katabasis | [PSL] in this sense the open jaws of wild beasts will appear no less pleasing than their prototypes

[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.

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It isn't like with McNair or any of the other men with whom he shares the exact same measure of non-agency. James is content to haunt the fringe of this conversation, letting the spans of quiet lengthen to the rhythm of shoes on dirt and the rasp of small insects in the dark. There's nothing benign about him trailing after them - even quiet and slow, there's a rough edge to his shape and how aware he is of everything that comes out of Marshall's mouth -, but it's far more guard dog lying on the step than wolf stalking in shadow. Real fucking careful.

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.

Thomas doesn't say That's the idea, about being on their best behavior, but the look he gives Marshall expresses it easily enough. He's always well behaved-- though that may be a reason some people don't like him. His quiet orderliness contrasted with the fact that he's gotten out once before, and now here he is with Captain Flint, an unreal and twisted storybook reunion none of them understand. What is he doing with this pirate? What is this pirate doing with him?

"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.

James does grin then, huffing out a low grumbling laugh that has Marshall bitching for an additional six strides or so. When he finally resolves to again speak above a resentful grumble ('See what I get for this nonsense, I fucking swear--'), he says, "I'll fetch her out. But you won't step a foot into that house proper, d'you hear me." As if that's any part of what Thomas asked for, but let the man have his small victories.

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.

Watching James's strength fade and continuing to walk along with Marshall is a torturous reminder of just how uneven things are. Thomas can't simply excuse them and return to the bunkhouse, he can't call for a rest on his own - Marshall seems halfway oblivious to the casual power he wields, and he might tolerate the otherwise forbidden show of autonomy. Might. Thomas can't risk it, especially not since so much now rides on getting Marshall to do this for them.

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.

It's a series of tells that must be so minor that maybe there's no one else in the world left to recognize them except for James. But to his eye, the shift of Thomas's hands and the angle at which he holds his shoulders seems painfully obvious - so much so that sitting on the step feels like a relief for more reasons than just how worn out his body is. If it'll smooth away some of the taut lines in the other man's face, he'll take every sharp word Annie has to give.

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.

For a moment, Thomas is so taken by the sheer improbability of all this that he doesn't know what to do. After everything that was taken from them and why it was taken, after James had been so wrapped up in his own hesitation and fear when they were first together-- here they are, their relationship plainly known to everyone in this isolated circle of hell. They kiss where others can see, they sleep curled together in a room full of other people, they plead their case for relief from harassment and it's taken with a grain of seriousness-- and here is James, reaching out to him.

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.

There's something so plain and bare about the trembling of his fingers that James can't help but cherish it with such immediacy that his chest ache. Even slashed through by Annie's long shadow, Thomas looks so shockingly clear in the glow of the lantern light and the oppressive weight of the night air around their shoulders. He is stunningly present, beautifully made down to the twitch of his hand and the grey in his hair James can't see but knows is there. If this is how he seems now, in this place and shackled by these circumstances, then James can't wait to see him in the moment he's allowed to tell the world to rearrange itself.

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.

It's too difficult to do or say anything else, at first. If he begins to speak he'll end up going on about something too soft and emotional, if he moves he'll kiss James. Instead he stays where he's sat and lets Annie hum her assent, holds James's hand like it's what's keeping him alive. James is so radiant even battered like this, and Thomas imagines he can feel that radiance in himself, reaching into his heart and bones and touching everything with its light.

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.

It should be easy to ignore the resultant sting and aches of this between Thomas's hand in his and the world of necessary things that must be done to prepare for a moment just days - days - away. But for better or worse, that doesn't appear to be how the body functions. He sweats through it with little in the way of conversation, feeling wrung out by the time Annie takes the laundry away. Can he get a razor between now and when the moment comes, is the random thought that occurs to him under Thomas's fingers at the back of his neck. He'd thought to grow his hair out again so at a distance he might be less remarkable to a stranger who knew only about runaways and not their description, but the fuzzy feather down state he's in is more glaringly obvious than just being freshly sheared--

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.

With both hands free, Thomas applies more of the salve to the worst parts on James's back, rough fingertips careful, pressing in against where he carries his weight and troubles, all the way down to the line of his trousers. The tremor still makes itself known here and there, but from the way he moves, it's clear he's used to working around it. He thinks about McNair and how it isn't fair to want to see retribution against him; they are all equally crippled here, and how one man chooses to protect what's his cannot really be judged against another's. No one knows how to act, here. It's inhuman.

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.

It has the feel of something written anyway - not the rote recitation of words from a page, but the kind of thing the merits putting to paper. That warrants retelling. That is so true that even abstracted down into letters that it would speak to someone somewhere else who never knew them. It's so brilliantly, beautifully theirs. He can feel it in his skin, in the ache of his back, in the warmth of Thomas's hand and the unmeasured air around and between them. The step and the lantern and the fields with their momentarily forgotten shovels and pitchforks and plows are as incidental instruments, both real and unreal - so wildly untethered compared to the sensation of this. If there are books with monsters written into their seams, then there are ones where the opposite is true. Where the story people tell is secured by this: that Thomas loves him, that he loves Thomas, and that the world was made better for it.

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.

Thomas curls his fingers against James's and feels something in his chest flutter at how careful he is - it is a precious, beautiful thing that they can be here like this and still be so gentle with each other. They both deserve that kind of care, even after all they've been through and done. Thomas presses his nose into the juncture of his shoulder and neck, loving the heat of him even in the already sweltering weather, loving the smell of him beneath sweat and grime and medicated liniment. Loving him, and the fact that he thinks Thomas is anything but a grain of sand lost in the filthy machine parts of an empire that moves ever-forward, carelessly devouring.

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."

Time ticks forward (tick, tick, tick). Eventually this moment - the easy quiet shape of their hands together and Thomas's breath warm on his neck, the line of his thigh there beside him and every other small, logged point of contact between them - passes like anything else does. He lifts his head at the creak of the boards, accepting the mug (and the fixed look that comes with it) without question.

"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.

The feeling of wondrous contentment stays, for Thomas, even after they are no longer touching, after he's helped James carefully with the shirt and let Annie press at and attend to the burn on his arm. Once she's done, he takes her hands and thanks her quietly, and the weight of his sincerity makes her turn with a flush and flap a hand at him to shoo them away for the night.

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.

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[PSL] in this sense the open jaws of wild beasts will appear no less pleasing than their prototypes

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