A prequellish sort of thing that will tie in with Setting the Stuns’ls later on. Set in the early days on New Providence island
They don’t so much become a couple as they learn to balance on a two-legged stool.
Miranda sensed the direction of his thoughts, and he felt himself
tugged against her, lithe, over-warm body draped up against his side in a
partial echo of how she and Thomas had enfolded him between their
bodies when James had returned from sea, back then. Not a year ago. Oh Christ—
“Our
Thomas was a generous man,” she said, voice small and a little choked.
“He would not begrudge us whatever joy there is to be eked out of this
existence.”
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Black Sails Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage Relationships: “Calico” Jack Rackham/Charles Vane, Charles Vane/Other(s), Eleanor Guthrie/Charles Vane, Anne Bonny/“Calico” Jack Rackham, background Anne Bonny/Max, Blackbeard | Edward Teach & Charles Vane, “Calico” Jack Rackham & Charles Vane Characters: Charles Vane, “Calico” Jack Rackham, Blackbeard | Edward Teach, Anne Bonny, Eleanor Guthrie, Israel Hands, Albinus (Black Sails) Additional Tags: Prostitution, Underage Rape/Non-con, Underage Prostitution, Rape, Pre-Canon, mostly canon-compliant, canon-divergent at the end, Character Study, Slavery, Non-Sexual Slavery, this is basically a biofic, charles is fucked up okay? Summary:
It’s not a secret that Charles was a slave, but it’s also not a thing he talks about. It’s a thing he’d confessed to Jack one night, when there had been a shipment of slaves in the harbor destined for the inland plantations. Charles had stared and then gone and drunk himself into a stupor. Jack had come to fish him out of a fight in the tavern and haul him back to his tent, stumbling and belligerent. He’d wiped Charles’s brow, given him water, and said if I’m to be your keeper I at least deserve to know why you’ve gotten yourself into this state. And Charles had told him, words slurring together, not the specifics but the general idea.
During their escape from London Miranda turned Thomas into a cat to smuggle him out of England. Now in Nassau no counter spell is working to turn him back.
A random selection of scenes where Thomas is a Cat and completely ok with it while his humans try and cope with the mess they’ve made.
During their escape from London Miranda turned Thomas into a cat to smuggle him out of England. Now in Nassau no counter spell is working to turn him back.
A random selection of scenes where Thomas is a Cat and completely ok with it while his humans try and cope with the mess they’ve made.
Did love, like life, continue where it left off? Or did it reinvent itself to fit new circumstances?
Thomas finds a runaway slave in the stable.
——
Abigail Ashe did not know what had awoken her, at least not exactly. She was not a heavy sleeper, especially not when spring turned into summer and the heat of the Savannah day lingered overnight.
Now, however, she was certain she heard a door close and the creaking of floorboards coming from just down the hall. It sounded as though it had been coming from the servant’s quarters. Abigail frowned. If Sundi or another house servant were caught out of their rooms after hours they would be punished. She liked the house servants and did not want to see them in trouble.
Abigail lit her bedside candle and threw on her gown. She slipped quietly out of her room and let her eyes adjust to the darkness of the house. She caught a movement coming from the balcony doors. She walked towards them cautiously, then froze when she heard the distinct click of a closing door.
Intensely curious and perhaps a little afraid, Abigail slowly neared the large glass-paneled doors and opened them with only a tiny creak. The balcony to her uncle’s plantation house was enormous and wrapped completely around the second story. And there, rounding a corner, Abigail saw through the candlelight a quick glimpse of a slave.
Thomas is near silent after that first blissful moment of recognition. After he has cried and after James has cried, they’re hurried out of the open and into a small cramped room. At least, James thinks, it’s some sort of privacy.
They stand staring at one another as the door closes and James’ skin prickles at the sound of a lock.
“Do they think that’s necessary?” He asks lowly, noting with mounting fury the flinch that jerks Thomas’ body when the sound reaches him. Thomas shakes his head and sits on the one of the only pieces of furniture in the room; a wooden pew, one of several. It’s probably a small chapel, he decides.
Thomas takes a deep breath, a shuddering thing that makes his shoulder quake. He flinches again when James sits next to him, puts a hand on his knee, but puts his own hand over James’ to stop him pulling away. When their eyes meet James sees the fatigued and broken thing living in Thomas’ body.
“Thomas…” He whispers under his breath. “Gods, Thomas what have they done to you?”
Again, Thomas says nothing. He shakes, his features collapse into a mess of grief and relief, tears falling down his cheeks and catching in the beard he now sports.
James holds him for what feels like an hour. They rock gently, both taking comfort in the proximity of another who is there to heal, not to hurt.
After a while Thomas calms and kisses James’ jaw. “I’d almost given up,” he says in a voice like granite. “I- I didn’t think I’d give up again but-” Another sob. “Ten years,” Thomas croaks, lips curving in a sad smile that breaks James’ heart. “Feels like twice as long.”
James laughs despite himself.
–
Two days later he sees the scars on Thomas’ body and breaks three chairs, four mugs, a table and his own finger. He only isn’t punished because he can fix the things and because he is still “acclimatising to his station” as the fucker who owned the place called it.Thomas watches the display with a quiet air but something… something wanting on his face. That night he kisses James like they had the first night they made love.
The night after that Thomas reduces James to senseless babble and keening moans, the two of them falling into one another with desperation and need so powerful it makes James beg for more.
Thomas is… different. Not very different, he is still kind and loving and as sharp as a razor but- there is something brittle about his wit and something dark lurking beneath his words. James sees it each time Thomas looks at a guard as he works, each time he takes a bowl of gruel and a piece of stale bread. He knows that sort of darkness and is both sickened and joyous that Thomas has found his own.
After a week of moments, kisses, tears and touches, Thomas lays at his side and tells him something.
“I want to see this place burn,” he says, grasping at James’ hand. “I want to make theses people, who have lived and profited off of my suffering pay for every moment I’ve been here. James,” he touches James’ face and draws him into a blistering kiss, “will you aid me? Will you lend me your strength?”
James whispers “yes” before he can even think to say no.
When the time comes they have fifty men and women with farm tools ready to revolt. James gives the signal and Thomas sets the main building ablaze. There is a bloody fight, a brawl, and James watches in awe as Thomas drives a scythe up and through a man’s chest. He’s the man who had taunted Thomas for holding James’ hand. Thomas is grinning as the man splutters blood and spit.
In front of the burning buildings, crackling flames and weak moans of dying guards behind them, Thomas kisses James sweetly leisurely, as though nothing in the world would be more important than that kiss.
With a deep breath and a longer stride, Thomas sets off down the road. He only stops to turn and hold a hand out to James. There is blood on his wrist and fingers but James takes it, holds tight, and follows wherever Thomas might lead him.
There is a measure of controlled madness in trying to see the world from an innately contrary point of view.(In which Thomas asks Lt. McGraw for an extended tour, and also Why Sodomy Is So Bad.)
i wrote a little something! works just fine as a standalone, but technically it’s a companion piece to stages of appreciation. (pt3 of which is still a while off, sry.)
in which there is carpenter!flint, woodworking, domestic fluff and lots of thoughts about the ocean. i learnt a lot about tree species native to north america.
rating: T (might go up to M for part 2) pairing: james flint/thomas hamilton word count: 1,617
Of all the things from his past he had expected to exert its influence on him, this was not one he had expected to be so significant. His father had worked mostly as mate to a ship’s carpenter, though intermittently he had taken regular landbound work the way James was doing now.
With the spectre of Captain Flint still hovering about every port of the New World, James had decided to keep his distance, lest he be recognised – not to mention that Thomas, for all his talents, did not have the makings of a sailor. Separation was out of the question, and James had found his newest home in a town close enough to the shore to still catch the ocean breeze, though it took several hours of riding to reach the ocean. And the town had found, in James Barlow, a new carpenter.
There was something deeply pleasing about working with wood.
It wasn’t temperamental as the sea at first glance; but what was a tree if not ever-changing, ever-moving in its quest for growth? The whorls and gnarls were like waves made to last, their shape a testament to its history, in the same way a wave was formed by wind and currents. It was like holding a piece of the sea, made to endure by unknown hands.
Meg's Mumbles 