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.
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no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.'
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
(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.
no subject
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.