The sound of Flint waking comes before the sleep-rough rasp of his voice. John has as little sense of the passage of time as Flint does, takes a moment to try and consider it before he turns to look at Flint fully.
"I know," John answers, though the expression on his face likely communicates that simple thought and more. John does not have to stay. He has not had to stay since Charlestown. But he choose to stay then, and even with the promise of warmth in Madi's bed, he chooses to stay now. There had been very little consideration of it beyond the pleasure of privacy and the sound of Flint's steady breathing. He's achieved a balance that seems to hold so long as John does not look at any aspect of it too directly.
"Feeling better?"
By which John means: less prone towards murder as our first option. Returning to the conversation isn't really John's intention; the initial glancing nudge of the inquiry is more to gauge Flint's temperament, to assess if he's likely to slide back into sleep. The heel of one hand scrapes absently down his thigh, metal leg discarded.
Even by the half-light, he holds Flint's gaze, takes in his the familiar landscape of his face. Thinks about what's coming, what he is accompanying Flint into, about the way the space between them changes into something else entirely in the dark and quiet of this room. It's a trick of the weather, perhaps, but John has the sense of being outside of things, as if this moment existed separately from the argument they'd been having before Flint had slouched back in his chair with a sigh.
For an instant, a shadow in the room casts some certain line in his face that seems to say No, to signal some preamble before Flint turns back to resume the debate. Maybe some thought had come to him in the minutes that have passed since - some sharp point he'll hook John with now. Then the light changes, the candle guttering in the aftermath of a gust of wind snapping past the roof's overhang, and the look goes with it.
Instead, he makes a low murmuring sound closer to a hum than a growl and simply stretches his legs before him, letting his attention fall away from Silver's to study the swirling downpour. It's a concession of a kind - to the hour; to the shifting hum of the wind and rain, first coming loud, then falling, then pitching up again; to the candle they are burning in the dark to no end. There are other lights out there. Fires will be burning in the long houses still. But there's no sound, no trace of walking along the footpaths in the early evening, no distant wailing of a child, no barking dog, and in the insulation of it and the lingering haze of unexpected sleep feels the narrow room feels pliable. Unreal as the tide running backwards.
"It will blow itself out soon," he says to inject the moment with something concrete. It will. Then John will go, and in the morning the settlement will be dashed with mud and scattered leaves and they will sit with Teach and and Rackham and Madi and try again. "These turns drive hard, but it won't sustain."
John's gaze returns to the window, the dark and the wet. Flint is speaking about the storm, but John worries—
Well, there are things that he can never say aloud for fear of summoning them forth with just the sound of his voice giving shape to them beyond some unattended dread. What if this fight all comes to nothing? What if they too blow themselves out? The heel of John's palm comes to the stump, pressure sparking a dull, bruised pain. John presses harder, lets the immediacy of that ache drive the thought of defeat out of his head.
"Just as well," John answers. "It'll make life easier when it dries out again."
Easier for John to get around without the added difficulty of mud. He doesn't say as much, but he knows the meaning will be noted.
For a moment, he's quiet. He lifts his hand but doesn't reach for the crutch, or angle himself towards the false leg.
"Do you think we're ready?"
For what's to come. For this war. For what comes after, should they survive.
But even as John asks this weighty question, the soft dip in his tone queries something else entirely.
There is immediacy in that sound. It sends some sharpening thought about what concessions will come tomorrow angling away, sucked back out into the remote dark and replaced by-- What, exactly? It's not a question about tomorrow. It's not a question of what they will find in Nassau when they arrive in its harbor, or what men and weapons will need landing before to in support of Billy's grip on the island's interior, or what they will do six weeks from now, or how they will maintain their hold once they have it. It somehow concerns angle of the discarded false leg lying in tandem with the untouched crutch, the barricade of the weather beyond the window and what he, Flint, can take in his two hands and steer. It's about something alive in the room.
In the low chair, maybe the length of an arm removed, Flint goes both quieter and less still. He turns haflway back from the window, a narrowed line in his face grown softer. It's less relentlessly measured. It centers him here instead of 'there', 'tomorrow', 'in the days ahead'.
Are we ready, Silver asks. The two of them.
He gathers his thoughts. It's a visible, anchoring, human thing. A beat, then: "I've come to trust that if there is a way forward which achieves what we want, we will find that way and take it. Further, I can think of no instance where either of us has been satisfied with any half measure. So if you're asking whether we're capable, of that I have no doubt. You know this. That you're asking has me wondering if you think maybe I don't."
An hour ago, spurred by the humidity and the heat and having been subject to sit between Edward fucking Teach and Rackham's endless prattle, it might have been an indictment meant for no purpose except to cut. But here the temperature has shifted and so too has the edge been filed away. It's an honest sentiment, as bare as Silver's question had been.
More than anyone, perhaps, John is aware of the particulars of delivery. It matters how things are said. It matters which things aren't said. It matters that Flint's rejoinder comes without malice, without intent to belittle. John is still quiet in the wake of the question, considering how best to choose his words.
The word we sears like a brand. The possessive, entwined imagery it invokes settles like a palm upon bare skin. It is not bestowed lightly. It is an unneeded reminder of how linked their affairs are. All that John had once wanted has turned to dust. What he wants now is somehow more difficult to attain and harder to name, though the shape of it lurks somewhere in the soft curve of Madi's mouth, the pale jut of Flint's collarbone, in the admiration and needs of this crew and the island beyond that stretch of sea. They are harder to define than the wispy ideas of comfort John had carried with him onto the Nassau all those months ago.
After a moment, he chuckles, gaze dropping to his hands, the stump of a leg.
"Some things just need to be said aloud."
John had needed it to be said aloud. He is not quite the man who has asked with such dismay, So I actually have to fight him? but the impulse to avoid the altercation all together gives a last gasp and settles under the inescapable yoke of we.
"I trust your assessment better than mine."
Unspoken: I trust you to tell me if I'm better served elsewhere.
A huff of laughter comes hissing through his teeth then that sounds like, You'll regret saying so the next time we have some point is worth arguing.
Which doesn't warrant saying for every obvious reason, but the flexion of the moment feels right. A reflex unraveling. It's the relief of exposing some vulnerable gap and not being struck through it.
Which makes it simpler to settle into this, even if no part of it is expressely easy: "If there were no way for this to succeed, we wouldn't be here," he's saying as he shifts to get comfortable in the chair. His knee pops. Flint winces and twists further to props his foot up, boot and all, onto the edge of the bed just shy of where Silver is set. "The Govenor sent men to pursue us explicitly because we've made it clear that we're a threat to his hold on the island. To England's hold on it. The very fact that we've captured their attention and haven't been broken by it is evidence that this war is possible. That we are here and able to make all this true when there's been every reason to disbelieve it is how I know we're ready."
He laces his hands over his middle, small fingers set against the heavy edge of his belt, and looks to Silver through the shifting, uneven dark. "Do you know anyone else who's come so far as the two of us?" Who's gotten so close to this terrible old thing.
It's not exactly optimism. There's a calculated edge, and Flint settles in it, satisfied with the coinciding points that lead him to his conclusion. John's hand lifts, settles on Flint's ankle over the battered, heavy leather of his boot before his gaze rises back to Flint's face.
"No. I don't."
He doesn't need to tell Flint that even if this fails, they'll be turned into the kind of story that turns quickly to legend. Every aspect of this is tailor-made for embellishment. It's already started among their men, as speculation turns itself over and over between them in preparation. They have already become larger than themselves. John thinks the word legacy and legend as his grip tightens on Flint's boot as if to anchor himself against it.
"But I admit, it makes sense that we've managed to get here." That it's you, you who have brought us here.
John's expression turns wry. He'd been so certain when he'd professed his disbelief in Flint. Now here he was, ready to accompany him into a war. The single point of physical connection between them feels almost negligible when set against the trust and partnership they'd forged.
"It's going to make a good story, someday," John says this quietly, almost to himself.
It's a good story right now, he thinks, but that doesn't do anything to smother the satisfaction stirring behind his ribs. The feeling catches him suddenly under the hiss and howl of the rain beyond the window, pinned here at first by the little guttering candle, by John looking at him, and a certainty he can't shake: Who's going to tell that story? The answer is obvious. The man has him by the ankle.
Maybe this is where John Silver starts. Not in dark words on papers written by a hand that isn't his, not in whatever denied thing came before across the ocean's width, but here with a story worth telling. These people in this room are ones worth being.
Which punctures something current in him, warmth spreading through him to the fingertips. Having regarded Silver for these quiet unfolding moments, he says now, "Stay. Even once the weather clears."
Something is taking shape in the silence after John's words. He can feel it as surely as he can feel the dampness in the air on his skin. He can see it passing across Flint's face, some consideration that John can only guess at. He isn't a stranger to the way Flint's gaze can pierce, but the request he makes slides like a dagger between his ribs. It lances some vital, private part of John, leaves him pinioned between Madi and Flint both. There is no way to tear free without bleeding to death.
The sharp slice of affection, of attachment, when had John made room for that? When he had become a man who was asked to stay? John suspects it had happened around the same time he had become the sort of man who could act as a Quartermaster, who would wade into a war without some clear, tangible benefit. Or perhaps it had been the moment when he had become the type of man who could give up his outrageous share of gold to remain with this crew, with this man who sits across from him and asks him without any particular fanfare to remain.
John breathes out slowly, thumb tracking a scar running across the leather. There is no real hesitation. John's response is not in question. But every so often he is caught off-guard by where he has landed in the world. He's very aware of that in this moment as he watches Flint's face and inclines his head.
"Alright."
Simple as that. Stripped down to simple assent, without barter or bargain behind it, marked only by the weight of his hand on Flint's boot and the raw-sweet dip of John's tone.
He doesn't know how it doesn't come as a shock that this of all things is so so bare of qualification, just that it doesn't. It is natural to the point that for some moment, he feels no immediate urgency. That something will inevitably follow is outlet enough for the affinity snarled through him.
If there's anything to be measured, it's that surge of fondness and how it was uncovered as easily as overturning a stone at the edge of Miranda's garden to find something rooted in the soft shadow beneath it. How long have you been growing there, and how much have you consumed already? It seems important to know what's left of himself under the weight of John Silver's hand and how fixed his attention is.
So instead if the half dozen given responses there must be to the low tilt of that 'Alright', Flint glances away. He studies the weather outside the window and the fleeting lights through it. He flexes through his heel and feels the shape of fingers and thinks to temper the high, sustained press in his chest or to at least be certain of its dimensions.
(He's certain. He was certain moments ago too. He'll still be certain in another. It's fine to take stock of this because nothing has changed that wasn't already underway. Pausing here will do nothing to stop it.)
There is a moment where the urge to speak again, to rein in all that his answer laid bare. Flint looks away and John feels more than aware of how vulnerable he has made himself. His hand is still on Flint's boot while he waits out the tumbling crush of emotions, draws in and exhales a slow breath, feels how the air between them crystallizes in the wake of having all that has been nameless invoked and confirmed.
John knows the things to say, were this anyone else. But he finds himself in the same place Madi had left him: wanting to be honest. The sense of it is still akin to wearing an ill-fit jacket. What is left to say between them? None of John's love talk has any place in this room. His devotions have been made plain in other ways, in other conversations. Anything else would be unnecessary, a tarnish on what they both understand.
There are words catching in his throat. John swallows them back, keeps his mouth shut lest he shatter something with an ill-placed word. His grip tightens on Flint's ankle as he breathes, carrying a wordless request: Look at me.
It's not exactly the request John wants to make, but it's close. It's enough, and it's patient, easily left until whatever thought Flint is turning in his mind completes and settles.
The answer is instant though, meditation willingly cut short in response to the increase in pressure. Flint's attention snaps back. It's less a dog checked by the end of a line and more like he's heard some long anticipated call, and is grateful for the shape of it.
He looks and when he does, all that measured unspiraled warmth coils back into heat. It must show in his face - all at once intent and ragged, half formed and open and expecting something.
The expression on Flint's face is like a scattering of coals across John's skin. He can feel the scorch of it, feels his breath catch. There's a moment of assessment (there is always a moment of assessment) before a small smile steals onto John's face.
He has the same dizzying sense he knows very well. The sense that he's taken something precious, that he's put his hands on something valuable and lifted it away with him. It's muddled with the realization that he's made himself so vulnerable. He feels closer to injury than he had the moment Flint had held a knife to his throat.
"Come here."
Even though the space between them is such that John could lean a little farther and hook his fingers into the cuff of Flint's sleeve. There's something about saying the words aloud. There's something about watching Flint react, seeing his reaction ripple across his face.
Something rises and falls in it, all at once crumpling at the sound. Or giving way. It's what a knot coming untangled looks like, corded loops with unclear ends being turned in strange directions.
He goes. It involves drawing his ankle from the security of John's hand, navigating the low slung chair, untangling himself from the blanket, so it isn't instant but it is deliberate. And though there's plenty of time for that raw edge to have been smoothed, it's still jagged by the time Flint reaches him. Everything else comes steadily: the knee he sets at the edge of the thin stuffed mattress and how briefly broad he is in the space before he settles in beside him. The hand he takes John by the shirt collar with. How purposefully he draws him in. Or draws himself close. It's hard to tell which direction the bend goes in, just that it does.
John is still thinking of the edge of a knife at his throat when Flint's hand finds his collar. He is thinking of how Flint has consumed him, piece by piece by piece. What part of himself is John giving over this time? These hands, Flint's hands and Madi's hands, they hold so much of him now. More than a leg. More than a fortune. A whole future is being spun into being there, lighting up as John registers the press of Flint's knuckles through his tunic.
His hand falls to Flint's thigh, bracing there as their mouths meet. John's body is pulled taut, attempting restraint. The candle gutters as they kiss, and John thinks Don't go out in the same moment as he thinks it would be fitting if it did. All those discussions of darkness, should John not expect some sign of that to make itself known here?
There is such intent in the way Flint does all of this. John's fingers press in hard against Flint's thigh as he leans in closer, exhales a breathless laugh. He lifts his free hand to catch at Flint's neck, thumb pressing at the hinge of his jaw to keep him close.
There's a story he knows about an island. On it there is a woman, abandoned there by a man she thought to know - a would be hero drawn to her through a labyrinth by the power of an unbroken thread. There is no saving that woman. There is no changing that the thing she thought was true has always been false. The man has always been a thing that ruins. But in that story, the god of wanting things takes her heavy crown and he transforms it into stars. He puts it in the sky, pinning all her desire between Hercules and the snake that Ophiuchus holds in a place the world can't help but see.
'I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities,' says the story. It says, Change doesn't make a thing different. It only makes it visible.
And maybe that's how he can detect no tilting of the earth or fundamental realignment in the shape of John's mouth. Never mind the dig of fingers at his thigh or the traces of a pulse there against the side of his thumb. This isn't changed; it's just realized. Maybe that's why it's easy. Maybe that's why it's as brief as it is pointed. If it weren't for John's hand keeping him near, would he even feel obligated?
(Sitting beside him is much the same as kissing him. That, Flint thinks, has been true for some time. They have spoken about dangerous things with their heads bent close and he can think of no way in how that differs from John's hand high on his thigh now.)
But the hand is there, so he stays. And gentles under that low laughing sound, line of his mouth growing crooked. Easier. "What could you possibly think was funny," he grumbles against John's mouth.
Above them, the rain beats endlessly down on the rooftop. John thinks of the time he'd spent in Flint's quarters on the long trip back from Charlestown, when the quiet sounds of Flint simply existing, moving, breathing in the dark was the only anchor John had as a counterpoint to the sea rocking beneath them and the agony of his leg. Now he has made himself so familiar that there is nothing new about the pulse beating steady beneath his fingers, nor the shared inhale-exhale of Flint's breath this near. John knows him. It is strange to think how little has been uncovered.
Madi's face comes to him, a tether, a reminder. John's thumb strokes gently along Flint's jawline, drawing back just enough to see his face.
"Nothing's funny," John begins, eyes finding Flint's. "I just wasn't expecting..."
John trails off, finding himself at a loss for words. That in and of itself is a rare event.
The way their bodies meet feels well-worn. Perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise, considering all that's passed between them. Flint had leaned across a fire and cracked open his chest, let all his secrets pass to John.
"Well, you. I suppose."
Which leaves unspoken all the rest of it, the way John can feel the warmth of Flint's body like a knife to the chest. Affection like this still comes to John like the awakening of a phantom limb, like some ache he doesn't know what to do but can't stop feeling.
Flint eases his grip and smooths down the rumpled edge of the shirt. Pats him there, lingers a beat, then lets his hand fall away. It reduces their points of contact to John's hands on him, and to knee set idly against John's thigh. It should bother him to do it, he thinks. He should want to snatch John by the shoulders and hold him there until he's certain of his dimensions between his hands.
But it's fine. Flint fixes him with a look. Without having twisted away from the hand at his neck and jaw, there's something heavy and sure and satisfied in it. It's the look of knowing he's right. That if he's patient, it's because he can afford to be.
"I'm shocked I still have the capacity to surprise you of all people." It's funny. He could almost mean it to be, with how dry he says so.
There are better ways to explain. John could try to find them, to put words to the sensation but not without dredging up all the things he'd steadfastly kept smothered and severed. And that's beyond him, even now.
"Don't sell yourself short," John tells him, though he takes note of how Flint lifts his hands away, the way his expression settles.
Patience isn't an entirely foreign concept to John. He can be patient about many things, but he is rarely patient when he has something desirable in his grasp. He recognizes that there is some element of observation or assessment here, but he can't quite unravel it to a point he understands.
"I haven't misunderstood your intention?"
John doesn't think he has. The question is prompting, seeking Flint's thoughts rather than any other kind of reassurance.
Here, he laughs. It's a short, sharp sound like he can't quite believe what he's heard and on its heels follows--
An untempered urge. He's aware of the flash of it, how compelled he is by its direction. Months ago, he would've been driven before that bur in his side and pressed hot paat the counter point of John Silver's hand. He'll show him his intention.
Instead, Flint swallows it. He reins something in and schools his expression as he studies Silver. "No. I don't think that would be possible."
He could wait like this until he stopped wanting anything. If he lingers long enough, some shadow will eventually find and devour him along with every scrap of this. The weather will break. The now ragged edge of the the things he loves will grow smooth and remote. They aren't changed, but a sense of distance could be imposed.
What then?
It all comes to pieces then. He wouldn't know how to arrange the parts that would come after without this one.
"What more is there?" But what it sounds like is, 'I want you here.'
Platitudes come to mind. The kind of love talk that maybe would have come easier to them both at the start of their acquaintance, when all of this would have meant less, when John knew less of Flint and cared less of Flint. They'd likely have meant very little then too, but John wouldn't have cared so much. But it's all different now. He has been made very different, changed inescapably, and now he can't dredge up anything meaningless to offer in exchange. He wants very much to find the right thing to say just now, something to match the soft, raw sentiment embedded in the question Flint puts to him.
But there is nothing. There's just a long moment where John watches his face in the shifting candlelight before he relinquishes his hand on Flint's thigh to cup his face between his hands. (He thinks of Madi, of touching her this gently.) Unbidden, he remembers the long march to the Maroon settlement from the sea. The strongest memory he has is of Flint's shoulder beneath his hand, the only thing keeping him upright and moving forward then.
He leans forward now, meets Flint's mouth a second time. It's a more clear answer than anything else John can manage: the intent in the way he kisses Flint, hands gentle where they bracket his face. What more is there? Promises and words that don't come close to the ways they've already defined their partnership. John is here. If he'd wanted to leave, he could have done many times over by now. This is what he's chosen. He sees no other path forward that doesn't see him falling in step alongside Flint. The added dimension of this moment, of his hands on Flint's skin, it's only another underscoring of what John had already known.
In an hour, the weather will have slackened and he will have thought to stop wasting the candle on this. If there's conversation still to be had, it will have to do with Teach and Rackham. In the morning, whatever is decided (deliberation is happening even now in some small part of him despite the hands on his face, the weather rough scuff of John's fingertips) will be changed by the arrival of the cat boat from Nassau carrying a message from Billy's eyes in the interior which say in more words, 'The street is ready.' Later, much later, Flint will consider the possibility that the reason he paused here in the narrow space after John kisses him isn't because he was waiting for some jagged grief to find him but because he'd realized there was something unknown in that space. Later, he will think: maybe that pause was an answer he didn't have to a question he wouldn't have thought to ask if Silver hadn't.
What's there to misunderstand? Why ask if there was nothing to doubt? Why say anything at all if hands and mouths and the low, relieved exhale of breathing between them is enough? Come here, John had said, and he'd been certain. Now--
Flint sharpens, the smoothed over urgency rising. His hand finds Silver's hip in the shifting half dark. Beyond the window, the pitch of the squall rises and here he chases after Silver's mouth and snarls his fingers in salt sea battered fabric.
In the morning, the memory of this will slot neatly between John's ribs. He knows already that he will feel the lingering sensation of Flint's hands like a brand, the way he cannot shake the echoing reverberation of Madi's soft laughter as she straddled his hips.
This is the danger of people. It has always been the danger of people, something John had understood even when he had dragged Flint from the sea. When had things shifted so inextricably? Before the leg or after? It had come to him slowly, washing in between breathes, between beats of his heart. It's as if Flint had laid the preparation for this from the beginning. The foundation has been here long before John had understood what was being built.
And soon they will go to war, and John will bleed a little more for this cause.
I am a fool, John wants to say. But he'd been a fool since Charlestown. What's a little more risk? What's the harm in his fingers finding Flint's skin, seeking out the scars across his belly and ribs while John's entire body shifts in turn, invitation in the way the language of his bones opens up.
What are you thinking of, John should have asked, but he didn't. And now it's not the right time for doing anything with his mouth other than this.
This being Flint's mouth on his, the punctuating sound of a sharp breath as Silver's touch warmed fingertips find vulnerable skin. It's fine. It's easy. The shape of John's hip under his hand is exactly as he expects it to be, he tells himself. Which makes it true. That's how the world works. Reason can be found here in the span of John's narrow frame between his hands and the way he comes unfolded in the sudden, sharp heat.
(There're going somewhere. They're going there in tandem and if he were to close his eyes, he thinks he can see the blurred edge of what it will look like. In the mean time, all he has to do is keep them in step.)
Which is made up of tugging hands and a demanding mouth, a relentless but blind search for some tender strip of bare skin to press his thumb against.
"What do you want?" He says eventually, breathed out so low that it's hardly a question. But tell him anyway. It's the only thing he wants to know.
The question almost makes John laugh again. A smile curves across his face, humor kindling even as John grapples with the question put to him. What does John want? Too much. Everything he can get his hands on and more. It's like a sickness, he'd told Flint once, flippant in the hull of a ship full of well-armed Spaniards. The ache of want is always there, a yawning chasm in his chest, aching like a gutshot. The demand it hums with is unformed; anything and everything will do. Gold, trinkets, anything more tangible than the shifting sands that he'd stood upon for so long.
What do you want?
Even the contemplation of it is strangely formidable. It feels like the moment when he unstraps the metal leg; it's deliberately making himself vulnerable. Flint's hands are scorching against his skin and his mouth feels raw from the ministration of Flint's mouth, and John finds himself overwhelmed by the sheer breadth of his own desires.
"I want you to show me," John begins, then stalls. He does not wish to inhabit the space between Flint and Thomas and Miranda Hamilton. He does not want to make himself a ghost.
But he wants from Flint another dimension of what he has been learning from Madi: what it is to be wanted, to receive affection without the clink of coin behind it or the metallic bite of mutual self interest. He wants a manifestation of what they've built between each other.
"I want you to show me how it's supposed to be."
What does that admit? Too much? Surely nothing Flint hadn't guessed, even if Madi is still unspoken, unnamed between them. John's past exists in gaps and blank spaces, but certain truths make themselves known regardless. He always knew it was impossible to draw so close to someone without being known in some inescapable way.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanks satan.
"I know," John answers, though the expression on his face likely communicates that simple thought and more. John does not have to stay. He has not had to stay since Charlestown. But he choose to stay then, and even with the promise of warmth in Madi's bed, he chooses to stay now. There had been very little consideration of it beyond the pleasure of privacy and the sound of Flint's steady breathing. He's achieved a balance that seems to hold so long as John does not look at any aspect of it too directly.
"Feeling better?"
By which John means: less prone towards murder as our first option. Returning to the conversation isn't really John's intention; the initial glancing nudge of the inquiry is more to gauge Flint's temperament, to assess if he's likely to slide back into sleep. The heel of one hand scrapes absently down his thigh, metal leg discarded.
Even by the half-light, he holds Flint's gaze, takes in his the familiar landscape of his face. Thinks about what's coming, what he is accompanying Flint into, about the way the space between them changes into something else entirely in the dark and quiet of this room. It's a trick of the weather, perhaps, but John has the sense of being outside of things, as if this moment existed separately from the argument they'd been having before Flint had slouched back in his chair with a sigh.
np
Instead, he makes a low murmuring sound closer to a hum than a growl and simply stretches his legs before him, letting his attention fall away from Silver's to study the swirling downpour. It's a concession of a kind - to the hour; to the shifting hum of the wind and rain, first coming loud, then falling, then pitching up again; to the candle they are burning in the dark to no end. There are other lights out there. Fires will be burning in the long houses still. But there's no sound, no trace of walking along the footpaths in the early evening, no distant wailing of a child, no barking dog, and in the insulation of it and the lingering haze of unexpected sleep feels the narrow room feels pliable. Unreal as the tide running backwards.
"It will blow itself out soon," he says to inject the moment with something concrete. It will. Then John will go, and in the morning the settlement will be dashed with mud and scattered leaves and they will sit with Teach and and Rackham and Madi and try again. "These turns drive hard, but it won't sustain."
no subject
Well, there are things that he can never say aloud for fear of summoning them forth with just the sound of his voice giving shape to them beyond some unattended dread. What if this fight all comes to nothing? What if they too blow themselves out? The heel of John's palm comes to the stump, pressure sparking a dull, bruised pain. John presses harder, lets the immediacy of that ache drive the thought of defeat out of his head.
"Just as well," John answers. "It'll make life easier when it dries out again."
Easier for John to get around without the added difficulty of mud. He doesn't say as much, but he knows the meaning will be noted.
For a moment, he's quiet. He lifts his hand but doesn't reach for the crutch, or angle himself towards the false leg.
"Do you think we're ready?"
For what's to come. For this war. For what comes after, should they survive.
But even as John asks this weighty question, the soft dip in his tone queries something else entirely.
no subject
In the low chair, maybe the length of an arm removed, Flint goes both quieter and less still. He turns haflway back from the window, a narrowed line in his face grown softer. It's less relentlessly measured. It centers him here instead of 'there', 'tomorrow', 'in the days ahead'.
Are we ready, Silver asks. The two of them.
He gathers his thoughts. It's a visible, anchoring, human thing. A beat, then: "I've come to trust that if there is a way forward which achieves what we want, we will find that way and take it. Further, I can think of no instance where either of us has been satisfied with any half measure. So if you're asking whether we're capable, of that I have no doubt. You know this. That you're asking has me wondering if you think maybe I don't."
An hour ago, spurred by the humidity and the heat and having been subject to sit between Edward fucking Teach and Rackham's endless prattle, it might have been an indictment meant for no purpose except to cut. But here the temperature has shifted and so too has the edge been filed away. It's an honest sentiment, as bare as Silver's question had been.
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The word we sears like a brand. The possessive, entwined imagery it invokes settles like a palm upon bare skin. It is not bestowed lightly. It is an unneeded reminder of how linked their affairs are. All that John had once wanted has turned to dust. What he wants now is somehow more difficult to attain and harder to name, though the shape of it lurks somewhere in the soft curve of Madi's mouth, the pale jut of Flint's collarbone, in the admiration and needs of this crew and the island beyond that stretch of sea. They are harder to define than the wispy ideas of comfort John had carried with him onto the Nassau all those months ago.
After a moment, he chuckles, gaze dropping to his hands, the stump of a leg.
"Some things just need to be said aloud."
John had needed it to be said aloud. He is not quite the man who has asked with such dismay, So I actually have to fight him? but the impulse to avoid the altercation all together gives a last gasp and settles under the inescapable yoke of we.
"I trust your assessment better than mine."
Unspoken: I trust you to tell me if I'm better served elsewhere.
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Which doesn't warrant saying for every obvious reason, but the flexion of the moment feels right. A reflex unraveling. It's the relief of exposing some vulnerable gap and not being struck through it.
Which makes it simpler to settle into this, even if no part of it is expressely easy: "If there were no way for this to succeed, we wouldn't be here," he's saying as he shifts to get comfortable in the chair. His knee pops. Flint winces and twists further to props his foot up, boot and all, onto the edge of the bed just shy of where Silver is set. "The Govenor sent men to pursue us explicitly because we've made it clear that we're a threat to his hold on the island. To England's hold on it. The very fact that we've captured their attention and haven't been broken by it is evidence that this war is possible. That we are here and able to make all this true when there's been every reason to disbelieve it is how I know we're ready."
He laces his hands over his middle, small fingers set against the heavy edge of his belt, and looks to Silver through the shifting, uneven dark. "Do you know anyone else who's come so far as the two of us?" Who's gotten so close to this terrible old thing.
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"No. I don't."
He doesn't need to tell Flint that even if this fails, they'll be turned into the kind of story that turns quickly to legend. Every aspect of this is tailor-made for embellishment. It's already started among their men, as speculation turns itself over and over between them in preparation. They have already become larger than themselves. John thinks the word legacy and legend as his grip tightens on Flint's boot as if to anchor himself against it.
"But I admit, it makes sense that we've managed to get here." That it's you, you who have brought us here.
John's expression turns wry. He'd been so certain when he'd professed his disbelief in Flint. Now here he was, ready to accompany him into a war. The single point of physical connection between them feels almost negligible when set against the trust and partnership they'd forged.
"It's going to make a good story, someday," John says this quietly, almost to himself.
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Maybe this is where John Silver starts. Not in dark words on papers written by a hand that isn't his, not in whatever denied thing came before across the ocean's width, but here with a story worth telling. These people in this room are ones worth being.
Which punctures something current in him, warmth spreading through him to the fingertips. Having regarded Silver for these quiet unfolding moments, he says now, "Stay. Even once the weather clears."
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The sharp slice of affection, of attachment, when had John made room for that? When he had become a man who was asked to stay? John suspects it had happened around the same time he had become the sort of man who could act as a Quartermaster, who would wade into a war without some clear, tangible benefit. Or perhaps it had been the moment when he had become the type of man who could give up his outrageous share of gold to remain with this crew, with this man who sits across from him and asks him without any particular fanfare to remain.
John breathes out slowly, thumb tracking a scar running across the leather. There is no real hesitation. John's response is not in question. But every so often he is caught off-guard by where he has landed in the world. He's very aware of that in this moment as he watches Flint's face and inclines his head.
"Alright."
Simple as that. Stripped down to simple assent, without barter or bargain behind it, marked only by the weight of his hand on Flint's boot and the raw-sweet dip of John's tone.
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He doesn't know how it doesn't come as a shock that this of all things is so so bare of qualification, just that it doesn't. It is natural to the point that for some moment, he feels no immediate urgency. That something will inevitably follow is outlet enough for the affinity snarled through him.
If there's anything to be measured, it's that surge of fondness and how it was uncovered as easily as overturning a stone at the edge of Miranda's garden to find something rooted in the soft shadow beneath it. How long have you been growing there, and how much have you consumed already? It seems important to know what's left of himself under the weight of John Silver's hand and how fixed his attention is.
So instead if the half dozen given responses there must be to the low tilt of that 'Alright', Flint glances away. He studies the weather outside the window and the fleeting lights through it. He flexes through his heel and feels the shape of fingers and thinks to temper the high, sustained press in his chest or to at least be certain of its dimensions.
(He's certain. He was certain moments ago too. He'll still be certain in another. It's fine to take stock of this because nothing has changed that wasn't already underway. Pausing here will do nothing to stop it.)
you're a criminal
John knows the things to say, were this anyone else. But he finds himself in the same place Madi had left him: wanting to be honest. The sense of it is still akin to wearing an ill-fit jacket. What is left to say between them? None of John's love talk has any place in this room. His devotions have been made plain in other ways, in other conversations. Anything else would be unnecessary, a tarnish on what they both understand.
There are words catching in his throat. John swallows them back, keeps his mouth shut lest he shatter something with an ill-placed word. His grip tightens on Flint's ankle as he breathes, carrying a wordless request: Look at me.
It's not exactly the request John wants to make, but it's close. It's enough, and it's patient, easily left until whatever thought Flint is turning in his mind completes and settles.
im rubber and youre glue
He looks and when he does, all that measured unspiraled warmth coils back into heat. It must show in his face - all at once intent and ragged, half formed and open and expecting something.
i'm an innocent
He has the same dizzying sense he knows very well. The sense that he's taken something precious, that he's put his hands on something valuable and lifted it away with him. It's muddled with the realization that he's made himself so vulnerable. He feels closer to injury than he had the moment Flint had held a knife to his throat.
"Come here."
Even though the space between them is such that John could lean a little farther and hook his fingers into the cuff of Flint's sleeve. There's something about saying the words aloud. There's something about watching Flint react, seeing his reaction ripple across his face.
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He goes. It involves drawing his ankle from the security of John's hand, navigating the low slung chair, untangling himself from the blanket, so it isn't instant but it is deliberate. And though there's plenty of time for that raw edge to have been smoothed, it's still jagged by the time Flint reaches him. Everything else comes steadily: the knee he sets at the edge of the thin stuffed mattress and how briefly broad he is in the space before he settles in beside him. The hand he takes John by the shirt collar with. How purposefully he draws him in. Or draws himself close. It's hard to tell which direction the bend goes in, just that it does.
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His hand falls to Flint's thigh, bracing there as their mouths meet. John's body is pulled taut, attempting restraint. The candle gutters as they kiss, and John thinks Don't go out in the same moment as he thinks it would be fitting if it did. All those discussions of darkness, should John not expect some sign of that to make itself known here?
There is such intent in the way Flint does all of this. John's fingers press in hard against Flint's thigh as he leans in closer, exhales a breathless laugh. He lifts his free hand to catch at Flint's neck, thumb pressing at the hinge of his jaw to keep him close.
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'I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities,' says the story. It says, Change doesn't make a thing different. It only makes it visible.
And maybe that's how he can detect no tilting of the earth or fundamental realignment in the shape of John's mouth. Never mind the dig of fingers at his thigh or the traces of a pulse there against the side of his thumb. This isn't changed; it's just realized. Maybe that's why it's easy. Maybe that's why it's as brief as it is pointed. If it weren't for John's hand keeping him near, would he even feel obligated?
(Sitting beside him is much the same as kissing him. That, Flint thinks, has been true for some time. They have spoken about dangerous things with their heads bent close and he can think of no way in how that differs from John's hand high on his thigh now.)
But the hand is there, so he stays. And gentles under that low laughing sound, line of his mouth growing crooked. Easier. "What could you possibly think was funny," he grumbles against John's mouth.
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Madi's face comes to him, a tether, a reminder. John's thumb strokes gently along Flint's jawline, drawing back just enough to see his face.
"Nothing's funny," John begins, eyes finding Flint's. "I just wasn't expecting..."
John trails off, finding himself at a loss for words. That in and of itself is a rare event.
The way their bodies meet feels well-worn. Perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise, considering all that's passed between them. Flint had leaned across a fire and cracked open his chest, let all his secrets pass to John.
"Well, you. I suppose."
Which leaves unspoken all the rest of it, the way John can feel the warmth of Flint's body like a knife to the chest. Affection like this still comes to John like the awakening of a phantom limb, like some ache he doesn't know what to do but can't stop feeling.
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But it's fine. Flint fixes him with a look. Without having twisted away from the hand at his neck and jaw, there's something heavy and sure and satisfied in it. It's the look of knowing he's right. That if he's patient, it's because he can afford to be.
"I'm shocked I still have the capacity to surprise you of all people." It's funny. He could almost mean it to be, with how dry he says so.
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"Don't sell yourself short," John tells him, though he takes note of how Flint lifts his hands away, the way his expression settles.
Patience isn't an entirely foreign concept to John. He can be patient about many things, but he is rarely patient when he has something desirable in his grasp. He recognizes that there is some element of observation or assessment here, but he can't quite unravel it to a point he understands.
"I haven't misunderstood your intention?"
John doesn't think he has. The question is prompting, seeking Flint's thoughts rather than any other kind of reassurance.
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An untempered urge. He's aware of the flash of it, how compelled he is by its direction. Months ago, he would've been driven before that bur in his side and pressed hot paat the counter point of John Silver's hand. He'll show him his intention.
Instead, Flint swallows it. He reins something in and schools his expression as he studies Silver. "No. I don't think that would be possible."
He could wait like this until he stopped wanting anything. If he lingers long enough, some shadow will eventually find and devour him along with every scrap of this. The weather will break. The now ragged edge of the the things he loves will grow smooth and remote. They aren't changed, but a sense of distance could be imposed.
What then?
It all comes to pieces then. He wouldn't know how to arrange the parts that would come after without this one.
"What more is there?" But what it sounds like is, 'I want you here.'
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But there is nothing. There's just a long moment where John watches his face in the shifting candlelight before he relinquishes his hand on Flint's thigh to cup his face between his hands. (He thinks of Madi, of touching her this gently.) Unbidden, he remembers the long march to the Maroon settlement from the sea. The strongest memory he has is of Flint's shoulder beneath his hand, the only thing keeping him upright and moving forward then.
He leans forward now, meets Flint's mouth a second time. It's a more clear answer than anything else John can manage: the intent in the way he kisses Flint, hands gentle where they bracket his face. What more is there? Promises and words that don't come close to the ways they've already defined their partnership. John is here. If he'd wanted to leave, he could have done many times over by now. This is what he's chosen. He sees no other path forward that doesn't see him falling in step alongside Flint. The added dimension of this moment, of his hands on Flint's skin, it's only another underscoring of what John had already known.
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What's there to misunderstand? Why ask if there was nothing to doubt? Why say anything at all if hands and mouths and the low, relieved exhale of breathing between them is enough? Come here, John had said, and he'd been certain. Now--
Flint sharpens, the smoothed over urgency rising. His hand finds Silver's hip in the shifting half dark. Beyond the window, the pitch of the squall rises and here he chases after Silver's mouth and snarls his fingers in salt sea battered fabric.
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This is the danger of people. It has always been the danger of people, something John had understood even when he had dragged Flint from the sea. When had things shifted so inextricably? Before the leg or after? It had come to him slowly, washing in between breathes, between beats of his heart. It's as if Flint had laid the preparation for this from the beginning. The foundation has been here long before John had understood what was being built.
And soon they will go to war, and John will bleed a little more for this cause.
I am a fool, John wants to say. But he'd been a fool since Charlestown. What's a little more risk? What's the harm in his fingers finding Flint's skin, seeking out the scars across his belly and ribs while John's entire body shifts in turn, invitation in the way the language of his bones opens up.
What are you thinking of, John should have asked, but he didn't. And now it's not the right time for doing anything with his mouth other than this.
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(There're going somewhere. They're going there in tandem and if he were to close his eyes, he thinks he can see the blurred edge of what it will look like. In the mean time, all he has to do is keep them in step.)
Which is made up of tugging hands and a demanding mouth, a relentless but blind search for some tender strip of bare skin to press his thumb against.
"What do you want?" He says eventually, breathed out so low that it's hardly a question. But tell him anyway. It's the only thing he wants to know.
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What do you want?
Even the contemplation of it is strangely formidable. It feels like the moment when he unstraps the metal leg; it's deliberately making himself vulnerable. Flint's hands are scorching against his skin and his mouth feels raw from the ministration of Flint's mouth, and John finds himself overwhelmed by the sheer breadth of his own desires.
"I want you to show me," John begins, then stalls. He does not wish to inhabit the space between Flint and Thomas and Miranda Hamilton. He does not want to make himself a ghost.
But he wants from Flint another dimension of what he has been learning from Madi: what it is to be wanted, to receive affection without the clink of coin behind it or the metallic bite of mutual self interest. He wants a manifestation of what they've built between each other.
"I want you to show me how it's supposed to be."
What does that admit? Too much? Surely nothing Flint hadn't guessed, even if Madi is still unspoken, unnamed between them. John's past exists in gaps and blank spaces, but certain truths make themselves known regardless. He always knew it was impossible to draw so close to someone without being known in some inescapable way.