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“You’re wrong.”
John Silver stopped, his left hand only inches away from the doorknob. It hovered there for a minute, the tremble of his fingers almost imperceptible in the dim light of the cottage, as he took one, two, three appeasing breaths deep in his chest. When he turned his back to the door, once again, they became shallow, barely making way out of the sore, brittle cage around his heart. It felt raw, as if his ribs had been gnawed at by a ravenous beast, over and over again, mercilessly. He wondered if the beast, sitting by the fire, could still hear the sound of them cracking between its sharp teeth. Silver did. Silver would always do.
“What exactly am I wrong about, captain?” Silver asked, impassive, as he took a single step forward. It took him more willpower than he had remaining to maintain the even intonation of his voice and the indifferent demeanour of his presence. He could barely hide how defeated he felt, but he would rather die than to let Flint know. “Enlighten me.”
Flint then laughed, a terrible, sullen laugh. He didn’t dare to face Silver. The light coming from the crippling fire outlined his head, warm shades bleeding into his skin like cold words often bleed out of his mouth. Flint did not answer.
Silver wanted to scream, to thorn his own body apart with his fury, to crumble, to burn, to wither into death, to be the own hands to end his misery.
“I love you,” Silver had said. All three words, tied together, fiercely unfolding from his tongue. He had never said them to anyone before; no one ever deserved them. But James Flint did, didn’t he? James Flint deserved many things. He deserved to be hated, to be feared, to be punished, so he should deserve to be loved, too.
But the warm, reverent arms around Silver’s waist then became rigid, tense, and the moment where they held him closer never came. Instead, they were retreated altogether. The body by his side followed suit, staggering out of the room as if poisoned. A foot followed the other, bidding farewell. As the words floated around the room, once so silvery, so mellow, now so pungent, so rancid, Silver wondered if he was still wrapped by the tender arms of sleep, entranced by the furious sea that rebelled outside. It felt like a nightmare, it surely did. His mind detached from his body, his reinless limbs, restrained by the fright shredding his guts apart, and his tongue too heavy in his mouth for pleading.
Silver prayed someone would haul him back from it.
I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.
“Where are you going?” Silver then asked, confused. The bruises over his ribs were only starting to bloom. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Talk to me!”
Silver wasn’t sure what happened next. Perhaps he yelled, at the top of his lungs, until his throat was sore, scraped be the enraged rain of words he poured over Flint, unforgiving as an only lover could be. Perhaps he cried, boundless in his ache, heavy tears being forcefully tore from his eyes. Or, perhaps, and more likely, he did neither. He took Flint’s rejection like he did most things: with the certainty that he deserved it. If James Flint deserved many things, so did he. John Silver stood there, grief-stricken, beaten, surely not for the first or last time, and accepted what Flint had for him. Nothing. Not a single sentence, meticulously braided together with words beautifully twined with sharpened thorns, not even a pitiful glance thrown over a broad shoulder.
“Do I disgust you so much that you won’t even look at me?” Silver spat, against his best judgment, incapable of swallowing the bitter poison polling in his quivering mouth. He wanted Flint to taste it, too. “Just – fucking say something, please.”
But Flint did not.
So John Silver turned away to leave, disobedient tears gathering in his eyes. He was no stranger to departures, quite the contrary; his body, now merely another ruin forged by too many wars fought, had fled many fires before. None of them had been as blazing as this one, raging and ferocious enough to reduce him to ashes, but survival was inescapable for people like him. It was both a gift and a curse, to always survive. Sometimes Silver wished he wouldn’t.
Once, Silver feared he would be the end of Captain Flint.
Perhaps he was wrong.
“You’re wrong,” James Flint then said. “You could never disgust me, John.”
The tenderness with which Flint said his given name drove the dagger in Silver’s chest farther, its sharp edge terribly close to his afflicted heart. If it dared to beat, even if slightly, even if unconsciously…
Silver waited, nailed down to the wooden floor, as the crackling of the fire filled the room and Flint’s unmoving silhouette remained motionless, barely there. Seconds became minutes, minutes that soon became wounds not even time’s boundless permanence could alleviate or restore. Time is too slow for those who wait, Van Dyke once said.
For those like John Silver, who waited for words that could never be voiced, time is just time.
Endless.