#pirate!thomas

accepting

Thomas could not sleep. He was sick to his stomach. Next to him, James slept but it was not peaceful. Captain Flint did not often rest easy but when his shadow watched over him at least he got some sort of respite. The shadow did not, not now, at least. 

“Who have we become?” Thomas murmured. He didn’t bother trying to keep his composure and wept freely and quietly in peace in the captain’s cabin. Civilian casualties always wrecked him. He didn’t mind fighting and even killing men who wanted to kill him but when innocents got involved he found it very difficult to handle. James didn’t feel it as much. He argued that there are no innocents when it comes to England, that every man, woman, and child is responsible if they do nothing to resist the injustices of the empire and deserve eradication. More than once Thomas had told him that was bullshit. They didn’t talk about it much, though, so neither had succeeded in turning the other to his side. 

When a child was caught up in the chaos, though, James had the decency to be affected by it. That’s why he slept so badly now, and why Thomas did not at all. 

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the terrified look on the young boy’s face as he held his dying sister, one of Thomas’ bullets in her stomach. He heard the screams the boy let out when James came in to put a hole in her head and have the trauma done with. When the distraught boy picked up a weapon he had no real hope to wield and made for James, Thomas cut him down without thinking because it was an automatic reaction. Anyone went for James and Thomas was there. This time though, no real threat had been posed. But still, two little children lay dead in their own home and James and Thomas would never wash that blood from their hands. An accident, it had been an accident-!

A quiet sob woke James up with a start and he looked up to see Thomas sat up on their bed and curling himself around a pillow, crying into it. His face was drenched in tears and his eyes raw red, cheeks and forehead and brow creased and flushed with sobs. 

“It’s alright,” James murmured. His head was thumping and he could barely see straight but he sat up anyway and pulled Thomas slowly into his arms. He pulled the pillow from Thomas’ tight grasp and lay it across his lap for the other to lie his head upon and he began stroking golden hair. It had been back in London that James discovered it soothed Thomas like nothing else and helped him sleep well. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”

accepting

Joshua led the vanguard this time, Billy and Joji at his flanks, Singleton bringing up the rear of the quad. They liked to clear the area on hauls like these, when the crew of their target fought and then fled the decks because it was usually a sign of an easy fight, a sign that the captain wished to resist but the crew would rather surrender and walk away with their lives. It was easy, and the bloodshed was usually superficial. 

As the smoke cleared from the gunpowder, Captain Flint and his shadow strode towards the small flurry of fighting. In one smooth motion his sword was unsheathed and steel sang against steel as it met Singleton’s blade. 

“It’s done.” Captain Flint’s words echoed in the wooden chamber. Singleton’s lip curled but he did not resist, and around them, the men of the Walrus decisively ended their skirmishes. Flint pulled the black sash from his mouth and piercing eyes locked upon the merchant captain. Behind him, his shadow moved slightly closer. “Wouldn’t you agree?” 

The Captain’s Shadow. That was the name some of the crew had given him. It began as a nickname way back when they first arrived in Nassau and James had met Mister Gates in a dingy tavern and Gates had taken a liking to him. There, James did the talking and Thomas did the listening and wherever one went, the other followed. Because Flint did the talking, it always looked like Thomas was nothing more than his shadow, going wherever the slighter man went, letting his feet lead the way. Thomas didn’t mind it much; he knew otherwise. Everything they did was a decision between the pair of them and more often than not it was Thomas who would take more of a lead despite how it seemed to the crew and to the rest of the world, for that matter. The Shadow looked as if he carried no sword and no pistol and there was little threatening about they way he presented himself but there were stories of the violence and carnage he could unleash should his captain be under threat. 

One tale told of a crew member who had fallen on the wrong side of Captain Flint and came to owe him nearly five hundred Spanish dollars that he could not ever hope to pay back and so he thought he would sneak into the captain’s cabin and do away with him. The Shadow, it was rumoured, slept on the floor beside his cot like a loyal dog. The crew member instead found them wrapped in an embrace even in sleep atop the bed, the captain against the ship wall, meaning the crew member had to lean over the Shadow to reach Flint. He tried it, steady as could be, but the Shadow rolled over and woke to find the crew member reaching across him to press a blade to the captain’s neck. The Shadow grasped him by the neck without flinching, it was said, and threw him fully across the cabin so he hit the door and fell, his ribs cracked, to the floor. There, the Shadow came to him and pulled a short and sharp blade on him and began a long and slow cut across his throat, the blade so fine that the crew member hardly felt it open the veins in his neck. He let out only the faintest noise once the Shadow had cut him from ear to ear and pressed the knife through his windpipe. Members who had served on the Walrus for years said the Shadow insisted on a trial aboard the ship as he felt remorse for the loss of life but the crew almost unanimously voted him innocent of murder on account of the dead man’s plans, that he told many a person, to solve his debt with a swift stab. The Shadow was fined for bypassing the crew’s justice and choosing to execute the man on the spot, so the story went, and he supposedly apologised for it. But some people told the tale of the captain and the shadow bathing in the blood of the crew member, drinking it, fucking in it, offering him as a sacrifice to the old gods that kept them kings among pirates. 

Thomas stood watching over the decks as the captured crew coward and wept below him, as the poor merchant captain stood tied to the mast across from him. Singleton’s rasping voice carried like an unpleasant stench up to him but he tried to hear every word. Our enemy, your enemy. The words echoed in Thomas’ ears and his mouth twitched slightly. It seemed that every loathsome phrase that left Singleton’s lips were not meant for the merchant captain but for Flint. It was no secret Singleton wanted the captaincy and the more and more poor prizes they got, the closer it seemed he was coming to meeting that end. 

The sea breeze whipped around Thomas and he straightened his back slightly. The captain followed Mr Gates out onto the deck and Thomas met James’ gaze briefly before the other turned to speak quietly to the man tied to the mast. Glancing now and again at the scarred face of Singleton, Thomas felt deeply uneasy. He began the decent of the stairs to come to James’ side when the loud cry of sails! startled them all. 

“Royal Navy,” Flint said, spyglass at his eye and Thomas on one side, Gates on the other. It had taken him a matter of seconds to cross the ship and search out the horizon. His Shadow was at his side in a heartbeat. “Scarborough.”

Gates sounded rattled. “Scarborough ports in Boston.”

On Flint’s other side, Thomas took the spyglass and looked for himself, his stomach dropping at the sight of the distant ship. “Not today she doesn’t.”

By the time they had sailed into Nassau’s bay, Gates had already given Flint a dressing down and, not for the first time, Thomas had aided him in doing so. The lack of trust Flint had in the crew was going to be his downfall, both Thomas and Hal agreed on that but James remained stubborn and difficult. Frankly, the only thing that stopped their discussion from heating up was the knock on the door and Billy’s youthful face coming to tell them they were home. Thomas sat in the window seat and smiled slightly, Hal winking at him as he left the cabin. Then, for what it felt like the first time in days, they were alone. 

“He’s right,” Thomas said, watching the back of James’ head. “You need to trust the crew.”

“I’ll trust them as far as I can throw them.” 

“You need to trust them.”

James was quiet for a moment and Thomas dared, for a split second, to believe that perhaps this time the other might have listened to him. Then the silence was broken. 

“I need to see Richard.”

Thomas couldn’t help but roll his eyes behind James’ back. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. He won’t help you, you know he won’t. Perhaps Eleanor is a better try.”

“She won’t know anything about this, it’s operations far beyond her control. She’d try to help but she would fail.”

Thomas made a small noise of agreement and stood up. “Alright. Do you think I ought to come with you?” 

“No. Go home, see Miranda. If all goes well we’ll be gone again by noon tomorrow. I’ll come home when I’ve finished with the Guthries. I think it’s time I paid Eleanor a visit too.”

“Tomorrow?” Thomas repeated in surprise. “That’s quick, don’t you think?” 

The chair scraped the floor as the captain stood up and he turned around to face Thomas, a twinkle in his eye. “We’re so close, Thomas. I can feel it, I can see it. We can’t slow now, not when we’ve come this far.”

There was a wildness in his smile, chaos in his eyes, but there was power, too, and goodness. Thomas leaned back against the wooden wall and returned the smile. “This is why I fell in love with you.”

The sudden declaration took James by surprise and he let out a short laugh. “Because I’m ignoring counsel and you and Gates?” 

Chuckling, Thomas shook his head. “No. Because you care for people when you don’t even know their names. You want to help strangers build better lives for themselves. You love people even when they do not deserve it. This is what it’s all for; a better place in the world.”

Captain Flint looked down to shuffle the papers on his desk and felt his eyebrows rise. “I love you too,” he murmured, cheeks flushed. “Right. Let’s get off this ship and on with business-”

:DDDD

accepting 

44. “I’m going to keep you safe.”

“Listen to me. Listen to me!”

Thomas could barely hear James over the sound of canons and pistols and steel and sea and his own racing heart. The sound of blood rushing through him filled his ears and he could taste copper on his tongue and he looked up, desperate eyes meeting those of the captain. 

James was saying something, shouting something, hands grasping the sides of Thomas’ face and he blinked once, twice, hard, trying to clear his mind. 

“Listen!”

Thomas drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he could see clearly again, and he could see James. 

“I’m going to keep you safe!”

They had agreed that if Thomas hoped to have any sort of authority over the crew that it was high time he did his bit in taking a prize and James had been training him for months for this moment. Turned out Thomas had a natural disposition for the blade and during their sparring they realised that with a short blade in each hand he had the potential to be quite deadly. That was what he had now in his hands, pretty little short swords that glinted in the hot sun, and he looked the part of a pirate. A dusty grey shirt and crimson waistcoat were his armour, Flint’s name on his lips his battle cry. The whistle blew and suddenly they were over. 

In two short waves the crew of the Walrus, following the lead of Joji and Joshua, flooded the deck of the Eel and the captain and his shadow roared with the rest of them, charging the merchant crew. Blades clashed and pistols blasted, and Thomas did not remember what happened. 

Perhaps an hour later and all was quiet. The captured crew had been sent down to the hull while the dead were taken care of. Down in the galley the Walrus’ barber was tending to the wounds of both crews, saving what lives and limbs he could with the help of his aides and mercifully few screams were heard from above. Thomas sat slumped against a mast and he blinked now and again, coming back to his senses. The first fight he had been in and there was blood on him. A lot of blood. 

There was someone sat next to him, he could feel the warmth of another person against his arm, and slowly he looked at whoever it was. Hal Gates glanced at him in return and gave him a grin. “You’ll be remembered for this one, my friend.”

“Beg pardon?” Thomas asked. His throat hurt a great deal now. 

“You put up a bloody good fight. Never seen a man gauge out another man’s eyes like that.”

“I don’t… don’t remember.”

“Do’t worry, you’ve just gone into shock, it’ll come back to you soon. Flint fell and nearly met his maker but you were there between him and the man. He knocked your blades from your hands so you carried on with your fists. Ended up pinning him to the floor and pressing out his eyes with your thumbs, it looked like. Then you skewered his throat with his own sword. Quite the execution. What’ll stick with our boys most is the time you took with it, too. You’d think we had all the time in the world, way you were dragging it out.”

The look of horror on Thomas’ face made Hal falter and he nudged him with his shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry. Flint was threatened. You took care of it.”

He looked out across the deck and Thomas followed his gaze. Standing tall and proud at the helm was the captain, hands behind his back, chest forward, feet planted firmly apart. Ever the military man. The wind whipped about him as he watched over his crew and Thomas was struck again by the power he held in himself.