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

[katabasis]

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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[katabasis]

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.

[aletheian]

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.

[katabasis]

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.

[aletheian]

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."

[katabasis]

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.

[aletheian]

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.