Warmth (Black Sails, M)

[groundcontrol]

Back again with everyone’s favorite boys! Or at the very least, my absolute favorite boys. Your honor, I love them. If you’ve seen the show, this takes place after the Kiss and the Dinner and before the 3 month stint to Nassau (feels like twice as long amirite?) and just generally around the time when they are by the window being all cute and smiley. Also another shameless plug for Black Sails. 

 

Thankfully, the worst of the rain had abated by the time Lieutenant James McGraw left the Admiralty. After a day’s worth of meetings in stuffy rooms with stuffier men, the cool damp London air could almost be considered welcome, were it not for the head cold he was brewing. At first a relief to his overwarm (and perhaps slightly feverish) body, the mist and sprinkles soon seeped deep into him, making his overcoat cling to him uselessly. He shivered, and sneezed (unfortunately) into a gloved hand when he could not retrieve his handkerchief fast enough.

    “Hhh’RShhh!” He groaned and swore under his breath, rubbing uselessly at his left ear, which had been full and throbbing all day, and had recently started affording him sharp strikes of pain whenever he sneezed, which was unfortunately becoming more frequent as well.

    The walk from the Admiralty to the rooms at which James boarded was short, ten minutes at most, for which he was grateful, even as the walk felt unnaturally long this day. He wanted nothing more than to just collapse into bed and sleep for a long while, until his ear stopped bothering him at least, and James spared a bit of thanks that he was under the weather on land rather than at sea. At sea any illness was always ten times more miserable. 

    He shivered again in the damp air, and wished there would be a fire in his rooms awaiting him. There wouldn’t be, of course, and the stash of coal he had with which to build a fire was pitiful. A lieutenant’s pay was scant and not to be spent much on worldly comforts, but perhaps James could justify dipping into his reserves just this once. After all, he was ill; he could feel it in his head, in his throat, in his ear, and he would be of no use to anyone in Her Majesty’s Navy if he were to come down with pneumonia.

    Yes, he could justify building himself a fire, but what James really wanted, if he were honest with himself, was to be curled in bed beside Thomas, burrowed beneath a blanket with the massive hearth roaring its heat throughout the bedroom. The thought of such bliss brought with it such a desire that it was almost painful and dear God, it had been scarcely a month since Thomas had first kissed him and yet now here James was, seeking his comfort above all else in the world. He had never felt this way with a woman, never with any of the men whose release he had sought in dark alleys and corners, and the thought vivified him as much as it terrorized him. 

    But the Hamilton house was down the road in the opposite direction, and James had already shuffled nearly all the way back to the boarding house. He was wet and tired and tetchy from pain, and even if he could manage to convince himself to walk all the way to the Hamilton’s, he would likely be poor company anyhow. Besides, he did not want to give his cold to Thomas, or to Miranda. 

    James ascended the creaky staircase to the room he rented, removing his damp and heavy overcoat with a tight sigh. He pushed open the door to his room, only to find that someone else was already in it, seated on the bed reading a book. 

    “Thomas,” James says, and in his head he meant it to be a question but it comes out as a statement on a relieved exhalation of air. His shoulders slump and, though he’s exhausted, his smile spreads fully across his entire face. “What are you doing here?”

    Thomas had removed his wig and it sat on the night table beside the bed. He smiled as he marked his page and placed his book beside it. “Miranda pointed out that our rendezvous are heavily imbalanced toward our home, and suggested I surprise you here.”

    James hung his coat on its peg by the door. “How did you get in?”

    “You’d left it unlocked.”

    Inwardly, James cursed himself for his oversight and blamed it on his stuffy, clouded head. “And if I hadn’t?”

    “Brute force, I’d imagine.”

    At the thought of Thomas, his sweet and gangly Thomas whose inkpots were sometimes too hard for him to pry open, attempting to bust down his door, James burst out laughing. After a little while, the laughter caught in his sore throat and sent him into a fit of coughing far hoarser and more scratching than he had endured yet that day. 

    Thomas rose from the bed instantly, frowning deeply. “Oh, darling. You don’t sound well at all.”

    There was no point denying it after such ill-sounding coughs, so James merely cleared his throat and sniffled. “Bit of a head cold, I think.”

    Thomas drew closer to him. “Come here,” he said, and reached for James’s shoulder to gently pull him closer. Thomas rested his forehead a moment against his, and James couldn’t help but sigh, feeling some of the tension drain from him. This was what he had been aching for. 

Thomas pulled back slightly and caressed James’s cheek, his glittering eyes roving over every inch of James’s face. “Mmm, you’re a little warm, my love. I knew you seemed a bit off at dinner last night.”

    James was forced to pull away and bury his nose in his handkerchief. “Hehh’IMPFF! Hehh’KMFPFF!” White hot pain shot from his throat to his ear, and he moaned quietly.

    Thomas had him gently by the arm, rubbing his thumb back and forth across James’s shoulder. “What is it?” he intoned quietly, worriedly. 

    “My ear,” James said, cupping his hand around it. “Been hurting all day.”

    “Oh, James,” Thomas said, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head, “go lie down and I’ll get you a warm cloth.”

    James did not need any more instruction to strip from the rest of his dampened clothes and crawl beneath the scratchy bedsheets, still slightly warmed from where Thomas had been sitting atop them. It was only when he had done so that he realized Thomas had had a fire going in his little hearth since before James had arrived. James knew that one word from him about the money would result in Thomas spluttering guiltily and buying him enough coal to warm a small city, and so James remained silent. Thomas had already done enough for him, had done too much most likely, and anyway, James had been intending to light a fire himself.

    Thomas soaked a couple cloths in water from the washbasin and hung them before the fire. Once one had warmed suitably, he brought it to James and laid it carefully across his sore ear. James pressed the cloth down, reveling in the gentle warmth it brought him, and coughed, the sound wet and congested.

    Thomas hummed sadly and started stroking James’s hair. “My poor, dear James, it must be the stress of everything catching up to you.”

    James yawned as widely as he dared, the combination of the warm cloth and Thomas’s ministrations already making him tired. “Must be,” he murmured.

    “I’m sorry.”

    Thomas sounded desolate, and James flipped on his back to look at him. “Don’t be,” he said firmly, knowing what Thomas was trying to apologize for. “Wouldn’t have met you otherwise.” 

And it was true, for all the stress Nassau and Thomas’s father and their relationship had caused him, it had also given him genuine happiness, genuine love for the first time in James’s life, and nothing could ever erase that. For the first time, the yoke of shame that had weighed heavily on his shoulders was becoming lighter, the future becoming a source of an imaginable good rather than a nebulous grey. James would never let Thomas blame himself for anything, not when Thomas was the only thing that made such stress worth bearing.

    James kissed Thomas’s fingers, and rolled back on his side. He repositioned the cloth over his ear, and felt Thomas return to brushing gently through his hair with his fingers.

    “How does that feel?” Thomas asked, tapping softly at the cloth. 

    “Takes a bit of the edge off. Definitely much better than serving on deck in the cold. I don’t recommend that.”

    “I’ll note that down,” Thomas said, and James could hear the frown seep back into his voice. “My heart breaks at the thought though, James. You shouldn’t be anywhere but in bed in a state like this.”

    “What do you call this, then?” James said teasingly, gesturing at the bed where he lay. “I know it isn’t up to genteel standards but–”

    “You know what I’m referring to.”

    James matched Thomas’s serious tone. “Yes, I do, Thomas. But you don’t have to worry about me.”

    “I don’t have to.” Thomas kissed James’s temple, then his forehead. “I get to. It’s God’s biggest blessing, having you here with me.”

    James jerked away to bury his face in his pillow. “Hahh’RSHH’oo! Hehh’ISHHuhh! He’ISSSHH!” He sniffled heavily and winced at the pain that still coursed through his ear.

    Thomas pressed his lips to James’s ear so tenderly, so gently, it was as if his lips barely touched him. “Would that I could kiss the pain away.”

    “You may be the most wonderful man I have ever met, Thomas,” James said, sniffling, “but I doubt even you can do that.”

    “I say it’s worth a try,” Thomas said. He pressed the same, featherlight kisses all around James’s ear and temple, and working down his jaw. It made James tremble, and not with cold. “After all, was it not just one of my kisses which made you mine forever, my truest love?”

    In lieu of a proper response, James sneezed again. “Hhhh’ISSHH’uhh! Hehh’ISHH!” He coughed a bit in the aftermath, and groaned quietly. 

    “Is the cloth not helping?” Thomas asked, already ready to remove it. 

    “No, it is, a bit,” James said, pressing it down against his ear with his hand. “It’s just… my head aches.”

    “Perhaps a bit of a massage, then?” 

Thomas had scarcely finished the question before his fingers were kneading comforting circles, firm and yet not too harsh, on James’s pounding head. James had never felt something so blissful in his life; if possible, he felt himself sink further into the mattress with a completely undignified (and loud) noise. James could have never imagined someone would care that he felt unwell, let alone lavish him with such attentive and loving care.

    “Oh God, oh Thomas,” he almost whimpered. ““Never stop that.”

    Thomas chuckled lightly. “I will admit, this was not precisely the context in which I expected to hear those words tonight.”

    The words made a knot of guilt form in James’s stomach; here he was being needy when he had weathered far worse than a measly cold all alone, and Thomas had come expecting a night pleasurable for the both of them. “I’m sorry I’m such poor company tonight,” James said quietly, remembering why he had decided against dragging himself to the Hamilton’s in the first place. He felt small and out of place and wholly undeserving of Thomas’s affections. “I’m sure this is not what you had in mind when you came.”

    Thomas clucked his tongue. “James McGraw, any moment I get to spend close by you is a moment I will treasure in my heart forever. It does not matter what I am doing, only that you are there with me. I would sit by your bedside for a thousand years and I would consider myself the luckiest man alive to have spent all that time with you.”

    James felt his eyes well with tears and he blinked them away, hoping to blame their wetness and his leaky nose on his illness. He swiped at his face and curled closer to Thomas. He was tired now, and tomorrow was for worrying and wondering, he reasoned. 

“Well, I hope it doesn’t take me that long to get over this cold.”

    At that, Thomas laughed, the sound light as sunshine.

[starpollen]

Aww  They are adorzable.