#silverflintdow

“I’m in hell,” Silver says to himself, watching the festivities. “I’m in hell meant to specifically punish me.”

Most people in the village had long since gone to bed, tired or moving on to other activities, but a few were still awake talking or dancing. It was the latter of the two that had Silver feeling like his skin was too tight; an uncomfortable heat at the back of his neck quickly making its way to his face.

Because Flint and Madi were dancing. Some devastating combination of waltzing and step, far too graceful for the music that was now being played by musicians who had far too much to drink.

Silver considers the question. “Somewhere quiet,” he decides, ears thrumming with the carousing taking place just outside Flint’s tent. “It’d have to be by the sea. I fear you’d grow restless otherwise. You’re too loyal to it.”

Flint gives him a strange, long look. 

Silver returns a wrinkled brow. “What?”

“You imagine we’d be together.”

Something icy squirrels through Silver’s veins. “No,” he says, far too hastily. The denial rings as redundant as an admission, and possibly more shameful. Silver scrambles to salvage some dignity, “I was merely--” he starts. 

@silverflintdaily | 12.16.19

Week 15: cuff, dusk, engineer

“When did you first know?” Flint asked. Dusk had long since succumbed to inky blackness, blanketing their hut.

“That I wanted you? I suppose it was after you stashed me away at Ms. Guthrie’s. You looked at me like I was less than a flea. I wanted you then.”

Flint wrapped two fingers around Silver’s bare wrist, forming an unbreakable cuff. His thumb ran over the tender flesh.

“If you’re asking when I knew I would have you,” Silver offered into the silence, “that was later. After you’d engineered our release from the cages. You were mine then.”

friendship, beer, wheelbarrow

---

"Captain, behave yourself, I can't wheelbarrow you back to the hut on a peg leg if you're too drunk to walk," Silver admonished him.

"We won," Flint said, a smile lose in his lips thanks to the beer.

"We did, so it'd be truly unbefitting for you to die of alcohol poisoning right now."

"We won," Flint repeated taking a step closer towards Silver, the proximity stealing the words from his mouth. "We won and you're still at my side."

"Of course, I am," Silver said as if Flint's confession the previous night would have changed their growing friendship.

failure, cat, spaghetti 

Betsy II wove her way around Silver's ankle and he leaned over awkwardly to pet her, for which he was rewarded with a purring nip. She skittered away when, a few feet away, Flint yanked on a rope and some part of the rigging made a huge thump in return. Silver straightened up. No good could come from the lines drawn between Flint's eyes and his muttering in a dead tongue while he fiddled with the nearest mast.

"...spacus," Flint ended, spitting the word like a swear.

"What's that?" Silver asked, venturing closer to him on the wet deck.

"Give me one of those," Flint said, pointing to the thin roping piled against the cabin wall. 

Silver picked up the one that seemed the least frayed and handed it to him, their fingertips touching briefly. He cleared his throat and stepped back again, fast. Flint affixed the rope to another with an elaborate knot and tugged, hard; the drab and sodden sail rose up like a spectre. Silver watched the sail flap and splatter rain onto the deck before Flint lowered it. 

Flint's eyes on him were piercing as needles. "What?" Silver let the syllable convey a number of questions. 

"Nothing," Flint said. He tied up the end of the rope and then stepped beside Silver. "Remind me to buy more actual twine when we're back on land." 

Silver sensed several sailors eyeballing them from various points on the ship. He schooled his face to neutral. "Yes, Captain." 

Flint said nothing for a minute. "Are you going to tell me who left this mess to be mended, or do I have to hunt down those shiftless failures myself?"

"I will handle it," Silver said firmly, "before we set off."

"See that you do." 

It was all very stoic, very professional. Silver stood a little taller, as a proper quartermaster would. For reasons he could not begin to explain the bite mark on his collarbone that he knew his shirt hid suddenly twinged; the faint beard-burn left on the insides of his thighs stung as though it had been doused with alcohol. The crew had resumed their tasks, their attention elsewhere. Flint's fingers snaked around Silver's wrist, lazily as a serpent would coil around a branch in sunlight, and his thumb drew a spiral atop Silver's suddenly jumping pulse. 

"My cabin again, tonight?" Flint asked, voice low.

“I'm not calling her that.”

“But it's the cat's name. Your failure to pronounce it is hardly her fault.”

“You say it then, since you're so clever.”

“Spaghetta!” Silver intoned perfectly. The slender tabby looked up hopefully at the sound of her name. “See? She's from Naples.”

The cat padded across the bar top towards Flint, her tail a happy question mark in the air. She nudged his arm and rubbed her cheek on his hand, demanding to be petted. 

“All right, fine.” He rolled his eyes, fingers carding through silky fur. “Spaghetta,” he mumbled awkwardly.