I realize that it’s Flinthamilton week and I’ve been wanting to do something to participate, but here’s the thing – I’m constitutionally incapable of writing short things. I just can’t seem to do it, and I have absolutely nothing short written that fits the bill, so instead, have a sneak peek at the first chapter of an upcoming project – don’t get too excited, it’s going to be a while before this one sees the light of Ao3 since I haven’t even got chapter 2 written yet: 

Theme: After the Reunion

He feels as though he’s been asleep for ten years.

It’s an odd thing, Thomas Hamilton thinks, to reawaken after so long. In some ways, he feels as though nothing has changed. His living arrangements certainly are little different. The work is the same – back-breaking, tedious, creating calluses on top of his calluses, the sun beating down and turning his skin a shade of brown he’s never particularly thought complements his straw-colored hair. In others –

He has James back. The knowledge is incredible, still, new enough that every so often he recalls and it feels again as though he had just looked up from the field to find a man dressed in red and brown standing at the end of the row, looking at him as though he might just possibly be the solution to a question he had not dared to ask himself in a very long time. He looks into green eyes – into James’ eyes, feels James’ arms around him, hears James weeping against his shoulder, and –

He has kept everything stuffed away for so long. In his mind, there is a Pandora’s box. It holds so many things – so many wonderful, awful, terrifying things, and until now, he has done a good job of keeping it closed. The hinges, if such a thing could ever have hinges, are rusted, the keyhole crusted over –

And James’ return takes the box, shakes it, and sends everything flying.

He is happy. That is the first emotion to come flying out of the box. There is no denying the joy that floods him with James’ reintroduction to his life – no denying the absolute relief and wonder with which he looks at his lover, that causes him to laugh and cry into James’ shoulder and into his lips for an hour after they first spot one another, to kiss him over and over and over again with no regard for anyone or anything around them. There is no denying, either, how he feels at having another mind working in perfect harmony with his own again after all these years.

“I’m gonna get us out of here,” James says into Thomas’ shoulder, his voice rough with emotion and with the accent he had hidden in London and now seems to have embraced, and Thomas’ breath catches in his throat at the notion. Freedom – to leave here, with James at his side. He clings tighter to him, feeling as if his chest is tight, as if he can scarcely breathe, as he answers.

“Everyone,” he murmurs. “All of them. I’ll not leave them behind,” and he is relieved when James nods, no words needed between them. He understands – completely and fully, and he buries his face in Thomas’ shoulder again, as relieved to understand as to be understood. They walk back to Thomas’ meager quarters – to the quarters they will share until they can escape this place for good – and Thomas cannot help the energy that fills him – the restless itch as his mind blows off some of its cobwebs and returns to some semblance of itself as it once was. He is whole. He is overjoyed, he is shocked, he is –

Two days later, he sits in bed, arm still curled around James’ bare shoulders, and realizes that he is angry.

It’s a slow thing at first. He wakes with James beside him, and for a moment there is nothing but happiness. He is here, with James. Beyond all hope, he is alive. They are safe –

But not free.

The thought strikes him out of the clear blue sky – like a fact he has not processed entirely. It has not signified to him for some time whether he is free or not. He has had nowhere to go – no one to go back to, no hint of life outside these walls. James comes blowing in though, and –

He has spent the past two nights in bed with James. He has tasted the salt on his lover’s skin, has seen the bronzed tone of it where his clothing has not covered him, has mouthed over the earring that he has gotten in the time they have been apart and been held in arms that are far more muscular than they ever were before, and for the first time in six years, Thomas Hamilton wants more than these four walls and this dirt floor. He can feel his mind stretching, the unused corners of it suddenly coming to light, and he cannot help but feel disgust for the way that he has been forced to neglect it for the past decade. He cannot remember the last time he actually cared about his appearance. He cannot recall the taste of good food or what it felt like to spend a day by himself, or the smell of a new book or –

God, he has been trapped here, stagnating for so very long and he is incandescently bloody furious about it.

The sensation strikes him all at once one night as they sit in the bunkhouse they now inhabit. He’s not expecting it – it is so long since he has felt this, has felt anything but resignation and boredom. It takes him entirely by surprise, rising as he listens to the tale of how James has arrived here – as he grows to know the people that have inhabited James’ life, grows to understand what his lover has been through – as he realizes the depth of the horror that James has endured. Has been made to endure.

“Stop.” The word is a whisper – something squeezed out of him almost against his will, that escapes before he can recall it, for surely he does not have the right to ask James to stop his tale when James has had no such luxury for the past ten years, and yet –

“Thomas?” James asks quietly, his voice concerned, and Thomas looks at him, blue eyes meeting green. The sound of James’ voice saying his name is balm, and yet –

God, it has been ten years. Ten years deprived of it and how dared they? How dare they keep him from the man he loved all this time – all these years? How did Peter manage to lie to him so effectively – so convincingly? Had he just been exhausted and made gullible by it or -?

He is shaking, he realizes – shaking with the power of what he feels. He has not felt anything of the kind in –

“Quiet down!”

Thomas shakes, rocking back and forth, his knees drawn up to his chest. He has not stopped weeping since he arrived – since he was dragged from his home and brought here. He is cold, and frightened, and he cannot stop the sobs that tear through his form, or the tears that flow down his cheeks. He has brought them to ruin, all. They are in danger, and he is here, and dear God in Heaven, what has he done to so offend? What can he possibly have done to deserve this? He rubs at his wrists –

“Thomas?” James voice, insistent now, breaks in on his reverie – on the horrifying memory that has just flashed through his mind, and he looks up, eyes fixing on James’ face, and the words will not come – will not move past his lips, try though he might, the anger choking him in its intensity. He has been imprisoned all this time. He has sat here, all this time, while others have done this to James. He has stood here, in this wretched place, while someone – a succession of someones – have convinced his lover of that thing which he feared all along – the thing that Thomas had so nearly cured him of when it had all come crashing down around their heads. Thomas has sat here, hopeless and helpless, while a string of heartless cowards have convinced James at last that society has no place for him. That he is unwanted. That no matter what he does, it will never, can never, be enough. He has been here. Trapped.

A prisoner.

The word goes through him again as it has not in years. It has not been important in so long – he has not been able to entertain the notion that any of it was important, without recourse as he has been, but now he can see what his inactivity has wrought in every scrape on James’ head and arms, in every scar that is new under his fingertips, in every time James’ voice catches as he tells him of some new atrocity the likes of which Thomas cannot imagine surviving, and Thomas Hamilton is angry, beyond any fury he has ever known before. It is not the distant, righteous indignation of his drawing room – no. This is visceral, and consuming, and he breathes it in like perfume because to feel again is a wondrous, horrifying, exhilarating thing. This – this feels like being alive again because it is personal. This is about James, and Miranda, and what has been done to them, and the bastards that have thought to harm them while Thomas could not intervene.

He closes his eyes, and then opens them again, looking downward to where James’ hand is resting on his knee. He cannot save Miranda – she is gone beyond his ability to aid, but James is here, and Thomas will be damned if he ever allows anyone to lay a hand on his lover in anger again. He reaches out, taking hold of James’ wrist, and gently, so very gently, slides the sleeve up his lover’s arm to reveal the fading marks that have been left on his wrist by the shackles they had brought him here in. He clenches his teeth, trying and failing to contain the thing that is rapidly clawing its way up his throat, taking hold of him somewhere in the center of his chest and squeezing hard. He traces his fingers over the marks, and the more he does so the more the desperate, howling thing in him wants to break free. This is –

It is not James he is angry at, and he has no wish to frighten him with the depths of his rage. He takes a deep breath, and another, until he can speak again without screaming.

“John Silver.” He says the name deliberately, slowly, his voice lingering over each part of the name. “He sent you here, like this?”

James nods, his eyes seeking the floor, lips pressing together.

“Yes,” he answers, his voice quiet, gruff, his other hand twitching where it sits on his knee, and Thomas closes his eyes again, taking a breath. When he opens them again, there is steel in his gaze.

“If I ever meet him,” he says softly, raising his eyes again to meet James’, “I’m going to make him wish he had never laid eyes on you, let alone had the chance to do this.” His hand strokes over the marks and he raises James’ wrist to his lips, kissing where it has been injured, and James looks up at him, his eyes a study in shock.

“Thomas -” he starts to say, and Thomas simply looks back at him. James opens his mouth as if to speak, and then seems to decide against it, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, hands taking hold of Thomas’ hand lightly, his fingers brushing over Thomas’ knuckles – his work-roughened knuckles that are bigger than James undoubtedly remembers them from having been broken once or twice. He seems to consider them for a moment – to consider the sort of life they speak of, the things that he does not know about but can guess from Thomas’ hand alone, and then blows out a breath.

“You wouldn’t be able to take him head-on,” he says after a moment. “I taught him nearly everything I know about swordplay.”

Thomas laughs gently.

“You have my thanks for the warning,” he answers, and James grants him a smile that still makes his heart do a flip in his chest, everything in him singing that he gets to see it again. It is still a tentative thing, James’ smile, but the longer he is with Thomas, the more he uses it. Thomas suspects that he has spent the past two days looking positively ridiculous himself, beaming like an idiot at the very sound of James’ voice. He does not care. He feels the edges of his mouth curling upward of their own accord, and the tightness in his chest dissipates, joy taking the edges off of it once again. He can live with this. He can stand it. For James, anything.

“Of course, this all depends on the notion that we can make our way out of here,” James points out after a moment. The words send a thrill down Thomas’ spine. To go – to be free –

It has seemed like an impossible dream, all these years, but nothing is impossible if James is alive and here with him.

“I can’t very well defend your honor if we sit here and never leave,” he agrees, and James reaches forward, grabbing hold of his hand, gripping it with his own, gentle, but firm, the same way they used to in carriages where no one could see them. His green eyes are bright, and fixed on Thomas’ face, the earring glinting in the firelight, his teeth showing as he flashes a smile at Thomas.

“Tell me about the outer defenses,” he says, and Thomas feels himself begin to grin.

“They’re no patch on Windsor Castle, if that’s what you’re asking.”