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It’s been two years.
Two years since he stood out on that field, under an overcast sky, and found the remnants of a life he’d thought lost forever. Lost, though never forgotten.
Thomas was the same man after all this time – opinionated, empathetic – and yet he wasn’t. He had lost some of his idealism and his shell had grown stronger, harder to get through. When James found him in the evenings in front of the fire, a book discarded in his lap, he wondered what Thomas saw in the flames. He never asked, because he feared what Thomas would say, and he feared Thomas would ask the same question in return.
It was a simple life they had built. When the passion of the reunion ebbed, they found an easy kind of harmony in which their days began and ended, a comfort James didn’t know he could ever have and still didn’t think he deserved. It was not without quarrels, mind you, but solid in the knowledge that every fight they had was fought for a common goal. They had put on their old love like a well-worn cloak, frayed at the edges but still unmistakably theirs, and had settled into its warmth like beggars who knew how the wind could bite without it. What they had found in each other was the kind of contentment James had yearned for all of his life.
And now.
John Silver stood in their kitchen, his posture slightly off-kilter on his wooden leg, but his back straight and his head held high with that aristocratic, arrogant tilt to his chin that made him look taller than he was.
He had been back in James’ life for five minutes and already made him furious.
“What were you thinking, just barging in here? It took us years to find a place in this community, and now the whole village watches a fucking pirate walking through our front door like he owns the place.”
“Nobody knows who he is, James,” Thomas starts in that quiet, all-too-rational tone of his, the one that does nothing to quell James’ anger, as Thomas goddamn well knows.
“This was a bad idea,” Silver has the audacity to add, with a sigh and a short glance at Thomas that looks as if the two are having a quiet conversation about James and his irrational bouts of anger. You know how he gets, Thomas eyes might say, and Silver will shrug and answer, Yeah I know.
Which enrages James even more.
“So, John, what brings you here,” Thomas tries again, ignoring James with ease borne from experience.
Silver shifts his weight from his left foot to the right. The prosthesis must hurt, it always does after a long day of walking. “I was close by and wanted to see how you’re doing.” It’s bullshit, James thinks. He wants something, Silver does nothing if there’s no gain in it for him, and if it’s only the joy of bringing chaos into James’ life.
“Bullshit,” James grunts and goes over to the stove to pour himself a coffee.
Thomas coughs pointedly.
James takes the hint. “Do you want coffee?” he grouses without turning around.
“That would be kind, thank you.” Silver’s sickly sweet tone is obviously meant to bait him. James knows not to bite.
James sets the kettle on the stove, waits for the water to boil, and tries to calm down in the process. When the coffee is ready, he makes a point of banging around with the tin cups and stirs a good amount of sugar in Silver’s coffee because that’s how he likes it. James hates that he remembers that, but he quells the urge to serve the coffee black and bitter just to get a rise out of Silver.
Thomas and Silver sit at the table when James brings the cups, opposite each other, deep in conversation. Thomas looks up shortly, something like an apology in his gaze, before he concentrates back on Silver who – James has no other way to describe it – wriggles in his seat under Thomas’ scrutiny. The most hated, most feared pirate captain in the Caribbean and it takes only a few minutes with Thomas to turn him into an anxious schoolboy. James would find it hilarious, if he hadn’t been so sure the topic that made Silver uncomfortable was himself.
Thomas has Silver pinned with his stare, the stare of a scientist examining a beetle. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t came back because of him,” Thomas says, voice low and steady, head tipping lightly in James’ direction. ”Because you’re in love with him.” Thomas says it like he’s inquiring about the weather and not about something dangerous enough to destroy their carefully-built life.
Silver’s gaze shoots up to James, shock and embarrassment clear on his face, his lips slightly parted as if he’s about to protest or plea for mercy. Thomas must be out of his fucking mind. How they got to that point so fast, he’ll never know.
“Thomas,” he barks at the man who looks up at him so calm and too goddamn perceptive that the words die on James’ lips. He turns to Silver instead, a much more easy target. “And you! Don’t you dare –,” he growls.
Don’t you dare say yes, he thinks, when I’m finally at peace. Don’t you dare say no, he thinks, and let all we’ve been through for nothing. None of that he can say. He straightens, he turns, and he runs out of the room.
On this godforsaken island, there are now lawns, now sprawling meadows and grasslands like back home. Here, you fight the jungle for a patch of land to grow some vegetables, and the fight will never be won, just goes on and on. Everything else, outside your combat lines, is thick, dense, unwelcoming green. So James’ storming off is cut short by the confines of their garden. He leans heavy on the wooden fence that surrounds the backyard, and tries to breathe.
Two years.
He’d been so goddamn happy to have Thomas back, delighted beyond comprehension to get a shot at a normal life, to bury Flint and with him everything he hated about that part of him. The same burial site contained a box with Silver’s name on it: The way Silver annoyed him, the way Silver challenged him, the way Silver aroused him, the way Silver allowed him to accept what he was capable of.
He wishes Silver had never come back into his life.
He shakes his head at his own pathetic weakness, because it’s a lie, and Thomas saw it the moment Silver entered their house, didn’t he, when for a long minute or two, James could only stand there and stare while his heart sank into his gut before it crawled up his throat and made him dizzy with a swirl of emotions, too many, too fast to pin one down and give it a name.
Thomas had stood there and watched and drawn his conclusions, and James despises and loves him for that, both at the same time. Maybe that’s what had Miranda felt like, all those years ago.
Silver’s wooden leg pounds a slow and steady rhythm on the terrace.
A few more steps on the hard-packed dirt, and then he stands next to James, arms crossed on the top of the fence. They stood like this, next to each other, a thousand times on the Walrus, watching the sea, looking out at the clouds and the waves, sometimes talking about the weather, or the crew or the million tasks that made the ship run, but mostly just sharing the moment of silence, knowing chaos waited just around the corner.
“Why wouldn’t you let me answer him?”
“What would it matter after all this time?” James bites back.
To speak of love between them, it would never have led to anything. How could it, between the death and blood and carnage that made up their lives. And when it ended, it had ended sudden and final. It had been too late for confessions, and it still was too late.
His love for Thomas was like a tree, with deep roots made out of mutual respect and a need for each other that only grew with time. Him and Silver: that was another matter entirely. A storm, full of unknown undercurrents and uncertainty, desire striking fast and unpredictable like lightning, sometimes indistinguishable from burning rage and gut-churning mistrust. Most times, when they fought, James hadn’t known if he wanted to hit him or to fuck him, kiss him hard just to shut him up, shake him until he let him in, let James through those damned walls he couldn’t seem to tear down.
“Thomas told me he had only half of you.”
James watches a flock of birds picking their way through the garden, destroying the hard work of two days of sowing. He’ll have to do it all over tomorrow. It should bother him, but it doesn’t.
“He mourns a man he didn’t even know. He told me he wants Flint to find peace, too, and he knows he can’t give it to him.”
James pinches the bridge of his nose. He can feel a headache coming. Of course Thomas doesn’t know Flint, that’s the heart of the matter. Thomas would leave if he knew the things he’d done, the monstrous side of him, he would flee and never look back. And rightfully so, because that’s exactly what James had done the first chance he got. Leave Flint behind and never look back.
Only Flint wouldn’t stay in his grave, a ghost to haunt James in the small hours of the night when he lay awake and images flooded his consciousness, images of blood and violence and Silver’s cocksure smile.
“I think,” Silver says, with the accent on the I like only he says it, in a way that makes sure everyone knows he stands on one side of things and everyone else on the other, that it doesn’t bother him to be alone, that he doesn’t want it any other way, “I think you are afraid of the answer, have been all along.”
“Is that so?”
“Madi left me, a year ago,” Silver continues, changing the subject and not changing it at all. “She says she can’t bear to see your shadow wherever I go.”
He falls silent for a long time. James wonders if it’s the same for Thomas, if he can see the hole in James, the amputated parts of him, just as stark and impossible to ignore as Silver’s missing leg.
“Took me a month to realize I had to come see you, set things straight. Took me a year to find the courage and actually do it.”
“That’s the most honest thing you ever said to me,” James mumbles. He turns his head, squints at Silver against the dying sunlight.
Silver sighs again, like he’s tired of repeating himself. “That’s what you don’t understand. We’ve gone into the darkness together, you and I, and on the other side of it, words mean nothing. Honesty, lies, those are trivial, words for people who haven’t seen what we’ve seen. Truth is what we make it.”
James doesn’t think that’s right, but he knows Silver believes it. And while the conclusion is debatable, the premises are sound. Silver knows him, inside out, has seen sides of him no man saw and lived to tell the tale. And Silver, somehow, accepted all of it, always. No matter how often James tells himself he’s no longer that man, he’s fooling himself. He’s James McGraw, or what’s left of him, and he’s Flint, too, can’t cut him out of himself forever.
Silver’s Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows. “Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want me here.”
Thomas’ words, now directed at him, like a knife to the gut. An ultimatum. The storm that has been quiet for so long hits him, takes his breath away and leaves his knees unsteady on the heaving ground.
“How would that even work?” he asks, desperation making his voice rough. Yes, it’s fear, he’s afraid of the darkness, the same darkness he once told Silver to pursue and to embrace. What he didn’t realize then: It’s so much harder to embrace it when you’re standing in the garden behind a house filled with sunlight. When you’ve actually got something to lose.
Silver shrugs that one-sided shrug of his. “Hell if I know. But that wasn’t a no, so I guess we’ll go back in and figure it out. Or you can stay here and brood a little more.”
“I’m not –,” James grunts, but it’s half-hearted. When Silver turns to go, he grabs him by the elbow. “Wait.”
Silver stands and waits, calm only at first glance. James can see the pulse working on his neck, the stiffness of his shoulders as if he’s waiting for a blow and positioning himself to his advantage.
Slowly, in such small increments it’s barely perceptible, a smile starts spreading on Silver’s lips, crinkling the sunburnt skin around his eyes, showing his white teeth. James can feel himself respond in kind, can feel the exhilaration of the challenge, smell the sharp scent of a battle worth fighting.
“Yes,” James says because unlike Silver, he has to say it. “I want you here. I want –“ The consonant is stolen from his tongue with the sharp bite of a kiss, more ambush than seduction, a statement final like a canon shot. It’s over as fast as it started, and leaves his lips tingling with the need for more.
“If I’d known it worked so well, I’d have tried it sooner,” Silver muses.
“What exactly?”
“Shutting you up with a kiss.” Silver grins. “Let’s go inside, Cap-” he pauses, a careful glint his eye, testament to the new and unmapped path they just started on, “James.”