{ Nonverbal Starters }

Thomas jerked away sharply, rising to his feet and turning – ready to fight, ready to run – and it didn’t matter that there was nowhere to go on this fucking ship. He was ready to fly straight into the ocean’s embrace if he had to. Anything was better than this – hell – inside of himself.

For a time he simply stood there – staring at James through the sting in his eyes and dragging in breath that clawed at his throat and left him feeling more and more raw with each and every intake. He was torn in the worst imaginable fashion. He wanted to be alone, he didn’t want anyone to see him, let alone touch him. He wanted to scream, to rage, to hurt something, anything but himself..

Yet beyond all that – beyond that tempestuous, self-guarding fury – he wanted to lay his head down in a familiar lap, to feel hands combing through his hair and hear the songs that had calmed him ever since he was a boy. The songs that had rescued him time and again, from pain and anger and grief. The scent of perfume still lingering against a skirt that felt like home, and the awareness that the storms could be put to sleep. To know that it was safe to weep, until the clouds cleared, and the world was made whole as rest overtook him in the greatest peace he had ever known in his life. 

He missed her – he had missed her ever since that incident, and the mutual agreement not to seek one another’s company. To protect themselves and what was left – and he had found hollow echoes since. Miranda’s soothing hands, the lap of a lover, the songs of paid entertainers – there had always been bits and pieces in place to tame the storms, but none had amounted to what he needed. 

There had been something close, on the plantation. How he had found her, and how she had known what he needed he could not say. He’d found solace, and another reason to be grateful for that cage, to be glad of it. There was much to be said about learning to love a prison, and none of it could be understood by the man in front of him, who had spent so long hating the world in the name of a ghost forged by lies and the will to believe them, despite knowing their source had never known truth once, let alone the capacity to speak it. 

Taking in another sharp, aching breath, Thomas accepted that what he wanted and what he could have would always be two seperate things. No rage, no grief, no pain could change that. He would, as he has always done, have to adapt. To alter himself, and compromise, again and again, for even an echo of what he needed would always, and ever, have to be enough. 

Stepping forward, he reached out and clasped James by the wrists – though who he meant to anchor in that moment, was anyone’s guess. 

“Can we – lay down, for a time?” His voice was quiet, if only to mask how raw it was. “Or are you – are you busy?”

@intolerablexsacrifice