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As if by some act of God they had escaped the doldrums. They had found wind and food, and Silver tried to take some respite in that. They would not all starve to death afloat on open water. All the same Silver remained exhausted; the men exhausted; and Flint aloof, and cruel.
Silver had half expected Flint’s ongoing reaction to him—had in truth expected it to be worse. But after their joint success with the shark, and another after it, after Flint had smiled so genuinely biting into that first portion, Silver had allowed himself to hope things might be different.
Ever the optimist, Silver. Though was it optimism if you simply did everything in your power to make the world how you wished it, and based your confidence in past success?
At dusk, on a day when Flint had hardly emerged from his cabin, Silver brought him a meager ration of water, a gamy cut of shark. Flint took the plate and roundly ignored Silver’s attempts at conversation until he tired of it and left.
Silver was not the only one experienced at making others obey his wishes in spite of their own. In Flint he was apt to call that skill manipulation.
When Silver approached him on deck to reconnoiter, Flint’s gaze floated over him like scum in a barrel. Flint answered direct questions, but anything Flint apparently deemed irrelevant to the immediate nature of their course and supply he simply did not hear at all, leaving Silver to look around at Billy Bones or De Groot to see if he’d simply spoken too quietly for others to hear. Leaving Silver looking stupid, and out of step with the captain.
He had to wonder if the men were beginning to reconsider their votes for him as quartermaster. He would have reconsidered, had he voted for himself—but then were he just another of the crew now, he did not think he would want for himself the responsibility of navigating Flint’s hurricanes, of oiling the seas of them when he could.
Just as he could bend men’s wishes to suit his own, Flint could propagate any storm occurring within his thick skull onto the natural world; Silver did not believe this power to be of any divine origin but evidence only of the force of Flint’s will. And at the moment that will was bent hard on Flint’s own self-destruction.
Silver’s problem with all this had multiplied, however: not only did he see how Flint’s rash spate of near-suicidal impulses had created a cyclone of consequences for all the crew; Silver had also begun to feel that Flint’s self-destruction would crush him personally, irrevocably, as well. The idea of losing Flint, of his ceasing to exist in some way on this deck, was an outcome so painful Silver could hardly bear to envision it, a possibility whose causal vagaries Silver could thus not fully prepare for. And thus it was an outcome he knew he had to do everything in his power to avoid.
The stump of Silver’s leg was raw, always—the bilgewater he’d stood in on end in the storm had created new sores that had yet to heal under the constant rub of leather and salt, and the flesh meant to cushion the bone from the sheath of the iron leg had only continued to retreat.
Personally Silver felt the same—each time Flint rebuffed him the slight felt closer to heart, as if Silver’s cushion of indifference to Flint as anything more than a path to riches, a way out, had somehow dissolved.
Flint had told him that as the men grew to need him he would grow to need them as well. But he had not said what Silver should do when he needed Flint—when Silver could see perfectly well that Flint needed him too but refused over and over again to admit it. What did one do with a need one could do nothing about?
“You must let someone take care of you.” Finally Silver had lost his patience: he could take no more of the captain’s insistent misery and his unwillingness to acknowledge it. He had knocked brusquely at Flint’s cabin and entered with hardly a response.
“Must I?” Flint didn’t even look up from the map on his desk. Already Silver’s blood began to boil at the passive dismissal.
The iron foot—it hardly felt like his just then—caught on a floorboard as he angrily stepped across the cabin, throwing him even more off-kilter. Silver slumped in a huff into Flint’s second chair, growing angrier as the leg defanged his advance.
“Perhaps you ought to let someone take care of you,” Flint said, looking up at him pointedly.
“Believe me when I tell you that the men have tried.”
“I don’t see you accepting it.”
Silver stood up, leaning on both hands forward onto Flint’s desk, into his face, obscuring Flint’s maps and charts with his body.
“My leg does not affect the men. Your mental state—”
“Oh, but doesn’t it?” Flint said, returning his stare. “Would Muldoon not be with us now had another man than you been with him below in that storm?”
Silver felt a sneer of a smile spreading across his face. Flint was trying to bait him, and of course it was working—Flint’s greatest skill was baiting men into submission—but he mustn’t let it take him over. He mustn’t loose the retort ready on his tongue. Silver soothed himself with the memory of meat in his belly, and the fact that there was more of it to eat yet.
“My, that is a low blow,” Silver murmured, holding Flint’s gaze. “A fair attempt. But you won’t distract me, Captain.”
Flint rolled his eyes and looked back at him with tilted head.
Silver continued, “Your mental state, as I was saying, affects that of all of the men. It affects all our chances at success, at survival. We are barely fed, barely out of the doldrums, we've endured weeks of battles on shore, and we do not know what fate awaits us from the colonial authorities. Additional—and might I add unnecessary—precarity among the crew is not something we can yet afford.”
“Thank you for informing me of our present state, Mr. Silver. It occurs to me suddenly that I’d been unaware.”
Silver sat back down. He did not have the faculties to massage this conversation through the fine grit of Flint’s sarcasm. He would have to try another tack. After a deep, slow breath, he said, “I am thirsty, Captain. I am exhausted, not least of the unknown—of not knowing when I will next eat, or what, or whether I will next eat. I am tired of salt in my open blisters.”
“You never were meant for the sea, Silver. These are ordinary complaints.”
“I am tired of blisters in my boot, sores on my hands, and the infernal saltwater in this fucking socket.” He gestured dismissively at the iron leg and looked pointedly back at Flint. “I can only imagine how the men must feel—especially those whose rations we cut.”
“I’m aware of your unending displeasure—”
“And I can only imagine how you feel—” Silver began. Flint tried to interrupt him but Silver only spoke louder, half-standing again and leaning forward on the desk. “I can only imagine how you feel, with your gold prize lost, your years-long hope of legitimizing Nassau aborted, and Mrs. Barlow murdered in front of you.”
Flint’s lip curled up as he fiddled with a page on his desk. “I don’t wish to speak of this.”
“I don’t care. I can’t care anymore whether you wish to speak of it or not. It’s eating you alive, Flint. It has been for weeks.”
Flint’s face was hateful, nearly gaunt, as he looked at Silver then. “Do not forget that I am your captain, Silver.”
“And I am your quartermaster, elected by the men. And we are no longer in the height of crisis. You have known this challenge was coming. You cannot put it off and off and off under the guise of circumstances.” Silver sat back down with a grimace.
“I do find it fascinating that you should come here and list all my personal shortcomings even as you daily ignore the orders of our doctor regarding the care of your leg.”
“Don’t turn this back to me. I refuse to be goaded into leaving this unresolved.”
Flint sat down too, looking at him across the desk. “Suppose I should order you to remove that contraption in this cabin.”
Despite himself Silver raged at this suggestion, blowing a bullish breath from his nose. “You cannot take my feet out from under me.”
“Howell has told me you won’t use the crutch in front of the men. Fine. But use it here. It won’t change my opinion of you.”
Silver scoffed, looking off out the window. He had nothing to say to this. Flint’s opinion of him was not a topic he had any desire to broach—he had only just convinced Flint to see him as an equal. Why risk that now, by showing weakness? Flint had his unyielding points of pride; Silver could have his too.
“I can’t sleep,” Flint said, slouching down to rest his head on the back of his seat.
Silver spread his hands at this, unsurprised. The weeks-long insistence of hunger hardly prepared a man well for restful slumber. He knew he was being surly, but Flint’s edge had worn him down; he was not now in the mood to hear complaints, even knowing that being short with Flint now might dash his plans for this conversation.
Besides, Silver thought, surly was Flint’s lingua franca.
“I’ve been having—waking dreams,” Flint said. “Like visions in their vividness.”
Intrigue buried frustration; Silver’s brow furrowed. “Of what? How often?”
Flint crossed his arms over his chest without opening his eyes. “Miranda. Mrs. Barlow. She’s speaking but I can’t hear her over a storm.”
“How often?” Silver repeated.
Flint opened his eyes then and glowered at Silver.
“Does it help when other people are near? I mean, do they—diminish, these visions?” Silver asked.
Flint glanced off to the side, and so real was his focus that Silver nearly turned to look behind him, to see if the ghost of Mrs. Barlow was with them even then.
“Not always,” Flint said, closing his eyes again. “But if I could find some way to sleep, perhaps—”
“I can ask Howell for a draught of some kind.”
“No,” Flint said firmly. “I don’t wish to be sedated. Only to sleep.” Flint shifted in his chair. Some levee had broken in him, and the bunched muscle of his jaw could no longer contain his suffering. “It can be difficult,” Flint breathed, “to be so apart from the men. To wake up day after day alone, knowing all the rest of you are breathing together in your hammocks.”
“You wish someone to sleep here with you,” Silver realized.
“I mean nothing untoward by it,” Flint said, holding out a hand. “But if you will rest your leg here, and sleep here, then perhaps I might rest as well. And perhaps we will both be the better off for it.”
“Ah yes,” Silver said, chuckling. “An equivalent exchange—in which I am the one making both of the sacrifices. Such parity.”
Flint tilted his head, grimacing, but said nothing, and Silver got up to leave. Silver would not be the captain’s kept creature, a limp doll for Flint to clutch and toss away as he chose. But Flint’s chair clattered as he hurried around the desk to catch Silver by the bicep. Flint’s face was vulnerable and raw now, like Silver had cut him open and left him to bleed.
“What if I said I needed it? That I trust only you to do it?” Flint asked quietly, looking sternly at the pendant on Silver’s collarbone, then up, eyebrows tilting, into Silver’s face.
Silver laughed a little, disbelieving. “You really do want me to sleep here.”
Flint’s hand tightened on his arm; if Silver didn’t know him better he’d’ve expected a sob to slip out of his mouth, the way the muscles of his face quivered. Flint didn’t sob, but when he spoke again his voice was soft and hoarse, as if the words scraped his throat on the way out. “I’m exhausted.”
Flint’s hand slipped away as Silver eased himself back down into the chair. Flint knelt in front of him then, and without looking at Silver began to cuff up his trousers, to undo the fastenings on his leg.
“At least let me get my crutch,” Silver said, grasping the arms of the chair.
“I’ll send someone for it.” He didn't look up at Silver, but his fingers tightened in the seam of Silver’s trousers as if he couldn’t bear for him to leave.
Silver pushed Flint’s hands away when he moved to pull the iron leg off, said, “I’ll do it.” Flint sat back on his heels as Silver tugged and grimaced and tried not to vocalize the pain of it. Still, sweat had sprung out on his forehead and under his arms by the time he’d set the thing aside, his breath coming rough.
He startled when he felt Flint’s hands flush on the skin of his leg, near the knee, feeling where the bones and flesh were rubbed raw by the socket—the sweat and saltwater under it always, the pulling weight of the iron. It might’ve been a medical examination, had Flint’s face held its usual aloofness.
Silver shifted back in the chair, pulling a little away from Flint. “This exchange no longer seems equivalent.”
Flint stilled his hands but left them resting around Silver’s knee. His voice was still so soft, as if the fighting part of him had gone quiet in his body. “I am only doing what Miranda would have done for me,” he said, “had I ever come back to her this way.”
Silver exhaled, trying to understand Flint’s frame of mind, and loosened his limbs, and when he made no move to push Flint away Flint began to massage his leg again: he started back around the knee, kneading his fingertips around the bone, into the connective tissues around the joint, avoiding the rawest skin.
But then Flint leaned, and Silver flinched, imagining Flint pitching forward face-first between his legs—and why was that something to fear? But both of them were unaccustomed to such intimacy, and with it growing up between them so hesitantly there in the space of Flint’s cabin, Silver’s flinch broke the quiet.
Flint stood, and though a closer intimate might have kept a hand on Silver’s knee to steady himself, Flint did not.
“I’ll get your crutch,” he said, and left.
Silver slouched, exhaling fully at last in the aloneness, the ghosts of Flint’s fingertips tracing his bicep, his lower thigh. He closed his eyes, and those ghosts drifted up, and up, toward the hot center of him, and Silver realized something he had not yet been willing to admit to himself, even as he had pined and suffered for Flint’s attention.
He had not minded Flint’s hands on him at all, had not even minded the times that Flint had set a knife to his neck. The beat in his throat at those times was not revulsion or fear but anticipation, and some trepidation that, were he to move even slightly, the touch would end.
As moments ago he had flinched, and Flint's touch had ended.
Silver had once hired a moll who could make any man cry: she herself would tear up the moment a man revealed a tale even slightly pathetic, and then, with his kept-close sadness finally loosed, acknowledged, the man would weep himself into a catharsis unmatched by fighting or fucking either. It had worked on Silver too, even though he knew it was coming, even though he had had fed her a dreadful lie. Still that woman’s crying with him had released the fist in his chest that had clenched around all his most secret regrets and resentments, and he had paid her handsomely for it before he walked back out into the world loose and well and real.
What had happened just now, in Flint’s cabin, was the first steps of such an exchange, Silver realized—he had only to ease himself even more deeply into the well of vulnerability that Flint had dug up, and very likely Flint would respond in kind.
So when Flint returned, Silver ensured that he appeared at ease. He leaned back in the chair comfortably, as far back as the weight of his leg would allow, his hands folded on his stomach. He straightened up only a little and turned to face Flint when he entered, accepting the crutch with a thank you and a small gracious smile—not so wide a smile as to seem false.
He leaned forward to set the crutch against Flint’s desk so that Flint would know he had no intent to get up, and caught Flint loosely by the wrist as he stepped by, hoping with that touch to reinstate the intimacy he had broken. And Flint looked down at him relieved.
“I’m sorry to have left you here immobile,” Flint said. He did not pull his wrist from Silver’s grasp, and Silver let his fingers drift down to his palm, catching at the fleshy center of it.
“No one should be looking for me at the moment in any case,” Silver said, and Flint’s mouth fell briefly open.
“It did help, thank you—the . . .” Silver did not know how to say massage or rubbing or touching without edging into innuendo.
Instead he tugged on Flint’s hand, and Flint folded back down to his knees in front of him, biddable in his uncharacteristic uncertainty. He knelt there, nearly between Silver’s legs, and looked up at him, a little guarded. Silver placed Flint’s hand back on his thigh, and then he leaned forward and ran his palm over Flint’s shorn head. With that touch Flint looked near to swooning: his eyes half closed and unfocused, his mouth falling open, his torso swaying forward.
Silver caught his weight with a hand on his jagged face, still holding the back of his head. Flint was a lost thing in his hands and Silver did not know what to do with him—he had advised Flint, convinced him and guided him in ways, but always almost without Flint’s knowing it. This Flint was so unmoored as to nearly be someone else.
Silver kissed him: a gentle press of lips at first, a kiss more of breath than mouth, his hands as soft but firm as he could hold them on Flint’s cheekbone, the back of his skull. But immediately Flint seemed to come alive against him, straightening up onto his knees, his hand sliding up Silver’s thigh to grip his shirt at his waist, his chest, his shoulder.
Flint gasped, holding Silver close against his mouth as he breathed, and then he dragged his lips over Silver’s, opening Silver’s mouth to him. Silver bit him, holding Flint’s lower lip in his teeth—and then Flint got a hand in his hair and pulled sharply, and Silver bit him hard enough to fatten that lip.
Flint fitted a palm between Silver’s legs, forcing his thighs apart, and kept a loose rolling pressure there on Silver’s hardening cock as he pulled Silver’s head aside by that grip on his hair, baring his neck. Flint took a great wide bite of his throat, licking the salted skin under Silver’s beard, and sucked hard on it until Silver’s weight had melted down into Flint’s hold.
The two of them had come to pass between them a cycle of never-ending need and direction, and now they added desire to it also—Flint’s desire was Silver’s, and Silver’s his, each of them an empty, aching thing bleeding hunger into the other. Together they were only empty hands and mouths seeking the weight of an anchor in the other, and for all their grasping and biting they could not fill themselves up.
Flint got his hands up Silver’s shirt, mouthing again at his collarbone, his throat, until Silver reclaimed himself—sat up straighter and pushed Flint off. He held Flint’s jaw fast and kissed him, licked into his mouth, tugged Flint’s shirt up over his shoulders. He could not bend deep enough to get his mouth on Flint’s chest and settled for shoulder instead—scar and freckled muscle under his tongue.
Silver could feel Flint reaching between his legs again, his hands gripping rough all the way up Silver’s thighs. He leaned back and pressed Flint’s face there instead—let Flint feel his need against his cheek and nose and mouth. He held Flint’s face there and rutted up against it until Flint slapped his hands away and reached for the buttons on the fall of Silver’s trousers.
And then Flint’s mouth—without warning Flint took his cock in his mouth down to the base of it, breathing hard against Silver’s belly, rubbing the tip of his nose in the hair there. He held there, mouth and throat hot, tongue stroking as much as it could, until he began to drool around Silver’s cock. Silver heard the whine scrape out of his mouth and lost himself briefly in it, the same sound he’d heard from a disbelieving distance as Vane’s man had hefted that axe against him.
He was disbelieving now too, but where the axe had forced him out of his body, Flint’s mouth on him dragged him back in. When Silver’s hands loosened on his head in dissociation Flint pulled up and bit, just enough that Silver felt the threat and came back to himself. And feral as it was that slight sharp pain made Silver’s blood pump all the harder.
Flint tangled his hands in the fabric around Silver’s waist and pulled until Silver began to thrust into his mouth, bracing one hand on the arm of the chair and the other on the back of Flint’s head. Silver eased himself into the rhythm of it, rocking into Flint’s willing mouth, Flint’s muffled groans and the slick of his pooling spit anchoring Silver in the cabin. He could spend this way, he thought—how easy it would be to keep up this rhythm and lose himself again, in the heat of Flint’s eager mouth and the steady tug of his hands, the soft stubble on his warm head, the stiff curl of his ear and the working muscle in his upper back—
But then Flint was pushing off him, his hand quickly replacing his mouth on Silver’s spit-slick cock. Flint straightened up to kiss Silver, stretching his spine as he leaned in and sucked Silver’s lip into his mouth, worrying it between his teeth, on the tip of his tongue. Back rigid, Silver held Flint’s head and breathed his air as Flint stroked him steadily.
“This is the rightest thing we’ve ever done by each other,” Silver said. Flint rutted against Silver’s shin and grunted in response. He spit into his hand and brought his mouth right back up to meet Silver’s.
Still Silver rambled, fighting against the climactic wave Flint was bringing down on him—knowing he’d forget what he wanted to say in the after-haze:
“I know nearly nothing of who you were before, nor you me. But I know you, and you me.” Flint pressed his forehead into Silver’s shoulder as Silver spoke, slowing his hand to a maddening stroke.
“I know your fears, your drives,” Silver said, panting. “It feels only fitting that I should know all your hungers, and fit them into me with mine.”
“I can’t stand you,” Flint said, lifting his head to look into Silver’s face. He quickened his pace again, gripping Silver’s balls, and Silver began to writhe against the chair, riveted. And then Flint said, “I can’t stand how badly I’ve come to need you,” gazing straight up into Silver’s face, and under Flint’s steady stroking hands Silver squeezed his eyes shut and came hard, shuddering as Flint bent his head to take him on the tongue.
Flint stood completely to kiss him after that, looming over him, forcing his head back. He slaked Silver’s thirst by his own body, tonguing his spend into his mouth with lingering strokes, and Silver took it, gave himself over to it just as easy as he did anything Flint had ever asked him to do. Flint took Silver’s hand in the midst of all this and placed it where he ached hard—exhaling through his nose when Silver squeezed the clothed length of him.
Flint broke the kiss and left Silver panting, his head still half dream and half stormcloud behind his own coming. Flint was like a mirage standing over him now, bare-chested, unfastening his own trousers. He was in the height of his power now, needed and needing as he was and knowing it, all traces gone of the over-vulnerable and uncared-for thing that had knelt in front of Silver earlier.
He set one knee on the arm of Silver’s chair, above his shortened leg, as he stroked himself. Silver had sated himself on such a choice few parts of Flint’s body—mouth, hands, shoulders—and now he was overtaken with a full view of him, his captain—the wide, steady stance, the flushed head of his cock weeping into his own hand, the broad strength of his bare torso, the stern gaze that bloomed open as Silver looked up at him.
Flint set a calloused thumb on Silver’s mouth, dragging down to pry into the wet of his lower lip. Silver did not bite him, did not lick him, but let his mouth fall open just how Flint wanted it.
“I’ll have your mouth today,” Flint said.
Today? Silver thought. “Will you?” he asked, tilting his chin up. Flint only hummed idly, eyes gone glassy as he gazed at Silver’s open mouth. Catching his eye Silver leaned forward and licked the head of his cock when next Flint’s fist revealed it. He wouldn’t mind a mouthful of that at all, even if the angle made his jaw ache—the taste of Flint, the salt of sea and sweat, no little bitterness, the warm weight under all of it on his tongue—he’d take as much as Flint wanted to give him.
Silver flicked his tongue over the divot at the head of Flint’s cock and Flint grunted approvingly, took a handful of Silver’s hair, and pressed slowly, inevitably into his mouth. Silver slid his hands over Flint’s hipbones and into his breeches to grip his ass, beckoning him again and again into his mouth. He held himself open while Flint fucked him, letting his mouth go swollen and sloppy. He squeezed the cheeks of Flint’s ass apart, reminding Flint of his own empty places, and Flint nearly lost his balance, the thrust of his hips stuttering.
Hurriedly Silver dipped a finger into his own mouth and roughed his way back into Flint’s breeches, slipping that fingertip between his cheeks, over his hole. Now that he’d thought of it, now that Flint had reacted so sweetly to his tease, Silver needed to get back inside him, to feel the giving heat of him again even as Flint used his mouth. He wanted Flint’s knees weak, wanted Flint clutching his head, wanted him grinding his teeth to stay quiet.
Silver got all of it: Flint stilled above him as Silver fucked his finger into him little by aching little, mouthing at his cock all the time, but when he crooked that finger and tugged, Flint began again to sway. Silver rubbed and Flint seeped onto his tongue; with that finger he fucked Flint into his mouth. And Flint held Silver’s head as his knees went weak, fucking deeper as Flint’s own mouth gasped quiet on its emptiness.
Silver buried himself in Flint and Flint in him just as they had in life, their needs and pleasures and bodies entangling anew. Silver drooled around Flint’s cock, lips beginning to bruise against his teeth, wishing he could give Flint more than a single finger to whine about.
Today, Flint had said. As if there would be other days for their taking.
As Flint’s thrusts grew desperate Silver held onto him, dragged Flint close with a firm fingertip in the depths of him. Flint yanked at his hair when he came, his spine a taut coil around Silver’s face, and Silver lapped at the sensitive head of him as he emptied, making Flint shudder over him. He swallowed and shoved Flint off him to breathe, enjoying the subtle writhe in Flint’s spine as he slipped his finger out.
Flint fell rough back down to his knees between Silver’s legs and clutched at his face, staring at him intently one moment and losing himself the next in the ghost waves of pleasure that drifted through his body. He kissed Silver as he came back to himself, gentle on Silver’s bruising mouth.
“Shall I assume you won’t wish to speak of this?” Silver asked.
Flint looked almost abashed. “You may assume that any wish not to speak of it does not reflect a desire not to repeat it.”
Silver smiled. “How daring of me to expect you to express a sentiment plainly.”
Flint only shrugged and raised an eyebrow, his composure returning. He stood and fastened his breeches, picked up his shirt where Silver had discarded it.
“A drink before we sleep?” Flint asked. Silver nodded.
“You’ll want to retrieve your hammock. I’ve extra hooks.” Flint gestured overhead, across the cabin from his own.
“And will you be expecting me to use it, or will my trek be just for the sake of alibi?” Silver righted his own clothes and reached for the iron leg, already dreading its horrible pressure.
There was a smug glint in Flint’s eye as he stepped round the desk to hand Silver a mug. “Isn’t the story all that matters?”