#tidefated

@tidefated

It’s not as if he’s never seen the man shirtless before, for Christ’s sake. He’s seen Billy sweating in the sun, seen him labouring both at sea and on land, seen him scrub himself as clean as one ever gets, working on a ship. He’s seen his back before. The shift of his shoulderblades, the ripple of muscle. The dip in his spine, going down.

But it had been Flint seeing those things. Flint, who turned away from all of life’s delights. Flint, who ignored any and all interests that did not serve his image. Flint, who had fashioned himself into something that could neither touch nor be touched, and ignored all things that made him wish it were otherwise.

(Fuck, but he misses Joji- Joji, who could be touched- Joji, who wanted to touch him-)

Whoever he is now, it is still forbidden. Touch is still a thing stolen and coveted in frantic, helpless bursts: Brushing Vane’s fingers when he hands over useless trinkets and old books he knows Flint will like. Standing too close to Silver, now and then, so that their shoulders brushed as if they were on deck again, two halves of the same thing. Goading Billy until he’s left with no choice but to restrain Flint or risk having to beat him. Touch is still half-forbidden. 

But he looks at things a little differently, now. And standing frozen in the doorway, with Billy’s back to him- Billy is something he can look at. That much is allowed. So Flint looks, and his expression would be carefully blank if not for the blazing--something in his eyes, and when Billy turns and looks momentarily surprised to see him standing there Flint somehow doesn’t balk. All he did was look. All he did was look, he hasn’t touched, he hasn’t done anything. 

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The point of a dagger presses into Billy’s stomach just hard enough to feel like a threat. Flint is flat against the wall, head tipped back--not in surrender but because he can’t look this tree of a man in the face otherwise--and left hand fisted in the front of Billy’s shirt. Whether he’s more inclined to pull him onto that dagger or push him away to free himself is anybody’s guess. The only certain thing is that Billy, for all his size and strength and intelligence (and for all that Flint has become diminished in the past several months), has yet to intimidate him.

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Flint makes a wry sound, more a sharp exhale than a laugh. The corner of his mouth twitches up. Billy doesn’t stop looking at him, eyes flickering between both of Flint’s, lingering on the left; the shift in hue, the flash of yellow-gold. Flint gazes back. Has to tip his head back to do so. For a long moment nothing changes.

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This has happened enough times that Flint can now feel the moment just before Billy strikes, and knows exactly how to push him into it, no matter how much Billy might not want to indulge him with yet another fight. As usual, Flint never stops until he has what he wants - even, apparently, when he isn’t fully certain of what it is yet.

For a man of his size and weight, Billy is remarkably fast. He slams Flint to the floor in seconds, knocks the breath from him.

“You know,” Flint wheezes, nodding to their--general predicament, “some would say this is becoming a pattern.”

Except usually, Flint doesn’t give up fighting so quickly, but with Billy straddling his waist, writhing for longer than necessary had seemed--well, he’d thought better of it. 

He does give a token hard shove with both hands to try and dislodge him, though. Billy’s hands snap around his wrists in a heartbeat, so quickly Flint isn’t sure he even thought about it so much as just--reacted. 

Flint stares up at him. Scrutinizing, maybe, eyes narrowed and flickering between both of Billy’s. The room feels smaller somehow. Billy is heavy atop him and utterly immovable and Flint wonders if he realises the fucking predicament he’s put them both in. Couldn’t just throw a punch, could he, had to fucking pin Flint in a position where he can’t even look away--

@tidefated

SEND 👿 TO SUMMON FLINT AS A DEMON. // @tidefated

The seas were hellish. Water and wind had destroyed half of the raised huts on the beach: the tide had come in farther than ever before, the waves dangerously high, and down in the Wrecks, the wretches and forgotten souls clawed their way further inland for shelter. Freak weather, some said, while others took it for a sign, and prayed for safety.

Captain Flint was dead, and had been for months. He was hanged, they said, in Charlestown. Now, the stories varied considerably: sometimes the dead woman was a witch, sometimes Flint snarled and thrashed in his bonds like an animal, sometimes he spoke and sometimes he was silent. But one thing was certain: Captain Flint was dead, his body a trophy and symbol of the might of civilization. No matter how the stories differed, that much remained true.

Flint did not know these stories. Flint had been consigned to endless night.

He came back screaming.

The thing that unfolded and collapsed before Billy Bones was not human. It retched and snarled on the floor of that dark, cramped space once it had screamed itself into exhaustion, and its wings splayed wide and beat against the walls. It was drenched in salt water. It smelled like the sea, and blood, and woodsmoke. 

When it lifted its head, the face was Flint’s. Around his throat was a thin, golden hoop that glowed so brightly it looked as if it would burn to the touch. Beneath it, the skin was raw and bruised. 

He did not know Billy, at first. All he knew was rage, and the terror of smelling the sea again, and the cold, cold air on his skin. He looked up at the man that had summoned him and felt his whole body tremble with rage and exhaustion.

“You,” the thing on the floor rasped. It did not try to lift itself yet. The wings splayed on either side of it shifted unnaturally, and there was a deep crackling, like bones shifting and mending inhumanly fast. “I know you. Billy.”

The more he remembered, the louder the rising snarl in his throat became. 

PINNING MEME (fury/leaving) // @tidefated​ 

When his back hits the wall, his breath leaves him- and so does all good sense and reason. Flint flashes back behind his eyes, summoned by the violence and the horror of being restrained by someone stronger than himself, a wild and wrathful thing that chases the remnants of James back into hiding. Even his voice seems to change, something of its old, sneering rasp creeping back in, a growl always pitched on the verge of cracking. He thrashes, and hears Billy’s voice as if from far-away for a moment, telling him to wait.

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It’s widely-known among the residents of Nassau’s shores that, with the exception of his quartermaster, Flint’s relationship with his crew is distant at best; and it’s true that there are plenty of people aboard his ship that Flint knows almost nothing about, most often due to sheer lack of interest. 

But. He knows the faces and names (mostly) of every person in his crew, and this tiny slip of a man he’s found hiding in the hold is most assuredly not one of them. Never mind the fact that he’s, well, lurking in the fucking dark like a rat, which is as dead a giveaway as any. 

Flint’s voice echoes in the dark, quiet and foreboding.