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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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.