#odyssed

Something has been bothering him for a while now. A faraway sound, construction or something of that kind. It's unfamiliar, but his brain has yet to catch up to this first hint of warning. There is a sharp light pointing at his face, traffic outside the window, a rush of voices. Nothing to aid against the pounding pain behind his eyes.

Clearly the intake of alcohol last night had gone a bit overboard.

There is an unfamiliar, but at the same time familiar scent in the room. Or perhaps it is a feeling? Did he book a hotel last night? Did he bring someone with him? What the hell did he even do last night?

A soft grunt fell from his lips. Fuck that awful daylight. He rubs at his face, fingers pressing into his eyes in an attempt to soothe the headache.

When he finally opens his eyes, he finds the source of that sharp light. The curtains are half open, the window ajar. ' fucking hell '.

Of course his drunk self would make life a fucking nightmare for his sober self, and so he pushes himself up in preparation to shut the world out, but something stops him.

The person beside him moves in his side-sight, and as Silver casts a glance at his nightly partner, his breath is caught in his throat. A slight panic rises in his chest and he stumbles out of bed. Naked and without his prosthetic.

"Oh shiiiit..."

jack staggers backward. his vision glitters. it's been a while since the last time he was caught in the middle of a tavern brawl, especially one where his crew is an active participant. some music plays in the corner while drunk men laugh and spit and shout over each other, more than a few mothers being unwillingly dragged into the argument as it heats up, and rather unkindly at that. jack dances around a table, dodging a flying bottle as it's thrown over his head. his lower lip, split by a sickle cut, bleeds profusely all over his chin. he could pay it back by climbing the counter and announcing a swarm of redcoats will be storming the tavern soon. as unlikely as that might sound at this hour of the night, to forty drunken sailors who can't even walk straight it'll sound exactly as the trumpets of judgment day.

but then, as jack's clever eyes scan the crowded place, a furrowed stare meets his from across the room. flint. rivers of alcohol in his blood sing in realization as he drops his plan with as much ease as he'd considered it. the cut of flint's attention bares a nerve that makes captain jack sparrow grin too widely, that makes him shiver as when he lays wet-clothed in the sun. he realizes he wants to herd that attention out of the piss-smelling tavern, somewhere quieter, where it won't flee as soon as it's acknowledged. he turns, his plaited hair whipping the thick air after him, elbowing his way out of the door.

outside, the sea air smells dark and sudden, like a punch in the gut.

james follows his trail in the warm sand. maybe he'd expected he would, because the seed of desire jack has felt blooming in his belly cannot grow unless watered; but maybe he'd hoped, as well. his lip is still bleeding. he couldn't feel it inside, where the warmth of the blood mixed with the warmth of the stale air, but he can feel it now—only, he cannot be persuaded to care. james opens his mouth to say something, but jack's finger deftly hooks at his belt. ‘we'll talk later.’

   HE SWEEPS HIS FINGERS THROUGH RED HAIR —   this hair that had, so shamefully in him, elicited a terrible sickness, a sadness like jealousy. Not shame for the longing, but shame for the bitterness of it. The longing to touch it, to press his face against it. To move his hands through it as now he does. James’ face turned aside and resting against his belly, in the clean, crisp linen of his shirt. The warmth of him. The fan of his breath. It is as he imagined  ;  it is, as all things imagined, more shearing and sublime in reality, more transcendent, than the waning brain could conceive of it. Such is the world, isn’t it? Such are all beautiful things. Beyond the understanding of man, who is always striving in the dark to describe them.

   He could not have described this. He could not have known the language, could not forge it anew without first feeling it, hearing it, smelling the soft, clean masculine musk of this hair, tinged with the sea-wind, so like the gloaming colour grey  —  but red! Redder in nearness, brighter than fire. How could he have known? How could he have known that it would be like this, so natural, in him like the a priori.

   Thomas smiles, spreading his fingers across his lover’s forehead like brushing away the dust of creation, revealing underneath the thing made by God that must have joined them even before they could perceive it.  ‘  Did you not imagine it? Perhaps not  —  my discipline has never approached yours. I did. Endlessly. So much that you would enter the room, and for a moment, I would forget that it had not happened  ...  ’

   ‘  How needlessly we have both suffered. ’  He smooths the hair back from James’ face, from his closed eyes and what, behind them, he knows to be a hidden look. A secret, bottomless place. Making a dwelling of this moment. Thomas looks into his face and still smiles, leaning down to kiss his furrowed brow as he murmurs with a depth of fondness like the sea  :  ‘  And what a piece of work is man  ---  ’

   IT SEEMS TO HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT THEM,  pulled apart or together by an impossible insistence that it would not happen. In the blisteringly clear light of the high moon, an uncomfortable closeness of their postures despite their distance, despite the empty space around them. Two leaning things. Geralt had touched his shoulder, yes  —  just his shoulder. Both of their bent heads, bent towards one another. The pull of it, the transmutation from touch to grip to this blind, grasping embrace. The crushing ferocity of that grip returned, the desperate inverbal cry, wordless, impossible to phrase. A lifelong bruise. Bleeding and bleeding and bleeding, this gash  —  looped into some madness of immortality, to suffer and not die. That the broken heart sits on the shoulder, broken again, in the chest. In times of drowning the grip is stronger by instinct.

   It passes in a confused clash of mouths, confused but madly earnest.

   There is a brief moment of eerie calm, of deep quiet. Flint’s forehead grazes his chin, a nose to a cheek  ;  bodily contact, unbroken intimacy and its terrible terror, it’s filling, like a sudden flood returning to empty places, excavating their edges and their shape to display it even as its momentarily gone. There are hands in his hair, his hands are in hair. Their eyes are closed  ;  both sets. Both sets of eyes are closed or cast down or away. They cannot look and touch at the same time. To desire and look at once  —–  impossible.

   They are breathing in a ragged unison, hands in hair, faces touching.

   It is unbearable to be touched. It is unbearable not to be touched. Worst of all is to cease touching. The second kiss begins just as the first  :  with no real evidence as to who has begun it, or where it has come from. It is slower now, less mad. Nervous, perhaps, but not panicked. He tastes on the other man’s mouth what he tastes on his own. Loneliness, powdered steel. Suffering. Meanness. The overwhelming longing  —  to touch, to be touched. It is unbearable, as unbearable as being without it. This, the clear sting of comfort as the pain that rises above the rest, as a pain that cuts through all other pains.

   THE SHIP SWAYS AND THE WITCHER’S BODY SWAYS WITH IT,  feet planted, as though his torso were not hinged to his hips. His spine is fluid, limbre and strong, some strange steel both rigid and molten. His weight rests upon his left foot even in repose. He hears the captain’s footfalls, the flex of the planks, long before the bar-latch on the door rattles under his hand, yet he does not take it for a warning. He remains where he is  ;  his strange, black eyes floating over the spines of a curiously expansive little collection of literature. Any small number is a luxury, after all.   Most would think it curious for a cutthroat.  There is a book in his hands already, plucked from the shelf, but not yet opened.

    somehow the touch of their hands is more electric to him than james’ hand on his back, than the weight of a hip brushing a hip when they both step first on the same foot and collide, tense and chuckling. because it will be easier for the james this way, he thinks, thomas acquiesces the lead without even a margin of care and follows james’ step.  it is something of a reversal, isn’t it?  warmth, like heat, floods him at that awareness, and he must look away from the intensity of his partner’s eyes. this, too, is a reversal. this warmth is love  —  thomas has been acutely aware of its name for many weeks now, though he is not yet aware of its return.

    he feels james’ bemused smile before he looks back to see it, and it stirs a smile in him as well. he had imagined it might be very hard, this  —  somehow it is easy, simple, a single cream colour rising with their blood against the taupe backdrop of the empty cafe.

    nearly empty  ;  miranda and peter have settled quietly at their corner table, their own dance finished as if in some silent communion to what has happened, is happening, to the awareness of it. they are watching, wordless. there is a feeling of divine tension, thomas thinks, as though the gods had drawn open the ceiling, parted the vast lilac clouds, and were looking now directly at them. at him and james. at him and james, together.

    james’ fingers flex nervously, as though he is struggling to keep them still, and the faint flicker of movement fills thomas with such love for him that it is difficult to swallow his answering inhale. he bows his head a little so that the lines of their cheeks are parallel  ;  parallel but parted by a cushion of shared breath. they could be cheek to cheek. who, looking, would know that they were not?

    it feels so terribly important  …  and yet it is easy, isn’t it? some tremendous parting moment in his life that he has not earned, that he is perhaps unprepared for. he does not feel unprepared at this moment. james’ arm tightens a little around his back, tensile, somehow possessive, and thomas knows that, soon, he will kiss him. he will have to kiss him. it feels profoundly inevitable, and thomas is flooded with the breathless urgency to beg for love as he has never done before. their eyes meet. james looks vaguely frightened, and so thomas offers him a small smile. nothing else. nothing else tonight.

    he longs to tell him that all will be well, it will be all right, as thomas knows that it will be. he translates that reassurance into something easier for them both  :  “you dance beautifully, james.”

    as he always does when thomas uses the stark familiarity of his first name, james reacts minutely beneath his steeled expression. just a flicker. as though he longs to ask thomas to please refrain or beg him to say it again. it makes thomas bold and, to hide his smile lest james think it at his expense, thomas turns his head to rest his cheek not on james’ cheek as he had been tempted but on the bend of his shoulder. as he does, miranda catches his eye. there is something in her face that he cannot name.  pleasure, apprehension, pride.  she’s a fearless woman, and thomas has faith in her, just as he has faith in the man who is holding him.

    they both tend to overlook too much joy out of fear of it, or in the desperation to keep it. it is beautifully human. when tethered to james’ exacting fierceness, it is remarkably and absolutely disarming.

       𝙹𝙰𝙼𝙴𝚂 𝙵𝙻𝙸𝙽𝚃 𝙷𝙰𝚂 𝙰 𝚂𝙼𝙴𝙻𝙻 𝙾𝙵 𝚂𝙰𝙻𝚃 𝚃𝙾 𝙷𝙸𝙼． it was the second thing jack noticed, right after his sunburnt, coarse beauty. unlike his own, worked in long braids and richly adorned, flint’s hair is trimmed very short — which is a shame, he realizes, as his mouth yields with easy surprise and his hand raises vainly, with nothing to clutch onto but the hem of his dark shirt. there is urgency in james’ kiss. an equal wish to anchor himself to something as real as the warmth of another; perhaps, the comfort of it. jack hums his vivacious annoyance against the seal of their lips because, and that is the third thing he notices about captain flint, he’s frantic where jack is languidly at ease. he lingers with his tongue on the taste of salt on flint’s wind-chapped lips, there discovering some sweeter flavor. liquor. they’ve both raised more than a glass.

       without a warning, but with a sting of devilish pleasure at the sight of flint’s mildly disheveled and questioning look, sparrow pushes him away. not too abruptly, with a gentle firmness, his golden earrings softly swaying in the movement. james seems about to say something, but he covers his mouth before he may, feeling the ticklish brush of his beard against his palm. a forefinger raises to jack’s own lips, at to order silence.  “no man steals from captain jack sparrow and lives to tell the tale, pirate.”  it’s an exaggeration, of course. his ship’s been stolen from him more times than he can possibly count, or that james might even begin to imagine, and the subjects are all more or less relatively healthy. jack’s sneer is a flash of teeth, knowing and certain, decisively fueled by the rum.