Chapter Text
“I have a plan,” Jack Rackham announced, pushing his way through the flaps of the tent. Which was annoying because Charles had specifically told his men to leave him the fuck alone that night. Jack’s presence meant that either his men had already forgotten his orders or they had assumed Jack was the exception to the orders. He would have to speak to the men again, ensure they understood that no one, meant no one, not even his quartermaster.
“Here lies Jack Rackham, the man who never shuts up,” Charles murmured into his bottle of rum, leaning against a post, “A good quartermaster, when his scheming wasn’t almost getting his captain killed.”
Jack stopped in his tracks, “are you practicing my eulogy? Wait, don’t answer that - I don’t want to know. Like I said, I have a plan.”
“Do you now.”
“I do,” Jack said, sprawling uninvited on the pile of pillows that served as Charles’ bed, “do you want to hear it?”
“Will my saying no actually stop you from telling me?”
“Not this time, Chaz. I think I know how to ensure we can sail and chase large prizes again.”
“You want to help fix things between me and Eleanor? You don’t like her. And where did you get the idea I would want that?”
“Don’t you? Even if you don’t want back in her bed,” Jack’s mouth twisted in distaste as he spoke. His dislike of Eleanor, of her influence on Charles in truth, was a familiar point of contention between them, “you must admit you want to be favored by her again, to get tip-offs about what ship to take. The men are going stir crazy, we need a good prize to win.”
Charles tipped back the bottle of rum and finished the last of it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he lowered it. He wasn’t surprised when Jack took his silence as agreement.
“Do you remember our conversation the other day? You know, about her new favorite?”
Charles looked at him blankly.
“You don’t remember? Don’t tell me you were that drunk Charles. We were on the ship, talking about Flint?”
Charles continued to stare and Jack sighed, “you never listen to a word I say, do you?”
“What about Flint?”
“Fuck’s sake,” Jack rubbed his face, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed, “about how he’s Guthrie’s new favorite. And - you know - his relationship with the Barlows?”
Charles had a sudden flash of memory, the captain’s cabin aboard the Ranger, about a week ago. Jack blathering on about something that wasn’t any of their business. Anne Bonny his usual shadow, lingering in the background. “Jack,” He said, “if I’m recalling the correct conversation I hope you know I was at least half-serious about your eulogy. I have never been, nor will I ever be, interested in discussing Flint’s romantic choices. I don’t know how it relates to your plan, but I suspect I won’t like it. You should quit while you’re ahead.”
“You do listen!”
“That’s what you came away with? Fuck off, Jack, and leave me to my drinking.”
“You don’t understand, hear me out, will you? Flint is Guthrie’s new prize captain, her highest earner. And thanks to his relationship with the mysterious Barlows we can assume she hasn’t taken him to bed as she did you. I mean come on - he’s old enough to be her father.”
“Arrive at your point. And quickly.”
“My point is we’ve been approaching this from the angle of reconciling you with Guthrie. I think we should focus on allying ourselves with Flint instead. He’s put it out he’s looking for a consort ship and crew - we could go back to garnering prizes without you having to work your way back into Eleanor’s good opinion. I think that will follow naturally, if you can befriend Captain Flint.”
“And how do the Barlows factor into your master plan?”
He moved to the makeshift dresser, tugging open the top drawer. Charles moved a thoughtful finger over the line of bottles inside and considered his choices. He stopped on one towards the middle, a dark and spicy rum but one that was watered down. Not good enough for this conversation, he decided. Instead, he chose a bottle tucked to one side, this one was similarly dark but unopened and not watered down.
A huff came from behind him and he didn’t need to turn to see the disapproval written on Jack’s face. He used his teeth to remove the bottle’s stopper, taking a long swig before turning back to Jack.
“Must you?” Jack asked, his tone petulant.
“Yes. Now, the Barlows?”
“I think they’re your in with Flint. I won’t pretend to understand how things work between the three of them. But. Everyone knows that when he’s in Nassau if he’s not on the Walrus or at the beach, you can most often find him at their bookstore.” Jack waved his hand around as he spoke, his fingers twisting in the air, “you have butted heads in the past, I think it’s best to approach him through Mr. and Mrs. Barlow.”
“What’s there to understand about them?” Charles chose the easiest bit of that to comment on, and if it was also the bit most likely to rile Jack up that was just a bonus, “they’re three mature and consenting adults who have found a measure of happiness together.”
“Aha, I always knew you were a romantic,” Jack pointed a playful finger at him.
Charles took another drink of rum, trying not to remember all the times he’d gone off half-cocked in the name of Eleanor Guthrie. Considering that Jack was often the one who picked up the broken pieces of him afterward, he’d earned the right to tease him about it. But there was a limit to what Charles would allow, one Jack usually sensed and stopped shy of.
“You truly don’t understand how three people could make a partnership between them work?” Charles asked rather than answer the accusation. At least Jack knew better than to call him a romantic around the men.
Jack flailed, and Charles knew that he had caught onto what he had been alluding to. While only the pairing of Jack and Anne was physically intimate, there was undeniably a partnership between all three of them and between him and Jack separately. He and Anne had respect for each other, and a grudging sort of partnership when it came to Jack’s health.
“That’s different,” Jack protested.
“It is, because we all know who you’d choose if it came down to it. I suspect that’s not true of Flint and his Barlows. I suspect they would refuse to choose until the world burned them down or they burned it.” Charles said, his grip on the rum a bit tight. He flexed his fingers until they stopped clenching the neck of the bottle. “There are similarities though, enough that you can’t claim ignorance.”
It was quiet for a moment, Jack was quiet for the first time since entering the tent. Charles had always known who Jack was ultimately loyal to, and he didn’t resent it, or Anne. Still, he never would have voiced it in normal circumstances. He set the bottle down on a table and moved to sit next to Jack, bumping their shoulders together. Maybe he should lay off the rum.
“Ah,” Jack said, “we seem to have gotten off-topic.”
“You want me to befriend the Barlows so that they’ll put in a good word for me with Flint,” he summed up Jack’s plan.
Jack was leaning towards him, his eyes lighting up, “Yes, exactly! You can be charming when you want to be. And I suspect we both know the trick to getting into their good graces.”
“Books,” they said together, Jack with delight and Charles with resignation. It was common knowledge that the Barlow Bookstore was more of a library than anything else. If you wanted to leave with a book you had to buy it, but if you were content to read it at the store you didn’t have to pay a cent. Few took them up on it, reading was not a common hobby among pirates. Most didn’t know how and didn’t care to know. Charles wouldn’t if his mentor hadn’t insisted that a captain needed to be able to read and write a log among other things.
It was common knowledge that the shop was able to stay open thanks to their partnership with Flint. They’d provided enough capital in the early days, and continued to help pay for repairs when needed, both of which earned them a share of every prize the Walrus took. An odd arrangement, but one that seemed to work for them and the crew.
“You really think this plan will work? What’s to say Flint won’t see through it and try and kill me for my trouble.”
“He probably will see through it. But this should benefit all parties. I’m not advising you to lie or manipulate them, Charles, just that you go make some new friends.”
“Maybe I should be writing my own eulogy,” Charles sighed, “Captain Vane, done in by his own quartermaster’s scheming.”
“Sweetheart,” James whispered, his arms sliding around sleep-warm skin. He brushed a kiss on a bare shoulder, on the slope where shoulder met neck, on the sharp corner of a jaw, “darling, I’ve got to get up. Hal is waiting for me at the tavern for ship business.”
“Nnnggghh,” came the protest and James laughed softly, curling around the warm body in front of him.
“I’d like to stay but I can’t, I won’t be gone long though, a couple of hours at most. I’ll be back to have dinner with you and Miranda and we’ll have the next few days together before the Walrus is due to leave again.”
There was a soft chuckle from behind him, knees tucking up behind his, a second set of arms snaking around his waist. “Liar,” Miranda whispered into the back of his neck, making him shiver, “it’s never just a couple of hours.”
“It will be,” James murmured, “you two should decide what you want for dinner. I can bring something from the tavern or I can go to the market and pick up some things, cook when I get back.” It went unsaid that neither Miranda or Thomas should attempt to cook. They’d both learned how after coming to Nassau, but James was the only one who was more than passable at it. The less said about his earlier attempts to teach his lovers to cook, the better. There were permanent scorch marks in their tiny kitchen.
“I have a better idea,” Thomas said, rolling over in James’ arms to face him. He was the slowest of the three of them to wake and the most reluctant to leave the bed in the mornings.
“What’s that?”
It happened so fast James didn’t have time to blink before he was on his back, his arms stretched and held above his head. Thomas was straddling his waist, nuzzling into his throat, his hands wrapped around his wrists. He gasped and Thomas shifted to smother it with a kiss.
“Oh,” Miranda breathed from beside them, “I approve of this idea.”
“I thought you might,” Thomas broke away with a nip to his bottom lip, twisting to catch Miranda’s lips as she leaned over.
James took advantage of Thomas’ distraction and pulled his arms loose. He bucked his hips and twisted, toppling Thomas over so he was the one trapped between him and Miranda.
“Well,” Thomas breathed, looking between them, “not what I had in mind but this works just as well.”
Miranda rolled her eyes and reached over to lace her fingers through James’ loose hair, tugging him over and smiling into his mouth. “Stay with us, lover. You’ve been away too long and we have missed you.”
“Hal and I do have to speak today,” James said between kisses, a reminder to himself as much as them.
Miranda didn’t stop kissing him, one of her hands caressing his chest and abdomen, teasing with the idea her hand might travel lower. “Fuck, why do you both have to be so irresistible?”
“Your own fault for choosing us, loving us,” said Thomas, his lips replacing Miranda’s as she slid down the bed, and wiggled her way between their legs, smirking up at them. His ability to think was obliterated then, his mind lost to the feel of Thomas’ lips against his, to the warm sensation of Miranda’s lips trailing down his ribs, his hips, his thighs.
Needless to say, he was significantly late to meet with Hal Gates. Thankfully his quartermaster had restrained himself to knowing smirks and one pointed comment. James had borne it with a roll of his eyes, any irritation washed away by the warmth in his chest whenever he thought of his two lovers. They’d been incredibly lucky to end up here together, and he would forever be grateful that Thomas had convinced his father to fake their deaths and let them fade into obscurity under new names.
Well, Thomas and Miranda had faded into obscurity as the local book shop owners, Mr. and Mrs. Barlow.
James had cast aside his name and taken up a new one, but he had done the opposite of fading away. He hoped Alfred Hamilton and Admiral Hennessy knew who the fearsome and infamous Captain Flint really was. He hoped they feared that knowledge and regretted driving him into the life of piracy.
“Captain Flint?” He looked up from the inventory list he and Gates were leaning over to see Max approaching them. She was one of the women who worked in the brothel, one of Miranda’s only friends outside the local Puritan community.
“Yes?” He asked when she hesitated before their table. Her gaze darted over to the bar, where Eleanor Guthrie was holding court with a few of Captain Hornigold’s men.
Her cheeks were flushed and he restrained a smirk, more apt to recognize that kind of affection than most. He cleared his throat and she focused back on him, and she had the grace to look sheepish about her distraction.
“Apologies Captain,” she murmured, “I just came from having tea with your Miranda. She asked that I pass on a message to you.”
“What was it?”
“She wanted me to pass on her apologies to you, and Mr. Gates,” she said, glancing over at Hal who nodded, “for causing you to be behind schedule. She also requested you stop at the market to get food to cook if you can still make it back in time for dinner.”
James propped his chin on his fist and glanced at Hal, considering. They really should finish planning today, but the sun was already beginning to set. He’d have to leave now to get to the market before it closed.
As if he had read his mind Hal began gathering up the papers, “you can make it,” he said in a firm tone, “if we end up here an extra day the men won’t complain. And we can’t go anywhere until we decide on a consort.”
Max smiled, “she hoped you’d say that. Now, if you don’t need anything from me...” she trailed off, her eyes darting towards the bar again.
This time James didn’t hold back his smirk, waving her over to the bar. She went, her hips swaying as Eleanor looked up and caught sight of her.
Across from him, Hal was chuckling under his breath, “ah young love. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you Captain?”
He didn’t dignify that with an answer as he gathered his things. He had a market to get to, and a dinner for three to cook. And if he had any luck, they would end the night in bed, as lost in each other as they were this morning. He would press his love into their skin, murmur it against their mouths, and not stop saying it until he was sure they would never doubt it. Life was too short to do anything less.