his chin on his chest, attention only halfway diverted from the inspection of a jar of something that's more paste than liquid, James hums some low sound to acknowledge the wandering touch and the tangle of their bodies and the hard, hot line of Thomas' erection between them.
The paste, whatever it was, looks like it's gone off. The lid goes back on the jar.
(Here, actually, is when the line of his thoughts might be given to making its way beyond this room and past where Thomas can touch. He could think, What the fuck will the crew say?, to begin with. There will be questions, and not ones that deal with Captain Flint fucking Mr Barlow, but Mr Barlow's association with other crews and what that means for the Walrus and--)
But the room is closed and the roughened pads of Thomas' fingers gone soft and smooth under the viscous liquid inspire a particular breed of myopia.
(What it means is that their uneven unity stretches between ships and crews, what it means is that the tipping point from scrambling individuals making no headway into a nation of thieves draws ever closer, what it means is - we will all just have to grow up, won't we. For the war coming, for something without kings.
They've gotten so good at taking.)
"Is it, or are you just impatient?" His voice, low and velvety, as enchanted as he is instigating. But he has no patience for real teasing; he wants James, badly, and there's plenty of time to draw things out later. The damn door's busted, they're never leaving this bloody room, and right now that suits him fine.
He draws a line with the edge of his fingernail through the neutral oil, watching the way the tiniest sliver of James' skin blanches and returns to normal - giving it a second to result in any strange reaction, all the while shifting to have more contact with him, his body, the wonderful heat and hardness of him. Are they old enough to worry about cramped muscles from certain positions? Fuck, he'll think about that some other time.
"Yes," is the summary answer to both, though he fetches the slim bottle from Thomas and dabs the contents onto his thumb.
It smells like nothing much, tastes like little more, and doesn't immediately sting when rubbed inside his cheek; and there is the line of his hip shifting in small, irregular increments under the insistent press of Thomas' frame - the good sense of being too old to fuck with something that's going to make them both tender waging a losing war with the rationale of being fucked throughly enough to feel it after anyway.
"Give me your hand."
Thomas' wrist isn't delicate, only the discoloration there is, and there is care in how James arranges his hand palm up across his chest but he isn't careful. With thumb at the bottle's mouth to regulate, oil is drizzled into waiting fingers. There is something to the look of it, bright in the low light, that fascinates - burns a real low and melting heat into the center of him.
His attention is very keen, the unabashed tip of his head some awkward angle, but the self-satisfaction is all in the curve of his mouth and how he sounds: "Good enough?"
Thomas doesn't need careful. It's nice, sometimes, but not when they're both basically gagging for it. Which, despite the austere evenness bred into him so thoroughly not even five years in a hole could break him of it, Thomas is. So effortlessly, eagerly aligned with the restless way James pushes against him, the bluntness of that Yes.
He kisses him. Agreement. Good enough.
There are surely erotic ways to describe preparation for anal penetration, with artful fingers and so many nerve endings, but(t) for today - Thomas does that, keen on further reacquainting himself with the most pleasing angles, what pressure makes him gasp, or delicate parts of him twitch. For a fevered moment he considers replacing his fingers with his mouth, because he could happily torture James this way forever, but it passes. Another time. (For sure.)
"--Well?"
If he's said anything about being ready before this instant, Thomas has ignored him on account of Knowing Better, but he'll accept such declarations now.
It all is heat being wound up in any case, strung together in this room and made up of sharp breaths and steadying hands, the encouraging jump of twitching muscle, and the brace of a clenched fist at the absurdly intricate headboard with all its curved leaves and rudimentary finches and
(someone in Kingston probably paid a dowry's worth for it, and here is where it's ended up and who's getting fucked against it).
Well.
"Well what," is not a question. It's a bitten out, flush faced demand and Being Kind of a Pushy Bitch About It.
In some later hour, when some of the sweat has dried and he's kissing the back of Thomas' neck and encouraging him to get hard again with some slow stroke of his hand, there will be time for artful meditations on what they are and this is. In this one, he's going pull something figuring out how to effectively kick Thomas in the ass if he doesn't make good on the promise of his hands. Fucking pirates.
In a way, there is no change, and no before with no division to set apart an after. Thomas never thought that the state of that before would be eternal, with James always but trembling under his hands and being molded into whatever he told him to do. Erotic as it was - and still can be, should they find themselves in a mood - such things as this are not static. What was that unspoken thing, an unbroken line from this bed to the steps of Parliament. They were always going to learn each other to the point of demands. Which is to say: pushy bitch is a good look on him that Thomas likes quite a lot.
Sparks of both frustration and relief at the necessity of touching himself enough to be finished with this business, and to answer that not-question, and push inside of him. Not roughly but a tick past as careful as he usually makes himself, strung tight and also impatient. He can still taste James in his mouth, he can near nothing but the other man's breath, and his own pulse in his ears.
Fuck, finally.
Muscle-memory. Heart-memory. The way the world vanishes to leave only the desire to reach the point where things shatter. Breath dragging in, and out, and feeling paradoxically dizzier for it. He pulls James's knee one way, shoves his own up higher, getting just. There.
There's a sound he makes. He's deaf to its exact shape and volume, but can feel it lingering in his throat like a caught breath after, sunk there like a hook he's relieved to find the point of. That's good. That's what he wanted. He can taste the satisfaction in it, sweet and feverish, as Thomas drives into him. Christ, how vividly bright he is; and how gratifying it is to see and feel how much he wants him poured back into him by Thomas' body and the desire stark in his face.
Pinned between that and his own braced hand, he shakes first like a taut thread and then laughs low and growling and "Fuck."
Which - yes. Clearly, if his inability to be still is any indication. He is all flexing muscle, an encouraging shift of hip, his free hand finding whatever point of leverage (Thomas' bicep) that's worth exploiting. This, this, this, says all the air in the room and that's no different from how it's always been.
That desperate, lush almost-animal sound and the growl in his voice sure does something.
It's ridiculous, the stuff of over-romantic nonsense, but every time is the best time anew. (Except for once, when they were really, really drunk.) Because every time is another explosive chance to stitch together two parts of something that should have been born together. There are a thousand poems like that, and they're all dull and unbelievable, because they don't say anything about the way James carves out the word fuck or the way his eyes look that way, the shade of perfect green. It doesn't occur to him that this, too, is over-romantic nonsense, because it isn't, and because everything feels too good to bother with thoughts any more complicated than yes.
Extra inches are a hazard on a ship, narrowly missing losing the top half of his head to low ceilings and whirling [stick various sails are connected to i'm sorry abby i googled jib and just confused myself with diagrams, i could rework this sentence but i wrote more of the paragraph before i googled, don't ever show this tag to anyone it's TERRIBLE]s, but in bed, they're wonderfully handy for leverage, and Thomas employs every spare inch of himself to fuck into him and chase that lovely sound again, and again. One hand is fixed to his hip, keeping up up, right where he wants (needs) him, but the other he looses to reach up and pry James's from the headboard. In a moment he'll see to his cock and making sure he finds his climax like this, but for right now, it's vital that he grip his hand in his hard enough it has to hurt, and look at him, and breathe the same.
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17xx | currently, without consequence
(He might have - could have, perhaps even would have, if not for the sizeable piece of shrapnel that had skewered his left hand and required some back-on-the-island surgery to save its mobility. His calm silence during the procedure had made Miranda cry so furiously in sickened realization, and it snapped a fault line in his heart, broken in so many places already. I didn't want her to know, he'd whispered to James, safe in the near-dark candlelight. Because James knows enough of the real worst of the world to understand Bethlem's torture without being drawn a picture, but Miranda is too practical to have imagined it on her own.)
The future isn't set. He may well sail under Captain Flint after all. Or if he gets too precious about it, there's always Charles Vane. Thomas' young mistress is on that crew, after all.
There's no air of French mistress from the man half-lunging at him and the book he's holding. It's all half-growling, half-laughing, masculine literature snob-in-pirate's-clothing charm. James misses in his attempt, his target gracefully side-stepping, but Thomas has suspicions about him trying very hard. Even though what he's reading is truly awful.
"Her busom did then expand, annointed with shimmering wet jewels from her eyes as pure as the Lord Savior's," he recites, as serious and deeply melodic as if he were reading scripture. "And against his, for he dost-"
"This is plainly mutinous," James says, finally snagging him around the middle. Thomas lets him, though he extends his arm up and away to prevent the offending book from being swiped. There's so much new poetry and art to experience and it really is impressive how gratuitously horrible some of it is. Thomas delights in both the best and the worst.
"Mutinous? I'm hardly a member of your crew, captain." It's too difficult not to smile. They're both a little wobbly. Almost over-warm; just enough. James gives up trying to grab the book and wraps both arms around him, which is an unfair tactic, as Thomas is powerless to resist that embrace.
"Maybe not on paper," James is murmuring, so close to him.
"Maybe not." The book thuds to the floor, the sound as distantly inconsequential as the noise from downstairs, the sound of the ocean, the pressure of the past. "And maybe not at all, have you considered that?"
"No."
They've navigated so many storms. The days of careful, brittle touches, and days of desperation. Thomas likes right now the best: comfortable and easy and smiling as James presses his mouth to his, two people who are here and now and themselves. The past is a map, not an open wound.
His breath hitches, his fingers curl in red hair, he steps back to allow himself to be pressed against the old ornate vanity in the small chamber. Thomas loves the taste of him, tinged with wine or smoke or nothing at all, wonderfully human and ordinary and familiar, from salt-chapped lips to the warm inside of-
BANG.
He'd jump if he hadn't gotten so used to cannonfire; probably the same for James, who's looking up adorably peeved instead of alarmed.
Perhaps there are conflicting interpretations of that look on Flint's face.
It's a Walrus man, one of the girls, God-knows-who behind them. For one muddled heartbeat the world is nothing but owl-eyed crewman faces and grasping at straws - is there an alternate explanation? For this? Thomas with his shirt mostly off, grappling intimately with James who has one hand inside the waistband of his trousers and the other peeling away the rest of his shirt.
There's not. So,
"Room's paid for," Thomas says magnanimously, before reaching out to slam it shut in still-shocked faces. (Not the most shocked, but still. Somewhere, Charles has a headache.) "Ah, damnit, the latch is-"
His complaint is cut off by laughter, incredible and beautiful, James pulling him back towards the bed, falling onto it, dragging him with.
Yes. He does much prefer this, to all else. Here, now, and themselves.
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The latch is fine, no matter its state and neither question has much bearing on the hour as it's James pulling Thomas into bed with his two sturdy hands and grinning mouth. And it's James who kisses him without the urgency, unconcerned because more will follow, and groans as if shot when Thomas makes the arch suggestion that the book be recovered before they get too far along and lose their place.
"I'd rather you kept me here," he can growl, false challenges without any delicacy as he finishes getting Thomas out of his shirt because they've navigated the terms of this already and because it's a more rewarding impulse than the urge to look back over his shoulder at anything else.
(Somewhere, Hal Gates is suddenly very tired.)
oh it's a scene now shorturl.at/aehiV
(So many long months of plausible deniability flung out the window, down the stairs; everyone likes to talk about matelotage as if it really were that common, and maybe it was, in differently-colonized waters. Less so, here, but who's going to show up to drag one of them away to a hospital? Who would risk their lives over something so frivolous, when they could go back to their own vices instead?
Not rhetorical questions, but answers for another day.)
Thomas' hands don't shake anymore, not even the one with the terrible scarring, not even while laughing and prying off James' gaudy belt. "Oh, I have no intention of letting you get away. Whether it's for-- this or that." For further psychological torture of bad poetry, or?
Or, much preferable. Thomas crowds him back and kisses him, letting him feel the way hunger has begun to tug at him, now that there's space for it. Metaphorical space. But physical space, too; they didn't get a room just to coyly read poetry.
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"This?" Is something cheap women might ask, blinking and coy in some grey dockside rooms. James asks it into Thomas' mouth, grin pulling against the taste of him (warm and pleasantly sharp, the acrid ghost of burned coffee), with his hand pressing between them - grip firm.
huehue
He laughs, bright and breathless, manages not to punch his bicep for that coy look. "This."
Or are they not the type. They've never tried - and acting out the same, fatal charade here in this lawless world as they did in England is sometimes too much to bear. There is something viciously freeing in having slammed that door with no attempt at defense. This it not something that needs justification, and they are not in fucking England.
Trying to peel James' shirt off while horizontal is slightly clumsy work, but as always, he falls into being practiced. Familiar shifts of posture and expanses of skin, with new scars, and freckles baked differently in the sun. It's not fair that James, ginger, tans even a little better than Thomas, who does nothing but burn horribly. Absurd. Beautiful. He pushes into the hand between them. Mm. (He doesn't think of the past, but he does think it's very nice that his sexuality returned after Bethlem, eventually.) With his weight on one elbow, Thomas skims one hand up James' chest and throat, pressing his thumb over his mouth as he shifts to scrape teeth along his jaw so he can murmur near his cheekbone, low and quiet, "I feel every way with you, my love, unraveled to the barest limit and still.. given pause over.. what to do with you."
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And has been prone to thinking them elsewhere, and in more inconvenient instances than flat on his back in a bought room with a cracked plaster ceiling and a door which either latches or doesn't.
(Before the trouble with Thomas' hand, say, when the Ranger's accountant had yet been operating as Charles Vane in fiat; the intrusive quality of watching Mr Barlow in the waist of some captured ship brusquely going about the business of taking the account as wreckage from the shattered foremost rigging is being cleared away from about him, and being suddenly aware that his interest has more to do with the line of Thomas hip and the flush of activity or sunburn on the back of his neck than it is to do with any show of seeing that Mr Barlow not somehow fuck them.
—Well.
There is something to be said for having Thomas here, on shore. Things like how he doesn't have to be sick with nerves when they are running down on some merchantman who's refused to strike her colors; how Miranda deserves her husband; how Thomas is maybe just marginally less likely to find himself in a position where he might be stabbed for being too fucking well bred in Nassau than on the deck of an unsecured prize. But it also means more than once being stuck on the Walrus at anchor on the harbor, snapping and surly over the ship's business keeping him there instead of finding some quiet, private place to reacquaint with Mr Barlow.)
So maybe he has an idea of what he wants as he takes Thomas' thumb into his mouth, humming some low note around it in time with the pointed squeeze of fingers. And maybe the real absurdity is anyone pretending that this is at all different or particular from every other hour of the day, when really the suggestions he makes with his tongue and the edge of teeth are as premeditated and sly and expectant as any other tactic. There's a basic self satisfaction in it; an insistence toward action. Getting the weather over on some prize isn't really so far removed from sucking Thomas' fingers into his mouth while he has the man's cock in his hand.
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--Increasingly impatient desire. Thomas pushes up - leaving his fingers where they are only long enough to duck in and place them with his mouth, his own tongue, claiming a deep, artless kiss - to get better leverage to start shuffling two pairs of trousers off. Something downstairs happens to prompt screaming cheers from what must be the whole company, hardly noticed in this heated chamber. Thomas rakes blunt fingernails down the crest of hip to pelvis to wrap his hand around James' erection, palming him, stroking upward and shifting to hold them together, in a tangle of laces and all else. Bright heat on such delicate, silky skin, the rough edges of fabric tugged only half-away, glassy eyes caught between the sight of it and his lover's face.
It's a good idea, just give him a minute.
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So never mind whatever inconsequential thing is happening downstairs—(What brought the Walrus man to door in the first place?, he doesn't think; Christ, let that din be over something easy like a pair of tits out)—, he's engaged with the bare line of Thomas's neck and shoulder under his fingers, and the heat of him against and between them, and first returning that kiss with his own hungry mouth then setting teeth and tongue to the sensitive skin of Thomas' throat.
Maybe the mark will be pleasantly obvious. Maybe, with the Ranger presently at large, it will be difficult to attribute it to Mr Barlow's French mistress.
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What's the point of being an anarchist outlaw if you're still being strangled to death by propriety. (What's the point of stealing and liberating and disrupting if you aren't doing it to fight back.)
The arch of his spine, the exhale from his lungs; Please. Fingernails (at his side, from the hand not on his dick) (Thomas has manners) rake against him. Leave every mark. There's no pain or attraction to suffering; only reality, and excess, and actually tasting the damn thing.
Unless James is actually going to draw blood and turn both these threads into surprise horror, Thomas is going to properly sit up and drag his trousers and all else off. Manhandling him where he wants him (briefly thinking how different sweat and heat smell when it's from lust than fear, how something can be so different) and only offering a brief detour to set teeth against the inside of his thigh, then his mouth is on his cock. Not as practiced as he once was, but still. If James meant the other way 'round he can lodge (hah) a formal complaint somewhere.
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"Christ."
Which is half frustrated laugh, fingers shifting in pale hair, and half the lines of muscle and sinew which sharpen toward the heat of Thomas' mouth. Because it's good regardless. Because for all that this is an uninterrupted line drawing straight back to steps outside of Parliament, and for all the careful touches and arrangement of hands and laces and pale scars since, it's still true that they both fallen free from the habit of asking for what they want.
That might rankle too if the thing mattered more than person. But Thomas can do whatever the fuck he pleases with his mouth and it'd still be right.
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Thomas makes a low-toned noise, self-satisfied, and just a hint of No, just me. And they are asking, anyway, aren't they. Learning to read each other's minds now that they've learned new languages inside of them, learning to read everything outside of them, too. Every stuttered gasp and clench of muscle and flush of skin. Or maybe-- it's that asking is too painful, because asking implies the answer might be no, and even the possibility between them is something to be disdained.
There's no answer to that, because there's no question, because Thomas' entire reality is James hard and overheated in his mouth, pressing his tongue to the underside and moving his head, moving a little slower than he'd like but quicker than would be reasonable for 'appropriately regaining bearings' or 'teasing'. He wants this, the push at the back of his throat, the fullness of his own breathing, the way he presses down on his lover's hips to hold him and not just hold him down. When he pulls back he presses his head just-so and encourages Jame to pull his hair, push him where he wants. Not much of a respite, only long enough to do that and send a look up at him, crystal-clear blue eyes as bright as they've ever been with desire so stark and deep. A teasing threat of teeth at the base of him, one hand moving between his legs to touch lower, kissing back up his cock to suck him down again.
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The line that neck and shoulder draws as Thomas takes him in is such a keen shape. He could map that; measure its trajectory and curve and put it down on paper--
(Speaking of gratuitously horrible writing.)
"Fuck." Which is partly just noise, hissed out. "Look at you."
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Thomas' thumb stokes down, curling over the warm weight of James' balls to the skin beneath, pressing with barely-there pressure, a small counter to the abandon with which he sucks him. Taking care only to manage teeth and little else, Thomas pushes forward until he can feel himself choking-- withdrawing in a hurry to drag in a breath, his quiet laugh rough with it. Look at him? He thinks he must look a mess. And deliriously happy.
Pulling off like that means his brain has a second to consider something besides James and his bitter taste and the pulse he can feel, and his own arousal punches into the forefront of his awareness. Fuck, indeed. He shifts up, one hand digging into James's side, lopsided smile on his face. "Kiss me."
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(And why should there be?)
"Are you going to fuck me?" James breathes into his mouth. It's not really a question. It's all his most deliriously pleased parts pressed firm against all of Thomas' familiar ones. Like he means to memorize the knots of his knuckles.
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"Mm?" Am I, or am I just going to rut into your hand, like a teenager, like a student, like the fumbling, desperate men we were when the scales first fell off after that stupid dinner. "Of course I am." Another kiss, and he shifts up even further to match him, one knee pressing into the back of James' thigh to nudge him where he wants him - will want him, in a moment. "Permitting--"
Permitting, if all the baubles and jars on the bedside table aren't perfume or things long gone rancid. Pirate or not, spit's not going to do.
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"Shit."
It's growled, laced with high spirits and the warmth set deep in his chest, as he twists half out from under Thomas and fumbles with more dedication through their options. If there's nothing here, he'll go out onto that gallery in nothing but his fucking coat and order something be fetched. Fuck pretense; now there is something to win favor with the goddamn crew.
(Thomas' bare side is so warm against the inside of his knee.)
"At least take your trousers off. For fuck's sake." That second part on behalf of a second box of strong smelling cloves and dried citrus peels.
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"Let's see," he sighs, settling atop James's chest like some overgrown housepet unconcerned with his positional comfort, and reaching out to help snag a few vials. He ejects one into the void of the room immediately, denied, pries open the stopper on another to investigate. Pinkish liquid smelling of nothing in particular tips out onto his skin and Thomas rubs fingers through it, over wiry ginger hair, circling one nipple.
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The paste, whatever it was, looks like it's gone off. The lid goes back on the jar.
(Here, actually, is when the line of his thoughts might be given to making its way beyond this room and past where Thomas can touch. He could think, What the fuck will the crew say?, to begin with. There will be questions, and not ones that deal with Captain Flint fucking Mr Barlow, but Mr Barlow's association with other crews and what that means for the Walrus and--)
But the room is closed and the roughened pads of Thomas' fingers gone soft and smooth under the viscous liquid inspire a particular breed of myopia.
"Good enough."
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They've gotten so good at taking.)
"Is it, or are you just impatient?" His voice, low and velvety, as enchanted as he is instigating. But he has no patience for real teasing; he wants James, badly, and there's plenty of time to draw things out later. The damn door's busted, they're never leaving this bloody room, and right now that suits him fine.
He draws a line with the edge of his fingernail through the neutral oil, watching the way the tiniest sliver of James' skin blanches and returns to normal - giving it a second to result in any strange reaction, all the while shifting to have more contact with him, his body, the wonderful heat and hardness of him. Are they old enough to worry about cramped muscles from certain positions? Fuck, he'll think about that some other time.
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It smells like nothing much, tastes like little more, and doesn't immediately sting when rubbed inside his cheek; and there is the line of his hip shifting in small, irregular increments under the insistent press of Thomas' frame - the good sense of being too old to fuck with something that's going to make them both tender waging a losing war with the rationale of being fucked throughly enough to feel it after anyway.
"Give me your hand."
Thomas' wrist isn't delicate, only the discoloration there is, and there is care in how James arranges his hand palm up across his chest but he isn't careful. With thumb at the bottle's mouth to regulate, oil is drizzled into waiting fingers. There is something to the look of it, bright in the low light, that fascinates - burns a real low and melting heat into the center of him.
His attention is very keen, the unabashed tip of his head some awkward angle, but the self-satisfaction is all in the curve of his mouth and how he sounds: "Good enough?"
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He kisses him. Agreement. Good enough.
There are surely erotic ways to describe preparation for anal penetration, with artful fingers and so many nerve endings, but(t) for today - Thomas does that, keen on further reacquainting himself with the most pleasing angles, what pressure makes him gasp, or delicate parts of him twitch. For a fevered moment he considers replacing his fingers with his mouth, because he could happily torture James this way forever, but it passes. Another time. (For sure.)
"--Well?"
If he's said anything about being ready before this instant, Thomas has ignored him on account of Knowing Better, but he'll accept such declarations now.
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(someone in Kingston probably paid a dowry's worth for it, and here is where it's ended up and who's getting fucked against it).
Well.
"Well what," is not a question. It's a bitten out, flush faced demand and Being Kind of a Pushy Bitch About It.
In some later hour, when some of the sweat has dried and he's kissing the back of Thomas' neck and encouraging him to get hard again with some slow stroke of his hand, there will be time for artful meditations on what they are and this is. In this one, he's going pull something figuring out how to effectively kick Thomas in the ass if he doesn't make good on the promise of his hands. Fucking pirates.
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Sparks of both frustration and relief at the necessity of touching himself enough to be finished with this business, and to answer that not-question, and push inside of him. Not roughly but a tick past as careful as he usually makes himself, strung tight and also impatient. He can still taste James in his mouth, he can near nothing but the other man's breath, and his own pulse in his ears.
Fuck, finally.
Muscle-memory. Heart-memory. The way the world vanishes to leave only the desire to reach the point where things shatter. Breath dragging in, and out, and feeling paradoxically dizzier for it. He pulls James's knee one way, shoves his own up higher, getting just. There.
is.qq
Pinned between that and his own braced hand, he shakes first like a taut thread and then laughs low and growling and "Fuck."
Which - yes. Clearly, if his inability to be still is any indication. He is all flexing muscle, an encouraging shift of hip, his free hand finding whatever point of leverage (Thomas' bicep) that's worth exploiting. This, this, this, says all the air in the room and that's no different from how it's always been.
pp
It's ridiculous, the stuff of over-romantic nonsense, but every time is the best time anew. (Except for once, when they were really, really drunk.) Because every time is another explosive chance to stitch together two parts of something that should have been born together. There are a thousand poems like that, and they're all dull and unbelievable, because they don't say anything about the way James carves out the word fuck or the way his eyes look that way, the shade of perfect green. It doesn't occur to him that this, too, is over-romantic nonsense, because it isn't, and because everything feels too good to bother with thoughts any more complicated than yes.
Extra inches are a hazard on a ship, narrowly missing losing the top half of his head to low ceilings and whirling [stick various sails are connected to i'm sorry abby i googled jib and just confused myself with diagrams, i could rework this sentence but i wrote more of the paragraph before i googled, don't ever show this tag to anyone it's TERRIBLE]s, but in bed, they're wonderfully handy for leverage, and Thomas employs every spare inch of himself to fuck into him and chase that lovely sound again, and again. One hand is fixed to his hip, keeping up up, right where he wants (needs) him, but the other he looses to reach up and pry James's from the headboard. In a moment he'll see to his cock and making sure he finds his climax like this, but for right now, it's vital that he grip his hand in his hard enough it has to hurt, and look at him, and breathe the same.
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