![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[PSL] in this sense the open jaws of wild beasts will appear no less pleasing than their prototypes
The bread that is over-baked so that it cracks and bursts asunder hath not the form desired by the baker; yet none the less it hath a beauty of its own, and is most tempting to the palate. Figs bursting in their ripeness, olives near even unto decay, have yet in their broken ripeness a distinctive beauty.
no subject
But there's merit, probably, in Marshall seeing how run down he looks. Like if anyone did decide to come after him, he wouldn't last. Thomas touches the side of his face like he's too concerned to touch anywhere else; he doesn't have to put much acting power into that one.
"I'm not chaperoning something, am I?" asks Marshall, loud and indelicate some meters away, plodding along closer.
"No," answers Thomas once he's a little nearer, instincts of politeness drilled in earlier and deeper than a decade of torture, somehow. "Do you mind if he's here, though?"
"Naw, I don't mind no Captain Flint, do I." The overseer shrugs. "C'mon and take a walk, though, I have to go 'round the fence anyway."
no subject
Why it's important, he doesn't yet know. Maybe it's as simple as wanting an excuse to shake the man insensible for what his cowardice did (to him, to Thomas). Maybe he wants Bettina safe (which isn't possible as long as McNair clearly knows something; eventually someone will get curious enough to ask the right questions). Or maybe it's something else entirely. Maybe it's the ghost of something lingering behind his shoulder, saying Stay, stay, stay. The question sits there at the very edge of his mind, gnawing like teeth at a bone as he drifts along in Thomas's shadow.
And waits. And listens.
"But see, this is why no one likes him," says Marshall.
no subject
"What exactly did you anticipate me doing this evening?" He asks instead, drier than perhaps James has ever heard him, dehydrated edges of it crackling with accusatory deadpan innuendo. The overseer barks a truly shocked laugh and swerves away temporarily, as though so taken aback by Lord Hamilton so much as suggesting a rude joke. He grumbles about what a classless motherfucker Thomas secretly is, but it's in tangibly good humor.
(Everyone is shocked about his pirate lover except for this one particular overseer, who seems to think it makes sense.)
"So what's this about, really?"
Thomas sighs and crosses his arms, reluctant. This is not surprising; he doesn't like making waves, he doesn't like snitching. Feeling compelled to do it is significant. Marshall is aware of this.
"I know it was McNair who threw James's name out about the fire," he says eventually. "He's made it obvious. His friends and a few others who've decided to feel one way or the other about me, or us, are making it difficult for--" he shrugs, shoulders tense. This uneasy feeling while he's so worried about James's recovery doesn't have a name in words. Marshall is listening to him with a frown on his face. "I don't know. I don't really sleep, because the doors are bolted now, and if someone decides to try and make a point in the middle of the night there's no getting away from it."
No sound for a while except their footsteps over the packed earth ground. Marshall glances over his shoulder sidelong to look at James, not for need of confirmation - whatever strange relationship he has with Thomas is not one of doubt - but warily contemplating.
no subject
It takes longer than just the interim following Thomas being so pointedly crude. There's nothing inherently untrue or funny about what Thomas is saying, including the part where someone could very well decide to come at either of them in the night (not McNair, but a friend--), but there's something about the moment that strikes him as irrationally pleasant. Listening to Thomas talk, how frank he sounds, makes something heavy in his chest go light and brilliantly sharp.
It's one thing for Thomas speak so certainly between the two of them. It's different to be so driven with one of the men who could run them into the ground if he really cared to.
By the time Marshall glances back at him, James has mastered the lines of his face enough to look back. Tone pitched low in the dark, he says, "You can understand why I'd rather not be put in the position of having to defend myself."
Let the man interpret that however he likes - that James doesn't trust himself to be able to mind their safety, or that he's too sure and isn't fond of the idea of being taken to task for harming someone so soon after his initial beating. Marshall's clearly spread predisposed to a certain strange amount of sympathy and likely his imagination will do better work than being explicit with him might.
Indeed Marshall makes a short noise that must border on agreement because after a moment he follows it with, "Look, who said what isn't really your business, though I can see where the thought comes from. But I can't very well just leave the door cracked when someone asks, now can I?"
no subject
It's his job, after all, in addition to making sure each and every person remain here, human-shaped property. If someone ends up brutalized in the middle of the night or concussed from a fight - particularly while Oglethorpe is away - the overseers will be in just as much trouble, if not more, than the convicts involved in any given altercation. It's a failure of attention paid as much as anything else.
And here's the fine line, effectively encouraging an overseer to watch them closer when they're in the midst of something so dangerous-- but it's the sort of gamble they have to make. They have to push to get the results they want.
Marshall makes a noise of assent but doesn't say anything else just yet, keeping pace with Thomas and staring at the fence as they walk, frown over his expression. It's a long while with no talking, but Thomas stays as he is, giving no indication of impatience, something that he hopes James notices so that no one ends up on edge.
"You know how it is," he says after a while, his voice lower. "With how parameters shift around with all of it." Thomas hums in agreement - reference to some conversation or other predating James's presence on the plantation. They must have had a number of them, to have this level of ease between them, even if it's necessarily manufactured on Thomas's part; their difference in rank, one human and one not, prohibits anything real, or honest, even on a surface level.
"Andies has it out for you." Marshall twitches his head, indicating James without properly looking back again. "Both of you."
"I know."
"I can get something going but you have to be fucking careful. I mean it, real fucking careful."
no subject
Saying anything feels like it might sever whatever line is being drawn between the two of them. So when Marshal actually does look back at him, clearly expecting some kind of answer, James just gives him of confirmation. See? He can even keep his mouth shut here.
Marshall expels one heavy breath, scratching his forehead vigorously enough that it's clearly just something to do with the hand not tucked into his belt. "Better if it gets done before he gets back from business then," he says, as if a note to himself. "Andies'll throw fits otherwise and that's too many questions. --So keep those noses clean through the week end."
Idiot, thinks James. That's four days without Oglethorpe's improving presence on the plantation. Plenty of time - to sort what needs to be sorted; for the residual exhaustion to wear out his body; for them to prove their worth to the African slaves; to make ready.
no subject
"Thank you," Thomas tells him, the weight of his sincerity almost tangible. Marshall grumbles something indistinct in response, shrugging off anything genuine as though for fear of accidentally brushing up against something alien.
Quiet, for a while. Then Thomas says,
"So you don't have to tell anyone, I'll have to complain at you now about the state of James's injuries, and ask to talk to Annie."
Marshall swears.
no subject
As they walk the fence, Marshall shifts to chatter so idle it's either to keep Thomas from asking for anything else or it's habit: talking to fill air when he could very well send them back the way they'd come while he does his work along the perimeter. James suspects it's the latter. It doesn't seem to occur to the overseer to just tell them to fuck off so they spend nearly an hour in his company while getting a thorough look at every piece of fence along the face of the property.
By the time they finally turn back toward the main house, James's pace has slowed so significantly that Marshall stops a handful of times - first to shake a stone out of his boot, then again just "Because you look sick." Also he doesn't want Annie talking sharp to him about dragging the pair of them around by the nose all evening.
"She can be particular," James agrees, sweating where he stands.
"Goddamn right she can," says Marshall and the topic of being on the bad side of women carries them all the way back to where they started.
no subject
Doesn't make it easy. His heart aches. His heart screams, frustrated and angry. Outwardly he is calm, even if the way he sometimes flexes his fingers is a tell for anxiety; the fine tremor that sometimes haunts him grips his left wrist, though it isn't so visible.
This has gone remarkably well.
Annie is displeased to see the state of James, frowning thunderously at all of them, her comments making Thomas think she might launch into a lecture if it were just the two of them. He's given a towel and a fresh shirt for James and instructions to fetch a pail of water so he can have something cool on his back. Marshall hovers but not for too long, calling out that he'll take a walk by later, which Thomas assumes means he'll be doing rounds near the bunkhouse to dissuade any overnight murder attempts.
"Drink some water right now," Annie is bossing Captain Flint without hesitation, meanwhile.
no subject
James does as he's told, drinking down the well water without complaint as Marshall recedes into the darkness. "Take your shirt off," Annie orders from where she's hooking the lantern high in the doorway. He gives Thomas a long suffering look as he unrolls his sleeves.
It takes him longer than it should. Something's come open from the labor in the field or the combination of scabbing and sweat has just reacted poorly, but peeling himself out of the shirt leaves him feeling raw and tender. No blood on the shirt though. That's a good sign. He's eager to bundle it over itself, stowing it on the step behind his heel where it can be forgotten.
"That went well," he says. It sounds so much lighter than he feels. But both can be true - that he's been hammered thin and that it's strangely easy to grin at Thomas as he shifts his arm out across his knee, holding his hand out toward him.
From behind him, Annie fixes Thomas with a skeptical stare.
no subject
Five years ago, when he was finally able to process what was happening to him, being moved from Bethlem to the New World, Thomas had been so infuriated and sickened by the certainty that he'd be forced to be grateful to slavery that he'd shut down. He'd left, and endured illness and branding as a shell of a person. What shall he think now? This feeling of fierce, unbelievable joy at how James has left shame behind, coupled with the weight of where they are and how they've both come to this point.
How could he ever have thought they'd have no chance at leaving? They can't die in the attempt. Death itself has already failed to separate them.
Thomas takes his hand, tremor and all, unafraid of showing that weakness to James and pressing it into his skin. Heaven knows what kind of look is on his face, relieved and helplessly adoring and baffled and concerned. Sometimes he's very good at schooling his expressions and sometimes he's not, and this is the latter.
Annie deserves an award for putting up with them.
"It did," he agrees, inexplicably sounding choked-up. Get it together, he tells himself, and smiles. Well. That's what they're doing. He squeezes James's hand and sits sideways next to him, angled so he can help with the welts on his back. Just as soon as he lets go of his hand. To Annie, quieter: "Marshall is going to help us with something Hannah asked for. He's just not aware."
A gamble to say it so plainly, but it pays off in the way Annie's entire demeanor changes. They all understand each other.
no subject
He holds Thomas's shaking hand close, the irregular movement against his center like some living bookmarker for this instance when everything is exactly as it needs to be. Annie will tell the others what they discovered. Marshall will do what Thomas asked. The plantation's master will come back in four days and have no idea he's on the very edge of being ruined.
"Our best opportunity will be when Oglethorpe returns. There's bound to be some unintentional slack in the changeover when he does." He twitches under the first application of the cool cloth at his back, huffing out a short sound under his teeth. But he doesn't twist away.
no subject
Thomas takes a steadying breath, and is soon enough carefully pressing fingers of his free hand between the raised abrasions on James's back, coaxing vital bloodflow into the muscle and skin, finding knotted aches. There's no way around it hurting, but it'll help in the long run. The thought of him ending up like Benjamin is too awful to get near.
"They will be tired, then," Annie agrees. They, the overseers, and they, the those returning from travel. "Efforts made to hurry and put everything to its best order before he gets back."
Once James's back is suitably cooled down and cleaned, Annie produces salve for the wounds and hands it over to Thomas, letting him handle the application while she takes his old shirt and the wet towels to be put in with the laundry. She'll be back to collect the lantern and pot of salve, maybe talk some more. Though she is more den mother than schemer, she likes them, and clearly communicates about everything with her peers. Sat behind him on the step, Thomas lets his fingers linger at the nape of James's neck, working at the tension there, doing his best not to make it obvious he's looking at the marks on his back and imagining George McNair's teeth getting kicked in.
no subject
He huffs out a laugh, startled, and after a moment, the strangest thing happens: he feels compelled to explain himself.
"I was just thinking," James says, finally releasing Thomas's hand so he can support himself against the step with it. "About wanting more time."
What a bizarre, insane thing to even cross his mind. To say out loud. But will there be another opportunity like this one in the coming days? Where they are alone with just the night around them? Will there be room for conversations in the bunkhouse after it's been rearranged, or will every conversation here forward need to be weighted toward convincing other men of the same resolution they already share? With escape right there at his fingertips, the part that comes after yawns strangely empty. He knows roughly what will fill it though, and doubts sitting on porch steps or bracing Thomas's hand in his will be much of it.
Not for some time anyway.
no subject
Blissfully unaware of the way Captain Flint has driven everyone else up a wall with his guarded nature for the past many years, Thomas listens and, perhaps, takes his openness for granted. What else can he expect? They are so often of one mind already. He leans forward and does not kiss James's shoulder, but brushes his nose against the side of his neck, below his ear. Pointless beyond simple want of some sweeter affection.
"Do you remember when you asked me if I was happy here, and I think I reacted like I'd cut a hand off by accident," he murmurs, rhetorical. Of course James remembers. Thinking back to it-- god, it already feels so ancient. They've come so far, grown back around each other like vines free of gardening, like they should be. "I spent a lot of that day thinking about time. It's something I used to contemplate often. The fact that I had no concept of the passage of it in Bethlem, that it felt like so much longer than it was. When I was removed, Peter could have told me I'd been there for twenty years, and I'd have believed him easily. I was so shocked it had been only what it was."
Hands at his ribs now, smoothing against weather-worn freckles and scars. That awful one on his chest, he sometimes wonders about, but hasn't mustered up the courage to ask for fear of James asking about some of his own. Silly of him. Thomas rests his cheek very gently on the other man's shoulder, looking out at the dark garden.
"I began to think of it like being reborn, because of the way children experience time. Every hour is a year. Childhood lasts forever and as we age we run faster and faster through everything. In that way I did die there. And here, again. And when I saw you... I was alive. Alive in a way I have either forgotten how to be, or haven't ever been before. How long has it been since you came to me?"
This, too, sounds rhetorical, and Thomas doesn't shift closer because his back can't take it, and the ointment there needs to dry as best it can in the humid night air, but the way he shifts his fingers speaks of a firmer embrace.
"Every moment with you is a lifetime I could hide in. I was lost in this.. faded, grey nothing, and now there is color, and shadow, and depth and feeling. We have so much time. And we will have every eternity. I know it."
No poetry or recited quotes; there are none that do what he feels justice. Even his own words are paltry things in comparison, too edged in the inherent awkwardness of live composition to ever be some lovely verse. But it is his heart.
no subject
A still quiet descends over the night, punctuated by the rasp of insect legs and the far away call of a night bird. His face has tipped against his shoulder toward Thomas as if involuntary, the lines of his expression twitching toward both pain and some incandescent happiness that should be too bright to look at here in this shadow but is instead just some unfolding relief. There's a word in his mouth - something he doesn't know the sound of - but it lingers there for a long moment struggling to take form, smothered by this feeling of wanting and having all at once.
James exhales. Turns his hand and offers it back. Worn palm and tired fingers and nails black with dirt and work and ash and-- He is so, so gentle in how he takes Thomas's hand again, sticky from the salve and unsteady.
"You matter," he says, voice so low that it sticks. Thomas does and so does every extension of him, which includes him and Miranda and every book Thomas loved. Every word he spoke of his own volition does. Every warm second. "Wherever you are." Even here in places where the shape of this gets told in a way that's untrue. They can exist in this mid-stride place just as there can be a fragment of himself that is frightened of the period looming at the end of this sentence while barreling toward it. The end of a thing is just an important as its other pieces; something must come after it.
no subject
He matters to James. He is as real to James as he was in London, he is real now as the person he's become. Thomas can't put into words how much that matters, to him. How much James does.
At some point, Fate stitched them together with her thread. It's been pulled, they've been torn, but it's stayed.
Thomas is quiet until Annie returns, just sitting with him, their points of contact so tender and vital. The woman clears her throat when she approaches and Thomas turns his head, wry smile tugging at his mouth.
"I almost nodded off," he tells her, slight teasing in his voice for thinking they might be up to anything physically intimate in the middle of the damn field. She huffs, and the boards of the deck creak under her feet as she walks nearer, mug of water in hand for James.
She looks at him when she gives it, eyes stern on his. "You will heal. Well."
no subject
"That's a relief." He usually does, doesn't he? James swallows down the contents of the cup, and because he isn't ungrateful: "Thank you."
Annie has a soft sniff reserved in answer. "Less walking after hours tomorrow. And less stirring up trouble with your people maybe," she says, clearly with the full understanding she'll only be minded if it's convenient. Apparently there'd been some talk after they left the supper table. "I might say a little less sun too, but I don't expect that's up to you."
"Give me a few days and I'll see what can be arranged." His spare hand is still wrapped in Thomas's. After a moment he undoes that too, trusting that the high sharp sensation in his chest doesn't need the contact to sustain it. Fetcheing up the fresh shirt and setting aside the half drained cup, he begins the slow process of crawling into it.
Before she takes down the lantern and reclaims her jar of salve, Annie demands to examine Thomas's arm 'while I have you' and spends some minutes checking over the drawn tight flesh. She dabs some of the same salve at a few points, leaving them both smelling of meadowsweet and wax. "Have him massage this for you when you can stand it," she tells him, then bundles her things into the pockets of her apron and takes the lantern from its hook.
no subject
Thomas catches one of James's hands in his on the walk, brings it to his mouth to kiss the back of his fingers. He knows how brutal and desperate what they plan to do is. He knows just how much misery and struggle the time after holds in wait for them. None of it has the power to touch him; no matter how bad it is, he has endured worse, and no matter how bad it is, it will be weathered alongside this man.
Outside the bunkhouse, Romans 4:18 (real name Cuthbert; Romans is an improvement) is picking stones out of a shoe. He gives them a nod as they draw closer, and there's a clear measure of solidarity in it. Factions are becoming established. Thomas squeezes James's fingers. When Marshall makes possible the shuffling of sleeping arrangements, some will surely notice and have an opinion. Likely some accusatory ones.
But by then it will be too late.