29+30 and flinthamilton?

buildarocketboys:

“I thought you were dead.”
“It’s not what it looks like…”

“I thought you were dead,” says James, in a voice that’s barely there. He runs his thumb down Thomas’s cheek, as if to reassure himself that Thomas is no ghost. Thomas knows the feeling.

He swallows. “Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” he says, with an attempt at a smile. That just makes James cry harder, downright sobbing into Thomas’s chest.

“James,” he tries to say soothingly, cradling his truest love in his arms. “James, it’s all right. I’m here. You’re here. We’re alive. That’s all that matters right now.”

“But what about everything we’ve lost?” James asks, and he looks so vulnerable, gazing up at Thomas, and Thomas has never felt taller than him than at this moment. He wonders exactly what the years have taken from James, but now is not the time.

No, now is definitely not the time, not with James’s hands snaking around his back, massaging his back and shoulders. It would feel wonderful, except- “Ow.” Thomas winces, and James backs away immediately, looking horrified at himself. Thomas wishes he would come back, hold him again – even a mere foot away from James, he feels alone again, as if James is just a phantom.

“James,” he says, reaching for him, and James goes back, hesitantly, like Thomas is a horse he’s just spooked. He cocks his head at Thomas questioningly, but a suspicion is forming clearly on his face, and Thomas must quell it, for James’s sake, even if it is not far from the truth.

He shakes his head. “It’s not what you think,” he says, too quickly, and James raises an eyebrow at him.

“What do I think?” he asks carefully.

Thomas just shakes his head again. “Nothing,” he says, and his tone is meek, subdued.

James reaches out for him, taking him very gently in his arms. “Oh Thomas,” he says, and Thomas hears all the unshed tears of the past ten years there, the pain James must have been in. “What have they done to you?”

Thomas snorts. “Nothing that I didn’t let them do,” he says, in a hard voice, and perhaps that is the biggest lie of all.