Tag: intolerablexsacrifice

“Would you mind if I kissed you?” [ for thomas! ;v; ]

{ Sinday Memes }

It was novel, to be asked something so intimate. He understood the hesitation – it had been years, and even in their prime James had never truly been one for the more daring of physical initiatives. He blossomed under the attentions, in ways that had enraptured Thomas to the point it felt as if every waking hour was consumed with thoughts of the naval officer that had eased so unexpectedly into the depths of his heart. 

It had been so much more than physical then – it was a desire of a different sort that had stirred them together to begin with. The desire for a mind to challenge, for scintillating conversation and above all else, for entertainment had been the draw at first. The more they circled one another’s orbits, the more those desires had drawn forth hidden depths until finally the line between enthusiasm and passion had been crossed.

Thomas had never forgotten those sweet moments, no more than he had lost the memory of the heat that could build between himself and the man before him. There were days now when he sought to stoke it – days when he did all he could to rile James up solely so that he could feel warm again. Whole, in the completion James could bring to him – and there were days when it cost him something to be touched at all. He ran hot and cold so often now it was a wonder James put up with him at all. A wonder that he had learned to ask – to see where he was when Thomas still forgot so often when his own torments were distracting him.

Realizing he had been silent too long, Thomas reached up and gently brushed his fingers against the man’s jaw. Stubble met him – rough and scratchy beneath his fingertips – and he raised his brows a bit as if to wonder if James had only asked this time because he knew how Thomas felt about beard rub. His lips twitched, the thought alone chasing away the last of his melancholy as he assured quietly, “You don’t have to ask today – though if this is here tomorrow,” He tapped a stubbled cheek, “I will dodge you on sheer protest.”    

“Could not have been easy coming here. Must have taken great strength.” [ for surgeon!abigail ]

{ Black Sails Starters } 

“You speak as though you left me any choice but this life I am now bound to,” Abigail’s soft tones had died in the same fires that stole away all she had ever known. The words were clipped as they were cold, leaving no doubt that whatever strength she had found had not come from kind places. 

Tapping her fingers idly against the table, her gaze finally lifted to meet his, unafraid and calm in a den of pirates when not so long ago, the mere sight of an ill dressed man could have filled her entire being with terror. “I suppose I could have died – that certainly would have been a cleaner end to the Charlestown chapter of your career, I am sure.” 

Soft lips curved into a smile that held the echoes of her past life – falsely pretty, an expression meant to placate older gentlemen when her words were too rash, reminding them she was little more than a silly girl who knew nothing of what she spoke of. Yet there was something sharp and brittle in the corners of her lips, as if poison welled in the corners and lay in wait for the prime opportunity to strike. 

“My refusal to perish could be strength – or it could simply be stubbornness. My father was a notoriously stubborn man,” The tapping stopped, and she did not yield in that moment, nor did she shy away from bringing up her father to this man in particular. If anything, it seemed a bald faced challenge – a test, though of what only she could tell. “So I imagine I would come by it honestly, if that were the case.”

She leaned back, surveying the room behind him, the sounds of men as they ate and drank, enjoying their time ashore, providing ample ambiance to what could have been a volatile conversation. Yet her body language was at ease, as if whatever she and Flint were discussing happened to be as light as the laughter rising from a nearby gambling table, or the disjointed singing at the bar courtesy of several sailors having enjoyed a bit too much of their gold in rum. 

“Personally I don’t attribute my return here to strength, Mr. Flint, so much as opportunity. Considering the reputation I now carry, honest work in my field is rather difficult to come by – at least in any lasting sense. All it would take is one fool to recognize me, and I’d be back to the gallows.” She wondered if he even knew what they said about her, or if she had been as unremarkable to him as every other innocent who had suffered his wrath that day. In the end she supposed it didn’t matter. His remorse or lack thereof would change nothing. “It seemed to me the wisest course to take. If I am to live my life this way I might as well come to the place that started it all and make them pay for it.” 

Here, she laughed, as if only just realizing the other meaning those words could carry. “In gold, of course. I still have to eat, after all, and I find there’s little profit to be made in vengeance. I can’t remember who taught me that, but I do recall it to be a rather unforgettable lesson.” Her expression held no innocence – there was no question where she picked up that particular bit of wisdom, after all. 

“/Your/ future is dripping down the drain.” [ for s1-s2 silver! ]

{ HAMILTON STARTERS }

Because he couldn’t figure that much out on his own, apparently. He was starting to think this entire venture was more mess than it was worth – but as it was he had no choice at this juncture but to play nice. He was on a ship in the middle of the fucking ocean and the only thing keeping him alive was the information inside his head. There might be something else he could bargain, but the very idea made his skin crawl – which left the lesser of two devils, in the form of playing nice with a monster of a man. 

One thing that was refreshing about Flint was that he didn’t conceal his monstrosity, or pretend it wasn’t a part of him. He didn’t fuck around – when he was pissed, there was no game to figure out. Blunt instruments like this were easier to work with than the kind of men he was used to maneuvering, so there was that at least. 

“Alright – it’s not like we didn’t establish earlier that I’m not, exactly, a cook.” How was he supposed to know you weren’t supposed to use butter as an oil substitute with that particular fish? The fact he even knew butter could serve as a substitute at all was because Randall had shoved it at him last week. “I mean – I should not have been unsupervised.”

He held up his hands placatingly, “On the plus side of all this – I do know how to fish. So I can get more.” Theoretically, anyway.

CHINHANDS talk to me about gates + tactile headcanons.

Hal has been at sea for a very long time. He has learned to keep his hands to himself, for the most part. That said he is both a very tactile and very territorial man at heart – which causes him to orbit those he considers to be his rather well. He is always within arms distance of them – or, keeping an eye on them from a considerable distance, which is an old habit he never broke from his time as a crack shot up in the crow’s nest. He’s got a deep seated appreciation for the bird’s eye view, to be sure. 

When he feels it will not go amiss, he is not above reaching out and clasping arms and shoulders, or even guiding people with a hand on the small of their back. The closer he gets to someone though, the more hands on he becomes, to the point of grabbing them by their ears to haul them out of a room or straight up throwing them over his shoulder when he has had enough of their bullshit for one night.

I keep saying they – and that is deliberate, because contrary to his babysitting contract frequent proximity to Flint, the man is not the only person Hal cares about – and is frequently exasperated by. Claiming Billy as a son to him goes well beyond feeling responsible for him – it also means butting heads constantly and trusting that it will resolve due to a mutual sense of camaraderie. He is as likely to haul Billy by his ear as he is to haul Flint, really. 

As a whole, Hal takes the entire crew of the Walrus as his own. He is defensive of each and every one of them, and considering some can be right shits for brains, it does mean he’s as likely to be carrying one of his own out of a bar as he is to be dropping men to the ground for trying to start shit with his boys to begin with. 

The only member of the crew Hal hasn’t grown exasperated with to the point of manhandling is Joji. Though he’d never indicate as much to anyone, Joji is low key his favorite because he never does anything fucking ridiculous, and on a ship full of dodos, that is a goddamn blessing.

Point Of Mercy

@intolerablexsacrifice continued from [x]

“Oh yes – pardon me,” Hal huffed, crossing his arms as he gave the man a look. “Strange time for mercy to strike you, seeing as he’s gone and lost all use what the hell’s the point of not making a full corpse of him?” Guthrie was a wanted man now – that made him more a liability than anything else. Not to mention he was of no value – so what benefit was there to keeping him around and running a risk?

His lips twitched a little, before he shook his head and headed into the cabin, remarking in a tone unreadable enough it was hard to tell if he was serious or not. “I’ll hold you to that – and it better be a nice one, or I’ll really get cross.”

“I honestly thought that things would be very different.” [ for gates! your pick B) ]

{ Profound Starters } 

“Of course you did,” There is no mockery in his tone – nor scorn, or even anger as he looks up at the man whom the saints themselves would point to when asked for a definition of marking the road to hell in good intentions. “That’s the problem with angry dreamers – they tend to build their own nightmares.” 

Raising his tankard in salute, he took a long drink before setting it back on the table and waving for Flint to sit down and join him. There is no fear, despite the way in which they had parted ( there were nights when his mind replayed it, nights when he wasn’t able to maneuver enough and catch the man’s throat with a forceful blow from his elbow, and the results were never all that pleasant ) and although it had been almost a year now, Hal seemed content to act as though nothing had changed. 

And in essence, nothing had. Flint was still chasing an impossible dream because there was too much pain in him to swallow and war was easier to face than grief. Guthrie had still been latched on to the strongest man in town like a fucking barnacle, convinced that manipulating stronger and more connected people meant she was the one with all the power. Fat lot of good it did her when the Spanish came calling again.

Max and Jack were still, arguably, the smartest and most business savvy people on the entire fucking island, and Anne was still by far the scariest – which Hal could only assume was the reason none of them were present at this particular gathering of force. Everything else was in some state of for Flint or against Flint which was pretty much par for the course if not for the scale of it all now.

And that, right there, was the only real difference – how many people were dead along the way and how many people rallied now that piracy itself had martyrs by the names Vane and Blackbeard. No. Nothing had changed in Nassau beyond the fucking body count and who was taking tally of the corpses this time – but the world. The world was shifting, and somehow, against all fucking odds, Flint was standing at the dead center of the storm.

“Interesting choice in quartermaster,” He observed flatly, wondering how in the hell the thief even worked into that position with all that was stacked against him. And if Flint had somehow not picked up on the fact he was unimpressed by the choice, his next words might prove a fucking clue.

“My ship leaves the harbor in an hour. We’re not lingering more than that,” After Silver’s little showdown with Julius, Hal honestly didn’t see anything here that would prove profitable for him or his men. “We’ll take those who have no desire to fight this war with you, but I’m not saying anything for or against this venture.” The not yet, anyway, hung heavily in the air. If Flint wanted Hal to pick up a stake in this fight – this was his one, and only opportunity to do it.   

“You have ruined our lives. You’ve ruined /their/ lives.” [ for s4-ish(?) silver because OF COURSE IT IS ]

{ Hamilton Starters }

“Take that self righteous shit and sell it somewhere else – you and I both know this has nothing to do with their lives. My life holds no meaning to you – and they are nothing more than a means to your ends. The only thing you give a fuck about is your own agenda and the only reason you’re pissed off is because you can’t stand the idea that this – all of this, everything you have done, every monstrous act, every unforgivable deed, every man you trusted and killed – amounts to absolutely nothing if you don’t have a martyr to fight for.” 

Shifting his grip on his crutch, it took everything in his power not to carry on – he could feel his fury building to the point that English was slipping from him. Spanish was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a far superior language to lash a man to a crippling degree with, but he had come too far in this game to let even an insult pass in his mother tongue in a heated moment like this one. Swearing in a second language at a time like this said one thing only – that it was the first – and even that was too much information to impart on this man.

Eventually, he found some measure of calm and continued in a clearer, more clipped tone. He was no longer striking, but he was not relenting, either. “If you want to claim that their lives matter, now is the time to prove it. Drop this fight that cannot be won, and disappear. Live – and by whatever you still hold holy, let them do the same.” 

“There is suffering too terrible to name.” [ for abigail, while they’re sailing to charlestown :’) ]

{ Hamilton Starters }

His words stir something, almost like a memory. There is no name for it, none that she can conjure. Being on this ship has caused her to see many things in different ways, to take chances she never would have dared to consider before. There was something – liberating – about being able to speak one’s mind, to ask questions that were perhaps too bold for polite company, and know that it would not be seen in a scandalous light. 

Lines could still be crossed – there were always lines that could be crossed – but here, on this ship, Abigail could test the true limits of curiosity without fearing the loss of something intangible like a reputation or a good name. It wasn’t proper, perhaps – but what was proper among pirates?

“Is that why you became a pirate?” While her nerve remained strong enough, Abigail pushed on, “To escape suffering – or to cause it in turn?” She did not ask this to be cruel – rather, she wanted to understand more about the man Mrs Hamilton – or rather, Miss Barlow – had turned to in her hour of need. The man who had hunted down the Hamiltons – the man whose name was synonymous with so many terrible things, who in turn was both so terribly sad and kind despite his reputation.  

“No one tells me what to do unless we’re in bed.” [ FOR SILVER FUCKING RIP FLINT’S VERBAL FILTER ]

{ Sinday Memes }

Is that supposed to be a threat? The fuck kind of line is that? “Fascinating as that bit of information is,” His tone could likely do with being a touch more scathing and a little less genuinely awed by the sheer ridiculousness of that particular angle being taken in this argument, “I think it goes without saying that requiring your quartermaster to bed you in order for him to do his job is counterproductive in the extreme, so unless you have something more substantial to argue with how about you give me a reason to work with instead of spitting out the first piece of shit to pop into your head?”